I lay silently in bed, my thoughts churning and the back of my neck pricklign with dread until Eliza returned with a loud bang on the door. “Sinbad wants to speak to ya!” She called. A crack resounded from Cove’s bed as he shot up from sleep, his head cracking into the wall. I winced, ducking low as I descended from my own bunk to land softly on the floor as he stumbled down, rubbing red eyes.
He reached for the door as I snatched his shoulder, pulling him back to meet his confused blue eyes. “There’s more than one fragment here. I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect one of the rooks has it.”
It was better to be upfront now and be wrong than to hinder our mission to obtain the fragment.
His hand went to ruffle his hair into a bird’s nest as he absorbed the information. “What a nest of trouble we’ve found ourselves in. Did she know?”
I thought back on Shahrazad’s actions. “Probably.”
A sigh escaped him. “Two birds, one stone, I guess,” he said with a plastic smile. “Less for us to find later.”
His eyes flicked over my form, evaluating me. “Still, I wonder why…”
He was wondering why I was the one who could track the fragments despite my lesser powers. I knew as the same question was running through my mind. Cove, I could understand, as he was desperate to make up for his parent’s mistakes. But why me?
The answer lay at the boundary between dreams and reality. I’d had all the pieces I needed at that moment; however, the answers were hidden just out of reach. A wall stood between me and the answers I sought, not allowing me to see the truth of the matter. Much, much later, I realized the wall was my own making, a way to protect my slowly growing ego from the knock-out blow the answer would have delivered. I felt unique and special like I was the only one who could accomplish this properly.
I wasn’t entirely wrong, but I wasn’t any of those things for the reasons I thought at the time.
The glow of hope, the knowledge that there was something I could do that the nearly all-powerful Cove, Ava, and Jacob couldn’t settle deep into my bones. Suddenly, I felt powerful and superior in a way that I’d only achieved with my studies previously.
I shook my head, dispelling the feeling from my bones. I’d never been one to rely on power and abilities alone, and I wouldn’t begin to now. I’d seen and experienced the intoxicating effects a sense of power could have on someone, and there were boundaries even I wouldn’t cross. If I was superior, it was due to my own efforts in developing my knowledge. Knowledge, I reminded myself, played a far greater role than the dreams I was plagued with. Without the mental aptitude to utilize the information or Cove’s power, it was all useless.
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Cove pulled forward, opening the door as I followed him into the brightly lit hallway. Our footsteps pattered softly on the red carpet, and curious crew members glanced at us as they passed, busy with other tasks. The door to Sinbad’s office was already open, Sinbad standing with papers in hand at the head of the table while Eliza sat in the same chair she had the night before.
She lazily raised a hand. “Yo.”
Cove tossed an equally casual wave back while I nodded politely, rubbing the chills prickling at my neck away. “What’s up?” Cove asked.
Sinbad lifted his eyes from the papers–the ones Cove and I had written before falling asleep–to nod at us.
“Sinbad’s just been going over the papers you’ve given him.”
The aforementioned explorer thumbed to the next page, nodding appreciatively. “Good work.”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
He finished reading, then placed the papers down on the table in front of him, poking and prodding at the map once more. “We’ll hover over this section of the beach, here,” he poked at a large, empty beachfront less than a mile from the underground and underwater dungeon where the rooks roosted, “And go down with a small team of our best fighters,” he met our eyes, explaining “Between your detailed descriptions, we should be able to manage the traps on our own. The airship will hover out of the rooks' path nearby until I summon it back for pickup. Any questions?”
“Nah.”
“Nope.”
“I suppose not,” simple plans like this were flexible, with plenty of room to develop. Most of the questions I could think of were self-explanatory, relying on Sinbad’s explorer class to get us through the forest and dungeon traps in our way. Brute strength was a simple, if boring, solution to the rest of our problems until Cove and I could figure out how to separate the rook with the fragment from the rest.
He clasped his hands, rubbing them together. “Right. We’ll meet on the deck in one–”
The ship lurched sideways, spilling the papers and the shelf contents onto the floor. A book struck me in the shin even as I danced out of the way. Cove and I struggled to remain balanced as Elia and Sinbad, used to the occasional unstable footing in their explorations, darted forwards to gaze out the large window.
Sinbad cursed violently, and I exchanged an uneasy look with Cove, who shook his head. Neither of us remembered anything similar happening in the novel. The deck of the ship heaved, tilting the other direction. A massive black shadow crossed over the window, and I felt my heart start to tremble as it slammed against the window, the giant suckers on the end plastering to the window, cutting us off from the outside light.
It could only be a kraken, a skyscraper-sized beast that roamed the oceans and appeared before unlucky players as they roamed the oceans. One of the hardest hidden encounter bosses in the game, there were only a few who’d encountered the thing, much less defeated it.
I swallowed thickly, preparing myself for another test of my newfound courage. Cove’s hands twitched as his side, and he cursed, his normal magic cut off from him.