Woodrat was at the tiller. They had managed to temporarily fix it with some shark hide strips and wooden pegs. The shattered railing and decking were piled on the uneven deck, along with any other scrap wood they still had. Ozzy had to stay on the left side of the ship to keep things balanced until they could repair the damaged supports on the right that the shark had splintered.

"I've been meaning to ask you, where did you learn about hunting sharks and woomeras and such things? You even seem to be getting along with porpoises and talking to them. But I remember you saying that you had never spent time on a real ship before, and watching you move about the first couple of days convinced me."

Ozzy thought about how to explain things. Might as well start with the big question. "Do you have gods here in the smoke?"

Woodrat spat overboard. "Of course, we have gods! What kind of question is that? They aren't friendly, and they don't care if we live or die, but a man has to have a god to pray to when things get bad. I've heard there are quite a few, but I only know of some of them."

"There's Evergreen, she lives on the Islands and tends to the growing green things that live there. I saw one of her processions once. Seven priestesses came walking down from her temple with little trees growing in wooden pots. There was some song and dance, and then a lot of food was given out. That's why me and a few friends were there. They all got on a ship and sailed off to take the Evergreen's blessing to somewhere that didn't have trees. I don't remember much more, but the food was good."

"A scary one, Jack Fyrebeard, has dominion over heat and takes a special interest in the people who get too hot. Some of the pirate clans worship him as The Burning Ma. His priests are said to have beards and eyes of fire. He incites ships to go to war, where tempers burn hot and warriors burn so bright, they burst their furnaces. They say he gathers in their souls as fuel, to clean up the world and get rid of anger and hate."

"Let's see. There’s Palaimon, beloved of shipwrecked sailors. He gets a lot of prayers and sometimes sends a current to put a man in the path of a ship to rescue him. At this point, you'd think I'd be pretty friendly with him, and maybe I am. I've been lucky a time or two."

"Old Smoke is who made this whole place. The legends say he was a creature of fire that got lost in the Skye and breathed in too much air—unhealthy stuff. He coughed and coughed for an age and created the smoke. Every time he breathes out, we get more smoke, and he gets a little smaller."

"Aeto'le is the goddess of hunting, especially whales, sharks, and Kraken. She has an enchanted Harpoon that always returns to her after she throws it. She's worshipped on all the big hunting ships, especially when they go after Kraken."

"There are a few more, but I don't spend much time on the islands, so as far as gods go, I'm pretty much just for saying prayers to Palaimon when I can."

Ozzy listened as Woodrat told him about the gods in the smoke, then continued his own tale. "Well, in the Conjunction, we have a goddess of the hunt named Artemis. She blesses hunters who go out to hunt beasts, either to protect their village or for food. I helped to restore one of her shrines. The shrine would grant a hunter new skills for completing hunts of the beasts in the forest. Shark Hunting and Woomera were two of those skills, but I never had much chance to practice them until now."

Woodrat scratched his head. "Sounds a little like Aeto'le, although I only half understand that story. A forest is a lot of trees? That's damned rare here, and only on the rich islands. But you should sacrifice that heart we cut out to your Artemis then. A good heart is tasty, but a blessing is probably a better use of it. If she's like Aeto'le, she'll appreciate it."

Ozzy doubted he would find a shrine floating in the smoke. "It's a little difficult to do. How do you sacrifice to Aeto'le?"

Woodrat pointed at the heart. "Take that, and add heat until it glows. Think of something you want, and throw it into the sky. Supposedly, the farther you throw it, the better the chance of getting your wish."

Ozzy did as Woodrat suggested, and wished to hell he could go home. A few points of heat made the heart glow brightly, and he threw it as far as he could. The little speck of light went high in the air and flew out of sight. Neither Woodrat nor Ozzy could tell where it came down. Ozzy felt a little let down when nothing happened. Woodrat saw his face and clapped him on the shoulder. "The gods don't answer that quickly lad. Maybe something happens, maybe it doesn't. But it’s always good to offer up a prayer, you never know who is listening. Now, let's get back to work. You've got sharkskin to work with and I've got some wood to fix.

The sharkskin had turned out to be ideal for hide crafting. There was nothing like tanning here in the smoke, the shark hide was essentially already tanned. It was tough as an unsplit hide of cured sedge beast leather. Ozzy spent some time making himself a butcher's apron from the hide to gain some armor from it and a pair of pants to replace the set he was rapidly wearing out. The rest he rolled up for future projects or cut up into long strips that were useful for temporary repairs to the ship.

