Blood Shaper

Book 3: Chapter 13

"Well, that's one reason they must feel safe," Kay commented.

"I'm no sailor, but I wouldn't take a boat anywhere near that," Halloway agreed.

Two days of watching Darkport had led to little new information. They'd determined that there were a few factions among the groups and solidified the idea that they each had territory in the port that was generally respected, but they weren't sure if there were six or seven different groups of pirates. As far as they could tell from distant observation and one very careful scouting mission at a closer distance, things were fluid. One building that seemed to hold some kind of store near the edge of town seemed to change owners twice while they watched, both times involving violence and at least one potential death.

After the days had passed, Kay and Halloway had jointly decided to follow the small passage out of the bay to the east. The thin waterway traveled between two bits of coast and was the only exit for ships to pass through. With no other sign of what made Darkport a safe place for the criminals that lived there, they decided to follow the one lead they could think of. And they found an answer.

"That is a lot of shipwrecks."

"Makes your name ideas from earlier seem a little bit better."

Kay snorted a laugh and rolled his eyes.

Dozens of destroyed ships littered the shallow waters near the disguised entrance to the channel. There were half-rotted hulks sitting on top of sand bars with giant gashes ripped in them, pieces of flotsam floating about and bumping against sharp rocks as the shifting current danced them through the waves, and submerged chunks of hull and broken furniture or crates sunk at the bottom of the clear waters, covered in barnacles and seaweed. Kay was pretty sure he could see a mast sticking up out of a small whirlpool, spinning in place.

"I'm not a sailor, but you couldn't get me near there on a ship for all the gold in the world," Halloway muttered.

"There has to be a way out; otherwise, there'd be no port." Kay commented, "I bet the pirates guard the secret like it is all the gold in the world."

"I bet you five gold that any shipping that comes through here knows about this place and stays far, far away. The pirates probably kill or capture anyone that gets close enough to take a good look, and it just adds to the legend of whatever they call the area." Lauren added.

The woman who Kay had talked to back in camp did have a name, which was Lauren. After a close call in the one close-up mission they'd sent in to check out the port had been quickly handled by her, she'd cemented her position as third in command of their expedition. Kay was quickly finding her a smart and effective leader.

"I'm not taking a sucker bet." He shot her a look, "You have five gold on you?"

"Not on me, no." She scoffed and shook her head. "It's back home." She nodded at the wreckage littering the water. "Do you think any of that is staged?"

"What, you think they took some captured ships and sunk them to add to the ambiance?" Kay scratched an itch as he looked closer at some of the broken hulls. "Maybe, but does it matter?"

"Not right now, maybe. But if they did, it might have been to help disguise the safe passages. Might be useful when you get around to conquering the port."

Kay shot her a look, which she studiously ignored. "If that's what happens, I don't think we'd use the secret, dangerous passage to get in and out."

"If?" She asked with an incredulous expression, "You're saying we might not deal with them?"

"Oh, no, we're totally going to take out Darkport. I'm just not sure if we're going to take it over." He shrugged and gestured at the scenery in front of them, "There are some things to think about before we set ourselves on that path."

Lauren made a thoughtful noise and let the topic drop.

"So, Mayor, what now?" Halloway asked, turning away from the ocean.

Kay pushed down his instinctive reaction. He wasn't sure what it would have been, but it wouldn't have been useful. He and Halloway had mostly chilled out with each other and weren't quite as quietly dislikeable to each other. The man still refused to use anything other than Kay's title, though, which was getting annoying. "Any reason not to head back along the coast?" He pulled out his map of the continent and pointed at the rough area of where they were. "We don't have a lot of information about this area from the coast in towards Avalon, so if we head back that way…"

Halloway grunted, "Smart. No reason I can think of not to. Just have to be careful like we have been."

"Lauren?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Since when are you asking my opinion?"

"Since you managed to somehow take out that random pirate that found your group and then somehow pin the blame on some kind of animal that then killed two more pirates."

She shrugged, "We got lucky."

"Luck or not, you made good snap decisions in the thick of it."

Halloway nodded, "Damn straight. You did real good."

"So, any thoughts?"

"Just what the chief said." She looked at the map, thinking for a moment, then nodded sharply, "Yeah, just general caution. We don't have enough info on the area to make judgments, so we take it nice and slow."

"I don't want to head all the way down to the end of the peninsula, so let's wait till we can see the mountain before we cut west."

Lauren turned and pointed at the distant peak of the mountain next to Avalon, sitting just at the edge of the horizon. "I see the mountain, sir."

"Ha. Ha. You're hilarious. What I meant," He paused to glare at her, "Is we wait till the mountain is due west."

"Oh, you should have said that then."

Halloway laughed and walked off.

Kay glared at Laura some more. "Have you been taking lessons from Eleniah about taking shots at me?"

"No," She replied straight-faced, "It's good that you've got someone to keep you grounded, though."

"I'm done with this conversation." Glancing behind himself as he stalked off, he saw Laura holding down a laugh. "I see you!"

She lost her battle with herself and let out a peal of laughter.

"I'm surrounded by comedians."

The pink sandy beaches eventually gave way to short cliffs of a dark red stone that the waves crashed into and broke as they traveled along the coast.

"We have not seen a single ship," Kay griped aloud one night at camp, "I mean, that's not bad since we have no way of knowing if they might be some of those pirates, but we haven't seen any! I'd think we'd have seen at least one, even if it was from far away."

Lauren and Halloway both professed ignorance.

"I don't know shit about shippin'."

