I REMEMBER THE DAY the High Council held court with a pirate who named himself King: he wore a crown of scallops, reeked of the ocean, had barnacles growing on his leg—the one of some wood, Xyloan, as I would learn—and drank from his fishbowl! Alone, the pirate sauntered into the Realm's most fortified city and warned of the rising tide in Notos.
The Council paid him no heed, more amused by the pirate's lack of a guard and escorts, or his insistence on sitting on the glass-tiled floor. The Neronian laughed, revelling in his oddities, saying he couldn't promise his "crew mates" would have behaved in a manner befitting such a gathering—so he stole their ship's anchor and left them adrift in a storm. He apologised if that was presumptuous.
Father finally broke his silence and asked what King had no guard or escorts, apologised to his equals (whom he let look down at him), and stole from his lessers. It was only when the pirate grinned and replied, "A king of no land," that I realised I had desperately held my breath all the while—afraid of drowning in his Way.
—FROM "AN ODYSSEY OF THE KING OF NO LAND" BY SWORD SAINT HILDE OF POTIRI.
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I INFILTRATED AN ASSEMBLY of the Potirian High Council to warn their elders of the rising tide; those high walls were not nearly as impregnable as I remembered. Clearly, there is not much to the City of Glass since Men killed the last of their Saints. Although, I was surprised to mirth when they disregarded my timely warning—even now, I snicker. Were they not told? Have they no clue what is upon us?
… Of the elves I met there, only the face of that child lingers—the one they call Hilde. Her Way prickled my skin. She reminds me of those old monsters. Had they lived, not even I would be so brazen as to sneak into the Envied Jewel of the Realms, unprepared to lose at least an arm and a leg.
—FROM "SHE WHOSE BLADE INTONES SHANTIES OF RUIN" BY HAVELOCK OF NERO, SON OF THE WATER; KING OF NO LAND.
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"I never saw waves rage this hard so far Voreios," said Bo. "Not since The King of No Land drowned the Realms!"
"What have I to do with that, you salty conch?!" replied Aalto, peeking at his first mate from a hole in his barrel and poking his finger through another. "Throwing me overboard will not calm the waves!"
"You're his son, Cap'n, don't deny it!" said Bo.
"Only in water—no more than you are a Son of Freya. I haven't a drop of the scallop's blood in me; taste it!" said Aalto.
"Blood's thicker than water, aye, but water's aplenty where we're from—and far more harrowing."
The tall, muscular elvenman lifted the barrel with Aalto in it over his head, steady on his feet even as their boat careened when its hull cut through the waves.
"Wait, wait, wait, Bo! It's me, Aalto, your friend!" cried the elvenman in the barrel. "Remember… uh, remember the summer we became pirates?"
The frigid waters flooded the deck, but Bo still hadn't batted an eye. He stood there, unmoving—barrel held high, ready for throwing. Bo didn't know why, but deep down, something carnal told him he had to do it—he'd waited long enough. Yet that voice… it lulled his fury; lessened the fog—ever vile and lonely.
"I remember," said Bo. "It was a frigid summer… in the Fjords; we were children no longer, so we built a boat."
"Aye, and we sailed for Fos—went as far Voreios as any Neronian would."
"Then for Anatoli, with the Flogan Merchant Thralls," said Bo, blinking, yet his eyes appeared lost, there but not quite. "We rode colossal jellyfish across the Voreiosian Ocean… searching for the fabled anemone that sucks cocks and cunts well as any elf can!"
"Oh, and was it ever so very real! Remember how obscenely those Gians paid for it?" Aalto asked, laughing. "Clearly, we should have demanded more!"
Bo blinked again; that voice, Aalto's laughter, it was sublime. The elvenman found in it repose and clarity. Bo wasn't running in deep water any longer. And something of a smile—eerie, impish, and childlike, all at once—tugged at his lips.
"Aye, Cap'n, but we're no merchants," said Bo, resting the barrel precariously on the plank. "Neither of us both thought of glass coins when we found the anemone; instead, we laughed and told the merchants we were ready to sire mermaids then and there!"
"Find me a Neronian wouldn't, will you?" said Aalto, laughing in the dark, damp, stale embrace of the barrel.
"No ocean stretches deep enough to hide but one of us!" replied Bo, smirking.
"Aye! Our first adventure! Many more await us, surely," said Aalto. "So put the barrel back on deck now, Bo, you've had your laugh."
Bo's face paled, and he hurriedly reached for the barrel on the plank—as if seeing it there only then that night. The elvenman took a sharp breath, finally feeling the lash of the frigid water gnawing at his warmth. Bo grunted as he gently placed the barrel in which he had trapped his friend, ready to drown him, on the deck, away from the plank.
