Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

It seemed to come from all around, from every bit of meat still living in the confines of the courtyard. A second later, the flesh attacked.

Ropes of muscle whipped out from the windows and the door, slapping at Teach. At the same time, smoking liquid sprayed from a bulb on the second floor, aimed to land on the General’s head.

She slapped away one tendril with the flat of her weapon, blackening and killing it instantly, and backhanded another with her gauntlet. Teach sidestepped the fluid without looking up, taking a few casual steps back until the Elder thing couldn’t reach her anymore.

When she was far enough away, the tentacles retracted, and the flesh ballooned out even faster than it had grown before.

“Bliss?” Teach asked, without turning around.

The Head of the Blackwatch leaned forward, squinting at the creature. “Hmmmm…I will examine it tonight. By morning, I’ll know what to do.”

“Very good.” Teach turned to the Guard captain. “Rotating shifts, just as you had before. Don’t let it grow any further before the Blackwatch are finished with their tests.”

The orange-eyed captain saluted. “Ma’am.”

As for the rest of them, that left the delightful proposition of finding rooms in a palace they knew was haunted by Elders. It was one thing to face Elder influence on the Aion, when you had your ship around you and your crew close at hand, but it was entirely worse to try and sleep in a bedroom where the building itself could be your enemy.

It will be clear in the morning, Calder told himself. Bliss would know what to do, and he could get on with being Emperor. It was strange; he was close to sitting on the throne, closer than he’d ever been since he’d first considered the possibility, but it had never seemed farther away. It was as though the Elders and the Fates were conspiring to throw every obstacle they could in his way.

He burned his clothes in a bonfire outside a palace window.

Calder and Jerri sat on boxes, huddled over a table in The Testament’s cabin. The room was so cramped it felt like a closet, and Calder sometimes found himself breathing too quickly, as though he were going to run out of air. The table was strewn with navigational charts, notes, and half-scribbled maps that Andel had provided.

For the last six weeks of their journey, Andel had plotted their course, and was even taking most of the burden of steering the ship. Calder helped with his Soulbound powers as best he could, but it was like trying to play the violin after having watched a genius musician. It seemed simple and intuitive, until you tried it. Calder felt that he should have been able to furl and unfurl the ship’s sails with nothing more than a thought, but in practice, the green-veined stretch of skin had simply wrapped itself around the mast and refused to be dislodged. The two Champions had been forced to leap up to the crow’s nest and untangle the sheet by hand.

Impressive, yes, but inconvenient.

Calder sensed The Testament like a second, simpler mind tucked away inside his own. It had a purpose, and it yearned to fulfill that purpose: to guide and protect them as they sailed the Aion. Somehow, it felt so eager that it almost fought Calder for control. He had never heard of a Soulbound Vessel wrestling its owner, but he had to admit that what he knew about Soulbound was largely academic. There was a stark difference between reading about Vessels and having one in his head.

His alliance with the ship may have started out uneasy, but they needed to smooth out that relationship if they wanted to survive the eldritch dangers of the Aion Sea.

Which brought them to the charts and maps on the table. They were a month into this journey, and Andel had guided them the entire way. At this rate, Calder would be relegated to a passenger on his own ship. He refused to let that happen, and Jerri seemed to agree with him.

If they were ever going to escape from the shadow of the Imperial officer, they had to chart their own course. Literally.

Jerri flipped her braid over her shoulder, running a finger along the map, tracing coordinates that Calder had provided. “And that would leave us…locked in ice, just south of the Fioran Reaches.”

Calder frowned down at his own piece of paper, covered in calculations. At the moment, they looked like meaningless scribbles. “That’s not right. If anything, it should abandon us on a stretch of shoreline outside the Izyrian jungle.”

Jerri shrugged. “Looking at the tides, I thought it would come out somewhere in Erin. Maybe we’re not moving as fast as we thought.”

The ship pitched lightly to one side, and an inkwell slid away in a suicidal dive. Calder snatched it from the brink, leaving only a few drops of ink to splatter next to his shoes.

Jerri gripped the table with both hands, face a shade paler than usual. It had taken her a week or two to adjust to the movement of the ship, and she still wasn’t fully accustomed to the constant rolling of the surf.

“We’ll get used to it,” she said for the hundredth time, giving him a tight smile. He returned it, feeling another wave of…not guilt, precisely. He had been an idiot, trying to break his father out in the way he did, but he regretted only his methods. And he hadn’t forced Jerri into anything.

He didn’t feel guilty, only responsible. The fact remained that she could have stayed back in the Capital, with a comfortable life and a family nearby, if not for him.

“Thank you,” he said, after a few more seconds pause. “For coming with me. I don’t know what…I’m glad I’m not alone.”

She took a deep breath to settle her stomach, then smiled at him. “Anywhere’s better than home.”

Jerri had made comments like that before, which Calder didn’t fully understand. As he’d heard it, her father had been a member of the Blackwatch who went missing in the course of his duties. Sometimes, she spoke of her father fondly, and other times as though she were glad to be rid of him. Likewise, when she mentioned her mother and the rest of her family at all, the very thought seemed to make her angry.

“You don’t miss it?” Calder said.

Jerri rubbed her emerald earring, an absent gesture. “My family can be…demanding. They know exactly what they want me to do, and how they want me to do it, and that’s the way it is. It takes dramatic gestures to get their attention, sometimes. They wanted to meet you, by the way.”

Calder had never imagined meeting Jerri’s family, taking his cue from her silence. She went home as seldom as possible, so he’d assumed he would never see where she lived or meet her mother. Now he felt a pang of regret that he might not get the chance.

“You told them about me?” he asked.

“Of course I did. I spent all my time at your house, obviously they would want to know everything about you. They were impressed when you joined the Blackwatch, though they were happier when you left.” She raised one hand to her ear again. “It’s something of a sore spot in my family.”

Calder could imagine so. Jerri’s father had died or vanished on duty as a Watchman, so it couldn’t be comforting to picture Calder sharing the same fate.

“Hold on. They know I was kicked out of the Blackwatch?” Calder asked.

“I told them you’d left, obviously. I skirted past the ‘why’ of it.”

“When did you have the chance?” Calder asked. They had boarded The Testament on the same day they were released from the Imperial Palace. Where had she found the time to fill her family in?

She looked at him as though it were obvious. “I went home to pick up my clothes. I had to explain where I was going, didn’t I?”