“You used to always tell me stories about the Oceans,” Pisces said. “But you never actually showed them to me.”

“You’re getting a trip of a lifetime now,” Watson said. “But what else is there to see now? The real fun is when you hunt. At least, it’s supposed to be.”

“Are you saying it’s not fun anymore?” Pisces asked.

“Well, it’s getting harder,” Watson insisted. “The actual game to hunt is pretty hard to come by. They’re getting smaller, the bigger critters are running about in smaller pods. Whales in pods. Fish in schools or shoals. Many of them hide in caverns. If you’re looking for scraps you’ll be lucky if a grouper is hiding in a crevice somewhere, or a lobster in a bushel of corals or weeds. And in the Atlantic, especially, they are not so abundant.”

“You said there are Seven Oceans here,” Pisces said.

“Correct,” Watson said. “The one we are in now is the Atlantic. To be fair, I haven’t been here in a while. Usually when the Vicegerent would send me on hunting expeditions it was to the Indian Ocean to far west, and slightly up north near the Erythraean Sea. But the Erythraean Sea, for some reason, isn’t too fond of us and want to be their own thing. Sort of like what the Arctic is.”

“Do they hate us?” Pisces asked.

“Only Lord Wayne knows, my dear,” Watson said. “Only Lord Wayne knows. But here we are, and we’re still alone.”

“I only see black,” Pisces said.

“This is what I tried to tell you earlier,” Watson said. “Most hunting and travelling is just like this. You’re sitting on your bum on a Strider, waiting for time to pass by and distance to pass by just as much as well. And all the while, you travel through the abyssal darkness hoping to find something. At least we have biolights to guide us. And also, you have me. Hunters usually keep in good company now, it’s the only way you don’t lose your sanity and don’t get bored. Unless you want to try and get becalmed in the waters around here.”

“Definitely not,” Pisces said. “This sounds very scary.”

“Do you already regret coming with me?”

“Never,” Pisces said. “Don’t try to change my mind.”

“I haven’t, and I never will,” Watson said. “You’re a stubborn girl, and I like that,”

“What for?”

“If a guy ever comes and finds you, you’ll need to stick it to him every once in a while. Give him some nerve. Your mother was like that too, although excessive at times,”

“You’ve been talking quite a bit about my mother lately,” Pisces said. “I wish I could’ve seen her at least once.”

Watson cradled Pisces as they were on the front of the Victory, which cruised along. “I miss her alot, Pisces,” Watson said. “But sadly, it matters very little now.”

“I’m sure she misses you too,” Pisces said.

You should stay like that, Watson thought.

“Commandant Watson,” Bergmann said as he approached him. “Might I say, I get to poke fun at you for that title now.”

“You’ve joined the ranks as well then,” Watson said to Bergmann. “You and Allen might be the only two who seemingly went to the future to make that joke, but I won’t let you get away with it still,”

“It’s simply pleasurable, ‘tis all,” Bergmann insisted. “You’re a funny lad, Watson,”

“I’ll need you and Allen close if we’re ever going to get to the High Arctic alive,” Watson said. “You said you remember your itinerary. Are we on it now?”

“We are,” Bergmann said. “My Lord Wayne, this definitely takes me back. To a different time. To a different Commandant especially. Franklin was very intense, from what I could tell.”

“He definitely took this expedition very seriously,” Watson noted. “I should do the same. I don’t even know.”

“When Franklin first planned out the expedition, his intent was to flank the High Arctic from the northwest, near the Bering Strait and the Newfoundland Seas,” Bergmann said. “He said that the region from the northwest was seemingly uncharted because even the Pacific Cities dared not venture near the cold. The cold up there is supposedly inhospitable or inadept. Kind of like the Southern Oceans, near the Antarctic for that matter. But Franklin appeared to have found a way to reach the ice and survive.”

“We won’t even be able to bare the cold on our own, will we?”

“Likely not, we will need help,” Bergmann said. “If only there were any icefish around. I know Franklin based it on the notion that in the Southern Ocean, there are icefish that produce a substance. The idea was to try and produce the same substance and put it through us, and that way we could balance our blood temperature against the harsh cold. It’s a surprise it even worked.”

“We don’t have any of that though,” Watson said.

“Precisely,” Bergmann said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll find some and survive. If not, it’ll be our own wits against the cold.”

“You tell us this right after we went on the abyssal expedition?!” Watson asked.

