image [https://i.imgur.com/9JnFmXw.jpg]

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In the early hours of the following morning, The Rogue Wave passed the port of Demerris without stopping and continued up Sedalia’s eastern coast towards the mouth of the Allura River.

Mirabelle’s crew had spent a day repainting the hull before leaving Saltcrust, and their ship was disguised as The Strivers Hope, a legitimate transport vessel chartered out of the city of Dualspire, with forged documents to aid the deception if needed.

They hoped to avoid unwanted attention on their way north, but Mirabelle told them that the Dynasty would be on the lookout for The Rogue Wave, and that magical eyes might be tracking the ship’s rough whereabouts regardless of their new paint job, so they were taking special care to steer clear of other vessels on the horizon all the same.

Rick was up on the quarterdeck, looking out across the waves to the distant haze of coastline to the west. He could just make out white chalk cliffs, and clouds moving over the land.

Mirabelle told him he could use this space to train, and he’d spent the day so far practising his spell-casting, under the sporadic observations of Dorian, who had emerged from his sulking to throw up repeatedly over the ship’s railing.

While the sun was bright in the sky above the sea, westerly winds had made sailing conditions slightly rougher, prompting the writer’s face to turn a queasy hue shortly after breakfast. He now sat near Rick’s practice space, slurping from a ladle of fresh water, groaning pitifully, and holding a damp cloth to his forehead to stave off the nausea.

Rick did his best to ignore the man’s very vocal bout of seasickness, but it was a challenge because every ten minutes Dorian lunged for the railing to repeat his upheavals, though almost nothing but clear water was coming out any more.

Rick held the wooden railing, closed his eye, and focused on just the feeling of the ship riding across the waves. The rhythmic rise and fall seemed to help him conceptualise the unseen Veil of ether that formed the boundary between their realm, and whatever chaotic jumble of unrealised possibility lay beyond.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined the Veil like a vast body of water, similar to the same ocean that The Rogue Wave traversed. He knew it was covered in intersecting ripples that stemmed from every innocuous action that took place on its surface. People affected the Veil without realising it, because on a fundamental level they were a part of it; their movements, words, and even thoughts, all caused disturbances, like the tiny ripples of pond-skaters chasing each other across the surface of a lake.

By comparison, spell-casting was like throwing a rock into the water; Rick didn’t know of anything else that caused such massive disturbances in the Veil.

The act of performing magic was inherently violent, imposing your will onto the stable ether of the world, and forcing it to change. If your own will wasn’t enough to force the change, you could bolster it with power drawn from ether crystals, divine patrons, or in his case, the Book of the Undying King.

Ever since he picked up that Book, Rick had become attuned to those larger changes in the Veil.

It had taken him a while to understand exactly what he was feeling, but swiftly he began to sense the differences between different pieces of spell-casting and enchantments. It was almost like gaining familiarity with a new sense. Magic had distinctive and detectable qualities. The rhythm and scale of the waves they created were unique. No single piece of spell-casting felt the same.

The Book had transformed his perception of the world, and he theorised that if he developed his awareness far enough he might even be able to discern those more subtle disturbances in the Veil that still flew beneath his notice. In the future, would he be able to detect people’s movements without having to rely on sound or sight; would he even be able to comprehend their thoughts?

Dorian leant over the side again, dry heaving into the ocean.

The sound broke Rick out of his focused state, and his mental image of the Veil faded.

He sighed and stepped back from the ship’s railing.

Perhaps it was time to return to the spell-casting exercise that had been frustrating him all morning.

Rick planted his feet and prepared to speak an invocation.

The Book remained in his pouch, unopened, but he could feel it thrumming slightly through the leather in response to his intention.

He’d finally figured out that he didn’t need to read invocations directly from the Book every time he wanted to use one. If he memorised the words, he could speak them and cast a spell even without the Book present.

He spoke the words of the first invocation he’d chosen to memorise, a bolt of force that would lash out to strike a chosen target.

