I took in the field of debris I found myself in and numbly processed it. When a heavily battered ship flying the flag of Antarus began sailing in my direction, I let myself slip beneath the waves.

Deep beneath the waves. I needed time to think, and process the prompts waiting for my attention.

Your recent endeavors have improved your Endurance by +3!

That teleportation spell had really put me through the wringer. I’d been close to advancing my endurance through exertion several times over without quite breaking through the threshold, but the ordeal my method of transport had involved pushed me through and then some. Endurance was now tied with Intelligence as my highest stat.

It was good to advance my attributes, since I hadn’t gotten any points from levelling with Jones’ order. Still, I was thankful I hadn’t advanced it any higher than that. It would have thrown my still-imbalanced attributes further out of whack.

Despite the attribute boost and the resultant stamina increase, I really wish I hadn’t gone through that – and not just because of how incredibly painful it had been. I was adrift. My crew was somewhere north-northeast of my position, and a long, long way off at that. I wasn’t returning to my ship anytime soon.

I couldn’t claim a replacement ship due to the infuriating ‘Slaver’ quest I’d been saddled with. I couldn’t claim an additional ship without investing the XP into the Raise Ship (II) ability … the 700,000 XP one. Being adrift wasn’t a mortal peril for me anymore – not like it used to be – but it was inconvenient and still dangerous with all the things that called the sea home.

What was I going to do? I’d left my crew for a moment to collect myself and decide how to respond to their mutiny, and now I was hundreds, thousands of miles away. They hadn’t stolen my life or profession, but they were in control of the ship. With the stealth ability I’d just purchased for it, they might have a shot at staying away from the navy – assuming they didn’t run straight to the authorities and beg for mercy.

I tried to imagine Burdette begging for mercy. My unpleasant expression twisted at the thought of my first mate. That man … I’d never felt the personal hatred for anyone that I now felt. Lawless Jack, the mercenary pirate who’d started me on this path, hadn’t warranted a fraction of this emotion. Even Jones, my unwanted master, hadn’t been so duplicitous in his dealings with me.

I hated Burdette … and dealing with him was my greatest motivation to return to the Death’s Consort.

But I found within myself an apathy regarding the rest of the ship and crew. I’d betrayed them, and they’d betrayed me. Now they were gone, and if I could have control of my own ship I’d have called it a clean break and for the best.

A clean break … whisked away first by Jones, then the ‘Spirit of the Ocean’. What had happened back there? Was I imagining things to think that I’d successfully resisted Davy Jones? Why had Jones let me be when the spirit had shown up? What kind of spirit was the ‘Spirit of the Ocean’ anyway?

It couldn’t be … like the actual spirit of the ocean itself?

You have been exposed to prolonged, concentrated amounts of a Deeper magic which you have an affinity for. You have developed new capabilities based on this experience.

New spell learned (Ocean Magic): Swift Current Travel – Utilize the concentrated power of the Ocean’s movement to propel yourself.

New spell learned (Ocean Magic): Replenishing Waters – With water’s ability to maintain life, heal injuries and restore HP.

For all that I’d just been thinking about distances, the first spell was useless to me. I checked. The initial mana cost was ridiculous, 250 points. That was just shy of my entire pool. The trouble was, that only got the spell going – it needed more mana during travel to maintain the spell!

Humans just didn’t have the capacity to hold that much mana. We became imbalanced first. The spell would be fine for fey creatures or spirits, but I didn’t have the capabilities for it. Even among those beings who had the mana to fuel such a spell, it was a powerful thing.

It spoke to how powerful the Spirit who cast it on me had been.

The other half of the problem with casting it was that channeling all that force meant that unless I had a crazy Constitution level (which I didn’t) the healing spell needed to be cast simultaneously. That was another drain on mana.

Fortunately, the healing spell was within my reach. It cost a base 200 mana to cast, then added an additional expense based on the severity of the injury. I couldn’t likely use it in combat, but with a full mana pool and maybe some spare mana potions, I could heal myself instantly and to a much greater extent than my cleansing waters spell could manage. That spell was handy, but very slow and couldn’t restore limbs the way my deeper magic spell could.

I’d have loved to get some offensive spell capable of weaponizing the power of the ocean to take out ships – something like creating a tsunami or maybe Cherry’s vortex – but the two spells was all I got from my experience. It was more than I’d had a right to expect.

Something about the mana cost of the swift current travel struck me as odd – and an investigation of the area I’d been transported showed I was on the right track. There was a lack of ambient mana in the area I’d travelled through, like was left behind when I claimed my ship.

