Marco checked the description for the Tortoise Gull’s Conquest.
Armored Sails
The sails of your ship have gained a slight resistance to slashing and piercing damage.
That was how his Conquest skill worked. Every ti they defeated so odd monster or so especially hard challenge, there was a chance his ship or equipnt would grow from it. Marco declined the upgrade. It didn’t make sense to get rid of the stronger Crabshell Cladding in favor of sothing that only added a slight resistance to the sails.
On the whole, the world they were entering was vast and incredibly dangerous. They could survive here only by growing fast, finding new gear, and keeping ahead of whatever challenges were thrown at them.
That was why they had co. It was adventure, pure and simple. It was excitent on the biggest, grandest stage possible. Most of all, it was freedom, sothing that each of them wanted in a slightly different way.
Now they just needed to find land.
—
Food was not a problem. The mysterious island they last called their temporary ho was run by an old woman who had packed their hold so full of food it very literally wouldn’t hold any more goods of any kind at all. They had eaten through a good amount of that food now, boiling rice and using up spices with fresh-caught ocean fish and whatever dried vegetable seed appealing enough to rehydrate.
Boredom was a problem, but only just. One of the benefits of having cruised through unspeakable dangers of various kinds was that a break beca very welco. The governnt had been chasing Marco for a ti and probably still was, but these days it was probably a much more theoretical pursuit than it had been before. According to the older, savvier people he had consulted on the issue, there were only so many people in the civilized nation they hailed from who could or would chase them here. The powers that be wouldn’t be eager to commit their entire navy to dangerous waters.
With their imdiate monster threat thwarted, their forr pirate nesis in the grave, and imdiate pursuit far behind them, Marco and his crew’s current goal was to make as much distance as they could in a particular direction. Elisa was their navigator, despite not having a specific skill that gave her an advantage in navigation. She could point them in the right direction, generally, just by using her very wide knowledge base. At the mont she didn’t need to do even that.
“Marco, slight starboard turn,” Elisa called out.
“That’s weird.” Marco adjusted the ship to be just a tiny bit more on course before propping the wheel in place and turning his attention to lunch. “We all know where the next temple is, down to the degree. It’s not like the system ssage ca with a map or so kind of coordinates. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“I haven’t either,” Aethe said. “So it’s not an elvish difference.”
“It might be an older thing. You know. Like in Old Magics of the Sistym,” Riv said.
“In what?” Elisa turned to face Riv imdiately. “Is that a book?”
“Yeah. Wait. Oh. Wow.” Riv suddenly gave his full attention to Elisa, taking his eyes and mind off of anything and everything else. “You’re telling I’ve read a book Elisa the Learned hasn’t?”
“As unlikely as it may seem, there really are books I haven’t read. For one, we didn’t have every book ever written on Gulf Isle. What’s weirder is that you read a book. Or anything. I’m assuming it had lots of pictures?”
“Not a single one.” Riv took no offense to Elisa’s implied insult. He never did to anything, really. It was one of the things that made him an easy crewmate to have. Things just slid off him. “There was a sort of competition at the island library where the prize was sothing from a local blacksmith, and I wanted a better hamr. You had to read the book, and then give a speech about it. I figured reading a bigger book would an I’d have a better chance at doing a good speech.”
“That’s not how it works,” Elisa said. “Riv, that’s not how it works at all.”
“I know that now,” Riv stated with a lot of emphasis on the last word. “I lost really badly. The point is that there are a lot of theories built off old records that the system used to be different. I’m not going to pretend to have understood all of it…”
“No shock there,” Marco ribbed. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you read a book.”
“Because I’ve been too busy keeping this ship in perfect shape. I apologize.”
“Marco, hush. You too, Elisa,” Aethe said. “Banter is fun but there’s a limit.”
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“Yes. Well, anyway, the idea is that over very long periods of tis, classes co and go. Skills co and go. They said that the original skills and classes might have been a lot different, especially a really long ti ago.”
“And they supported this with what?” Elisa asked.
“Supported? No idea. Like I said, I didn’t understand the book. But it seed like what the writer was trying to argue was that if everything changed at the sa pace stretching back into history, there would eventually be a point where everything looked very different. It would still be the system and it would still be people, but everything would be in a different balance.”
“Huh,” Elisa said. “Maybe. I know there have been so very small changes to classes during our lifetis.”
“Like mine?” Marco raised his gun a little in its holster, by way of demonstration. “It’s weird. Nobody has seen sothing like it so far.”
“No. That’s normal weird. The system has always had outliers. Your class wasn’t all that different from Steed’s, if you think really hard about it. That man could fight, he could pilot his ship, and he had so pretty unique skills. What I’m talking about is more like small changes in the average way classes work. Little adjustnts you can only see when you study hundreds or thousands of people.”
“Got it. So if I’m tracking this right, the idea is that whoever made that temple back on the invisible island also made the island itself, probably. And to do that they’d have to be working with stuff that we can’t do anymore, but that made sense back then sohow.”
