The afterlife disappeared, and dense fog replaced it. Oliver stood on wooden planks. Rope strands filled the gaps between boards like grout between tiles. They pitched upward, and he crouched with both hands on his swordstaff to avoid falling backward.
Spray hit his face when everything dipped and surged again. “Where are we?” The only sound around him was splashing water and the creak of timbers. The only smell was of fish and tar.
Mist swirled and parted to reveal three masts. Sails furled, tugged up by ghostly shapes moving in the gray. They climbed rigging and balanced on spars. They moved about their duties, their faces obscured, seemingly unaware of Oliver's appearance.
Beside him stood the reaper, its form shrouded in velvety white robes. In its skeletal hand, it held two glowing spheres—the memory spheres of Zaisy and Hunter. The orbs pulsed, casting shadows along the reaper's hollow-eyed skull. "Take them. They’re somewhere in this world."
Oliver reached out hesitantly, his fingers closing around the cool surfaces of the spheres. "Will they remember me?" he asked, searching the reaper's unchanging visage.
Water ran down the bare cheekbones. "I don’t know. They were becoming aware, but their bodies were heavily damaged." The reaper gestured to where the moon glowed behind the pall and out around the rolling waves. "Of all the worlds, this is my favorite. You’ve done well in places like this before. This is far more complex than the last one."
Oliver nodded slowly, absorbing the weight of the reaper's words. "What is my class?”
"I don’t know," the reaper said. "I think it’s unique to you. When you were designed, there was interest. But you never lived up to your potential."
A gust of wind swept across the deck, dispersing the lingering fog. The ship became clearer. They stood far at the stern and could see all the way to the bowsprit.
“I want to do better.”
The reaper glowed as moonbeams broke through the sky. “Perhaps you only lay dormant, and now you’re ready. That’s an interesting thought. Your body has stopped resetting, and you’ll grow old and die. Maybe the best thing you can do is make a home here and live out your days.”
A sudden shout pierced the air. "Angel of Death!" A sailor stood frozen near the mast, his eyes wide with fear as he stared directly at the reaper. The commotion drew the attention of others, all with mouths agape.
The reaper handed a small crystal to Oliver, and then began to fade. "Crush it if you need me to heal.”
Oliver began to ask what he meant, but the reaper vanished.
The crew approached and cast nervous glances, darting between Oliver and the spot where the reaper had stood. The sailor who had spoken stopped. "Is he a wizard?"
Before Oliver could respond, the captain approached.
He was a stout man with a stern visage as if he’d taken thirty years of storms directly to the face. He wore a faded blue coat adorned with brass buttons. "Who are you?" the captain demanded. "And how did you come to be on my ship?"
Oliver straightened, meeting the captain's gaze. "I’m Oliver. I mean no harm. I just boarded unexpectedly."
The captain's brow furrowed. "Demons, Ay? My crew speaks of omens and apparitions." He glanced at the sailors, who stood close behind him. "Are you human?"
"Yes. I'm just a traveler. I can leave at your first stop." He tried to keep a confident tone, but the last sentence came out close to a question.
The captain regarded him for a long moment before nodding curtly. "Very well, but I’ll have no trouble on my ship." He gestured, and sailors took the swordstaff. "We're bound for Credola. But I don’t give free passage. Not even to my own blood kin. You’ll have to work, which we have aplenty, even for a landlubber."
Oliver nodded in acknowledgment. "Thank you, captain."
“Captain Hache. Now,” He turned to a boy in a coat. “See that he finds a place on the morning watch. I need no wondering wizards on my ship.”
Oliver exhaled slowly as the captain turned away, barking orders to the crew to return to their duties. Somehow, this felt much more real than the last world, and it drained his confidence. He patted the orbs in his pouch, their weight comforting. He had his friends with him.
“You’re a wizard?” the boy asked.
“N… yeah, I suppose I am.”
“Awesome. We’re like a military ship now. Can you make the wind blow?”
“No.”
“Well, what kind of wizard are you?”
The boy showed him a hammock on a lower deck in the dark. The air smelled musty, and he was pretty sure it was infested.
He lay in the hammock with his eyes open in the dark.
The fog burned away in the morning, and the sea stretched out forever on all sides. The sight took his mind off the more depressing thoughts, and he wondered why he didn’t just threaten the captain. He could sink this ship if he wanted to, which might have gotten him comfy quarters to sleep in.
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“Have you ever worked a day in your life?” the boy said.
Oliver tugged on the rope for the thousandth time. “I’ve done work that would suck the soul right out of you.”
The boy shut up, probably taking his words literally.
However, he’d never worked like this. Sure, he considered himself strong but had no gloves, and his hands burned. The sailors were machines, hauling rope for four hours to the jaunting rhythm of song.
After all that, the meal consisted of hard bread crawling with bugs, and the crew didn’t appear happy about it any more than he was.
After a few bites, he moved to the ship's railing, resting his hands on the salt-crusted wood. The rhythmic rise and fall of the waves eased his thoughts but not his stomach. Gulls cried overhead, and the crew settled back into their routines under them.
"Credola?" he asked, spotting a distant shoreline.
“Nope,” the boy said. “That’s an island.”
