I knew then that I had been so utterly foolish. Foolish, and stupid, and naïve, for not training my Gifts while I could, mastering them before I really needed them. I could've begged to stay for a while longer, could've commanded the ones who knew how to train me to do so. I could've searched for ways to control my power, beseeched the gods for an answer. But I had not. Unless I was going to shatter the glass windows and dive into the sea, there was no way out of this. Fear—pure, undiluted terror washed through me. No. I would make it out, I had to.
Or maybe not. The bodies that lay buried in the sea, less than peaceful in their watery graves—the gods hadn't had mercy on them then. But even if my only choice was to break down the door, I put it off as long as possible. I had no heavy things I could use to hammer into the wood and splinter it, and even if I did, I didn't have enough strength left in my bones to possibly smash it down. Close to ripping handfuls of my hair out by sundown, I paced, the creaky floorboards a cringe-worthy tune in my ears, until my stomach was rumbling, begging me for a scrap of food. How empty it was, how starved it was for a scrap of food. From a glance, it might look like those unearthly books were leeching the life out of me. Like the demons living between their pages were stealing the scraps of life from my face and body.
But that, that was all me. A self-inflicted damper; my fault. I'd let myself waste away, until my skin was pallid and my hair was limp.
How do you feel?
Empty.
Void of everything.
The thought set my stomach churning. It grumbled loudly again. I sat against the wall, imagining what I might've been eating back at Kaleveh right now, had I just been a normal sixteen-year-old. A feast fit for a Chieftess who had just had her Agecoming. Roasted duck with perfectly spiced brown sauce to savour, aromatic herbal rice in a mild beef curry, perhaps a side of deliciously roasted asparagus or bell pepper salad. Prepared by Mama, who always insisted on helping the cooks even when she didn't have to.
Playing games now? My stomach taunted. What might you be eating in the East if you actually made it there? A ghost of the flavourful scents of food wafted in front of my nose, strange, Eastern food. Chicken and lettuce salad with a light dressing, fried zucchini, grilled rosemary trout with tomatoes and lemon. Things I had never tasted before; things as unique as the rugged caveman fashion of the northern lands, well, not the Northern Lands, the actual northernmost scrap of land blanketed by snow and hemmed in by icy glaciers— Eidamaine, near the top of the world.
They were almost no better than our cavemen ancestors, or at least that was what they made us believe; insisting on living in such a frigid tundra meant they ate whatever fish, seals or whales they caught over a fire in an igloo made from hard ice, wearing the skins of whatever they could find. Sometimes they rigged up the sails of the wooden skiffs they used, sailing down to the Northern Lands for supplies. I knew nothing of their culture or their lands. Nobody really knew what they did up there. Rumours said there were secret cities hidden behind the mountains and between veils of mist, ones that rivalled the ones at the heart of the East.
Help, I thought. I'd had absolutely no magical training, I knew almost nothing about the Gifts, the gods who bestowed them, how to concentrate the power and leash the full might of those gods. In my now almost-daily demon bedtime stories, I'd read about Gifted people who had incinerated their friends because the god or goddess that watched over them was out for vengeance on those friends or simply didn't like them. So that when the Gifted used their powers, they had to control both themselves…and the gods.
Sighing through my nose, I slumped to the floor. I…didn't see what I could do short of waiting for something to happen. I realised that never had I had to force myself to think and plan and act. Never had I realised the exact enormity of one decision. Back against the rickety wall, I did nothing but sit and stare at the opposite window. Suddenly, I heard a series of frantic beeps fill the room.
Like I had been doused in a bucket of ice water, I jumped up so fast I nearly knocked my head on the hanging light. I cleared the space with a few urgent bounds, bracing my hands on the table. Where the radar was flashing, the boat a flashing red dot. Waves radiated out from it. Which meant—emergency. The boat had a clever system that allowed it to sense danger and send out sonic warning signs, flares that cried help. The system only self-activated in the direst of situations, meaning the passenger's life was in danger. That was basic knowledge, every girl and boy who was taught how to sail knew that. We were also taught in our first lesson to be able to activate it manually.
Crossing over to the interactive map, I saw why. I was approaching the most hazardous part of the Iliesao Channel, a place nearly as deep as the deepest trench, with a steep bank of reefs on the other side. Sailors who couldn't navigate the steep bank of coral reef usually drowned. I tried hard to not think of those lonely graves deep beneath me. Thousands of them. I shuddered as some of the old stories ran through my head. Some of them were rumoured to have been pulled under by sea monsters, some's ships dashed on the rocks and pulled apart by swirling currents.
But why was the radar beeping? A skilled sailor could cross this part easily. Then I remembered the message on the back of Auralainei's note, which I had nearly forgotten.
Look up.
That I did.
Then I was thankful that I was on the boat and not on land, otherwise I might've run deep into the woods guarding Sereia from navel to sternum, far from the reaches of any coastal storms, and never come back to civilisation, which lived under the wing of the yearly good rains on the coast.
Because when I looked up… I was sailing straight into the arms of Death itself. I might as well have been embracing it for how useless I was against what was coming. I prayed, but then I remembered the story of a man and his pack dogs, who had crossed a frozen sound to call for help to his ailing hometown.
When he was on the way back to his home, aid to the city trailing him, the village had prayed. But there was a storm, and they all thought, there is no way he could've navigated that. They stopped, fearing his life was lost. But he returned in spite of it all. And the next day, one of the men stationed along the coast told him that they needn't have prayed after all. The villager had seen the sky-high waves that struck the shore, the lightning that cleaved the sky and the snow that blinded the night. The winds that ripped apart the ice over the tundra as it froze, the thunder that boomed through the slashing rain.
