Unbound

"More to starboard! Three big ones!"

Zara heeded the Yttin sailor's warning but did not turn aside the speeding mass of the carrack, and in fact sent a delicate song on high. It stirred the winds into a greater tempest, pressing the ten sails on all four masts to their limit. Yet the creatures were faster, moving through the waters like the shadows from which they came.

"Breach! Breach!" Harn bellowed, just as two burst from the surface of the raging sea. Their serpentine Bodies writhed, clad in dusk-colored scales and festooned with spiny fins that arced like sails. They undulated through the air. "First Talon, loose!"

They were met by fury and dire, deadly thunder.

One of the creatures—Noctnatters—was torn to pieces, its strong flesh pierced by lightning and arrows bearing vicious payloads. The second shielded itself from the barrage with the corpse of its brethren, undulating over its smoking carcass only to run mouth first into a cascade of brutal magic from the Second Talon.

"Excellent!" Harn shouted, balanced atop the slick, icy gunwale. His impressive Agility was all that kept him from tumbling over the side as the carrack rode down the trough of another wave. Perhaps he'd gotten practice in during their tumultuous journey from Ahkestria. "Lieutenant Pava! Report! Where's the third?"

"Sir!" The dark-skinned Pava sheathed her glowing sword and frowned in concentration. "I—I don't know, sir! The song of it...It's gone!"

Zara shook her head. Still learning. She would have been utterly surprised if Felix's strange warriors had so easily mastered their Affinity. That they had grown so fast at all was still a wondrous mystery. She could feel the third Noctnatter easily as it lingered just below their careening ship, hiding in their massive wake. These voidbeasts bore a crude cunning that was on wide display during their many encounters.

Not nearly as dangerous as what we could face, I—She cut off the thought before it could form, quelling the inklings in her Mind with ruthless force. She could not address it, or else their journey would be far worse.

"Focus!" Harn shouted over the crash of the waves. "They don't leave us be, so it's still here. Eyes up, now!"

It burst upward the moment Harn's words left his lips, and none of them were ready. The Noctnatter shot up and over the railing, shattering a large chunk of the ship with its sheer bulk as it flung itself maw-first at the defensive line. Zara saw Harn's leading axe ignite with silver flame and interesting lines of metallic sigaldry begin to scrawl into the air...but he was too slow.

"Bonds of Dominion!"

Instead, a figure in dark leather and flashing metal streaked across the deck. Dark purple chains erupted from the air and deck, snagging the voidbeast across its open jaws and tangling among its spines, giving Evie the moment she needed to bring the full weight of her weapon down.

"Reap the Maelstrom!" she cried out, and just before her chain struck it accelerated powerfully. Chain hit scales and voidbeast hit ice-deck all at once, sending superficial fissures through the carrack's construction. The Noctnatter twisted, attempting to bring its fangs to bear on the slight girl, but Evie yanked hard. "Rimefang's Wrath!"

Purple-white Mana, already invisibly leaking from the ship, was snagged by the girl's Skill. Twin clawed gauntlets of dark ice manifested around her fists as she shoved the flat blade of her hand into a putrid yellow eye. Still, the voidbeast would have snapped her up had she not leaped and rotated her entire body upward, light as a breeze, landing astride the Noctnatter's skull. She pulled hard against it's skull, dragging those dark icy claws up through its skull. It twitched once more before expiring.

Impressive. It had taken the girl all of three seconds to restrict and kill the voidbeast. Alone. Zara hadn't expected that. Perhaps I should be paying more attention to her as well.

"That's how you do it, kids!" Evie shouted, lifting a gore-covered gauntlet in victory. More than a few faces pinched in disgust, but others watched with serious eyes and steady, earnest Spirits. "Keep eatin' your vegetables and one day you too could be as stunning as me. Mabye." Evie tilted her head. "Eh. Probably not. But it ain't bad to hope!"

"Alright! Back to battle stations!" Harn shouted over Evie's bravado. "First Talon, Second Talon, go take a rest. Third and Fourth, you're comin' up here! Move people!"

"You heard Commander Kastos, no telling when more voidbeasts will come!" Darius bellowed just after, pushing the next group of soldiers up from the lower decks while the others filed below. Zara could sense the soldiers' relief to be in the open air, no matter how tempestuous. The carrack was vast, able to hold all of their people and supplies, but only just.

Darius joined Harn near the mizzenmast, where they began a fierce but quick discussion about tactics. Zara could have eavesdropped, but restrained herself. The Hand would know if she listened, somehow. Zara hadn't quite figured out his trick...and he knew it.

Infuriating man. Within seconds the voidbeast had turned to streamers of foul smoke, lost to the whipping winds as the carrack continued to sail onward, prodded by her potent Willpower. Intelligent and strong, surely, but entirely too proud.

