--- AYMIAE, TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO ---

“They’re all dead. Every last one of them. Tell the widows and mothers and let them mourn.”

The words echoed uselessly in Aymiae’s mind, replaying like an annoying child who didn’t quite understand what they meant yet. A child who thought she understood. Aymi didn’t know how to banish the thoughts, only remembering that she was useless.

The world around her played out like it was happening to someone else. Usually when something terrible happened to someone she cared about, it gave her strength and bravery to stand up and make the world right.

But you can’t solve death no matter how hard you try.

Aymi felt the tears bite her eyes. “Tell the widows and mothers and let them mourn.”

What about the sisters? The friends? The daughters? How many people would simply not know the fate of their loved ones because they didn’t realize their brothers and fathers had been in that battle?

Aymi wished she’d been someone who didn’t know, that way she would have the strength at least to join the group scouting out the battlefield to make sure that Foralen was right. But in her heart she knew that if her brother had lived, he would be here by now, reassuring her worries and joking about how weak the other army was compared to him.

Slowly the reports trickled in, a battlefield of ash. All of them were dead.

The only good thing from this whole mess was the fact that it gave princess Steris the chance to seize the throne. Aymi watched with hollow eyes, swollen blue from crying, as the crown was placed on her head and she began to make order from the chaos.

The rest of Reiaran seemed just as shocked by this turn of events, everyone assumed that prince Talein would win in the end. But most of his army had been destroyed by Foralen.

They started calling her the hero. She’d ended the war after all, only a year into the carnage. Aymi wasn’t sure how to feel about that yet, it brought another kind of grief to think of it. No one had seen the hero since she’d come through the gates and started shouting to people about the fallen. Didn’t…didn’t she care? Aymi hadn’t really seen any emotion on her face when she’d said that.

Aymi was more concerned though that now she was alone. Eventually someone remembered to tell the sisters, but Aymiae already knew he was gone. She already knew that she had to take his dream for herself.

And so it was that Aymiae, devoid of family and devoid of peace, removed herself from the city of her birth for the first time in memory. She brought all her meager money and all her things, traveling south and east, toward something more.

--one year later--

Aymi felt her face melt into something else. It was a feeling that used the sense she had of her own mana rather than her nerves, but it was similar, like a creeping up her spine that was…somehow centralized on her face? Not sure how accurate the illusion looked, Aymi peeked out the deserted tavern’s window, trying not to scream as she watched the bloody group of Pitten marching through the village.

They looked horrifying to her, though she knew plenty of humans thought the more rough Tuvei were disgusting. A Pitten was just another kind of person, except they had gills, webbed fingers, and their hands were strange shapes as they were designed to move water more effectively. They had strange proportions and stranger minds.

There were ten of them, grinning madly, revealing sharp teeth and mad eyes. Around the lead Pitten’s neck was a strange amulet that glowed with a sickly blue light. Aymi saw corpses behind them, mostly human as she’d long since entered Nakoria, south of the lands where Tuvei were the majority.

She put a hand to her mouth, eyes still wide. The illusion held though and to them she looked like a Saelden. She’d noticed in the last village that the Pitten armies didn’t harm the tree folk if they didn’t fight back, which they rarely did unless a forest was in danger. They waded through the carnage and Aymi only felt despair that she was too late to save anyone. She’d been delirious last night when she’d tried to tell them about the danger.

This time she needed to do something, right? But what could she do? Her options were rather limited and she didn’t even know how to fight the people of the sea.

The leader kicked a corpse out of his way. It was marred with claw marks and scorched with flame. One of the villagers had been a self trained fire mage who’d set several buildings aflame during the initial assault. This was the result of not having any decent mage schools between Reiaran and Nakonua.

The body he’d kicked didn’t move easily, so he kicked it again, grinning.

He was grinning.

They were all grinning.

Aymi saw the face of the corpse and vaguely recognised it from last night when she’d arrived. It was the kindly old woman who’d asked no questions of her and given her stew and a bed at the tavern.

