Chapter 12

Wil watched the tiny boat sail away, its white sails becoming a distant speck on the horizon as he stood on a desolate island, waiting to meet the son of a god.

Sophia had met him at dawn, with the yellow sun barely peeking over the horizon, on white sand beach of Miquelon. Despite the early hour, the dock had been bustling with activity.

The repairs on the Drake were in full swing, crew members and craftspeople were already clearing away the damage, making ready to install the new masts.

Dressed in his leather armor, Wil wore his sword on his waist, rather than his back. He wanted to be able to draw it quickly or cast away the weight of it if he fell into the ocean.

He had left his cloak with Annabelle, not needing it for the beautiful warm weather. He also didn’t want to risk losing it if he had to take a sudden swim. The cloak was valuable for the material, but as a gift, it was priceless.

The memory of the cloak’s weight when he was submerged in Quentin’s cabin had made him wary of carrying it near water. He didn’t want to have to cut himself free and risk damaging it.

Everything else he needed was already in his bag of holding, slung over his shoulder, tight across his chest. He wanted his spell book and supplies close on hand. Like Garman had taught him, be prepared for anything.

A new addition to his attire was the gold ring on his finger. He wore his signet ring again, not out of familial obligation, but as an acknowledgement of his quest from the Sea God. Aruna had given it back to him, Wil thought it would be rude to not wear it. Besides, no one here, or in Lund, would understand the significance of it anyway.

The priestess had secured a small fishing boat for the trip to the neighboring island. Only large enough for a handful of people, it would just be the pair of them, with her son as the pilot. A very pleasant and cheerful person, her son was nearly an exact copy of his father, in both looks and personality.

Tucked into the boat, Wil had a very unpleasant trip out of the bay and into the rougher waters beyond. The sea was rather calm, in comparison to what it was like during the storm. For Wil, anything but completely flat waters were enough to roil Wil’s stomach.

By the time the island was a speck behind them, Wil was completely green in the face and regretting the decision to come.

A quick healing spell from Sophia cured some of his sickness, but it could do nothing about the sense of nervousness flooding through him. He was about to see a creature that few people had ever seen before.

To the islanders, the Azure Lord was a protector and the son of their god. But to Wil and all other human mages, the Dragon Turtle was a link to their magical heritage. Early humans learned magic from observing dragons, mimicking their manipulation of mana to achieve an inferior imitation of their natural spellcasting abilities.

A Dragon Turtle was a direct descendant of an elder dragon, one step removed from the source of all human magic. It was an incredible opportunity, and one that Wil was terrified of screwing up.

Truth be told, he had never been an amazing student, having gotten through the academy using private tutors and his father’s money. He was average at best, and he struggled to recall every shred of information he had ever heard about these mythical beasts. It wouldn’t do to offend Lord Azure or waste this opportunity.

There was also the small fact that a god had gone to the trouble of sending a storm to nearly destroy his ship, all with the intention of forcing him to assist the Azure Lord in whatever way the secluded demigod wanted.

Wil didn’t want to imagine the reason behind such an act. He wasn’t particularly strong when compared to a Dragon Turtle, and his living experience was incomparably shorter than a long lived mythological beast, what help could he possibly provide?

Sighing as the boat disappeared from view after dropping him off, Wil looked around the small island he found himself on. Made of black volcanic rock, it was barely an island, more of a piece of rock jutting from the sea.

Sophia had brought him to a rocky shore, leaving him on a narrow beach that was barely big enough for the boat to pull alongside of. The entire island reminded him of a mountain peak, with only the very edge peeking up out of the water.

The black rock stretched into the air, twenty or thirty feet from the sea. Seagulls and other birds were circling overhead, and Wil was careful to watch where he placed his hands while climbing up the steep rockface.

White bird droppings covered a large portion of the island, and Wil gave up trying to keep his hands clean after the fourth time he gripped a fistful of guano.

Muttering curses at Turtles and Gods, he struggled upwards, the ocean breeze blowing the hair out of his face and keeping him thankfully cool in the heat.

Sophia had said it was a short trip from the beach to the altar on peak of the island, but it was twenty minutes of hard climbing for Wil before he finally dragged himself up the last foot, thankfully kneeling on the black rock on the very top.

The peak was a wide piece of solid stone, perfectly flat, twenty or so feet across. Surprisingly free of birds and their droppings, a Beachwood altar, similar to the one in the Sea God’s church, had been placed here as well, facing north. Offerings from the islanders were on the rock beneath, flowers, food items and fish, all fresh and recently placed. The isolated island was frequently visited by the locals, looking cared for and tidy.