“I knew the odds were unlikely but we had no choice,” Bergmann noted. “Faith can sometimes be useful.”

“As a trained hunter in Tridention, you should know that hope is never a good hunting strategy.”

“Yet you are relying on it now,” Bergmann said. “To try and qualm Jane, and resolve your inner peace. Sometimes, maybe a little faith is the only answer. But I can see that you are not one, because you haven’t recited a sermon to the brigade before we left.”

Watson grunted at Bergmann’s observation, looking beyond the biolights. The Redemption and Titan slowly descended down to the seafloor. And as he checked their lights, their dim beacons exposed more corals and crevices near the right walls. Rugged and haphazard. Hunters started to leap from them and draw out their harpoons. “They appear to have found some quarry, lads. Might as well grab some. We’ll need some snacks for the longer road up ahead.”

“Watson,” Bergmann said. “If I may, I’d like you to hear me out.”

Before Watson could leap off the Victory, he turned to Bergmann’s aid. “What is it?”

“The Waynian Faith has been a valuable part of any hunting brigade’s decorum since time immemorial,” Bergmann said. “Perhaps you might not see it right away, but I can tell you contend with it often. Your own soul is in conflict with such faith.”

“Your point?” Watson asked.

“Look to your heart for those answers,” Bergmann said. “It sometimes is just the only explanation you have. And often times, it’s the best explanation anyone ever has.”

“I’ll consider it,” Watson said. “Unfortunately, faith alone can’t help you if you have an empty stomach. You remember how to hunt still, right?”

Bergmann drew out his harpoon. “Right after you, Commandant,” he insisted.

I am never going to hear the end of this, Watson insisted as he leapt off the Victory and dived to the crevice. “Pisces, come with me. We’re hunting.”

The network of coral bushels near the bottom of the seafloor did not seem to fester with many a creature, but they hunted them nevertheless. Having not brought food with them from the city, all they could feast upon were the snacks of gribbles they could find in the mounds. And the smaller fish scurried about as hunters tried to plow their irons right through the mounds, chasing them away into the open water. Watson dived to the bottommost point of the Ocean floor, where he scoured and scavenged. And all the while, Pisces tailed him. “Though there are many patient predators in the Oceans, the human is the most patient of them all,” Watson said. “Unfortunately, they are not patient by nature. They need to be taught that.”

“And you’re going to teach me now?” Pisces said.

“A virtue you should always have, and a blessing if mastered,” Watson said. “Watch closely. And keep yourself quiet.”

“I’m not known to make a ruckus but okay,”

Watson crouched and lied on the seafloor, where he had spotted an opening in the corals right in front of him. He peered right into it, pulling out one harpoon from behind his back, and aiming the iron straight into the hole. He lied on the ground, with the harpoon ahead of him, and remained still.

He remained still for a good while. Much so that Pisces tried to approach him lightly, by treading on the ground just as much. Watson raised his other hand, and tried to stave Pisces off without telling her much of anything. Pisces pushed back against his hand, but Watson resisted. She got the queue and waited.

Another minute or so of Watson waiting while on the ground, then he fired the harpoon right into the coral hole. The iron propelled out of the shaft, hurling right into the coral network. It didn’t take long for the iron to crush right through something, and make contact.

Watson then quickly yanked out the iron from the corals, only to discover it got stuck. He got on his two feet, grabbed that one harpoon with both hands, and started pulling the lines from out of the coral slowly. Over time, he managed to yank the irons out of the mound. And from out of the mound, came a large lobster.

The iron plunged through the abdomen, and cracked the shell right underneath it. Legs wobbled lightly, head throbbed right atop the iron. Watson reached for a knife from his back pocket, and stabbed the lobster through the skull. It froze in place in a moment’s notice.

Then Watson cradled the lobster like he would a baby, and showed it right to Pisces. “What patience will get you, if you harness it properly,” Watson said.

“Did you even know that thing was in there?” Pisces asked.

“That part was mostly experience,” Watson conceded. “I know its hard to explain. But yes, I knew I’d likely find a lobster in there. Wasn’t absolutely guaranteed. But I had a hunch.”

“How?” Pisces asked. “What in the Waters? I often wonder if you were actually meant to hunt or to see through walls?”

“You’ll envy me for it, I know,” Watson admitted. “Don’t get your hopes up with this lobster. The truth is this will only serve as dinner for a night, but it will get us going. We’ll have to keep hunting every day we’re on this perilous journey to the Northwest Passage before we even get there.”