That was…

That…

That brought pain, and with the pain came resolve...and finally bravery. Aymiae set her jaw and held her hands out, casting a new illusion. She was going to be an adventurer, that meant she had to protect people. That meant she had to start somewhere.

Even if her resolve was too late for this village, there would be others.

A bright, blinding flash of light emerged from the sky, the huge bubble of light poured down, making a wall of light around the entire area, destroying all shadows with a finality and blinding the Pitten as they screamed and clawed at their eyes.

I should have done that sooner, so so much sooner. What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I help?

She bolted out the tavern door, drawing her sword with clumsy fingers and heading straight towards the leader. She was smaller than him, Pitten were tall, but she pulled the sword across his throat. There was too much air between the blade and the neck though, sparks, what was she doing?

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She felt the blade cut something, and she was dancing away before she could second guess the action. They would recover in a moment and be after her.

She stood in a defensive position as the light faded and they began to blink at each other in confusion. Her eyes went back to the lead Pitten who’s hand was to his neck where the blue amulet had been.

She’d somehow managed to accidentally cut the strings. It was laying on the ground innocently as the Pitten stared at it in shock. They muttered to each other in their language and gazed with confusion at the carnage around them. Their eyes went back again and again to the amulet.

Eventually, one shook his head in a surprisingly human gesture. He stomped on the amulet with a grimace and after a moment the rest followed him, hitting it with things until one of the spikes broke off.

The group dispersed afterward, not even looking in Aymiae’s direction.

What the sparks?

--a few months later--

The ship rocked again and Aymi’s deathgrip on the railing tightened as she continued barfing her guts out. The deck had been a slate gray before, but as the hours passed, it started to look more like the porridge they were feeding her than anything else.

The sailors seemed amused at this, and the other Tuvei passenger wasn’t in any better a state. Aymi had heard of the curse before, and there was a reason tuvei didn’t become sailors unless all other professions were taken. The weakness of their frames extended to their stomachs, tossing the contents with the slightest unwarranted disturbance.

Aymi had heard it could be overcome, but the longer she was on the ship, the less she wanted to try that out. Would it really be that hard to obtain a water-breath spell and walk the whole way to Aulous?

She groaned as the ship fell past a particularly violent wave, her stomach began churning again without so much as a break from the last round of barfing. Thankfully she’d long since emptied her stomach of any contents.

The thump of sturdy boots had her looking up as one of the sailors approached her. Most of them were human men, rough looking and far from the types of people that Aymi would normally associate with. This specific sailor wasn’t one of those though, she held herself with a quiet dignity, but she didn’t quite look down on others. In fact, the way she held herself reminded Aymi a lot of mistress Raia, down to the expression of slight amusement that hid behind her eyes.

She was a pitten though, apparently most ships had one or two sea folk with every voyage since it kept the seas calmer and most could speak to monsters from the depths. There was some claim that the goddess of the seas favored them, but Aymi wasn’t certain how much stock to put in that.

“If this was my ship, I’d make you scrub up all that filth.” The pitten spoke with a subtle accent, words a bit too sharp, annunciating things with more clarity than Aymi was used to, even though neither of them were speaking her native Melorian.

Aymi blinked up at her and groaned slightly as her head swam unhelpfully, “Then I’ll be glad it’s not your ship.” Part of Aymi in the back of her mind shivered at the fish woman’s presence, remembering the group of pitten who’d massacred all those villages months ago.

She sat gracefully down beside Aymi, a stark contrast to the sailors' careless strides. “Yes, but then again, if this were my ship you would have been eaten by my cousins by now.”

Aymi tried again to pull herself to a more dignified position, “That would be…a lot better than suffering like this for weeks.”

The pitten tilted her head curiously, “I never did believe those who spoke of tuvei frailty. From afar your people are strong as the stones, strong as a good ship. But then a little bit of wobbling sends you to the deck.” She shook her head in what seemed to be amusement.

