Ocean spray spat into the child’s face and caused her to recoil with an excited shriek, narrowly managing to close her eyes before they were filled with brine.

The ship began to rock back to port and the child hopped off the starboard deck railing, gleefully running to the other side of the vessel.

The air was filled with orders and expletives barked by sailors as the Old Shamal was tossed from side to side, only interrupted by the roar of the ocean and the occasional cry of delight.

 

The giggles the child let out were suddenly quieted as a large hand grabbed her arm and held it aloft, practically lifting her into the air.

“I told you that you are to remain below deck, girl!” Yelled the man, his voice roughened by decades of smoking and salt.

The girl looked at the man with mixed fear and disappointment as she dangled from his grip. He was the man that everyone aboard the ship had to listen to.

 

As the wind howled and the waves crashed, the girl was dragged by the man through a door and down a creaky set of stairs. Through a narrow corridor, she was dropped to the ground before another man in the room where people eat.

She looked up at both men from her knees, each staring at the other with faces that resembled one another.

 

The older man; the one who had dragged her down here, spoke first.

“What have I told you about keeping her under control? It’s a small miracle that Vananaru hasn’t claimed her yet when she taunts him so.” He spat, the anger in his voice expressed more so in tone than volume.

 

“You know she doesn’t listen to me.” The younger man refuted, barely pausing to look up from his meal of salted meat and watered beer.

 

“Then make her!” The older man cried out, finally raising his voice above normal. “She was gifted to us by the gods and I’ll not see my own blood acting so foolishly!”

 

The young man raised his wooden tankard of poor beer to his mouth, gulping down the remainder of its contents over a dozen seconds before slamming it back down on the table.

“The gods provide no gifts, father. The girl is a nuisance for the both of us.” He spat, beer foam running down his dark beard.

 

A hand was suddenly clutching the younger man’s collar; his elder gripping it tightly and pulling him upwards.

“Listen to me, boy.” The elder man said through clenched teeth.

“Spilled or passed on, blood is the most important thing in the world. It is through it that the world remembers us. In order to live on past death, we must respect our blood.”

 

The older man paused to gauge his son’s reaction, growing more and more frustrated with the continued uninterest on his face.

 

“Please father. Could you save your sermons for the morning?” The young man groaned, his fingers gripping his forehead.

“Your gift has spoiled you. It has robbed you of both will and ambition.” The older man continued, anger settling into disappointment.

“There will come a day where I am no longer around, when you will realize that you’ve been falling prey to the same fate that awaits all men. I hope your daughter will be there to guide you through it.” 

The older man finished his lecture, releasing his iron grip on the girl and turning to go back above deck.

 

“Hmf.” The younger man groaned.

“Knowing her mother and my gift, do you honestly believe that the girl is mine?” He called out to the older man.

 

The older man paused on the stairs, but did not turn around.

“It is because of those things that I think she is yours. The gods could tell that you needed a bit of responsibility.” He added, continuing up the stairs until he was out of sight.

 

The young man was irritated. He knew that the girl couldn’t be his. 

Whether it was from robbery, smuggling, or even killing, his gift had let him evade consequences time and time again. For years he had lived his life free of worry and had nodules in whatever pleasure suited his whims at the time.

So why was it then, that this little creature would be thrust back into his face every single damn day? 

It was bad enough that his bounty had finally grown large enough to warrant him seeking his father out to leave the annoyance of the land’s bounty hunters behind, but now he had to deal with some fucking whorespawn that he likely didn’t even have a role in creating?

 

Perhaps he should just leave the old world behind altogether and head off to the frontier and start fresh. After all, he had never lost a fight.

 

His empty mug slammed down onto the table and he wiped it mouth on his sleeve. He yawned.

Come morning his calluses would be thickened by rope-work and his eyes would squint away from the sun. His hammock was calling to him, telling him to come rest his half-full stomach.

 

He looked at the girl for the first time since she was brought down by his superstitious father. She was playing with a musket ball, watching it roll across the ship’s deck as it rocked in the storm. He watched it jump uneven boards and crash into the hull, and when it came back near him, he stepped on it.