“The other hunters are still roaming about,” Pisces said. “Want to keep going?”

“Are the Redemption and Titan still lingering around?”

“I can see them” Pisces said. “Right over there,”

“I might be the Commandant again,” Watson said. “But I can’t leave them behind. Might as well give them their morale for now.”

“Are you that eager to get the expedition over with?” Pisces asked.

Watson went to his daughter and knelt again. “More than you know,” Watson said. “The sooner this gets resolved, the sooner I get to go home and spend more time with you in the city.”

“But we’re here now,” Pisces said. “Is this not enough?”

“It always is,”

“It never seems like it,” Pisces said. “It even never was when we were in the city. It doesn’t seem to be even now.”

Watson grunted to Pisces over this, before pulling up his harpoon again and sheathing it. “We can either eat the lobster now, or keep on finding more quarry and eat later. Your choice.”

“I already gave you my choice,” Pisces insisted.

“Very well then,” he said. “Get your irons, we’re hunting then,”

Pisces and Watson enjoyed hunting around this region of the Atlantic for a bit. Harvesting the corals near the area, many a creature were brought back to their wares and prepared to be eaten. From the lobster, to flounders, to smaller fish, to even fry. “What in the Waters is this thing?” Pisces asked.

“You just found a grouper,” Watson insisted. “Go ahead. Try to yank it.”

“What?!”

“Yank it,” Watson said. “Trust me on this.”

Pisces only had one iron pulling on the grouper, but she quickly drew out the other and fired the irons onto it. Just as the grouper was about to escape. Somehow, Pisces managed to restrain the beast and slow it down, but her own strength was fading her as the grouper tried to flee from it. Watson immediately realized she would be carried away by the creature, and so Watson went to her and grabbed her from the chest. “Pull now,” Watson insisted. “Keep pulling.”

Pisces then yanked back and immobilized the grouper, pulling the irons to her slowly. She retracted the lines, brought the grouper back to them. Another kill was added onto them. “How long will this grouper last us now?” Pisces asked.

“A while longer,” Watson said. “I’ll make sure none of the other hunters get their hands on this.”

“Aren’t you slightly concerned that they won’t find much of anything to hunt?” Pisces asked.

“That’s their responsibility,” Watson said. “It’s the responsibility of every hunter to find their own quarry, and claim it as their own. Hunter’s honor.”

“But if the grounds don’t have much to offer, what happens then?”

“If the situation gets really desperate, then we help out,” Watson said. “Until then, hunters usually go on their own. However way they want to.”

Pisces had already collapsed onto the seafloor. “I think I’ll lie on the corals,” Pisces insisted.

“Bad idea, don’t do that,” Watson said. “These corals have sharp polyps. They might also think your back is a predator.”

“Really?”

“Coral polyps, I thought I taught you about them before,” Watson said. “My goodness, daughter,”

“Sorry,” Pisces. “I’ll just sit,”

“Surprised you can even stay seated on the seafloor,” Watson said. “Even I can’t do that.”

Watson tried sitting on the seafloor, with his back almost touching the coral mounds. Then he looked outwards, and took in the view of a mountainous range spanning nearly the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean from left to right. The mountains appeared directly above them, nearly towering the entirety of the water. “What are those hills up there?”

“They’re not hills, but mountains,” Watson explained. “The Ocean Ridge, it’s called. Legend has it that range is said to split the entire Atlantic in two. The only Ocean known to have that, is here.”

“This Ocean is supposed to be really dark, but I can see those mountains,” Pisces said. “Why is that?”

“The water and the mountains have their own shades of darkness here,” Watson said. “It’s easy to recognize them. I can have a Rank Commander shine some lights nearby the area, if you want to take a better look.”

“I think some are already heading there now,” Pisces said.

“Where?” Watson asked.

Pisces pointed to the upper left. And where Watson looked, he saw dim lights in the distance, moving right to the Striders that were left floating in the water to their right. Their beacons exposed some of the mountains. And then they could see the entire mountain range. “I can look to my left, and to my right, and still see the mountains,”

“They stretch as far as the entire span of the Ocean itself,” Watson explained. “Longest range of mountains in the Seven Oceans itself,”

“Have you ever hunted anything there before?” Pisces asked.

“Many things,” Watson said. “Whales, sharks, dolphins, quahogs, menhaden,”

“You hunted whales?” Pisces asked.