After a moment she pulled something out of her bag, a package wrapped in some kind of waterproof leather. The pitten placed it in Aymi’s hands, “this is from a friend of mine, he asks that you don’t open it until you arrive at your destination.”

Aymi managed to pull herself up, as she took it, tucking the small package into a pocket, but her arms shook as she leaned against the railing, “That’s just great.” All her training in the art of conversation from mistress Raia had long since gone out the window, so she didn’t even excuse herself from the conversation or even thank the pitten for whatever it was as she slowly inched her way back to the cabin she’d paid for.

Really it was her own fault she’d come up here, but she’d read somewhere that watching where the ship was going might help. That was a load of dragoncrap. She felt a twinge of guilt for not trying to help out that other tuvei, but what could she do?

She fell into the bed with a groan, landing awkwardly and feeling the frame scrape against her leg, but this was significantly better than trying to stand and she even had a bucket that she’d found in this room, probably left specifically because the sailors knew what would happen. She hadn’t really noticed it before but it would find good use over the next few weeks.

She pitied whomever had to scrub up the mess up there.

She pulled the package out as she started getting tired, wondering what her destination even was. With a sigh, Aymi tossed it onto her desk and groaned as her stomach started churning again. She thought she caught a bit of sickly blue light from the thing while she turned away.

--- RAAN---

Someone handed him a mop when they made port. He didn’t have enough presence of mind to remember which port it was, but he did have enough to know what the mop was for. Raan stared at the green deck with trepidation.

“You sure about this? I’ll probably just keep on hurling.”

The sailor grunted, “Can’t make the other tuvei clean it up, she’s got an even weaker stomach than you if that’s possible. ‘Sides, she’s a lady ‘n stuff.” The rest of the reason was unspoken, you owe the captain. No reason to let that debt pile up.

Raan was distinctly glad the waves were less at port. He looked out at the ocean, moving the mop across the deck and trying very hard not to look too hard at the gunk lest his stomach empty again, he noticed the distinct mist floating about the ship, the thicker the mist got as it floated past the land itself.

It was a clear week for this area, which was why they’d been able to sail here at all, after this the mist would thicken again for several months before there was enough leeway to sail through it again. Best not to be delayed on this trip.

Raan saw several of the locals unloading the cargo as the captain supervised. They looked like regular humans in most ways, tall, more muscular than Raan would ever get, and hard enough that at a glance it seemed nothing could shake them. The only real differences between the sailors and the people of the mistlands were the way they dressed, more tribal and practical than uniform, and the way their local magic manifested.

Each person Raan saw had some kind of wings, some insectile, some as if made of light, and some large and feathered. Often they would take flight while moving the boxes, carefully setting the cargo in piles.

“Boy stop gawking.”

The voice pulled Raan out of his mind. He stammered, “I- uh…sorry!” He started moving the mop again, dipping it in the water and scrubbing against a section that was a bit too dry. The sailor watched him for several tense moments before shaking his head and turning away.

Raan kept on mopping. Eventually moving to the other spot. The weird pitten who’d been staring at him every chance she got came over to watch for some reason. He’d eventually asked her name the other day so he’d feel less weird about her presence. She’d simply laughed at him and refused.

“By the depths, I thought that captain of yours had sense in his skull after I chatted with him last night.” She remarked.

Raan glanced at her, “What?”

The pitten sighed, “Rich or not, that girl should learn to clean up after herself. You ought to help her out with that instead of doing it for her.”

He slowed his scrubbing, “and...that means you want that other tuvei to clean this up?”

“No,” She said slowly, deliberately as if speaking to a child who didn’t understand. “She’s not going to learn if people intervene.”

Raan squinted at her for a moment and started scrubbing again.

“No response?”

Raan shook his head, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, so I’m assuming it’s a metaphor or some weird highborn crap. I’m just here to wash the deck.”

The pitten tilted her head, an amused smile growing on her strange fish-like face, “Alright then.” She nodded curtly and turned away.

Raan was so confused.