The very island had been shaken down to its foundations and destroyed, shattered like a bowl struck with a hammer. Spires of stone, their sides still green with grass rose up from the grey water like a quiver flint knives forgotten in some pool, left to grow moss in the rain. Huge date palms, hundreds of years old from their massive height, grew perpendicular to the ocean, their soft trunks bending down towards the water, fronds and fruits being washed away by the spray. The foundations of houses stuck out of the spires like barnacles, their main structures brought down and blown away by the wind.
The water all around the wreck was flooded with debris, so much and so thick the children could have walked to the remains of the island, but the land mass itself had been stripped bare of any remnants of civilization.
It was hard to call Greatfish Isle and island anymore thought John, his heart pounding with rising terror. It would be generous to call it several. He pinched his own wrist for thinking of a joke in the face of such tragedy.
The only place where it looked like they'd even be able to land was a narrow strip of scree between two lumps of grassy stone that must once have been rolling hills. The children dragged Jaspers up onto the ground and hopped off, stretching their legs and looking around. The bit of land was ten yards long and about three wide, with a shiny red mailbox planted in the center, some tragicomic marker of the life the island once held. John walked past it, silent, until he wet his feet in the water on the far side. A little ways off into the water he saw a wall of deep blue stone, arched near the top and deeply marbled with an even darker shade of blue. Moored to it was a small raft made of sturdy logs bearing some pots. There was no sign of who might have piloted it here, and John assumed they had perished with the rest of the island.
"We'll look for survivors," John said, half-heartedly. There was no indication that there'd be any. He remembered when a hurricane had hit Outset when he was a small child, and how the cries of the injured had carried during the calm of the storm. There was nothing of that here.
An hour or so later, they'd given up. If anyone had survived, thought John, they'd fled this dreadful place hours go. He somehow hoped that most of the people had left, despite what the abundance of broken ship parts bobbing in the water and lodged in trees and between stones told him; that it came too suddenly for anyone to make it to a boat.
Without speaking, all the children agreed to set up camp on their sad little strip. Using one of Aradia's fires, they were able to warm up their food. A touch of salt water had gotten into the bread since their lunch, leaving it soggy, but they ate it anyway. "Caliborn won't have to kill us," said John, voice full of venom as he swallowed a bit of salty biscuit. "We'll die of pneumonia in a few hours."
Roxy snorted. "I think this bread isn't the only thing that's salty here, John."
"Where's Aradia?" asked Tavros, looking around.
"Bruh," said John. "I'm not one of those guys that're all defensive of his date mate but step off."
Tavros coughed, face darkening. "Um, what?"
"It's kind of embarrassing," said John. "How obvious your crush is, I mean. 'Oh shit, where's Aradia?' every time she's out of your sight? Dude chill, she probably just went to pee somewhere. Maybe you like her because she was nice to you, or just because she's the only troll in the group. I'm not telling you how to feel, but stop being so blatant."
Tavros looked utterly confused and miserable. "But—like—I don't even u-understand what you—"
John gestured widely, flinging a small spattering of moist breadlumps through the air. "Okay, fine there's quadrants in your guys's romance, so if you're like red for her or whatever; I won't stop you because we're pale, right, but for fucks sake we've only been together like a day, there's gotta be a waiting period! Let her get used to the pale zone before you start proposing red marriage Tav!"
Tavros was making a small, whining noise under his breath, keeping his eyes firmly in the fire. His face was so brown that not even a hint of grey showed through the blush. It took him a second to realize that Roxy was trying hard not to laugh, mouth covered, shaking her head as if to say 'no, not here, there was a tragedy here, you mustn't'. He glanced over at John; the boy was smiling, though his ears were halfway down and he looked more sick and sad than happy. Still, he didn't look angry like he'd sounded. Had it just been a joke and not an accusation? Tavros experimented with a chuckle—
And just then Aradia slammed down in the middle of the gathering, sending up a spray of gravel and shocking Tavros off his seat and onto the ground. She was carrying a heavy, rusty bronze chest under her arm; she dropped it and it buried itself in the scree. "Hey look what I found!" she said, picking up a rock and starting to smash the lock with it.
"Where was it?" asked John.
"So she wasn't peeing," muttered Tavros, sitting back up.
"Aradia that's disrespectful, looting this village, I'm ashamed of you," said Roxy, leaning in, ears pricked up in excitement. If she'd had a tail it would be wagging.
"It was up on a hill," she said, "or crag, or something. Anyway, where it was used to be the bottom of the ocean so it didn't belong to anyone, probably." With a last strong chop of her stone, the lock broke in half, and she started working on opening the chest. The edges were rusted shut, almost looking like a solid piece in places. Roxy scrambled over, whipping out two of her new knives. She passed one to Aradia and they began cutting and scraping the edges apart.
It took a little less than a minute. Roxy threw the lid back open with a triumphant shout. The company was then blinded by a ray of gold and silver light erupting from the box like a volcano. The brilliant lance shot up through the clouds, piercing a small hole through the maelstrom above. The light faded, and for a second the kids could see the sky. It was the deep blue of late evening, and the stars were starting to come out. Skaia twinkled to life for a moment, and then the clouds closed in again, slamming shut as if flung by an angry hand.
John watched it with one eye, as he was busily rubbing the other one after having ripped his glasses off to do so. Living with weak eyesight was hard. "What was in there?" he mumbled, "a flash-bang grenade?"
Aradia poked her head inside and gave a little gasp of surprise. She pulled out a gleaming shard of gold. "Looks like we found another piece!" she said, tossing it at John.
It bounced off his hands three times before he was able to cup it against his bandaged fingers. "Out of how many, again?" he asked the blurry green and pink afterimage of Aradia, "eight?"
"That's right!" said Roxy. "Guess coming here wasn't such a bad move after all!"
Then, like a crimson meteor, another troll slammed down in the middle of the campsite in a perfect three point landing, spraying all of the kids with his dusty impact and making Tavros scream and fall over again.