Dinner was shark, as it would be for the next few meals. It was better than most other fish and saved them time normally used for fishing. With nothing distracting him, Woodrat was able to get most of the repairs done in a day and they sailed onward, Woodrat navigating by some system of reading the currents of the smoke that Ozzy simply couldn't grasp. He chalked it up to one more thing he didn't understand about the Smoke.

Woodrat said there were islands in the direction they were headed, but he just wasn't sure how far. An Island meant a place to rest, better food, cold beer, and a place to trade and buy things. "Might be we find a larger ship we can sign on with. I'd hate to not have my own ship, but some of the big hunting ships use smaller, faster ships to scout for them. Or maybe we sell that Void Core for a ship a tad bigger than this one, take on a few crew and make some coin on our own. Lots of options when we finally get to an island."

"But right now, I think I'll take the option of a long rest. The helm is yours until morning, Mr. Ozzy." Woodrat laid back on the deck and was almost instantly asleep, a talent Ozzy couldn't match. He was barely sleeping these days, making all the time into one long continuous experience. The monotony was starting to get to Ozzy. He was used to working, but not to just holding a tiller or staring into the smoke for what was going to attack them next. He made an idle wish for something a little more exciting to happen. Unlike his other wish, this one came true very quickly.

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The sound hit them first—a massive explosion that shook them to their bones. Both men had been fishing and were knocked prone by the blast, and their ears were ringing. The smoke was riled up, with four-foot swells and small waves. The force of the sound tearing through the air destroyed their sail.

Ozzy saw a ball of light that had to be miles away come up from the deep smoke. When it got to the surface, fire and light shot into the air hundreds of feet high, and then fiery bits came back down, falling all around the plume of fire. It reminded Ozzy of a fountain...no, a volcano! It was like a volcano in the smoke, a place without land. And then as a dark peak thrust up out of the smoke, with rivers of fire running down its flanks, Ozzy revised that notion. Somehow that really was a volcano!

Woodrat stared at it. "Oh, by all the gods, this is bad. So very, very bad. I have to get a sail back up and keep us moving. Tie everything down and save some strapping to tie us to the mast."

"What's going to happen? A huge wave?"

Woodrat crafted a new sail, and they started moving directly away from the volcano. "Several waves. The smoke will form into some huge ones, over and over, as the turbulence sends them out. But the worst is coming sooner or later. A wave of heat and fire. That cone will get bigger, and then it will erupt again, and explode, and that's when we need to be further away. I'm not sure we can outrun it, and that's the only way we survive."

Ozzy shielded his eyes and looked at the flaming mountain. "How does that happen? I thought the smoke was between Skye and Fire?" His knowledge of planar geography was limited to what Woodrat had told him, and this seemed out of line.

Woodrat created a second sail, and they began moving again, faster and faster. "Go ask a Fyre Priest if you want answers; all I ever heard was that Rock gets frisky sometimes and comes to visit Fyre. It makes a big fist and smashes through Slag and into Fyre. If the fist is big enough, it makes it all the way through Fyre and into Smoke. And then it all goes to shit because Rock may play rough, but Fyre plays hot. Sooner or later, that first back there is going to get too hot to survive. We're just the little minnows that will be roasted and no one will care about."

The captain poured his own heat into the sail, and they skimmed over the waves for a few minutes until, with the sound of a bomb going off, another blast from the volcano destroyed the sail again and nearly capsized them. "Dammit. With no sail, we're dead in the water, and if I keep wasting my heat, I'll just be dead."

Ozzy could only look back at the volcano that was growing and growing. He saw movement in the smoke. They weren't the only things trying to get away. Pods of porpoise were racing by, alongside sharks and smoke suckers. Predator and prey were swimming side by side, not paying attention to each other as they fled mutual death.

A mile behind them, something bigger leaped into the air, coming down with a splash as it dove back into the smoke. It was heading in the same direction as them and looked to pass them by. The creature was immense with the rough shape of a shark, but with large dorsal fins on four sides, and a tail with four flukes. Smaller fins ran down its body in rows.

"What the hell is that, Captain?"

Woodrat had a third sail made and spared a look. His eyes got wide. "Gnarl Whale, a damned big one. Luckily, we aren't in the way of it. That thing will outmass a Ship of the Line. It's one of the few things that will live through this."

Ozzy looked at the whale and then turned the tiller. "Then we need to get closer. Help me steer a course that puts us next to it. It's moving a lot faster than we are."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Woodrat grabbed the chains connected to the sail and guided them to a new course. "You're insane! But I like the idea. Most likely, it will crush us or eat us, and we won't die in the heat! Death by Whale will get us a much better seat when we have to row out of death! Good thinking, Mr. Ozzy."

