Karadra's Shipwreck

The Ship - Chapter 15

“At first, there was nothing, Arsik. Only what you see around us.” The captain’s gesture encompassed their surroundings; his eyes remained black, lost in thought. Arsik followed the journey of his words. “No ships, no people. Not even animals; only the waves, the rocks, the earth. Only those.”

There was something magnetic in the captain’s voice. Arsik could listen to him talking about anything.

“At the beginning came the First Gods. Believe it or not, they were women, and trouble started as soon as they set their foot here,” he couldn’t help laughing again.

“Damn that wicked rum, now’s not the time,” Arsik choked on his own laughter.

“They traveled to the ends of this beautiful world. We don’t know where their journey began, or why, but that’s what the scriptures tell us. Until they found the crater at the center of the world. Have you heard of it?”

Arsik nodded. “The Sentinel’s crater. Yes, I have heard of it. Where the Meteor fell.” Maestra’s hair.

“Exactly,” Sentrik concurred. “That was the place that drew them, and they understood that in this place there was power. The nectar of the Gods; the Meteor’s power.” He gulped down more rum. “In order to dig and claim its power, they brought more Gods here: ancient, powerful miners. They succeeded in breaking through the Earth’s crust and worming their way to her insides. And then…”

They exchanged a look. “Our Earth was disturbed,” said the captain. Arsik swallowed, his throat dry. “And reacted, of her own volition. Having the same amount of ambition as we do, the Gods had made a mistake, had committed a sin; there was no return after that. The planet itself spat out a creature, the Great Sentinel, to protect this world from the First Gods. A cosmic misunderstanding, as Tarlan used to say, the priestess’s young assistant, gods bless that little s**t,” he chuckled as he drank.

“They started fighting, you know,” his voice thickened by sadness. “The Sentinel and the Gods. And then the creature forged the races for them to come to its aid and they did as they saw fit. Some of them helped one side, others helped the other. The animals were a part of this war too, and every creature you can imagine from all over the world. Everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve heard of, in one battlefield. That would be quite a sight, don’t you think?”

Arsik nodded, his eyes blurry.

“The battle lasted for years and the planet suffered because of it. They lay waste upon it, Arsik, ravaged it… People were divided in armies now – kingdoms, weapons, chariots, magic. The Gods had enlisted their help; they fought side by side in glorious battles, lad. And through this tragedy, glory arose, but also a few individuals: cunning mages. Four of them changed everything.”

Their eyes met again. Arsik realized they were getting to the heart of the matter. He could always sense it. He stopped drinking.

“The first four mages had become so powerful, they decided to put an end to the Battle of the Gods. Such was their ambition but also their abilities, godsdamn them,” he spat on the floor and sipped from his cup. “I have forgotten their names. Sokar, Missandria… Wife! The names…”

He paused midsentence and c****d his head. A moment later, he answered an inaudible question with a smiling yes, as if he were lost in thought. “Right…” he muttered. “Thank you.”

He turned back to Arsik who was watching him curiously. “Sokar, Missandria, Akrayn and Taarum Thiaspis. Those were their names, Arsik. And the power they had acquired by all those years spent by the Gods’ side, on the virgin lands of Vitallia, with the Meteor’s magic welling up so close that you could smell it like spice… It was terrifying, Arsik.”

A gust of wind blew forcefully and overturned their cups. Startled, Arsik shot to his feet; rum stained the captain’s shirt. “Godsdamn him,” said the captain. “We are getting closer, you see. It won’t take long now.”

Arsik winced. “Captain, where are we? Less than two days ago we left Saraport and I still can’t see the black shores of Orkandus or Thetir Island. I am trying to figure out what course we’re following but it makes no sense.”

The captain bowed his head in acknowledgment of his question. “The course is not wrong, Arsik, but you are right. We passed by the shores of Orkandus quite early in our voyage.”

