“How long did you live missing an arm you could have had back?” Aisha asked, leaning over on the rocking hull of the ship as she watched Lucius.

“Nearly two years. With enough food, everything comes back.”

“Even your heart?”

“Yeah, I’ve had my heart ripped out. That was a land dragon, big horn coming off its snout, gored half my chest off.”

“How did you eat if you didn’t have a chest?”

Lucius scratched his chin and tried to remember. “I think Master dumped my body in a barrel of mead and that was good enough.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Well they don’t call it liquid bread for nothing. You can come back even if your head is cut off?”

“Learned that the hard way, yeah.”

“How?”

“Heretic hunting on the Skaldish border. One of the raiders caught me with my helmet off and–” he sliced his hand across his throat.

While their conversation had gone on, the weather had changed. The wind picked up till it whistled against the windows. The creak of rope was like an army camp getting set up. It put Lucius at ill ease, and forced tension into their conversation. It was possible that Aisha was about to invite him over, but the stiffening of his body didn’t go unnoticed.

“So, this thing, this godling you’ve called it, what are they?”

“Little gods,” he answered.

She pouted.

He cleared his throat. “Newborn gods, yet to grow to the strength of Saphira, or Lumius and the others. The gods are living things, they have to grow into their power.”

“And Amurabi… kills them in the cradle?”

“Would you want to live in a world with evil gods?”

She frowned and rolled her head to the side. With her eyes fixed on the bobbing moonlight, she said, “No, I suppose absentee gods are better.”

“If only.”

“What?”

“I think I storm is coming. If it starts raining, we’ll have to bail water.”

She blinked, bringing her mind around to the new line of thought. “That would be bad.”

“This would be the worst time for winds to blow us off course, what with the… you know… whale hunter following us.”

“And you’re just going to leave me hanging? Mid story? Not to know how the brave little boy slew the godling?”

Lucius grinned and stood up. A particular lurch of the ship made him stumble, and he had to throw out his hand to grab the deck joist. It made him tower over her, halfway on top of her. With the beat of his heart, words failed him. And then, like every dreamer who missed his chance, he said, “There’s always next night. Gotta leave you hooked, don’t I? Coming back for more?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Get out of here and make sure we don’t sink. That will give me some peace, don’t you think?” she said, and sent him from her cabin. He left as though two anchoring chains had him, one pulling him back and the other pulling him back to the deck. His need for knowledge won out that night, and he stepped out to the wave slick deck.

The wind had doubled, and doubled again. Captain Bodin barked orders to furl sails, to change course, he tore at the wheel as the Sea Bird’s Rest slipped left and right between the swells. The night had declared war on us, just as we veered from the sea lane. Not because the route itself was dangerous, we were in open water above a great chasm, but because the winds made it so.

“What’s happening?”

“The wrath of the goddess is upon us!” Captain Bodin spat back at him. “She must have realized what that blasted wizard did and has spited us. You’ve made an enemy of the sea herself!”

“Nonsense!” I screamed back at him, the wind augmenting my voice as it whipped the words from Bodin’s lips. “We’ve done nothing to bring her attention to us.”

“You bastardized her protection.”

“We haven’t even used it yet.”

“Well she still knows. She’s a goddess!”

I wanted to fly into a rage at him, grasping at fragmented memory and superstition. I couldn’t even puff my pipe to calm myself, because the flying rain had already soaked it. “I’m telling you, it’s not us that has her attention, it’s the beast. The moment we pour the poison, we will break free of the storm.”

Honung stomped over to us, whipping brine from his face and brushing his hair back. He had his sleeves pushed up and his trousers cuffed, and looked about ready to dive off the side of the ship than stay on with us. Had he been able to see a shoreline besides the Donjon so far behind us, he might have. “That snake is bigger than you think it is, Amurabi. You pour that poison and you’ll just offend it! Like a… like a… a squid inking to run away, you’ll just tell it that we’re out of tricks and easy prey!”

Lucius stepped in, putting his hand between us. “Wait, what of the other ship? If the storm is behind us, it should have overtaken them, yes?”

“Damned if I know,” Captain Bodin said, gesturing behind us. “Even I can’t see anything back there. Soon we won’t even see the stars. We’re sailing on faith.”

I huffed. “Should I have made you a compass first?”

“I have one! It’s useless. That’s how I know this is the wrath of the goddess,” he said, jabbing his finger to a glass orb he had beside the wheel. The needle inside swung and wobbled so much the weight of it banged about, pointing every which way.

I wanted to throttle him. There was nothing about a magical storm that would affect a magnetic compass, his was simply engineered poorly. My spare thoughts went again to a mechanical compass, one made by a spun flywheel on a gyroscope, set to always point due north, or whichever direction one might choose. No jostling or magnetics or magic could make that falter, but the requisite precision of ball bearings may as well have been impossible.