Closet the whale came, swimming through the smoke. Ozzy estimated it at over two hundred feet long, twice the length of a blue whale. It had multiple large fins along its dorsal spines and a huge tail. It was just below the surface of the smoke, racing along and making everything else move out of its way.

Woodrat maneuvered the Splinter until Ozzy could have almost reached out and touched the leviathan as it went by. He had his chain ready. A thick chain ran from the mast to a harpoon. He was aiming for a spot 20 feet away, and the whale was bigger than any barn. He wasn't worried about hitting it, but he was worried about what came after. He only had one shot before the whale would be out of reach.

The throw was good, backed by all his strength. The harpoon stuck into the thick hide and cartilage just behind one of the huge dorsal fins, and Ozzy held tight to the chain, pouring smoke into it and bracing his body against the mast. Woodrat had taken any wood not already in use and reinforced the bottom four feet of the mast with heavy braces. Both he and Ozzy were tightly lashed to the mast with lashings of shark hide, and hastily made chains.

The jerk when the chain became taunt was as bad as Ozzy had feared. His arms nearly dislocated as he did his best to keep the chain in one piece. The ship bounced twice across the smoke and then was towed behind the whale, and then directly on top of it. The whale moved up and down, sometimes even lifting the ship from the surface of the smoke. Other times, going deeper, and the angle of the chain became steep. Ozzy had the odd thought that this was the best fishing story ever.

The whale had thousands of times the mass of the Splinter. They weren't going to slow it down. The question was could they hold on. They were aided by the fact that the Splinter was the smallest of ships and sailed on top of the smoke without a deep draft. Added to that, the sail was down again. They were simply small chips of wood connected to the whale by a magical chain and anchored by the harpoon in its flesh.

It was getting hotter, and the waves of smoke crashed and rolled. They were unaffected, the bulk of the whale breaking through anything ahead of them and shielding them from anything behind. Woodrat had both hands on the deck, and Ozzy could swear he was fixing cracks in the wood as soon as they appeared.

Woodrat looked up at him. "Replenish your smoke! Burn your fuel and don't worry about your heat. Your furnace will be picking up extra. Don't let your smoke go low!"

It was good advice. Ozzy hadn't spent a life in the smoke, only a couple of weeks. His heat was up, and going higher! And he was so low on smoke, he might have died if Woodrat hadn't yelled at him. He took a little of his concentration off of the chain and started burning fuel to make smoke. Woodrat handed him a large chunk of raw shark, and he chewed and swallowed mechanically. As he filled up his smoke, he poured it into the chain to keep it from breaking.

Woodrat yelled and pointed ahead. Ozzy looked up and was amazed at what he saw. It was a ship. A huge ship. She reminded him of an English Ship of the Line, with three masts and several decks. He idly wondered if they had cannons here in the smoke. The massive sails on the ship were tattered and most were missing. She was limping along on only partial sail. Ozzy could see a hundred men running around the decks or in the rigging. Two dozen were lining the rails nearest them, pointing and staring.

As Ozzy and Captain Woodrat raced past the huge ship, riding on the back of the whale, Woodrat leaped to Ozzy's shoulders, holding onto the mast with one hand. He pulled out his sword which burst into flames, and he slashed a salute at the other ship. A dumbfounded Captain on the upper deck saw him and saluted back. Ozzy took just a moment to wave with one hand before putting it back on the chain that their lives depended on. Woodrat jumped down and checked that he was still secure.

"They may have a bigger ship Mr. Ozzy, but we have the faster one!"

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Her Majesty's ship, Dauntless, was in trouble, and Captain Cavendish wasn't sure for how much longer they could keep her together. The first blast had taken out half of the sails and knocked men from the rigging to be dashed on the unyielding deck, or lost into the smoke. The crew had scurried to do what they could, hampered by most of them being partially deaf.

Cavendish sent some thanks to Evergreen that they hadn't been broadside to the blast. They had been sailing almost directly away from where the eruption point was and that had saved them. "Where the hell is the messenger I asked for? We don't have time to waste!" A panting midshipman came running up the steps holding a glowing lantern. Cavendish took the lantern and looked at the small ball of light within. The Willowisp was fat and healthy, well-fed on heat from many of the crew. Now it was time for her to earn her keep. "I charge thee with delivering this message and release your bond when done. "From William Cavendish, Captain of Her Majesties ship Dauntless, to her Majesty, Liana, Queen of the Nine Isles. Eruption on the 47th day of our cruise, 2 days out from the Great Sargasso. Survival is doubtful. Magnitude of eight or higher. Firewalkers sighted. May Evergreen find our souls."