"I did it again, didn't I? Forgive me, Cap'n, I wasn't… I wasn't thinking. I never am lately. Nero wants me drowned, I know she does!" said Bo, as he pried the barrel open with a rusted wrecking bar.
"She'll have to drown us both first, Bo," said Aalto, his chapped lips purple and trembling as he stood within the barrel. He eyed not his friend, but a small, round fishbowl made of clear glass. In it was a little manta ray suspended in the water, belly up. It appeared dead.
Aalto Stian smiled as the boat rocked and the wind played with his clipped, silver hair; he gulped what he could of the fresh breeze and savoured the water's chilly touch, then licked his lips. It was good to be free, but he was thirsty.
He then staggered onto the deck and out of the barrel; unable to hold his own weight, the young elvenman bent to a knee. Aalto was weary and grimy, but living—his parched throat ached, and he eyed the fishbowl like a mad elf.
"Cap'n, take my hand," said the muscular elvenman beside him—Aalto pushed it away.
"It's alright, Bo, I'll live," he said. Aalto's limbs were like whale blubbery as he stood on his own feet again, still eyeing the fishbowl. "Besides, I know there's where you want him—save your strength—you've done more than enough already."
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Bo held his breath; his muscles still brimmed with unbridled might—he wasn't tired at all. And who wanted whom where? Who was his Cap'n talking to when Bo stood right next to him? The elvenman shuddered; had Nero seeped into the Son of Havelock's mind, too? How long had Aalto been in that blasted barrel?
Bo's head ached as he thought back—he was aghast at what he'd done to his own Cap'n, but could not, for the life of him, remember why he had done it—who still believed throwing elves overboard calmed waves?
Nero was truly harrowing to elves she wished drowned—an unrelenting wave eroding the shoreline of their sanity.
Spare Cap'n, at least, thought Bo. I'd walk the plank on any other ship for what I'd done, surely, but not Aalto's.
Bo looked on as Aalto staggered toward a scattering of barrels full of Dilitrion spirits. Atop one of these barrels rested his Cap'n's fishbowl—Aalto never let go of that—not even in his sleep. The little manta ray that always swam all alone in there was unmoving, belly-side up.
Had it died?
I never once saw Cap'n feed it, thought Bo. It's a wonder it lived as long as it had.
A smile tugged at Bo's own lips as Aalto grinned when he held the small, round, glass fishbowl in his palm and then embraced it as he would a friend. Bo's eyes widened as the water within shimmered in a bright blue light—it made a lantern of the fishbowl.
Had it always done that?
It must have. Strange—he'd been around the thing a long time, but he couldn't quite remember seeing this.
As Bo stepped closer to his Cap'n, that light stirred something in him, and his heart raced as soon as his skin prickled. The muscular elvenman paled as the little manta ray in Aalto's fishbowl came alive! It wiggled its fins, and the spots on its back twinkled as the stars would that night had storm clouds not hidden them.
The pirates had relied on the Starry Back to navigate their way through a wild Storm of Ages, one they had been foolish to brave, when the manta ray died. It had starved. The Starry Back wouldn't eat anything they fed it.
That's right—they had been stranded in this storm since; for Fos knew how long—Bo remembered now!
The manta ray enamoured Bo as it swam in circles at a deranged pace he never knew the indolent little thing could manage; the water in its bowl shimmered brighter as it did. Aalto spooked Bo as he suddenly laughed aloud, raising his fishbowl to the moody heavens—for Fos to see.
Soon, a whirlpool took shape within the glass enclosure, and like a bird caught in a twister of its own conjuring, the manta ray was sucked in! Bo was amused that the Starry Back might throttle out, but for a long while, nothing happened. He waited, and still nothing.
Until…
Bo heard a bubble burst in his head—louder than the waves raged, so loud, the tall, muscular elvenman yelped—unnerved, sure as the tremors in his bones.
As the bubble burst, it lifted the fog that had plagued him; the elvenman's ears did not ring, but a startling clarity echoed through his mind. In its wake, Bo—no, for that was not his name—gasped.
This Son of Havelock is no Cap'n of mine!
The thought came unbridled.
As the elvenman, whose name was not, in fact, Bo, made sense of his bearings, he saw the familiar patchwork sails, the Jolly Roger he had painted himself when he first set sail—all on his own—all those years ago, and—he took a sharp breath—those barrels full of Dilitrion spirits in which, with his very hands, he had drowned his crewmates to the tune of Aalto Stian's shanties!
The elvenman roared, reaching for the blade that should have been by his hip, then he remembered plunging all weapons on the boat into the deep himself. The elvenman clenched his jaw, then fists, and glared at the sinister Son of Havelock's blue eyes.
Aalto was weary as he leaned against the barrels full of spirits and the dead elves drowned in them—holding a shimmering fishbowl over his head—the whirlpool still raged within, with nary a sign of the Starry Back it had swallowed.