John squinted at the figure and tried to figure out who it was. "Is that the empress?" he said, blinking his teary eyes.
"NO JOHN IT'S FUCKING KARKAT," declared Karkat, rising up to his full height and folding his wings. He strode over to John and started shaking the boy. "Why is it that whenever I see you these days I am TERRIFIED FOR YOUR LIFE?!" he shouted.
"Stop being such a wimp maybe," John said with a grin.
"Shut up, you're an ass of shit and deserve a sound beating, et cetera," Karkat growled. He looked around at the gathered party. Jaspers yawned and started munching on a clump of hail that had washed up on the beach. "Is that your boat? What the fuck," he muttered. Staring at Tavros, he added, "and kidnapping our resident weirdo wasn't enough for you, had to go add another troll to the menagerie!"
"Hi my names Tavros," said Tavros, offering his hand.
"Never heard of you," Karkat snapped. "You must be from off. Anyway, I saw your signal and thought, 'thank fucking Din, someone survived this asshole of a disaster,' but it was just you guys. This is still a good thing I guess."
"What signal?" John asked. Karkat sputtered angrily, dropping John to the ground, and gesticulated upwards, waving his hands and wiggling his fingers while making *pew* and *fwoosh* noises with his mouth, until John remembered the huge beam of Triforce light. "Okay! I know what you mean now! Geez!" he snapped before Karkat could bust a vein.
The troll strode over to the edge of the water, looking out towards the dark ocean. After a moment, he said, "I take it you're still going to go through with this quest business?"
"Yeah," said John. "We came here to get Nayru's Pearl from Cetus." He looked around. "What happened anyway?"
"From what the morning mail trolls reported, the storm appeared, and it tried to kill Cetus," he growled. "It wasn't a natural storm but a monster of a storm, and Cetus is a monster of a water spirit; you can see the result of the two of them clashing."
Pointing at the odd blue stone that loomed ominously in the darkness, Karkat added, "That slab used to be the door to her lair. She used to have a ton of similar lairs guarded by similar doors all over the Great Sea, but there's only one left, and it's probably where she went."
"Where is it?" asked John. "We need to go there."
"The island where you were born," said Karkat with unnecessary dramatism, "Outset Island." Appropriately, lighting crashed in the distance.
John suddenly recalled a memory. He'd once gone around the island with Dave and Bro on a fishing trip, and seen the southern face of Outset Mountain. No one ever really went there; the only thing south of the island was a nearly impassable stretch of empty ocean and then the homeland of the cannibals, wherever that was. There weren't any towns or even beaches on that side, and the slopes of the mountain were a sheer drop all the way to the water. But he remembered that the rough, blue-black cliff-face had been interrupted by a stone that was much smoother, marbled deeply with thick blue mineral deposits. He'd thought it looked like a massive door.
"Shit," he said. "What if Cetus attacks there?! Thanks Karkat, but we have to go now!"
"Wait, what do we do when we get to Outside?" asked Tavros, warming his hands over the fire. "Um, knock? Is there some kind of sign we can give Cetus that we're friendly?
Jaspers meowed loudly, drawing everyone's attention back to him. "Even if there was, she probably won't want to see anyone for a few hundred years after a home invasion like this. She's wounded too," Jaspers said, closing its eyes, tentacles scratching the top of its head as if thinking hard. "She's much weaker now."
"Soooo," Tavros said, stretching out the word to an awkward amount of syllables, "do we just break the door on Outside down?"
"Outset," John snapped, "and no, I don't think so." He rubbed his chin for a bit. "Karkat, Aradia," he said, after a minute or two, "can you fly up and prize off a bit of the door?"
While Karkat tore into John for treating him like his own personal errand boy, Aradia fluttered her way up to the door with a series of wing-assisted hops, and then glided back down with four tile-like shards the size of playing cards. Ignoring Karkat, John played with the pieces, arranging them like puzzle pieces before stacking them and then striking them with his hammer. They sank into the ground like nails; when he dug them up, they were unharmed. "These are chunks of Azurine ore," he said, striking two pieces together to make a spark. "The whole door is made out of it. We're not getting in."
Roxy snorted. "Not with that attitude!" She cracked her knuckles dramatically, then her neck. "Remember that I am a highly skilled not-ninja. I've been trained in infiltration. I can get through doors!" She snatched a piece out of John's hand, stroking it gently with her fingertips.
"You'll never break that," Karkat scoffed. "Azurine ore is practically indestructible!"
Roxy ignored him, ears horizontal with concentration. After a moment, she muttered a word, mostly to herself, and a small burst of pink light flashed into being before rapidly expanding with a loud pop and shattering the shard. "Vulnerable to concussive force," she said with a wicked grin. "You were absolutely right Tavros, we're breaking the door down!" Karkat was stunned, mouth gaping.
"With magic?" asked Aradia, eagerly igniting her curls. Karkat jumped in surprise. "Who the fuck are these kids?" he muttered.
"Hell no," said Roxy, "We're not strong enough to do that, not even if we all cast the spell together. We're just gonna acquire some bombs out on Windfall!"
"That's a bit out of our way," said John. "It'll take a whole, what, two days to make the trip?"
"Do you see any other options?" Tavros asked. "It's not like we can…I dunno, rescue a Great Fairy from the stomach of a Big Octo anywhere nearby, and she'll be so grateful that she'll like, double our magical power."
"I am going to spank your face with my fist," said John, "but you're right. How much money have we got?"
Aradia jumped back onto Jaspers and dragged a large metal chest out from underneath the rearmost bench, where they'd stowed most of their monetary gain from their adventures. "This thing can hold about a hundred pieces," she said, cracking it open. "And at a glance, it's nearly full, and more than half the pieces are green."
"We'll have to steal the bombs," Roxy said, smacking her palm with a fist. "I ducked into the bomb shop on our last visit; the dude's prices are extortionary."
