Prologue

The ancient stone cube groaned as its door was opened, the stale air wafting out as a dank wall of vile gas. Stellan would have vomited if he hadn't experienced this already, although the five years in between had caused him to forget some of the horrors. He heard his soldiers retching outside and allowed himself a slight chuckle. Maybe now they wouldn't complain so much about not being allowed in. The door finally opened fully, revealing a shadowed figure chained within the cube. Steeling himself in anticipation for the voice, he prepared himself to hear the words that would damn him.

"Back so soon little warlord? I would have expected a few more years at least before you came crawling back for more."

Stellan still struggled not to join his companions in spilling his food onto the floor when he heard it speak. It sounded like a drowned person talking through flooded lungs, as stagnant water spilled from its mouth with every word. It still wasn't as bad as seeing it though, a slight blessing which quickly vanished as he stepped nearer with his torch the new light revealing the tortured figure before him.

No one knew how long the Sea Witch had been captive in the stone cube. The only confirmed fact was that it was older than the fortress they stood in, which itself was one of the most ancient buildings in the Myriad Seas. The fortress had been built around the Sea Witch after the ancient Sealord who had discovered it paid the monster's price to discover why it was imprisoned there. He had ordered the fortress raised around the prison in its deepest levels, then hanged himself the day it was finished nearly a century later. No one had ever asked again.

It was a hellish creature, and Stellan still woke up in cold sweats sometimes when he remembered it, even on the warmest nights the Southern Isles had to offer. Its skin looked like rotten wood left too long in water, and instead of hair it had long strands of kelp, equally rotted and sodden. A mouth that was more a bottomless black slit cut into its twisted visage of a face, ringed with a set of vicious needle-like teeth almost completed the horror, but its eyes were the most terrifying. Or rather, its lack of eyes. Where eyes should have been lodged into their sockets there were instead three-foot long tendrils extending from each orifice.

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"I found what I wanted. I have everything I wanted when I saw you the first time. And you knew it would mean nothing when I discovered the truth" Stellan said as he heard the witch's choking laugh echo throughout the chamber.

"And you thought it was your goal to discover the Trackless Isles! There was a reason I allowed you to meet me the first time. Didn't you ever wonder why the Marshall was willing to let a lowly house slave like you accompany him down here? Why he let you go without a struggle afterwards? Most of all, why he let you back in tonight, breaking his own sacred rules when even the most ignorant wretch in the whole Myriad Seas knows you only get one meeting with the Witch!"

Stellan hadn't cried in fifteen years, ever since he was dragged screaming into the bowels of a slave-ship as he watched his mother cut down behind him. He allowed himself a few tears now. He hadn't been free since that day, despite what he thought. He had been a simple pawn in the hand of this monster, who had sent him to discover that terrible truth in the Trackless Sea, thinking himself some brave explorer. It had known what he would find, and it would have known he would come back to find out how to fix it. That last thought made him steel himself. He would fix it. He had to.

"You know what I'm here for then. What's the price this time? I'll pay from the left hand if you can accommodate that". He held up his right hand to show the stump of his right index finger, cleanly bitten off by the Witch's fangs in exchange for the location of the legendary Trackless Isles. The creature laughed again as streams of toxic water sprayed from its mouth.

"No price this time boy... at least not the same kind of price; I think you'll find the consequences of knowing what you must do something of a cost itself. Now ask the question."

Stellan abruptly realised his hands were shaking. Maybe they had been since that night when he learned the truth. A fat purple tongue emerged from the Witch's maw as it smiled at him. He wished he could kill the twisted creature, but he knew he didn't have the power. Maybe Lyrisius could have done it in his prime, or the even the Wayfarer on a good day. It didn't matter, they were many leagues away and he could only assume they didn't know what he did, or else they would be helping him. He was alone.

He was weeping now. The moment he'd been dreading for every waking second of his long return voyage had arrived. All the strength he'd built up didn't matter. He'd been forced along this path from the second he first spoke to the witch. Probably even before. He prayed for forgiveness as he asked the question that would doom him forever.

"How do I save the world?"

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