For the last month, Morn had been occupying himself every day, preparing for his journey to Fairjott. The first week had been hell.
Every night, nightmares flooded Morn's sleeping mind. Every night he'd see the faces of the dead villagers… his dead friends…
After the first nightmare, Morn would wear his inhalant mask, breathing Vyvol anytime he began to feel tired, forcing himself to stay awake. He spent four sleepless nights digging a mass grave for the villagers. His muscles screamed in agony every day, but Morn relied on a cocktail of pain relief and other gases to stay active.
As he buried his friends, the memories of his weeks in the village had flashed through his mind. The laughs they'd had together, the meals they'd shared. It all felt so recent, yet so long ago. Morn had paid special attention during the burial, leaving their most beloved objects in the grave to prevent restless spirits.
Long ago, the Greater Malsatan Information Syndicate had created a pamphlet for burials. They did so after a particularly important government official was killed by a wraith when visiting his father's grave. The proper steps to appease a spirit were simple.
One could bury an important object with the body, something to accompany them to the afterlife, as a way to appease the spirit's homesickness. Another option was to cremate a body and spread its ashes in the ocean, but Morn couldn't bear the idea of burning his friend's bodies. The final method was to create a special charm, blessed by a priest of the patron that the person had worshipped in life.
In the end, the only option Morn had was the first. Morn buried his friends one by one, ensuring to bury their most precious or important belongings with them.
With Toli, his pipe. With Haldwin, his wife's hammer. With Vincent, his father's herb harvesting bag. With Baldrick, the statue of Vasjrani. With Eldwin, his spear, and so on...
By the time he'd finished, the pain in his muscles was so great that his legs couldn't support his own weight. After burying his friends Morn had crawled to Haldwin's hut, collapsing on the gravel road halfway there. He'd woken up soaking wet from rain, shivering from the cold. After lighting a fire in Haldwin's forge and stripping his soaked clothes off, Morn had fallen asleep once again.
When he'd next woken up, it was already the start of the second week since the night his friends had died. Morn was forced to lay in bed, only leaving for food and water. With the help of a relaxant gas to ease his stiff muscles, Morn finally recovered after three days.
As he regained the ability to walk more than a short distance, Morn had made his way to his workshop. Remembering the pink gas he had seen as he was leaving to bury Azur, Morn checked the tank of gas that had killed the oarat. As he'd expected, a hole was melted in the canister.
The tank of acid had a similar hole at the bottom of the container. Morn teared up once again as he concluded, the acid in its gaseous form had slowly eaten away at its container. After it created a small hole, air rushed in and mixed with the acid, changing it into its much more powerful liquid form. The acid had then dripped onto the tank of pink gas, melting it open in a few short hours.
The expanding and sinking properties of the gas had then caused it to spread rapidly throughout the village, while still staying close to the ground. The villagers had breathed it in their sleep, then suffered the effects of the gas, much like the oarat. Morn was saved from this fate thanks to the filtering system of the inhalant mask he'd been wearing due to his insomnia. In the end, Azur's snoring saved Morn from his own mistake.
Morn felt a seed of guilt begin to bloom in his mind, the acid gas had been harvested by him, the pink gas had been his creation. His failure to study the acid had lead to the horrific nightmare of that night. That night, full of guilt, Morn dreamt of Azur.
His friend was sitting in the meadow under the white and gold tree. He was eating a familiar Yoltaen pastry as Morn walked into the clearing. As Morn approached him, Azur said one simple sentence.
"Quit moping and live your life, for the both of us."
After Azur spoke, he pointed to the sky. The same constellation from his previous dreams appeared in the sky, the beam of light striking down from above. When he'd looked back, Azur had disappeared. When Morn awoke, he could feel that the guilt in his heart had lessened, replaced with a renewed vigour. He would live a life that he could be proud of when he one day faced Azur again, in this life or whatever came after.
Since that day, Morn had spent the next two weeks gathering supplies from across the village. He took apothecary supplies from Vincent's shop, crafting and arcana materials and tools from Toli's hut, smithing tools from Haldwin's smithy, and weapons from the guard barracks.
Morn worked tirelessly once again, crafting, gathering, planning, all for his coming journey. He planned to follow the path his dream had shown him, to the hand of trees deep beneath Fairjott. He stocked long lasting food for the trip, and prepared several waterskins.
For his journey, he synthesised as many gases as he could fit in his bag. Most namely, he crafted a special gas known as Mirage. The gas was highly compressible, and was breathable, perfect for deep sea diving. Most importantly, the gas could be recycled and re-breathed many times. The only issue being, as one rebreathes the gas, it begins to cause intense hallucinations as its components change, reforming into a hallucinogenic gas known as Daydream.