Everyone looked at John. He considered for a moment, then nodded. "There's no other choice," he said. "Let the great bomb heist begin!"
"Wait!" Karkat shouted. "Ignoring the fact that I just witnessed a bunch of kids conspiring to rob a gunpowder store, there's a complication in that plan!" Here he faltered, tugging at his collar. "John, you remember those pirates? Rose's crew from The Grimdark?"
John smiled. "How could I not?"
"They're on Windfall," said Karkat.
"Cool!" said John, ears twitching joyfully.
"And I told them about the Pearl earlier today," Karkat continued.
"Awesome, do they want to help?"
"Well you see I was drunk," he said, shuffling his feet a little. "And kind of a mess. So, I left out some details and embellished some others, and long story short, they think Outset is home to some legendary treasure horde, and they're probably loading up on gunpowder right now to break down the door for themselves."
John's expression struggled with itself, trying to smile and fall at the same time. He gave out a laugh, a weak little "heh", and said, "But Rose is good. She'd probably want to help me, if she knew what was going on right? If someone…sober explained things to her."
Karkat grabbed John's shoulders, glaring down at the boy. "Kid she's a pirate. A fierce pirate with a reputation for brutality. She only really helped you before because I shamed her into it, and I don't think she would fall for that again. I really, really don't think you should put your faith in a gang of bandits who, remember, left you and Dave to die in that fortress!"
John grit his teeth. He supposed Karkat had a point; there was no real reason to trust the crew of The Grimdark, and he didn't want to risk everything he'd fought for trying to find out if he could trust them or not. "Alright," John said, "we'll try to avoid them, and not tell them what we're up to if we can't."
Karkat heaved a sigh of relief. "Do you have any messages to send your Nana?" he asked.
John bit his lip. He really should be sending more letters home; it had been less than a week since he'd been found on Dragonroost. "Just tell her that I'm safe, and I'll be home soon, with Jade, and, uh…" he pulled out a silver rupee from the moneybox. "And give her that too," John finished.
Karkat nodded. "I promise. Be safe." And with that, he jumped off into the air. "AND I WON'T TELL HER YOU'RE A CRIMINAL EITHER!" he shouted against the wind, and then and his red wings were quickly lost in the dark.
"Well," said Roxy, "guess we have an early start tomorrow. We should hit the hay."
"I'm not really tired," Tavros muttered.
"We should probably sleep anyway," said John, frowning. He really should have asked about Dave, but then again, if Dave had checked in, Karkat would have told him right?
Huddled around the bottled fires, they slept very fitfully. None of them really felt tired. It had rained fitfully throughout the night, the storm never really letting up nor stopping, and the sound of rain and hail and thunder on the ocean became a dull white noise that pricked at their minds. The rain ran down the broken shards of island all around in rivulets, adding a soothing susurrus to the general noise.
Judging by Aradia's internal clock, it was around six in the morning, and a good hour or so before sunrise when everyone roused themselves. Though they had barely slept, they didn't feel that way. "Does anyone else feel as rested as you did when we went to bed?" asked Tavros.
"Yeah, just about," asked Roxy. "Did you do that?"
Tavros shook his head. "I can only do like, wind and stuff, same as John."
John bit back a snarky comment about Tavros not knowing what John could do, because Tavros was right. "It's weird but we can't worry about it now," he said. "Breakfast, and then we set off."
"Shouldn't we wait for it to get brighter?" asked Roxy, looking up. The blackness overhead was illuminated only by lightning flashes, and their fire reflected blood-red off the falling droplets. "The sun won't rise for a while yet."
"Remember yesterday?" asked John. "These clouds aren't letting in any sunlight until the storm is over." He repeated himself, "breakfast and then we set off."
"I'm not even really all that hungry," said Aradia, stretching herself with a yawn. "Who wants my share?"
Roxy opened her mouth to accept it, but then stopped. "I think I'll pass too."
Tavros nodded along. "Yeah, me too."
"You're not just saying that to be cool?" asked John with a smirk. Tavros shook his head. "Then we can skip eating altogether, because I'm not hungry either."
It wasn't until they'd set out, the second Triforce piece secured with the other treasures, that Jaspers said, "If these clouds weren't in the way we'd see some beautiful stars. We should go night sailing more often!"
Roxy coughed. "Jaspers, babe," she said, "we know you're not…actually dumb, so cut it out, it's morning."
"Nope," said Jaspers simply, looking over his bough at them.
Aradia giggled, if the sound could be called that. It was low and dangerous, and sounded like dry stones clacking down a mineshaft. "You know, Jaspers, I've always been very good at telling the time," she said, looking at something out in the water that no one else saw, "It's like I can feel the moon and the earth moving around me, keeping pace with this tempo that thrums through everything, keeping everyone in line. But…I must be worse at it than I thought because I can swear the moon and stars haven't moved at all since last night." She bent her head back, hair spilling from her head and swinging free of her back, and stared up at the clouded sky.
John looked up and saw only the roiling blackness above. For a moment he was frightened of what he might see if the clouds were removed. His ears drooped low.
"Caliborn is a Lord of Time," said Jaspers, "he could be doing something to the Earth's rotation. Most of his power is buried under the full weight of the sea, but he could do this kind of thing all the time in the old days!"
John growled in frustration. "At a fraction of his power he can do all of these things?"
"I told you," Jaspers purred, "Caliborn wants to strangle the heartbeat of creation—"
"I know," John sputtered.
"—lock the void into a single unceasing moment—"
"Yes you told me—"
"—calling all evil to him from all corners of the—"
"Okay I get that—"
"—not fighting for yourself, nor me, nor your sister but for everything, everywhere, for all of time," Jaspers paused in his recitation a moment, seeming to have forgotten what came next.
After a while, John sighed and said, "We'll just have to finish our Quest so Dave can kill him before he gets stronger." He tried to sound confident, but was growing cold inside. He almost wished he could just go home, but he'd made a vow, and he'd see it through.
