"His condition is getting worse - he's not woken up in the past two days, Adendé. It's probably a good time to take a look, no?" Lazarus asked after leaping up to the outside railing of the forecastle. Adendé remained in his usual spot, the dome of electricity calmly surging around him.

"Two days," Adendé echoed, the energy around him ceasing as he stood up and vaulted the railing onto the main deck.

The pair of them made their way to the captain's quarters.

 

They opened the doors to reveal Mikey, wrapped up in layers of blankets in his bed. He was sweating profusely with air clawing its way out of his throat in short bursts.

Gisla sat at her desk, her hands interlocked, as she watched Mikey from her cushioned chair. Her once organized utopia of scrolls and books were in a jumbled mess, sitting under her anxious gaze.

Adendé approached Mikey, who lay motionless, and tore the blankets off of him. Mikey couldn’t even manage a flinch and was left stuck and powerless where he lay. Gisla, however, exploded onto her feet.

"The fuck are you doing?!" she snapped at Adendé, drawing the behemoth's attention towards her for a moment before he looked back to Mikey.

The bandage around his leg was fresh, but a large black spot sat in the middle of it. "Necrosis. The wound has already begun to rot," he spoke aloud, unwrapping the bandage from Mikey's thigh. The edge of the wound had turned to a dastardly black, almost liquidizing into a mushy sludge. Yellow and green pus slowly emerged from the rotten cavity; a foul stench escaped with it.

Without removing his gloves, Adendé scooped his index finger through the wound, provoking Lazarus to cringe. Gisla, pushing her chair away and marching toward Adendé, grabbed onto his wrist and glared up at him. She was barely tall enough to reach halfway up his torso.

"You've all been very adamant about touching and interrupting me," Adendé stared back down at her.

Gisla found herself in just the right light, looking at just the right angle, to get a detailed look into Adendé's eyes.

His iris held a lightning blue core, streaks of yellow and white moving outwards into clouded darkness below the rim. Gisla heard a whip crack every time Adendé blinked.

If eyes were the windows to the soul, then inside Adendé raged a storm too fierce for Gisla to oppose.

Releasing his wrist, Gisla's rage quelled in the moments she'd met his eyes.

Adendé waited a moment, holding his gaze on Gisla before pinching the puss sludge on his fingertip.

"The next one to grab me is getting fed to the serpent," Adendé commented, as he rubbed the sludge between his fingertip and thumb. A brief spark of electricity circled his hand, as the sludge dissolved into grainy dust. All that was left was a fluorescent green gel, barely visible to the naked eye.

"Venom from the scales. There's always a bigger fish," Adendé continued as he wiped the liquid onto a rag.

Lazarus and Gisla both watched silently, wanting to avoid interrupting him again, as she, in particular, took a step back to give him space.

Adendé knelt beside Mikey's bed and hovered his hands over his chest. In a series of flashes, electricity seemed to charge rapidly around his hands. An azure aura had begun to surround Adendé's black gloves, emitting a low, but powerful, buzzing hum.

 

Following what felt like an eternity, Mikey found himself embraced in familiar darkness. It was warmer now - welcoming even. As if a sun-kissed body of water passed over him, Mikey could feel each change in the current of the shadowy realm around himself.

"A precarious position you find yourself in yet again Mikhail; and, yet again, you have those around you that would help," an authoritative voice spoke out to Mikey as he felt a brief heat pulsating from his hand. "The plains are a more delicate matter, however. The smallest slight against the war chief La'Qashur will guide you to a swift end to your journey. Earn his favour and respect. If you manage that, you'll find him by your side during the moment you need him most. This is what you must do, Mikhail."

 

Kazap!

 

Adendé thrust his hands flat against Mikey's chest, sending the aura out through his body in a sudden discharge of energy. Mikey's body had begun to violently shake, every muscle in his body helplessly twitching from the jolt.

"Lazarus, get a bucket," Adendé ordered him off. Lazarus made no effort to refuse, immediately leaping to his feet and moving, taking off outside.

Although Mikey continued to shake violently, Gisla grew even more concerned as she watched his skin move from its sunbaked tone at sea to a darker wenge brown, spots on his skin even turning completely black.

"What's wrong with him? Why does he look like that?!" Gisla demanded an answer as she was forced to let Adendé continue.

"I've begun destroying every trace of the venom in his system, but it has nowhere to go - no outlet. It's clogging his system. But I have to leave it in until it's finished, or I'll have to repeat the process and we could risk muscle damage," Adendé explained, moving to the site where Mikey was struck by the scale. While his hands hovered over his thigh, Lazarus returned to the room with a bucket in hand and set it down at Adendé's side.

Like a pump suctioning the liquid from the wound, Adendé raised one hand upwards while keeping the other hand stationary. At the same rate, as he lifted his hand upwards, a grainy paste began to siphon out of the wound and towards the bottom hand where it formed a small floating orb of the liquid.

