Chapter 51: The Shattered Sea

For the first time since he left Bondook’s farm on this adventure, Miro woke up before he needed to. The eastern sky was cobalt blue against the black jagged line of the Deep Scar Mountains. The old archer was sitting with his back turned to Miro and the leftovers of their campfire – deep red dying embers that looked like the many eyes of a snoozing beast.

“You’re up,” Peteri said before Miro had even moved any muscle aside from his eyelids.

“Yes,” Miro answered hoarsely. The air was crisp and chilly, the coldest he had felt it since they came to the Lowlands.

“You’ve got another hour, if you want it.”

“I’m good, I could use the stretch.” He really could have – as Peteri promised, he did feel the soreness from the ride worse the following day, and a chill set into his bones while he was sleeping.

“I’ll get the fire started again for our breakfast.”

“Sounds good.” It didn’t really. A deep sinking feeling was already occupying his stomach the moment he woke up and it didn’t leave much space for food. In that pre-dawn light, Miro almost walked face-first into the side of their sleeping horse. He admired the animal in that moment, would have stroked her mane if she were awake. If it weren’t for her, there wouldn’t even have been a chance of reaching the temple in time. Miro would have still tried, and much like an overworked horse, would have passed away before giving up.

He stepped past the horse, whom he now dubbed Winterbug, because she deserved a name and no one else had given her one, and because her shiny dark coat reminded him of the shimmering carapace of the plum-sized beetles that moved in when most other insects had gone to sleep. Behind Winterbug, Miro found the stream, and chose to walk alongside it in order to avoid getting lost in the dark. It was not unlike the stream where he first encountered the black substance that he’d initially thought was a vein of fire rock, the place where he had introduced it into their lives and then insisted on pursuing its course, which eventually led to Hima having to fight for her life in a nondescript farmhouse in a village that hardly deserved a name and that now lay dozens of miles from the one person that apparently had any ability to help her.

It wasn’t the head-clearing walk that Miro had hoped for, and he had to stop to breathe in deeply and remind himself that for most of their journey the previous day, he and Peteri had not encountered any new traces of the black substance. Miro knew that what he needed was to build a mental wall between himself and the events of the previous day, as he wasn’t sure that a shaking blubbering mess would ever be deemed worthy of finding one of the lost temples of the – Miro realized that for all the knowledge folks seem to have of these arcane magic users, no one had bothered to give them a tidy label by which to refer to them. It was a welcome distraction, pondering the nature of the magical abilities of someone other than himself, and by the time he returned from his walk, Peteri had breakfast ready and the sun was peeking over the Deep Scar Mountains; this far north in the Lowlands, its disc a dull affair that burned whiter and colder than he had ever seen it.

“Come eat,” Peteri said, squatting by the fire and handing Miro a small wooden bowl. Winterbug was now also awake and contentedly picking at the grass.

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“I’m not hungry,” Miro answered.

“I didn’t ask if you were, I told you to eat.” Peteri stretched his arm further to Miro. “Whether you want it or not, your body needs it. And you might need your body to get through today.”

That was probably a bit more ominous than Peteri intended, and it did nothing for Miro’s appetite. All he wanted to do was get a move on, but saw wisdom in the archer’s words and ate his breakfast in just a few quick bites. Without further delay, they had Winterbug saddled and were back on their way, trotting through a country that grew only less hospitable the further they went. The tall grasses were replaced by sparser shorter relatives, and the temperature continued to drop to the point where it was no longer comfortable for the clothes they were wearing and Winterbug’s heavy breath became visible on the air.

They rode well into the afternoon, long past the time when they should have rested for lunch, as if Peteri too would rather have seen them to their destination even if it meant ignoring reason. Miro had felt the old archer’s tenseness grow with every passing hour and wondered if it was because Peteri also expected the coast to appear at any moment, but still it would not come.

There was no longer any room inside Miro’s body for hunger and he thought that he could keep going for as long as Winterbug’s legs would carry them when their journey led them to the top of a gentle grassy slope. They found themselves at the edge of a steep cliff, and finally the grand vastness of the Shattered Sea was revealed before them.

From here, it was easy for Miro to see exactly why it had been so dubbed. Though the water crashed against a rocky beach below them, there was not really an open sea to speak of – jagged rocks and treacherous shoals littered the surface, while imposing cliffs sometimes rose hundreds of feet out of the water.

Waves crashed furiously in a constant roar before them and the spray of salt water was carried by the bitter winds even to where they stood. To the east of them, the tail of the Deep Scar Mountains cut into the sea and disappeared into the steely-gray distance.

It was Miro’s first time on the shores of a sea and the grandness of it was making him dizzy.

“How does one sail something like this?” he asked in awe.

“They don’t,” came the short reply, and after a moment of silence Peteri chose to elaborate. “The Boundless Sea is a sailor’s sea. Not this one. No one could tell you if the rocks ever end.”

Miro could see that what the archer said made sense – even the smallest boat would have difficulty navigating the narrow passages below. The desolate landscape seemed like the perfect place for those who preferred to never be found and the only living souls appeared to be flocks of large black birds nesting on the sheer rockfaces, circling over the waters, and diving down, straight as arrows, in order to eat.

“Cormorants,” Peteri said, ever with the eyes in the back of his head, “About the only thing that lives in these parts. That, and the fish they eat, and that which eats them.”

“What eats the cormorants?” Miro asked as a shiver went through him.

“Best not to dwell on that one for now.”

They stood there in the echo of Peteri’s words for a few minutes, as the cries of the cormorants reached them sporadically above the sound of the waves.

Miro had never searched for a needle in a haystack, though he was sure that Bondook would have been disappointed to realize that the thought of making Miro do so never occurred to him, so there was nothing in Miro’s experience that would have aided him out here. Still, a thought had crossed his mind, and he unleashed a fireball in the direction of a distant cormorant that he picked at random from the flock.

The cormorant, as expected, flew away unharmed and entirely oblivious to any danger. The message that Miro, for the first time since encountering it, had actually hoped to see, blazed before his vision.

Debuff: Mother’s Blood

And yet this time something had been different – he noticed that the crackling yellow lettering was slightly faded on the left side. Miro turned his head in that direction – west along the coast – and his eyes settled on a faraway spot where deep narrow canyons cut from the sea into the land.

“That way,” Miro said, motioning with his head.

“You sure?”

“No, but I don’t think this was ever about being ‘sure’.”