“Heave!”

“Ho!”

“Heave!” The burly sailor shouted again.

“Ho!” The men yelled over the screaming of the seagulls, which danced in the wild winds over the Shipwreck Bay. No. Ravenport. Got to remember that.

I stood with my hands on a mast we had repurposed as a lever. Aside me were ten other sweating men, stemming their weight against the wood, us being just one of 5 such groups, while others pulled on the ropes and pulleys. Slowly, ever so slowly, the brig, as a sailor around me had told me to call this ship, inched forwards on the round logs we had placed to drag the ship over.

We were halfway up the Wreckage, and the brig had been one of three ships Captain Locksley and his ship-carpenter deemed to be still in good enough condition to try and restore them. It had been tricky, but as I had learned more and more over the last few weeks, there was little a thousand men with a common goal, nothing to do but to work and some organization could not achieve.

Finally, the brig slipped over the edge, cranked, and then tumbled down. It was not a rock merrily hopping down a slope. This was a ship with a length of around 150 feet and two main masts and dozens of tons in weight. We only had been able to move it, because it had hung on the side of the wreckage on the top of a slope, and we just had to remove some other debris and ship parts to basically let that thing slide on its own. And it had taken a hundred men and days of installing clever pulleys and rounded logs to get it moving in the first place.

We now were sprinting back over the ships. There had been no way of telling if the tumbling ship would take the whole side of the structure with it. We heard the crashing sounds of breaking wood behind us and felt everything shake violently. Followed by an enormous splash as the ship reached the surface of the sea.

We hesitated a second, waiting to see if we would go down as well, then raised our fists in a cheer. Laughing, the men slapped their backs and loosened up their muscles.

A lot of them had Skills enhancing their strength, as had I, that was why we had been put on the levers. Without the Skills the task would have been impossible. We returned to the edge we had thrown the ship over, looking down.

It had sheared off a lot from the seaside of the Wreckage. Broken off all its masts and the railing, rigging and it looked like the rudder. But it swam the way a ship was supposed to swim. Already, sailors were jumping over, fasting ropes and shouting orders to the crews in the dinghies, pulling the brig clear of the Wreckage.

We had rescued, if you could call it that, three ships. This brig, a schooner, and a bulky hulk. The others had not been as risky as this one. They basically just had to be cut free and pulled away. But only the hulk still had its masts, but plenty of leeks and other issues.

“Wouldn’t want to catch a ride on a ship like this.” The man beside me said, as he leaned over the edge. It was a sailor from the Albatross, and I had not met him before today. His name was Rook. I knew that because I had used my new Skill [Discern Subject] on him. Rook, [Sailor] Level 7, [Lumberjack] Level 4, [Brawler] Level 9. Most of the common sailors had levels in different trades. Most came to the sea on a twisted path.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Ocean’s an old, fickle mistress at the best of times.” He grinned toothlessly. “Even more so in these cursed waters. Don’t need to add to my worries by sailing a ship that has flown down a mountain, if you can believe it. Got to be doomed. Ships are not supposed to fly.”

I laughed. “Superstition, then?”

He looked at me sternly. “One of them landlubbers, are you not? You do not trust a ship that has fallen. No sayin’ what has broken down there, just now. What should be loose gets tangled up and what should be solid gets in a twist.”

He pointed to the brig. “That ship needs a drydock. And what we have is one carpenter, a right old mangled fud if you ask me, a couple of sails to plug the holes and all the prayers of the world. Would not want to have a hull like that between me and what’s out there.”

I winced but could also not hide a sly smile. I was a sheltered noble, after all. “Why, what is out there?”

“Ocean’s a grave as big as they come, in the best of times. But here, with them things in the air…” he made a swirling gesture, encompassing everything. “Its not right what hides in these waters. I have seen my fair share of things you would not believe, but never had a dog watch before where I was the watched and not the watcher. The bay is cursed, I tell you, with the waterfalls and the flying rocks and such.”

