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 copper 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 mainyard 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 of 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 Maraboud 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.
Nox – 4th Harvestwatch 1383
Emerald Expanse, Duskmere
Consciousness returned by degrees: First smell, then sound,hen pain. Smell was impossible it seemed – sweet soil, wet moss, the sharp green of crushed fern, balsam resin hissing on coal. Nothing in Hell ever smelled this alive. Sound was rain's gentler cousin, a hush of droplets through the leaves, the tick-tick of them rolling on my warm skin, and a low crackle – fire. Pain was everywhere – bruises, rope-burns, a gash at the root of my left horn – but pain meant that I still drew breath.
I opened my eyes. Dawn? Dusk? A clouded sky glowed pearl above a lattice of colossal trees hung with veils of silver moss. Mist pooled among roots like spilled moonlight. A campfire burned in a shallow pit, its smoke a thin grey ribbon spiraling into the canopy. Across the flames crouched a man.
"Dalia –" My throat rasped the name. I turned slowly. She lays on a pallet of woven fronds, skin grey-ashen, lips cracked. She breathed, but shallowly.
"You are safe for the moment," the man said. His voice was velvet dragged across granite – soft, resonant, edged.
He wore a suit tailored from midnight: long coat, vest, high-collar shirt blacker than coal. Rain beaded on the fabric but never soaked it in – as if the cloth refused the world. His hair likewise charcoal, fell straight to , framing a face too refined to be common yet too severe to be gentle. Eyes glinted ruby, his pupils pinprick-narrow. He held a tin kettle over the fire, wrist lax, motion .
Prescence rolled from him – quiet, tidal. 'In all my time in Hell, I had felt such a gravity only from the demon princes themselves: the sensation that the world itself bent to their will and their will alone; choices dwindled, and individual agency cowed before such a force. And now the man before me exhibited the same sway as the great horrors I had fled from.'Instinct told me danger; exhaustion and pain told me tread softly.
I pushed up on one elbow despite agony. "Where. Are. We."
Despite the rain-dark mist wreathing the clearing around us moving, swaying like saying hello, I forced my eyes to hold the stranger's.
"Duskmere, milady," he said – his voice while soft carried in the night air. "Three leagues inland from Hell's coast. I found you on the stand at dawn, lashed to a capsized skiff and half drowned."
He kept his hands visible, palms open. While he carried no obvious weapons, her gut spoke that he could be more dangerous than a dagger ever would.
"I am Ran Zephyr. My traveling companions" – he gestured toward silent figures sitting on a fall log. I hadn't even noticed them despite looking their way. "are my wife and our daughter, Sylvia. We mean you no harm."
I drew a slow breath, my last memory was water endlessly in every direction. "You found us?"
"I heard wreckage dragging along the rocks – followed the tide line to you both." His scarlet eyes held steady. "Your sister was not breathing. I coaxed water from her lungs, warmed her and you with fox-pin embers, and brewed some cat's tongue tea to steady the fever. Nothing more cunning than that."
He poured two cups of tea into a pair of metal canteens, not unsimilar to that of someone in the military. He then walked over to me, stopping a few feet away. Lifting up his hand he took a sip, then offered the other to me. "It's not poison, merely a remedy to keep you warm against the cold. Water will chill you faster than air even could and keep you that way."
I took the warm cup from his hands. Glancing over at the two figures sitting as Zephyr poured them each a drink as well. One was clearly younger, she had a dark leather suit on, and a violin propped beside her. The woman had pale white skin, obsidian silk hair, and stunning features that would've caused any war in the crimson garden any time. Her mother was the aged version of , a sweet wine that only improves with age.
I took a sip from the cup and a tremor ran down my spine as a warmth began to spread to every corner of it. Despite the kindness, I to get a solid understanding. "Why camp here? You are obviously well off? Why is there fog swirling like a hungry beast?"
He lifted a brow, "Mist is the forest's own cloak. I merely nudge it in the right direction to keep unwelcome beasts from interrupting a good meal." He turned, "Plus, it will be morning soon, and mist acts well to keep the morning glare away. Sunlight has a tendency in dense forests to pierce through a canopy like knives – unpleasant for travelers who spent a night on the sea."
"Thank you for your help so fair." My voice came out, still somewhat hoarse from the brine, " you offered your rescue and service one sidedly – Neither I nor my sister owe you anything."
The man paused for a moment.
"I ask nothing." His smile was polite, not soothing. "Though I do admit curiosity. I have travelled two Empires, visited every province and seen many species of people, yet seldom horns shaped so elegantly."
I stiffened. If I admitted I was from hell, would that change the dynamic? Would he turn hostile like the captain did? Hell has been sealed for the past two thousand years, so I had no information to go off of other than what I have experienced so far.
"Not all bloodlines care to parade their histories."
"Fair." He nodded, accepting the rebuff without visible offence. "Should you wish a convenient fiction if others pry – there's an abundance of changelings in Duskmere. A species who can change their appearance to match different aspects of those around them. It should be useful, folks who value courtesy over lineage will believe the tale." A measured pause took place as he took another draft from his cup. "Wolvsbane for example."
"Wolvsbane?" The name was unfamiliar on my tongue, like most things in this strange realm.
"A free city five and twenty leagues west. Cosmopolitan. Its laws judge based on deeds, not faces." He rested one hand on a fallen trunk; the wind sighed through needles overhead, shaking a silver drizzle that hissed on the fire. "I am bound there myself. If you desire refuge – physicians, beds, anonymity – you and your sister may travel in our company."
Dalia stirred, coughing weakly. I swiftly walked over and knelt, wiping rain-beads from my sister's brow. The fever still held her in its dull vise, yet the rattling breaths sounded a bit stronger,
Zephyr spoke again, lower. "Her illness is beyond my herbal knack. Wolvsbane will have alchemists and healers who weave vitality as easily as I bend wind. Should you want it, I would be happen to guide you there without price."
Thunder rumbled far off, rolling through the canopy. I studied the man in the firelight. Nothing in his stance or tone rang with a classic devil's bargain. Nothing in his stance or tone rang with the classic devil's bargain; the way in which he carried himself and spoke harbored no ill-intent. Why? Wariness fluttered in my ribs, but Dalia's ghost thin pulse hardened my resolve.
"We travel at my pace. If my sister's condition worsens, we rest. If dangers come, you do not command me."
Zephyr bowed deeply, as formal as a baron to an Empress. "You will, Lady …?" His voice trailed off expectant.
"Nox." I looked at the man, "Just Nox."
He straightened, "Then, Nox, gather strength. We march when you deem fit."