“I hate Shikijima,” Natsuko said.

“You hate everything,” Sofiane replied, sitting cross-legged across from her.

“Yeah, but I really hate Shikijima.”

“Why?”

“It’s got a dumb gimmick.”

“You mean the Fire Barriers?”

“That and the dictatorship.”

“I don’t mind the Fire Barriers.”

“Cuz you’ve done all the stupid little side-quests! Pech, Shui, and I aren’t gonna be able to get into half the damn places you can!”

What Natsuko was referring to, as they sat around having a picnic of dry hardtack on the deck of the ship, were the Shikijiman Fire Barriers, large fields of bubbling volcanic heat that blocked off certain areas and regions until a Hero collected enough Fire Sprites to unlock them. Natsuko did not like being told no, and did not like collecting anything that wasn’t liquor, and so the Fire Barriers were tailor-made to piss her off.

“Well, we won’t be going on any quests, so they shouldn’t be a problem,” Shuixing said. “We’re just supposed to lay low and wait for Daisy.”

“If someone told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?” Natsuko asked.

“Yes. We did that back in Vermögenburgh,” Shui replied.

“Okay, but what if it’s someone annoying and stupid and slimy like Daisy?”

Sofiane rolled his eyes and bit down on some hardtack. “I don’t want to hear you whining about Daisy the entire time we’re here. She went out of the way to save our asses, yours included. She’s the only thing standing between us and getting lynched.”

“But—!”

Shuixing sighed. “Natsu, please give it a rest. We’re out of options and in a lot of danger.”

“How are you all fine with her working for the Yishang? Shui, she’s gonna throw all your research down the drain and— and what if she tries to get rid of it by getting rid of you!?”

“She’s not going to do that,” Shuixing said. “And besides, I agree with her. We need to get rid of my research for good, and probably your bottle too. I regret ever having researched dimension-jumping. The better if the Yishang can find a way to prevent it entirely.”

Running out of sympathetic ears, she looked up at Pechorin, who was leaning against the mast because there was no cool, edgy way of sitting on the ground. She flashed a hopeful look at him and he raised an eyebrow.

“I suppose I am sensitive to the possibility of betrayal,” Pechorin said.

“See? I’m not crazy!” Natsuko said.

“However, I don’t think she’s against us. I think we ought to trust her for now. There are larger forces at play that she is shielding us from, I believe.”

“Shut up, no one asked you,” Natsuko said.

“Be annoying on your own time then,” Sofiane said. “But we need to figure out what we’re going to do once we get to Shikjima. We’ll need some place to stay, somewhere to eat, and some way to kill time that doesn’t draw any attention to us. Maybe even disguises.”

“You just want to try on more outfits, puffball.”

“No, I want to not be hounded by a bunch of jumpy Heroes looking for revenge.”

He drew his knees up to his chest. His expression was tired and somber, and he didn’t seem keen to take Natsuko up on the offer of another loud argument. It took all the fun out of poking at him.

“We’ll figure something out,” Shuixing said, resting her chin in her palms. “Maybe I can talk with the folks at the Shikijiman Arcane Ministry.”

Natsuko snorted. “Good luck with that. Goddamn fascists.”

“The importance of science knows not the borders of politics,” Shuixing replied.

They were still another day of sailing away from Shikijima, but the sailors were already nervous. At the best of times, Shikijima was a pain in the ass to deal with, being a centralized bureaucracy under an absolutist Empress and Imperial Court. Most of the archipelago’s questlines dealt with the countless bandits and rebellions and disturbed spirits from the absentee aristocracy who left the governance to incompetent and corrupt bailiffs.

When it was the main site of fighting the Entropic Axis, the final, mainline quest that Natsko’s party completed had been exorcizing a demon spirit from the former Emperor. But during subsequent events, his daughter, Empress Sadako, had taken power and become even more tyrannical. Yuna was supposed to play the role of “equally evil alternative” rebel general, but she took her archetype so seriously that she was actively trying to win the war, requiring the Yishang to throw random event quests in to stop her.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“You don’t think Yuna will come back here and mess with us, will she?” Shuixing asked.

“Doubt it,” Sofiane said.

“But she did say she had plans to win the war for real,” Pechorin said.

“All talk. The Yishang will throw another wrench in her cogs if she tries. And besides,” Sofiane sprawled backwards across the deck with his hands behind his head, staring up at the blazing yellow sun. “Daisy’ll be back by then. I’m sure she’s just explaining everything to her team and then we’ll have four of the top five Heroes in our corner. Just wait and see.”

It was around this time that Pechorin stopped caring about the conversation. And this time it was a true lack of care and not merely the aesthetic affectation of nonchalance. What he really wanted was to be writing poetry. Poetry was, after all, the proper response to vexing circumstances. But, alas, neither pen nor paper could be found aboard their vessel.

Instead, he collected poetic subjects for later. His specialty was the clipped, raw verse of the Sibe-lands, though he was familiar enough with other poetic traditions to have formed opinions about their relative merits. The Cascadian style of rigid meter and rhyming lines that Daisy said she was fond of during their poetry discussions was not his favorite. Neither was the Tianzhounese style, chock full of historical and philosophical allusions which seemed overly flowery and opaque to Pechorin.

