Woodrat noticed immediately when Ozzy came on deck for his next shift. To the captain, it was obvious that Ozzy had moved to the third tier. He clapped his mate on the back, shook his hand, and congratulated him. "I'm a couple of leagues behind you, but a few more adventures, and I'll catch up."

The rest of the crew waited for him to come down to the lower deck and congratulated him one by one. Butterbelly grabbed the Butcher, gave him a bear hug, and patted him on the head. "Keep growing; I want you at least two feet taller by the time you meet my family." Mariah whirled around him and then gave him a deep bow before racing to the top of the mast where Derek was on lookout.

The young man leaped from the crow's nest, drawing his sword. As he was about to land hard and break a leg, winds swirled from his blade, slowing his descent. Landing, he sheathed his blade and gave Ozzy a smart salute. "You don't have a deck of your own, but I can tell by looking at you that you will stand on one soon."

Woodrat allowed the crew some time to congratulate his first mate and then yelled for their attention. "We'll have another little party tonight. But for now, let's get back to work. Mariah, I want you and Derek to check the navigation and switch the lookout each hour. I want fresh eyes up there. The course I've set is back along the route Mr. Ozzy and I took to get to the salad. We left the Dauntless behind while we went whale-surfing, and I'd like to find out what happened to her. She's a well-built ship with a strong crew. They could have survived."

The crew went about their duties, and Ozzy joined Woodrat on the bridge. "You think they made it?"

Woodrat shook his head slowly and shrugged. "I can't say. That was one hell of an eruption. You and I survived the heat because of strange circumstances. Dauntless certainly had captains about who could put shields on the ship, but the blow-up was so sudden, it might have took them by surprise. Their sails were in tatters, and the crew was scrambling to clear broken chains and relight the sails. If the right people survived the first part of the eruption, they might still be on the smoke. Or she might be a ghost ship full of charred."

"And since then, this blasted heat has made life difficult. Half our crew would have been dead with burst furnaces if you hadn't pulled out the excess heat. If Dauntless isn't a ghost ship by now, she's bound to have a lot of ailing crew."

Ozzy looked out over the smoke. The surface was still choppy, with big swells rippling out from the eruption. There was more time between the waves, but they were getting larger. "How long does the sea stay like this?"

Woodrat looked in the direction of eruption, just over the horizon. A glow lit up the area, and an angry rumble now and then. "This is a big one, but I think it's subsiding. It's still pouring out some heat but it will go away in a month or two. But the damage to the smoke has been done. Things are too damned hot. The little fish have run for cover, and the big stuff is dying off or being eaten by bigger things. And if the monsters from the deep wake up, everyone has problems. Well, everyone who doesn't have a fast ship as we do."

"I don't think anything can catch us this side of a cyclone. The Splinter is everything I ever wanted. Big enough to sail where I want to go and fast enough to get away from anyone I piss off. I might even try my hand at a little merchanting. There are a lot of small villages perched on reefs and needing things only found on the islands. Big ships want to avoid bothering with them, but those out-of-the-way places have their own riches. Shell, pearls, clams and mussels, sea snake hides, and seasoned driftwood. And auric. A village might only produce a few pounds in a year, but if an enterprising and handsome captain in a small ship could find twenty or thirty of those villages, it would add up to a lot. Much to think on."

He turned to Ozzy. "And a place for you if you don't find your way home. Keep that in mind if you get feeling lonely." Then he smiled brightly. "Or you could head to the land of the giants and get a wife with 'legs like tree trunks.' My, the girl sounds lovely, doesn't she?"

Ozzy laughed but said."Not for me. I wouldn't want to annoy the woman. The part of the story about braiding her hair with her other boyfriends' bones sends a clear message. To be honest, I'm a little on the small side for her."