When I used my deeper magic to claim a ship, the initial mana expenditure was used to create a thread that extended into the surrounding water. Those threads attracted ambient mana and grew. If a single thread cost 1 point of mana, it could accumulate five times that from the water. When I completed the spell, all those accumulated threads spooled in and the mana fueled what I was casting – even though the power of the spell should have been far beyond me.

When I was traveling through the painful swift current travel, the spell had grabbed ambient mana as I went to continue the casting until the spirit deposited me where it wanted, leaving a trail of mana-stripped water. It wasn’t quite as bad as when I raised my ship – more like an arrow piercing a sail than a sword cutting it open – and even now the water was returning to equilibrium.

If I could learn how to employ that technique though … I could have nearly endless mana. I could harvest it from my surroundings … at least I could once, and then find another area. The swift current travel wouldn’t be beyond me.

That was great for future me. Present me had problems.

I considered dropping into the depths and leaving this battlefield behind, taking the freedom I had and isolating myself from contacting anyone else. The trouble with that was I couldn’t claim even a small wreck, and I’d be swimming around until Jones decided to swoop in on me again or some leviathan decided little level 10 me was a good snack.

That left finding passage on the ships above. The problem with doing that was they belonged to the same human confederacy that had been hunting me down in the Death’s Consort. They’d call Domenic Seaborn falling into their hands a miracle.

I considered killing all aboard a ship and commandeering it, even if I couldn’t properly claim it, but however skilled I was I couldn’t manage a warship on my own. That was the same reason I’d gone with recruiting a crew who had turned around and betrayed me.

I could consider getting some XP and buying the ability to summon constructs to help me sail, but I couldn’t afford that yet. Even if I could, they couldn’t fight for me and so we’d be on the run. Since I couldn’t claim a commandeered ship with my slaver quest active and the Death’s Consort was an ocean away, I’d be stuck on the surface, unable to submerge to escape and doomed to be hemmed in again and stuck like a fish in a trap and … aaargh!

I had to get help from the ships above.

I knelt on a broken section of ships’ hull, waving a white shirt above my head. The shirt had the dual purpose of getting the attention of the passing ship and indicating that I was peaceful. I was also wearing a ragged pair of pants I’d pulled from my adventurer’s bag, clothes that I’d used for working. My Captain’s ensemble was stowed in that same bag.

If I wasn’t human, the ship might have left me or used me for target practice. Instead, they nudged through the debris and dropped a rope ladder over the side, which I left my barely-floating island for and swam to. Once on deck, I faced the armed-but-not-yet-hostile reception I’d expected.

“How’d you find yourself in these waters?” A gruff military sergeant asked. “And what ship were you sailing on?”

I nodded to the sunken ship behind me. “I was sailing on that one.”

Instantly the reception became more hostile. I accepted it. I knew I couldn’t bluff my way into claiming to have been from any of the human ships – they’d have ferreted my lie out and clapped me in irons in a matter of hours.

“You fought for the enemy?” the sergeant asked, clarifying.

“I did, until they died.”

My calm admittance to fighting for the enemy seemed to confuse several, but the sergeant eyed my bag and spat.

“What kind of scum hires himself out to the snakes against his own kind?”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the Madu called snakes, but I’d been hoping that they’d take my position as a mercenary with less racial bias.

Not because I didn’t have my own reasons to hate Nilfheim, but because I didn’t want my first attempt at this to devolve into a fight.

“I had my reasons.”

“Is that so?” The sergeant said. “Mister, I don’t like you. I don’t like men that won’t stand up for their own race. I’ve got a notion to take your head and your bag and lodge a complaint with the adventurer’s guild!”

“You better have a notion that beats that one all to pieces, because I don’t like you either.”

This was going great.

The sergeant took a step back and gave the command to his men to ready themselves, the crossbowman first. I had nearly decided to summon my water whips when a voice called “stop!” A naval officer paced quickly across the deck. The sergeant scowled even as he ordered his men to hold. The officer moved to the sergeant and demanded a report, at which the sergeant explained how I was an uncooperative enemy who’d shown myself to be hostile.

The officer noted my unarmed stance and adventurer’s bag, lingering on my face. My imbalanced charisma might have had something to do with the sergeant taking a disliking to me, and the officer seemed to know that.

“Mercenary?” he barked.

“Yes,” I replied, unapologetic.

“Drop your stats.” He commanded. I complied. At least, I showed them part of the customized lie I’d created with my Necklace of Persona. Between the magical item and my Hide True Nature ability left over from my time in Tulisang, I had a plausible alias.

The officer scrutinized my stats. “Well Dom Harter, you’re not much of a mercenary.”

