As the light-brown liquid flowed out the barrel, the man crawled below its flow and drank it. He drank and drank, for minutes on end. And I began to wonder where it all went. When I was an animal, I couldn’t even drink one hundredth or even one thousandth of what he had just drunk, so his unending thirst impressed me.

Finally, after three minutes, he rolled over and let out a long burp.

“Thanks for that. I needed it,” he said.

I didn’t know how to respond. At first, I thought he’d be a quiet, reserved man, but now he seemed like a loud, obnoxious creature. Anyhow, I wondered how he ended up on this ship. There had to be a good reason, especially if there was a wizard aboard. “What’s your story?” I asked.

“My story?” he replied. “It’s quite simple really. I was wandering about the port searching for something to eat and found this fishing vessel, but as I was about to take a salmon or two, they caught me. Oh well, happens.” He took another gulp of beer.

“Is that all?” I asked perplexed. “Wouldn’t they kick you out or give you a light punishment before sending you off? Why keep you here?”

“I don’t know, but if you want me to make stuff up, I can…” He continued to drown himself in beer.

Tired of this display, I crushed the barrel under my talon. The man watched the beer filter through the floorboards, but he didn’t seem greatly bothered. “Look, I need you to lead me to the other fishing ships. Or, better yet, the port where they dock.”

“Sure, but are you going to let me hitch a ride on your back or do I have to swim back? Because I don’t know how to navigate a ship nor swim.”

“On my back…” That didn’t sound too appealing, but I couldn’t think of another way. “Wait. I have an idea.” I jumped up through the hole I made in the deck and leaned overboard. “Ocean, can you push us back to the port? It is for your mission!” I yelled to make sure they heard me.

But, yet again, I didn’t get an answer. Well, this was to be expected, gods didn’t need to answer to beings. I hopped back down below deck and told the man, who I learned was called George, that we would let the ocean carry us to port. He was a bit confused and even negative about the whole affair, however, he eventually understood that trusting in the ocean was fine.

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#

“Land-ho!” yelled George.

The journey wasn’t long. It only took us about a week to find land. And since I had recently eaten so many hearts, and George had the whole crews’ supply to himself, neither of us had any problems. Still, it was boring. There just wasn’t much to be done on a ship, but soon I’d be saved from boredom.

I peered into the distance. I could see the people walk about town; our ship came to a stop on the dock where ships unloaded thousands upon thousands of fish. This was terrible. I knew humans ate a lot, wolves did too. But this wasn’t the same. We hunted for our food, we went out there on our own, risking our own lives—even losing it to it, to the hunt. But these humans relied on their ships, on their nets, and preyed on the kind and peaceful ocean. This couldn’t go on. Red tainted my eyes, but taking deep breaths, I reined in my emotions.

After all, the Ocean only asked me to restrict them to one day’s worth of travel. This was fair, and if I had to lose one or two feathers to keep someone else alive, it wouldn’t bother me. But I’d have an issue with it, if they took so many feathers, I couldn’t fly anymore. And for the ocean, this was fishing outside the one-day range.

I flew towards the city but decided to stay high above it as not to draw their attention while I staked them out.

There were currently twelve vessels of note. They were large ships like the one I had caught in the act. The others were smaller vessels which I could see fish off the coast.

#

It only took an hour before one of those large fishing vessels left the port. And when it did, I flew up and followed it from high above. In honesty, it was hard to follow due to its slow speed. As such, I was forced to continuously fly circles above it as it continued out to sea.

The day came to pass, and night arrived. And even though thousands of silver fish came to the surface, the fishing vessel didn’t take out their nets and kept sailing through the seas.

I wondered when the moon would go to sleep and how time moved so slowly when you weren’t doing anything of note.

After dealing with this ship, would I need to return to shore and follow another? I’d never get this mission done. After all, I needed to head to the Dead Empire. It was the natural progression of things and if I wanted to be granted another wish, speaking with a newly born demigod who’s still establishing his power should be a natural thing to do, especially when one was a being and the next closest thing to it in terms of power. We both had issues with the Empire of Flora, after all.

Anyhow, perhaps destroying the vessel outright wouldn’t be the smartest choice. I might be able to seize control of the crew and use them to guide me along the region where it would be illegal to fish. This way I wouldn’t need to waste so much time in transit and could deal with them all at once. They should also know how many of these large fishing ships exist, so I wouldn’t need to search for ships that didn’t exist.

But for now, I just needed to confirm that they would travel further than the permissible zone. And just as I was getting annoyed at the moon’s persistence, the sun came up, and the fish disappeared under the ocean’s shadow.

This was when the ship pulled out their nets. It was time to act.