It takes over a week to push the submarine up to the surface. Even with all my glass and void, we’re still just a fraction of the size of the Prismatic, so it’s a lot like a dog trying to push a semi truck. But little by little, inch by inch, we make progress. And finally, the water begins to grow brighter. And then there’s sun.
No more trips to the seafloor to gather sand and make more fulgurite. But I don’t mind, given Zyneth’s condition. As I’d hoped, our progress slowed the advancement in Zyneth’s cursed tattoo—slowed, but not stopped. I catch him grimacing when he doesn’t think I’m watching, and he’s slower and more careful with his arm than usual. But we’re getting closer. We’re making progress.
We stand in the cargo hold, looking up at the twin eye-shaped windows leading outside. A waterline cuts them in half, and on the top half is daylight.
“I can’t believe it,” Zyneth says, looking up at the sunlight cascading through the window. “We actually made it.”
“You can’t believe it?” I repeat. “I told you I’d get us out of here. No faith at all!”
“It’s one thing to believe, and another to see,” Zyneth says, not rising to the bait of my teasing. He stares out the window, his face smoothed with relief. I wonder how much worry he’s been keeping knotted up behind that mask.
“Want to head up?” I ask.
He tears his gaze away from the sky. “We probably shouldn’t. It would be unwise to leave the submarine uncrewed while we both left.”
“I’ll stay in, then,” I offer. “Or, part of me. I can leave my core and some glass behind, just to keep an eye on things in here. And then I can send my body up to take a look around.”
Zyenth gives me a curious and amused look. “You’ll be in two places at once.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess so.” It is kind of weird when he puts it like that. But I’ve already adapted (mostly) to seeing from multiple sources, so in practice it should be simple. Existentially, though, it does kinda feel inhuman.
Not that I am a human anymore. I guess Echo’s been saying it from the start, hasn’t she? [Species: N/A]. Just thinking glass and shadows.
“Let’s stop dallying,” I say. “I can help lift you up if you need it.” Since the lower half of the windows are still underwater, he’ll basically have to jump up to the ceiling, grab the lip of the roof, and swing himself up and through the air-side of the window to land on top of the submarine, if he wants to do it by himself.
Zyneth gives me a skeptical look. “Just because I’m a little injured doesn’t mean I’m helpless, you know.” Without even using his right arm, he runs up the curve of the wall, kicks off a strut, catches the lip of the roof with his left hand, and then swings himself up and through the air-side of the window to land on top of the submarine.
“Oh, well excuse me for forgetting you’re a literal ninja!” I call after him. If he heard, he doesn’t reply.
Removing my core and leaving it behind with all my loose glass—both the new stuff I’ve Attuned, and the recently created glass from the fulgurite—I try to lift my body from the ground and through the window. The void is doing most of the work, though I’m still mentally trying to levitate the glass. Maybe it’s all the practice I’ve gotten from swimming around in the water, but it’s not as hard as I’d expected, given the glass that makes up my body weighs several hundred pounds. In theory, I should be able to levitate my body without the void’s help, in the same way I levitate all my small bits of signing glass. But the body has so many more parts, and is so much more complicated, that it’s hard to hold everything in my mind at once.
I’d done it before, once. In the Athenaeum, when fleeing from the fire mage, Raz, for the briefest moment I’d seen everything as one unified shape, one complete body, and I’d been able to pull myself from freefall onto the safety of a nearby floor. There’s no reason why I can’t do that again. It just takes more focus. Split attention. Maybe, with the predator’s help…
The predator perks up as it catches my thought. It surges to the forefront of my mind. What can it do? It’s ready to fight.
We’re not fighting anything, I tell it. I was just thinking about moving all the glass… Nevermind, it doesn’t matter.
But the predator can read my mind: it understands what I’d intended even without me having to explain. Oh, yes, that should be very easy. It reaches into our void.
Hey, wait—
The void stiffens throughout my body, abruptly locking every joint into place. And just like that, in my mind, the glass body snaps into focus as one solid object. I raise it toward the ceiling, and it levitates exactly as I intend.
I pass through the window and hover over the submarine. Huh. Actually that was pretty help—
The predator lets go of the void and I crash to the top of the submarine.
