The water was freezing. At first the waves had nearly shredded his small boat to pieces, crashing over his head as it did so, but as the storm quieted, he managed to find a few wooden boards floating in the water to hold onto. But that all seemed pointless in the middle of the ocean; Taramiel was lost.

Of course, Gloss would know by the time he returned to camp—if he managed it. The punishment would be severe. Another betrayal, he thought. What else could he have done? He fought with all the strength available to him, and so did his men. What could he have done to win? There was no hope, then. Why bother to fight? Why did Gloss send him to his demise, anyway? Wouldn’t he know? Shouldn’t he know what the outcome is? What power was an obedient servant like himself supposed to garner by comparison?

But those questions would only matter if he survived his journey. He looked once more around the water, and saw the horizon face back at him from every direction. He sighed. Now it was those damned gods’ choice what would happen to him. Still clutching to the wood, he let himself nod off in parts, keeping his eyes open, and himself awake, long enough only to keep a hold of his position.

And then his makeshift raft began scraping against something below. Taramiel opened his eyes, first emerging from a hazy fog, and saw beneath him soft and white earth—sand. He let his grip go for a moment and fell into the water, then started laughing. He noticed a collection of heads turn to him on the shore—he was at a shore, he thought, a shore—and watched him, eerily. Taramiel stopped laughing. The rest of his crew was there. Every single one that had lived. Of course, some of them had died on the journey, but even the bodies had decided to join them. And there was nobody else ashore.

Taramiel rose out of the water and rallied his troops together. Bodies were meant to find the places of their death, as the Sacredate commanded, and the bodies of their comrades were propped onto wooden boards and pushed into the water far enough for the tide to whisk it away. None of them knew what shore they had landed on or where the nearest spot of civilization might be, so they decided to carve a path out in the woods behind the shore and hope for something.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As Taramiel led the way, the same thoughts began to plague him. And the thought of that boy. He’d almost forgotten him, but now with a slightly clearer ahead he could see him. The realization had completely stopped him. If he had not hesitated, perhaps he wouldn’t be in the debacle he was now. What else could he have done?

He thought he could hear Gloss speaking in his head now, in reply: You had no faith in me.

But Taramiel knew it was a lie, and kept moving.

As the night grew deeper, Taramiel broken out of the trees and found a familiar path. He turned down to the left, and saw the moon hanging above a decently sized city. Taramiel walked closer some, checked behind him to make sure the rest of his crew was still following, and then stepped up to the barrier of the town, and saw the large ships sitting at the docks and bobbing in the water. Taramiel smiled. Perhaps this was one way that he could repay the Sacredate.

Balto spent a few days at sea to return home. The water was, for the most part, calm and kind. There were fewer people to take care of now, and he appreciated that. Although he missed something about the excitement of the fight. It was a feeling he didn’t have the chance to revel in frequently. Now all that remained was the aftermath.

And, strangely, he missed talking to the kid. Sartore, his name was. Balto laughed—he’d almost forgotten the kid’s name.

As the sun rose one morning, he spotted land at the horizon. He nodded at the sight of it, and he went on with his regular business.

But as they drew nearer, something was strange. He couldn’t see the town hall. Or the stadium. Or any of the other buildings, for that matter. Sure, they were some distance away, and the glare of the sun might blur the lines, but Balto thought that the image was uncanny.

Terror filled him as the ship slowly moved closer to shore. It dawned on him more and more, with every passing second, that those buildings really had gone missing. Soon he could spot the rubble where the city had been. Now the passengers had started shouting at the image of it, but Balto was frozen. The docks had been destroyed, too, with the ship skeletons part way through sinking below the water.

Balto didn’t have the strength to turn the ship around just yet. Doom, here, was inevitable.