Wil sat for a moment, catching his breath and taking in the view. Primaris had risen high into the sky during the boat ride, hovering directly overhead, and the blue waters of the Azure Sea shimmered beautifully. Wil could smell the ocean breeze, of salt water and clean air, unpolluted by human industry or magic.

To Wil, the capital always smelled faintly of piss and ozone, the unique scent he associated with civilization. Depending on where you went in the empire, things invariably smelled more of one or the other, but usually he could find both mixed in the air.

Even the Drake, with its cleaning spells, reeked of the acrid smell of magic, the wards that powered the ship left their stink on everything.

He’d grown used to it, but it was times like these, when he was in the middle of nowhere, that he was truly aware of their absence. Taking deep breathes, he looked out over the water, looking for any sign of the Azure Lord.

Standing, he walked over to the Altar, looking at the engravings and runes etched into the wood. He recognized a few, such as ‘Praise” and “Divine”, also “Protect”, all tied together with hundreds of others that he had no clue about. Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, he cursed his history focus.

Although he couldn’t understand a lot of the etchings, he knew they were more mundane, rather than magical. A couple were divine, clerical runes, likely from Sophia or a priestess like her, the others seemed a mix of random words from different languages.

He spotted several ancient Illyrian symbols, along with one that was clearly from Khmer, their alphabet distinct and easily recognizable.

His curiosity over the altar and this island lasted for only a few minutes, before his impatience at the waiting took over. With each hour that passed, the sun crossed the sky overhead, and gradually sunk towards the horizon to the west.

Half a day later, Wil sat on the edge of the rock face, swinging his legs over the waters below, scooping the sweet ‘meat’ of a coconut that he had taken from amongst the offerings. He suspected the Azure Lord may have a fondness for them, since nearly half the baskets were full of them.

This was the fifth coconut he had eaten since he started pilfering from the Lord’s offerings, and he had the technique finally down on how to eat the tricksome treat.

Splitting the outer husk with a rock, he drained the ‘milk’ to quench his thirst, before splitting it in half with a conjured hatchet. Wil was thoroughly engrossed with using his newly conjured metal spoon to shove the delicious meal into his mouth when the water surged in front of him.

The water was split by large, jagged spikes, reaching dozens of feet into the air. Dozens of these pillars pierced the water’s surface, before the ocean surged upwards as something massive breached.

The spikes were attached to a greenish grey shell, worn smooth by the ocean. Deep expansion lines were carved into the carapace, some running hundreds of feet along its length.

As more of the body was revealed, Wil was struck by the sheer magnitude of the creature emerging in front of him. It was larger than the island he stood on, and much bigger than the Drake, considerably so. It was also old, he could feel the age from its carapace.

Ancient scars, white lines that were once jagged and raw, were now worn smooth with time. Dozens of the spikes, once towering and sharp, were merely worn knubs, the friction of the ocean wearing them short, like a beach rock endless grinded by sea waves.

Wil stood, his mouth open in awe as the shell lifted from the water, and the head of the Dragon Turtle broke the water’s surface.

The Dragon Turtle’s head wasn’t flat or smooth, it was sharp and angular, with a beak that protruded forward, before curving downwards, like a hawk or eagle. Its skin was covered in large, hard scales, each as thick as a warrior’s shield and as wide as a man is tall. They overlapped, creating an impenetrable barrier of plates, as strong as the finest steel.

Wil was in awe at how the sun shimmered off those dragon scales, like oil covering water, the light danced across them, shining bright blues and deep, dark greens. The Dragon Turtle in front of him was both the most beautiful and most terrifying thing he had ever seen in his life.

The picture had done it an injustice. There was no conceivable way that something like the creature before him could ever be painted or described. Words failed to capture its majesty, its size, its power. A picture couldn’t contain its beauty, its splendor, or the heart pounding, primal fear that standing in its presence brought him.

It was something deep inside of every human, every living being, that stood in front of a predator.

Tearing his vision away from its body and scales, Wil looked into the Dragon Turtles eyes. Glowing orbs of Azure Blue, filled with an ocean of Mana. An inconceivable amount of mana, enough to make the Lich he faced in Aachen look like a child playing with cantrips.

It dwarfed the world around him, it burned the air, twisting and warping the light from the sun with its power.

Its eyes contained wisdom, and experience. Every question Wil had ever imagined, could ever conceive, the answers were in this divine creature’s mind.

Wil looked deeper into those eyes, and in them, he saw himself reflected, a small and insignificant speck to the divinity before him. It was all too much!

With a scream, Wil wrenched his sight away from the Dragon Turtle, but it was too late. His head was filled with visions, memories that were not his own. Crying from the agony, Wil knelt on the black rock, tears running down his face as the newly imparted knowledge ripped his mind apart.