“No,” I admitted, wondering if I should have gone for a less generic last name. “I was a sailor most my life. The adventuring and mercenary work is … a recent career change.”

“You are also a sailor?”

“I’m the best sailor in the country.”

“Which country?”

“Name it.”

He scoffed. “15 levels of seamanship is good, but hardly the best I’ve seen.”

I wanted to tell him the truth – that I really had 19 levels and dropping 4 of them had hurt my pride more than I cared to admit. Besides that, I was the only one on the sea to have the experience of sailing a submersible ship rolled into my experience – besides that black-hearted mutineer Burdette, anyway.

My boast was empty, though. I was a very good sailor, but I’d never before claimed to be the best. It was just a statement designed to show that I had confidence in my abilities. 15 levels of seamanship showed a mastery of the skill that not even old salts who fished every day had a right to.

And ships this battered after a fight needed hands.

“If you will forswear your allegiance to Nilfheim and agree to serve aboard the Carpathia to the best of your abilities until we make port, your crimes against the state may be pardoned.”

This was what I’d been expecting. “I’m agreeable. I’d like to discuss the terms and expectations in greater detail.”

“Make no mistake, we are not hiring you as a mercenary. We are rescuing and pardoning you in exchange for service.”

“No pay, no criminal charges. Got it.”

He frowned. “The Captain will finalize the agreement with you, after you give us a detailed report on your previous dealings and arrangements with Nilfheim.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t give those details because I didn’t know them, and the navy undoubtedly had better intelligence on the Madu than I could bluff with. Stars, I couldn’t have even said the name of the ship I’d supposedly served on! Since I couldn’t explain those reasons, I had a different lie prepared.

“I can agree to renounce all my dealings with Nilfheim and swear not to interfere with the Confederacy’s war against them, but I cannot give you any intelligence on them.”

The sergeant took a threatening step forward, and this time the officer didn’t try to restrain him. “You’re in no position to make demands, snake-lover! You’re lucky we don’t tie you and throw you in the brig! Now, how ‘bout you treat the lieutenant here with more respect, eh?”

“I know exactly what happens if we don’t come to an agreement here.” I said, addressing the officer, not the sergeant. “I go back over the side.” I raised my hand, palm up. With a simple casting of summon water, clean water poured from my hand to the deck. It took the men a second to realize I wasn’t just dripping or pouring water out. When they did, they tensed even more, the sergeant barking ‘mage!’ and shifting his feet like he meant to charge me and bowl me over the side.

The lieutenant cried “stop!” again, and watched as I let fresh water spill onto the deck. It was a very simple, utilitarian spell with solid functionality at sea. Besides being a non-threatening way to tell them I was a mage (which was threatening them) it told them I could keep the ship supplied with water if they were running low.

The lieutenant reassessed me. “You didn’t have magic listed in your stats.”

“I was keeping it as a trump card. If your analyze level were higher, you’d have seen it.” I exposed the section of my stats listing my magic, which accurately reflected my abilities with water and air magic. My deeper magics naturally weren’t part of the alias I’d created with my necklace.

“We shall have more to discuss, but we will require you to list all known spells to us and agree not to use any that could prove detrimental to good order and discipline.”

“I have no objections; I don’t even have charm spells, which I gather you’re most concerned about.”

“We shall see,” he said, neither denying it nor acknowledging.

The sergeant spat, nearly on my feet, and ordered two of the other soldiers to flank me. The lieutenant didn’t dissuade them from the power play, and I didn’t begrudge them their effort. Domain still worked on ships, so I could easily summon the whips to attack people even in my blind spot.

The lieutenant had me wait under guard while he spoke with the Captain in his room. After several minutes under the glaring afternoon sun with the withering looks from the sergeant, I huffed and lifted my hand to summon water directly into my mouth.

“No casting!” The sergeant cried.

I – very slowly – lowered my hand with a satisfied sigh. I analyzed the sergeant. He was a miniature of what Blake had been for the Wind Runner. Not as skilled, and leaning towards axes over swords, but filling the same role. He was also an army man, something I’d found interesting in the standard military arrangement. Navies trained sailors and artillerists. When it came to professional fighters, they naturally pulled from the better-trained might of their landside armies. Besides sometimes making friction between the two branches, men like this sergeant lacked some of the basic necessary seaman skills. This sergeant only had the first level of his sea legs!

“Sergeant Polis,” I said, letting him know I’d seen through his stats. “Were you thirsty?”

The man scowled at my jab, but before he escalated anything the lieutenant stepped back out. “Polis! Mr. Harter! Please come with me.” The sergeant and I complied; him shooting dirty looks at me and me ignoring them.

