by Sever Bronny
“She seems to think it’s a game,” Maxine said. “What will happen when she appears twenty feet underground?”
“Uh, that’s what training is for, Miss Sour Pants,” Leera replied. “You know, like with all arcanery? Anyway, I have a plan—and this will come as a revolutionary idea to you, Maxine—but I’m going to ask for help with the concepts. Whether it’s from Bridget, Augum, Esha, even you—heck, I don’t care if I have to go all the way back and get Ning’s help. Right now, my goal is to simply get through the parchments. Next round I’ll dive into the concepts in detail. And I promise, Aug, I’m not going to cast it until I completely understand it.”
Augum, recalling his many brazen attempts at casting spells before he was ready, had to admit that it was a bold undertaking. Despite the risks, he smiled at her. “You’ve got my total support.”
She slapped the parchments into her chest as she melted. “Aww, love, thank you, that means a lot.” And for the rest of the ever-darkening and windy journey, Leera did not stop smiling … or studying.
The Dragon Sea
“There she is,” Augum said, nodding ahead at the pirate ship. “Howling Lily.” The fearsome vessel, lit in silhouette by moonlight that penetrated a patch of fast-moving clouds, rocked in tumultuous waters just off the coast.
The group stood atop a rocky snow-encrusted cliff, hair and robes and coats whipping about in the wind. The cliff gradually dissolved to coarse sand the closer it came to the salty waters of the Dragon Sea, which rhythmically crashed against the shore in waves. A dinghy bobbed in those churning waters by a broken dock, lit by a single dim lantern that swayed in the bitter wind.
They trekked down the dark slope, watching their steps, and were soon greeted by two men, who had five of them step into the dinghy.
“They is all ’locks,” the shorter of the men said.
“Gon’ take a few trips,” the taller muttered, eyeing them warily. “Why’n’t you magic yer way across?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Brandon replied without elaborating.
The shorter man recoiled at seeing Esha. “And what in Path’s name is that there thing?”
“She’s just a woman with a, uh, deformity,” Leera blurted.
“Then that’s a right beastly deformity, I says. You keeps her well away. Belongs in a carnival, she does.”
It took three trips in the small dinghy to get everyone onto Howling Lily. On board, men—and a few women—scurried to raise anchor.
Captain Vada Chan approached Augum with crossed arms. “It’s bad luck to have this many ’locks on her.”
Augum noticed the crew eyeing them with suspicion. Esha kept her hooded head low, paws hidden with the sleeves of her robe. “We’ll stay out of your way,” he said.
“I reckon that is a good idea.” She looked them over. “And I now reckon I know exactly who you are,” causing the group to tense, but the captain merely glanced at the moon. “Is it going to appear above like a mighty raven of old, swoop down on us, and smash my beautiful ship to splinters?”
“We hope not,” Bridget replied. “But if it does, we would all be in a great deal of trouble.”
“Would we now? But you all could ’port off. What would then happen to my crew?”
“We would teleport you out too,” Augum threw in, wondering if the two Group Teleport scrolls—all they had left—would suffice.
Captain Chan scoffed. “Tarred rat you would. But your coin is as good as anyone else’s.”
“All ready for the call, Captain,” shouted a voice from above.
Captain Chan placed an expectant gaze on Augum.
“We’re going to Moonhook Isle, Captain.”
“The cursed island. Why am I not surprised. So be it.” She raised her head and shouted, “Let ’er loose, saltbloods! To Moonhook Isle we glide!” Her voice carried well in the wind.
“Let ’er loose, saltbloods! To Moonhook Isle we glide!” many voices echoed in unison. The anchor winched with a loud clank and then four square sails rose simultaneously and filled with wind. The ship lurched forward as if struck by a battering ram, forcing Augum’s group to grab onto each other or the ship itself lest they get knocked over. Captain Chan watched with an amused expression, arms still folded, her sea legs holding her as steady as one of the many brass gimballed oil lanterns that swayed with the ship. Only Mary and Leera swayed the same way, water warlocks in their element. The rigging began to hum and the ship tilted as it raced forward.