“Kanin!” Zyneth leaps to my side. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” I grumble, picking myself up. “Just having some technical difficulties.” Nothing’s broken at least. Maybe because I hit boots-first, and the Feather Foot spell it’s artificed with absorbed the damage. I shoot a mental glare at the predator, but it’s oblivious to my irritation. Now that it’s job is done, it’s stretching out and curling up, like a cat basking in the sun.
And there is sun. After so long underwater, it seems impossibly bright. I can feel its warmth on my glass. It’s distant. It doesn’t prickle my skin and sink into my bones. But I can feel it, and that’s something.
I turn my glass in a slow circle, taking in the sight. “Wow,” I say. “Would you look at that.”
“What?” Zyneth whips his head around. “Do you see land?”
“Oh, no. ‘Wow,’ as in, ‘That’s just a whole lot of ocean!’” In every direction. The horizon seems impossibly far.
“Too bad.” Zyneth takes in a deep breath, and sighs it out, long and content. “But at least it’s nice to get some fresh air. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed it.”
Without the ability to smell, I’d forgotten about that. “And running out of air should no longer be a danger,” I add.
Zyneth nods. “Food and fresh water is the limiting factor now.”
“I could probably hunt something if it comes to it,” I offer. Well, the predator can. I’ll just have to convince it to not tear all the meat to tiny little shreds after it kills whatever it catches. “You could cook it with your fire.”
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“Eating unknown meat might be dangerous,” Zyneth says. “There’s the potential for it to be toxic.”
“I could get Echo to identify it first,” I say. “If you know what it is, would you know if it’s safe to eat?”
“Probably, depending on the sea creature,” Zyneth says. “Then that just leaves fresh water. I can tell the Prismatic has some function that should allow for the sea water to be filtered into drinking water, I just can’t quite figure it out. It might require water arcana to activate, in which case we’ll be out of luck. I’ll keep trying, though.”
“Maybe I can help with that,” I say. Now that I’m not making more glass out of sand and lightning and then Attuning it, I have both more free time and more mana on my hands. “I’ll see what I can work out with the Inspect spell I have.” I’d tried to use it on the navigation system before, but my spell wasn’t high enough level, and the spell network in the Prismatic was way more complicated than I was able to parse. But finding one water filter spell might be easier.
“Look at us,” Zyneth says with a chuckle. “We’re practically self-sufficient now. We could live out here for years.”
“Oh please, god, no,” I say. “Becoming a lonely pirate crew is the last resort, remember. But if we keep heading in the same direction, we’re bound to hit land eventuuuuaaaalllllll…”
My voice pitches lower, the word dragging out until it’s just one long, insensible note. Then, it goes out. I shake the amulet bound to my wrist. What the heck?
[Check,] Echo says. [Artificed translator. Its internal spell network is out of mana.]
Oh, great.
“Your translator,” Zyneth says. “It must have run out of mana.”
“You think?” I sign. I unclasp the chain and hand the pendant over to Zyneth. “Can you fix it?”
He watches my signs intently, his eyes slightly narrowed in concentration. “You’re asking if I can charge it back up?”
I forgot he’s only learned a handful of signs. “Yes,” I sign, keeping it simple.
“I’ll have to spend some time figuring out its spell circuit, first,” Zyneth says. “Like the glass spell circle I’m making for you, it’s designed with a specific type of arcana in mind when it’s built, and most artificers build them to be compatible with their own arcana type. In this case, Red’s. Let’s see… I think he might have a lightning affinity, like me. That might mean I can charge it back up without any tinkering.” He hesitates. “But if I’m wrong, I might just fry it.”
My instinct is to tell him to just go for it, but I suppose there’s no rush. Might as well have him take his time with it; after all, time is something we have an abundance of.
“Not now,” I sign, again trying to simplify my language. “We can wait.”
Zyneth’s eyes dance in amusement. “What’s this, you exercising restraint?”
I show him a rude gesture Rezira taught me, and he laughs.
“I’ll take a look,” he promises, pocketing my translator. “In the meantime we still have that backup. The first one Red gave you.”
He still has that? I thought I got rid of it back in Miasmere. Sneaky rogue. But using that knock-off translator is the last thing I want.
“No,” I sign. “Absolutely not.”
“I know you don’t like it,” Zyneth says. “We can use signs for most things instead. But there might be times where I’ll need to communicate with you while I’m working the ship’s controls and I can’t spare the attention. Would you at least carry it around just in case?”