Slowly, the ashy wenge colour from Mikey's skin began to flush out and his original skin tone returned.

 

"Do exactly as I've said, Mikhail. Alternating from this series of events, even momentarily, will bring ruin to you and your crew," the voice forewarned Mikey as it finished. Light slowly began to pour into the dark abyss, the voice vanishing with shadows within it. "Exactly, as I've said..."

 

After the clearing of the storm in the days prior, an ocean of blue now mirrored a clear sky. The Blackjack soared over the seas towards the plains as they were halfway to their destination.

A day had passed since Mikey was freed from his paralysis. As he awoke, Mikey was met by the familiar sight of Gisla at her desk, rigorously studying texts and scrolls. She'd amassed a larger pile than before, having reorganised its tedious engineering since the previous disorder.

'She's still studying? That's not for me is it?' Mikey thought to himself as he watched Gisla from his bed.

"I bet you've not moved a muscle," Mikey said with a chuckle, sitting up and leaning against the bed's headboard.

Gisla's attention instantly pulled to Mikey, an overwhelming relief washing over her face. Mikey had managed to score his first sincere smile from her.

"Why're you looking at me like that?" Mikey asked, blushing slightly as he looked away from her shyly.

"What? Oh, hm. No, nothing. Get out of bed already!" Gisla realised what face she was making, whipping her attention back to her desk and burying her face in a book.

Mikey shuffled around and realised he wasn't wearing any pants.

"Don't look, or you'll walk a plank," he warned Gisla, sliding out of the blankets and changing into something more appropriate. He lightly dragged his hand over the bandaging on his thigh. It was clean, meaning it had to have been done earlier in the day.

Mikey moved to the exit, intent on leaving, but stopped as he grabbed the handles.

"Thanks, Gisla," he managed to say over his shoulder, though promptly left afterwards.

 

Making his way on deck, the Blackjack's crew had grown more lively over the past days. Whether it was the weariness of Jorgansol or the battle with the serpent, everyone on deck was training.

Galliard was halfway up the mast doing callisthenics, holding out his body laterally like a flag, crawling his way up and down the length support.

'What in the fuck?' Mikey asked as he came limping past, his eyes making out the solid definition in every muscle along Galliard's back.

As Mikey continued along the deck, he also passed by Liza and Lady. Liza seemed to be practising acrobatic maneuvers over or past her, though Lady had the additional aid of ropes and other floating deck debris. Liza seemed to be too focused on her training to notice Mikey limping by.

At the forecastle of the ship, Mikey saw Adendé - however, Lazarus stood side by side with him. With his arms crossed, the giant seemed to be coaching Lazarus whilst he coddled a small object in his hand. As Mikey got closer, he saw the object was a spoon - but it was vibrating.

"You're focusing too hard. Power comes from will. If your will is to hold back, then nothing will happen," Mikey overheard from Adendé, stopping where he was by the port side railing.

"Well if I don't it's just going to liquify again," Lazarus replied, frowning as he loosened his muscles. However, as he did the spoon burst into a molten splash of iron. He pulled his hands back just in time, though the metal barely grazed his skin. "Ouch! Fuck fuck fuck!"

"You're a mage?" Mikey called out.

"Ah, welcome back to the land of the living Mikey!" Lazarus grinned in reply before blowing on his hands to cool them down. "Mage is a bit of an overstatement - it's an old family trick. Never had the means to work on it, but Adendé here reckons he can teach me a few things. Though I'm sure you'd know all about that."

Lazarus nodded, gesturing past Mikey. Mikey turned to see Gisla walking the deck, a handful of books in her hands.

"We ought to get ready for your next lesson, yeah?" she asked with a cheerful smile, her pale cheeks shining under the sunlight.

"Yeah, I suppose we should."

 

In the days that followed, Mikey had begun to recover - and at an astonishing rate. Though still injured, his leg had become more of an inconvenience than an inhibitor. Both him and Gisla had cleared through many of the books in her pile. Before long, their training and studies had come to a pause.

The cries of gulls and the crashing of waves on a shore brought the bounties of land, however few there may be in a plain as desolate as Jorgansol. The land seemed boundless. Yellow shrunk behind the horizon in every direction the sea was not. There stood no single obscurity through its vastness that wasn’t a bare hill holding more of the same.

“Although I’m glad we’ll be touching down, I’ll admit,” Mikey commented as the crew lined up by the edge of the ship, watching out towards the grassland banks, “I never expected there to be this many people set up to welcome us.”

Amassed along the banks, standing above the water’s edge, a huge party of warriors had arrived in waiting. Chants and warcries accompanied their bloodthirsty gaze. They came in every shape, colour and size - though all seemed to share the same hunger for battle.

Right at the centre of the hordes, warriors cleared well away from an enormous figure. Littered with the white of bone armour, the ogre-like creature held a staff larger than the log from a small tree.

“Welcome to Jorgansol,” Adendé replied without a hint of surprise or shock in his voice.