“Gods it’s going to go under!” Jengo shrieked, frantically trying to find something to grab onto other than people. He finally found a barrel strapped to the deck and hugged it like it was all he had left in the world. “She’s tipping into the water—!”
A profusely sweating Brandon, for his part, edged away from the rails and held onto the mast.
Chan ignored them. “Any of you air ’locks?”
“I’m afraid not,” Augum replied.
“Shame. You may go below, but stay out of our way. And payment will be due halfway, Dragoon Stone.” She sounded annoyed rather than mocking.
Augum nodded at Arthur, Mary and Maxine, judging them a balanced team. “You three stay above and keep watch.”
Arthur saluted. “Aye, aye, Cap,” drawing a scolding look from Chan, the real captain. Arthur promptly cleared his throat and shuffled off.
“Report how things are going at your leisure, Maxine,” Augum added.
Maxine gave a terse nod. “Mmm.”
“Now give me a hand here, Ollie,” and Augum and Olaf gently pried a whimpering Jengo off the barrel before following the rest of the group.
The ship’s interior was cramped, with a low ceiling that forced nearly everyone to duck. The deck was tilted to such a degree that they had to brace themselves against the walls to walk.
They entered a room filled with shelves stuffed with sacks and barrels and crates and banded humpback chests. There the group settled in for the voyage. Most lay down on sacks of flour, while Leera withdrew the Spectral Teleport parchment and began studying. Augum leaned his head against her shoulder and tried to keep the queasiness at bay.
Bridget fetched the ritual scroll from Augum and began studying it, but before long she clamped a hand over her mouth, gurgling, “I’m not feeling well.” She was pale and drops of sweat had beaded on her forehead—she was an earth warlock, who were well known to prefer their feet on dry land.
“Same,” Olaf moaned, face green.
“Same,” a pallid Haylee mumbled. She spread her hands over a cracked broom handle to distract herself. “Apreyo,” and the handle reformed, a small light sealing the crack shut. She wavered a moment and abruptly bent over and vomited. This caused a cascade effect, starting with Bridget, followed by Olaf, Cry, Brandon, and finally Jengo. Augum somehow kept it in while Leera seemed unaffected. The cabin soon reeked like a sick ward.
Leera rolled her eyes and was about to fetch a nearby bucket and rag, only for Augum to grab her by the elbow. “No, you keep studying, I’ll handle it.”
She looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but then her face melted. “Oh, Aug,” and kissed his cheek. “You are a good man,” she whispered, and returned to mumbling at the complex parchment.
Augum fetched the bucket, filled it with water from a covered barrel and, despite his friends’ protests, washed their sickness from the floor, feeling it appropriate that he was the one to do it. After all, he felt responsible for their lives, not to mention he thought he could use a lesson in humility. He also used the opportunity to iron up his stomach, vowing that he would not vomit. Throughout, he was conscious of Esha watching him and Herzog noting the moment in his book, something Augum wished the man refrained from doing—not everything need be immortalized.
“I’m not an invalid,” Bridget protested when Augum took to cleaning her mess, though she fell back with a groan the moment she tried to rise from Olaf’s lap, the black scroll still clutched in her fist.
“Oh, hush your blea
ting,” Augum said in an imitation of her. After finishing and receiving grateful thanks from his friends, he flopped down beside Leera. He wanted to study the black scroll ritual but knew that he’d get violently seasick if he so much as read a single word. Besides, he should have time enough to study it on the island.
The ship maintained its list, wooden beams creaking and groaning as it sliced through the waves. Surprisingly, the motion steadied as the wind picked up, the water soothingly rushing by its hull like a river. Time passed in a creaking and watery rhythm. Leera would occasionally flip a page, or return to a previous page to reference what she’d already read. Once she even sidled over to Bridget, whose head lay in Olaf’s lap, and asked her to clarify a concept. Bridget answered in a weak voice, keeping her eyes shut against the nausea. Olaf, who still looked a little peaked himself, idly stroked Bridget’s hair with one hand while holding her close with the other.