He wanted to say more, commend his crew and ask for promotions so their families would receive a higher death payment, and say something to his father and wife. But there was no time. "Fly, little one, Fly." He smashed the lantern with his hands, and the wisp shot away, flying to safety and hopefully all the way to the Queen.

"Sir! Captain! Off the starboard stern!" the lookout shouted through the loudspeaker and pointed at him.

The captain looked and saw a bizarre sight. A massive whale was coming up beside them, running from the same threat as the Dauntless, only much faster. Few things could match the size or the speed of a Gnarl Whale. This one was a titan of its kind, centuries old. And as grand a sight as the creature was, it was what was riding the whale that had every man staring.

A small two-huller was sitting on top of the whale, held in place by a giant of a man whose chain had snared the leviathan. Daringly, he turned and waved with one hand. More daring was his Captain. The smaller man in the captain's coat and tri-corn hat leaped to his mate's shoulders and sketched a salute to Dauntless with what had to be a flaming sword. Cavendish drew his own, more mundane, sword and saluted back. His eyes turned to the wake of the huge whale. It was so massive that it was flattening the smoke and creating a current behind it.

Cavendish grabbed the ship's wheel and guided Dauntless into the path the Gnarl Whale had gifted them. Any little bit of speed was a blessing. "Did anyone get the name of the ship?"

One of the lookouts with a spyglass had managed to identify the ship. "Aye, sir. That was the good ship, Splinter, Captain Woodrat commanding."

"If we find our way clear of this, I owe Captain Woodrat and his pet whale a drink."

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The Dauntless fell behind as the whale raced onward. Porpoises, sharks, and other creatures were being towed in its wake, drafting behind the behemoth and trying to survive.

Ozzy glanced behind them, not seeing the large ship at all, just the rolling smoke and the volcano in the background. Then the horizon turned red, and once again, the volcano exploded. Nothing was left of it, and a wave of heat poured out across the smoke, pushing the smoke and heating it, creating titanic waves. Ozzy tore his eyes away and paid attention to the whale. Would it dive deep? Did the smoke provide any cover from the heat?

Woodrat yelled and pointed. "Ships ahead, several of them. What the bloody hell?"

Ozzy looked to where he pointed. He saw several ships, but they looked like dark hulks, with no sails and few masts or spars. Many sat too low or were tilted at angles. The area around them didn't look like smoke, and there were no waves.

"Salad! Dammit. That's a Sargasso. A sea full of Salad and dead ships." Woodrat wasn't happy to see it.

The whale was though. It turned towards the dark mass floating in the smoke as if it was going to ram into it. "What the hell do we do, Woodrat?" The whale was going faster and faster, and it was all Ozzy could do to hold on.

"She'll dive deep! The whales will go under and use the salad for cover. It grows deep in the center of the Sargasso. When she starts her dive, you need to let us loose, or we'll be dragged under as well, and the hungry kelp will strangle us for sure."

Sure enough, as they approached the graveyard of ships, the Whale started down. The chain between them changed angles, and Ozzy released the Trammelian Chain from the harpoon. What had been a chain became smoke that wrapped around his arm and became a tattoo once again. The Splinter was back on the smoke, skimming along faster than they could ever go with sails.

"Let out some chain Mr. Ozzy, and moved to the back of the boat, we have to shift the weight, and make her lighter up front!" Woodrat had made his own chain and moved back to the edge of the railing. Ozzy did the same. He felt the boat shift, its front coming up from the smoke. As they hit the mass of sargasso weed growing tightly packed in the smoke, the catamaran's pods lifted up, and the Splinter skidded across the top of the Sargasso, slowly losing speed. Woodrat tried to use the rudder but it broke off as it caught on the heavy weeds. The ship bucked as they hit debris, and then came to a shuddering stop. Around them, tendrils of salad began crawling towards them.

The first wave of heat was nearly upon them, a huge wave of glowing air sweeping across the ocean of smoke. Ozzy grabbed Woodrat and threw him on the deck, covering him with three layers of sharkskin before laying down on top of the smaller man. The captain took offense to being manhandled. "What's the meaning of this, you big lug?!"

"Begging the captain’s pardon, but I'm trying to save your damn life. In the Conjunction, I can ward off fire from myself. None of you here have the skill. You need the fire. Except when a damned volcano shows up. I might survive, you won't."

Ozzy tried to remember how he had used his Active Fire Resistance. It was like a man missing an arm trying to flex it. He was still trying as a wave of fire roared across them, killing the top layer of salad that was even now sending tendrils up to grasp the Splinter and strangle its two crew. A moment later another wave followed the first, and then a third. The Sargasso burned, and the graveyard of ships became an island of ash and charred wood.