Between Three Rogues

by Erico

There were Valuans, Black Pirates, and Blue Rogues, and that was enough for Vyse and Aika to wrap their heads around. Then a girl crashed into their lives, and the world became a whole lot bigger. And somewhere during a globe-spanning epic adventure that changed everything, a man, his best friend, and the girl that went sailing off the map with them figured themselves out.

28. Here Be Monsters

BETWEEN THREE ROGUES

By Eric 'Erico' Lawson

---

Twenty-Eight: Here Be Monsters

Lawrence considered himself a damn decent helmsman and navigator. He'd cut his teeth serving on blockade runners as a cabin boy in the early days of the empire, fast-moving smuggling ships that circumvented the vessels of the Valuan Armada that closed in around the outlying islands that didn't fly their banner and pay their taxes. The ships he served on weren't the only ones who did it, there were also stories of a special kind of thorn in the side of the Empire known as the Blue Rogues who thought themselves better than most, but Lawrence didn't pay them much mind. He was too busy graduating from cabin boy to ship's mate, with his eye set on being a pilot in his own right. Not a captain, though. He'd been told that he didn't have the temperament and patience for it, and as he grew older, he could see how right that statement was. Captains had to deal with people, even the idiots. Lawrence trained to be the best in everything he did; navigation, swordplay, even finance. He didn't have the time for idiots.

It took him years, but by the time he turned 20, Lawrence had gathered up a decent reputation. Decent enough that he was able to quit the ship he was serving on and start demanding a proper contract fee. He never flew with any of the Blue Rogues, though; they never seemed to be in it for the money, which meant they never had the gold to pay him.

By the time he was 27, he'd garnered the nickname of 'Lone Wolf Lawrence' on the Valuan bounty boards, and accrued a single star to his name. He was considered an 'irritant' by the Empire, akin to One-Armed Drachma and The Angel of Death. A disruptive influence, but not one that was a particular threat to their ambitions. Not like Dyne the Blue Storm. Not like the Blue Rogues in general. He never thought he'd end up working for one. It wasn't that he disagreed with their morals, they were fine, but none of them had the money to pay for him. And none of them offered up a worthy challenge for someone of his talents.

Then suddenly, there was Vyse the Whatever standing in front of him as he leaned against the side of the Sailor's Guildhouse on Sailor's Isle, asking him to join up with his crew while someone who looked remarkably like the crown prince of Valua stood beside him.

Lawrence quoted him his contract fee, and because Vyse was a Blue Rogue and quickly becoming the most-wanted man in Mid-Ocean, he fed him the price for what his services would cost for a year's duration. He never expected Vyse to flash him a coin from the legendary Daccat's hoard, or to learn that a single coin was all that Daccat left behind in his hidden tomb.

He definitely didn't expect Vyse to counter his contract price with a bid cut in half...and with the guarantee that Lawrence, who prided himself on being the best behind the wheel of a ship, would learn that he wasn't. It was open-ended, it was wholly subjective, and Lawrence stared at the boy who had only just become a man by his years, one ten years younger than he was, and took the bet.

Lawrence wagered that he was a better helmsman than Vyse, who spouted off that Daccat, the greatest air pirate in history, had valued friends, family, and freedom over any other treasure in the world. Vyse, who had broken out of the Grand Fortress twice and fought monsters and defeated three Admirals. Lawrence watched, as one of the first members of his crew aboard the most powerful warship that he'd ever laid eyes on, as Vyse and his chief engineer Aika and their friend Fina and the damned Valuan prince traveled from Sailor's Isle to Nasrad, to the Frontier Lands and back, across Valua's own backyard to the North Ocean and south until they reached the newly discovered lands of Ixa'taka. He watched as they flew, as they fought, as they recruited people in every place that they stopped at.

A swarthy fire control officer and an entire gunnery crew. A cutthroat rubenesque merchant. A ship's cook that made the best grumble pie Lawrence knew of. A doctor who was also wanted by Valua, not for piracy but for his skill. They added a lookout and navigator in the North Ocean when they stopped for a meal at a flying restaurant, then turned around and added a second lookout in Ixa'taka, along with a dancer and sous chef, and two ship's engineers when another Blue Rogue asked Vyse to look after his adopted boys. And that time, there had even been alcohol involved. By the time they got to Esperanza, Vyse had taken to wearing an outlandish hat that suited him perfectly, and they picked up a fortuneteller. Hell, they even had a couple of kids who'd joined up and made passable cabin boys and runners...and there was even a stupid dog.

Actually, Lawrence didn't much mind the dog. Even if the name was ridiculous. Who names a dog for the sound it makes…?

Esperanza was the icing on the cake when it came to crewmembers. Led by a ruddy-faced alcoholic, close to two dozen people were added to their crew from that port alone, bringing their numbers up to forty. Or thereabouts. Enough for a ship that had been flying on shoestring shifts to suddenly be staffed the way it was meant to be. Enough that when Fina gushed about the crew manifest to Vyse on the bridge it made Lawrence wonder how this one boy had pulled it off.

He knew why he'd accepted the terms of Vyse's bet and conceded the loss, sacrificing half his pay. Vyse had said that there were better pilots than Lawrence was, and he'd been right. The young captain had pushed himself to the breaking point flying them through the wind tunnel of the Southern Ocean. He'd taken twice the shifts that Lawrence had, then had made sure to teach Lawrence about every little stunt and trick that he knew of so that the ship would keep flying even when he forced himself to not be there. And then Fina and Aika had forced him off of the bridge for a much-deserved rest, which had clearly been what he needed. He was himself again when he finally dragged himself out of the captain's cabin the next day, forever cheerful, forever himself.

Still, as they flew away from the Cape of Good Hope and Esperanza and what was left of Admiral Gregorio's Fleet, Lawrence couldn't help but wonder why so many people followed Vyse. If it was just for money, he would understand it. If it was for revenge, he would understand that as well. Yet only Kazim was forever howling war cries. And only Lawrence had ever made a fuss about his pay.

Lawrence preferred to keep to himself, to do the job he was paid for, and to leave it at that. But he also liked to know who he was working for, and who he was working with. He had never flown with any Blue Rogue before, and claimed it was for a lack of money.

For the first time in years, as they flew closer and closer to the Dark Rift, 'Lone Wolf' Lawrence realized that he would have to do the unthinkable to find his sense of equilibrium on his new posting;

He was going to have to socialize.

---

160 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

SE of Esperanza, The Dark Rift Entryway

All hands were at their stations, and the ex-Valuan sailors were all parsed out and assigned to different areas of the ship. Only one of them stood on the bridge with the rest of the main crew, and Lawrence found himself at the helm with both the captain and the old sailor named Don standing off of his shoulders. Behind him, Enrique and Domingo and Fina stood at their stations, with young Marco hovering by the hatch that led from the bridge to the rest of the ship.

The moaning of the Dark Rift passed through the hull, and they all stared with hard eyes at the wall of endless black wind that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other ahead of them, a wall of promised destruction. Vyse looked solemn and focused. Don was as pale as death as he faced the obstacle that had defined his life.

He pointed to a small, by scale, region in the wall which was lighter than the rest of it. As though something illuminated it from the interior. They'd been flying all night in shifts, following the cryptic words of their new helmsman to travel along the Rift in search of an opening, a spot where the winds formed a vortex that burrowed a hole through the wall of wind. Lawrence had begun to think that the older sailor, who smelled like the underside of a dive bar, was either drunk when he put forth the idea or that his memory was so spotty that he'd imagined it and built it up as a real thing. To find out that Don had been telling the truth…

"There." Don whispered. "We flew through there."

"Advice?" Vyse asked him, and Lawrence felt the captain's gaze go past him to the other helmsman. "Anything you remember?"

"Stay off the walls." Don said, shivering a little. "Take the middle of the vortex. It turns into a tunnel, and it breathes. Sometimes in, sometimes out."

"Knowing when it's doing which is important, then." Vyse mused. He looked over to Lawrence. "Take us in. Slow ahead. Keep the maneuvering spinners online."

"If we meet resistance?" Lawrence asked, giving Don a side-eye. "Do we back off and wait for it to reverse?"

"We could." Vyse conceded, looking to Don. "But do you know how long it takes for the currents to reverse?" Don shook his head, the knowledge either lost in the passing of years or never learned. "Well, in that case, if we're against the wind...we fly through it. This ship is powerful enough to break through sky rifts, after all. Time we put that to work."

Lawrence gripped the wheel tighter and nodded, moved the EOT to the ordered speed, and the Delphinus started in. The orange light that had been their constant companion since passing through the World's End sky rift began to fade, and ominous darkness took its place.

They entered into the vortex, and slipped inside of the walls of swirling black.

The ship shivered and shuddered, and Lawrence reached for the EOT, punching up his speed as he felt the vortex try and buffet them backwards.

"That's right." Vyse said, his voice a soft thing meant to be heard, but not to distract. Like a soothing voice. "Feel it out. Listen to her. She'll tell you what she needs."

It was still jarring in spite of Vyse's intention, because it came disturbingly close to the first lessons that Lawrence had gotten in piloting ships, given by old men who only set foot on land once every three months or so, and never for longer than two or three days. Lessons from sailors who had lived their whole lives on voyage, who got feelings about the weather from the aches that they felt, and who spoke of their ships like grand old dames. Most sailors feminized the ships they sailed on, but only a few that Lawrence had ever known had ever been that crazy enough to believe it.

Lawrence had been glad when he'd picked up enough experience of his own to no longer have to deal with being mentored and apprenticed to death by crazy old men (And one woman, Captain Gardenia had been the one who taught him to fight dirty if it meant staying alive) because it had meant that he'd been able to get away from the kind of spiritual sailor's mentality that they always tried to impress on him. He'd never expected to run into it again. Especially from someone as young as Vyse was.

He'd learned to fly without the tricks that the old sailors swore by, but here, with the ship rattling around him even worse than it had in the wind tunnels of the Southern Ocean, Lawrence found himself grasping for the old lessons again.

What do you need?