As for Esha, she lay in patient stillness beside Herzog. Augum was amazed that no one was pestering her about history. A fountain of pure knowledge rested amongst them like a ghost from the past. Then again, even he was drawing a blank as to what he would ask her, his mind too distracted trying to keep his stomach in check.
Maxine eventually came down, eyes taking in the room. “Reeks in here.”
Augum smirked at her. “Stinks of friendship.”
She only scowled at him.
“How are things above?” Augum pressed.
“Dark and boring.”
“Are you even scared about … you know.”
“Nope.”
“Not even a—”
“Not one iota.”
“But—”
“I told you what I value most, Dragoon Stone.”
“You did. A good death. I just—”
“I’m going back up top. At least there they know to keep their mouths shut.” She turned her back on him and left.
“She’s quite the sunny personality, isn’t she?” Leera muttered.
Augum snorted. “As much as she tries to get everyone to hate her, I just can’t muster it.”
Leera stopped briefly to look at nothing in particular. “Same, strangely.”
More time passed. Haylee’s head slumped as she began to snooze where she sat. Seeing this, Cry sidled over to Augum, journal open, twirling his raven quill with ink-stained fingers.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Augum replied. They sat in silence for a moment until Augum asked, “How does it feel to join us on an adventure?”
“Not as fun as I thought it’d be. Truth be told, I find it …” He cleared his throat. “… rather harrowing.”
“Welcome to our lives,” Augum muttered.
Cry looked to the empty doorway. “Think she’ll really go through with it? Sacrificing herself for us?”
Augum didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Cry shook his head. “Bizarre woman. Complicated woman.”
“Tell me about it.”
Cry glanced over at Leera, whose lips were moving, sharp eyebrows scrunched together in focus. Then he lowered his voice. “Um … how, uh … how do you, uh …”
Augum raised his eyebrows.
Cry swallowed, unable to articulate what he wanted to know. Instead he looked over at Haylee and nervously cracked his knuckles.
Augum tried not to smile as he leaned closer to Cry. “How is it that you can be such an eloquent writer but not have the faintest idea how to talk to a girl?”
Cry went beet red. “I … I …”
“Come on, you wrote a nice piece about her womanhood ceremony, at the very least catching her attention. You’re good with words. What can you do on that front?”
“I … I guess I can write her a letter.”
Augum flashed him a Now there’s an idea look.
Cry got up only to plop right back down. “What do I say?”
“I don’t know. Try expressing how you feel.”
Cry returned to cracking his knuckles. “Right, how I feel.”
“How you feel.” Augum elbowed him. “You’ll do fine.”
“Right. Right …” Cry wandered off to begin his letter.
The rhythm of the sea returned, making Augum’s eyes steadily close. Just as he was about to nap, Captain Chan came down, and Augum hauled himself up to greet her, indicating for his friends to continue resting.
“We are midway to Moonhook Isle, Dragoon Stone. Let us seal our bargain.”
Augum retrieved the coin pouch. She, in turn, held out a small vial of dark liquid—the black nettle poison—and they made the trade.
“A most un-Arcaner-like exchange if I do say so myself,” Captain Chan said, weighing the pouch in her hand. “But this is a worthy sum.”
“The nettle is not for what you think.”
“I gathered.” Chan’s eyes fell on Esha, who sat with her hood drawn, obscuring her face. “I have heard word that a lioness has graced the deck of my ship. Is she who my saltbloods think she is?”
“That depends upon who they think she is,” Augum replied.
Captain Chan strode over to Esha, looming above her. Esha did not look up. “I think she is from a distant land of lions, a land thought to exist only in children’s tales by those who do not spend their lives on the decks of ships.” Captain Chan glanced over at Herzog quietly scribbling in his tome. “She is an escaped tale carried upon the salt winds by sailors with wide eyes who have seen too much, heard too much, drunk too much. I think she is like the wolven of the north—a creature foreign to these lands. A creature as mortal as any other.” Captain Chan beckoned at Esha. “Look at me, lioness.”