The journey to Windfall was long and tense, but largely uneventful. The waves rolled and tumbled them from side to side, but the power of the Breath Wakers kept their course steady and the wind on their side. Once, the shadow of a great beast passed beneath them, a gargantuan torpedo-shaped head trailing dozens of tentacles as thick as people, and it must have been just inches below the surface to have been visible during the storm, but it let them be, and was soon left behind. Occasionally a huge purple fin would rise from the spray; it trailed them a while, but eventually grew bored and swam off.
A monolith came into view. Illuminated by flashes of red lightning, the children saw that it was nearly straight, and topped by a massive rounded formation, shaped something like a pear. The map said it stood on a nameless, uninhabited island, but fires glowed at the center of its top like a pair of red eyes, and as they passed it, they could see it turning, and that it was crowned with massive horns. Whether it was a gigantic monster or a man-made structure in the guise of one, the children had no desire to learn and sped off, sailing ever northward.
They did not feel the need to eat and rested only slightly. They never stopped sailing in all the hours they spent at sea.
Eventually Windfall's lighthouse loomed in the distance, its two beams slicing through the darkness like a sword of light, guiding them on the last stretch of this long journey. The children welcomed its cleansing light, feeling warmth at the sight of its cheery yellow glow. As they grew closer, they saw the candlelight and fireplace lights of the town gleaming like fireflies in the storm, and as the great beams swept overhead, they illuminated the rustic fields and the gunpowder store, kept far from the town to avoid accidents.
As they rounded the southern tip of the island, they saw a dreadful sight. The Grimdark lurked in the water, hidden behind the overhanging cliff where John and Roxy had sheltered so long ago. The lamps in its monstrous kraken figurehead stared accusingly into the night. It was like a crocodile, John thought, lying perfectly still in ambush, with nothing but the light of its eyes to give it away.
"Now what?" asked Tavros, wide-eyed at the sight of the evil-looking ship. The rest of the crew looked equally horrified at the black hulk; only John had ever thought of it as a friendly shelter.
"We land," said John, "and we try to steal our bombs before the pirates get theirs, or at least clean up whatever they left behind."
"Volunteering for this mission solo," said Roxy, her hand shooting straight up. "I'd rather not have to fight my way through a whole crew of pirates that you kinda sorta think of as friends," she said.
John nodded. "It's better this way."
They beached Jaspers, dragging him up the sand almost all the way onto a muddy field of flowers while pigs and sheep made angry, wet noises in the distance. Roxy gave a salute and sped off into the rain, ducking into her run to make herself smaller. She'd been right, John thought, her blue outfit blended into the storm within a few steps, and she was gone.
The room was small and drab, not clean, but shoddily wiped down constantly to give the illusion of cleanliness, and reeked of cordite and sulfur. No creamy yellow candle glow lit this room, but instead it was brightened by the flickering, stark, colorful light of forest fireflies, imported at great cost, and hung in expensive glass jars from an iron chandelier that swayed slightly as the house was struck by pounding rain. The walls were of whitewashed stone, though long stained grey near the ceiling by powder and smoke. This was the bomb seller's shop, an outpost of the Engineers' Guild that kept a tight grip on all scientific innovation on the great sea from distant Seline in Calatia.
Rose loomed over the hapless bomb salesman. She would have done so whether she tried to or not; the man was around four feet tall, excluding two odd poffs of hair on either side of his head that added another six inches to his height, and was currently tied up. However, when Rose chose to, she loomed. There was a whole art to it, a refinement to the exact posture and expression. What's more she looked terrifying in her war paint, all black and grey streaks across her face, furry ears pierced with black studs and bone rings, and her wands crackled with black energies that sent shivers up the spine. The little man wet himself, just slightly. He thought she didn't notice, until she shot him The Smirk. He withered.
"You're quite fortunate," she said, Smirk still gleaming malevolently on her face, "that I didn't turn you into something unnatural." She strode towards him, stroking the top of his shiny, bald head with the very tip of her weapon. He flinched as his skin began to smoke.
"You've heard of witches turning people into pigs? Well I am so much more imaginative than your run-of-the-mill green skinnéd hag, grinding mushrooms into potions and flirting with young bravos. I could turn you into something that had never been seen before, some new monster that's all eyes and teeth and tentacles, and unleash you on the city." She dragged the wand around in a little looping pattern, burning needle-fine trails of skin as she went. "You would kill scores of them," she murmured, voice low and soothing, almost sultry, "but then they'd kill you and string you up as a warning, or throw you to the bottom of some pit and seal it off, leaving you to starve, but unable to die, maintained by my eldritch craft."
"Honestly, I should just gut you and not even bother," she added in her regular tone of voice. Rose finished carving; she'd marked his forehead with her symbol, a big, beautiful, looping RL; the flesh around it was livid and swollen, but the mark itself crackled with rainbow fire. Breathing deeply, the shop-owner seemed to relax. She ripped the badge off his chest, the hourglass and stylized "B" of the Engineers' Guild. With a tap of her black needle, it crumpled into grey and lifeless dross. "But there is one thing I despise above all others, and that's extortion." She looked over her shoulder, watching her crew carrying off powder kegs, bombs, and assorted charges by the armload. "Your guild's hording has kept this world in a dark age for long enough; it's time the age of exploration became the age of industry, don't you think?" She raised the other wand, crackling black and pink, and thrust it down at the shop-owner's head.
A light gasp shook her concentration and she missed. The ghastly light of her wand burst into sparks just to the right of the shop-keeper's head, and where they landed spindly arms as fine and short as hairs crept out of the ether. The man screamed around his gag.
Looking up, Rose saw—
Nothing. She was almost certain that there'd been a flash of blue up above the shopkeeper's desk; there was a little storage area up there, just a tiny loft with cleaning supplies and a moneybox that had no doubt been embezzled from the guild. Where she looked however, there was nothing. Naught but shadows.