He almost closed his eyes, like Captain Rollings used to sometimes. It was a trick that never failed to scare the younger sailors, even if Rollings flew just as good doing it that way. Somehow, Lawrence held off and instead let his hands, and the vibrations that passed through them, talk to him.

He adjusted the output of the port spinners, increasing power to give him a smidge more lateral movement as they kept on through the tunnel and pushed the EOT up to three-quarters power. He'd seen the turbine output for this ship; it was three times as fast, three times as powerful as the standard Valuan vessels.

At three-quarters speed, with the spinners pushing him to starboard and centering the ship in the passage, the shuddering began to calm and slow. The moaning was still there, but it slipped around the ship, not a force that smashed into it but something that passed it by.

They flew like that, with The Dark Rift an oppressive force all around them that they slipped through in the tunnel and didn't look back from, for a period of time that Lawrence somehow failed to keep track of. It was almost as though the moaning outside drowned out his own thoughts.

Then all at once, the tunnel vanished. The swirling gray and black winds that had clouded in on them from every direction disappeared.

The Delphinus sailed into open, empty airspace, and they heard nothing but the sound of their own engines. Ahead of them in the distance, they saw twisted and gnarled landmasses covered in riotous greenery and glowing fauna. No sunlight penetrated to where they flew, he could see a thick layer of gray and black clouds that formed a clear, delineated ceiling.

"All stop." Vyse ordered, and Lawrence reached for the EOT, dialing it back down. In fifteen seconds, the engines shut down, and the propellor shafts spun down to nothing, leaving the ship to hover in darkness that glowed only from its interior, from enormous plants and motes of drifting light that lingered in the air.

All was quiet, and that was what made Lawrence shiver.

"We're here." Don said faintly. "We're inside."

Inside The Dark Rift, with only the sound of the blood rushing in his ears to break the stillness, Lawrence stared out the window before looking back to Vyse, who was glancing back to Fina. The blond-haired girl was slumped a little at her station, looking pale and ill.

"Headache." Fina uttered with a croak. "Sorry to worry you."

"It's all right." Vyse reassured her, the tension of the moment gone. He walked back to the captain's chair and keyed up the intercom. "All hands, this is the captain. We've crossed into the Dark Rift. Stand down from full alert. Everyone not on for this shift, go ahead and knock off for some grub and some rest before you're up. Good work." He cut the transmission and nodded at Lawrence. "That includes you, Mr. Lawrence."

"Yes, captain." The brown-haired helmsman nodded, looking over to Don and waiting until the shaking sailor had a hand on the telemotor before backing away. "I am relieved."

---

Evening

After five hours of rest, which would have been longer if that stupid dog hadn't started scraching at the door of his cabin, Lawrence made his way down to the galley with Pow trotting along at his heels. The purple-haired Huskra ruffed softly, and Lawrence almost felt the urge to roll his eyes at its antics. The furry beast was behaved enough to lean its head on his leg when he was feeling out of sorts without jumping all over him, at least. If it wanted to plod along beside him, he wasn't going to stop it.

He walked into the galley with its opulent hanging chandelier and long wooden tables...and reinforced moonglass windows that let the crew look and see the conditions outside. During the quieter parts of the voyage, it meant that they could watch the sunrise, or the sunsets, or just watch the clouds roll by as they passed through blue skies. In the Southern Ocean, everything had taken on a gray sheen. But here in the Dark Rift? Darkness. Endless darkness, like a dimly lit room with multiple candles set up around it. The light from the interior of the ship was brighter than what came from the outside. He quickly looked away from them and tried to find something else to occupy his attention, and to his relief, he saw both Marco and Pinta come racing towards him.

"Boys." He greeted them coolly. Lawrence looked down to Pow, panting at his side. "I think you misplaced something."

"Aw, gee Mr. Lawrence, we didn't misplace him, Pow just went wandering." Pinta answered, his chubby belly sticking out from under his shirt a little bit. "Was he a good boy for you?"

"He woke me up." Laurence muttered. "So I'm on the fence about it. Think you can take care of him now?"

"Sure thing." Marco chirped in, grabbing at the dog's collar and walking him away. Lawrence watched the boys and their dog slip over to their corner of the room and glanced around the galley, seeing who was grabbing their evening meal. He caught sight of Khazim, his gunner's goggles and his hat sitting on the table off of his left arm, and came to a decision. After grabbing a tray and going through the line to get some of Polly's homecooked skyfish casserole and canned applesauce, he walked over and sat down across from Khazim, nodding once at the man.

He'd sat beside the man before, and the extent of their conversations so far had consisted of nods on his part, and monosyllabic grunts from Khazim. Today, he would change that.

"Khazim." Lawrence began. "You have a moment to talk?"

The gunnery officer glanced up at him with his beady brown-black eyes and frowned. "Khazim will allow this." Without his hat, the barrel-chested soldier looked less fierce than usual, his beard rugged instead of menacing. "So long as we may eat peacefully. The meal is quite good." He dug out a small phial full of powdered red pepper flakes from his homeland and sprinkled more over his half-eaten casserole, which was already coated with it. Lawrence made a face as Khazim offered it over to him. "Care for some spice?"

"Some." Lawrence said, carefully shaking out a small amount onto his spoon before handing the phial back. He didn't mind a little kick, but it was a miracle that Khazim could still breathe after having that much. "I had a question about why you stayed."

Khazim looked up at him once, then shoveled a heaping forkful of dinner into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. He swallowed and cocked his head to the side. "Pardon?"

"When we were sailing through the Frontier Lands, north of Nasrad...We did battle with a Valuan task force hunting down Komullah. At the party afterwards, Admiral Komullah asked you and your men if you would join his remnant fleet to continue battling against the Empire. You refused him. Why?"

Khazim raised an eyebrow and shoveled another forkful of food into his mouth. "Khazim shaid why." He garbled out with his mouth still full.

"Because you took the Oath of the Blue Rogues." Lawrence hummed, finally digging into his own meal. There was silence for a time as they ate, and then he spoke again. "So did I. But Oaths can be revoked. Contracts can be broken. You are a soldier of your homeland. Why did you turn away from that in the first place, and become a pirate? Why did you not go running back to it when you had the chance?"

Khazim swallowed, laughed, and reached for his ale, a sweeter Nasrian blend that they'd picked up in Maramba before starting towards their real destination. After a swig, he grinned at Lawrence. "You think Khazim stays out of obligation?"

"I do." Lawrence shrugged. "I accepted a contract, and I'm in the employ of Captain Vyse for a year."

"Perhaps this is so for you, but Khazim and his men stay for another reason. Loyalty."

"Shouldn't your first loyalty be to Nasr?"

"A mercenary thinks he can teach me about loyalty." Khazim snorts, and lifted the last bite of his dinner. "You don't see it, do you?" He asked, stuffing it into his mouth and chewing away.

Lawrence felt the sudden urge to let one of his eyebrows twitch. "If I didn't, I wouldn't ask."

Khazim held up a hand to stop him from saying anything else as he chewed and swallowed, then followed it with the last swigs of his ale. Only after exhaling in satisfaction did the gunner fix his gaze on Lawrence. "What he offered was more than money, and more than a chance at revenge. I could tell you exactly why I stay with him and this crew, and you wouldn't believe me. Because you don't see it yet." Khazim stood and collected his tray. "Listen to what your heart is telling you. If you have not forgotten how to listen to it."

He scooped up his square goggles and his hat, nodded once, and left. Lawrence sat in silence and worked his way through his meal, trying to think about what exactly Khazim had been driving at.

It wasn't enough information. He would need to ask around further.

---

161 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

The silence of The Dark Rift's interior remained an unsettling and haunting presence as they sailed through it. Domingo and Enrique had their hands full in mapping it out, and they were still exploring the opening area and its mangled landscape. There were shipwrecks dotted about, a fortunate few who had been grounded instead of falling into the clouds of the abyss or being torn apart by the Dark Rift's outer wall.

"It could be like a maze." Domingo observed, running a hand through his spiked hair as he stood in his gaudy orange jacket. "Based on what we've seen so far, this is kind of a, a pocket of quiet airspace surrounded by interior skyrifts on every side."

"Have we located any survivors?" Vyse asked, not looking at the map of the interior slowly taking shape, but staring outside the bridge viewports at a strange and enormous glowing flower easily a third the size of the ship a half mile off, jutting up stubbornly from an outcropping of rock.

"Of the shipwrecks we've come across...no, sir." Domingo said dimly. "We've found bodies, withered to skeletons and picked apart by the wildlife that exists here, but nobody living yet. We've found supplies, at least. The food's all gone bad, but the things like sailcloth and moonstone fuel and repair materials are intact. There's been almost no weathering at all."

"Why would there be storms inside of a storm?" Vyse asked, half to himself.

Enrique looked up from the cartography table and lifted an eyebrow. "Vyse, what makes you so sure that there's anyone alive to find in this dismal place? The last expeditions were…"

Twenty years ago, Lawrence said to himself, finishing the sentence Enrique couldn't.

Vyse shrugged. "Our cook, Polly, had a husband who was part of these expeditions. And she's sure that he's still alive, because she said that she'd have 'felt it' if he died. You could dismiss it as wishful thinking, but I'm of a mind to bet on long odds. So we keep looking, all right? If we try to race through this place, we're only going to get lost and get kicked back out the way we came in, or worse, we'll never get out at all."

"And here I thought you found refuge in audacity." Enrique joked, which made Vyse look over and grin.

"Only when I know the odds, Enrique."

It was so easy to focus on the needs of the moment and to not pay attention to anyone else on the bridge. He was the helmsman, after all, and that made it his job to put everyone else out of his mind and concentrate on flying the ship. But there were some noises that tore your mind away from whatever you were focusing on, that made you turn and address them. Like the soft cry of painful whimpering from a girl, or a woman.

So Lawrence brought the ship to a stop, knowing that there were no crosswinds or currents about that would drive the Delphinus into the nearby landmass, parked it into a hover and set the ship's spinners to maintain position, and whirled about in time to see Fina crumple over her station with her strange supernatural companion Cupil hovering over her head, chirping in worry. The girl had a hand pressed to her forehead and was trying not to cry.