 

The girl looked up at him with large eyes, but he looked past them as he considered what he should do with her.

“Are you tired?” He asked her after a moment of contemplation.

 

“…No.” The girl said, shaking her head curtly and staring down to his foot.

 

He sighed, and released the small metal ball to roll back towards the girl.

“Whatever.” He muttered, tired and lacking the patience for this.

 

He stood up and beckoned the girl to follow. He knew at this point that she had an insatiable need to be in the way of his crew member’s jobs. Since his father seemed to have a soft spot for the girl, most of their complaints would be addressed to him.

In order to get a good night's rest as well as a morning greeting that didn’t include yelling, he had to find a solution to the girl’s inquisitiveness.

 

“Where are we going?” She chirped.

 

“Down. I’m going to show you where we keep all the treasure.” He told her, mustering the nicest look he could and grabbing an oil lamp from the wall.

 

He led the girl down another set of worn stairs, past sleeping bunks and hung hammocks and down to the ship’s hold. He cracked the door and revealed a room full of carpets, kegs and furs, a closed hatch in the centre of the ceiling to crane them out once port was reached.

 

The girl’s eyes darted over each corner of the room, searching each fixture and furnishing for something.

“Where’s the treasure?” She asked after a while, looking back at him over her shoulder?

 

The man shrugged.

“It’s in there somewhere. Have fun.” He said, stepping out of the room and beginning to shut the door, the light from his lamp retreating as the door cast a larger and larger shadow.

 

“Wait!” The girl began to cry out before the wave of dark washed over her as well.

 

The girl cried out for help, but the sound of the storm and its waves slamming into the hull drowned what little sound made it out of the pitch-dark room.

 

The girl’s juvenile mind began to search for options.

The treasure!

From what she had heard, treasure was shiny and bright. Easy to find in a dark room like this.

 

The girl began to feel her way around the hold, stumbling into piles of salted pelts and barrels of liquid.

She cried out in pain as her hand encountered what must have been an exposed nail, sending her jumping away in reflex.

She tumbled across a floor she couldn’t see, bumping into several different objects as a squeak rang out through the room

 

But she didn’t make that squeak. 

And it was much louder than the squeak of a rat.

In fact if she wasn’t mistaken, it was the squeak of another child.

 

“Hello?” She cried back as she pulled herself from the floor.

 

A chill went up the girl's spine. 

She was cold. 

Was the sea leaking in?

 

The time-worn wooden boards of the ship felt like icy candle wax, with bits of something sticking under the girl's nails and to her clothes.

As she push herself off the ground, the girl felt her arms pierce through a membrane of soft grease.

Too overwhelmed to scream as the dark room melted around her, the girl was quickly sucked into a cold soup of viscera and oil that clung to her skin like the stickiest honey.

A flash of silver light filled the girl’s vision, and then all was still.

 

—-

 

The first whiff of sea air filled Kalia’s nose as she finished recounting her latest dream to Thomas, who sat cross-legged with a hand on his chin as he contemplated it’s meaning. Things had been rather awkward between the two of them after their evening alone was interrupted, so Kalia had been trying to interact with Thomas in a less personal manner to mend the odd looks that he had been giving her.

 

Part of that was consulting with him in regards to the bizarre dreams she had been having on the journey, which luckily enough happened to be an area of expertise for the young man.

 

“Well, if it were Lady Dona having these dreams I would tell her to take a vacation and get a change of scenery. Drowning is often associated with feelings of overstimulation, stress, or lack of control. To be out of your depth, as it were.” Thomas tried explaining.

“Of course, I don’t know how much of that would actually apply to you given your personality and on-the-move job. And while I can’t even begin to imagine what all the black goop might be about, I think it’s pretty obviously a bad sign.”

 

3 nights had passed since Kalia had chased off the hobgoblin, and Kalia woke from all of them with aches and pains and fading memories of strange dreams. Some, like the most recent, had started out as simple memories of the past.

Others felt strange an foreign, like the world was written in a language she only halfway-understood.