‘Auusvartun!’ he pronounced each syllable with sharp precision, and felt power gather to him in response, bending seaspray around his body in swirling patterns that danced in the air.

As quickly as Rick could, he started willing instructions into the power, assembling the shape of the spell, giving it focus and direction. The process was slightly tiring, but manageable. His stamina for spell-casting had grown noticeably since he’d started training himself in earnest, perhaps because he was being more efficient now.

Unfortunately, it still took him nearly twenty seconds to finish preparing the spell for release.

The power gathered in his hand. He raised it and pointed at the white crest of a wave thirty feet from the ship, then he let the spell fly with a sharp concussive Crack! that jerked his arm back with the recoil of the release.

Dorian jumped slightly, as he had each time Rick had cast the spell, and the writer peered over the railing to follow its path.

The bolt of force lanced forward. It covered the distance in a flash of green light and blasted a furrow through the intended wave. A plume of spray shot up and slowly rained back down onto the surface of the ocean.

If that had been a person, they would likely have a hole in their chest.

‘Bravo!’ Dorian weakly cheered.

Rick shook his head and cursed, utterly disappointed by the attempt.

His meditation break hadn’t helped. As he’d feared, he was plateauing.

Twenty seconds was exactly what he’d been able to manage yesterday, and all morning today. No matter how many times he repeated the same spell-casting motions, he’d stopped getting any faster.

Even with all his practice, even memorising the invocation and freeing his hands from the unwieldy Book, he couldn’t seem to reduce the casting time any more than he already had.

Why? What was he getting wrong?

He knew that some spells took a long time to cast, but that was supposed to be the more complicated and advanced ones. This spell was the most simple expression of directed force he could find, it shouldn’t be taking this long. Rick had seen wizards casting simple spells like this in seconds, with just a wave of their hand. Why couldn’t he do the same?

Rick paced around the quarterdeck, his mood growing darker. He felt like he was butting his head against a wall without making any progress.

The memory of desperately trying to form a spell to attack the Ragon’ta Hunter in the tunnels of Vishrac-Uramis had plagued him every day since. It was like he could still see those jaws turning to face him, and that enormous clawed fist being raised to lash out right before everything went dark.

He’d been too close, Fig told him. That was true. But it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been able to cast his spell faster. He could have blasted the Ragon’ta to oblivion, if he’d only been able to finish casting the spell before it could hit him.

As much as his inexperience in battle, the sluggishness of his magic had almost cost him his life, and not just him, Fig and Dorian as well.

He couldn’t bear the thought of Fig getting hurt again just because he was useless.

Not willing to give up, Rick spat, ‘Auusvartun!’ and tried again, and again, and again, blasting the ocean with one magical bolt after another, but he just couldn’t seem to break through whatever skill barrier was holding him back.

Rick was nearly at the point of tears, if his eye had only been able to produce any.

It seemed like his father had been right to deny him entry to the Magisterium to study magic. His family must have somehow realised a long time ago what he was only discovering now, he was just bad at this. He had no talent for it. He couldn’t do what other wizards could, and no amount of practice was going to change it.

He didn’t understand how it could even be done faster. As soon as he summoned the power of the invocation, it started struggling against him, begging to be released. He had to imprint it with instructions while he held it still, which was incredibly hard and mentally taxing.

Practice had whittled the skill down to a precise and efficient process, especially when he got the chance to do a single spell over and over again, but it was still like trying to build a sandcastle with waves washing over it and erasing everything while you were still building.

The power didn’t want to retain instructions, and unless you could hold your focus on the bits you’d already done, while you were working on the rest, it would all just dissolve back into a chaotic mass of possibility with no structure or direction.

The fact he’d got the whole process down to twenty seconds in the first place frankly felt like a miracle, but it still wasn’t good enough, because it wasn’t even close to what most wizards could achieve.

Again.

Again.

Slow, always so slow.

Again.