Arsik remained unconvinced. “But how? With this breeze? Up until now there wasn’t even that; it was perfect stillness, captain, how could we have covered such a distance? We need a week to leave the bays behind and this only if all goes well. Unless there is a secret route I’ve never heard of.”

The captain smiled and pointed at the steering wheel. Arsik watched it moving on its own again, guiding the ship according to the wind. “The course is the same, Arsik,” the captain repeated calmly. “It’s the speed that’s different.”

They sat on the bench again. “My wife… Karadra is guiding it with her powers. When she is rested, she pushes it with such force that it glides on the sea as if it were butter – with incredible speed and regardless of the wind’s direction, eh!” Admiration and sadness mixed in his voice. “You simply failed to realize it because you had shut yourself in your cabin with Maestra for hours,” he chuckled.

Arsik blushed with embarrassment and bared his teeth. He wanted to tell the captain to lower his voice. Quite pissed, he felt his ears flushing red. He didn’t want Maestra to hear them. If she found out they’d been talking about her and Arsik, she would be furious, and that was more important to Arsik than the Battle of the Gods.

The captain kept chuckling. “Look at you! No reason to be like this, who cares what you’ve been doing?”

Arsik crossed his arms over his chest. “So, you were saying that your wife is guiding this ship with her mind?” The captain nodded. “And she’s also making it accelerate to such a degree? We are already past the black shores?”

“Right,” confirmed the captain and Arsik pursed his lips thoughtfully. “That woman could do wonders, Arsik. Ah, if you’d met her twenty years ago, she could change the world with a simple nod of her head, Arsik, a simple nod…”

Love shone in Sentrik’s eyes. When he talked about her, his tone changed, his eyes glimmered, and the years were lifted off him like an invisible cloak. Arsik liked him for that. Was this the way he would sound when he would be speaking of Maestra?

“Please, go on,” Arsik prompted.

“The mages, then, decided to intervene. In order to deliver the definitive blow, they thought it wise to summon an even greater power to put an end to the war – because all the signs, they said, indicated that if the battles didn’t stop, our world would not survive, Arsik. The trees would be uprooted, the mountains had already been eaten away, the waters were retreating. Nature herself cried for help, as did the Titan she’d created to fight for her, but who listened? No one.”

Arsik swallowed, grief settling in his heart. Humanity would always be like this.

“So, they brought the Hunter, the Black Knight as they called him, Nedel. Here in the South, everyone still calls him Armageddon.”

Numerous times had Arsik heard about the Faith of True Existence and the Hunter. Its followers were the only prisoners he’d ever seen not being afraid of the Temple of Nothing on Sing Island. They believed in the one and only true existence, the one after death, when they could become part of the Hunter’s cloak in the eternal life of power, walking the path of the Spiral – an endless hunt of evolutional superiority that seemed just as pointless as any other religion’s great idea.

“But when he arrived, he tricked them – such was his nature, or they simply could not control him. And how would they be able to, those fools.” The captain spat again. “Why would you summon someone to beat a force you can’t beat yourself and then expect to beat them afterwards?”

Arsik smiled. “Good question.” He took a sip.

“In any case, they all killed each other, as you probably know; everybody knows. Entire races, genocides; it’s all there in the scriptures. The knights fought alongside God-Knights, the Battle of Gods and Mortals in all its glory. Three different fronts, innumerous casualties, but in the end…”

Arsik held his breath. He was trying to connect the pieces of the stories he’d already heard and was familiar with, but this was the first time he’d listened to them uninterruptedly and in the right order.

“They imprisoned Nedel and built the wall. It was torn down later, but this is of no consequence to this story. The planet found its peace –whatever peace it could, anyway– and balance was restored. For a time, at least.”

Arsik waited to see where this was going. He had enjoyed the tale but couldn’t fathom what their group could possibly have to do with these cosmic events.

“The mages, Arsik, the four mages. One of them, the female…”

“Missandria?” Arsik supplied.

“Her, yes. She became his wife.” Arsik’s eyes widened in surprise. “Don’t look at me like that, she became the Hunter’s wife and bore his children, godsdamn her.”

