Chapter 51: ”What now?!” (1/2)

We escaped the naval sortie without any other casualties. We headed for the deepest water we could find, and while the Spirit of Retribution and the cutters could stay above us, they didn’t have the means to further assault the ship.

Well, besides the last boulders they tried dropping on us. Thankfully it was much harder to hit a target when it wasn’t just under the waves. We avoided the attacks.

Looking at the charts and the terrain around us, Burdette and I picked a spot to hide. ‘Hide’ was the wrong word, as they could still point right to us, but to go any further would require us to move closer to the surface with the terrain, and I wasn’t willing to surrender an inch of depth.

We were currently deep enough that the weight of the ocean would crush any beings that weren’t protected. Our curse protected us, but however prepared the navy might be they couldn’t prepare for every eventuality. Any fighters on board the ships above us would not only have to be hardy, they’d have to be able to breathe down here, fight, then return to the surface. No way those ships had the water-breathing potions on board to outfit a strike team for that.

They could drop zombies on us, but the Emerald would have to catch up. The same token that let my crew point at my ship let me know exactly where their ships were. The Emerald was too far behind. They wouldn’t catch up before my crews’ time ran out.

Back on the island, I’d felt like I understood their choice to desert. They were only trying to be free, and I couldn’t fault them for that. Now? Now I looked over my damaged ship, bereft of so many crewman, and I cursed the deserter’s names. May they die in excruciating torment on the decks of those they fled to!

I had Burdette perform a muster. It was a mess, of course, as people tried to account for where crewmates were – those missing were dead – and compile a list of the names of the deceased.

The muster revealed some discrepancies in the initial report – some thought dead were present, and some no one had thought of were missing. All told, my initial conclusions were correct. I only had 25 people left with combat abilities. 10 of those only had minor skills, things that made them competent enough to call on but sub-par when matched with a professional.

Thankfully, Phillip had survived – though he had some nasty burns on his left arm – so the command structure I’d created for the fighters wasn’t beheaded. Rather than split into divisions, Phillip martialed all the fighters under himself, with three smaller teams.

Zandar had survived as well. Of course the half-mad spear master had survived. I appreciated the man’s skill, but he unnerved me sometimes.

I’d lost some people to the zombie swarm, but the most casualties were inflicted in the devastating attack with multiple runes. The deck we were mustered on showed the scars if not the blood.

Because a third of the crew was gone, some were standing in their normal positions crowded on the foredeck while most of the main deck stood empty. I directed them to come down and find new spots for their sections in the space of the fallen.

Arnnaith gathered all the notes people had written on, handing me the stack of the names of the departed. I looked through the names in silence while the crew waited. Passively, I checked the morale function on my interface. The Voice of the Crew status was set at Shell Shocked which delayed emotional reactions and morale penalties at the cost of lost efficiency and speed.

The crew had never been better than neutral on morale. They’d started in unhappy and worked up to neutral, but things had been falling for a while now. They’d progressed through sad, miserable, and angry. They were currently at spiteful. Mutinies had happened at this level of morale, though they were more likely in the last two stages: hateful and mutinous.

My interactions with the crew hadn’t changed much for the first several tiers, as my rank and power cowed them. Since they’d become angry, things were much more tense. I had a feeling that if I didn’t address the battle we’d just escaped and the lives we’d lost, more than a few individuals would find themselves at the mutinous stage regardless of the crew average.

I shuffled the sheaf of notes in my hands. “I remember what freedom is. Even now it’s something that I feel dangling in front of me like a carrot, just out of reach.”

Burdette looked at me askance, wondering why I would twist the knife by this choice of words from the man who’d taken their freedom in an exchange they hadn’t had time to consider.

“I want to … to be free again someday.” I shuddered as even saying that seemed to pressure against my oath to Jones. “Last night I wanted to give you lot a reminder of what freedom was like. Some decided that was opening enough to join our pursuers. I won’t berate them now, as I know we all served with them regardless of their decision,” and more and more of you are feeling like they were the noble ones, aren’t you? “But the consequences of those decisions – both my decision to stop and theirs to desert – is that we were caught. Caught by those who promised to hunt us down the moment we existed.”

I gestured at the damage – the holes through the decks and the places where we’d hacked harpoons free. Then I read out the names of everybody we’d lost. Normally, a ship would have a proper ceremony and a burial at sea. Given the large number of dead and the fact they’d all been ‘buried at sea’ to drag zombies down, this was what I thought best. It took far longer to read the list then I imagined. I had to softly clear my throat partly through when my own brained processed that all these names – people that I’d known – were dead and never to be seen again. I couldn’t reclaim the spirits of my former crew over and over again. Once dead, they were gone. Forever.