And Vyse was at her side in an instant, bracing her and keeping her from slumping to the floor. He guided her into the chair beside her station and took her hand into his, squeezing it.

"Fina, talk to me." Vyse said worriedly.

"I'm...I'm fine, it's just…"

"You are not fine." Vyse interrupted her with a harsh whisper. "You've never been like this before. Stop lying to me, to yourself. Tell me what's going on."

It didn't feel like the level of concern a captain would typically give to a member of his crew, it felt more like something a close friend would give to another. The sob the girl let out at that made his heart twinge, and Lawrence wondered why he cared.

"There's something about this place that...It's an ache in my head and in my heart and I don't know why. I don't know what's causing it." Fina confessed, crumpling into his shirt. He held her for a moment, stroking her back. "Something is wrong with this place. I don't know what, but it hurts me."

In seconds, Vyse had picked her up in a bridal carry and had the blond-haired girl in the silver dress cradled to his chest.

"Enrique." The captain said, a fire burning in her eyes as Fina kept whimpering, and held tightly to him. "You have the bridge. Call Aika and tell her to report to the infirmary." He only waited long enough for the dazed ex-Prince to nod before sweeping his gaze around the bridge. "The rest of you. Finish exploring this 'pocket' of the rift and mapping it out. Any shipwrecks we find, mark and send down a team to investigate for survivors and supplies, and to recover logbooks and crew manifests. We're not letting the lost sailors go forgotten here. We left a beacon where we came in; figure out what other passages there are, but don't go through them yet."

Vyse left the bridge, carrying the girl as though it was the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it was. There was no mistaking that Vyse cared about the people who were on his crew more than most, though as Lawrence turned to Enrique and waited for the officer on the bridge to issue him orders, he blinked to see how Enrique stared after Vyse and the incapacitated Fina with hard, almost accusing eyes.

He wondered what that was about. The moment passed, and Enrique turned to face him. "Resume our course, Mr. Lawrence." Enrique said crisply. "We have mapping to finish."

"Aye, sir." Lawrence reached for the EOT as Enrique sat down in the captain's chair and toggled the intercom, calling down to engineering to get a hold of Aika.

The Dark Rift beckoned to them in ominous silence.

---

Delphinus Conning Tower

162 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Lawrence couldn't escape all of his habits about limiting his time around others so easily, so he cobbled together a list of crewmembers that, to his mind, had less clear cut reasons for joining up and which he could find in places other than the bridge and the galley. One of them was the lookout that they had picked up in Horteka, an Ixa'takan man who was always wearing a mask named Tikatika. The fellow had sharp hearing and even sharper eyesight, so when Lawrence climbed up the conning tower's ladder to get to the crow's nest at the highest point of the ship, the hatch that kept the exterior platform sealed off from the rest of the ship opened right before his hand could reach for it. And Tikatika was staring down at him with his mouth and hidden eyes devoid of emotion.

"You are not a lookout." Tikatika said.

"No. I'm a helmsman. But I'm off shift and thought I'd come up here to have a look around." Lawrence said to him. Tikatika cocked his head to the side, analyzing his statement, and he felt the need to then add, "And I brought a snack?"

"Ah." Tikatika retreated away from the crow's nest hatch and gave him room to climb up and out. The shift in the air he felt immediately as soon as his head was out in the open. The sky inside the Dark Rift felt moist, and neither intolerably hot or unfavorably cold. It simply was, a neutral temperature that left one feeling a little disturbed. It took him almost ten seconds to place what it was, although the silence should have been a clue. The air didn't move here, not enough for a seasoned sailor of Mid-Ocean.

Tikatika stood on the railed platform atop the crow's nest with a climber's web strapped around his thighs and legs, and a braided rope with a springlock carabiner hooked solidly around the thickest bar of the railing. An old-fashioned shortbow and a quiver of arrows were slung over his back. He waited expectantly as Lawrence dug in his pocket and came out with a pressed bar of dried fruits and nuts wrapped in paper, then took the snack with a nod and set to work on it.

Lawrence stared out into the darkness around them, both unsettled and in awe of the landscape. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen in his life. There was no sunlight, yet life, albeit of stranger varieties than he'd ever seen before, somehow flourished.

"It is strange here." Tikatika observed.

"Yeah. Definitely different. Beautiful."

"And yet wrong." Tikatika said, swallowing down the last bite of the ration bar. He extended one arm as he shoved the wrapper into a belt pouch, and pointed off into the distance towards what looked, to Lawrence, like an irregularity in the smooth and gently swirling walls of the pocket they were in. "You see there?" He asked Lawrence, and the helmsman squinted and stared. "That is the opening we came in through." Then his arm moved, and he pointed at two others in plain view, then towards the rocky wall full of holes. "And there are three more openings in this 'pocket' as the crew calls it. This place is nothing like my home. The air is moist, but there is no warmth of life, or of spirit. There is only emptiness here, and we must find the correct way through."

Lawrence took the opening for what it was. "You miss your home."

Tikatika paused, for a moment. "Yes."

"Why did you leave it?" Lawrence asked, and watched as Tikatika broke into an open smile.

"Did you know," the Ixa'takan hunter began conversationally, "That Vyse and the Ladies Aika and Fina freed our people?"

Lawrence had heard something to that effect in the rumors before Vyse and Enrique had stumbled across him that day, but even when they had been traveling through Ixa'taka and visiting people, he'd never heard Vyse bring it up. He settled for a nod.

"The Valuans, the false Quetya, came and imprisoned so many of our people in the sacred mountain. I had the sharpest eyes of all of the hunters, and yet I did not see them coming. I could not warn my people fast enough. I failed them, and in my shame, I trained to grow stronger. To see further. And still it was not enough. All my strength was not enough to save them from the mines of the sacred mountain. But Vyse and his comrades were." Tikatika smiled at that, eyes hidden behind his mask, and he crossed his arms.

"You joined out of obligation, then? Because you felt you owed them a debt?" Lawrence blinked. Tikatika laughed at that, just two short barks before he jerked his head skyward and reached for his bow. Nocking an arrow, he released the shot and sighed.

"No. I owe them no life debt. I offered. They refused. Blue Rogues do not demand servants, or servitude. I came because they were strong enough to do what we could not. They saved our people. I must become strong enough to do the same."

With a wet thud, a Looper colored blue fell to the deck two paces away from Lawrence with an arrow through its head, and he jerked away from it and slammed up against the guardrail. Tikatika chuckled and slung his bow back over his shoulder.

"These can be quite tasty, if prepared correctly. Please take that to Lady Polly or the Lady Fatima for me, please."

---

Some captains were very strict and rigid when it came to authorized areas. Vyse had a much more hands-off approach in that regard. He didn't particularly care who wandered where, and actually encouraged the practice of getting to know the ship that one sailed on, so long as it didn't interfere with normal operations and you weren't vagabonding when you were supposed to be on shift.

Maybe that was why nobody gave him a second glance when he wandered down into the engine room of the Delphinus and stopped at the base of one of the enormous reciprocating engines that powered a propellor shaft. Lawrence stared up at the towering behemoth of refined and wrought metal, a masterpiece of modern shipbuilding and mechanical engineering. Drawing power from potent steam pipes kept fed by the ship's moonstone reactors, the gargantuan assembly pushed pistons the size of a human body to keep it all moving.

"Hell of a thing, ain't it." A gruff masculine voice said, drawing Lawrence's eyes away from the machinery, and to a man with a gaudy purple scarf tied around his neck, with blond hair tied back into a tight ponytail behind his head. "Never thought I'd see an engine this big, much less get the chance to work on one." The blond-haired man looked to be around 25 or so, a few years younger than Lawrence but still older than their captain.

Lawrence nodded once. "Lapen, right?"

"Yeah." The mechanic and inventor had a crowbar in his hand, and he slung it casually over his shoulder as he turned to address him. "You're one of the ship's pilots, right? The one that they picked up on Sailor's Island?"

"Yes."

"And you really got Vyse to agree to your ridiculous fee?" Lapen raised an eyebrow, and Lawrence couldn't help but blink. He hadn't been going around bragging about it, so where had the man heard about his going rate? Lapen kept on speaking. "I knew about you before. Lone Wolf Lawrence. I kept tabs on all the low-level bounties, and you kept showing up in the same ports I did."

"Oh." Mollified, Lawrence shrugged. "No, he's paying me a little less these days."

"How'd he manage that?" Lapen frowned. "Everything I ever heard about you always seemed to say you were a stubborn kind of a fella when it came to money."

"No less stubborn than you were, 'Loose Cannon Lapen.' Rumors aboard the ship say that you got recruited after putting a few holes in the deck armor."

"Yeah, well." Lapen shrugged. "Anyhow. What do you want? A guided tour? Because we're a little busy."

"Don't listen to him!" A younger voice shouted out from nearby, and they turned to see a brown-haired youth of around Vyse's age come strolling up with a massive wrench that looked to double as a weapon easily. "I've been busy, but my big brother here's been dragging his feet on the system inspections."

"Hans, for the love of the Moons, would you stop calling me that?"

"Calling you what?" Hans asked innocently, sticking a hand into the side of his engineer's coveralls.

"Your brother!"

"But we are brothers."

"Adopted!" Lapen sputtered, and Lawrence had to bite the inside of his cheek to resist the urge to bust out into a grin. "That doesn't count!"

"Really?" Hans murmured, glancing briefly at Lawrence before turning his gaze back on Lapen full force. "That wasn't what you said back in Horteka when you and my father got drunk and patched the fences."

"Hey." Lapen snarled and brandished a finger at the younger man's face. "You can't hold me accountable for the things that a man says when he's dead drunk on that Ixa'takan devil's drink you call Loqua."

"I'll have to take your word for it, since our father never let me have any." Hans rolled his eyes. "Anyhow, who's your friend?"

"He's not my friend, he just came wandering down here for…" Lapen started, then froze and turned towards Lawrence again. "Why are you here?"

"I actually came to talk to you." Lawrence explained, only a little disappointed that the squabbling appeared to be at an end. "If you weren't busy."

