Departure Location: Unnamed cove on the island of Toad's Mane

Departure Time: 5/13/973 P.C. - 4:13 PM

Arrival Location: Customs dock of the free city of Yuthsenia

Arrival Time: 16/13/973 P.C. - 8:54 AM

Distance Traveled: Approximately 810 nautical miles

Weather Conditions: T. Max 65.3 F - T. Min 37.5 F - Clear for the first four days, slightly cloudy until the seventh. Fog banks from the eighth to the tenth day. Clear on the eleventh day.

Sailing Conditions: Slightly choppy seas until the seventh day, dead calm from the eighth to the tenth day, choppy on the eleventh day.

The return voyage to the Velitasian peninsula was not one of the most fortunate. As soon as they were on the fishing boat, Viryl had asked Natharol for a detour to take them as close as possible to the city of Meridania. Natharol, studying the nautical charts, had proposed the port of Yuthsenia as the destination, on the eastern coast of the League territory.

Although that detour only increased the geographical distances to be covered by a hundred miles, the route to follow was another matter. Indeed, there was a notorious stretch of sea south of Yuthsenia, the so-called Gerasonte's Mists, which Natharol superstitiously wanted to avoid.

Not that there was fog in that area all the time, but an ancient navigator, Gerasonte of Ovlodia, had first described that phenomenon which had been associated with the activity of marine Fekoros.

Few ships had actually sunk in the Gerasonte Mists, and the presence of Fekoros was attested to by the not inconsiderable number of sea monster hunters who plied those waters. Nevertheless, the route was normally traveled, and the risk of a fateful attack by a sea monster was so low that there was no captain so cowardly and gullible as to avoid such a crossing. After all, the horrors of the depths are generally not interested in what floats, unless the latter are to take an interest in the former first.

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Natharol, Viryl intuited, was being so reticent in order to raise his fee. He had given him the following choice: circumnavigate the Mists at a cost of thirty silver ducats for eleven days of travel, or cross them and arrive in eight days at a cost of forty. Viryl and Anker, after a quick consultation, agreed to pay the extra ten ducats. That useless journey had already taken enough time out of their life.

As if to jinx themselves, they shipwrecked.

This happened at dawn on the eighth day of sailing, after seven days that had been favorable on the whole, a handful of miles from safe waters. The fog had suddenly fallen, and the colossal jaws of a Borzael had emerged from the depths, crushing the ship's keel in their fatal grip. The Queen Jolanda II had sunk in less than five minutes, cut in two.

In that disaster, only one crew member survived besides Viryl and Anker: they were spared only because they were on the quarterdeck at the time of the Borzael's attack. Natharol and the other two men were lost at sea. Everything that was in the hold sunk with the ship: Viryl's duffel bag with the almost forty gold ducats he had left, Anker's speculum, a couple of crates of food, and much more.

The three survivors were providentially, or rather, coincidentally, rescued by a passing ship. It was a caravel flying the Ferlonian flag and equipped for sea monster hunting, the Sea Lightning. It was its crew that had stirred up the Borzael, so that rescue was not so much an act of magnanimity as an apology. It was a Corlonese ship, and the sailor rescued along with Viryl and Anker was immediately gripped by a mad and burning resentment towards his colleagues and countrymen. He was still soaked and risked getting pneumonia, but he couldn't help but launch into a torrent of invectives and insults in Sanchirian dialect, going so far as to threaten violence. They had to tie him to the mast to calm him down.

They found the crew of the caravel in a pickle, as the hunt was not going well at all: the Sea Lightning was short of a harpooner because its top man, a fallen knight, had died in mysterious circumstances a month earlier, and there was a growing feeling that they had bitten off more than they could chew, to use a seafaring metaphor. Viryl offered to help with the hunt, on condition that they were guaranteed a quarter of the animal's carcass and that they were accompanied to the port of Yuthsenia. After some hard bargaining, they agreed on a sixth of the carcass.

The hunt kept them occupied for three days, but in the end they were victorious. It would be appropriate to devote more space to the retelling of this event, but perhaps there will be other opportunities to go into detail.

Suffice it to say that on the morning of the sixteenth day of the month of Silifico, the Sea Lightning docked in the port of Yuthsenia, and that after selling his share of the loot, Viryl was richer than when he had left. Anker bought a new speculum, but all his contacts were lost. The surviving sailor was returned to Corlona, secured to a bunk to prevent him from going berserk on the return voyage.