“It all works out to that happening a very long ti ago,” Aethe said. “Which raises the question of why this is all just starting to resurface now. We found the temple, soone else found a map to the temple. Frisk knew sohow. So now three people know about it. Presumably this all happens within a few months. Why now?”
“The temple said sothing about a new era,” Marco said. “Not that it ans much. The way I figure it, we have nothing better to do.”
“Nothing better to do?” Riv tossed his hamr into his tool bucket. “I could be building houses, Marco. Big beautiful houses. Or docks. Or barns. Anything, really. Though this ship isn’t bad either. ”
—
They sailed onward, taking shifts as they worked closer to whatever unidentified target they were headed to. Most of the ti, Marco stayed on the wheel, since his presence made the ship go much faster than anyone else’s could. When bedti ca, though, anyone could steer as accurately as he could, even if they couldn’t go as fast. They all had a sense of where they were going, and pointing the ship that way wasn’t hard.
Night fell slowly over The Foolish Endeavor, turning the sky from a bright blue to a dark, diamond-studded black. The crew settled into the rhythm of slowing down for bed. They ate, joked, and finally divided up the night watch.
Marco stayed at the wheel for the first stretch. Having won the drawing to have his choice of slots, he opted for what he usually wanted, which was as much uninterrupted sleep as he could get. The sails caught the moonlight and glead.
These days, he could feel the magic in his body flowing into the ship in different, more powerful ways. The power from defeated pirate captains stored in his gear sohow interacted with the ship enhancents from the strange monsters he had fought. His class should have done pretty well on its own without all that, but with all the slight increases and moderate enhancents he had accumulated over his adventure so far, he and The Foolish Endeavor were batting far above their pay grade.
Aethe took her post on the bow, sitting cross‑legged by the rails with her longbow across her knees. Her eyes, far sharper than any other crew mber's, scanned the horizon. Even in darkness, her Scout's sight could pick out shifts in the water or the movent of clouds that Marco would completely miss. She humd quietly to herself, a tune without words that wove through the sound of waves striking the hull.
"You don't have to be up with , you know," Marco said. "You could get so more sleep."
"I will, when I want to," Aethe said. "For now it's just nice being with you when it's quiet."
Riv and Elisa moved below deck, checking their supplies and making sure nothing had gone awry with the food that was keeping them going. For a long ti, Elisa had demanded Riv also run her through the day’s maintenance as they went. Lately, she didn't. Riv seed to have an instinct for what sounds were normal and what weren’t, what planks could be tightened, and what joints needed more tar to stay watertight. When he needed help or another opinion, he asked for it. Otherwise the others trusted the well-being of the ship to their quartermaster absolutely.
Hours passed after that, and slowly the others drifted to bed and sleep in earnest. The night air cooled, the sound of the water slapping the sides of the boat dominated all the remaining noises of the night. Marco scanned the horizon, seeing nothing at all besides more water. And yet, after looking long enough, he thought he did see sothing different, even if he couldn't quite put his finger on exactly what. The waves were different sohow. Not bigger. Just off their usual rhythm.
“Sothing out there,” he said softly, pointing northeast. “Not close. But moving.”
It could have been a school of fish, for all he knew. But if so, it was the only one that had stood out to him this way since they had started. It felt more likely that sothing weird was happening.
Then, far out in the black water, sothing breached. At first it was just a shadow, but it was a shadow as wide as a house. Aethe was up and near Marco in what seed like an instant, bow drawn. Marco gripped the wheel and squinted into the dark, glad he wasn't deciding what to do alone.
“Elisa and Riv?” Marco asked.
"They're coming."
The sea bulged again, closer this ti. A long tentacle surfaced and slapped back under the waves, leaving a trail foam where it hit. The rhythm of the ocean shifted. The off-beat waves Marco had noticed now had an obvious source.
Aethe whispered when the head finally rose out of the water enough for them to see the house-sized head in its entirety.
“Kraken,” she said.
"I thought those weren't real. Elisa said so."
"I said there's no one thing called a kraken. It's sort of a catchall for very large squid." Elisa was up now. her hands glowing with fire. "But I'd say that's one, if anything is. A kraken."
The word hung in the air, chilling all of them..
“What should we do?” Riv asked. "Fight? Fly?"
“Hold steady,” Marco said, keeping his voice steady. “It might not want us. But maybe get that axe you packed anyway.”
Another tentacle broke the surface, thicker than the ship’s mast, lined with suckers that glowed faintly blue in the starlight. It hovered, dripping, then slamd into the water just off their port side, drenching them all in spray and rocking The Foolish Endeavor back and forth like a cork.
Elisa raised her hands, switched to lightning, and waited. Aethe stretched her bow. The kraken regarded them coolly, and for a long mont it seed like it might not move for them after all.
Then it did.
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