Kane’s eyes flew open, and it all hit him at once.

The grayscale tint of the world. The slight touches of color and light over the horizon, piercing through the ever-present blanket-like cloud cover, signifying that morning was finally approaching. The frigid wind tousling his hair, the ship’s railing pressed into his hip, the Sea raging directly below him, the— WHAT?

Kane was leaning forwards off the railing, only kept aloft by his waist functioning as the world’s worst fulcrum, his feet already in the air; inches further and he would fall. Proprioception finally hit him like an eighteen-wheeler, and he attempted to keep from losing his balance and plummeting towards certain death.

His windmilling his limbs only made things worse. He tipped further forwards, and as the Sea grew closer, he wondered what exactly would be bestowing this second death upon him — perhaps the blood would fill his lungs and suffocate him? Would the waves cut his limbs to shreds? Or would the deadly creatures that lay beneath those waves kill him in a way he couldn’t even conceptualize just yet?

In the midst of his hyperventilation and flailing and tipping over, he barely noted the rough tightening sensation around his neck. In a blur, he was yanked backwards, away from the Sea, Saul releasing the scruff of his shirt and shoving him down into a heap on the deck.

The older man’s eyes were underlined with dark shadows and conveyed a deadly fury, and Kane feared he might get cleaved in half by one of the almighty scimitars strapped on the man’s back then and there.

“Hey, bud? Kane? What the ever-loving fuck are you doing?” Saul stood over Kane, his right eye twitching with fatigue or anger or some frightening combination of the two. His hair was down, no longer up in a bun but rather flowing freely. His red leather jacket ruffled in the powerful wind of the dawn, and Kane only now noticed what an abhorrent getup the man’s outfit was as a whole, as if someone had yanked the guy out of some dance club and dropped him onto a pirate ship.

Kane stammered as he searched for an answer, still struggling to regain control of his breathing as he clutched his chest over his heart, looking back and forth between the rickety wooden railing behind him and the furious man before him. “I— I don’t— I was asleep!” He couldn’t quite comprehend what had just happened, much less explain it. “I was asleep in my hammock, that’s all I know! I’m guessing I… I sleepwalked?” But Kane knew he’d never been a sleepwalker.

Saul swiftly ran a hand through his admittedly luscious mess of hair, as if he wanted to pull it all out. “Do you make attempts to kill yourself every time you sleepwalk?” Despite Kane’s expectations, Saul wasn’t actually shouting. His tone laced with poison and ice. Kane hadn’t seen Saul this type of angry before. Previously it had been all simmering indignance or blustering outbursts, but this anger was a cold, hard ball of steel, locked and loaded.

“I don’t know,” Kane said, not to Saul’s particular question but rather to the whole situation in general. “Do you think I have any clue what’s going—”

“Use that big brain of yours and tell me what you think will happen once you die in Hell.” He crossed his arms, fists clenched tightly. “I don’t know what you were up to, kid, but don’t let me fucking catch you doing it again.”

Kane squinted at Saul as he slowly got to his feet. The implication he’d made was clear: if he died down here in Hell, there would be… nothing afterwards? Kane, as he knew himself, would be gone for good?

It was a harrowing thought, one that he’d already spent a good amount of time considering. It would explain why Lucian had been so damn serious when telling him not to die or kill himself the day before. But how did these guys know that dying was final down here? Had someone already died on board and served as evidence? Or maybe it was simply written in one of those stupid books Lucian had been reading?

Despite all that, despite the threat of oblivion and erasure, what somehow stressed Kane more was the fact that Saul was hypocritical enough to be telling Kane to be tread more carefully, when not 24 hours prior he himself had leapt into the maw of a murderous sea beast with Medusa-like powers.

So Kane lifted his chin, turning towards the stern door and away from Saul. “Thank you for saving me,” he intoned, his voice dry. “I’m heading back to the quarters.”

He wasn’t really willing to carry this conversation on any longer; he’d had conversations like this back on Earth, conversations with hypocrites where it was impossible to win because there was no right answer to any question.

As he walked away, he glanced back only once. He caught a glimpse of Saul still watching him, arms still crossed like a disapproving teacher, a look of scrutinizing concern on his face immediately hardening into something rock-hard and stoic the moment he realized he’d been found out.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

—

Kane didn’t actually remain in the crew’s quarters. He was far too antsy; between the itchy hammock, the lack of actual dreamless sleep, the unreal passage of time that had made hours of “rest” feel like mere minutes, the near-death experience immediately upon waking, and the hell of an admonishment he’d received right afterwards, he doubted he’d be able to lie still in one spot for long. So he’d stationed himself in the dining room, where the seemingly frosted windows would allow him to watch as the sky brightened and color returned, and where the large dining table was available for him to use.

