With the western coast so close, the sky along the horizon is enshrouded in an overcast grey. Even without all we’ve seen that tells us the sands counteract water, the sight of the vast cloud cover dispersing into clear sky as soon as it flies over the desert leaves little doubt. It is almost like the floating water containers have hit a wall… a barrier to protect our wasteland.

The Titan Alps cut from the north, all the way to the distant southwest on the other side of the ocean. Maybe it’s more appropriate to call it a sea in Leal’s people’s terms, but when there’s that much water, it matters little what name you want to give it.

Yalun and I have spent this trip almost no differently than the past few weeks. She continues to guide me in my self focus while inspecting my flames to both make sure I don’t actually take any steps toward growing my binding and continue searching through my inner flame. Sometimes, she’ll stop me from doing anything other than observing her, and she will grasp for more binding.

Her examples have allowed me to understand with a clarity her explanations don’t — not to say she’s bad at explaining — but even feeling her flames as she clasps more binding isn’t enough to be ready to try myself. At least Yalun doesn’t believe so.

The typical method to enhance binding is incredibly abstract. A lot of her explanations rely on metaphors and feelings. Most of which I’m lucky to have a decent understanding of because of my already high binding level, but I can see why it might take a dozen years to be ready to try for the first time.

Intrinsic alteration to your very soul is not something that should ever be approached lightly. An instant burst of all an áed’s energy isn’t the only danger to one trying to improve themselves this way. If you lose concentration while attempting a grasping, a split in consciousness can cause two separate bodies to be formed. Both missing fundamental qualities that allow an áed to live, resulting in these two new beings’ deaths within the day.

Intensifying one’s heat has some similar risks, but considering it does not involve adding aspects that aren’t already there, the chance for death or other tragedy is far lower. I learnt about that too, but considering the best way to gain in heat is to compress it over a long period while in the hottest environments possible, it’s not exactly something I want to bother with.

Increasing my heat would be great, but I don’t want it to take decades to reach the next rank.

Well, the way it’s going with my current training, it might be a decade before Yalun lets me grasp for more binding. I know my impatience is exactly what she’s worried about, but I really might try it myself if she doesn’t let me soon. It’s a good thing we have this detour, all things considered; it keeps me distracted.

“Push harder,” Śuri commands. “No, the others can feel it. Narrow your focus. Apply your pressure to nobody besides me.”

And then there’s Śuri’s presence training. His methods are more harsh and militant than even Bunny’s. After that first day with him, I’d thought his method of teaching would be rather similar to Yalun’s, considering how they teased each other. Whenever he takes charge, I get no rest. Everything is to be done perfectly and immediately, lest I be punished with his own overpowering presence.

The only relief I have is that we are still flying, so he’s limited by what he can do. Though the amount of times I’ve collapsed in exhaustion upon Grímr’s back now is extensive. Who would have thought controlling presence could be so tiring?

In the times I’m not squeezing out what presence I can manage, Grímr and Śuri spend the time chatting. The two have hit it off surprisingly well. Most of their conversations remain around the eastern nations. Śuri is clearly interested in anything beyond the wasteland, and Grímr is all too happy to talk almost non-stop about the places he loves, even going into the áinfean and how they live with in cooperation with his portian.

Now that I think about the áinfean, I never did get to fight alongside Spenne again like I promised. Hopefully, he won’t hold it against me when we meet.

Once Leal got everything she wanted out of Śuri, she closed herself into her notebook again, rarely looking up for any reason. I’m not sure if she just doesn’t care to talk further, or could only manage to do so because of her curiosity.

The ocean finally comes into view. Waves continually fall over the sands, only to evaporate into nothing as the water attempts to slide down the dunes.

“What the…?” Grímr blurts.

I tilt my head curiously his way, but he doesn’t elaborate, simply stares ahead. Leal looks up from her book and immediately locks onto the ocean, her eyes widening.

“What?” I ask. No matter where I look along the shore, I can’t see what surprises them.

“That’s not what a beach is supposed to look like,” Grímr says.

I twist my head between Yalun and Śuri, but neither seem surprised. Am I the only one that sees nothing weird? I mean, this is only the third time I’ve seen the ocean touching land, and the first touching desert, but how could it not be what it looks like when we’re looking at it right now?

Leal’s head swivels between the ocean and the desert behind us before she asks, “Does… does the entire wasteland sit below sea-level?”

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“Besides a few mountain ranges and the southern cliffs, yes,” Śuri says.

“Then how…” Leal bites her lip for a second before pulling back her notepad and writing rapidly.

“Okay.” I’ve had enough being out of the loop. “What am I missing?”

Grímr tilts his beaked head back enough that he can see me while motioning to the ocean before us. “The water is flowing onto the sand like a waterfall, rather than the normal back-and-forth motion you would see anywhere else.”

“You said the ocean has been overtaking the wasteland?” Leal asks Śuri. “How long has this been happening? How far has it travelled?”

“As long as I’ve lived. I can do you one better than tell you where it started; I can show you,” Śuri says. “Just keep flying straight, Grímr. It’ll still be another day before we arrive.”

“Whoa, wait. It’s raining out there.” Yalun backs off in her flight. “Let’s at least wait until it stops.”

“Yalun, you said you can manage the heat in my chambers now; a bit of rain should be nothing,” Śuri says. “Besides, it never stops raining over the western ocean.”

