Call me Ishvael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — after hearing the bards and minstrels sing about the fearsome chapters of their lives crossing the world and meeting exotic lands for years and years at my father’s establishment, the ‘White Flame Inn’, and therefore inheriting his propriety after his passing — may Goddess Autumn have his soul — I decided that I would take a voyage someday and write a book about my adventure.

Well, I did it.

If there is such a thing as a fitting subject for an adventure, there is nothing more fitting than the endless waters of the sea, for in the mesmerizing oceans in which we sail in search of lands, glory and gold, men married to their ships will sail hand-in-hand with death against terrors that even dragons fear to face.

And if there is something that dragons fear, it surely is a whale. From this side of the Tempest Ocean, many eras were lived by humans and alvurians and nanimians in total ignorance of the presence of this behemoth, for such a creature this beast is, that many sailors took it either as an island or unusually great skerry portions of an uncharted archipelago.

But what kind of island moves itself? When the first reports of an alvurian exploring voyage described this creature, most naturalists took its size as a clear error of translation, for the shaking hands that wrote that report in the high tongue couldn’t possibly compare anything in the known nature remotely close as that beast these travelers of the sea saw.

The alvurian Marindriel Al’Farmir onboard of the Luxien was the first naturalist to properly describe his encounter with this monster, and what a legendary encounter!

“‘Twas a morning of shining sunrise for the Luxien’s crew,” he says, “for the deck was sliding through the northern ocean of Aporia, far away from any land, when the scream was suddenly heard. The first immediate, Duncan Rivers, strode to the helm in order to ready our dame, shouting ‘Get ready for a dragon. Marindriel, get the Morning Beam!’. I ran to the cabin and took the artifact with me, conjuring the maximum amount of vita my body could handle. The deck was boiling as everyone tried to see from where the dragon would appear. Then it came, diving through the clouds, piercing the air as I pointed the Morning Beam towards it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“In a glimpse of an eye, a wall of snaking flames tried to reach the ship, held off by a white-thin beam that dispersed the flames as it hit the dragon. As the flying beast gave a sweep, ready to attack, it suddenly flew up, as if shook by an unnameable feeling. ‘Twas the first time I saw fear in a dragon’s scream. We didn’t know what made the red rising creature take such a vertical flight, when the waters shook the ship, as if dragged by a different sea current, just born in the bowels of the ocean. From deep, deep below. Duncan shouted ‘Hold on, there it comes!’ as the biggest wave I have ever seen rose from nowhere, enveloping our horizon, and with it, came a mountain.

“I could almost swear that it could reach the stars as I saw it ever-emerging with a scream that made my chest rumble. Its eyes were like two moons of pure blue, shining in the vilest and hungriest stare towards its prey, and its prey was a dragon. Poor thing! It almost escaped, but it was so desperate in its flying, that it simply couldn’t reach a far-enough longitude in order to evade the bite of that mountain.

“The echoes of the dragon’s scream was the only thing that escaped the whale’s mouth. Then, with a splash that made the waters rumble and the sky look like a waterfall, we grabbed ourselves and prepared for the waves. The ship was wrecked, torn apart by a flood that seemed endless. We stood adrift for seven days before finding safety onboard of the Lacemistress, our savior.”

Well, suffice to say that when my journey began, I didn’t thought I would encounter one of these legends. But destiny is a fine trickster; it may push you towards the strangest of people and remotest of lands, only to send you back to the same place where everything started. And everything started when I heard that a man was going to hunt one of them.