Silence then fell across the wasteland, the echoes of gunfire slowly fading in the night. Leaving nothing but anxiety in the air as others dashed out onto the deck, peering over at the cruiser from the Kerru-Bānû.

A few shouts arose as the captain dashed up to the bridge, ordering signals to be sent over to the ship, spotlights flashing in the night asking for answers from the other vessel.

Flashes returned back, but Mathew couldn’t make out what they said, the art of signalling beyond him.

Moments passed as the two ships spoke to each other, messages flung back and forth as more and more questions were asked. All until the silence was broken again.

It was like when the voice of the ice people was “talking” a few days prior. But no words were spoken. Instead inside of his mind, he heard a blood-curdling scream, the sound popping and cracking as its shrill tone bounced around inside of his skull. The sound nearly crippled him in that moment as his head pounded from it, as burry eyes saw something even more horrifying.

Eyes.

Countless, countless eyes in the sky replaced all of the stars and stared down at them all as they judged.

They judged.

The anger seeped from them. Every last one of them different, all belonging to different beings from a world beyond. Their malevolent gaze boring into his soul.

His soul his soul his soul his soul his sou-

The scream stopped. The eyes blinked out in an instant to be replaced with the stars once again. The pain ebbing away…

Mathew slowly climbed back up onto his feet, his trembling eyes scanning across the pack ice and seeing nothing. Everything seemed like nothing had happened.

And yet the images that could only be found in the Jælbath had flashed in front of himself and infected the world. Sights that by any stretch of the imagination should not exist at all. Even according to the most devoted bishops who fully believed the history contained in the holy texts.

He needed to find Smith and the Captain, and they should be in the same places as they were before. If something else hadn’t happened that was…

Then… He couldn’t help but think that there must be something lurking, even now. After all, if this was the same threats talked about in the Jælbath, they could be anywhere, and in any form.

----------------------------------------

The ship had been thrown into a mess of confusion and controlled panic, but through it all, the Black Diadem’s captain had arrived on the icebreaker and Mathew, Captain Janson and the head of engineering had managed to get together with him inside of the ship’s conference room. All with a lot of very important questions.

The captain of the Diadem had arrived with a small set of marines like last time, but with the admiral absent now and a splattering of blood across his uniform. The upper-class man’s face was stereotypically stern, even now in the conference room, but Mathew could tell there was a bit of uneasiness hiding behind it all. A well-groomed man trying to preserve the image despite what had happened.

Everyone could see it, with every eye in the room on him.

Captain Lewis stood up, straightening his dirtied jacket, “Gentleman, in all of my years of service, I have never seen what I have just witnessed. Never in my life have I see the wastes and skies turn into…” He swallowed, “Whatever in the twelve hells happened just now.”

“But what started that all!?” Mathew asked, “I don’t know what was being signalled during that time, but I heard gunshots come from your ship.”

“That…” Lewis sighed, “Is something that’s story goes back to when our airheaded admiral brought back the savage and that staff to our ship… He then seemed to get… Enthralled by the thing the next morning, insisting that he had to study it and the… Thing from the ice.” He shook his head, ”It was not an Inack and most certainly not human. At least not anymore. The only thing human left was its form.”

“And then he locked himself up with them?”

Captain Lewis nodded, “I suppose chatter from the ratings got out. Yes, he did spend almost all of his waking hours from that morning in his office with them. But when he came out for meals… His degradation between each of them was apparent. At breakfast on the first day, he was quite normal, simply stating his intentions to start his study. By dinner he was rambling about how fascinating the staff and the corrupted person was. Declaring that everything he was scribbling down in his logbook might get him an honour from his majesty. Damned prideful fool…”

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The captain sighed, settling back into his seat, “The second day he seemed a little pale and had spent the night “talking” to the thing. Never mind that the savage couldn’t utter anything approaching any kind of language I have heard, but somehow the admiral had been speaking to it.” A weak chuckle escaped from his lips, “But at the time I didn’t know if the change in his complexion was just the lack of sleep or something else… But by the third day, I knew it was not anything natural causing it. His skin was turning a pale yellow and he was talking about the supposed truths of the world and the true wonders of the “ley lines” further north. He was floating the idea around that we should be moving north, coal supplies and the storm be dammed, to find them so that we all could see them. At that point, I knew what I needed to do.”

“You started a mutiny.” Captain Jenson muttered.