Finishing the list, I soberly reorganized the papers. The random thought popped into my head that we’d have to reorganize the watch schedule.

“Most of us died today because we never had a chance or a choice to begin with.”

I was intending to say something comforting and inspiring next, wrapping up with a dismissal that promised we would escape and not suffer the way we had today. I was interrupted as general grumbling suddenly shifted to angry murmurs and someone, emboldened, raised their voice.

“They died because our Captain didn’t know what he was doing!”

Another person – female – yelled in anonymity from the back “Some cursed legend! A young buck still wet behind the ears!”

I didn’t flinch when the attacks found the chinks in my armor. Instead, my eyes turned hard and brought my leadership skill levels to bear in ensuring that my next words cut the grumbling to the marrow and dissuaded any further outbursts.

“If you lot think that you would be better off working under Jones’ heel on the Perdition, I can make the arrangements.”

Silence greeted my threat. They might have gotten used to me, but most of them had known me as a deck hand first, a freshly-minted cursed Captain second. They’d been hearing ghost tales and horror stories of Jones and his ship their whole lives.

Not that I would give any of them to Jones. I didn’t feel like he could lay a direct claim to them, either. He might control me, but it was only through me that my crew followed him. They didn’t know that though.

“I was never any more than a man who loved the sea, but I found myself where fate led me and by Callis, I’m going to seize control of fate before it leads me anywhere further! I’ve not set out to be a harsh man but I’ll have it said that I won’t tolerate any sedition on board my boat. Clear?” There were no responses to that but downcast eyes and sullen glares. I took the lack of opposition as assent.

“We’re going to lay low until we’re far away from the net we found ourselves in. Take a few minutes to process, grieve those we’ve lost, write it down in those journals you all seem to be keeping if that helps. We’re going to escape, tend our wounds, and live to see the sun rise. Dismissed!”

Well, not exactly my most motivational speech ever. I usually departed the deck immediately after dismissing the crew, as I’d seen older Captains do it that way. Hanging around made the crew uncertain about getting back to work – or back to loafing. Now, I felt like I was running from the accusations of my own crew.

When we arrived at our destination, the darkest depth Burdette and I could find, we were surprised to find that it wasn’t entirely dark. There was a slight reddish glow. Rhistel and I found ourselves at the prow looking closer.

“Molten rock,” Rhistel said, and suddenly it clicked for me and I understood what I was seeing.

“This won’t be the deepest place in the area forever,” I said, looking out over the field of semi-liquid stone spreading out into the gloom before us. The heat from the molten blood from the heart of the earth fought with cold pressure from the ocean. The result was a dark plain of rapidly cooled rock that roiled when magma pushed under it. In some places the magma flowed, producing the light we’d first seen. In others spurts of it broke through the thin surface and caused a small explosion of bubbles and … smoke?

These things drew the eye so effectively, I nearly missed the other battle that was going on. With one of the spurts of magma breaking through came a golem, an elemental born from supersaturated mana in a zone. It didn’t react to the water as fast as the natural magma did, indeed the flow around it seemed bolstered by its presence.

Its presence, however, wasn’t tolerated by the other mana-born manifestations that claimed the deep. Water elementals were either drawn to this area or born here, and they descended wherever one of the golems appeared.

“This place … probably isn’t safe …” Rhistel said hesitantly.

“No,” I agreed. “It certainly isn’t. But the surface is worse for us right now. This place just needs to tolerate us for another 2-3 hours, then we can go without being traced.” In 2-3 hours, all my deserting crewmen would have their time lapsed to return. Of course, they could try to return in a last ditch effort, but I didn’t think the navy would let them go, and if they somehow returned to the ship I would give them even less mercy.

They’d had their chance. Their right to freedom didn’t exempt them from the blood of their fellows.

Suddenly I got an unexpected prompt.

Congratulations! You have discovered an unknown, significant location! This place is a mana fount and elemental disruption.

+10,000 XP for discovery. Cartography skill unlocked

Would you like to name this area?

I’d heard of explorers who searched out unknown places, but on land such places usually had a reason for remaining unfound that made exploration innately hazardous. The seas were scarcely explored even by aquatic races, which led to us stumbling upon this place.

However, looking over the primal landscape I couldn’t think of anything that would fit it. Nor did I think it needed a name. Let it remain a place isolated from human interface.

A moment after declining the option, I received the prompt:

Location named: Ehtelë melehtë

What? Wait, that’s elvish …

I turned accusingly to the elf standing by my side. “You named it?”

“Of course!” Rhistel said, confused at my reaction. “I was credited a small amount of XP for my involvement in the discovery, a few moments later I received the option to name it. Whatever is the matter?”