“I did, what of them,” Watson said. “Whales are some of the largest creatures you can find here. Their meat is incredible. I remember you tried some.”

“You tried to get me to eat whale meat many times,” Pisces remembered. “But I always hated whale meat.”

“I never understood what problem you had with whale meat especially,” Watson said. “After a while, I simply wasn’t convinced and decided to stop serving you whale meat.”

“Whales are innocent creatures,” Pisces argued. “There’s no point in killing them. They even help humans.”

“We have to survive as humans,” Watson said. “We can’t get by without eating. It’s just inevitable.”

“I’d rather eat anything but whales,” Pisces said. “Whale calves especially are adorable. I’ve played with them before.”

“You have?” Watson asked. “When?”

“They would sometimes get lost from their parents, and end up by the city walls,” Pisces explained. “I can interact with them somehow. I don’t know how. But I love them. They’re amazing. I would even defend them against anyone who wanted to kill them. Even humans.”

“Killing the whale calf can be controversial, which is why I usually go for the parents and let the calves live,” Watson said.

“Letting the young ones survive without their parents in this wild world?” Pisces said. “That’s cruel,”

“It is, but when your livelihood depends on it what else will you do?” Watson asked. “I don’t like it as much as anyone else. I don’t think anyone else. ‘Tis the blessing and the curse of being a hunter. One day you kill an animal, that was the child of another, you grieve the mother. When you kill the mother, the child mourns, and might try to get back at you. It never ends well. Which is why you usually need to have an accord with how to do it. Hunting is not so ruthlessly conducted. Though sometimes it has to be.

But you can never choose an animal or a human.” Watson explained. “We coexist with these animals in these waters for a reason. The city likes to say that Lord Wayne blessed us with this. And perhaps it’s right. But even so, we choose our own kind over any elses. Do you understand me?”

Pisces lightly nodded.

“We’ll see,” Watson said. “I’d hate to try and kill a whale only for you to stop me.”

Watson and Pisces would eventually bring back the lobster, grouper, and other quarry they hunted back to the Victory. Mounting their guarry on the chassis, Watson turned to face the other hunters and counted everyone on the fins. “I think a few of the hunters have gone missing,” Watson said. “Anyone see Bergmann?”

“They’re bringing him back now, he got carried away hunting the coral mounds,” another hunter said.

“My goodness,” Watson said. “Okay then.”

Bergmann eventually returned with two Rank Commanders from Watson’s regiment. They escorted him to the front of the Victory, where he rested comfortably. He leaned on the harpoon iron for support as he climbed up. “Pardon me, Commandant. But it feels great to be hunting again.”

“It excites you that much, eh?”

“Well to be fair, it’s been well over a century-and-a-half,” Bergmann said. “It would make anyone ecstatic if they were deprived of something for this long.”

“You can barely even climb onto the Victory, are you sure you’re fine?”

“I am,” Bergmann said. “I know it, Commandant,”

“Might want to be careful with that,” Watson said. “I’ve seen many people claim they were fine, only to be in denial. Better I judge myself and see. And you were almost hardly able to move at the moment.”

“I may be the lesser between both of us, but I am also the older,” Bergmann said. “Franklin might have been an impulsive fool, but I hope I have enough wisdom to know I wouldn’t do this if I couldn’t.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Watson said. “It’s simply…you’re not the only old person I’ve seen succumb to over-exertion.”

“Has it happened to Jane?”

“Right before we left,” Watson said. “I went to Jane to get her blessing instead of the Vicegerent’s, since I knew I would never get it…and…”

“Ah,” Bergmann said. “I see now.”

“I can’t even guarantee we will return safely,” Watson said. “But even if we do, it might be too late.”

“That is up to Lord Wayne to decide,” Bergmann said. “But regardless, I’m sure she’d be proud knowing she devoted her life to this chance. And you too, Watson, know deep in you that you’ve a good heart. Otherwise you would’ve never done this for her.”

“I often times think I’ll regret this,” Watson said. “And maybe I will.”

“Nobody ever regrets having a good heart, Commandant,” Bergmann said. “The only shield against a world of darkness.”

“Have you ever considered being a missionary for Tridention?”

“No,” Bergmann said. “Why is that?”

“You’d make a good one,” Watson noted.

“Allen often said the same to me,” Bergmann said. “Especially back then.”

“Well then, since you insist on guiding people like me to a path of enlightenment, continue to guide the expedition,” Watson insisted. “You really are the one who holds all of our lives in your hands. Because you know the way to the passage.”