“It was an idea that had been brewing in my mind ever since he decided to set off a month later than we should have.” He replied curtly, “The man believed that it would be fine with the Kerru-Bānû and completely dismissed the idea that the voyage could be completed faster without needing to cut through pack ice. He also dismissed the idea that in these uncharted waters we are still going through we might encounter a land mass that we’d need to take a long diversion to get around. He’s not been cut out for this since the start. So, by today it was sure in my mind I needed to do it to make sure we get out of here alive by removing the fool at the helm.”

“I thought it would be against your code as a naval officer to do so Captain.” Mathew said, “In all of my experience you sort don’t seem to be the sort to do so even in this sort of situation.”

Lewis scowled, “In this situation, it was a necessity. Something that became apparent when I and a select few marines stormed his quarters. In there he was in a daemonic ritual with the staff and the beast, praying to something in tongues. Something I can only imagine, after seeing those eyes in the sky, to be one of the daemons or old gods from the Jælbath.”

Everyone in the room looked between each other, Mathew resisting instinctually scoffing at the notion. Until his mind flashed back to only a few minutes ago.

“So, I sent the marines forwards to break it up, with the Admiral demanding they stop with the beast starting to growl. Then, as one placed their hand on the staff, the beast lunged at them and was shot, the Admiral trying to dash towards the one that had too the staff too before, in turn, he was shot as well by a marine with an itchy trigger finger. It was… Surreal. He was still in his uniform and looking like he always had, minus the skin change, but that staff had clearly started to corrupt his mind, taking hold of him and twisting him. With that, we decided to throw the thing into the boiler. But as soon as it was thrown in, it started screaming… Something that it seems we all heard. Which therefore brings us to now.”

“How, do we know that this is all real?” Janson asked, “Today we discovered that we might have been being poisoned throughout our entire voyage.”

“What!?”

“The cans… Their seals are older ones made of lead solder and are rather shoddily done, causing contamination and for some of the cans to spoil outright. We even had a man go mad because of it.”

“If you are referring to the same study that I am thinking about,” Lewis replied, “Then you would know that it cannot cause delusions of this scale unless we had been consuming lead for a long time. It seems like whatever strange forces that are related to that staff and these, “lay lines” have created a madness all of its own. Which might have catalysed with the lead poisoning to drive people mad while also displaying signs of the poisoning. Not to undermine the threat that the contamination poses, however. Do we have enough for a full voyage through the pack and to the nearest port on the other side of this sea?”

Janson shook his head, “I’ve yet to get a report on that, but if I’d have to guess, we could make it if we aren’t too picky and we start rationing…”

“Good, and I think you can also agree that we therefore need to leave now. Before daemons start boarding our ships or we starve. Whichever comes first in this hell.”

“But in which direction?” Mathew asked, “The ice is certainly passable if we go back the way we came, but continuing through the uncharted waters and making it out on the other end at Dean’s Outpost could be faster if we don’t discover anything in the way.”

Lewis turned to Mathew, “And do you still hold your statement from the other day that the ice is not increasing in thickness?”

He swallowed, “I… I would have to say so, yes.”

“Janson?”

“We have enough coal to run at full power for two more days than we need to and still make it with some to spare, so we should be able to make it through some thicker clumps if they aren’t too thick.”

“So as much as I am loathed to do so,” Sighed Lewis, “I believe the best way forward is to move forward through the ice as commanded by our late admiral. We cannot waste a day more than needed here when it seems that devils can peer at us from the sky. So that I assume, leaves you to speak.”

Lewis turned to the head engineer. Harry was a rather rough-faced man, his skin pocked with various calluses, burns and other bits of damage as caused by getting rather involved with the day-to-day running of the ship’s machinery. His black hair was blotched by even darker patches right now from bits of ash and coal that had settled there and had kept there, despite washing earlier in the week.

Harry grunted, “If you want to know how long it will take to get us moving, you’re a little lucky. We have been keeping one of our boilers on at a low burn to keep heating supplied and the generator on with the rest of them being cleaned out and ready to be fired tomorrow morning with the planned continuation of our voyage. But, it’ll still take us five to seven hours to get us moving. If we wake all of the firemen. Though there is only so fast those fires can build and those boilers do have a limit on how fast they build pressure so I can’t promise any faster.”

“Do it. If any of them are too tired to work, we can get some more down there to replace them.” Lewis said, not waiting a moment for Janson to reply.

“Well sir, you’ll just have to hope all the firemen can work as any old sod that you send down there to help will be more of a hindrance instead.”

“You have your five hours.” Lewis replied, “I’ll make my way back to the Diadem immediately. Janson.”

“Yes?”

“Be ready for few hard weeks of sailing, we need to be getting going with all due haste, for our lives depend on it.”