"As I was saying," she hisses, glaring down at the little man, who now looked more curious that terrified, "I am going to—"
Something fizzed with power at her hip. Reaching into the folds of her bright pink sash, she brought out a cracked, dark pink orb. The pattern that had once rested beneath the surface was now a mess of broken lines…but now it was glowing. The thing had lost power a few days ago, and the only thing capable of bringing out this last little spark of energy would have been its twin.
"Do you think she's been caught?" a whispery voice crackled from the sphere, sounding as broken as the ball's surface. It was so quiet she had to strain to hear.
"It's been five minutes," said another voice. Rose saw the vaguest outline of a face. It seemed familiar. "She's probably not even—" then it cut off as the sphere cracked in two, falling into a pair of solid black halves. She let them clunk to the floor.
Rose let out a sigh of relief. John was alive, and he was on Windfall.
Up on the loft, the shadows moved. There was nothing there, or so her mind told her, refusing to let her eyes look at the spot, trying not to think about why there would be extra shadows just bunched up on the middle of the loft with nothing to cast them. There was only one thing that could do that, Rose thought, affecting both the mind and reality to hide something in plain view. Sheikah magic. John needed to steal some bombs too, and she had an inkling as to why.
"Excuse me, boss?" chirped a soft voice. Rose spun on her heel, and loomed at the new arrival. Nepeta was standing right behind her, eyes huge and sparkling like they were when she was asking for something. The crew usually sent her as its representative when they didn't want to go through Vriska.
Rose furrowed her brow. "Yes, ship's cat?"
Swishing her tail playfully, Nepeta said, "The lads and ladettes were just wondering if maybe we could spend the night here in Windfall? I know you said you wanted to leave as soon as we had the bombs, but everyone's tired and hungry."
"We just ate," Rose snapped, and just then her stomach rumbled. The bomb seller looked up at her with the most surreal expression she had ever seen on a person. Rose growled to herself and with a flick of her wand turned him into a huge pale blue toad.
"We've taken every single grain of powder! This is our most successful raid in a looong time!" Nepeta replied, bringing her fists up to her chin. "Even if we didn't go for the treasure, we could make our fortunes just selling off this gunpowder! We deserve to celebrate!" She batted her eyelashes. The bomb shop owner shuffled his way out from the coil of ropes. He was only half his original size. He looked at his hands. They were bright orange.
"The real raid is going to be on Outset Island," Rose sighed, ears drooping, and stared at her new creation. The cursed shopkeeper was marveling at his hands. A tongue snaked out and licked its eye. Up on the loft, the shadows moved.
Rose bit her lip. "Just make sure to load up all the bombs. Tell Jake English ad Pounce to stay behind and guard them." Staring intently at the shifting shadows, she added, "Tell Mr. English to set a password, and to let anyone enter who guesses it correctly. It's the answer to this riddle." She spoke the riddle clearly as the frogman sat down behind his desk and started looking over his ledgers. Up in the loft, Roxy giggled.
"And when you've finished that," Rose said, arching a painted eyebrow at the loft, "we can hit the café and bar on the northside, and requisition their facilities for the night."
The pirates erupted into cheers.
Jake English sighed, patting the head of the huge white cat sleeping next to him. Sitting in the dark interior of The Grimdark alone on a three legged stool, an oil lamp swinging from a hook overhead. He was in the small antechamber just past the only door. Rose's room was directly behind him, and a set of stairs led to the cavernous, bigger-on-the-inside hold. The other pirates had left him behind to go party in the city. Again. He really did like his private time, but he was becoming increasingly sure that the other pirates didn't see him as an equal.
Even Willoughby was treated better than Jake was, and the lying reptile cheated at cards.
"I'm going to strike out on my own!" Jake decided, leaping to his feet, pink ears lying flat against his head. The stool toppled to the warped black wood and Pounce leapt up screeching, running down the stairs into the hold. "I'll get a boat and adventure alone for a few years," he said as he began pacing, "then, once I've done a bit of successful treasure hunting, I'll buy a ship and begin the process of hiring a crew." He tightened the straps on his leather gauntlets, feeling the cold metal beneath press against him. "Only good blokes, whom I like and am sure like me, people who will be my chums and not desert me to go get drunk on Byrnish coffee and fornicate!" He slung on his short green coat, the tails flapping dramatically. "They'll bring me right along to the fornication and spiked coffees!" he shouted, voice ringing in the small chamber.
He snooped around for his bow and arrows for a minute before the knock came at the door. At which point he dropped everything and headed cheerily over. "Good'een chums!" he said through the peephole. The people outside were hooded and he didn't recognize them, but that didn't mean they weren't crewmates. It was very dark out after all.
"An assassin's knife," said the one in the lead. He thought she looked a little like Rose, so it must be a test.
"Not so fast," said Jake, waggling his finger, even though they couldn't see it. "I didn't ask you the riddle yet!"
Someone sighed. A raspy voice muttered, "Fine, let him ask it, I guess."
Jake cleared his throat, grinning like a lunatic.
"I am the hard punch and pull of power,
Bold thrusting out, keen coming in,
Serving my lord. I burrow beneath
A belly, tunneling a tight road.
My lord hurries and heaves from behind
With a catch of cloth. Sometimes he drags me
Hot from the hole, sometimes shoves me
Down the snug road. The southern thruster
Urges me on. Say who I am."
The people outside the door were dumbstruck. "Is…this a d-dick!? Why is the answer to the riddle dicks?" He gasped, covering his mouth. Jake thought he could see a hint of a blush. "Holy shit no it's a turd. What's wrong with literally everyone on the Great Sea?" The raspy voice shouted. One of the figures, a big horned troll to whom the voice clearly belonged, was hyperventilating. Jake chuckled. He didn't remember that rack. A new swabbie?
A familiar sigh hit his ears. "No Tavros the answer is still a knife, it's a trick, you're supposed to think of dicks first, okay?"
Jake had begun cackling, though he wasn't aware of it.
