His relief at not dying is short-lived. The cataclysm at Mount Aleph had far-reaching effects, and everywhere they turn monsters have sprung up out of the wilderness. They're terrible abominations, perversions of the animals that used to wander freely. It's something to do with Psynergy, he hears his captors saying, but what matters is that it's more than they can handle.
"We need help." The man's name is Saturos. He's big, taller by a head than Dad, and covered in blue-green scales. He speaks calmly, now, voice low and even. It would be pleasant if Felix hadn't heard it threatening them before.
"We can't." The woman is Menardi. She stands only a little shorter than her partner, pink and fuchsia to his blue-green, all scales and teeth and well-muscled arms, and as she speaks she leans in, insisting on something that Felix can't quite hear.
They're halted, none-too-happily, in a clearing near the river. Saturos has a bleeding lip, a slowly-oozing cut on his arm. Menardi survived unbloodied, but she's bruised and—more dangerously— angry.
Their healer, apparently, has abandoned them.
The argument gets louder. She gestures, unsubtly, at Felix. "Do you want to wake up with a knife in your back?"
Saturos is unmoved. "Do you want him dead? Where are we going to find another one?"
This gives her pause.
"Fine," she snarls, and pulls something out of her pack - a short sword, its scabbard burnt, its hilt warped and twisted. It belonged to one of her comrades, he knows, one of the raiding party who didn't survive the initial attack.
They turn to look at him almost in unison, red eyes unreadable and unnerving. He wants to duck his head, hunch his shoulders—become invisible—but it's too late.
They're already plotting.
"You. Come here." She holds it out to him, and he hesitates. He doesn't have to pull the blade to know it would be next to useless in a confrontation. She has to know it, too. "You keep this with you and use it only if we're under attack. One wrong move and you're an orphan. You understand?"
He opens his mouth to say something—to protest, somehow—but behind her he catches a glimpse of his mother, shaking her head minutely.
He nods, instead, and takes the blade.
Felix scrubbed a hand across his eyes and stared out at the trees. In front of him, the fire slowly burned itself down. It was well past midnight, not yet dawn. Since leaving Daila, things had been more or less quiet - a couple monstrous rats, nothing bigger than knee-high - but he'd heard it was worse to the south.
He looked down at the sword in his hand, better than its predecessor, and wondered if it would have made a difference, then.
Next to him, Sheba stirred fitfully. "Felix?" she mumbled, eyes still closed. "Wha's goin' on? Somethin' happen? Saturos an' Menardi…"
He froze. He hadn't known she could mind read in her sleep.
"No," he whispered back, and tried to make his thoughts stay quiet. "Everything's fine."
Her brow furrowed, and she muttered something unintelligible in response, voice muffled by her shawl, which she'd turned into a makeshift blanket.
A bead of cold sweat trailed down his spine. He licked suddenly-dry lips and forced his voice to steady. "Go back to sleep."
With another wordless murmur, she did just that. He sighed heavily and considered the sword again, his grip tightening. A better tool than he had before, if only he could use it.
He'd just have to learn.
He started on it the next morning, trading his and Jenna's swords for stout sticks—safer, in the hands of two near-beginners—and setting to work on practice drills. He remembered a little, very little, from his childhood, although then it had been more of a game than anything. Vale wasn't known for its warriors. He walked Jenna through the patterns anyway, figuring it was better than nothing.
Once she'd got the basics, he left her to it, and turned to Sheba, who looked at him expectantly, Shaman's Rod in hand. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I don't know anything about staves."
"That's all right." She hopped to her feet, shifting a little as she tested her balance. "Attack me, like what you were doing with Jenna? I want to try something."
He gave her a questioning look. The staff was half as tall again as she was.
"Pleeeease?"
In answer, he started in slowly, an overhanded strike that she blocked with ease, though once she had it took her a bit to figure out what to do next. He attacked once more, striking for one of her hands, and she blocked again, more surely this time, and half-hesitantly struck back at him. He dodged, and redoubled.