Dead, every time. What enemy would politely wait twenty fucking seconds for him to finish his spell? They’d just kill him, and even if Fig protected him while he cast the spells, that just made him a liability.

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‘For fuck’s sake!’ Rick yelled, kicking over his crutch in frustration. He wouldn’t give up just because it got hard. There had to be some trick he was missing.

‘Just take a deep breath and believe in yourself,’ Dorian interjected, ‘Once you do that, anything is possible my boy!’

Rick gave him such a dark look that the writer went even more pale, gathered up his things, and promptly left the quarterdeck.

‘Ok, come on, come on,’ Rick muttered, and prepared to cast the spell again.

He kept going, trying to figure out the issue. He knew exactly what he was trying to do, it just took the same amount of time, every single time.

Again.

Again.

‘Why are you doing it like that?’ a voice cut in while Rick was in the middle of another infuriating attempt.

Startled, he let the spell dissipate with a low whine of released energy, and looked around.

Grisson, The Rogue Wave’s quartermaster was leaning against the railing nearby, wearing a bemused expression.

‘What do you mean?’ Rick asked, slightly out of breath from the repeated angry casting.

‘Your spellcasting, it’s all backward. Are you doing some kind of weird training?’ Grisson asked.

‘I… No. Wait, what do you mean backward?’ Rick looked the man up and down. He was an older Vermili, and he’d been the one looking after Fig in her sickbed, but he and Rick hadn’t spoken much up to this point.

Grisson stepped closer as he explained, and gestured at Rick, ‘Well, I can see that you’re not using an ether crystal, which means you have some other kind of power source for the magic. I’d be very surprised if you could fire off spell after spell like that if you were just using your own willpower as a source. But you’re drawing power into your control before you shape the spell. That must be exhausting, and time consuming, so why would you do it that way?’

‘I don’t understand, how else would I do it?’ Rick sat in the stool Dorian had left behind, and Grisson perched nearby.

‘You haven’t received any magical training, have you?’ Grisson asked, scratching his fingers through his braided beard.

‘No,’ Rick admitted, ‘I have a pretty broad theoretical knowledge of the major concepts, but, no, I’ve never actually had anyone show me how to cast a spell.’

It felt a bit embarrassing to admit, but then again, for someone who’d been figuring things out as he went along, he thought he’d made a surprising amount of progress in five weeks.

‘That makes a lot of sense. Ok, as someone who was a Magisterium trained mage for over thirty years, let me be the first to tell you that you’re doing everything backwards,’ Grisson said, standing again and rolling up his sleeves.

He produced a glowing plum sized blue ether crystal from a pouch on his belt, and held it in his large fist so the blue light just winked out between his knuckles.

‘Do you mind if I demonstrate?’ he asked.

‘Please do,’ Rick watched with rapt attention as Grisson took a wide stance and pointed his free hand over the railing.

‘I’m going to approximate your spell based on what I saw,’ Grisson said, ‘I’m guessing it’s some kind of invocation based casting, so this won’t be exactly the same, but it should demonstrate the principle I’m talking about.’

Grisson’s brow knotted as he focused on a point in the near distance. He took a deep breath and as he released it Rick watched the ether crystal flash a brighter blue.

Light coalesced in Grisson’s outstretched hand and a bolt of near transparent force burst from his palm. It crashed into the waves and sent up a similar plume of seaspray.

The whole thing had taken only a couple of seconds.

Rick shot to his feet, staring over the rail as the tall plume of water droplets turned into a rainbow in the bright sunlight.

‘But… How!?’ Rick could hardly find the words, ‘I’ve practised that spell a hundred times and I can’t cast it anywhere near that fast.’

‘That’s because you’re making everything harder than it has to be,’ Grisson said, stowing his ether crystal and rolling out his shoulder to release tension from the spell’s kick.

‘It’s not your fault, necessarily,’ Grisson continued, ‘especially if you’ve never had training, but this is one of the fundamental things new magic students get taught in their practical lessons.’