“I tire of this,” I declared, and threw back one sleeve. I extended my hand, showing the dark, wrinkled flesh of ages past like I was brandishing a sword, and I grabbed the captain by the head. With thumb and pinky pressed to his temples, I gripped him so tightly I nearly lifted him off the ground as I pressed magic into him. His eyes to be precise.

When I let go, light had suffused into his eyes, a glittering blue like arcing electricity. The light of the night redoubled in his vision, and doubled again. After a moment, it was too much and he screamed. Lucius had to jump on the wheel, clumsily fighting the waves to keep us pointed in the rough direction of forward travel. All the while, Captain Bodin staggered and covered his eyes. Honung had to grab him before he toppled off the railing.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“Open your eyes and see,” I spat back at him.

With some shred of courage he looked to the world again, and saw it as though in daytime. The experience is hard to describe in words, but after a moment, he appeared almost transcendent. Perhaps it had some coupling with his stigmata, a bit too much sensory input, but he wasn’t a good captain for nothing. The best Rackvidd had to offer even.

“I can see the storm. It’s like smoke across the floor of the world,” he said, staring slack jawed off the aft of the ship.

I shoved him to the wheel and Lucius handed it off. “If you can see the storm, then sail us out of it. Follow the currents. Keep the beast off us, and I won’t have to use the poison.”

Captain Bodin took it with vigor, jerking the ship and curving it through a rut between waves. The storm surges rose on either side of us, enough to wash over the decks, and yet they did not strike. Every crest moved with us, fell by the wayside, and Bodin laughed.

Lucius grabbed me by my robe and shoved me to the back, to where the cask was. “So it won’t catch us? We both know that’s a lie.”

I turned him away, pulling our shoulders together against the wind. “You’ll have to fight it off. We’ll coat your sword with the poison, tie a lifeline to you, and send you in.”

“Master, are you drunk?”

“No! I’m pressed for time. That man might be a fool, but he was right that this is a magic storm. We’ve caught somebody’s attention.”

“If someone was coming after you, you should have taken another ship!”

“Golden must have done something stupid, must have gloated to the wrong being. There’s no other explanation for why any of the angels would know I’m here.” Unfortunately, in the scheme of things I never found out if he was the cause. By the time I returned to Giordana, he had already fled, but that is a story for the future.

“If this is your problem, then you should fix it!”

“Oh? So I can arrive at Hearth Bay at the mercy of that bitch angel? No thank you! This isn’t a godling, it’s just a monster.”

“A monster that will strand us at sea if it doesn’t kill us outright. Are you still going to hoard your magic when pirates are putting us in chains?”

“I will stop hoarding my magic when there isn’t a suitable alternative.”

“Suitable alternative? You’re tossing me off the side like bait!”

“Poisoned bait!”

“That’s not better.”

“It’s plenty better, it will actually kill the beast.”

“Just pour the poison in now to drive it off.”

“I can’t, the currents will disperse it. It’s in a hunting frenzy now, some mild irritation won’t even be noticed. It needs to be delivered right to it, and you’re the man for the job.”

“I’m always the man for the job, aren’t I?”

“That’s right.” I laughed at him. The argument was pointless, it was the rage of a young man. He and I both knew he didn’t have a choice, not while Aisha was on the ship and without means of escape. I could save myself just fine. He could fight his way free. The rest of the humans were doomed if one of us didn’t act, and he knew better than to wait for me.

“Get my sword,” he shouted. He shoved off of me and turned to the crew, repeating his cry. “And you, tie the anchoring line to me.”

Honung blinked, rain gushing down his face. The storm was catching up to us. “But you’ll just sink.”

“Without the anchor!”

Sammy came running up from below deck, clutching the infantry blade Lucius had used at the siege. He sprinted across the deck, losing his footing at the last moment and tumbling over his feet and across the slosh of sea water. Lucius snatched him by the shirt and hauled him back to his feet. The boy gulped down his fear and held the blade out for him. “You need this?”

Lucius took the handle and wrenched it from the scabbard. “Yes, because apparently I’m going fishing.”

With a bit of prying, we popped one side off the cask and he doused his blade in the poison. It came out black and smoking, the steel rusting as we watched. “What did you make?”

I chuckled again. “Best to put it back in the scabbard for now.”

He shoved it back into the oiled sheath as I vanished below deck. They trussed him up in the anchoring line, tying thick knots behind his back as best they could, while the giant sea boa drew closer and closer.

“You’re insane, you know that?” Captain Bodin asked, glancing over his shoulder. He was the only one aboard that could see the monster clearly, and his ashen face reflected it well.

“Shouldn’t you be encouraging me?”

“I’ll encourage you all you’d like!”

The head of the snake broke from one wave to the neck, crashing through and opening its maw. It didn’t roar, it gulped air and gave itself fresh strength to burst towards the ship.

Lucius felt the fear, like anyone else. He simply had the weapon to deal with it. “Remember this, you’ll never see anything like it again!” he shouted, and jumped off the back of the ship.