"Ohmigosh," said the person in the lead who was probably his boss, "just open the door! We've said knife four times now!" Barely able to restrain himself, Jake opened the door.
The lead girl threw off her hood, revealing herself to not be Jake's boss by virtue of her perfectly manicured pink hair and ears, and immediately clocked him in the face.
Or tried to. He brought up his arms defensively just in time. She took another few swings and he deflected them off his forearms with a series of deft rotations of his elbow, suppressing a yawn.
The girl stopped to clutch her fist and whine in pain. "Merciful Sufferer, what are those arms made of!?" she shouted. Jake answered by picking her up by the lapels and throwing her out into the rain.
The big horned troll lunged at Jake with an odd wooden spear. He side-stepped the bow and grabbed the weapon by the shaft. Pulling hard, he brought the troll crashing into the doorframe; his horns were too wide to let him through. "Nice rack," he said with a wink as the troll let out a loud "ow!" Jake pushed the spear and pulled it back towards him, hitting the troll's horns against the doorframe again, and again, and once more, leaving the doorframe cracked from the repeated impacts. Looking like he was about to vomit, the troll dropped to his knees and fell over sideways.
Dropping his stolen spear, Jake stepped out onto the deck. The girl he'd thrown out had hit the fourth person and they were both lying in jumble now. The only one left standing was a troll girl, rustblood, dressed in all in red, with a red leather coat. She was giggling like a demon, her eyes wide, pupils dilating and contracting rapidly, filling with random flashes of color. "I'm sorry you guys," she said as her hair caught fire. The floor beneath her began to crack. Huge splinters of wood tore themselves out, leveling themselves at Jake like arrows. "Really! I—"
Jake cleared the distance between himself and the girl, jumping over the prone troll, and brought his hands together in a clap on both the girl's cheeks. The loud, solid *pap* rang out in the night. The girl coughed like she'd had the wind knocked out of her. A few drops of red spittle splattered on Jake's cheek, then the troll girl fell over with a smile on her face.
Jake stepped over her and approached the pile of what he assumed were Hylians. "Well lads, that was a good scrum, I admit," he said, punching his fists together. A metallic hum hung in the air like the sound of a distant gong. "But I believe it's time for me to pitch you overboard for the gyorgs! Say hello to Lanayru for me, she keeps the souls of the drowned, you know."
He reached down to grab one of them, and then stopped, smile freezing on his face, changing over the course of a few muscle movements into a horrified grimace. "We'll I'll be blown! Zounds, it's my old swabbie John Egbert!"
"I'm so tired of being captured," said Jade, lying on the straw palette in her cell. It had just been replaced a few nights ago and was still pretty dry. She was cradling her arm, which she'd sprained trying to escape, and Jane was sitting next to her, cradling Jade's head in her lap, caressing her wounded arm.
Outside loomed their captor, a Darknut in black and gold armor. Fascinating creatures, Jade thought, not as hideous as the other monsters that Caliborn had created. They were like huge, strong men, with sleek short black fur all over, and the heads of Dobermans. This one was easily seven feet tall, with hands like dinner plates. A bit of vapor puffed from the vent in his faceplate; he looked like a steam kettle. She could see the powerful, black nose behind it, nostrils expanding and contracting as it breathed.
That was the creature that had hurt her arm. Jade was already coming up with plans to kill it. Light a fire up its nose? Maybe. Her arm twinged. Maybe tomorrow.
"Tell me about Greatfish Island again," she said, wincing at her arm pain. Her soft white ears hung limp, as if they were mere rags with no substance, no life.
Jane sighed, the folded tips of her own ears twitching. "Well missy, I don't think there's anything I can tell you that I haven't told you already." She started talking anyway. Jane used to ask about Jade's home, but she could tell that answering just made her sad. The poor boy who'd broken in all those weeks ago, John, had been Jade's brother, and another boy who'd helped him had been Jade's boyfriend. Neither of them had made it. Every memory that Jade had of Outset was with one of the two, often both, and so she talking about home brought tears to her eyes. She always finished talking, seemingly glad to bear her pains, but eventually Jane stopped asking. It was too much.
"The spice market's fabulous and we have traders coming around from all over the West Sea. My house was a big fancy two story place that overlooked it, right across from the mayoral palace with its big showy clock tower. Dad never really let me go out and explore, always tagging along, practically holding my hand, bringing guards along. The life of an heiress is stifling, let me tell you!" Jane bit her lip, looking out the window. There were metal bars bolted deeply into the stone now, so thick she could barely see out. "Gosh, there were days when I thought I wanted to leave the island and never come back, but now I want nothing more than to go back and tell Dad I want nothing more but to stay in his house forever."
Jade laughed. "You'd let people in though? So I could come visit you?"
Jane smiled. "That's right, and Roxy too! If we can ever find her out there in the wide world." The older girl squinted at a distant star, and wished with all her heart that someday her cellmates turned friends would be able to come over and have a slice of spiced rum cake with her, these dark days far behind them.
All this while, something had been descending the stairs, a hooded figure in orange and green so dark it was almost black. His voluminous sleeves unfurled like wings, the creature floated just above the ground, never touching the steps. Soon, he came into view on the other side of the wooden cage, and the girls startled, Jade sitting bolt upright and smacking Jane on the chin. The man had the face of a toucan, and eyes of gleaming metal.
The wizzrobe waved its wand and Jade froze, seemingly held in place by a dozen red gears floating in midair. With another wave, Jane was forced to her feet, back ramrod straight. Her eyes were tearing up and a bit of blood dribbled down her mouth from where Jade had made her bite her tongue. A sickening realization filled her gut; she was out of time.
