The tower was even larger up close.

But words like ‘large’ didn’t do it justice. As the ship sailed into the narrow bay, its shores gray and dark, the tower filled Varro’s entire field of view like a mountain of shifting blue stone.

The ship rocked, and he looked down at the water breaking against its hull.

Dark, cold, and boundless. Varro swallowed. There were things in the water that even Seekers stepped lightly around.

One goblin would be little more than a snack in those depths.

The captain's deep voice rang out, startling Varro from his reverie.

He looked toward the big man.

The captain wore no hat, which was bizarre. The captains around The Wall wouldn’t be caught dead without a hat. But captain Reece preferred to let his black hair run wild, the thick strands flying about in the wind.

“Those of you getting off, gather around the main mast!” He didn’t have a thick Waller accent, either. Which made sense. Varro was pretty sure the man was from the shifting coast. But the accent was so entrenched in his mind as belonging to sailors that hearing the captain without one was jarring, even after a week on the ship.

Varro gathered at the ship's main mast along with four others.

Jalok waved, and he waved back.

Aside from the Grey Mane, there was a woman with dark skin and pitch-black hair done up in an elaborate bun. She wore a skirt of dark brown cloth and…leather armor?

Varro wasn’t sure where she was from. Maybe one of the splinter kingdoms?

Beside her, a tall man with tanned skin and sandy blond hair leaned against the mast, a wooden pipe clenched between his teeth as his fingers tapped out a rhythm on his chest.

His blond hair made Varro think he was from the shifting coast, but that was all he had to go on. The man was wearing simple travel clothes that could have been from anywhere in or around the empire.

The last member was sitting on a box with their back against the mast. She was a green-skinned woman with dark brown hair and luminous yellow eyes. She had a blank expression, and her unsettling eyes took Varro in at a glance before dismissing him.

Varro’s heart caught in his throat. He’d seen the woman on board, of course, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit of panic every time he saw her.

He was a swamp goblin. He’d grown up on stories of the monsters from the north, on why, precisely, they needed The Wall and why it was so important that his people helped protect it.

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This woman wasn’t a towering Kuth Xairie; she was one of their cousins, an Eith Xairie. As far as he knew, the Eith had never done anything to his people, but a relative of the Kuth still scared the hells out of him.

That was no reason to be rude, however, so Varro nodded to the woman before settling down.

Four sailors quickly gathered around them. Varro had learned most of the sailor's names but had trouble recalling them now, his thoughts still filled with swirling blue stone.

One of them approached Varro, her hand glowing with a wispy light.

Stilla? Or maybe Stera? He knew she had an S name.

Her hand landed on his chest, and the light flowed into him.

Varro blinked. He’d known this was coming. They didn’t want to risk a rowboat in these waters, so magic was the obvious alternative.

But the feeling! The cool power seeped into every fiber of his being, drifting through his bones before spreading outward.

It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it was strange.

He took a half step back, and his feet left the ground. His stomach lurched before the sailor caught him with a laugh, one finger on his wrist enough to stop him cold.

She’d been bestowed with one of the five gifts of Nieftila, the goddess of mist and travelers. The power to ‘be as weightless as the mist’ or simply Drifters.

Being able to make people and objects weightless meant they were never out of a job that involved travel and cargo or anything where weight was a major concern, really.

Two of the other sailors stepped up, imbuing the others with weightlessness.

“Alright,” the captain said with a clap of his hands. “Try not to flail around too much. Don’t need to make Rufus’s job any harder.”

“Huh?” The man with the pipe grunted before the last sailor raised their hand.

A furious wind swept over them just as the other sailors let go.

The salty wind crashed against Varro, dragging him into the air. He spun, and for a terrible moment, his eyes locked onto the dark waters with nothing but some glowing light between them.

But despite being more than fifty feet from the shore, they reached it in seconds.

Then the wind changed, pushing them down instead of forward. Just before they crashed into the rocky shore, it switched again, pulling them up short a few feet from the ground.

Varro slowly lowered, and then the white light vanished.

Varro’s weight returned instantly, and his feet struck the rocks.

He looked back to the ship, its length covered in the shadow of the tower.

A few sailors waved, and Varro and Jalok waved back. They’d be back for them tomorrow, and if they didn’t show up by then, they’d return in a week.

He marveled at the distance. They had been flung all the way from the boat like it was nothing. The sailors wouldn’t even be particularly powerful gifted. Hell, they weren’t even Seekers!

Excitement bubbled in his chest, waring with his nerves.

The island the tower was on was barren save for a single shack with a large rowboat docked next to it and the tower itself.

He turned to the tower. No one said anything save for Jalok, who loudly wished everyone luck.

Varro took a deep breath, and then he started for the tower of the mad god.