So, he got it when I passed. Oh well. “What’s that name mean?”

“Loosely translated, it means ‘fountain of mana’. I thought it appropriate, given the world described the place as a mana fount, and the evidence of elementals feeding off the byproducts of creation.”

“Right. Suppose that’s better than anything I’d come up with.”

The unexpected rewards for the discovery were nice. The cartography skill could be useful for those trying to create nautical charts – and I had a much better skillset to provide accurate details on dangerous waters than most harbor pilots. While I didn’t expect I’d be selling such charts to make a fortune, I would be more than happy to start keeping notes for my own use. Vague charts were one reason why I’d been caught in the navy’s trap.

And XP was always nice to get. Hang on, with this XP, and what I’d gained for killing that team beneath the Athair …

I could purchase Domain.

I couldn’t even consider allocating points into other abilities until I’d fulfilled Jones’ order to get the skill, so I didn’t fight the compulsion to get it immediately. 150,000 XP disappeared, replaced by a growing awareness, a dizzying rush of perspective, a …

“Captain?” Rhistel asked, catching me a moment later as I fell, forgetting where my body was.

“I’m fine,” I said. “New ability … it’s a lot.”

Domain brought me an awareness of both my ship and everything within its sphere. I could tell who was on board and where. I could sense another elemental clawing upwards through the magma below. I could even sense the tiny, curious sea life that lingered on the edge of the elemental battlefield.

“Wow,” I said. I could choose how narrow my focus was, but I didn’t need to stop using the ability. I had the capacity to passively absorb all of it. “There’s a lot of people who’d love to have even a minor version of this skill …” And already I wanted to upgrade it. As large as my ship’s sphere of influence was, I knew that it didn’t mean I was omniscient. The sea was a big place, and it swallowed up my little sphere like it was nothing.

I startled at the voice suddenly in my head.

“Hmmm. I didn’t expect you to make it out of there with your ship intact. Well, mostly intact.”

I motioned for Rhistel to give me some space. “Did I prove myself?”

“Prove yourself? Prove what? Your utter lack of strategic sense? If I wind up pulling you to my crew after all this, at least I know what not to do with you.”

“I was facing prepared enemies much more powerful than me …”

“Power’s great,” Jones interrupted. “But you of all people should know that levels and a plan don’t always dictate the victor. How many fighters three times your level have you killed? No, I’d expect someone with the perk of Trickster to know how to pull something over a powerful opponent. Instead, your own perk led you wrong. You got caught up in outmaneuvering them, trying to be so clever, and wound up getting a punch in the taint from everyone there.”

He was right. I’d already acknowledged my attempts at strategy were a failure. I’d only plucked a successful escape from the jaws of doom when I ignored trying to make the Death’s Consort win the day and struck off on my own. Did that mean I should forget the captaincy and just fight on my own?

“Is that what you want, lad?” Jones asked. “I could make use of you as a fighter like that.”

No. No! I was not going to put myself further under Jones’ thumb by surrendering what I had. I would make this work. I had to if I wanted to be free.

Jones snorted. “At least you got the ability I required. Dragging your feet you might be, but at least you’re shaping up.”

“Are we free from the Broken Isles? The fleet here will pin us down in a week if we’re stuck in the area.”

“Don’t let any more of your crew walk off, and maybe you won’t be stuck with eels coiling around you!” Jones retorted. “There’s not a thing in existence that can rival the power we have over the ships stuck on the surface. Start using your strengths, boy. I’ll be watching.”

I felt Jones’ presence leave and sagged against the gunwale, only to realize Rhistel was hanging around. “What is it?”

“I thought I’d remain at hand, Captain, in case you required assistance.”

“I’m fine, Rhistel.”

“Mmm-hmm. Have you decided where we’re going after losing our pursuit?”

I slapped the gunwale with my hand. Always it was ‘where next’ and ‘what now’! “No, I haven’t given it any thought Rhistel. If we make it out of here I’d say that’s as good a first step as any!”

The elf remained unfazed. “If you don’t mind suggestions, there’s an island about 100 miles south-east of our last port that I would be interested in stopping at.”

“Our last port call didn’t exactly go swimmingly, and I’m disinclined to repeat it. Why is your island so special?”

“First, it should be uninhabited. Second … I got a quest tied to it.”

“A quest?”

“I know personal quests might not be of importance to your patron’s efforts,” Rhistel said hurriedly, “But if you’d give me a chance …”

“Talk to me.” I said. A personal quest? For most the crew, I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way for it, but I’d been hoping Rhistel would get a class like Menagerie Master to control sea life.

“I spoke with some researchers back at the port who told me about this island called Cuffmagin used as a research base …”