Nox - 3rd Harvestwatch 1383
Amidst Cogogee Wrath, Azure's Reach
"Each storm is the Mother's single breath. Her exhale is the deeper mercy you dread, pressure enough to crack a hull to splinters and pull the bravest lungs flat. When she releases it, the sea swells to claims its debts, for Cogogee remembers every oath sworn upon her waters, and she comes to collect with interest measured in fathoms."
King Corsair, Avatar of Water
I never imagined a sky could move. In Hell, the firmament was a roof of furnace stone shot through with vent holes forever glowing amber and crimson. But the sky above the Azure Reach is a living engine, layered in heaving anvils of slate that charged past one another in a mad procession. Thunder peels so constantly it feels less like sound and more like the heartbeat of an angry god.
The captain of our ship had cast some silver over the edge for safe travel when the journey had first begun. She spoke of arrogant sailors who didn't follow tradition and swiftly found out who owned the sea when their fleet was swallowed by the depths.
Only but a breath ago it seemed for time was an unraveling concept amidst the rising panic Dalia and I had been wedged among the pilgrims of the Queen Marabound We bought grey veils that hid our horns and the gold we gave softened questions about our soot-colored skin. We threatened not a soul until three days into journey. However, our efforts to remain inconsequential appeared to be in vain as the storms overhead grew in ferocity.
The calm skies broke into a wrath I had only seen amongst the Princes of Hell. Waves taller than the grandest castle threatened to swallow our boat. Lightning spidered across the mainsails, cleaving cloth to ribbons; water sheeted down companionways in rivers; and the passengers discovered that their shrieking resembled wails of the damned. Amidst the chaos, a rumor boiled from the pilgrims: devils aboard, the goddess is enraged.
Captain Sark, salt tough and tattooed from collarbone to wrist, believed as little in rumor as she did in surrender. But when the main yard snapped like a twig and crushed six sailors to pulp, even her sharp pragmatism bent. She found us buried away from the others behind a staircase; her eyes filled with a fear that sought scapegoats.
"You bleed hellfire," she hissed, rain coursing scars inked in her cheeks. "Cogogee wants you gone. Maybe if I toss you back, the Lady of Waves'll be quiet."
Dalia tried diplomacy, voice trembling but respectful: "We can pay more. Double. Triple." Lightning split an entire barrel to splinters. The captain flinched, h. She Dalia with an iron hand and dragged her to the starboard gate. A jolly boat skiff clamored side to side, ropes barely holding it aloft from the dark depths below.
She held a sword aloft at us, and we understood the message. We climbed onto the coffin that was to be lowered to the wrath of the sea. She used the sword to cut the rope that held us steady, and we swung out over the sea. "Pray to whoever owns yer souls. I've paid my fare to the sea."
With those words' gravity disappeared, a sharp crack heard, then darkness. I felt a warm breath tickle my ear.
"I see you child, and your cries. I will protect you."
The darkness lifted I am dragged back to the present, the sensation of falling dominating my world as a wave tall as a war tower heaves us to the crest and drops us into the dark twilight below.
Rain burns my eyes, cold enough to hiss against fevered blood. Each breath tastes like iron filings and brine. Dalia had lashed herself to a stern bench and she clung to me with the desperation of the dying.
Our boat rode the chaos an hour. Two. Five. Time lost meaning to the churn of Cogogee's anger. Sometimes we crested high enough to glimpse the Queen Marabound fighting back westward, back towards home. More often we saw nothing but walls of slate water.
At the head of one monstrous breaker, I saw the silhouette of something titanically wrong: The silhouette rose out of the water in the distance, and when it sunk so to did the Queen Marabound.
Panic usually breaks mortal sailors. But I have lived through the bodysnatching demons and soul eating devils. Instead of folding, I catalogued: the skiff's aft plank was cracked but held by pitch; two oars remained intact; a water cask bobbed in the bilge for a moment before being swept away. Beside me, Dalia spun stories against despair tales smuggled from Hell's libraries of other mortal heroes who wrestled storms and won. She compared us to them, but I would consider us to be surviving, not winning. Her voice quavered, but it was comforting to hear, and it wove a fragile fortress.
That fortress crumbled when the next wave flipped us.
The world inverted howling winds replaced by the explosive hush of submersion. Salt stung eyes and nostrils; pressure crushed lungs begging for air. My horns struck something, the boat? sparking white hot agony. . Instinct roared: Surface. Air. Survival. I hauled, breached, gasped sweet wet oxygen before another breaker clapped me like a thrown sone.
Up became down again. For a looping eternity Dalia and I traded roles in a mad ballet: Sometimes both beneath, sometimes one above dragging the other by hair or horn towards breath. We had never learned to swim Hell offered no oceans yet the skiff itself was our salvation, floating alone by the grace of the gods. Enduring. Surviving wave after merciless wave.
Rain fell not as drops but as spear shafts. Lightning detonated so near its shockwaves punched ribs. Between flashes of wonders even the terror of the storm could not dim: a whale streaked in glimmering algae, riding the storm's under pulse; jellyfish the size of bath houses blooming opal light through the gloom; sleek fish of hammered bronze scales that leapt, twirled and dove like living coins. Beauty was coexisting with this danger in a way Hell had never and would never allow. I wept brine and could not tell the sea from tears.
Hours blurred to exhaustion's edge. Muscles had failed me in the past, mainly during spars, but never in this way. Never so helplessly before. Dalia's grip slackened first. I felt the laxity through the shared rope a deadly omen. I hauled myself shakily across the near flooded boat and pressed two fingers to her throat. A beat, faltering but present. Relief nearly undid me, yet I could not speak for the ice in my lungs.
I cinched her knot tighter during the lulls in the waves, then lay belly down across the , arms draped around the hull's outside like a lover who will never let go. Wind still hammered, but I pressed my cheek to the slippery pine, and let the dark claim me.