Hans sighed. "He's not that busy. Take five, brother. And then meet me at the moonstone reactors, we need to check valences for the maintenance log. Aika wants it done before we start our next maneuvers." He waved one last time at Lawrence, then went plodding off.

"So. Your brother." Lawrence said, when the younger brown-haired man was out of earshot.

"Adopted." Lapen grumbled, rubbing at his scalp. "We were both taken in by this Blue Rogue who's stuck in Ixa'taka right now, guy named Centime. Decent mechanic for someone who prefers dragging in every orphan and runaway he finds so he can give them a home. Centime asked me to take him along, seeing as Hans was deadset on going with Vyse, and…"

"Let me guess." Lawrence cut in. "Your adopted father wanted someone he trusted looking out for him."

Lapen flinched a little. "Trust...might be too strong a word."

"Maybe." Lawrence searched the engineer's unsteady face. "I only had one question. Why did you join up with Vyse?"

Lapen looked down at the deck. "Because I screwed up. I got mad and went nuts, thinking that Centime and the rest of 'em had run off and abandoned me. After Vyse told me where Centime was, what he'd been doing, I asked for him to give me a ride there so I could hash things out with the old man."

Lawrence nodded. A matter of necessity and convenience, then. It explained why he'd given up his ways of being a Black Pirate. But…

"Why did you stay?" Lawrence pressed him. "Once you got to Ixa'taka, you didn't have to stay aboard with Hans. It's not as though there aren't others aboard who can do the work, especially now after Esperanza."

Lapen sighed. "You serious? Why do you wanna know that?" He looked over to Lawrence suspiciously. "What are you digging for anyways?"

"I'm looking for perspective." Lawrence confessed. "Perspective on Vyse. On what makes people sign on, and stay with him."

Lapen rubbed at his chin. "Well. I suppose I could help, but...It'll cost ya."

"I've got a bottle of 15 year old Nasultan's Reserve brandy I've kept under lock and key." Lawrence offered. "Come clean and I'd be willing to share it."

Lapen's eyes sparkled. "Oh, wow. The good shit. Okay, deal." He extended his arm, and after a pause, Lawrence clasped the man's forearm and they shook on it. "Fine. Long story short? Family."

"I thought you didn't have any. You were just protesting to Hans that you weren't related."

"Yeah. By blood, we aren't." Lapen shrugged. "But, that never mattered to Centime. He never cared if we were Valuan, or a Mid-Ocean colonist, or Nasrian. Hell, he even had Ixa'takan kids running around him and his wife Carol. His biggest lesson was always that family is the people you care about. I forgot that for a while, when I thought he'd left me behind. Turned out he hadn't, and I'd been on the warpath for nothing. I was a miserable kid growing up, and he still put up with me. And he took me back and hugged me, no questions asked, and Missus Carol even made me dinner. I could have stayed with him, or taken my chances going solo. But after everything I'd done, all the mistakes I'd made, he didn't throw me out. He asked me to look after Hans."

Lapen drew in a deep breath and let it out easy. "We're all screwups, you know. At least, it feels that way. And Vyse doesn't care where we came from, just like my old man. He doesn't care about the mistakes we've made. The only thing he cares about is doing better, and moving on." He hoisted the crowbar off of his shoulder and nodded. "We're a part of his crew, and Vyse treats us like family. This seems as good a place as any to stay for right now. And somebody has to keep my little brother from getting a disease the first time he gets the itch to spend the night with a woman." He smirked at that. "I think in Hans' case, though, that's not much of an issue. The kid's got a knack for engines, but damn if he isn't a blushing wallflower. All right, Lone Wolf. The next time we're both off-shift, you owe me a bottle of the best brandy under Mid-Ocean."

"I honor my contracts." Lawrence reminded the other man stiffly. Lapen considered him for a moment, then grinned wolfishly.

"Yeah. I hear you do." He clicked his tongue once, then went sauntering off, leaving Lawrence in the belly of the ship's machinery.

---

164 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

In the end, they had mapped out the entry pocket within the Dark Rift completely, placed markers for orientation in case they got turned around...and picked one of the unexplored vortices at random. To everyone's relief, it didn't kick them back out the way they had come, or worse, go into a dead end. It led to another pocket within the Rift, one much smaller than the first one. There were two floating islands within it, but also...Another shipwreck. And somehow Lawrence found himself on the exploration team, going down with Aika and Don and a couple of the Esperanzan sailors. It was a near thing for Vyse coming along with them, but he stopped trying to force himself on the team when both Aika and Fina put their foot down and all but yelled him out for even thinking about leaving the ship without its captain. Fina, especially, seemed shaken by the thought of him leaving the ship even temporarily. Everyone was nervous and on edge, but the blond-haired girl, the Silvite as Ilchymis had mentioned once in passing during his routine examination, took their fears about the Dark Rift to new extremes. She'd been edgy before. She looked to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown when they had left.

He shook his head as he brought the skiff to a stop next to the crashed shipwreck and looked over to Aika. "Ready here. Mooring lines?" Aika made a gesture to one of the sailors up at the bow, and they quickly tied the skiff to the side of the broken-apart wooden ship.

The core of the shipwreck exploratory team remained very much the same, with a cadre of Esperanzans working under a sailor named Daniels, who was never without a yellow scarf dangling from his neck. They moved with their usual quickness to suss out the ship's state and to try and reach the cargo hold to make an accounting of any possible supplies, leaving one of the core group to go with the expedition leader and their tag-alongs. Namely, Don went with Lawrence and Aika to see if they could find any survivors or bodies in the upper reaches of the ship, along with paperwork and logs and provenance to determine what ship they'd stumbled across. Don froze as soon as they stepped onto what remained of the bridge with its broken in windows, still as a statue as he glanced around.

"Don?" Aika asked, caught off guard by his behavior. It looked like he'd seen a ghost, even though Aika scowled and refused to even think of such a possibility any time anyone had ever brought it up. Lawrence had heard her utter the word 'Rixis' under her breath the last time somebody had tried to broach the topic.

"I know this ship." Don uttered softly under his breath. "Why do I know this ship?"

"If Daniels were here, he might have an answer for you." Aika told him. "I can only guess. Maybe there's something here that could tell you why. We've had some good luck finding logbooks before." The redhead glanced at the broken windows and shook her head. "Maybe not here."

Don walked onto the bridge and walked without hesitation to a locked cabinet along the wall. Without wasting a breath, he drew a hammer from his belt and smashed the lock in, then swung it open and came up with a green-covered logbook, undamaged by the elements, albeit with a bent spine from where it had rested opened and tilted on its side for 20 odd years. Shaky hands picked it up and he stared at the faded ink on yellowing paper with wide open eyes.

"This is my handwriting." He whispered, clutching the logbook tight to his chest and looking up at Lawrence and Aika. "This is my fucking ship."

Aika blinked. "Oh." She schooled her features. "I'm sorry, Don."

Lawrence could see a great deal of grief on the man's face, but Don managed to keep his wits about him. "It was a long time ago. At least I know that it didn't sink into the abyss like I thought. It got picked up and tossed into here." He tucked the logbook in his pocket and exhaled. "Come on. Let's finish our look-around."

The one thing that the Dark Rift had in abundance was silence, and their presence broke it. They went for the first floor and stopped dead in their tracks. Or rather, Aika did and held up a hand to make Lawrence and the others stop. It took the helmsman a moment to hear it, but he did. The sound of crackling and popping. Like from a campfire. And it was coming from behind the door that led, once upon a time, to the captain's quarters.

"Something's here." Aika murmured, and Lawrence drew his sword. The Blue Rogue checked the straps on her glove before reaching for her boomerang, and they looked over to Don, who took a deep breath before moving up to the door. He pushed it open and stepped inside with the two fighters right behind him.

They all froze when they looked across the cabin and saw a ragged, emaciated man with a beard that went down to his navel sitting in front of a fire built out of scrap wood. Somehow, he'd rigged up a fire pit that kept it from burning through the floorboards. What was left of his clothes was coated in grime and worn down to rags. He didn't even react as they paused and started to watch him.

"Sweet moons." Aika uttered faintly. "There's a survivor."

Lawrence wanted to believe that the man wasn't a member of the ill-fated expeditions from Esperanza 20 years ago. Surely, nobody could have lived that long in this mess, even if there was air and water and things that could be eaten. If this man had been on his own for that long, he might have gone insane.

Perhaps he had. He only looked up after Don had gotten to within 5 feet of him, and there was no glint of recognition in his eyes. "No." The man said hoarsely.

Don stopped. "No? No, what?"

"Not real. Go away. Never real." The man added, and looked back down into the crackling embers of his fire, hunching over his legs. Don made a strangled noise as he kept staring at the man, and he took a step closer.

"Look at me." Don told the man. "Let me look at your face."

"Hm. Never said that before. Like he doesn't know who I am. He always knows who I am." The man muttered, still looking away. Don reached out and grabbed gently at his beard, turning his face towards him, and the fellow's dull eyes blinked, sharpening slightly. "Never touched me before. Can't touch me. Not real."

"This is real." Don said softly, and he searched the man's rugged face, shaking his head. "Are...what's your name?"

The man blinked. He could talk, but Lawrence realized in that moment that he couldn't remember.

"I know you." Don said, his face swelling with grief. "Even with this ridiculous beard, I know you. I thought you were dead, but you're not. You've been trapped here, all this time. You're my friend Robinson."

The man snorted, and tried to look away, but Don tugged on his beard, holding him still. "You are Robinson. And your wife is with us. You remember her? Polly? You always talked about her. About the little girl you had before you set sail. Anne. They were the dearest things in your life."

Something in the marooned sailor's eyes shifted at the mention of those names, and he started to blink rapidly. It was because he was crying.

"Not real." The man Don called Robinson said hoarsely, and finally broke Don's grip so he could shake his head and press the heels of his palms against his skull. "Not real. Not real."

"She's on board our ship. Right now, Robinson. Your wife is on board our ship, and has been cooking up a storm keeping us all fed. And she's got help now, you remember that Nasrian girl who came with us to settle in Esperanza? Fatima? She's helping her now, ever since a captain crazy enough to challenge the Rift broke us out of our funk and dragged us here. You're coming with us."