The two commanders returned to their respective posts, this time Harn going belowdecks, and Darius started marching up and down the soldiers that lined up against the ship's sides. Zara busied herself with checking the wards that kept hers and all the power contained. They had lashed the stone wards to the gunwales in all directions, and so long as their people remained within its circumference they would not draw down the ire of greater and more worrisome beings. Her senses found the array unbroken and functioning as intended. Even still, their very presence within the Shadowgate seemed to signal nearby scavengers.

"Lotta nasties out there, huh?" Evie said, shuffling toward the prow. The deck rolled, but her knees and hips moved effortlessly with them.

"Indeed. It seems these Shadowgates are quite attractive to their kind, if not as permeable as the Dark Passages I've used in the past. Otherwise our wards would allow us to pass without a trace." Zara examined the sky, which was an unrelieved pewter blue, empty of even clouds. It complimented the slate-gray seas, a calm counterpoint to their swells. "Be thankful nothing worse has noticed us."

"You mean the Whalemaw?" Evie scrunched up her nose. "That thing sounds nasty."

"It was a vile abomination fueled by a dark hunger." Zara shuddered. "If I never see it again, it would be too soon. As it stands, we shall pass through the Shadowgate within another few hours. Already we are making greater time than before."

"Huh. Didn't we arrive really fast last time?" Evie asked, shifting her weight as the ship began to climb up another swelling wave. "Like we traveled for six or seven glasses but only a glass had actually passed between the leaving and the arriving?"

"Time moves strangely in the Void, and liminal spaces like the Shadowgate tread closely to its influence. The exact conversion is unknown to me, and it very well might fluctuate. Perhaps we will have been gone several glasses, perhaps only a fraction of that time." Zara grinned, baring her sharp teeth to the wind. "I do admit to being quite curious. I have a theory that the amount of space affected influences the temporal dilation, but we will have to use the other Shadowgates to ascertain whether that is viable."

"Uh-huh. Fascinatin'."

Zara's smile swept away with the breeze. She found herself wishing for the company of Atar or Alister; as annoying as their questions had grown earlier, at least they would have been excited by the prospect. "What is it that you want, Ms. Aren?"

"Me? Oh. Nothin'. Me and the Battlelord were talkin' a bit, wonderin' about all this ocean."

Her relationship has improved with the giants. Zara had noticed Evie's attitude toward them had shifted—her Spirit returning to a mellower tempo since the events in Ahkestria—but engaging in friendly conversation was a new turn entirely. It seems I've more than one reason to be impressed with the girl. "What is it you are curious about?"

Evie scratched her head, tugging at the braids she'd hastily woven. "Well, is this your Skill? Like how the last one was Felix's?"

Zara tensed. "It is. Like Felix's Bastion of Will, this allows us to traverse the Shadowgate path far faster by providing a medium we may traverse. Without it we'd be slogging through dense Void-stuff."

Let that be explanation enough, child.

"What sorta Skill is just...an empty ocean? Even with the monsters, this feels way too easy."

Zara sighed as, in response to Evie's words, Zara felt a resonant click deep in her core space. A Skill was fatefully engaged. All around them, the water thrummed with a pitch that few could ever hope to hear, and it set the Naiad's heart racing. She knew someone was going to ask soon or later, and had even managed to keep the mages distracted long enough to forget the question. She hadn't expected Evie to bring it up, but then, the girl had surprised her multiple times. "It is a Mind Skill, the only one that the Shadowgate found a sympathetic connection to, and which I have long Tempered to Master Tier. It is called Guardian's Challenge, a Skill that tests my own limits in order to surpass them."

Ahead, the sound of roaring water was interrupted by a cataclysmic splash. Huge, golden obelisks twice the width of their ship erupted from the surface of the ocean. Each monolith was made of cratered stone that glowed like miniature suns, putting off enough golden radiance to turn the slate seas into sunset waves.

Zara frantically whistled, and the winds shifted them to port, narrowly avoid the first upthrust stone.

"Noctis' bloody throat! What is that?" Evie asked, grabbing hold to the railing as the ship bucked sideways.

"A Challenge," Zara shouted back as more gleaming monoliths ripped from below. The harmonics blazed within her senses, alight with her Intent as she manipulated the ship. "One that only activates when it is acknowledge by thought or word."

"What? Why didn't you warn me! I wouldn't have brought it up!"

"Wouldn't have mattered. That alone would have caused the Challenge to enact. Come, Evie! Harness yourself to the ship and breath the wild spray!" Zara felt the ghost of old instincts, ones that were native to this Mask yet almost forgotten. The feel of swimming through chill rivers and endless lakes, battling the tides and the monsters below. "We've no choice now."

The ship raced forward, tempest winds behind, a shifting maze of blazing stone ahead.

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