 

A gust of cold ocean air washed past the convoy, shaking the conifer forest around them in rhythmic waves. They were getting close to the outer limits of the settled frontier and their journey would soon come to a close.

Kalia shivered as the wind stuck her and shuffled ever so slightly closer to Thomas in a nearly involuntary reaction to make use of someone else’s body heat.

 

Thomas noticed her movement as soon as it was finished, and shifted his own weight to lean ever so slightly away from her. Neither his eyes nor his words showed it, but their last encounter days prior seemed ever present in his mind.

And not in a good way.

 

Kalia’s teeth clenched in both embarrassment and self-loathing at how she had acted around the boy. She felt her soul die a little bit every time she was forced to remember what she did.

It was really dumb. Absolutely moronic.

He wasn't a drunk noble or a sailor in town for the first time in months.

He wasn’t a soldier on leave or a lonely hunter.

 

The fact that she had even grouped him with such characters in the first place was still even something she couldn’t get over the sheer stupidity of.

Obviously the young introverted scholar, excitable though he may be, would react entirely differently to the swath of men she was used to dealing with.

 

She should have just asked for his story and not tried for anything more, because now he would barely converse with her.

Sure, he would respond to questions just as chipper as ever, but he hadn’t initiated a conversation since their interrupted encounter.

 

Gods. Most men were so easy.

Have some drinks, show some interest, and as long as you don’t let them take complete control you’ll be due for a night of fun and fulfillment.

And it wasn’t just the sex, either. Well, mostly it was, but other benefits came as well.

Men easily spilled their heart out after a good fuck, and the storied she’d collected over the years could fill a…

No, not a library.

Kalia didn’t think that she was that much of a slut.

 

But still, who could forget the stories of the thrice-mutinied pirate captain Abraam, who she’d taken in a standing straddle when she visited Stopover.

Or the habitually drunken arch-cleric of Saint’s Point who she’d gotten plastered enough to forget his vow of celibacy in 2 entirely separate encounters.

Not to mention the leader of the thousand-strong mercenary band “Arti’s brothers”, who she’d also manage to bed twice.

 

Kalia took an odd bit of solace that she’d had cocks with such legendary stories inside of her in her short life. Cocks who’s owners surely would have been talked about for centuries to come if only the world would stand still long enough to remember them. Even though she personally would never earn a spot in a weighty history book, she was still able to hear from the sources directly about their exploits long before anyone else would piece it all together after the fact.

 

No, what got under her skin more than the fact that she had never gotten the chance to screw a prince or legendary war hero was simply just that her journey was coming to an end.

It was fun to travel, to drink, to share stories and to fuck.

Probably a lot more fun than it would be to rot in a hole in the ground.

 

But when she had just begun to settle with the fact that she would soon die, along comes the favorite manservant of one of the most influential future-tellers on the frontier. A man who surely would write not only many books about the present, but about the future his master saw as well.

 

Oh the possibilities!

Would she earn a spot herself in the books? Did she really even want that?

What about the Syer? Could the combination of extreme wealth and fortune-telling maybe let her add more sand to her hourglass?

 

Either way, the gateway to these possibilities was sitting right next to her, and she ablsolutly could not let herself fuck this up. Innuendo and flirting be damned, from now on she would just be friendly and approachable as possible and try not to dig herself a bigger grave than she already had. They already got along pretty well and Thomas knew what she was willing to do. She just had to wait and see what he wanted.

 

Kalia sighed and cradled her temple. While it may just have been because she was getting used to them, the headaches and joint pain were getting more manageable.

 

Fweet-fweet

A soft 2-note whistle struck the ears of the party, who quickly turned towards the source to see who had sounded it.

It was the high alert signal, sounded by Codrin. 

And he had just heard something.

 

“Umbers!” Codrin exclaimed. “About a half-dozen. And- no, this can’t be right, they're all grouped up?”

 

Simultaneously, every member of the convoy but Thomas tensed up and scrambled for their weapons. Kalia grabbed Blackberry's scabbard and slid it through one of her belt loops and checked to see that she had her sidearm dagger tucked in her boot.