“Lord Raven? A word?” I heard the cool voice of Captain Locksley at my back, and I smiled as the jaw of the sailor dropped. His captain being here was bad enough, but he had talked to the lord like that? I laughed, turning after slapping the man on his shoulder, and walked over to Locksley. His gaze was as cool as the voice had been.

“What is it, Captain?”

“I am just surprised to find you here, my lord.”

“I could not sit still. And I have the strength to help.”

Captain Locksley looked at me a good long second. Finally, he sighed. “You do not have to do everything yourself, you know? I am sure there would have been more pressing matters to attend to.”

“Do not be like that, Captain. I enjoyed it. And I grow rather restless myself. A little exercise and excitement were just the things I needed.”

“Excitement.” The Captain repeated, one brow raised. Then he visibly decided to change the topic. “I am optimistic concerning the condition of the ships. We can rig a few jury masts. We have enough spares in the lot. But it will be nothing like properly pulling them up and scraping them clean.”

“If they can get us somewhere, it is worth it.” I said as we walked over a few walkways toward a rope ladder that would take us up to the ship that has been given to me, without having spoken about it. It was Barak’s old ship, the one at the top of the pile, scrubbed so clean, they had scraped of the topmost layer of wood on the planks.

“Oh, they will get us somewhere. Provided we find someone to actually sail them.”

“How is that working out?”

“Well, we have a few volunteers. Which is not something the imperial navy is used to. We are used to take all the scum and villainy we can get our hands on and break them in on sea, where they can’t get away. So that is a change most welcomed. But you cannot replace competence with eagerness. And shiphandling is a skill not easily learned. Officers enter the ranks as young as thirteen years of age. But with a few experienced sailors in the mix, the new crews will learn fast. It is just the officers that are missing.”

We reached the deck of my ship, where a table had been laid out in the middle of it. We had some cutlery, pilfered together from all the officer’s and captain’s cabins below us. On the menu, as every day, bird-creature from the Broken Lands.

My unofficial and impromptu council had already assembled. Which was Thimotheus, Gideon and Grim. There would have been more, I guess, but Higgins and Veneir still were in the hospital, Veneir still had not won his fight against the fever. I visited him every night to cast [Reinvigoration] on him, but something in him fought my efforts. I needed him to be awake. I just had so many questions only he could answer.

Simue had become reclusive, avoiding every kind of social gatherings. I had stopped asking her, letting her grief in her own pace for a while. But she was one of the highest leveled fighters of Ravenport. We needed her. I had to talk to her soon.

Cogar would come later. He was the busiest of all of us. He not only had his own camp to manage and to defend, he was preparing a journey back to the Wyld, to find and meet with other Wyldling groups. On top of that his Wyldlings were hunting most of the food Ravenport consumed. And we had decided to make it a point to let Cogar and his hunters bring the meat directly to the people of Ravenport.

We needed to bridge the gap between the two communities somehow, and the act of bringing and giving them food, helping them, and interacting with them in a positive way would lay the foundation for future cooperation. Unfortunately, Cogar was supremely skilled in telling stories and being charismatic. Which is why he was not here, because he spent a lot of times around the campfires of the humans, doing exactly that. Normalizing his presence, winning hearts, and just clarifying a few misconceptions, the humans had. He would not win them all. He would not even win most of them.

But every step in the right direction counted.

I greeted the ones that were present, unceremoniously dropping into my seat and grabbing something to eat. I barely registered the raised eyebrow of the captain, who sat down with more…rank. It had been, and still was, hard to get the man who had to survive at all costs out of me. I remembered my lessons on etiquette of course, but that had been in another life. I had problems to care. Everything else seemed to be more important.

As high up as we now were, the winds were strong and cold and I found myself again ruffling through my newly cut, short cropped hair. We had found a mirror in one of the ships and I had seen myself for the first time properly, since I had jumped to my death at the Last Flight of the Ravens.

I almost had thrown the mirror out of the window. I was no longer the man that had jumped. My hair had been a barely restrained tangled mess, dirty and… worse. I had once taken a good amount of vain pride in the fair features of my face. What had looked back at me from the mirror had been a dirty, gaunt, malnourished ghost, fine crisscrossed lines of scars marking every part of my body.