They continued, increasing the pace very gradually, and as they did she grew more confident in her counterattacks. He was moving in for another one when he felt it, somewhere in the back of his head—
—a slight presence, almost unnoticeable, pressing on his mind—
—and mischief glinting in her eyes. Ah. For a moment he threw all his focus into that, trying to keep her out, and as he did she swung her staff, striking low and deep. He made to block, not fast enough—
—and found himself on his back, staring up at the sky. "Good job," he wheezed.
She beamed. "Thanks."
Five days.
Piers had been in here five days.
He'd never thought five days could feel like a long time. He'd never counted days before. He paced the borders of his cell—six steps one way, seven the other—and seethed, wary of coming too near the bars. They didn't like that.
They didn't like a lot of things, these Outsiders. He looked strange. He talked strange. His name was strange. His ship didn't make sense. He'd pointed out that they made no sense to him and it only annoyed them further. He was glad, now, that he'd insisted the mayor safeguard the Orb; it never would have survived otherwise.
His power had started to come back, albeit slowly. He'd had enough time, now, to sleep off the last of the exhaustion, and they fed him a bowl of rice every morning, carefully slid through a small opening in the bars. He hadn't yet convinced them to include a spoon.
Unfortunately the renewed energy made his confinement chafe all the worse. He'd have given nearly anything to be back on the deck of his ship—his, although he'd only captained her for a short while—and heading somewhere away from here. For once his people's edicts on isolation were starting to make sense. These Outsiders were nothing more than children.
Nonetheless, he tried his best to stay civil, to convince them he wasn't a threat. He'd considered trying, perhaps, to force his way out—but they were children, and ignorant ones at that, and once he'd realized that he couldn't bring himself to harm them. For now.
He only hoped he could get out soon.
They made decent time, heading southward, and Felix was starting to think that the warnings about the damaged road had been exaggerated when the grass thinned out before them into a plateau of dusty yellow-brown clay. Someone had helpfully carved steps into the rock, long ago, and they reached the top of these to see more of the same, flat sunbaked dirt spread out and stretching to the horizon.
He stopped short. It looked perfectly fine—dry, at least, and its open planes didn't even leave much room for monsters to hide—but something about it felt wrong. "Wait!" he called.
He stepped forward slowly, eyes to the ground. His stomach clenched. It just wasn't right, somehow.
"What is it?" Jenna asked.
Wordlessly, he reached out to borrow Kraden's walking stick, and jabbed at a particularly suspect spot. With a dusty whoosh, it collapsed inward, revealing a hole in the ground below.
Jenna gaped.
"It's crumbling," he said. "The floodwaters must have opened up a sinkhole."
They all backed away from it, carefully. So much for making good time.
"What do you think our pirate's name is?" Jenna asked. She sat perched on a boulder, kicking her heels against the rock. She'd waited quietly at first, but after an hour of nothing she'd finally given in and begun to fidget.
"Hmmm," said Sheba. She was fidgeting too, walking carefully along the edge of the terrace where they stood, her arms stuck out for balance, and the only reason that Felix didn't stop her was because at least she'd stopped hopping back and forth over the sinkhole they'd opened up. "It has to be something exotic. Like… Roscoe."
"Nah, he's a pirate. It needs to be tougher."
"Oh." She paused in her balancing act to think, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. "Knifelegs? Stabhands? Bloodfist?"
"Those are even worse!"
Kraden cleared his throat. "If I may? How about… Deathbeard, Scourge of the Open Sea?"
"Ooh, I like it!" Jenna raised her hand in mock salute. "To Deathbeard!"
Felix crouched ahead of them, one hand to the earth. If he concentrated just so, and focused his psynergy, he could almost see the weak spots underground. He shut his eyes, trying to block out the distractions. "Do you mind?"
It bought him all of a minute before they started up again.
"I bet he's all tan and leathery!" said Sheba.
"I bet he's seven feet tall with a huge beard and rippling muscles!"
"Maybe he kidnaps fair maidens and ravishes them!" She sighed, hopefully.