"This is the second time I've seen the ocean in my life."

Kay's head jerked up from the bite he was taking, "Wait, seriously? Wait, no," He shook his head roughly, "I keep forgetting how stupidly massive this world is. Where's Lann? Lann!"

"Sir?"

Lann, the nervous guy who knew the most about ships, had turned into their on-hand expert in all things nautical. Or most things nautical, he actually didn't know a lot of things, but he knew more than everyone else.

"Sorry to dump more questions on you, but why haven't we seen any ships?"

"Oh, that's an easy one, sir. This part of the coast isn't on most of the routes."

"Why?"

"Because there isn't anything here." Lann, whose full name was actually incredibly complicated and hard to say, shrugged. "Since there's nothing for ships to do in the area, it's actually pretty out of the way to head this direction. All the ships that are going to be anywhere near here are headed between Nelam and one of the coastal cities on Kementa. Most shipping routes of that sort just avoid the whole peninsula. Faster and safer that way."

"So there's a reasonable explanation, good."

"Sir?"

Kay waved him off, "Nothing to worry about; thanks for the information."

"Happy to help, sir."

Lauren gave him a look after Lann had wandered off.

"What?"

"What kind of explanation were you worried there was?"

Kay pointed at Halloway, "This one was explaining to me earlier in the trip that there were fewer monsters near home because they were all staying away from that thing in the tunnels and its minions. We haven't seen any ships or many monsters, so I was getting worried it might be something similar here."

"Not likely," Halloway pointed at the ground, "There aren't much monsters in the area 'cause they don't have anything to eat. No plants here to support those kinds of animals, which means there are no predators. Most of the fun's going to be out that way," He pointed over the cliffs into the ocean.

"We haven't seen much coming from the water either."

He shrugged, "Ocean's big. And deep."

"Those are all good answers," Kay acknowledged, "But why does your accent keep changing? Sometimes it's thicker, and then suddenly you're speaking without it."

Halloway ignored him and took a bite of his food.

Kay stared at him, waiting for an answer that never came. After multiple minutes of waiting, Lauren decided she'd had enough.

"I'm going to bed." She got up and walked off.

Kay continued to stare at the strange hunter. "Are you going to answer my question?" He eventually asked.

"Nope."

"That's not friendly."

"Don't really care."

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Lauren of the village of Boren's Vale, who wasn't sure if she should call herself Lauren of Avalon now, was not as comfortable being noticed by the leader of her new home as she was acting. She was constantly double-checking her words and doing her best not to freak out when she thought she'd pissed him off. Her very limited interactions with people of power before she'd made the move from the Tumbling Rapids area to Avalon hadn't been great, and she was constantly being reminded by Kay's actions that he was something different than she'd been exposed to. She wasn't sure what he was yet, but it wasn't anything she'd dealt with before.

She was slowly starting to get used to him, though. One thing was for sure, he wasn't going to start hitting her for voicing her opinion like her old village headman had done.

He said something to her, but the deafening sound of rushing water that came from somewhere up ahead drowned out his voice. "What?" She shouted back.

Mayor Kay leaned in close and cupped his hands around her ear. "There's nothing like this on any of the maps I have!"

"Isn't that why you're making new ones?"

"Sure, but I feel like this is a glaring oversight!"

She shot him a look, silently asking him what she was supposed to do about it. He shrugged back and started walking again. He was a lot like some of her old adventuring teammates, not that she'd been an adventurer that long or that she'd had those teammates for that long. Of course, her old teammates hadn't been tier fours able to kill giant bug monsters with a storm made of the monster's own blood, either.

They made their way closer to the source of the sound, curiosity driving them to find what was causing the cacophony. The volume became so loud that they had to fashion earplugs just to keep going.

Eventually, they found what was making the noise.

"What. The. Fuck?" Lauren asked, entirely to herself, since no one could hear her, not even herself.

Almost a mile across and hundreds of feet back from the cliffs they stood on, a gargantuan waterfall was created where the sea fell into the chasm below them. There was the endless blue sea for as far as the eye could see, and then suddenly, it all fell into the semicircular gap in space, making the largest waterfall Lauren had ever seen. Not that she'd seen a huge number, but she couldn't believe that there would be any that were larger than this.

She turned to look at Kay and Halloway and saw that they, like the expedition, were gaping in awe.

Mayor Kay slowly raised his arm and pointed at the sight, and shouted something.

Lauren stepped closer and cupped her ear. "What?"

"That's not fucking possible!" He screamed in outrage. "Where the fuck is all that water going!?"

"What?" She asked again, this time out of confusion.

"There's a perfectly dry bit of land down there! Where is all the water going!?"

Lauren stepped a little closer and found that he was right; there was a space at the bottom that had no water on it. The ocean water seemed to flow right past it, following the walls of the chasm down deeper past the patch of land she could see. "You're right; that doesn't make any sense!"

"And why hasn't the ocean just filled it all in? Why is it flowing down at a consistent rate? It should just be filling the gap!"

"I don't know!"

A member of the expedition ran over and pulled Kay's sleeve. "Sir!" He shouted, "There's something above us! It's circling us!"

Lauren looked up with everyone else that heard and saw three shapes banking and turning above them. With the sun partly in her eyes, she could only make out a few things. The fliers looked big, with long beaks and some kind of crest on the back of their heads. The wings looked like they had a flap of skin connecting the front limbs with the back, a bit like a bat.

Mayor Kay shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up. "… Are those fucking pterosaurs?"

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