Captain Graves was a stern naval man who analyzed as 42 years old but looked 60. He had both the leadership and tactician skills. I had come to expect at least one of those at a decent level in Antarus’ commanding officers, having both spoke to me of his capabilities.

He looked at me like I was a troublesome child disturbing his well-ordered ship with pranks and shenanigans. His look reminded me of my first meeting with Captain Michaels aboard the Wind Runner.

I wasn’t the same person I’d been back then. I now stood in front of the experience of facing Davy Jones, of Captaining my own ship, of hunting down more ships of a higher threat level than the Carpathia was. I’d killed just this morning, and their shouts still haunted my ears.

Captain Graves’ glare could take in the darkness of the deeps, then try and tell me I was an unruly child.

“You are an adventurer spellsword mercenary?” he demanded.

“I am,” I replied. Kane had lectured me on the pointlessness of spellswords – and his arguments still made sense – but I’d been forced to be versatile in my abilities. Until I could learn enough magic and up my leadership abilities, a spellsword I was.

“You are charged with conspiring with the enemy; among many, many other charges.”

“In my defense …”

“Oh, believe me, I’m so anxious to hear your excuses.”

It was my turn to glare at him. “Do you plan to have me work for you or charge me?”

He leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Lieutenant Siebert tells me he offered a potential deal with you, conditional on my approval. You have to convince me to make the same.”

If I had the same patience I had a year ago – if I had the same fear of the authorities I’d had a year ago – I would have made an attempt to reign in my temper. I’d been dealing with a lot of things over the last few months though, and prevaricating and wheedling over the details of a deal was pushing me.

There was also the fact that my fallback option was harvesting the ship for XP, then booby-trapping it for the rest of the fleet. My recent experiences trapping ships convinced me I could get enough XP that way to buy more professional abilities, even if I couldn’t take on the whole fleet.

Arrogance, pride, temper … and a lingering defiance over having just told Davy Jones off. If I’d done that to a legend, I wasn’t going to surrender my freedom to this random naval Captain. I’d make a deal, but I wouldn’t put myself under his service!

“We can abide by the terms discussed,” I said quietly. “We can even renegotiate those terms if you find they somehow put you hard up. But if you continue to try and bully me with threats, then you’re going to need more soldiers than you can pack into this room.”

Captain Graves’ eyes widened. Lieutenant Siebert’s mouth dropped open and he leaned back as if slapped. Sergeant Polis hissed and cocked his fist, ready to cuff me.

I readied myself to turn the cabin into a charnel house with spells and blades.

Then Graves smiled and barked out a laugh. A laugh! “So it was pure nerve that let you side with the Madu! I’d thought it was cowardice. Very well, lad. Promise not to defy me so in front of the crew and I’ll treat you fairly.”

Polis and Siebert looked at Graves in shock, and the roiling waters of my temper simmered down as I reconsidered the Captain. I didn’t think he was stringing me along, but recent events had taught me I wasn’t the best judge of character, so I’d keep a wary eye open.

“I understand the necessity of maintaining image as a Captain.”

“Good! And you two,” the Captain pointed a pencil at the other two in the room. “Keep mum on this. Now, Siebert tells me you won’t spill anything of Nilfheim, but I still must ask why you’d fight for them? Antarus reinstated the proper treatment of adventurer mercenaries to get away from the sanctions, but they still discouraged it heavily. Why fight for them?”

“I was fighting for a friend,” I said simply. “I swore to protect him. Now he’s dead.”

The Captain nodded with the solemnity you gave when you were sympathizing with someone without being the least bit sympathetic. They had just sunk ‘my’ ship, after all. “And your imbalanced Charisma? I don’t mean to pry, but you can see it’s already causing issues.” He gestured at Polis, who looked sullen at being pointed out but not apologetic.

“That was during an adventuring contract,” I lied. “I made a bold promise, and received a quest. If I succeeded, I would have achieved the ‘War Leader’ title. I didn’t. Instead, I suffered a heavy loss to Charisma, making me imbalanced.”

The Captain nodded, buying my lie. It was a story I’d heard from a pirate in Tulisang, only that pirate had lost one attribute from each category as a punishment. Apparently, the quest wasn’t rare, just uncommon, and as many people failed it as succeeded.

“Well Dom,” Graves said, standing. “I think we can write out a contract along the lines of what Lieutenant Siebert initially offered, in exchange for amnesty.” He offered his hand, and I hesitantly shook it. “I just have one more question for you.”

I tensed, using domain to look for any new surprise attack.

“How’d you like to work as the Carpathia’s second mage?”

Well … that was unexpected.