‘Please, enlighten me. I feel like I’ve been going crazy up here all day,’ Rick was almost frantic for the old pirate mage to get to the point.

‘Ok,’ Grisson said, holding his hands up to calm Rick, ‘So when I say you’re doing everything backwards, I mean that you should be forming a clear shape for the spell with your will, before you draw any power; essentially the opposite of what you’re doing now. It’s really that simple. Most magic students, you tell them this once in their first lesson, and that’s it, but I guess you’ve been doing everything the hard way because nobody told you there was another option.’

‘But… That doesn’t make any sense,’ Rick said, ‘The power is chaotic potential. You can’t just make a shape for it and then release it all at once. I thought you have to hold it still while you imprint it with instructions, or it just fizzles and the spell won't work.’

‘That’s an interesting theory you’ve come up with, but I’m afraid to say it’s just not necessary,’ Grisson shook his head as he laid out the proper order of spell-casting, ‘You should fix the shape of the spell you want to cast clearly in your mind before you cast it. That idea acts like a conceptual mould, it’s ready and waiting to automatically encode instructions into any power you summon, and it can be released as soon as the amount of power meets the spell’s needs. You don’t have to encode all of the instructions to shape the spell manually while you’re actively restraining the power from being released. That’s… so needlessly difficult and awkward, it really is the worst possible way to do things.’

‘I can’t fucking believe this,’ Rick groaned and put his head in his hands.

‘Sorry to break it to you,’ Grisson said with a sympathetic grimace, ‘Try it for yourself and see. The ideas for more complex spells still take a while to shape in your head, and don’t get me started on stable enchantments, they’re a whole other thing, but most spells will be a lot easier to cast this way.’

‘I believe you, I’m just kicking myself that I didn’t figure this out earlier,’ Rick said as he got to his feet and prepared to cast the spell once more.

This time he fixed the concept of the spell clearly in his mind before speaking the invocation. It was astoundingly easy, especially considering he’d spent days trying to fix this idea into a squirming node of ethereal possibility. Without that obstacle, it snapped clearly into place, the shape, range, target, force, and all the little adjustments that went into shaping the spell were all ready in a second.

‘Auusvartun!’ Rick uttered the invocation and raised his hand to point at the waves.

Power flowed through him. He held the shape of the spell in place, and because it was already fully formed before the invocation was spoken, it was stronger than it had ever been before, strong enough to withstand the turmoil of the arriving power and shape it into the necessary shape for the spell to work.

Rick released the spell instantly.

Crack!

A perfect bolt of green force blasted into the waves.

It was almost embarrassingly easy, and it had taken him less than a second from speaking the invocation to casting the spell.

‘Woah, that’s more like it,’ Grisson said, ‘Well done kid, you’ve passed your beginner’s magic test.’

Rick didn’t respond, instead he held out his hand again and spoke the invocation three times in quick succession.

Three sharp retorts rang out across the water as three consecutive bolts of force lashed out at the waves, each spaced only a couple of seconds apart.

When Rick turned back to Grisson, he had a tired but satisfied smile on his face.

‘I wasted so much time…’ he said, ‘Thank you. I don’t know how much longer it would have taken me to figure that out if you hadn't come over.’

‘I’m just nosy,’ Grisson said, ‘and it’s been a little while since I’ve seen anyone except priests using magic without an ether crystal to fuel it. Invocation magic is very rare to see being thrown around in the open these days.’

‘How much do you know about this type of magic?’ Rick asked eagerly, ‘I’ve been trying to piece things together, but I only gained this power by accident. As you can tell, I don’t really know what I’m doing.’

‘There are no accidents where invocation magic is concerned,’ Grisson said, shaking his head solemnly, ‘You were chosen by something, a patron, or some kind of being that is lending you its power, and the means to summon it. Whatever it is, it will have its own reasons for doing so. That makes you powerful, and subject to fewer restrictions than most wizards, but just remember that the power isn’t yours, ultimately it belongs to something else and you’re just getting a taste of it, as long as your patron thinks you’re useful.’