“That I do,” Bergmann said. “And we simply keep continuing forward. But when I tell you, we will need to cross over the mountains.”

“Over those mountains?”

“Aye,”

“The Mid-Ocean Ridge,”

“That ridge right there,” Bergmann said.

“Okay,” Watson said. “Relay the command to the others, let them pass over to the Redemption and Titan, we’ll get a move on then.”

The three Striders all received the signals in due time, and continued their course throughout the open Ocean. Bergmann ended up signaling the time to cross over the Mid-Ocean Ridge. “The food will fall off the Strider if we don’t hold onto them,” Watson warned. “Have some hunters fasten the wares carefully to the chassis, and prepare for a steep ascent,” Watson noted.

Some hunters obliged, even offering to unfasten ropes from their own harpoons and use them to tie the rations on the chassis to themselves. Then they returned to their places on the fins, and started readjusting them so the Victory could start to rise right over the mountains. The striders rose their fronts upward, until they could look directly above them. And then they started to climb against the slopes of the Mid-Ocean range peaks. The steepest of which were the ones right closest to them.

The striders aligned themselves with the slopes of these mountains, and eventually scaled them up to the top. But as they were vertical, the hunters clung onto the chassises with their bare hands. The rations barely hung onto the Victory because of the leverage from the harpoon wires. Watson watched over their newly caught quarry as they tipped over. Some fine craftsmanship, those Tridention harpoons are, he noted. Only way we won’t go hungry in the next few days.

“Bergmann, did you have to do this nearly two centuries ago too?” Watson asked. “I feel like I’m hanging off a ledge.”

“You mean you’ve never hung off a ledge before?” Bergmann asked.

“For Lord Wayne’s sake, Bergmann, I can float!” Watson said. “Age has done you in quite nicely.”

“Savor it,” Bergmann insisted.

Watson paid more attention to the slopes of the mountain peak, next to his own Strider, worrying about how tall the mountains actually ascended. Seemed to take forever for the Victory to scale up the peak. He looked upward, and only found hope when he saw an apex to the peak in sight. Banking on them actually making it intact, he persevered by latching onto the Victory’s chassis tip while it scaled. The moment it hovered over the mountain completely, Watson turned to his brigade. “Re-align and get this thing down to the seafloor!” Watson insisted. “Do it now!”

The hunters started moving the fins again such that the Victory would go back on a dive. “Pisces? Are you alright?”

“Dad,” a faint Pisces voice shouted.

Watson looked beneath him. Somehow he had not realized it, but Pisces grabbed onto his feet and had latched there the whole time. She climbed up his leg and tried to get to him. My goodness, Watson thought. He offered a hand to Pisces so she could climb back up. “You’re becoming more difficult to look after by the minute,”

“Sorry,” Pisces warned.

“I told you to stay close at all times!” Watson insisted. “I guess this was not expected either.”

“I try, I’m sorry,” Pisces said.

“Come here,” Watson said as he lifted her up to the front of the chassis. “We’ll be taking a nosedive now; we’ll be fine.”

The Victory reached a stable depth in the water before aligning to be straight. Straight enough that Watson could comfortably stand on the chassis and not fall off. Then he turned to Bergmann. “So what did you catch down those corals?” Watson asked him.

“Some hake and herring,” Bergmann said. “Not much, but it definitely rekindled the hunter in me.”

“It wasn’t the quarry then that inspired you, but the act,” Watson said. “Missionary work would leave you uncomfortable.”

“A change of heart, then,” Bergmann noted.

“You ever wonder if you could’ve changed Franklin’s mind about that accursed expedition?” Watson asked him. “You ever once, try to talk to him, while he led the brigade to their death, in that ice, and tell him, that he should reconsider? Maybe change course? Maybe change his mind?”

“I know some who tried,” Bergmann said. “But as you know, between us hunters, reputation is a matter of life and death.”

“Well in his case, it literally was,” Watson said. “I would not have wanted this.”

‘You assume Franklin had the choice,”

“He always had a choice,”

“Not when Banishment was at risk,” Bergmann said. “Franklin was at a fork in the road. And it would appear that either path on the fork led to his death. He knew it was inevitable.”

“You’re starting to concern me alot, Bergmann,” Watson said.

“Why so?”

“Because you’re putting us on the same parallel path Franklin was on,” Watson said. “And if I’m right, death will be around the corner soon.”