After cleaning up, shaving my beard and head, and eating well for a while, it was not so bad. But you could see the traces of my struggles and battles in my face, even if it was not as obvious as on the rest of the body. I looked like a hardened man of the wilderness, not like the powdered noble of the imperial court I had been.

“Let us go around the table.” I said.

“We recovered the brig today we have been speaking about, my lord.” Locksley said to the benefit of the others. “That makes three additional ships that can, theoretically, brave the high seas. We found a couple of carpenters among the freed, and we can teach them slowly. But with just the one ship carpenter, it will be slow going for a while. I estimate that we need a month for the hulk, as we do not need to jury-rig the mast. The others will take longer after that, depending on how fast the carpenters can learn the trade and if we find enough material in the Wreckage. But I am confident.”

I nodded. That was not news to me, of course, but he was not speaking to my benefit. It was a little game I played with Locksley. He was a leader, and a good one, and he showed the others how to report and discuss problems with their superior. And he did that by always speaking first, reporting concisely and correctly, stating facts first and then offering his opinion and assessment at the end.

My eyes wandered over to Gideon. He was uncomfortable. He was a young man and still not used to a sudden role in leadership. And he had just been a guard. He had not even have military training.

“I don’t know what to tell you my lord. The recruits are eager, but we are missing a proper instructor. We are training, but I am not a [Swordmaster]. I can only tell them and show them what I have been told in training.”

“It’s all right, Gideon.” I said. And meant it. Manus and Zora were sorely missing. They could have trained the guards and soldiers properly. Their death had ripped a hole nothing could fill. “You are doing your best. Grim!”

I turned to the [Wild Stalker]. “I think it is time. I want you to take the hunters into the Broken Lands with you. All of them, including the pure [Archers]. Make a camp up there, live with the Wyldlings if you must. But we need more food and we need the hunters to be strong enough to hunt in the Broken Lands. It is our most important source of food right now.”

Grim nodded. “More arrows would be nice.”

I grimaced. We had no way of forging anything at the moment. “Can you make them out of bone or something?"

Again, he nodded. “Enough for the light weights. But won’t down a scaled critter with a tip o' bone. Good enough to train and hunt though, I reckon.”

“I will talk to the craftsmen. Someone must be able to do something.” I turned back to Gideon, as I had an Idea. “And Gideon? I will talk to Simue if she can help you out. If nothing else I will ask her to make a trip with you and some soldiers into the Wyld. To wet your blade against real enemies. Help you level your troops.”

He nodded, not quite convinced. For him, and most people, classes were an extension of the person and the purpose he was working towards. Soldiers fought other soldiers. So how would hunting beasts in the Wyld help them level their classes? They did not know what I knew.

That Essence was a big part of leveling, even your mortal classes. The fact that I could use this Essence as I pleased was the reason my mortal class leveled so slowly and only through important moments of significance and learning, rewarded by the system.

The Wydlings were a lot stronger than humans. Because they lived in a dangerous environment. As a whole. As a culture. Struggle was part of their lives. We humans had grown too complacent and trusting in division of labor, training, and education that we lacked the insight into the simplest form of leveling. Adversity and struggle. There just had not been as many opportunities in the protected and sheltered empire.

Now that was different. We were even deeper in the Wyld as the Wyldlings had been. The creatures were bigger and more dangerous. The environment was as well. We would level more, generally speaking. And we had to use that to our advantage.

Grind until we rule the land or die to the dangers surrounding us. On the long run we would produce higher leveled individuals than the moderate rest of the world, there were other pretty harsh environments out there, but many would not survive the first months. We had to do everything we could to protect them while they adapted.

Grim and Gideon fell silent, thinking on how to organize their assignments. Which left one person. Thimotheus had red hair and gleaming eyes, switching between sharp and mischievous in an instant. He had lost his leg and a couple of his fingers, but not once had that come up in conversation. He just carried on, optimistic as ever and seemingly not bothered by it.

