“Due to the inherent dangers of sea travel over the deeper seas, only the foolhardy even dared to attempt it, most of the time. Even so, some routes over deep waters became commercially viable with increased usage. The number of ships that went under from either unexpected bad weather or sea monster attacks becoming negligible and acceptable losses to the increased profits the route provided.” - Fareed Ibn Batout, Head of the Sailor’s Guild of Meergant, circa 210 FP.

“You see that bit o’ land sticking out to our port there? That there’s the Cape o’ Lush Beards, or at least that’s what we sailors called it, ‘cause it’s like mostly dwarves livin’ there,” said Arquivaldo several days later as he pointed out the distant landmark to Aideen and Celia. “Other than that, ‘tis also a very convenient landmark as it happened to be right at the veery south-eastern corner of Alcidea, makes as good as a signal to turn as any.”

“I see. So the ships that follow the coastline would veer south on noticing the cape?” asked Aideen.

“Either that or loop around it and go north, yea. Going much further east would mean heading into deeper waters, and nobody sane really goes there. Too many critters big enough to swallow your whole ship whole, over there, I tell ya,” replied the captain with a playful nod. “Since we be headed for Ur-Teros, we’d be taking a turn to the starboard once the cape’s precisely at our port, to make use of the flow it created.”

“Makes sense,” she replied calmly. Aideen had not been on the seas often, but at least it wasn’t her first time, unlike Celia, who still often spent her time gawking at the endless ocean by the railings. “Around how long was this trip planned to take, again?”

“Since we’re just headed to Gulski, I’d say another sevenday and a half from now, milady. Not too many take the trip all the way to the Lichdom, I fear, since having to apply for a permit first scared quite a few off. For what it’s worth, I have such a permit, just that this trip didn’t happen to head that way,” explained the captain apologetically. “You’ll pardon the Alcideans, I hope. Not too many countries fond of necromancy, there.”

“I noticed,” replied Aideen. During the century or so she spent on Alcidea she did see much fewer death-affinity mages who peddled their abilities openly. It was partly due to an old prejudice, she guessed, as there were no influential figures who helped give necromancy a more positive look like Grandpa Aarin in their history.

In Ur-Teros, even if they might not be the sort who controlled undead creatures, those who used Death affinity magic for all sorts of work were practically everywhere. In Alcidea the few she saw were of those types, while she had not seen any real necromancer other than a couple of the shamans of the prairie, who could care less about what the rest of the continent might think of them.

“Speaking of which, how often have you traveled by sea, milady? I can’t help but notice that you seem pretty used to being on a ship, unlike your companion,” asked the Captain with some curiosity. Celia had gotten a bit seasick on her first day aboard the ship until Aideen taught her some tricks to combat that issue, and had since been quite enamored by the ocean around her.

“Probably a dozen times or so? Most of those were from when I visited my in-laws in Elmaiya. They had their own private ship so it was a much faster trip to just head over by sea rather than by land,” replied Aideen after a quick count in her head. “We mostly hugged the coastline, though, and never really ventured more than a day or two away from the coasts.”

“Aye, that’d be the safe distance to take, most of the time,” replied Arquivaldo with an approving nod. “Unless you’re in the waters between the continents themselves, it’s ill-advocated to travel more than three days away from land, as by that point you’d enter the deep waters, and there in the deeps where no light could prevail, they lurk.”

“If you refer to those sea monsters of gargantuan size, I’ve seen one myself, in the flesh,” replied Aideen with a smirk of her own gracing her lips. “That one’s probably a juvenile who swam into shallow waters, only a kilometer long or so, but still more than huge enough to make a big mess of our waters when it decided that it wanted to stay there. Trying to shoo it off didn’t work either.”

“Oh? I’ve heard of such tales, yeah. They were usually tales of horror and bravery where fleets were mobilized to drive away the beast in question, not always with success,” replied Arquivaldo with obvious interest in his eyes. “Pray tell, what happened afterward?”

“We took some more drastic measures against it,” she replied, her smirk widening into a grin in the process. “They sent me over on a small dinghy with a whole set of Dragonfire Brew in my storage ring and let the damn thing swallow me up.”

“That… is a novel way to deal with one of those. I believe Dragonfire Brew were unstable explosives, no? Did you carry enough on your person to blow it up from within?”

“Nah, got nowhere near enough for that. So I ended up carving my way out of its belly and swimming in its blood until I reached its heart, which I figured must be just as vital for it as for most of us,” replied Aideen as she related her tale to the intrigued Captain. “Then once I was there, I set the Brew up and blew its heart into halves. That turned out to be enough to kill it.”

“And then?”

“And then we towed the carcass back to shore where it was butchered for everything of value, which turned out to be rather literally everything. Grandpa even made use of the skeleton and turned it into an undead sentinel that watched the coast to this day,” she said with cherish. “If you ever went to Andera, you can see its snout poking out from the sea like a reef.”