"Well, that can change. Take up Butterbelly's offer to visit his home, maybe get invited to the clan, and start eating ten times as much, and you'll start growing. We had a sailor named Edward on Bolt Thrower who got tossed overboard when pirates attacked the ship. He was counted among the dead, but a year later, he was on the docks wanting to rejoin the crew. He claimed he got picked up by a fire walker after floating for a month and spent some time in Muspelheim. We'd have called him a liar, except his skin was bright red, and he'd grown four feet taller." Woodrat got distracted by a scuff mark on his deck. He glared at it until the wood smoothed and became dark black with infused smoke.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Derek's voice called out. "Disturbance in the seas dead ahead, captain! Something big is coming up!"

Woodrat began yelling orders to the crew to shift two of the sails, then turned the wheel of the ship hard. The rudder bit into the smoke, and he threw heat to the new configuration of sails. "Mr. Ozzy, brighten the main sail by a notch if you can. Maria, get up there and make sure our lookout is securely chained to his spot. The rest of you, chain yourselves down or grab on tight."

Ozzy leaped down to the main deck, causing the planks to groan in protest. Making sure no one was in the way, he breathed out enough heat to make the main sail glow, dropping his own heat by 1000. Heat the Sails was at rank 4, more than doubling the amount that went into the ship.

Heat the Sails has increased to Rank 5. INT has increased to Rank 1. You have gained +1 INT

Heat that you imbue into a Ship's sails will be increased by 2.5

You have gained an ability that will manifest in the Conjunction.

He made the mistake of looking at the notification, and it almost got him thrown overboard as Captain Woodrat turned the helm hard over to starboard. He didn't trust grabbing ahold of the rail as he fell and instead reached out to the mast. His chain tattoo became a thick chain that shot out and wrapped around the mast. He grumbled under his breath and made sure to turn off notifications.

The smoke boiled up and three humongous tentacles, each bigger than the Splinter, broke the surface. One of them made a grab for the ship, but the sudden turn and burst of speed allowed the ship to escape by a distance of a few feet. "Top off the sails, Mr. Ozzy. I need all the speed we can get. Butterbelly! I want two staysails set at the bow as soon as the first mate has the jib sail heated. Mariah! Make sure the chains are set correctly for the top sail. It will be hard enough for the first mate to light it, and I don't trust him moving around up top."

Ozzy carefully moved forward to where he could heat the jib sail. As soon as that was done, he moved back to the mast and looked up. "Stay put, Derrek! I don't want to hit you". He threw the Trammelian Chain hard, and the end wrapped around the top of the mast. He ran up the chain ladder as fast as possible, keeping the tension on his safety chain tight. The ladder had taken some time to create. Every bit of it was done with a Kraken weave and could support even Butterbelly's weight. Derek was looking in all directions and calling directions to the captain. Mariah was hovering in mid-air, looking almost transparent.

"Clear the sail!" Both of his crewmates were well clear, but Captain Woodrat wanted a tight ship run, part of which meant a safety warning before you spewed out enough heat to char a man. The top sail was only a fraction of the size of the main sail, but he needed to use enough heat to both create it and bring it to full. Hanging by his chain and feet on the ladder, he breathed out fire that filled the area between the chains, the sail glowing brighter and brighter as he added more heat.

Mariah was observing. "She's full; back off the heat and head down." She was glancing worriedly around the ship. Ozzy also paused to look and saw several more denizens of the deep emerge from the smoke. "What are those, Derek? Kraken?"

The lookout nodded, but his attention was on the smoke. "Aye, Kraken. Big ones from down deep. That first one almost got us. I can't identify them, but it doesn't matter. Any one of them could crack us open and eat us for breakfast. Somehow, we are drawing their attention."

"Captain! Look to the Skye. We've got more trouble coming!" Mariah was pointing to Skye.

Against the grey-white of the Skye, a dozen titanic cyclones could be seen dropping towards the smoke. Each was bright blue.

Ozzy had dropped down to the deck and moved to where woodrat was chained to the poop deck. "We have trouble, Mr. Ozzy. One of the greatest terrors of the smoke; it's going to rain."