...and Look Him Straight in the Eye

23rd Day of the 1st Quarter of the 42nd Year under Her Glory, Empress Teadora Czara II

Vyse pulled his winter cloak tighter about his shoulders in the dim light the Silver Moon cast in the surrounding murk. The winter winds from the south had been strong this year. It was a bad omen, and he'd heard some of the men quietly muttering about it in the lower reaches of the ship, far from his father's ears.

He snorted, softly, and took a pull of the cheap loqua he'd brought up to warm him through his watch hours.

And so the Violet Witch sends a bit more cold our way this year. Two years back was a short winter, and a few years before that there was talk the cold would never end.

He shifted a bit, trying to tuck his head under the lip of the tiny loopers nest. It was unnaturally cold, there was no denying that. Winter should have been easing its grip on the mid-ocean, the storms and icy chill giving way to a more temperate climate. As it was, the fishing seasons might be disrupted.

Or the Valuans might send out raiding parties to prey on the small islands while they were mostly grounded.

Speaking of swine he thought as he adjusted the farsight lens over his right eye and braved the winds for a few moments to scan the fog shrouded horizon.

Before he could brace himself back in the relative safety of the low guardrail, the ship shifted slightly, probably Briggs at the helm. The tight-assed bastard was always just a touch harsher with the old girl than his father.

He spared a moment for an unkind word about the man's abilities as a pilot before returning to his seat and taking another swig of loqua.

Moon's but its cold.

He whiled away a moment with pity for poor Luke, tucked in the even smaller keel nest. Keeping an eye out for threat from below was important, but nobody liked the duty. You had to be insane to want nothing beneath you but a single layer of thin planking.

And that didn't begin to cover having to lean over the edge and stare down into the roiling, eternal fury of Deep Sky.

His shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

He made to bring the flask to his lips again when an unearthly howl started him almost out of the rigging. He spent a thought hoping the flask didn't hit anyone on the deck before he was perched precariously as high as he could get. One arm griped the mast with white knuckled pressure, while the other fussed over the settings of his lens, trying to make some sense out of the damned fog.

He could see nothing but the mist phantoms that always followed ships in a fog. Ticks of light and shadow or wandering spirits, they posed no threat.

But something in the night had given that soul-rending call. Something he'd never heard nor seen in a decade of sailing.

And judging by the panicked shouts from the deck, neither had most of the more experienced crew.

And then it was there, looming out of the impenetrable night like a vast wall. A riot of twisted violet plates and what couldn't possibly be the oozing flesh it looked like, that he swore had to be bigger than all of Windmill Island. And he couldn't help but just stare at the indescribable thing before him.

Distantly, he heard his own voice screaming itself hoarse. "Object to port! Coming closer damnit!" But he couldn't quite remember ever telling his body to speak. He could only stare, arm still locked around the mast as his own death approached.

Then he heard, distantly, the sound of cannon fire and again that earsplitting shriek rent the skies. And as he forced his eyes open, not ever remembering when they had closed, he saw that he wall was slipping back. The thing, whatever it was, was falling behind.

He heaved a breath into his aching lungs and touched a hand to his raw throat. When this was over, he was going to buy a bottle of good loqua from Torrence, damn the cost, and get well and truly drunk. And if he was lucky, he'd never think of this night again.

And then the eye slid past him, and in the second his gaze locked with the creature, and it was a creature he suddenly realized with a sinking sense of wonder, he saw Age heaped upon Age, far back into the days of myth and legend, perhaps even back to he fabled Fall.

And as the last of the creature slipped away into the shadowed night, he couldn't help but stare after it.

And he knew that nothing would ever make him forget this night. That when he lay on his deathbed, whether that was a hard deck tomorrow of a soft bunk decades hence; he would still hold that eye, that endless gaze, with perfect clarity.

When Aika hauled herself up the ropes to see what was wrong with her friend, she found him staring back into the sky, hands and face starting to go purple from the cold.

O0O