‘Do you know if there’s a way to break out of the contract?’ Rick asked, getting out the Book of the Undying KIng and trying to show it to Grisson.

The quartermaster backed away, eyes wide and holding his hands up defensively.

‘What is it?’ Rick asked.

‘It’s better that you keep that thing away from me,’ Grisson said, ‘there could be unintended consequences if I touch it.’

‘Other people have touched it before, and they’re fine,’ Rick said.

‘I’m different,’ Grisson said.

‘Different… how?’ Rick asked, pulling back slightly, ‘I don’t understand.’

Grisson seemed to consider, then his face settled into resignation. He flexed his lean frame and a change came over him.

Rick watched in horror as the old Vermili’s eyes went the deep black of endless depths, and his skin took on the pallid tone of the drowned. Even though the sun shone down on them, Rick felt the utter cold of the deep ocean chilling him to his core.

Water pooled on the deck around Grisson, and his beard started to float upwards, its braids drifting as if in a light current. His feet lifted off the deck and he hung there in the air, just floating.

A moment later the effect was gone, a small pool of water had formed on the quarterdeck, but Grisson looked like a normal man again, standing casually beside the steps down to the main deck. Nobody else on deck seemed to have noticed any change whatsoever. Had that awful display been for Rick alone?

Rick’s back pressed against the ship’s railing as he recoiled in shock.

‘I have my own patron,’ Grisson said, keeping his distance, ‘and there’s no guarantee that our masters would get along if we forced their markers into close proximity.’

‘Oh… Ok,’ Rick managed.

Grisson looked at him, then sighed, ‘Didn’t mean to spook you quite that much. You really are very new to this aren’t you?’

He took a step closer, holding up his hands to show he meant no harm.

‘Let me give you some advice, boy,’ he said, ‘You should start carrying around ether crystals to fuel your magic when you’re in mixed company. It’ll help to hide what you are. There are people who hunt servants like us. I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve stayed alive by finding allies, and being careful.’

He walked to the railing and looked over at the deep ocean below them, ‘You should also be careful of others like me, if you come across them. Some of us are on opposing sides of a conflict most people will never even learn about, and all of us are dangerous in our own special ways. But don’t worry, right now I have no quarrel with you, in fact this has been a very refreshing encounter, helping out someone who's new to the game.’

Rick just nodded, too baffled to speak. The image of Grisson as a drowned corpse kept him backed into the corner of the quarterdeck.

‘As for how to break out of the contract…’ Grisson looked sad for a second as he looked down at the water churning below, ‘I really don’t know if that’s possible. I was fathoms deep when the Lady found me. If I abandoned her service, and she wasn’t sustaining me any more, I don’t know if there would be anything left to keep going.’

Grisson looked up at Rick and smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.

‘I’m sure you understand,’ he said.

‘But what are you?’ Rick finally asked.

‘Me?’ Grisson said. He thought about the question, then laughed, ‘I’m just an old sailor.’

He winked, and wandered down off the quarterdeck, leaving Rick alone with a confusing tangle of questions and feelings he could barely start to unpack.

As it turned out, he wouldn’t have time.

A few minutes later the ship’s lookout sounded the alarm.

Everyone flocked to the portside railing to see the pale sails of two ships approaching them from the north, four miles out and closing in.

One was a Frigate of similar size to The Rogue Wave, the other was a War Galleon, massive and packed full of soldiers.

They’d broken off from their patrol down the coast and turned out into deeper waters, making an aggressive line towards where The Rogue Wave was trying to creep past.

Mirabelle and Fig both appeared at Rick’s elbow, looking past him at the approaching warships.

‘Do we run, or try to bluff our way through with those forged charter documents?’ Fig asked Mirabelle.

‘Neither,’ Mirabelle responded, looking around, taking in the angle of the wind and the sun, and finally shooting Fig a feral grin, ‘I’m going to try out my new toys.’

[End of Chapter 16]