The days at sea were long, the horizon an unchanging line between the rolling waves and the expansive sky. The sun beat down relentlessly, and tempers among the crew began to fray like old rope. They whispered on the scuttles and scowled behind the captain's back.
One evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the sky with hues of red and purple, Oliver sat at the bow, taking a shit. Nearby on the bow, two sailors murmured in low voices, and the metal of a knife glinted at one’s side.
"He's leading us to ruin," one said, his face shadowed beneath a tattered cap. "We’re starving, and he’s going to come out of it rich as an elf."
The other nodded. "While we scrape by, he dines in comfort and laughs at our misery."
Oliver pretended not to listen, but their words weighed on him. The captain had seemed increasingly distant, his commands brusque, and his door guarded. The crew's morale was sinking faster than the setting sun.
As darkness enveloped the ship that night, the murmurs turned to murmurs no more.
A gathering formed on the lower deck. The sailors huddled together, their faces illuminated by the flickering glow of a lantern.
Oliver lingered at the edge.
A burly man named Rurak spoke, his voice rough like the sea outside. "I know a man who’ll empty our hold and ask no questions. We won’t get full price, but we won’t swing from the gallows either."
Reluctantly, they all agreed to the man’s plans.
Rurak's eyed each man in the assembly. "We do it quick. We do it now."
It was mutiny.
Oliver felt a knot tighten in his stomach. He was not loyal to the captain and didn’t know him, but he just wanted to get off this ship in one piece. Before he could decide whether to intervene, perhaps scare them with magic, the mob moved, swarming the captain's quarters. The sound of boots pounding on wood echoed ominously.
“They’re going to kill him,” the boy said.
From what Oliver had pierced together, this whole thing, this whole universe, was nothing but an arrangement between the Observer and Universal Constructor.
He shouldn’t care about the lives around him, but he did. He followed the mob.
The door to the captain's cabin burst open under the force of a heavy boot. The captain sprang to his feet, eyes wide with shock. "What’s this?" he demanded, drawing a curved blade. “Who’s the first to die?”
Rurak held a sword and prowled forward. "Your time’s up."
The captain met steel with steel. “You fools. All of you knew the course was dangerous. We ran low on supplies, and it’s no more my fault than the next man's.”
The captain danced back and forth as the two fought. "I’m taking you with me, Rurak."
Oliver recognized the sword forms. He recognized when the captain baited or when Rurak fainted. They broadcasted their next move, and neither took advantage properly.
They appeared as clumsy with swords as Oliver was with a rope, and he stood almost mesmerized watching the duel.
A sailor with a look of glee grabbed the captain from behind. Rurak swung, and the captain's throat opened in a bubble of blood. A hush fell over the room as the captain gargled.
Rurak wiped the blade on a cloth, his expression unreadable. "It's done," he announced to the gathered crew. "Prepare to set sail."
The crew stepped around the captain as they dispersed. Oliver retreated, wanting to break the crystal and summon the reaper to heal the wound, but the crew would only murder him again.
The cool night air filled his lungs when he leaned over the rail at the quarterdeck. The stars overhead glittered.
The boy stood beside him. “They killed him. And it wasn’t even a fair fight.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” The words seemed like what an adult should say to a youth who witnessed that.
“That’s nothing. I’m always the first to watch them swing at the gallows. I just wanted to see a fair fight between the two.”
As the first light of dawn crept over the horizon. Those who hadn’t seen the city stood in awe on the forecastle.
Oliver was used to skyscrapers, but still, the city took him aback. It was a sprawling metropolis of towering spires and intricate bridges, glimmering white stone before rugged mountains. “Credola?”
“No other,” a sailor responded.
The details of the city's architecture became apparent as the ship entered the calm waters of the harbor.
A lace of walkways connected whitewashed towers topped with gold.
Ships crowded the harbor, and Rurak shouted orders. The man at the whipstaff pulled and pushed, and the ship threaded through.
Oliver snuck to the captain’s door. He wanted his weapon back and meant to depart as soon as they docked.
Two armed men stood guard, arms folded. They eyed him but didn’t seem worried. “What do you want?” one said.
“I want my stuff.”
“You’re not going through this door.”
Oliver reached out like a whip and took one sword from the scabbard. The other drew and lunged, but he battered the blade away and let the tip hover near the other’s Adam's apple. “Stand aside.”
“Be my guest,” the guards said, and as soon as Oliver entered the cabin, they shouted.
Oliver couldn’t see well in the gloom, but the swordstaff gleamed on the wall. He took it and smiled. It felt so good in the hands.
The door slammed open, and Rurak stood in the doorway. “I’m afraid I can’t let you leave. We don’t need anyone spreading scuttlebutt around the city about this little mutiny.”
The guards entered the room. The one was armed again and angry.
But Oliver had seen them fight and wasn’t worried. He whipped the swordstaff around, careful in the confined space not to lodge it into the bulwarks. The reach advantage overcame the disadvantage of numbers. And he was amazed at how precise the weapon danced in his hands.
The three stood panting and disarmed and holding shallow cuts.
Oliver stepped past them. “I’ll be leaving. And if you call the whole crew against me, I’ll show you what kind of magic I have up my sleeve.”
Rurak let go of his forearm. “You’re bluffing.”
“Try me.”