For any man who could spit in the face of Death was guarded by the gods themselves.
For during the night, after his journey through snow and over sea, the storm had broken apart the ice he'd travelled over, shattered it, and in the morning, nothing remained of the ice but raging waters beating against the shore.
Storm clouds were gathering right in front of me, menacing as the seagulls who bullied the children for food, dark as the trench below it, and as utterly unforgivable as murder. So sudden I nearly jumped out of my skin, lightning flashed ahead. It reminded me of how a heavyweight boxer might crack his knuckles while staring with a predator's grace at a cowering opponent. One streak of gold bolted across the sky, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. Suddenly, the grey swathe of sky was embroidered with a tapestry of interlaced golden threads, each one fading before another appeared. They illuminated the steadily darkening sky like a flickering chandelier. Were it not for the danger looming in my face, I would've sat back, content to watch the lightning dance. There was no light, none except for the flecks of electricity arcing across the sky, bolting over the clouds like champion runners.
You must be the mountain that yields not to the storm.
All dances needed music; every athlete came with a roaring crowd. It was no surprise that soon after, thunder rumbled across the sky, deep and strong to the lightning's lithe movement. It was deafening, a drum to signal doom. Turn around, my very instincts screamed. As if, I scolded myself. Even if I tried to turn back or skirt around the sides, the turbulence would eventually spread to me. It would just make my suffering longer—to try and escape, try to grasp at the last chance of survival, before having that hope ripped from me.
Like a line of dominoes, the storm grew. Before long wind joined in, buffeting the boat from side to side. I didn't think I could be the mountain this time, because I felt as powerless as a pebble in a tornado. The sails were still up—the winds had been cooperating earlier, sending me easily downwind. Now, in this storm, they could mean the difference between life and death, as they could send me in whatever direction—namely the direction of the coral reef. But I was still trapped here. Not like I could take them down. I felt like I was a stranger watching from the outside, controlling my jerking movements like a robotic puppeteer.
Then the rain started up. Like a tap had been turned on, water poured from the skies. Not even a tap. A giant bucket had been overturned on top of the Channel, likely courtesy of a cruel god. The sea immediately welcomed the water, the pressure of the rain hammering down on the ocean sending huge waves lapping at the deck. I only watched, as the boat flooded, as the boat rocked back and forth. I wasn't one for seasickness—I'd had it trained out me as a child. Yet the swinging of the boat made me want to throw up. The waves Ilkroda had made were like pins compared to these. It was a rollercoaster ride that could end in death, a rollercoaster ride without a seatbelt. A particularly nasty wave knocked me off my feet and onto the floor, which was tilted at almost a 45-degree angle.
I sat dazed on the floor for about half a minute, after which I got up and staggered to the table, planting myself firmly in a chair. Which, even without roller wheels, managed to send me skeetering to the other end of the cabin. I tumbled out of the chair. It skidded across the deck and crashed into the opposite window. The edges of the grey countertop cut into my fingers as I gripped it, my palms slippery with sweat. I hauled myself up to see better, peeking from behind the controls, but—
"Ow!" I yelped instinctively when the lurching slammed me into the floor. It awoke a prickling sensation that skittered up and down my still-sore back. Needles jammed into my skin when I heaved myself upright. The best I could manage was crouching in the corner of the room, almost hiding under the table.
From my humble vantage point I watched the storm. I watched the rain splatter the windows with beads of liquid. The droplets slid down the glass at an electric pace, wriggling back to join the sea. It did not seem natural.
No normal storm could be like this.
Surely no regular clouds could hold so much moisture. And I had thought the monstrosity Ilkroda created was terrifying. This was worse than terrifying.
The Branokann had allowed me to fight, fight for my future, my safety, my world. Yet now, I could do nothing, utterly helpless.
All I could do was wait. And what made it more potent—that every shake of the sky spiked my already pounding heart, that with every buffet of wind tossing the boat like a ball, the panic rose in me just as the sea tore itself apart, rising and falling like the chest of a god.
And I knew that I could not do anything to stop this. A god or nature, I was vulnerable. Only time and luck would save me now.
Suddenly it was hard to breathe.
What if I became another one of the sea's conquests? What would it feel like to have the sea close over my head, to see it as the light disappeared above me? What would it feel like to sink to the bottom of a road of bubbles and sand and think about it, think about my family and about all the dreams I would never see come true, to have my last thoughts be of joining him when I took my final breath? What would it be like to descend into a land of cold darkness and leave the world of the living forever?
What would it feel like to die?
I pressed my eyes closed, my body shaking as I curled up.
What truly lay at the end of the road? An entrance into Varyx's realm, or nothingness…forever?
Surely no mortal sound could be as loud as the thunder, a booming drumbeat amplified tenfold.
Perhaps this was a mischievous deity's trap. An unleashing, that set the oceans rocking and the waves rolling. Or maybe it was just Aquanaya playing, bored in her home at the bottom of the sea.
What would it feel like to die?
Whatever it was, this wasn't a typical force of nature. Where nature was the work of science, of the weather cycle, this was not natural. Where a normal storm was the work of some random conditions thrown together, this was the work of a god.
My prediction proved correct when I saw the ocean start to swirl. Not like a hurricane, no, the air didn't contain an ounce of warmth. Simply the water spinning faster and faster like a whirlpool, sucking the waves in, while the winds continued to rip my sails to shreds. The water whirled faster. Faster. Until I was drawn into its rapidly rotating depths, like a race car skidding at the corners, sinking steadily into the deepest eddies of the whirlpool.
There was a gaping hole in the middle, the eye of a cyclone.
A parting of the water, a cylinder of air.
Which sucked my boat straight down into the eddying depths.