His brigantine, the Grymjaw, misted him and his crew with a heavy spray of water as they cut through the house-height waves.
"Captain!" came a young, clear voice from the crow's nest, ringing out like a bell. "They're gaining on us!"
"Hells take those bastards," he murmured to himself before calling out his orders to the crew: "Unfurl both jibs and hold them tight!" He felt the ship lurch in response under him as it suddenly picked up speed, the two smaller sails attached to the bow flying out to catch the wind.
The gain in speed was minor relative to their already impressive speed, but they needed more. It was already difficult to maintain the ship's heading and ensure they cut through the waves instead of smshing into them side on, but he would manage it — you didn't reach the cusp of the third evolution in Helmsmanship without picking up a few tricks.
"More mana to the air elemental," he spoke quietly despite the roar of the sea and shouting crew, trusting that the wind would carry his words to their Elementalist.
"Farron, we're already running too much through it," came the reply of One-Tooth, sounding as if the orc was directly beside him despite being belowdecks.
"I don't give a damn, burn it out if you have to! We'll catch you another, but we have to survive first."
The ship gave another burst of speed in response, shooting along so fast it felt more like it was skimming across the surface of the water instead of floating through it. This feeling was intensified every time they launched off the peak of a wave, flying through the air for multiple seconds at a time before crashing back down into the water. A lesser ship would have broken apart from the sheer forces involved, but he'd sank too much time, money, and mana into her for the hull to fail now. It groaned in protest, and he could feel the strain through his connection, but he knew it would hold.
The Scout's voice rang out from the crow's nest again, "We're gaining distance! Wait..." he trailed off, disabling his loudspeak enchantment too slowly. A rookie mistake to not cut it off in time. Sometimes, he forgot how fresh their new Scout was given how reliable he'd been. "They have an artillery mage! Fire aspected, by the looks of— incoming!" the boy screamed out.
"Brace!" he ordered his crew, hauling on the wheel as they all hunkered down and grabbed for something to steady themselves. The only man still standing, he glanced backwards, seeing only the faintest of red flickers. The approaching projectile was mostly covered up by the dark thunderclouds and flashes of lightning. It was too far away for his non-specialised eyes to see the pursuing Empire ships that had launched it, but that wouldn't be a problem for long. The incoming attack was rapidly growing in size and brightness in his vision as it shot towards them.
The missile left a trail of steam in its wake despite being a dozen metres above the surface of the water. It must have been ridiculously expensive mana-wise to pack so much power into a single fireball and to then launch it such an extreme distance. Those Empire dogs must have realised they were going to lose the Grymjaw and put all their mana into a last-ditch attack in the hopes of slowing them down. As long as he could maneuver the ship to avoid the brunt of this attack, they'd get away.
"One-Tooth, more mana, now!" he shouted, "trim the sails, this is it lads!"
A thrum from belowdecks signalled their bound air elemental burning through the ship's mana reserves, while a few of the bravest crew leapt up to grab the ropes and angle the sails to catch as much of the produced wind as possible. His high Leadership skill gave them an increase to their physical stats at the cost of some of his personal mana, a necessity to maintain their footing during these rough maneuvers. They'd be getting the first pick of the loot tonight, he promised.
The overcharged artillery spell had eaten up the distance deceptively fast, the sheer scale making it hard to put into perspective exactly how much time he had until impact — but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds.
Of course, the bound elemental took that exact moment to give up, the sheer quantity of foreign mana being forced into it being too much to take, resulting in the elemental collapsing in on itself. As the thrumming felt through the hull died down, the wind changed from being an ally always pushing from their backs to its natural state. The storm was now releasing its pent-up fury by buffeting the ship from every direction, trying to spin them out of control and allow the towering waves to wash his crew out.
With a final turn of the wheel he spun the aft of the ship out, drifting sideways through the water right as the projectile impacted. It wasn't a direct hit — impacting into the water off the starboard side of the ship instead — but for an artillery spell with such quantities of mana woven into it, there was a very, very large range between 'direct hit' and 'no longer dangerous'.
The explosion annihilated all the nearby waves. Moments after, it all came rushing back in a tidal wave to fill in the massive bowl-shaped depression that had just appeared in the sea's surface. The hull along that side splintered, fragments of the enchanted wood flying through the air with such force that they passed straight through several of his crew. Those lucky enough — in a certain sense of the word — to survive experienced a sudden fog of scalding steam, their screams echoing out into the burning fog. Some of them were washed overboard, the pain too much for them to remain steady in such tumultuous waters, but the captain didn't turn back or slow down.
Already, his Elementalist had done something to disperse the steam, his crew picking themselves up and moving to wherever they were needed most. They had no proper healer on board, but a sailing life was a rough one and thus meant they all had a high Constitution — enough that full-body second-degree burns wouldn't stop them from doing their jobs. The pain and injuries were a secondary concern when they were all already willing to give their lives to the cause.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Using the last of his mana, he erected a temporary barrier to fill in the massive gash along the ship's side. It would only last a few minutes, but that was plenty of time for the crew to bring out the boards and nails and patch up her wound.
With that, he knew they could make it through the storm and to safety. After putting all their mana into a last-ditch attack, his pursuers had no reserves remaining to continue the chase with.
A lesser man might have taken this moment to sigh in relief, but there had never been any doubt in the mind of the captain.