“But what about…” Yalun points to me, but I’m already sitting on Grímr’s back with my waterproof outfit tied tight. “…Fine.”

So, while I knew it would happen, we fly over the ocean. As soon as we fly across the border between sand and water, the world darkens. The sun now blocked by the dark clouds above really pounds in the message that every direction is now a threat of danger. I’ve never been surrounded by this much water before, and it is not as easy to shrug off as I’d assumed it would.

Yalun, flying beside us, gives off a lot more heat than she usually would. Whether it’s a preemptive method to hold off the water or a slip in her control because of stress, I find it oddly nice to have someone else amongst my travelling partners that knows water is something to fear.

“Hey, Yalun? What’s the smallest you can make yourself?” I ask.

“About as tiny as a jerboa,” she says, tilting her head in question.

I open up my hood a little. “There should be enough space.” I invite her in.

She hesitates for a moment, looking Śuri’s way, before she dives in, already making herself smaller. She makes me take her twin daggers while transforming into — as she said — a jerboa. The tiny thing sits on my head and I pull the hood back over, tying it closed.

“Thanks,” she says.

Śuri shakes his head in disappointment, but I don’t mention it. Yalun likely feels his movements, anyway.

“Wait.” Yalun pokes her now minuscule head out before I can seal her away. “If it takes a day to fly over the ocean, how do you usually travel there, Śuri?”

“Don’t you already know? I kite-surf.”

“What! No matter how much heat you have, the ocean is still the ocean. How could you do that?”

“Easy,” Śuri says. “Just don’t fall.”

❖❖❖

When Śuri said we were a day away, I thought he meant from our destination, not some stop on the way.

The skies have done nothing but unleash on us for the past hours. The innumerable droplets vaporise before coming close to Śuri, but the mist that results still irritates the grand elder. Even with those incomprehensibly hot flames, he is still not truly immune to water, though he is doing much better than Yalun and I, huddled inside my snowsuit as we are.

Grímr tried to fly through the clouds, so we could coast above the rain, but that turned out much harder than expected. Immediately upon entering the cloud formation, his wings iced up. That wasn’t much of a problem considering his three áed passengers, but the higher we went, the more ice tried to crawl along his wings.

It didn’t help that the air within was too turbulent to keep consistent flight. Grímr had to activate his inscription to keep himself heading straight and up, but even after gaining what we assume to be a few kilometres of altitude, the obscuring clouds refused to disperse. As we were getting too close to dangerous heights, we had to give up and return to the rains beneath the clouds.

Eventually, through the heavy obscuring of falling water, large, dark objects make their appearance. There is one directly ahead of us, and a couple to each side. The rain makes their shape indistinguishable, but their size is unquestionable as we approach.

“Ah! We’re finally here,” Śuri says. “These ancient structures marks the ocean’s shore a millennium ago. Grímr, you should be fine to land on them.”

As we get closer, the dark structure becomes clearer. It’s not so much a structure itself, but rather the framework of one. Plenty of missing sections leave it hollow and riddled with holes, but once I get a good look, there’s no denying I’ve seen something similar before.

It is just like the cube we found out in the middle of nowhere.

Unlike that water fountain of a city, this one doesn’t gush out rivers of water from every direction. Rather, it looks dead in comparison. Waves crash against the four thick leg bases that sink deep beneath the ocean, but while the structure doesn’t shake or wobble under the assault, it slowly rises and falls with the overall motion.

The massive metal cube floats.

“How many of these are there?” Leal asks. She’s looking to the south, where another is barely visible.

“About three hundred or so. When they first arrived in the wasteland, our elders scrapped them for ever resource they could take,” Śuri says.

“So, none of them are active?”

“Active?”

“We found one still intact on our way to the Agglomerate. It somehow made water from nothing.”

“Interesting. Sounds much like the island we are heading to. Did you find anything about what causes the creation of water?” Śuri asks.

“If a certain duo hadn’t stopped us, we could have found out how it worked,” Leal playfully accuses.

“What?” I ask. “Would you rather face that blast alone next time?” Leal avoids eye contact, so I shake my head in derision. “Thought so.”

Grímr lands on a large metal beam connecting two major pillars. Some scrap metal breaks off under his weight and falls a few hundred metres to the waves below, clattering against remnants of the cube on the way down. To think there are hundreds of these metal structures that somehow avoid sinking across this ocean.

“It would solve a lot of our problems if we scavenge these structures for more of their metal — there is still plenty left — but unfortunately, the ocean makes that impossible.” Śuri jumps off Grímr’s back, landing on the thick connecting beam. He snaps off a portion of metal — the beam itself remaining undamaged — and eats it. “The only feasible method would be to create ships of our own, but the problem with that should be clear in of itself.”

The higher half of the cube is picked clean, but as Śuri said, there are still plenty of resources to take. Enough for a tribe to survive for a century. The legs of the structure remain the most intact, which is understandable; not even the áed of thousands of years ago would have wanted to be that close to water.

“We’ll wait until Ember’s light has passed to move on. From here on, I want everyone keeping an eye out; the ocean has been home to the Titan Charybdis. It left four years ago, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come back.”

“How will we know?” Leal asks.

“It’s a Titan,” I say. “You will know.” Śuri nods in agreement.

I’ve only seen two Titans, and both of them were nightmares in their own right. Hopefully, this Charybdis is gone for good.