Jenna laughed. "Not you. Deathbeard doesn't go after kids."
Sheba stuck her tongue out, and Jenna flicked sparks at her in answer, which she dodged with a yelp.
Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. "No one's ravishing anybody. And he's not our pirate." He stood. "I think I've figured out the way through."
Felix's senses got them most of the way across the plateau, although near the end he'd used too much power, and they had to resort to prodding at the ground, which worked until one particularly treacherous section when his boot had met the dirt and kept on going.
Much to their luck, though, the sinkhole had contained a Djinni—Mars, this one—and an odd little cube that they'd given to Jenna for safekeeping. When they eventually clawed their way out, covered in dirt and coughing, Felix wasn't sad to leave the place behind.
Finally, after several more days of walking, and practicing, although he couldn't actually tell if they were getting any better or if he was just getting worse, they saw smoke on the horizon, and headed eagerly towards it. After the plateau, it was refreshing to be able to walk without having to think about every step.
Guards, clad in timeworn, pitted armor, stood at either side of the town gate. Felix made to approach them and quickly found a spear blocking his path. "Halt!"
Before he could say anything, both soldiers rushed them, coming in close. His hand reached for his sword, but they made no move to draw their own weapons, and after a moment of close staring they drew back.
"Pardon me," asked Kraden, "Is there a problem?"
The guards looked at each other.
"Inspection," said one, finally. "But you're not Champa. You can go through."
"Champa?"
"Pirates." He spat. "They attacked us and took everything that wasn't nailed down."
"Don't want them coming back for more," said the other.
Felix frowned. "We'd heard you captured a pirate, though."
"They took him, too."
His heart sank. They were too late. They'd been so close… he turned to the others, wondering just what they were going to do now, when the first guard continued, "All we got now is the weird guy from that other boat."
Other boat? He turned back. "Where?"
The guard jabbed his thumb in the direction of a squat brick building to the west, where two more men guarded the door. Felix said a hurried thanks, and they made their way over. It was a jail, he realized, bars over the window and door.
If they were lucky, it also held the solution to their problems. He peered into the barred window, set high in the wall. Only one of the cells was occupied, though it was hard to make out the prisoner. As he watched, the man shifted a little, into the light. His hair was blue.
Felix nearly fell over in shock. Alex?
No.
He looked more closely, and saw that it wasn't. The prisoner was dressed far more lightly than Alex ever did, in clothes of a strange design. He had broader shoulders, a squarer jaw. Taller, too, Felix thought, although it was hard to tell. He sat in the far corner of the cell, one leg folded up in front of him. And, Felix noticed, he looked positively miserable.
Sheba, on her tiptoes, put voice to what everyone was thinking. "That's our pirate?"
Jenna pouted. "I was expecting at least an eyepatch."
"Shh!" Felix hissed, before anyone could hear them, and gestured toward the door. "Let's go."
"Admit it!" Shin glared at him from outside the cell, arms crossed. "You're one of the Champa, aren't you?"
They'd been through this already. They'd been through this a dozen times over the past two weeks, and if they had to go through it again it was going to drive him mad.
"You already know that I am not." Piers spoke slowly, trying to keep calm. If Shin got bored he'd leave him be.
"Where'd you come from, then? Never seen a blue-haired freak like you before."
Or not. Shin had a friend with him today; he must have been showing off. Piers took a deep breath. Calm. He just had to keep calm. "I have already told you. The heart of the Eastern Sea."
"Yeah, right! There's nothing there but rocks!" With the town leaders gone, Shin was free to do as he pleased, which apparently meant harassing Piers. He'd been in every day since the mayor had left, poking and prodding and goading.
Piers stared him down. His head throbbed, and it would be easy now, too easy, to put a stop to this. He kept it hidden as best he could, looking coolly ahead, and not so much as budging when the door opened and even more people made their way in. The rest of Shin's audience, no doubt.
Shin took no notice of them, either. "Where'd you steal the ship from? You can't build one of those on a hunk of rock!" He scoffed. "It's a weird ship, too. None of your maps make any sense—some mapmaker you are!"