Esha at last glanced up and Captain Chan grabbed her muzzle as if inspecting a slave, making the friends—as sick as many of them were—instantly jump to their feet.
“How dare you,” Haylee hissed. “Let go of her—now.”
But Captain Chan ignored Haylee and inspected Esha’s face, twisting it to the right and left before letting it go with a slight jerk. “Fading whiskers, tired eyes, old wounds and blemishes. She is aging. She is from afar, from a land of lions. She is no more a Dreadnought than I am, and you are all fools for believing in tall tales.”
Augum did not argue the point, feeling it was preferable that the woman considered Esha a fake Dreadnought. He was only glad Arthur hadn’t heard, as it would fuel his misbeliefs.
“Halfway there,” Chan reiterated, and went back up, allowing the friends to resettle.
Augum plopped down beside Leera and sighed, still fighting the queasiness that never seemed to let up. She put an arm around his shoulders, eyes glued to the parchment, and pressed him to her. Eventually he lay down in her lap and closed his eyes, willing the nausea to subside. Above him, Leera kept whispering to herself under her breath, her hair tickling his face.
“… and rebound perpendicularity likely alludes to the concept of arcane perpendicularity, except it seems to be applied in a whole new way,” she muttered, one hand stroking his back, the other rhythmically tapping out a pattern on the page. “A way that uses the concept of teleportation to bend the laws of arcanery almost to the breaking point, hence the challenge. But how does perpendicularity, which is meant to counter a spell in the Mirror of the Dragon simul, apply here? Where’s that part again—” A page flipped and then the hand on his back froze. “Oh, I get it,” and the hand resumed caressing his back as she quoted the text.
“ ‘The caster must, prior to the casting, prepare his soul to continue drawing from the well of the arcane ether even though his soul will demand he stop that draw. The caster may think of it like writing a sentence, wherein he pauses midway to attend to another task before continuing writing.’ So how does it apply? How can I understand this without the concept of rebound perpendicularity being explained in detail? Ugh, come on, brain, help me here, we’re done being stupid, all right?”
“It probably only means that you have to prepare yourself ahead of time to counter the natural tendency to cease the casting
at the point where you temporarily appear to strike your opponent,” Augum muttered sleepily in her lap, briefly mustering his concentration, which took a lot more effort while fighting nausea. “You have to hold on to that initial arcanery while splitting your focus on the attack. The rebound part might refer to rebounding back into that original arcane draw.” He half-shrugged. “Just my impression, anyway.”
Leera froze. She flipped back a page, reading silently to herself, before leaning down and planting a firm kiss on Augum’s cheek. “Brilliant, thanks.”
Augum wrapped an arm around her waist, toned out a happy “Mmm,” and soon drifted off to sleep listening to his girl mutter, debating herself on this or that concept.
Moonhook Isle
Amazingly, Howling Lily made it to the coast of Moonhook Isle without incident. The companions filed into the dinghy in somewhat calmer waters, for the wind had died down, and were dropped off on the island in three successive trips. Augum was the last to step off the pirate ship, and when he said goodbye and thanks, Captain Chan didn’t utter a word. On land, he raised a hand in thanks again but the gesture was ignored.
By then, the group estimated that it was around the tenth hour of the evening, just as they had planned. The clouds, backlit by a large and silver full moon, were slowly parting to reveal patches of brilliant night sky. Howling Lily bobbed in the Dragon Sea’s black waters like a dark hunter, readying to depart, not a single light visible from her. The air was thick with salt but fresh, and warmer than it had been in the north.
The group stood on a finely pebbled beach littered with driftwood and the occasional blotch of snow. Behind them loomed a windswept forest of stunted maples and rugged junipers and gnarled oaks. It reminded Augum of when he and the girls had trained with Atrius Arinthian in the Arcaner course for the final hour of Mirror of the Dragon class, as the man had brought them here—or at least within an illusion framed as such.
“I guess we’ll study the ritual at the site,” Augum said, digging out the Orb of Hearing. “Right now, it’s time for an orb check.”
“Orb check!” Maxine called out. “Keep your mouths shut.”