Robinson didn't quite seem to grasp onto the idea that this was real and it was actually happening, not when they walked him out of the captain's cabin, not when they met with the rest of their away team and learned that the hold was barren of anything useful. Robinson didn't accept that this wasn't some more frightening and potent hallucination cobbled together by his mind when they dragged him onto the skiff and flew up and away from his prison towards the Delphinus that hovered nearby. He violently protested that they were all lies, that none of it was real as faces that knew him and that he had known reappeared and cried out his name, looking older and more worn than they were in his memories. Lawrence could only watch as the Esperanzans gathered around him, wept, held him close, none moreso than Don, wondering what would finally make the man admit that he wasn't suffering from a fever dream and that after 20 long years, salvation had come.

In the end, it was the presence of his wife, rounder than she had been but no less adoring of him, that shattered the walls of his disbelief and restored memories lost or suppressed. Robinson wept in her arms as Polly, the cook who had joined up on Sailor's Island for the chance of finding her husband, bit her lip and cried through a wide smile, whispering to him of how good their daughter had grown up to be. For Robinson, the road to healing and recovery was a long one, but he was with his wife, and Polly seemed whole and content in a way that Lawrence had never seen before.

And both she and her husband Robinson swore undying gratitude to Vyse for it.

---

167 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Flying within the confines of the Dark Rift for a week had led to some uncomfortable close calls, but a greater understanding of how to suss out the vortexes that peppered the walls of the pockets of space spaces dotted inside of the permanent storm. It had allowed them to discover Robinson, reunite Don with his long-lost friend and Polly with her long-lost husband. It had given the crew additional confidence in their talents, in each other, and in their captain. But not everyone aboard found that the trip was easier as it went along. Fina, to the ongoing concern of Captain Vyse, and Chief Engineer Aika, and Prince Enrique, only worsened the deeper they flew into the Dark Rift. In hindsight, Lawrence realized he should have been paying more attention to her, like the fabled canary in the moonstone mine. For a reason that none of them rightly understood, she was a living barometer to the environment they were passing through, and it grew worse the quieter it got outside. The deeper they got, the more tunnels they passed through and the more areas they explored, the already faint noises of the whistling wind beyond the pockets decreased further, making the Delphinus almost uncomfortably loud in its operations. Fina no longer came on the bridge and spent her time down with Ilchymis, either helping to tend to his medicinal herb garden or assisting him in medical.

It was a warning that none of them understood until it was too late. Until they passed through one more flashing vortex, which experience had taught them meant a vortex that connected to an adjacent pocket of safe airspace, and found themselves in a dark place gleaming with black light and completely still and silent.

As silent as a grave.

Lawrence shivered as he stood at the wheel at the end of his shift, with Don having come aboard the bridge five minutes ago during their flight through the next vortex. Lawrence stared off into the distance of the pocket that seemed to stretch on to forever; an optical illusion crafted by the environment that lacked any piece of land. He was about to comment on the stillness when Don came up and stood beside him. "This is different." The old sailor rumbled.

"There's nothing here." Lawrence answered him, slowing the ship to quarter-speed and guiding them towards the center of the open space. "Everywhere else we've been in here so far, there were scraps of land. Shipwrecks. Even creatures."

"I was wondering why we had Looper kebabs the other night." Don offered jokingly. Lawrence ignored the opening. "But here, there's nothing. Like there was nothing here to begin with, or…" He stopped talking as a wave of something unlike light, but visible in the darkness all the same pulsed up from below, from the depths of the abyss far beneath them. It passed by the ship harmlessly, but glimmers of spectral radiance erupted in the wave's wake. It took on the form of a faint and glimmering miniature sky full of stars in a false night. Tiny bits and pieces of unknown moonstone hovered all around them in incomprehensible configurations, gleaming the same dark light that had been carried by that pulsing wave.

Then Don swore loudly, and Lawrence jolted to throw the ship into full reverse as an enormous shard hovering in the heart of the void, perilously close to them, finally appeared in the gleaming.

"Fuck!" Lawrence gasped as the Delphinus lurched to a stop and began to reluctantly pull back from the obstacle. "Sorry captain, it…"

"At ease, Mr. Lawrence. I saw it too." Vyse said, walking over to stand beside them at the helm. "The damn thing came out of nowhere." All three of them stared at the menacing shard of translucent black crystal, invisible until the wave from below had struck it and made it resonate with a clinging aura. An aura painted a sickening ultraviolet, pulsing in time with another wave of power that came up.

"What in the blessed Moons is it?" Don finally got out, a strangled distance in his voice that wasn't quite reverence. "That thing's as big as a mountain!"

"No." Vyse said, tearing his gaze away from the gleaming black crystal ahead of them to look at all the smaller shards around it. "It was bigger, once."

Nobody on the bridge knew what to say after that, though if the rest were like Lawrence, they latched onto the meaning of it immediately. What they were looking at had been bigger than a mountain. What was left of it, what was visible hung like a scar in front of them, but it had been more once. Moonstones were powerful things. The smaller pieces infused their weapons, powered their ships, and provided the foci needed for spellcasting. The Moon Crystals that Vyse and his original team were chasing after were reportedly powerful enough to control terrible monsters or supply the energy needs of a continent.

The black shard that glowed ultraviolet was the fractured corpse of something much larger. And even looking at it for too long made him feel dizzy and on the edge of panic.

Then the intercom went off, and everyone on the bridge flinched when the sounds of agonized, terrified screaming, female screaming, broke the silence.

"Vyse!" It was Ilchymis calling, and that meant that the woman shrieking as though she were being flayed alive…

Fina.

"Vyse, what the hell's going on?! Fina just lost it! I need help down here, now! She's...Shit, Fina, don't...DON'T! No! Stop! Stop beating your head into the floor!"

Vyse was as white as a sheet. "Stop her from hurting herself!"

"She's stronger than I am, I can barely hold her down! Whatever we sailed into, it's doing something to her! She was clawing her face off before! Get down here NOW!"

Vyse sucked in a breath. "Enrique?"

"I have the bridge. Go, Vyse. Go." The Prince snapped at him, as shaken by Ilchymis's report as anyone else. Vyse lingered a moment longer, just enough time to look to Don and Lawrence and to stare at them with haunted eyes.

"Get us the fuck out of here." He whispered, and finally ran off, faster than the mercenary had ever seen him run before. Shaken, Lawrence turned the ship around and went sailing away from the heart of the void at the center of the Dark Rift, marking the vortex that they'd come in through and trusting to Don to find the one that would lead further east. With their compasses still spinning wildly in the rift, Don was the best hope they had to escape it.

Lawrence got off shift half an hour later and went down to the galley for a drink to settle his nerves. There were very few people present when he did so; Only Polly and Fatima were running the kitchen, Robinson was sitting up next to the bar, keeping his wife within eyesight if not arm's reach at all times.

Of Vyse or Aika or Fina, there was no sign. But Ilchymis was there with a bottle of the strongest triple-distilled grain alcohol sitting at the back table, his face now whiter than his soiled physician's robes.

Robes spattered with specks of blood.

---

169 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Galley

The tone on the ship was muted after their close encounter with what Domingo had marked down as "The Black Moon Stone" in the Discovery log, in the absence of Vyse doing it. Don's almost preternatural talent for distinguishing vortexes that were probable dead-ends or wrong-way turns from the correct path forward had been their saving grace. Whereas before there had been a sense of confidence and nervous energy, it had been sapped in the wake of what Fina had done and suffered through when they touched the center of the Dark Rift and the terrifying power that lay at its heart. It hadn't taken long for the news of what had happened to get out through the power of gossip, even if Aika and Vyse and Enrique weren't saying anything about it. Fina, whose condition had been steadily worsening from a slight headache when they first entered the Dark Rift, had been down in the ship's makeshift arboretum tending to the medicinal plants with Ilchymis and Merida. When they had passed through the fatal vortex that took them to the center of the Rift, she had immediately stiffened up and clutched first at her chest, and then slumped to her knees and started shrieking and trying to claw her face off and her eyes out. When Ilchymis had managed to pin her down with his own body weight and then trap her arms so she couldn't lacerate her already bleeding face any further, she'd started slamming her forehead into the metal decking, breaking the skin even worse and even fracturing her skull before Merida had wedged a leg under her head to keep her from making it worse. The Ixa'takan dancer had suffered severe bruising when Fina kept trying anyways, and it wasn't until Vyse arrived that Ilchymis was able to get free of her long enough to prepare a sedative to put her out. Merida had been so shaken by the ordeal that it left her mute for an hour before Polly had gotten the story out of her.

That had been two days ago, and nobody on the crew aside from Ilchymis had seen Fina since, and Ilchymis wasn't saying a damn word aside from that she was being cared for. In that time, Vyse and Aika had been less visible presences around the ship as well, with Enrique being given more time at the helm of the ship.

Maybe that was why Lawrence jumped when he was pulled out of his woolgathering as Vyse suddenly appeared beside him in the chow line. The helmsman did a double take as he saw how tired the younger man looked. Or maybe tired wasn't the right word. Distraught came closer to what he was seeing.

"Captain." Lawrence greeted him stiffly.

"Lawrence." Vyse said in return, giving him a brief nod. That was usually the extent of their off-the-clock conversations, but some wiggling sense of guilt made him say something more. It was apparently as jarring to Vyse to hear as it was to him for saying it.

"How's Fina doing?"

It wasn't until then that Lawrence realized just how much of a mask the captain had been wearing. He'd been tired, but that had been him putting on a brave face. Now, as the question sank in, the Blue Rogue almost crumpled on the spot.

"She'll be okay." The younger man said. "We got to her in time. Aika and Ilchymis patched her up, stopped the swelling. But until we know for certain that we're out of this, it's…" He stopped, choking on empty air, and swallowed. "It's better if, if she…"

And that answered so many questions about why Vyse looked miserable.