Jade had been a great help since her imprisonment. Roxy was a fine friend, but the girl's dependence on alcohol had been draining. Jane was over the moon with happiness that she'd managed to escape, but the truth was that Roxy had brought her down. Jade had fortified her, and they'd kept each other sane during the long hours filled with the unhealthy cocktail of boredom and terror. They'd come up with schemes to escape, none successful, each bringing about a change to their prison, making it harder and harder, but there was always hop. The younger girl buried her fear and her depression and smiled, and it made Jane smile too. They bonded over time, and they lost track of time. Now time was up. Jane would be flung from the tower, and Jade would be all alone.
Jane's legs began to shuffle towards the now-open door, stiffly as a doll with no knee-joints. She wanted to spit out her mouthful of blood and shout, not curses or threats, but reassurances to Jade, that she loved her like a sister and that help would come, that Jade would not meet the same fate as so many other girls. But the clockwork magicks ticked away inside her bones, and she was deprived of this final act of mercy.
She was forced up the stairs, ugly irregular things that were half melted into a ramp in places, and out onto the roof of the tower. And icy squall hit her square in the chest and almost sent her flying, but the beak-faced monster held her steady. Why? She wondered. He was only going to toss her off in a minute or two.
The ocean around the fortress was boiling and thrashing, throwing up sprays of water that gleamed like silver in the light of the spotlights. Off in the distance, red and violet lightning crashed down into the ocean. High above, the clouds swirled and boiled, as if being sucked down some cosmic drain.
The wizzrobe led her up a soaring path, to the highest point of the Forsaken Fortress. Half a mighty galleon had been lodged up here, either by a monstrous storm or more likely, by the terrible magicks of the lord of the fortress. The doorway was marked with bones and shields and red paint—no, it was blood. A huge, grinning face painted in blood, wedge-shaped, with squares for teeth and sideways eyes. She knew what it was, an ancient symbol out here in the islands, the face of the all-devouring serpent that had drowned with old Hylia.
The doors opened, and she was brought face to face with a nightmare.
"Hey there cookietits," he grumbled. Caliborn's voice was low and crackled like a log on the fire. He sounded like an avalanche, and just listening to him made the throat tighten in sympathetic pain. "Wow. Fuck. No need to go to the hospital. Because you are fiiiine."
Jane was shocked as she watched the hideous green skull leer at her with eyes that flashed a dozen mismatched colors. This was not what she had expected.
"Really though," he continued, with his chronic smoker's voice, "Those are tits. Like what they write songs about. The Legend of Jane: Oracle of Dem Tiddies." He walked across the room towards her on clawed feet—no, one foot, the other was a peg leg done in gold, tipped with an emerald as big as an egg. He needed to use a walking stick, a huge staff tipped with a green crystal bigger than Jane's head, the inside a mass of swirling green energies.
The monster of legend whistled at her as it passed behind. She could feel its horrible eldritch eyes on her ass. "What the fuck?" she shouted, stamping her feet and not even realizing that she was free of the physical control. "I am fourteen years old you primitive ape!" She covered her chest with crossed arms, eyes closed.
"Hey. If you got it. Flaunt it." A cold, hard, hand the texture of leather stretched tight over granite seized her by the back of the neck, and she was carried inwards like a kitten in the jaws of its mother. Or the jaws of the neighbor's tomcat that didn't want to raise some other cat's children. "Age is just a number. And statutory is a kink. Listen. You have something that I want. And it's not your bod. Bodacious though it be."
Jane almost heaved a sigh of relief, but then remembered that he was still going to throw her off the tower. She was plopped down onto a very comfortable chair. Opening her eyes, Jane saw that she was in the middle of a huge plush armchair with red velvet cushions. Across from her, Caliborn dropped himself into an equally plush loveseat that was still barely enough to hold him. Between them there was an antique globe. It had been tagged up with crude drawings in red ink, and had been burned with cigars.
"The Triforce did not resonate for you," he said, raising a meaty fist. A tattoo made up of golden triangles gleamed on the back of it; one of them was so bright it seemed to glow. "Normally. This is grounds to have you killed. In a way that I find amusing. Watching you pop against the rocks of my island. And be eaten by crabs on the beach. Or hungry goblins inside the walls. Or fall into the sea. And disappear. Sometimes I find the bones. And I keep them. I don't try to aim for a particular ending," he elaborated with a bourgeois twirl of his clawed hand, "I just toss the bitches. And let fate decide."
Jane remembered the skulls and crossed bones outside and wanted to cry again, but she was listening. If there was something preventing him from killing her, then she would need to exploit it in order to keep on living. "There are others," he went on, in his slow, halting tone. It sounded more dreadful than the smooth, oily voice she'd imagined when she first came here. "Other powers than the Triforce. The Oracles are one power. Three women. One man. They have the power of Time. Seasons. Secrets. Love. Stupid beautiful quims. That I hate." He growled deep in his chest, and it sounded like a stone tiger purring as it licked the blood off its jaws.
"There are also the sages," he went on. "There are usually ten. Seven protected Hyrule. The other three also did. But in a different way. The seven kept bad shit like me away. The three gave blessings and made shit stronger. Unlike Oracles. Sages need to be awakened. Told what they are. Before they can be useful." He grinned, though being a skull this was more or less a default expression. He rubbed his golden tusk. "I have two of their souls. Trapped in purgatory. It's good shit. Their descendants can't awaken. Until they pass on. But I never found the third. She slipped away. And opened her legs. And sprayed out a line of babies. That lasted to this day."
He stood up, looming to his full height. "And you're the last one. Cookietits. The Ocean Sage."
Jane fell forward off the chair and onto the sumptuously carpeted floor. It felt like she was being split in half at the belly. His words made sense, and she had a horrifying vision of her entire line going back to ancient times, starting with a woman who looked just like her emerging from the sea. She'd always felt like the ocean was a womb, that it couldn't hurt her despite what her dad might've told about sea monsters and whirlpools, what she saw of yearly hurricanes. And the revelation was cutting her in half.
An old song came to her and she grabbed a hold of it, trying to sing, to distract from the pain as her insides turned to water. It came out like a wet hiss, but the words were clear in her mind.