I fold my arms to emphasize my displeasure, and instead use some of my extra glass to sign, “Fine.”
“Well, as delightful as it is to feel the sun and breathe fresh air, we should be getting back inside,” Zyneth says. “I was really hoping we’d see some sign of land while we were up here. Ah, well. Keep heading west, and we should hit the coast eventually.”
I’d offer words of encouragement, but Zyneth probably would only get bits and pieces. I need to lend him my sign language book.
The two of us head back inside, and I nudge the predator for an assist as I lower myself back through the window. It obliges, radiating boredom, and once more the void locks my body up, allowing me more precise control over the glass. I glide slowly down, this time managing to make it to the ground before the predator drops me to the deck in a glass heap.
Zyneth is watching me with eyebrows raised as I touch down. “Are you levitating?”
I shrug, then spin some of my signing glass around my hand, gesturing to it.
“Well, yes, I suppose it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise,” Zyneth says. “You levitate the small pieces all the time. I just didn’t realize you could do the same with your body.”
“Me neither,” I sign, which isn’t strictly true, but getting into the nuances of “I technically did it once before and I can do it again now with the predator’s help” is a bit much for his signing vocabulary.
“Could be useful,” he says as I go to retrieve my core. I guess I didn’t need to leave it behind to guard the ship afterall. “You keep surprising me. The ability to separate your mind from your body to be in two places at once, the way the predator can act independently from the rest of you, the spell that allows you to teleport things through your void, and now flying.” He shakes his head with a chuckle. “That’s a terrifying combination in the wrong hands.”
I’d actually forgotten about Displace. The predator had learned the teleportation spell from the tempo squid, but I’d only had a handful of opportunities to use it before now. It costs so much mana to move things through my void that, on my own, I had only been able to use the spell on my core; I’d needed collected mana from the waters of Emrox or gifted mana from Zyneth to achieve anything on a larger scale. But with this evolved class, I have more mana at my disposal. I wonder how much I can manage now.
Zyneth retrieves the backup translator for me, and I inwardly grimace as I clasp it around my wrist.
“I hope you get the other one fixed fast,” I say, the voice echoing out of the translator much more stilted and robotic than the other.
“Oh come on,” he says. “It’s not so bad!”
“It is Expletive terrible.” I spread my hands. “See?”
Zyneth only appears highly amused. “If you didn’t swear so much, you wouldn’t even notice.”
“I absolutely would notice,” I say. “It can not do contractions, for one! Noli was right, these are pieces of Expletive.”
“And those are the exact words she used?” Zyneth asks, grinning.
“Expletive off.”
Zyneth laughs. A full, unrestrained laugh. And dammit, I can’t totally hate the translator when it’s the cause of his smile. Everything was so tense, so serious, for so long. We’ve needed this time on the Prismatic to just be.
I glance at his arm, and my good spirits fade.
“Back to work, then,” I say. “It cannot be much farther now.” The predator surfaces at my words like a Pavlovian dog. I’m not sure if it’s starting to learn the language, or if it’s just reading the concepts directly from my mind; either way, it knows when I intend to go for a swim, because it knows I’ll need its help.
“Back to work,” Zyneth agrees. He hesitates, and I linger. It seems like he wants to say something. Do I want to say something? He flashes me his usual roguish smile, then turns and heads to the control room. I drift back over to the cargo bay windows.
What was that? Was it just my imagination? Ugh. We really need to talk about… us. A thought I’ve had on repeat in the back of my head for the last couple of weeks. But it never feels like the right time. I’m not even sure what I’d say.
Nerves prickle at the back of my mind as I try to focus on the task at hand: getting the submarine back to land. Maybe I’ll bring it up tomorrow.
But when tomorrow comes, I don’t. Or the next day. Or the next. We practice signs, discuss Zyneth’s blueprints for the glass spell circle, steadily inch the submarine along its trajectory. I investigate the water purification system, while Zyneth investigates my translator. Zyneth steers the Prismatic, while the predator and I expend our restlessness in the waters outside the ship. We do just about everything except talk about us, as if drawing attention to it would shatter the tenuous warmth that’s grown between us. But there’s always tomorrow, I tell myself.
Until one day, there’s not.
“Land!” Zyneth calls, his excited voice echoing through the ship.
I pause the Sculpt I was doing on my fulgurite.
“Land in sight!”