Lawrence nodded. "We'll get out of here, sir. We've come this far." He stepped back and allowed Vyse to go ahead of him in line, which surprised the Blue Rogue and got a thankful nod out of him. Vyse took a tray and loaded it up high with food, then turned around and walked back out of the galley. Perhaps to keep vigil at his- at Fina's bedside. Lawrence tried to put the thought out of his mind as he went for his own meal, and he gave Robinson a respectful nod before waving at Polly and Fatima back behind the galley.

"You two ever get a break?"

"Oh, aye, we get breaks." Polly smiled. "We don't always bother with a hot meal, after all, and bread keeps for a day or two. Don't you worry none about us. Breakfast tomorrow's cold leftovers anyways. And things've gotten a little easier since Fatima started helpin' out in the kitchen, easing the pressure off poor Merida."

He took his meal with a nod and wandered to his table in the back, determined to have a meal in peace before turning in for the night. It stood to reason that it lasted all of a minute before somebody decided to sit across from him, and he nearly stood up and walked away before he realized that this particular person was someone he'd been wanting to talk to anyways.

"Kalifa." Lawrence greeted the Maramban fortuneteller coolly. "You do not usually sit here."

"I am not usually required to." She answered, her head tilted far enough that he could not make out her eyes through her thick glasses. "However, the Moons have spoken. You are in search of answers, and you have not yet spoken to me. I should be offended." Kalifa raised up her glass of watered down Nasrian ale and took a long, slow drink.

"I'm not in need of your cards or a spinning chunk of glass."

She swallowed. "True, but you still wished to ask me something. And you haven't yet." Kalifa set the glass back down and reached for her flatware. "Ask me now."

"Why did you decide to come along?" Lawrence asked her. "You serve no vital purpose on this ship. You aren't a sailor, and you barely qualify as entertainment. You had a life for yourself in Maramba, our last stop before we set sail for Esperanza. You knew what Vyse was trying to do. You knew how dangerous it would be. What on earth possessed you to come along and suffer through this?"

Kalifa cackled. "What is it that you think I do, exactly?"

"You swindle gullible fools out of their money by telling them exactly what they want to hear." He replied without a pause.

"Rarely. Only for the fools who I can be of no help to." Kalifa said back to him, the mirth gone from her voice. "You think me a swindler. A charlatan."

"All fortunetellers are charlatans."

"Hm." Kalifa removed her glasses and cleaned them off with her napkin, keeping her eyes shut tightly as she did so. If she opened them, it wasn't until she slipped them back on again. "Perhaps most are. But then again, most are not able to listen to the whispers from the Moons. Or they are unwilling to. Shall I tell you your fortune?"

"I don't care to hear it." Lawrence growled out. "I make my own destiny."

"Before, you did. But now, you serve Vyse as a member of this crew. A crewmate on this ship. And that will change your destiny more than you know." She finally started to smile again, an enigmatic expression that made him shiver a little. "You can sense it, I think. You are afraid of it. That is why you have been speaking to so many people here, when before you had no interest in it. But now? Now, you wonder what sort of man you have agreed to sail for. And you are concerned."

"I'm not afraid of him."

"I did not say afraid." Kalifa said, gesturing to him. "You just did. But to answer your question, I needed you to first think about your own. What would make a woman leave the comforts of home and the steady work of a career in fortunetelling behind to travel to the corners of the world with a Blue Rogue on a ship of wonders?"

Lawrence didn't have an answer, and judging by how her smirk widened, Kalifa knew it.

"I listen to the Moons. I listen to the world around me. I pay attention, and because I do, I see things, hear things, sense things others do not. And all of my senses and my instincts tell me that I must be here. That something rather spectacular is coming. A great story is being made here. I do not know where it leads...but I want to see it." Kalifa finished carving off a thick slice of her meat and chewed thoughtfully, swallowing it back before nodding at him. "It is not your answer for why you are here, but it is mine. And perhaps it gives you the perspective you wished to hear."

Lawrence mustered a grunt in reply. "I will take it under consideration." Kalifa nodded, but didn't move. "Was there something else you needed?"

"Yes." Kalifa was grinning now. "Are you aware of betting going on aboard?"

Lawrence narrowed his eyes at her. "Bets? On what?"

Kalifa cackled and brought out a small journal, but she angled it so it was not visible elsewhere in the room. "Gossip runs rampant on a ship, even one this size. Especially on one this size. There's been quite a few rumors on which way our dashing captain's heart turns. He has two very beautiful women all but hanging off his arms, you know."

"I am aware."

"Perhaps you would care to place a bet?" Kalifa said, softer than before. "On who is in love with who? It is a minimum bet of five gold coins. The odds are currently 3 to 5, with Fina as the dark horse."

Lawrence thought about it, then shook his head and dug out ten gold coins. It wasn't as though he had occasion to spend any of it on anything else right now, after all. "I say that Vyse's heart belongs to Fina."

"Oh?" Kalifa asked. "Hoping for the bigger payout, or do you know something that the rest of the ship doesn't?"

Lawrence thought about how broken Vyse looked with Fina still unconscious and recovering. He thought of how the captain had taken a tray and left, in no mood to do anything but go back to her side. And yet it was tempered by what he had seen on Sailor's Island, when he had called Aika 'his girl' and then the redhead had kissed him for it. Vyse hadn't kissed her back then, he remembered. The people who figured that Vyse and Aika were together...They weren't seeing the whole picture.

"If you are not a charlatan, Kalifa, you are still a swindler." Lawrence told her, sliding the money over to her side of the table. The coins disappeared in a sweep of her hand. "You will get no insight from me."

"I see." Kalifa mused, adding his bid to the ledger within her notebook with careful scratches of a quill pen. He couldn't help but look and read her handwriting upside down, and frowned to see some of the other people who had placed bets. Domingo? Tikatika? Osman? Even Ilchymis? "I am surprised at you, Lawrence."

"Why?"

"For someone who claims to be a Lone Wolf, you are becoming decidedly loyal in protecting the privacy of your captain." She pointed out with one last smile as she tucked the ledger back away again. She picked up her tray and nodded before walking off, leaving him to sit in stunned silence, back in the privacy and solitude he preferred.

Or, the solitude that he used to prefer.

---

Delphinus

Rec Room

171 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

If there was one thing that Lawrence refused to skimp on, it was his training. Just because he spent most of his time piloting the ship and tag-teaming with Don and the captain for shifts at the wheel didn't mean he let his other skills go to seed. And while he hadn't had to draw his cutlass in anger since he'd joined up with the Delphinus, Lawrence had been in too many fights and seen too much trouble to dismiss the need for maintaining his swordsmanship. Vyse was apparently a skilled fighter in his own right, as he carried twin swords for a dual-sword style that offered a greater balance of offense and defense, but their schedules never really aligned when Lawrence had the time to train. To the fortunes of himself and others on the crew, Prince Enrique had taken it upon himself to serve as the combat instructor for anyone willing to learn, when they had the time for it.

Enrique's skill with his rapier was world-class, and he had mopped the floor with Lawrence at their first training session weeks ago. The 'prince in exile' as Enrique preferred to think of himself knew full well the value of speed and how a blade's flourish was more often than not meant as a distraction to keep an opponent off-balance and reacting incorrectly. He employed solid footwork and misdirects, and had the honed habit of never breaking eye contact with his opponent, relying on the wider scope of his peripheral vision to track unexpected blows. Enrique approached swordfighting like it was a dance, and he shifted the cadence and the tempo as though moving to a band that only he could hear. For Lawrence, who had studied only the basics of swordfighting and then sprinkled in enough dirty fighting techniques to survive boarding attempts and the like, it had been an entirely new experience. A mostly humbling one.

It was a sign of how dramatically things had changed, that Enrique, who must have learned from the best swordsmen that money and blind loyalty to an Empire could buy, was now offering training to anyone with the time and inclination to learn. Even little Marco, who went through warmups with a wooden training blade every morning even when Enrique wasn't down belowdecks to guide him through it. As he was this morning, with Enrique working Lawrence through his paces while somehow keeping a part of his attention turned towards Marco close nearby.

"Adjust the placement of your front foot, Marco. Keep the weight on the ball of it, not the heel, and pointed straight on." Enrique said between short, huffing breaths. "You remember why?" The former prince asked, even as he pulled one shoulder back hard to let Lawrence's cutlass sing past the front of his now turned body harmlessly

The boy's face was scrunched up in concentration. "So I can...react to the unexpected. And turn fast?"

"Precisely." Enrique nodded, putting the whole of his focus back onto Lawrence, and the mercenary hissed a little as he felt the shift when Enrique turned all of his considerable talent and ruthless ability on him. It didn't take long at all before Enrique had disarmed him, sending his cutlass clattering and sliding across the floor with the blunted point of his opponent's rapier pressed perilously close to his chest. Lawrence stared down at the vulcanized white rubber bulb that served as the blade's stop point and swallowed. Enrique held it there for the space of three heartbeats, then pulled it back and smiled. "Good. You lasted eight seconds that time when I began my riposte. You are improving."

"You're frighteningly good at this." Lawrence conceded, stepping away and moving to retrieve his sword. He slid it back into the scabbard hanging from his sword belt with the definitive slide of metal on metal, then looked back. "No wonder you have taken it upon yourself to be the Captain's personal trainer, if everyone of high status in the Empire fights like you do."

"More or less." Enrique smiled innocently. "Not everyone uses a single blade in the duelist's style as I do. Among the admiralty, Gregorio favors a weighted spear mace and a shield. De Loco has never fought in melee combat, and likely prefers firearms. Vigoro wields a 'cannon club' of such size that it would be impractical to anyone else, and Galcian uses a broadsword that could best be described as a weighted cleaver in the place of a more refined weapon."

Lawrence nodded. "Why did you do it?" He asked the prince, for that was a question that had been burning in his mind for a while now, though he'd never worked up enough motivation to ask it properly. "Leaving the Empire behind, leaving the palace behind, all of that easy living. What made you spring Vyse from the Grand Fortress, hand him the keys to what was supposed to be your flagship, and now train others to fight against your own people?"

Enrique looked back at him, eyebrow raised. "As I recall, when we first met you, Vyse made it a point to say that he stole it all from me."

"A joke between the two of you. No, Enrique. You committed to this cause with open arms and no hesitation. So why?"