----------------------------------------
As was becoming a habit, Symon catapulted out of his dreams and into wakefulness with a start. Panting heavily, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he recalled the dream. Why did it feel so familiar?
"I don't know man," Symon replied before pausing. "Wait, you saw that too? The Grymjaw sailing straight through that storm to avoid those other ships?"
Suddenly, he felt the swirling vitality in his vessel impact something solid. He'd never encountered anything similar, so he quickly focused his awareness on this internal energy. His vitality was churning around violently as always — it reminded him of the storm-wracked seas from his dream — but it had to move around a blockage every loop it did. This blockage was all the energy that comprised Keelgrave, sitting perfectly still and condensed.
"Uh, I had another dream. I was steering a ship away from some other ships. I'm not sure who they were or what they wanted. We had to go through this storm to avoid them, but they fired his giant fireball thing at us. Oh, and then right before it hit—"
"Yeah, exactly! So you had the same dream, too?"
That meant he'd, what, dreamed some of Keelgrave's memories of the distant past? He knew magic could do some impressive things, but that seemed pretty far-fetched. Although, the dream had been remarkably vivid while also feeling oddly familiar, leading to an intensely surreal feeling akin to deja vu. It almost felt like it was one of his memories that he'd simply recalled in a dream.
Almost immediately, Symon thought he knew the likely cause. They already knew that his Essence Bond ability allowed him to communicate with Keelgrave just by sharing thoughts — it was what enabled them to understand one another without a shared language — but who could say that was all it did? Keelgrave had never heard of the ability or anything similar to it before, but together they'd already worked out a vague understanding of what it was capable of.
The most obvious feature was the communication aspect, but it also provided Keelgrave with immunity to Symon's passive vitality drain, almost as if they were considered a single being by his magic. The ability had levelled up several times since they encountered the adventurers, and yet it didn't feel any different.
He did feel like their communication speed had improved, but this had seemed more like him gaining a better understanding of an existing ability, and not improvements stemming from a magical increase from the Ledger. Perhaps their ability to communicate quickly had been trained through providing Symon with fast translations of and into Common, but he felt that the improvements were a more mundane thing coming from simple practice, in the way that he was more confident with his pipe club even without gaining a skill for it. Even if the benefits were all from the magical Ledger, he didn't feel they were large enough to explain so many new levels.
Going from level 2 to level 5 in his other abilities was enough for a very noticeable increase, even if he wasn't able to quantify it precisely. His Seize had improved in range and draining speed, levels to Running made him run faster with less effort, so what had all these levels to Essence Bond done?
Apparently, their bond had deepened enough to allow the transfer of more than just deliberate thoughts. Eager to understand this ability as deeply as they could, the pair engaged in a quick test of the dream's accuracy. Keelgrave would ask Symon questions of what felt like every mundane thing in his dream, such as what a certain crewmate's hair colour was or if they had any noticeable scars. Though his improvements to his Intelligence supposedly improved his memory, it was far from being perfect — let alone noticeably changed. Still, he answered every question either correctly or with an 'I don't remember'.
As it turned out, nothing was noticeably different from Symon's dream and how Keelgrave recalled things happening in reality. In fact, they decided it wasn't entirely accurate to call what Symon had experienced a dream. He'd simply been reliving a memory.
"Well, what does that mean for us?" Symon asked. Personally, he wasn't sure how he felt about the deepening of their connection. Reliving the spirit's life while he slept was an odd experience, but didn't seem harmful. In fact, it had been kind of cool, almost like a super realistic VR movie where you were able to experience the thoughts and emotions of others. The part that worried him was how little they knew about the ability, specifically how it would continue to grow. Keelgrave had been helpful when it came to combat advice, which he seemed happy to dispense, and for use as a translator, a task which he performed only begrudgingly... but that didn't mean they liked each other and wanted a literal magical bond to grow stronger between them.
Just from that short glimpse into Keelgrave's past, he could tell that his previous life was a rough one. Being hunted by powerful enemies across the sea was an obvious sign of this, but it ran deeper than that too. Despite the life-or-death situation, Keelgrave hadn't once thought of his family or friends, the life of his crew, the ship itself, or even his own life as anything more than a means to an end. He'd just been... angry. Angry at some nebulous concept that Symon didn't understand, considering the memory had started and ended while still deep in the thick of things. It was like Symon had read a chapter from the middle of a book that was Keelgrave's life and didn't have enough context to understand the details.
Keelgrave had been angry at his pursuers, angry at wherever they came from, and angry at himself for taking too big of a risk — not because of the danger to himself and the others, but because it meant he could have died before taking out his anger on his enemies.
Symon wasn't a hateful, violent, or aggressive person. It just wasn't in his nature. That was why it felt so confusing to reconcile that intense loathing he'd felt in the memories with how he felt in his own life. The feelings weren't lingering in the sense that he felt he was being influenced by them, but it was very strange to temporarily feel so different to how he normally did.
Simply put, the new aspect of his ability was an interesting novelty, and he already had some ideas of how it could help him presuming they could consciously control it, but currently, it didn't seem to change much.
Symon was happy to put this whole thing to rest, safe in the knowledge that their connection was more or less unchanged, before he remembered something. He'd been so caught up in how strange his dream had felt, that he'd completely glossed over that Keelgrave had also woken up extremely confused. They'd already established at the very start of their conversation that Keelgrave didn't have the same dream as Symon... so what had he seen?
If Symon had peered into Keelgrave's past...
Had the spirit done the same?