"We were foolish not to boil you with our shrimp when we had the means, Son of Havelock," said the elvenman. He clenched his fists with such might that Aalto heard his bones groan. "No more! With Fos as my witness, you will die as my friends did—strangled and pissing yourself as you drown in spirits that blind your eyes and blister your nose and lungs!"
Ah, your Path's come undone, Bo, hurry on out already! thought Aalto. He clenched the fishbowl in his hands as the tall, muscular pirate sauntered toward him, wary but unhinged.
As if hearing Aalto's silent prayer, it was then that a massive wave erupted from his fishbowl and sent him flying into the barrels, knocking a handful over.
The older elvenman braced for impact where he stood, but there was none. As he opened his eyes, he met the vast shadow now looming over his boat; it was as though night had descended in the storm's already dark embrace.
As he gazed up at the stormy sky, his lips parted—in awe of the colossus that swam in shimmering water, drifting untethered right above the elvenman's head. His skin prickled as the insidious little eyes on the sea monster's underbelly peered into his soul. Moments before the horror set in, he considered whether Aalto played tricks on his mind still. How had the little manta ray the Son of Havelock carried in his fishbowl grown so big?
"Your illusions won't work on me—"
A stench of blood seeped into the smell of the ocean as viscera splattered on the deck. The colossal manta ray had bitten off the elvenman's torso and swallowed it whole. His bottom half fell, twitching and pissing blood, as did his fists—still balled.
The vast, shimmering pool of water in which the colossal manta ray swam receded in rivulets, back into Aalto's little fishbowl. The manta ray followed the stream in a truly surreal spectacle. Soon, it appeared tiny once more as it swam happily in its fishbowl.
"Make no mistake, Bo, we nearly died here," said Aalto, breathlessly, to his manta ray. His hands trembled as he clung to the fishbowl. "All this water around us! Had the Walker been in his right mind, he could have killed us in any number of ways!"
The little manta swam in circles, and the water shimmered and dimmed.
"I know, I know; but let's not stowaway on strange little boats from now on. We'll walk, no matter the distance—this… this was an exception—don't get any ideas," said Aalto. "Although, it was brilliant how you had those old monsters turn on each other."
The Son of Havelock stood, walking up to the dead elf's bottom half. He patted the Walker's pockets. There, he found a small, blue metallic case. Aalto pried it open. Inside was a stunning blue alloy shaped into a sphere—almost like a pearl. As water fell on it, the alloy melted into an iridescent liquid that sparked. Aalto snapped it shut as the flickers crescendoed.
He took the wrecking bar the Walker pried him out of the barrel with and walked on back to the ones knocked over and filled with spirits and the pirate's own crew. Aalto left one barrel near the stern, then rolled the rest all over the deck. He walked back to the barrel at the stern, lifted the wrecking bar, then struck it—the rusted metal slipped out of his weary grip. Aalto cursed, picked it up again, this time holding it firmer.
The Son of Havelock struck the barrel true, with what might he could muster, and the Xyloan wood splintered. He struck it again and again, and soon tasted his sweat in the storm's water. Aalto was breathless when the wood finally succumbed, and a chunk fell off. A smell of alcohol and rot tinged his nose, and out the blue spirit oozed. He winced as the lifeless, red eyes of the elvenwoman the Walker had drowned within peered at him through the hole in the barrel—she was the Walker's own lover.
"It was us or her—us or her," he muttered, swallowing down a dry throat as he cradled his fishbowl.
Aalto, fishbowl in hand, staggered across the deck—away from the barrel by the stern and toward the plank he was nearly drowned at. The young elvenman opened the blue case with the pearl-like alloy and let it spark on the deck. He stood on the plank and walked it backward as the oozing spirit snaked toward the spark, like a moth to a flame. Then, at the very edge of the plank, Aalto leapt off.
Instead of plunging into the deep, Aalto Stian, Son of Havelock of Nero, walked on the water's surface, leaving behind footprints of shimmering water. In his wake, the boat erupted in blue flames so scalding, even the ocean seemed to reel at their fury. And as Aalto finally brought his fishbowl to his lips and drank from it, the sweet water seeped vitality into him.
"Onward to Potiri! The greatest adventure of all is upon us, Bo," he grinned at his fishbowl. "The Elven Way awaits!"
Bo's starry back twinkled as the stars would, could Aalto see them, but the Son of Havelock ignored the manta ray's antics, for the stars were useless in a Storm of Ages. He walked, instead, toward Fos—the bright light atop the highest peak of Dragon's Nesting.
Fos was the Lantern of the Realms; for its white light shone everywhere—through the darkest of clouds, the blackest of nights, the deepest of depths, and vilest of secrets. Aalto knew that winds that blew Fos led pirates to the harsh terrain of the Realm of Voreios—there, the City of Glass stood.