No, the only other style of poetry he appreciated was the Shikijiman style, with its austere yet evocative minimalism and privileging of seasonality and impermanence. Apart from his warrior’s poetry, the Shikijiman style alone soothed his tortured world.

Waiting passively, cultivating his yin energy, Pechorin prepared to receive poetic signs. Inevitably, they came. Squawking reached his ears and he gazed up. Above him flew a squadron of seagulls like a feathery arrow cleaving piercing the sky. That would not be enough for a full poem, but it was a start. The next subject would come to him when it would come. The proper poet must have faith in the universe.

“Pech,” Sofiane said.

“Hmm?”

“What do you think?”

“It might be wise,” he said, not knowing what he was responding to.

“Alright then, that makes three to four, it looks like we’re going to the Imperial Court first,” Sofiane said.

Natsuko groaned. “Ugh! Pech doesn’t count as a vote! He just says whatever so no one knows he isn’t actually paying attention.”

“Okay, fine, so it’s two out of three, which, uh, in case you’re bad at math…”

“How many times do I have to tell you, the court is not going to help us! The Empress doesn’t like non-Shikijimans and she hates deserters with a passion, and I’m a deserter by leaving Shikijima, not that I had a choice, waking up in Vermögenburgh,” Natsuko said.

“So you’re gonna give up without even trying? Can’t say I’m surprised,” Sofiane said, reclining on the deck and scratching his bare leg.

“Excuse me!? I went along with your dumb ass card game plan—”

Pechorin started thinking about what emotions he could evoke through seagulls. The association with the beach or seafront was obvious to the point of being trite. A poem about the ocean would be too pedestrian. He needed to be at least one layer of symbolism removed, or concoct a novel association with another aesthetic object to triangulate the contents of his deep and oceanic soul.

Dolphins leapt out of the water off the portside railing. Cloyingly idealistic. He hated it. No dolphins. Sadly, the rest of the ship left him little in the way of poetic material. The junk sails were inextricable from Tianzhounese themes, sailors were best kept in the background as set dressing, and hardtack biscuits were sad in a thoroughly unaesthetic sense without any of the melancholic pathos he sought.

He sighed and looked at Natsuko, his muse. Her slender, golden throat bellowed with expletives and scatological insults like the reeds of a very rude pipe organ. Her hands flapped like a tent upon the wind of the steppes. Unfortunately, while gentle maidens were a suitable poetic subject for any season, culture, or occasion, Natsuko did not fit the bill for gentle, and he was also embarrassed lest she stumble upon anything he wrote down. No, there was to be no more poetic musing for the time being. Their ship was an aesthetic desert.

This gave him the idea for a haiku.

“Adrift on the sea,

Inspiration does not come,

But sleeps on the shore.”

Pechorin declaimed.

“Yeah, that’s great buddy, but the adults are trying to plan,” Sofiane said.

“I thought it was nice,” Shuixing said.

“Nice was not the intended affect,” Pechorin replied. “I was aiming for brooding and melancholic.”

“Well, you did a very nice job at that.”

“Thanks.”

“I thought it was good too,” one of the deckhands said.

“Thanks,” Pechorin said again. He couldn’t seem too enthusiastic, but it was nice to hear from an audience member who wasn’t one of his friends.

“I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me up when we’re being boarded by the Empress’ secret police,” Natsuko said, heading below deck.

When she was out of earshot, Sofiane propped himself up on one elbow and raised an eyebrow at Shuixing.

“Seriously, what is up with her and never wanting to do anything? She gives up without even trying.”

Shuixing adjusted her glasses. “It’s a learned reaction. We’ve been kicked around a lot.”

“Yeah, but you and Pechorin are fine. It’s just Natsuko that shuts down the second anything doesn’t go her way. I get that the Use-Ranking game isn’t fair, but there’s a limit to my sympathy. There’s always something that can be done, non?” Sofiane said.

Shuixing agreed, which Pechorin could tell because she remained silent.

Such was Natsuko’s dichotomous nature that, should an avenue of action seem efficacious, she would throw herself at it, but if not, she would dig her feet into the sand and refuse to budge. Very stubborn. Like a seagull insisting on stealing your sandwich. No, that metaphor didn’t work. Strike that. He was trying too hard to fit seagulls in.

Everyone else, even Shuixing, would become frustrated with Natsuko’s attitude from time-to-time. However, Pechorin had an unlimited patience for it. The shifting tides of her heart were as inscrutable and mysterious as the expanses of the ocean, yet this was precisely what impelled him to sound their depths. If only she would allow him the chance to.

“Though the seagull squawks,

Her heart lies above the clouds,

Like a golden sun,”

Pechorin said.

“Too kitschy,” the deckhand said, swabbing the deck. “The artifice thrusts itself into the foreground and the audience becomes too aware of the poet’s presence.”

Pechorin grunted. Sadly, the deckhand was correct on all points.

“You are familiar with Shikijiman aesthetic sentiments?” Pechorin asked.

“Aye. I’ve been sailing these waters as far back as they’ve been reclaimed from the Mist. I’ve past many a night drunk in a Shikijiman tea house talking poetry,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Du Bai,” Du Bai said with a curt head nod.

Pechorin curtly nodded back. “Pechorin. I don’t suppose you could offer some advice as to the state of Shikijiman poetry?

Du Bai put his hands on his hips. “Swab the deck for me and I’ll give ya a crash course.”