He had lost his spellbook and thus had been busy scraping together every piece of parchment, paper, and leather he could. He had improvised a new book, roughly fitted, and worked on remembering his spells. Which was, as he had told me, nearly impossible. So, he needed to rework them almost from scratch. But more importantly, he was in the process of analyzing the Dragonamber.

He scratched his head, turning the little gem in his hand as he spoke.

“I can most definitely say, my lord, that I never saw a gem like this in my life before the Wyldlings hung one round my neck. And let me say that I am neither an expert on the creation of magic items, nor the scholarly type.” He smiled apologetically. I knew that he had been a practical war mage. But he was the best we had, and so it fell to him to tell us what we were working with.

“The stone seems to work like a sponge, or a lung, to the energies of the Wyld. Which I guess you could categorize as life energy, with the knowledge that the Dragonamber literally is a part of the body of the Dragon of Life.”

“So why does it protect us from it? Should it not, I don’t know, emit more of it?”

“It is removed from the source of the energy. But it soaks it up, so to speak. Like a living breathing thing. Breathing in the energy around us, thus protecting us from it. If it gets full, the energy releases. Breathing out. Away from its wearer. And the cycle continues.”

“Fascinating.” Locksley stated, folding his hands on the table as he leaned forward. “That cannot be all there is to it. There is the corruption the Wyldlings used to their advantage.”

“Forgive me, captain. But I am by no means an expert on the dark arts.” Thimotheus said shrugging. “But I can tell you that I have fought many practitioners of the craft that used corrupted and twisted forces. Theoretically, on the basest level, there is no difference between the energy of life and the life force of a living being. And the sorts we talk about are using the life force of sacrifices for their magic since the dawn of time itself. These,” he gestured to the gem, “are every black and dark magos’ deepest desire. A regenerating source of energy, ready to be corrupted, twisted and used.”

He now leaned forward as well, his face falling into a bitter grimace.

“And there you have the answer, gentlemen, as to why the hordes had been so keen to sacrifice the prisoners they took in war. Cut off from the Wyld, they had to recharge their amulets somehow, if they wanted to keep using their dark magics.”

We fell silent. Memories were surfacing again, which brought nothing but pain. But this time we shared it.

“There must be something else to do with it, but to corrupt it.” I said. I had unlocked the Skill to use the power within the amulets, [Corrupt Life Force], but every fiber of my being rejected the idea of actually doing that. As long as I had the luxury to do so, that is. Survival first, always.

Thimotheus nodded. “I am sure you can. Even I am fascinated beyond belief, and I am not a specialist. I knew a few mages in the tower that would give their left leg, “ he slapped his leg grinning, right on the stump, “to study those. I even knew an expert in life magic, which would throw his mother off the tower to see what we see here every day. The easiest answer is: We can sell them. There is nothing I know of that is like Dragonamber, and the possibilities are just endless. Every mage, academy, tower and being that can sling a spell would want one of these. To study them, to use them, to enchant them.”

“But they are the reason we are protected.” Gideon chimed in silently. “Without the gems, no one can reach us. We should not sell them.”

“We have to strike a careful balance, I agree.” Locksley nodded.

“We think about that once we have a way to get more. The project of building down that staircase is slow, as you might imagine and we need the reserves for new arrivals.” I reminded them.

“Well then, the most important question of all.” Locksley said, as everyone had spoken their piece. “What do you want me to do with the Albatross?”

“We need more time here. Two weeks at least, before we can seriously talk about sailing to another port for provisions and material. And there are a lot of problems with that single decision as well.” I thought out loud. I switched to a more formal, more commanding tone: “Leave the bay, if you will, and hunt down the Wyldling ships that are bound for this place. We must take their ships, their slaves, their material and last, but definitely not least, their Dragonamber amulets. Return in 14 days and give us a better idea of the lay of the ocean, while you are on it. It is uncharted territory after all. But do not leave the Shattered Sea and do not leave the straight leading to us undefended.”

Of course, this was pre-planned as well. But a little showmanship never hurt anybody.