Elephant Pond 13:

Reckless care and Careful ignorance (1)

“And you are absolutely sure that it’s not an Imperious grade weapon?” Typhon asked his son for the tenth time.

“Yes, I made sure not to use the Smith Hold. The Murk Blade can’t be any stronger than Uncanny grade.”

“And you didn’t use any of your skills as an Animist?”

“Not a single rune from the spirit script, no.”

Morgan’s father had been interrogating him since he had woken up. The pirates had returned Tory immediately to their care after receiving the blade and Morgan had promptly fallen asleep as soon as they had all returned to their cells unharmed. The night had passed and when morning came, Morgan had woken up to his father’s empty cot, as he had left to tend to his regular smithing duties on the second highest floor. He had only returned in the early afternoon, and the prying had commenced shortly after some reassurance to ease his son’s guilt.

“Alright, I’m just trying to be sure.”

“Though, I’m still not sure that it was the right choice in the long run…” Morgan added as an afterthought.

“Of course it was,” Typhon stated adamantly. “Your sister’s life was on the line, anyone would have done the same.”

“I know that, and I’d do it again without question but what about the balance of the tides? If and when Dagon kills with the sword that I made for him, then at least I can still say that the tide has been balanced; a life saved and a life taken. But what about when he just continues killing?”

“Contrary to what the elders have been preaching; you can’t be responsible for what’s done with the weapons and armor you make in every circumstance. Of course you have to bare the burden for weapons you’ve freely granted to others as their maker. However, to hold the weapons someone is forced to make and relinquish unwillingly, against them is madness.”

“I think the sea smiths they caught before us would very much disagree with you, Typhon,” Maya interrupted. “They chose death over servitude because they understood that anyone odious enough to kidnap them would commit acts just as vile, if not worse with the weapons they would be forced to make.

They had chosen death to avoid the exact circumstance and guilt that Morgan was facing now.

“That’s too steep a price for balance in my eyes. You had the chance to choose for yourself, and all of us are here last I counted.”

Maya sat back, away from the bars.

Luckily for Dagon and his crew, they’d happened to find Typhon, who had lost faith in such belief, alongside his wife who was as much a servant of the balance and Avitide as any, but a mother first.

“..So just a serrated edge and ink clouds, right?” Typhon said turning to face his son again.”

“A serrated edge and ink clouds,” Morgan confirmed. “Making it reminded me of Brunwin.”

“Mhm, I miss him too…and again, I’m sorry that Brunwin had to step in to teach you while I was gone.”

Morgan stared at his father for a moment.

“You’ve apologized more than a thousand times in the year you’ve been back. If you’re so sorry about it, why did you ever leave in the first place?” Morgan asked.

His father stared back at him, as if he had grasped his lungs between breaths.

Sly explanations and poorly veiled excuses of chores had been enough to dismiss their questioning in the past, but Morgan had never been this straightforward. It especially didn’t help that father and son were locked in a cell together.

His mother’s face appeared behind the bars on their left again. Maya leaned forward her brows steeply angled in a glare at her husband, as if she was forbidding him from answering the question.

Typhon’s face sagged with the apparent weight of his guilt; a sudden, haggard flash of remorse. He couldn’t keep the secret any longer, not when their futures were so uncertain.

“You are right, you deserve to know. The reason why I left is also the reason why we are here right now. Or rather, the reason why we took the harvesting trip in the first place, and stopped where we did.”

“I don’t see the connection.”

“When you went harvesting, did you find anything…surprising, off the edge of the reef?”

With the terror of the chase and them being shot out of the sky afterwards, Morgan had completely forgotten what he had seen. While he was in the darkness over the edge of the reef, a cast of giant orange crabs had fled toward him in a stampede. He had swam moved out of the way but by the time the last of the crabs had gone their way, they’d kicked up the sand enough sand to expose red light bleeding into the water from a crack.

“There…there was red light coming from a crack in the ground. Except it wasn’t the ground, that entire reef was on top of some sort of huge building. When I looked inside of it I saw glowing red lights and huge piles of… bodies, human bodies. Someone or something had them stacked them on top of each other in mounds, like towers, taller than anything I’ve ever seen and then preserved them in some kind of mucus.”

Typhon nodded while Maya put her hands over heart. “It’s alright,” Tory said, embracing her mother.

“That was the reason why I left. There are a dozen or more identical cracks on that ‘sea bed’ alone. Four years ago I happened to find one of them, and what I saw changed everything I thought I knew about Khantani and Avitide up to that point. The things that I found inside left questions I couldn’t live without being answered.”

“So you just left for those answers with no goodbyes? Why didn’t you just tell us?”

“Your mother told me not to. She called me a heretic and told me to leave before I destroyed our family and I was mad enough at her that I did.”

“You told us you didn’t know where he went or why he left!” Morgan exclaimed at his mother.

“Quiet!” the pirate guard yelled at him.

“She was right, Morgan. I’m sure you remember what happened when I returned. I showed Tallus and the elders the proof but they chose not to believe me and I might have been made an outcast for it, had your uncle not been the Chief. If you two had supported me, they would have treated you the same, your lives would have been ruined. And you wouldn’t be the sea smith you are now, the one you need to be to survive the Knife Isles.”

Morgan sighed. “Human remains is one thing, but what did you see that made you doubt Avitide?”

“I can’t tell you that. The purpose of the harvesting trip was for you to interpret what you saw on your own to reach your own conclusion. It was the compromise your mother and I came to when I returned last year. But we will have to discuss the rest of it later, we’re close to The Blot.”