Codrin stopped the horses and he and Angela slung their quivers over their shoulders.

Davy put on and buckled his helm and tightened his steel chestpiece before grabbing his axe and leaping to the ground with a thud.

Even one of the merchants reached into his pack and readied a long leather whip.

 

“Why are they this far north, Cod?” Angela hurriedly asked.

 

“I don’t know, damnit! Can you tell me why they’re on the road?” Codrin cried back, pulling the string on his crossbow and loading it with a bolt.

 

“Maybe they’ve just ambushed another carriage?” Kalia tried coming up with a plausible explanation.

 

“No! They’re definitely coming towards us!” Codrin warned, tightening the buckle on his own helmet.

 

All the while everyone else was scrambling like wet cats, Thomas sat silently clutching his book like a lost child.

 

“A-are six or seven Umbers really that bad?” He asked. “They won’t be wearing much armour and we already know where they are…”

 

“Boy.” Davy snapped. “Umbers are the most tricky, unpredictable, and coordinated elves out there. If one of them so much as spots you they’ll be back with-“

 

“Davriel.” Codrin said suddenly. “Let me think for a minute.”

 

Each party member turned back to Codrin with wide eyes. Even Kalia was surprised at the notion that they had even a minute to spare against Umbers; elves known for sudden and deadly surprise attacks and ability to navigate the densest forests. Even with Codrin’s gift in detecting ambushes, the sheer amount of uses their innate gift held was staggering.

 

“This is all wrong. We've let instinct rile us up into a panic without lending an ear to reason.” Codrin addressed the convoy.

“This isn’t their land, they don’t vastly outnumber us, they aren’t in an ambush formation, and they aren’t even trying to hide. I don’t think that they're looking for trouble.”

 

Goatlike horns and long pointed ears. Skin dappled shades of dark red and brown like leaf-litter and eye reflective like a cat’s.

Umber elves made their homes in broadleaf forests and brushland armed with an innate gift that let them wordlessly communicate with each other over a large radius.

They were the bane of the southern frontier.

 

But this was the northern frontier.

 

From the forest ahead, the sound of creaking wood and clopping hooves came into earshot. As the convoy waited and listened, another horse-drawn wagon slowly became visible through the tall trees.

In place of a horse, an enormous bison taller than Davy pulled the carriage with leather straps as thick as Kalia’s wrists. 

The great beast snorted and Kalia saw the pebbles on the road rumble.

 

The lead Umber was sat cross legged atop the bison’s shoulder with neither saddle nor reigns as it trudged forward. He had horns that curved in a full semicircle and long hair the colour of rust that fell loosely to his shoulders.

As he and his wagon drew closer, it became obvious to Kalia that his shiny eyes were solidly glued to Codrin.

 

“Stand down.” Codrin said firmly and loudly. “Do not show them any aggression.”

 

A few members of the party looked to Codrin, but ultimately no one spoke up. He had earned their trust time and time again and no one was willing to object to his judgement.

 

The Umbers watched the party wordlessly like owls as they passed, all of them silently rotating their heads to keep their eyes locked at Codrin.

Even after they had fully passed by, it took the party at least a minute of sitting in silence before someone was brave enough to speak up.

 

“The fuck was that about, man?” Davy blurted out shakily after staring out into space for a while.

 

“I can hear them.” Codrin answered. “Their mind-chattering is picked up by my gift. It’s all gibberish to me, but I could still tell that they were just as worried about us as we were for them.”

 

“And judging by their gazes, they could hear something about me as well.”

He added.

 

Kalia hopped to the ground and walked a wagon’s length forward to where Davy was standing, drenched in own sweat despite not moving a muscle for minutes.

 

“C’mon. We’ll be in real beds by sundown.” Kalia reassured him, reaching up high to put a hand on his enormous shoulder.

“Have a drink and we’ll shoot dice later, okay?”

 

“Ah. Y-Yeah.” He sputtered out, still staring at nothing.

 

Kalia couldn’t help but grin a little.

For a big guy, he was pretty high strung.

It was kinda cute.