"Because Vyse is an honorable man, even for as young as he is." Enrique answered plainly. "Because he is like his father, in the ways that matter. I heard of his achievements, his courage and his bravery, and I saw someone who I would aspire to emulate. Because what the Empire and my mother and Galcian are doing is wrong, and I have been screaming about it for years and nobody listened. Because I had begun to think that the world was twisted, and wrong, and that it was beyond saving, that the Empire would swallow it all and then crumble and leave Arcadia in ruins." Enrique removed the rubberized stop point of his rapier and whipped it around in the open air a few times before sheathing it. "But when I am here, with Vyse, I see a chance to change all of that. To stop Galcian's ambitions, to save not only my kingdom by blunting the Empire's reach, but to save the world from it as well. Because Vyse lives by the Code of the Blue Rogues, which I have taken the Oath to serve under, and I have more pride now in how I live and fight than I've ever had. My honor is intact, my heart is unwavering, and my blade is his."

Lawrence blinked as Enrique's eyes misted up a bit and the prince swallowed loudly before laughing a bit. "Though being here among such proud and stalwart hearts leaves me prone to dramatics. Especially when people ask me questions that have obvious answers."

"Obvious?" Lawrence repeated dubiously.

Enrique shrugged and glanced up at the ship's chronometer hanging from the wall. "You're due on station on the bridge in 20 minutes. If you hurry, you should be able to get some breakfast before you head up." And he smiled.

---

Afternoon

Another vortex had led them to a new pocket that they had no memory of seeing before, and more importantly, no hovering beacon pulsing with light to mark that they had come this way before. They launched another from one of the torpedo tubes and left it hovering in their wake, a propellor spinning at its top to keep it afloat while the base of it strobed a brilliant white every five seconds. The moonstone power cell running it would die in a month, but they would be out of here by then.

So they all hoped.

Lawrence was holding station as another away team investigated a nearby shipwreck which looked wildly different from anything that they'd ever seen. It wasn't a ship that had come in recently, it looked older. And there were parts of it that didn't seem to line up with any ship design that Lawrence had ever heard of. They'd come a long ways, and they had seen no shipwrecks for a while after their encounter with the black moonstone at the heart of the Dark Rift.

For days, there had been one constant remark uttered and repeated by Vyse and Aika and Enrique; There is more beyond the Dark Rift. There is another side to this storm. Fina said there is. And none of them ever uttered those words with a trace of doubt, like Fina was clinging to some religious belief that had to be taken on blind faith. No. When they said it, it was with a surety that came from knowing. From trusting someone so implicitly that you took them at face value.

Looking at a ship that Lawrence had never seen before, he began to wonder if the Silvite, who was finally out of being under sedation and improving to 'steady headache' levels, even if she wasn't allowed back on the bridge, might be right after all.

"Hey, kid." The voice of Don pulled Lawrence out of his thoughts again, and he glanced over to see Don walking over with a tea mug in one hand. There was a moment that the mercenary thought that the older helmsman might be drinking coffee, the strange drink that they had picked up in Ixa'taka and Fina was addicted to, but he didn't smell it wafting in the air. So, tea then. Lawrence glanced up at the bridge chronometer.

"You've still got half an hour before your shift starts."

"What can I say?" Don chuckled. "You spend 20 years living your life at the bottom of a bottle, you miss some things. I'd live on the bridge if they delivered food and there was a working toilet and a hammock." Then the older man looked out through the forward windows and caught sight of the ship that they were hovering in close proximity to, and frowned. "That's not one of our ships."

"Yeah." Lawrence agreed, quiet again. More like himself. Don got closer to the reinforced moonstone glass and stared harder.

"That ship is old. Like, Daccat-era old."

"Yeah."

"That's not all Mid-Ocean construction, either. Where the hell did this thing come from?"

"The other side?" Lawrence posited innocently, and that finally got Don to gape like a skyfish. The man looked ready to argue the point, but Lawrence just raised an eyebrow.

Don took a longer draw of his tea, which was still hot enough to be steaming. "Shit." He whispered.

"You should have an interesting shift." Lawrence remarked, and he turned away from the shipwreck to examine the rest of their current pocket. "How do you know which vortex to take?"

"Feelings, sometimes. Observation, others." Don explained. "The way the wind moves around it, or what color the flashes of light in it are. I avoid the red ones. I look for the blue."

"Blue flashes." Lawrence repeated. Don smiled. "Always?"

"Not always." Don shrugged. "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."

"If you can't trust your eyes, and you can't trust your ears because it's so quiet inside this mess, then what do you trust?" Lawrence asked, a little irritated at how cryptic the man could be. Don didn't answer him, and the delay made Lawrence side-eye the man to see if he was thinking or just spacing off. The old sailor was doing neither, and was instead staring thoughtfully out at the rest of their surroundings. At what seemed to be a swirling column of lights off in the distance, rising up between two pieces of a massive island that had been broken in two.

"You trust the environment." Don murmured, pointing off in the distance. "Are those skyfish?"

"No skyfish I've ever seen. Most fish don't glow."

"Most skyfish don't live inside a permanent storm, surrounded in darkness." Don pointed out. "And yet things still grow on the islands inside here. Life finds a way. No, if I had to guess...they're going towards something." The old man smiled. "And as soon as the away crew's aboard, that's where we're headed."

"Hm." Lawrence nodded. "As good a guess as any. We didn't find any vortexes down here on the lower side. Which is a little odd; most pockets have two or three red herrings to mislead us."

"A ship none of us can attribute the construction of. A pocket that feels different." Don mused, polishing off the rest of his tea in a gulp that must have scalded his throat. "And Fina, back on her feet even if she's on medical leave. Something's different, Lawrence."

"You think we're…"

"Don't say it. Don't." Don cut him off sharply. "I won't have you hexing us with such ill-thought words."

Lawrence shrugged. "You're superstitious."

"I am an old sailor who stared at a wall of darkness at the edge of the world for most of his life, and who now flies inside of it. I am a man who found his best friend after meeting his wife, and smiles to see them reunited and forever at the other's side. I am living in an adventure story, as we all are. Yes, Lawrence. I'm superstitious." Don's eyes glimmered. "I have reason to be."

Lawrence suppressed his shiver, but he didn't leave the bridge even when Don assumed the helm. He stayed on to watch, because as Domingo finished charting the latest pocket's interior and looked up to Vyse, he felt a strange, nervous energy that hadn't been there before. One that was shared by everyone on the bridge.

Something was different as Don flew them up along the column of bioluminescent skyfish, and the crew all realized that they formed an arrow pointing to a singular vortex up near the top of the pocket.

Lawrence had never believed in destiny, or that things were fore-ordained. They weren't for him at least.

But perhaps they were for Vyse. Perhaps that was why they were succeeding where so many had failed. Maybe that was why Kalifa joined to see the story play out, and maybe something was at work that Don refused to let Lawrence give utterance to.

Maybe Vyse, their captain and a leader of Blue Rogues, was destined to see them through this.

---

There was one question that none of them had bothered to ask about the Dark Rift, once they had realized that the spaces within were somehow able to support life. Nobody in the crew had asked just how big that life could grow.

Considering the size of the school of glowing fish that they had passed by only a scant hour and a half before, the answer should have been chillingly apparent before they were staring a monster in the face.

Very large indeed. And very menacing. Like a twisted anglerfish, the thing that was as big as the Delphinus sat within the lone vortex on the other end of a safe zone that had no other life inside of it, just broken and floating rocks and the sounds of low, howling winds. That missing sound of air currents did more to bolster them than anything else as the klaxons summoning everyone to battle stations droned on and on.

After a minute of them blazing away, Vyse finally cut the noise off and reached for the intercom, just as Aika reached the bridge. The captain looked over his shoulder to the redhead and gave her a short nod. "Listen up, everyone. We've reached a different pocket that we've never encountered before, and we're finally hearing the wind again. That's something I'm taking as a good sign that we're close to getting out of here. Our only problem is that there's some very stubborn wildlife standing in our way, in the form of a fish big enough to give Rhaknam a run for its money in size. Hopefully not in power, though. Remember your duties, do your jobs well, and I'll be there to greet you on the other side of it." He stepped away from his chair and moved to the two feeder lines that led into the ship's Moonstone Reservoir and the charging capacitors for the Moonstone Cannon. "Aika, take one. I've got the other."

"Aye, captain." The chief engineer did so, and smirked a little after. "In the mood for some fried fish tonight, I take it?"

"I'm in the mood to get the hell out of here and that thing's not budging. Even with signal flares going off next to its face."

The time it took for the cannon to finish charging up was less than it had been, especially with two people pouring their spiritual energy into it in tandem, and the Delphinus trembled when it fired off the potent beam of searing light and energy. Stuck as the creature was, it could do nothing but take the hit clean to the face, and the shriek the thing made thundered in the near silence. That was when everything went sideways.

It might have been staying in the vortex, but after suffering that first blow that had charred and traumatized it, the massive anglerfish spun out of its makeshift nest and started to swirl around the ship, throwing a spray of illuminated poison over the whole of the ship's forward end. The acrid smell of potent fumes immediately stung at Lawrence's nostrils, but he held on as Vyse swore.

"Hell, I hope that doesn't eat through armor plating." Vyse coughed, watching it glow along the bow, wafting vapors as it gassed off. "I think he just painted us as a target in here."

"It would make sense, considering how dark it gets inside this Rift." Enrique agreed.

"Bring us about, Don. We need to see this thing to target it." Vyse ordered.

"If it cleared out of the vortex, captain, shouldn't we just dive through and leave it behind?" Domingo asked cautiously.

"Captain, it's coming up behind us!" The voice of Tikatika rattling through the intercom was jarring, and they heard the sound of him slamming the hatch on the lookout's tower shut, which meant he was diving for cover. "Brace for impact!"

The entire ship shuddered like a leaf in the wind as the hull's armor plating groaned from a heavy weight settling around it.

And then everyone aboard screamed when a monstrous face with pale white eyes and a mouth full of teeth leaned in towards the windows of the bridge and opened wide with a snarl.