The captain finished his drink. “The other mages, the males, were lost like rats, along with their books and their terrible powers. One of them is rumored to be living inside Bladefall Academy, in Lothen, where he has access to the royal bloodline’s ear. The other one, Sokar, I have no idea what happened to him. But Taarum…” His eyes gleamed in the dark. “Taarum never got over himself.”

Arsik shuddered. “What do you mean?” he asked curiously.

The captain peered into his eyes and then turned back to the sea. “Very few things can be found in the scriptures about him. They say that for years he wandered in the desert. Searching, poking around the crater, yearning to see the power again, to feel it. He had fallen ill with greed, they say. The path of the Spiral. He’d been seduced by the Meteor’s stardust, Arsik. He traveled to the ends of the Earth, learned, grew more powerful, surpassed the limits of his mortal life. Time never killed him, none of those magical bastards. At some point, however, he came and settled down here.”

The blood in Arsik’s veins froze. His pulse pounded in his temples.

“Here in the Vespia Sea, Arsik. He planted himself in the deep like a parasite and started infecting the world with his uncontrollable energy.”

On the verge of tears, at the edge of his seat, Arsik was shivering all over.

“He is an abomination, Arsik. He stayed in the depths of the Vespia Sea and he’s been flaying our ships ever since. Haunting our children, weaving our nightmares, sucking the souls of our dead.” Tears welled in the captain’s eyes. “At night, my wife hears them crying through the waves, thousands of souls. His face is made by the fabric of death. They are calling to her, Arsik…” His voice broke. “They are calling to her for help, reaching out from the depths of hell with their invisible hands like children dying hopelessly and she is trying, she is trying, godsdamn it!”

He burst out crying. Numb, his eyes two wet orbs, Arsik wanted to rest his hand on the captain’s shoulder to comfort him.

“But she can’t reach them. No, where they are, nobody can reach them. But she feels their burden, their pain. It started years ago and never stopped. More are added every night. The mage stayed in his underwater realm, settled there and, in his greed, became one with the sea.” Tear-filled eyes met Arsik’s. “Other seamen know this, Arsik. They have heard of him. Lots of us have felt his power. He is called Taarum, the Lich of the Seas.”

Arsik rose. His hairs stood on end like a cat’s; every breath hurt like razors. “What you’re telling me is…” He faltered. “We… Him… The mage… The ancient one…”

The captain stood up and faced him. “Him, Arsik. He is the reason this dark sea has become a gravesite for our ships. He is the one leeching the life out of this place. He is the one who’s making my wife sick, Arsik, killing her more each day. I will find him in the depths of the ocean, and I will rip out his dark heart. He won’t take her away from me, Arsik. I won’t let her sink under the weight of this ocean’s souls. In Revedon’s name, I will not let our children perish under his black waves anymore.”

The captain’s voice was a broken thunder.

“I am old, Arsik, but godsdamn it, I’m still strong. I refuse to die and leave this black stain in the ocean behind. I will not leave without Karadra, Arsik. I found her, I found her many years ago and swore not to lose her, you hear me? No one is going to take her away from me. My ship, my seas – and I will save them, Arsik. We will save them.”

Arsik was sobbing now. He couldn’t help it; he’d never seen a man capable of such depth of emotion. He admired the captain in a way he couldn’t imagine possible a few days ago.

So much grief inside him – for himself, for Maestra. He wanted to fight for her too; he wanted what he saw in the captain, what he’d never thought or dreamed of, but it came to find him, nonetheless. Through his “death” on the cross, she came and pulled him to the surface, touched her lips on his and breathed new life into him, and now, he wanted to stay alive, he wanted to fight and, most of all, he wanted to win.

Shaking, with weak knees and wet eyes and a flaming mind as his world turned upside down and broke out of every seam, Arsik placed his hand on the captain’s shoulder. “I will fight with you, captain.” Their eyes met. “In the depths of the sea, we will kill the nightmare’s monster. My sword is yours. You have my word.”