One day I was walking, I heard a complaining
And saw an old woman the picture of gloom
She gazed at the mud on her doorstep ('twas raining)
And this was her song as she wielded her broom.
Oh, life is a toil and love is a trouble,
Beauty will fade and riches will flee
Pleasures they dwindle and prices they double
And nothing is as I would wish it to be.
"Here," said Caliborn, picking her up by the head, clutched in one had like an egg, "while you're vulnerable during your transformation. Let me show you a thing."
He raised his rod. The swirling clouds of green and gold consolidated themselves into forms. Her beautiful island. Greatfish, shaped like the slumbering form of Lady Cetus beneath.
A storm formed above it, angry, swirling, like the louds were being sucked down some cosmic drain.
Last night in my dreams I was stationed forever
On a far little rock in the midst of the sea
My one chance of life was a ceaseless endeavor
To sweep off the waves as they swept over me.
Red and violet lightning thundered down from the storm, like a hail of bloody arrows. The bolts plunged through buildings, lighting them on fire, plunging through earth and sending up sprays of dirt and stone, daggers stabbing the earth rather than natural lightning. The earth bled water as they stabbed all the way down into the submerged caves at the base of the island. The earth bled blood as it stabbed Cetus in her dreams.
Her beautiful house was tattered to smithereens, she saw—
Alas, 'twas no dream; ahead I behold it,
I see I am helpless my fate to avert.
Blown apart to flaming debris. Her father wasn't there though; he was running, shouting through the streets, directing citizens, taking control, tending to the wounded—
The earth opened up as Cetus breached, screaming in agony, her face—her face like nothing else in heaven and earth, bloodied and screaming and full or dirt and rock and foam. She thrashed and thrashed and Greatfish shattered—
Just like Jane's heart. The pain in her stomach was over.
She lay down her broom, her apron she folded,
She lay down and died and was buried in dirt.
Author's Notes: Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a bicycle I fucked up bad with this chapter and let me tell you why. I wrote a page, the first page, of course, then I stopped for about a month to do something else (agonize over a short story I submitted for publication, and no I didn't succeed). I eventually got back to this and had written three or four pages when I stopped again to work on something else. When I returned, Word offered me two different versions of the document that it had recovered. Now, Word does this a lot, whether I saved the document or didn't. I thought it was the former case, so I picked the top one and kept right on writing. I changed the title slightly because I noticed a spelling error. Somehow in that week I managed to forget everything I had written, so I reread the chapter. For that reason it didn't seem odd to me that it was only a page long instead of 3.5ish, and I wrote a good deal more pages before having to stop for a good week or so due to having the lovely polyfandrous stay over for a few days. At that point I'd written around nine or ten pages.
When I started writing again, intending to finish. Once again, Word asked me which "recovered" file it wanted me to keep. I looked and saw that the document was only a page long and said "oh good, Word did its job correctly this time" and opened the first option. I scrolled to the bottom, and noticed that it was about 3.5 pages long and cut off midsentence. I was about to keep writing, when I noticed something odd. I reading a couple sentences above the break, I realized that I didn't recognize any of the writing. Worried, I went back to the first (still open) file, the one that was giving me options. I clicked the second option, and was given another file, which also offered me "recovered" file options. After a ton of clicking and closing of pages, I came to a startling conclusion.
I had made two copies of the same file. Word "recovered" the document at the one page stage twice and I had started writing from that point twice. The older draft was much shorter, in that it was only 2.5 pages after the first, but also shorter in that I take much less time to get to the place where the second draft got to before I realized the mistake. There's more snappy dialogue, and the tone is more one of panic than it is of sorrow. Jaspers fills the role that Quill had in the game, explaining what must have happened and where to go next, because I thought it would be kinda clumsy to reintroduce Karkat here at the time I wrote it and just wanted to get done with this part of the game. Jaspers also tells them about the endless night right off the bat. Roxy figures out how to break down the door to Cetus and makes up the plan to steal bombs herself.
The second draft was slower, more atmospheric, and had less dialogue. The kids don't set out immediately, and they don't learn about what Caliborn did to time. Karkat does show up in the same way that Quill does, and he explains what happened and why. He also tells the kids to go break down the door on Outset with bombs from Windfall. It was at the point that they set sail that they realize there's something up with time, and also that I vaguely remembered having written a Big Octo sighting at some point, but didn't act on that suspicion until later. Regardless, in this version Aradia feels uncomfortable because she can swear that the moon hasn't moved thanks to her time sense.
The first part was too quick and came across as callous, while the second part was too deus ex machina-esque (which is weird because I never got that impression from Quill; does the King of Red Lions suggest bombs after Quill explains what happened to the island? That makes a bit more sense). In both parts, Aradia wanders off from the group to scavenge. In the first one, she brings food, rupees, and fragments of the door for John to study. In the second, she only finds the Triforce piece. While it's almost all Karkat's idea to blow up the door in the second part, Roxy is the most attentive and vocal of the "students" during his lecture. These are probably ways that my subconscious tried to tell me I was doing the same thing over again.
I basically frankensteined the parts of both drafts that I liked to make one super draft. Karkat's explanations went on too long, so I had John ask to study the wall, and Roxy make up the plan, so as to make it more of a team effort. I moved some funny lines towards long after arriving on Greatfish so it wouldn't seem like they got over it too quickly, and merged the two revelations about time into one, Aradia's feelings triggering Jaspers to talk.
I think this stapling of things worked out very well, but that's up to you to decide. Wow this note was really long. Once I figured that stuff out I took about a day to write the rest of it.
The Engineer's Guild is descended from the Bombers from Majora's Mask. They monopolize the world's high technology and prevent the Great Sea from entering the industrial age so maintain Calatia's power. Rose breaking their monopoly by stealing bombs brings about the technological revolution that exists by the time of Spirit Tracks.
I have been building up to the end of this chapter for a while, but it was not originally endgame. However, Jake being surprisingly badass was always gonna be a thing.