He’d grabbed his wallet from the quarters, and now it sat squarely in front of him on the wooden surface. With nervous energy, he forced himself to stop fidgeting and reached into the wallet, pulling out the Polaroid photograph featuring him and the girl in their embrace.

Kane sighed softly. In the photo, the pair looked so carefree, so happy, so in love, their smiles just barely visible on the unobscured parts of their faces as they kissed.

Isabella? he thought, gingerly holding the photograph up to the light. Is that your name?

He stared at the photo for far longer than what must have been healthy, rummaging through every filing cabinet in his brain to see if anything came up related to the name and to this girl. But no dice. The name was still meaningless to him — as far as he knew, he didn’t know a single Isabella — and the photo was jarring in the way looking at a photo of you from a night out blacked-out was jarring.

Do it for Isabella, this Freddy creature had said. Even as a memory, the Shade’s voice was silky smooth, tickling Kane’s eardrums.

Of course, Kane had no way of knowing whether that entire interaction was simply a trick of the mind, a dream, a nightmare, or a vision-phone-call thing like the creature had implied. But it had been damn vivid either way, he’d give it that. Not to mention that his walking about in that dreamscape was likely what had caused him to walk out of the hammock, up to the deck, and straight for the railing.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that Freddy guy had done it on purpose, to prove a point.

Despite the pit of cold growing in his stomach at the realization that he wasn’t safe even in sleep, Kane decided that it ultimately wasn’t worth dwelling on whatever had happened to him last night. He had no real evidence to work with, so all rumination would amount to nothing helpful.

It would be infinitely more useful to start preparing for today’s events. Ostensibly, he had lessons with Lucian and Saul; and he’d already pissed off one before the sun was fully up.

Thus, if dagger training turned out to be a wash, Kane may as well lean into it. Suck so bad with blades that Saul cursed him until his ancestors understood; so bad that Lucian would have no choice but to fully focus on teaching him magic instead.

So he’d figured he may as well get a head start on learning magic; perhaps if he did well enough, Lucian would see it as a “natural proclivity.” Kane had retrieved some books from the room by the captain’s quarters, and now he pulled the first book from the top of the stack and opened it up to the first page, movements quickening with excitement as—

Total gibberish. Like, foreign glyphs and diacritics-type gibberish.

At least, the first six books he flipped through were written in this useless script. The seventh book he’d flipped through was in Spanish, and from Kane’s mediocre knowledge of the language, he could at least tell it seemed to going on about how to tie knots.

After quickly leafing through the last tome in his stack, Kane slammed its hardcover shut and sighed. He’d frankly been expecting as much; otherwise, with such a low barrier to entry, the others might have been more keen to learn magic than they seemed to be.

But that begged the question — if it was impossible to read the magic textbooks, then how had Lucian learned in the first place? Perhaps that was his power, and he’d lied about not having one?

And that wasn’t even to mention the fact that Kane wasn’t actually sure if these were the books on magic at all. He’d simply collected the ones that looked to be similar to the one Lucian had used while stopping the Kraken.

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin in thought. Perhaps he needed a pendant like the one Lucian had in order to be able to read and use magic? It would add up — Kane was quickly finding out that when something didn’t make logical sense down here, magical bullshit was likely behind it.

“Up bright and early, are we?” The sound of a voice jolted Kane upright. Lucian strolled into the dining room with a mug in one hand and his pocket watch in the other. “You didn’t whistle before sunrise, did you?”

Kane hadn’t rested a wink, so the pep in the man’s voice made him internally recoil. He looked up, stunned, and then caught the beams of full-on daylight streaming in through the frosted glass windows compared to the mere hints of light before. He hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed.

“I did, real loud, just to spite you,” he lied, putting on his best ‘not-tired’ face: quirking his brows and smiling as if he were actually enthusiastic to be here. “We’re still training today, right?” he asked with real eagerness.

Lucian eyed him tiredly. “Not before breakfast. Not before tea, either.” He raised the mug to his mouth and sipped, sighing as he sat down and pocketed his watch.

The man’s eyes danced over Kane’s collection of literature. “How could you tell those were the books on magic?”

Kane shrugged, shutting his eyes, leaning back nonchalantly, and crossing his arms behind his head. “I guess I just have an eye for it.”

Lucian rolled his eyes. “Good on you, but those will have to wait. Priorities, my friend. There are sword fighting tutorial books in bottom of the bookshelf on the far right in the cabin by mine, if you’re so eager to read something.”

Kane opened one eye and looked at Lucian pleadingly.

So the man took pity on him. “But… I do say it’s always better to learn through doing.”