"Khazim!" Vyse raced for the speaking tubes by the helm and activated the line for firing control. "It's wrapped around the ship! Fire everything!"

They couldn't make out the position of the guns, for as much as the massive titan within the Dark Rift blocked out their whole view. But they heard and felt the massive main batteries of the Delphinus go off all at once, and there was no mistaking how the beast howled and shrieked with deafening volume after the warshots impacted and detonated.

The Delphinus shuddered again as the fish let go of it, and they were treated to the sight of its long, eel-like tail snaking off into the darkness, coated in its own blood and the glowing remains of its own spray attack where it had wrapped around the ship's affected bow.

"Reloading, captain! Can you give us a bearing for the torpedoes?"

"Negative. Too dark in here. How many signal flares do we have left, Khazim?"

"Three dozen."

"Load up six of them in the torpedo tubes and give us a circular spacing. Right now, we're hunting a monster in its own element." Vyse clenched his hand into a fist. "Time to even the odds. Aika, you ready for round two?"

"Always." Aika said, looking over to Enrique, who hadn't yet needed to charge up the main cannon. "But I wouldn't mind an assist." It took a little finagling, but Enrique slipped in between Aika and Vyse, grabbing their hands and forming a circuit for the three of them to power the cannon back up again as Khazim put the plan into motion and Don slowly circled the ship around inside of the launching flares.

The illumination they provided was a drop in the bucket, but it made the total darkness close to them ease off just enough that things moved to a shade of gray. Enough for everyone to be able to pick up on movement again.

Enough for Tikatika, who had resumed his post after ducking for cover, to see the massive behemoth coming for them.

"Captain, the beast is coming off of our left, closing fast!"

"Charge...ready!" Vyse gasped, the glow of the aura around him and Aika and Enrique fading as he let go. "Don! Skid hard about and put our nose to port! Ready the Moonstone Cannon for firing!"

Lawrence was at Don's side immediately, working the spinners to help guide the massive ship into a controlled turn that would keep its bearing steady and help them to line up on target. The targeting reticule for the Moonstone Cannon kicked on, projected onto the glass, and as they finished the turn, the looming form of the anglerfish with that elongated tail came flying in towards them out of the darkness. So close to the targeting reticule that the adjustment took less than a second's worth of delicate nudging.

The shot lined up perfectly, and Lawrence found himself reaching for the trigger even as he heard Vyse suck in a breath.

"FIRE!" Vyse thundered, and the ship bucked as another blindingly bright beam set the dark of the pocket ablaze, dismissing every shadow. The creature coming for them hunted in darkness and its milky white eyes were useless for sighting danger. It never saw the shot coming.

Already weakened and bleeding, the thing was bisected from head to tail from the shot, and the two pieces of it fluttered once in the fading light before falling towards the depths of the abyss.

Lawrence finally breathed as the cannon's barrel retracted back into the ship and the hull's sections closed back up around it.

Aika let out a yell of triumph and tackled Vyse from the side in a hug that had the captain laughing in relief. It was Enrique who sighed and went over to the intercom by the captain's chair, accessing every line in the ship.

"All hands, this is the bridge. Stand down from battle footing. The monster has been dispatched. Rather efficiently."

As cheers rose up in answer, Vyse finally found it in him to hug Aika back in a one-armed hug as he reached for Don and Lawrence with the other.

"Well done, you two." Vyse congratulated them, as Don shook his hand. "Good teamwork there at the end. But you really should go get some rack time, Mr. Lawrence."

Lawrence considered that. "Is that an order, captain? If it's all right with you, I would like to stay. For...if this ends up being the vortex that takes us out of here…"

Vyse's face softened up. "No, I get that. You want to see it too. Matter of fact, there's someone else who should see this." He let go of Aika and went over to his chair, making one more call.

Five minutes later, a still shaky Fina was brought onto the bridge, escorted by Marco and Ilchymis, and they put the blond-haired girl in the captain's chair with Vyse and Aika each standing on either side of her as Don sailed them out through the vortex that the anglerfish had been guarding so zealously.

Through the graying winds, through an ominous tunnel of uniform size so like all the others that they had flown through for days and days, the Delphinus sailed as the crew watched and hoped to see something new.

They emerged on the other side of it, not into further darkness and silence, but into the low and steady roar of Arcadia's skies, and the lingering orange and pink glow of a fading sunset.

Nobody dared speak as the Delphinus sailed forward, sailed beyond the Dark Rift. They weren't sure if it was a lie. If they had ended up back on the western side.

But then Lawrence and Don had the same thought and looked down at the compass stationed at the telemotor that had been spinning uselessly the entire time they'd been inside the miasma of bleak hopelessness.

The compass had them pointed east. Flying east. On the other side of the rift.

Beyond the edge of the world.

Fina let out a happy sob, one hand pressed over her heart. "It's gone. It's gone. I can't feel the pressure anymore!" At last, everyone roared in celebration.

---

Beyond The Dark Rift

Unknown Skies, Uncharted Island

171 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Evening

There was another sky rift to their north, but unlike the Dark Rift that they had cleared in 11 days, it was a regular one. They would be sailing through it tomorrow. Tonight, though, as the orange skies had given way to a dark blue starry one devoid of a moon overhead, the majority of the crew of the Delphinus had a different mission.

On the first scrap of land that they had found large enough to land five skiffs on and have plenty of room to spare, every Esperanzan sailor and most of the Mid-Ocean crew aside from the Ixa'takan contingent and Ilchymis and Pow stood, holding flickering lanterns and candles and even small moonlights for those who had magic as Robinson and Don planted the tattered remains of the expedition flag that had hung in the captain's cabin of their old ship. Strapped to a new flagpole, the weary canvas caught in the breeze and flared proudly.

Lawrence masked his face in solemnity, matching the expression that Vyse wore as Aika and Fina stood to his left, the girl's hands gripped together tightly. The Esperanzans were in tears, but stood their ground and did not weep. All waited in silence as Don gave Robinson a tight hug and guided him back to the warm and waiting arms of his wife Polly, and then the mustachioed helmsman coughed once for the attention of the gathering, standing next to the flagpole.

"Twenty years ago, King Mathias du Valua sponsored an expedition to explore the unknown in the midst of war. We were the best of the Royal Navy. Now, we few who are left stand on the opposite side of the Dark Rift. We have lost so many to the Rift, to time, and to hopelessness. We have braved the wall at the end of the world and found more on the other side. This flag we fly not for our lost kingdom, but for ourselves. For our own dreams, at last realized."

Don paused, taking a moment to compose himself. "I never thought I would be standing here. I never thought I would see the world beyond the Dark Rift. I thought I would die within sight of it." He wiped fresh tears out of his eyes. "There were so many who deserved to be here. To see what we have seen. Sailors and soldiers who were more than I am now. Who were more than I was."

So many heads bowed at that, and Lawrence could feel the shadow of loss lingering around the Esperanzans as they thought of all the people that they had known who hadn't made it.

Moons, they were so few compared to how many there had been before. That they had gotten even one back…

"I can't bring them back. We can't bring any of them back, or talk to them beyond the grave to tell them that our sacrifices were worth it. But I can live in honor of their can live, and tell our stories. Tell theirs. Because we were given a chance to."

Don gestured to Vyse and to Enrique. "I am proud to call myself a Blue Rogue. I am proud to sail with this crew. I don't know how much time I have left on Arcadia, or if I'm fated to die on this expedition of theirs to save the world and stop the Empire, or if I'll live through it. But I know that I will live without regrets. This is my second chance, and I won't waste a Moons-damned second of it. We are the legacy of that expedition. We are the survivors of Esperanza, and our hope is restored. We have seen the fulfillment of one dream." Don smiled tearfully around their circle of men and women. "It's high time we searched for others."

Enrique came forth with a crate full of small shot glasses and a bottle of Valuan rye whiskey, and in short order they were filled and passed around. Lawrence expected Don to make the toast, but instead the old sailor who had been the figurehead for all the Esperanzans looked to Enrique and nodded, giving him the privilege.

Enrique bit his lip and raised his glass. "For old dreams realized. To new horizons. May the Moons bless our cause, and may we be worthy of the sacrifices made by those who are not here with us."

They all drank as one, no eye as dry as the alcohol was. And then with one last salute to the flag that marked the passing of that long-ago expedition, the crew all started to pile back onto their skiffs for the journey back to the Delphinus and to their warm bunks and beds.

Yet Vyse and Aika and Fina and Enrique lingered near the flag, having taken a skiff of their own to the site and not beholden to the ships of the rest. Lawrence found himself lingering and watching as Aika and Fina pulled in around Vyse and Enrique as the prince finally let himself cry and fell into the captain's arms, with the two women holding the men tight.

Enrique wept for the sailors that his country had failed, for the relief of having given them peace at last. He wept for his friends, a Blue Rogue and the two women who had taken him in and made a prince-in-exile a friend and shown him a way forward. Lawrence blinked, and finally saw it.

Just as Kalifa had told him, he had been searching for answers. He finally had them.

"Something wrong, Lawrence?" Vyse said, when the group hug came to an end and the captain recognized that they were not alone.

"No, sir." Lawrence shook his head. "I've been trying to figure you out for a long time now, and I think I finally understand."

Vyse cocked his head to the side. "Understand what?"

"Why people come to you." Lawrence told him. "Why they stay in your employ, when they aren't motivated by money or a need for vengeance against Valua."

"Indeed?" Enrique spoke up, curious. "And why is that, exactly, Mr. Lawrence?"

"You make everyone on this crew believe that they can reach, and find, the best version of themselves. People come to you because you shine, and they want to reflect even a little bit of that light back." Lawrence said, never looking away from the captain. "I couldn't see it before. I do now."

Vyse nodded, absorbing that. "So how does that change you, exactly?"

"Before, I was part of your crew because I was paid to be." Lawrence told him. "Now...I want to be here."

Vyse smiled, and so did Aika and Fina.

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Lawrence. We're glad to have you." Vyse said.

Lawrence was still a wolf in his heart, but he wasn't a Lone Wolf any longer.

He had found a pack to belong to at last.