Piers jumped to his feet. They'd gone through his ship?! Uncivilized savages—
His shoulders tensed, straining with the effort of keeping control. "Stop," he growled, holding out a hand as much for his sake as theirs. "I implore you, do not anger me. Just—stop."
Shin grinned. "Or what?"
Shin's friend had begun to back away. "Uh, maybe you should go easy on him…"
"It wasn't your girlfriend who got hurt!" He turned back to Piers. "Don't anger you or what? You'll go take it out on more innocent girls? Can't do that in here, can you?"
He could feel his hands getting colder, and forced his voice to steady. "I am sorry she was injured, but—"
Shin rounded on him, rattling the bars. "I don't want your sympathy, freak! I want you to get angry!"
Do you? he thought, and deep down in him a very small voice said, well then, why not.
Before he had a chance to think the power roared up in him, desperate for release, and he couldn't bear to stop it any longer—
—a cascade of ice shot from his hands and struck home, freezing and snapping and crushing—
—finally—
A scream.
The sound broke his concentration, and he drew back his hands sharply, unheeding of the commotion beyond the bars. What was he doing?
When he'd gotten it under control, he looked up to find that Shin had fled. Not hurt, then. Not permanently, anyway. Piers did his best to hide his relief.
Shin's friend still stood there, staring at him in horror. "W-what are you?"
His eyes narrowed. "What did your friend expect?"
"M-monster!"
Is that what his people were to these Outsiders? He'd gladly be a monster if it separated them from him. He smiled, slowly.
Without a word, Shin's friend turned and ran.
Piers watched him go, and then settled back into the far corner of his cell, eyes closed and knees drawn up in front of him.
Perhaps now they'd leave him alone.
That was quite possibly the last thing he'd expected to happen. Felix stared, still pressed against the wall where the two men had shoved him when they made their escape. Next to him, Kraden was just as shocked. "Was that -?"
Felix could only look at him, wide-eyed.
Jenna elbowed Sheba in the ribs. "Sheba! Do the thing!"
She squeezed her eyes shut and went still, as they all watched with bated breath.
"Can you tell anything?" Kraden asked, after she'd been silent for a while.
"He's definitely an Adept… but there's not much else…a lot of it doesn't make sense." Her brow furrowed. "He's… been here a while. He's got a boat—excuse me, a ship—"
She jerked her head suddenly, breaking the connection, and opened her eyes, breathless. "It's confusing—I think—he might not even be a pirate. I can't tell. For a second I thought he recognized my psynergy, but…" She bit her lip. "He's from somewhere far away, but I don't know where. I don't know what he's doing here."
Far away…there was a Mercury clan based in the north, Felix knew, but with the exception of Alex he didn't think they traveled much. They certainly weren't known for seafaring.
He approached the bars and crouched in front of the prisoner, who surveyed him warily. Next to him a pillar of ice still stood, glistening in the heat. "Where are you from?" he asked.
"It matters not. You won't believe me." For a moment he looked up and caught Felix's gaze. His eyes were amber-gold. More than anything, the sadness in them struck him.
Alex wasn't capable of sadness.
He swallowed. "I think we would."
"You wouldn't. You've no idea. You've no possible idea-" He cut himself off, abruptly, and turned away with a groan. "When will the mayor return and end my imprisonment?"
They stayed in the jail a while longer, trying their best to get any other information from him, but he said nothing more. As they all headed back to the inn, the others chattered excitedly, but Felix stayed silent, his head spinning.
Their pirate was an Adept.
This changed everything.
Felix dreams of water.
An endless sea, black as pitch, engulfs him, crushing against his chest and threatening to drag him down. The cold stabs him like a knife.
He breaks the surface, barely, and above his head the stars don't shine. He finds himself awash in a field of ice. The waves crash and he's knocked the against floes, thrown around like a rag doll and powerless to make it stop.
No, he says, tries to say, tries to scream, but no sound escapes. All around him there's only the ocean and the ice, seizing him and pulling him down into the dark.