If one breathed Daydream for too long, it would eventually integrate into their body, causing them to permanently hallucinate, even if they stopped breathing the gas.
The gas was created by the gas nomads of Nauv, the great island occupied by a loose collective of nomads, merchants, and mercenaries, and governed by the mercantile council that founded the capital city of Nauv, Balkaar. As of yet, there was no cure to the long term effects of Daydream.
When Morn had finished gathering supplies, he'd begun to craft a Yoltaen device. The device was known as a Folia-pipe. The Folia-pipe was a crucial component of the Skip-boat, allowing a regular boat to become as fast as a bird. The Folia-pipe was fueled by the signature gas of Yol, the first gas they had discovered and monopolised, Folia. The gas was a tier two arcane gas that shared a base component with Mirage, flux dust.
Flux dust was originally discovered by accident by a Yoltaen fisherman collecting salt from salt sheets. He soon discovered, when grinding the salt down, that it tasted different from ordinary salt. He began to sell it in the portside bazaar as a new spice. An early Alkimiya researcher took interest in the dust, using it as a base in her research. She quickly discovered its properties to be excellent in making compressible gases.
Folia could be condensed beyond reasonable limits, allowing even the smallest container to store massive amounts of the gas. Due to its compressibility, the gas could easily be emitted from a valve at intensely high pressures, enough to launch a boat across the waves.
The Skip-boat relied on the Folia-pipe and a large tank of Folia to skip across water at high speeds. A Skip-boat, with enough Folia, could travel hundreds of Loy easily, without worrying about Wind or waves. The Skip-boat could also manoeuvre in limited space, and outpace up to a class five Levjottun, or up to a class six on a full tank.
The Skip-boat, while fragile, was the fastest type of mass produced boat in Malsata. A similar principle was used by another series of Yoltaen devices, Folia weapons. The most popular Folia weapon, the Folia-Lance, uses compressed Folia to create jets of gas that can cut through most materials. The Folia-Lance uses a single tank per shot, requiring a belt-feeding mechanism to sustain multiple rapid uses in combat.
Morn currently held such a device, evaluating for several minutes before giving a slight nod. He then used a vial of Frieda gas to lower the temperature of his prosthetic hand below freezing. The stormwood quickly turned workable, allowing him to screw the device into his hand. He then fed a long belt of Folia vials into the device, wrapping the belt around his arm up to his elbow, securing it onto a metal gauntlet he'd painstakingly forged in Haldwin's smithy.
With his final preparation complete, Morn gathered crafting supplies, his backpack, and his various other supplies onto a wheelbarrow and began to walk from the village.
He left the wheelbarrow at the village gate and headed East into the forest. After several minutes, he arrived in the meadow that he had dubbed Azur's Rest. Morn walked to the tree, kneeling down above a rough patch of dirt. A newly grown pink flower sprouted from the grave.
Morn caressed the small flower gently, smiling briefly for the first time in a month.
"Azur, I'm leaving now."
Morn paused for a moment, then continued.
"You were my friend, you were family. I won't see you for a long, long time. I'm going to go and live life. I won't just sit around in Caslac with money earned off a gas that killed my friends. I'm going to enjoy every exciting thing this world has to offer, every mystery, every city, every taste. I'm going to live enough for the both of us, and maybe, when I've learned all I can- I'll be able to find a way to bring you back."
Morn stood solemnly and sighed. He spoke one last time before parting with his lifelong friend.
"See you around, Azur, one way or another."
Morn left Azur's Rest, heading back to the village. After claiming his wheelbarrow, he began wheeling it through the forest, back to the boat he and Azur had arrived in.
***
At the peak of a dark mountain, at the end of a winding river, across an ocean of fog, and far from the linearity and reach of time, a man sat beside a small, clear pond. In the reflection, Morn could be seen standing in a clearing. A voice rang out from the pond, arriving clearly in the man's ears.
"See you around, Azur."
A smile spread across the man's eyes as a single, crystalline tear fell into the pond. The man opened his mouth, speaking through his tears as he watched Morn leave the clearing.
"Don't stop by too soon, Morn. You've got a long life to live… I can wait."
Azur wiped the tears from his and walked down the mountain. He soon arrived at a peaceful cliffside where a group of children ran around a grassy field, playing happily.
When they noticed Azur approaching, they ran over, crowding around him. A young boy began to shout excitedly, looking at Azur with excitement.
"Captain Azur! Tell us another story!"
Azur smiled at the child, sitting down on the comfortable grass, donned his storytelling cloak, and began to tell a long and arduous tale.
"Listen up, and listen closely. This isn't a myth, nor is it an exaggeration. I'm going to tell you about the true and legendary adventure of my closest friend. This is the story of Captain Morn, the legend of the Immortal on the Sixteen Seas!"