The air had shifted without Morgan noticing a thing. It felt thicker, and rippled the way the air did after a lightning strike.

The dull men must have felt it too because uncomfortable murmurs came from their cells as it gradually intensified. Eventually the pirate assigned to the floor marching his way down to their cell, worry lines cut deep in his forehead.

“Aye, sea smith,” the guard called his father, “Midge told me you know a lot about the Blot.”

“Midge?”

“Short and stocky lad that runs his mouth more than he should, asked you to make protection from the Blot gods for him.”

Morgan had completely forgotten about it, and from the surprise on his father’s face, he had as well.

“Ah. Yes, I’m familiar.”

“Great,” he said sarcastically, “Now tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing right now, we are just getting closer to the Blot. This is just what happens when there are vast amounts of magic in the air. It’s usually only this prominent around the more powerful creatures in the sired isles, but it also makes sense considering we’re approaching a tiny island housing four gods.”

“How could there be four gods on one island anyway?”

“They are only gods by title, in actuality they are tribesmen just like the Plain-walkers and I. The only difference is that they each have a significant part of their god’s powers.” Typhon said

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t they just be the same as you?”

“It’s because of the pool theory,” D interjected. “The Harcovians theorized and proved that each of the tribes have a limited pool of power granted by the gods and given to each tribesman at birth. In effect, the larger the population the less each individual gets, and inversely the smaller the population, the more powerful the individual.”

“Then the four people on that island are as strong as the entire Harcovian Empire?” the pirated inquired.

“No, they are far stronger. Skill and talent can overcome the gap between someone born when there is more power available in their tribe’s ‘pool’ and someone on the lower end. But the Blot Gods have been alive since the tail end of the Perennial War. They’ve had literal millennia to hone and push their abilities past what any other tribesman could achieve in our fleeting lifetimes.”

The detailed knowledge that D demonstrated was astounding, but especially curious given what little he remembered about himself, or at least claimed to.

“So not too far off from the real thing then,” Tibbles muttered anxiously from his cell.

Morgan’s family had gradually become more familiar with the other prisoners as the days in the belly of Daiah’s Locker had dragged by. Especially the most vocal like the man from Black Veil named Tibbles, who had assured Morgan that it was the name of an infamous conqueror in his town and the woman from White Coast named Vella. The pirate guards didn’t seem to mind the conversation if they didn’t make it too obvious.

“Personally, I’d say they are worse,” D said, “True gods often reserve their meddling for the most extraordinary of circumstances. Some don’t even act then. In contrast, the Blot’s gods have no such reservations when it comes to mundane issues. The stories prove that they are watching and they will act. You pirates may have very well steered yourselves toward an agonizing death, they haven’t taken kindly to abductions in the past.”

What little noise had been made prior had been snuffed out in the anticipation of what might come, exacerbated by D’s warnings. All of them in Daiah’s locker sat buffeted by the power the gods emitted, in dead complete silence except for the ship’s creaking as it rocked and splashed on the Scab Channel. Morgan wasn’t sure what to expect. He wondered what divine act could possibly eliminate the pirates whilst leaving them unharmed.

“I’m not sure if anyone heard me the first time, but I’ve done many bad things. A bit of clarification on what it takes to be struck down by these gods would be greatly appreciated.” Tibbles complained.

As the minutes went by, the sensation in the air intensified till Morgan could feel the air shifting around the individual goosebumps on his arm. In the near absolute silence Morgan heard the stomachs of dull men gurgling, as they struggled not to spill what little they had been given to eat.

That was until the magic in the air began to fade, much more quickly than it had seemed to come. The sound of upset stomachs and groaning subsided with it, till it was superseded by the stomping of boots on wood, splashing and emotionally distressed groans Morgan had grown used to. The pirates’ ships had passed the Blot and left the Knife Isles. They were just a stretch of empty sea away from Korenth.

“I don’t understand. Nothing happened, at all. Not a single lightning strike, no fog, nothing,” Morgan said.

“The Four gods have either decided that the pirate’s crimes are not heinous enough for vengeance or…” D said.

“Or our lives aren’t worth saving.” Maya concluded as well.

“It was always a long shot, but it was our best shot,” Typhon admitted somberly.

The pirate guard flashed a silver-toothed grinned as wide as he could, and sprinted up the steps, giggling the entire time. Short after that the pirates had broken out into song on the deck, a racy shanty about rum and retiring to houses made of gold.

Morgan heard dancing and clapping from Tibbles’ cell as he celebrated as well.

“You moron!” Vella bellowed from her cell, “At least we had a chance of surviving if the gods on the Blot had attacked; now we’re guaranteed to be executed in Korenth.”

The dancing stopped.

“About that, I have a plan,” Typhon offered, “If it works then all of us will be able to return to our homes, in the very ships that stole us from them.”

“I can’t speak for the rest of them, but that sounds like conmen’s promises to me sea smith,” a voice called from farther down the stretch of cells. “You want to use us as scape goats for you and your blood to escape since the Blot gods didn’t save you!”

“I’m not asking any of you to die for me, or my family. I won’t lie about our odds either. Most of us will die if we try, but most of you are set to be executed either way. I can only promise you that your end won’t be with your head on a block in Korenth, your imminent demise printed onto posters as mid-day entertainment, while you wait for the guillotine to drop.”

“Sounds better than nothing to me,” Vella said.

“You can count my aid as well,” D confirmed, followed by most, if not all of the other captives.

“He didn’t even say his plan!” Tibbles complained.

“Send word up the floors; let them choose where their last breaths will be.”