Blessed Time II - Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Wisps of images floated around Micah’s head as he cast weave of fate, slowly resolving into threads of possibility that were almost as dizzying as the steady roll of the ship beneath his feet.  One by one, he focused on the potential futures, tracing his mind along the grooves of fate in an attempt to map the near future.

He reached out with his mind for one swirl of potential only for it to pop like a soap bubble under his attention, erasing the spider web of choices and actions that had brought it about.  Around him, the dreamlike renditions of possible futures began to blur, uncertainty clouding them.

Micah frowned, biting his lower lip.  Manually, he reached out with his mind, unleashing the safety and regulation runes built into the spell and letting mana pour out of him.

His body began to grow warm, sweat beading his brow as the visions of possible futures snapped back into focus.  Despite his spot deep in the Amelia’s hold, a gust of wind fluttered through the pages of the Ageless Folio, accompanied by whispers in an unknown language.

Micah ignored them, instead pushing his perception into one of the rippling potential realities.  Suddenly, he was observing the Amelia’s deck as it sailed through small but choppy waves, a series of tall and foreboding volcanic islands jutting up out of the ocean to their left.  Drekt was leading Eris and Esther in another training exercise on the deck while a handful of sailors took a break nearby, shouting out unhelpful tips and encouragement.

Behind him, Micah could vaguely feel the thousands of interlocking choices that had brought him to the current location.  Four days ago he had suggested a course correction toward the Serpent’s Teeth that had helped them avoid a sudden squall.  Yesterday he had advised the captain to correct the ship’s course, dodging a shallow reef made of volcanic runoff that would have ripped the Amelia’s keel from the bottom of the vessel.

In the vision he squinted.  He was about a week in the future, around the limit of weave of fate’s power.  A sudden sense of unease caused Micah to turn, looking to the right.

Where there had once been a largely cloudless sky and ocean, stretching as far as the eye could see, Micah instead encountered a wall of seething fire.  It pulsed toward him, silently screaming faces and grasping limbs made from the same argent energy bulging outward.

Alarm bells rang inside Micah’s head even as cracks began to appear in the sky.  He didn’t even need to see the fingers of mist seeping into his vision through the growing slivers of void to know that things were growing out of hand.  Micah’s arcana skill had already told him everything he needed to know.

With a grunt of exertion, he pulled himself from the dream state, ignoring the crimson hands reaching futilely toward him as the scene dissolved.

He was pouring sweat, breath coming in short, sharp gasps as his eyes popped open.  Everything about the room seemed alien, from the wood-grain of the timbers used to construct the ship, to the low table sitting in front of him, everything was wrong.

Simultaneously, all of the cloudy images orbiting Micah’s head burst into flame.  His arcana skill screamed a warning as the fires began to bend inward, reaching toward him with hungry, grasping tendrils.

Micah bit his lip, tasting blood as he slammed down on the runes in the spellform that he had previously opened, cutting off the mana flow to weave of fate.  The spell guttered out in a second, leaving only a couple lingering hints of the flames and the stench of Elsewhere behind.

He slumped backward, feeling the curvature of the deck bite into his back through his soaked tunic.  Micah’s mind was racing as he tried to sort out what had just happened.  He sifted through his recollection of the attack- because that's the only way he could conceptualize the failure of his spell, but kept coming up blank.

Try as he might, Micah couldn’t think of anything capable of disrupting a seventh tier spell like that.  It might have been a ritual, but even that seemed impossible.  It was true that rituals had the power to step outside the natural order, letting a low level practitioner craft incredible works so long as they had sufficient skill, but at the same time they were borderline useless on the water.  Precise locations and ambient conditions were vital parts of designing any ritual.  No one had been able to come up with a way to hit a moving target other than to simply attack a wide enough area.

Shakily, Micah reached out and planted his hand against one of the room’s walls, dragging himself to his feet.  Other than the creak of the Amelia’s wooden skeleton as it rocked back and forth on the Emerald Ocean’s waves, there was no sound to disturb Micah as he tried to catch his breath.

After almost a minute in which nothing strange happened, he grabbed his spear from where it rested beside the door and stepped out into the ship’s narrow hallway.  Quietly, Micah made his way past the various bedrooms, the smell of the unwashed sailors sprawled in their hammocks hurrying him along.

Finally, he reached a ladder and clambered up the two levels from the Amelia’s hold to its deck, clambering out into the moonlight.

He took a deep breath of the salty night air, reveling in its fresh scent after the cloying staleness below deck.  As far as Micah’s eyes could see there was nothing but waist-high waves and stars filling the empty sky.  When the sun was out, they could see smoke welling up up from the Serpent’s Teeth on the horizon, but the volcanos were still a couple of days away from their current position.

Slinging his spear over a shoulder, Micah made his way across the ship’s deck toward the aft-castle.  Around him, supplies in large burlap sacks were packed into netting secured to the sides and of the ship, leaving corridors for the sailors to pass back and forth closer to its two masts.

Just before he reached the rear of the ship, Telivern’s stark white, antlered head popped up.  The stag was sleeping curled up in a small covered enclosure designed to keep two to three horses out of the elements on the Amelia’s long trans-oceanic voyages, hardly comfortable accommodations, but short of the massive magically shielded warships and luxury yachts, Micah hadn’t heard of a way to make long-term deepwater sailing truly enjoyable.

Telivern stood up, stretching its wings as it daintily stepped over Ravi’s curled up form.  It closed the last couple of paces toward Micah, burying its muzzle in his shoulder.  He reached up, hooking his fingers into its white fur, scratching it behind the ear.

Concern. Unease.

“You feel it too, don’t you buddy?” Micah asked softly, closing his eyes as he leaned into his friend’s comforting weight.

Telivern pulled back slightly, wrinkling its muzzle as it chuffed out a dissatisfied breath.

“You don’t smell all that hot yourself there,” Micah said with a quiet chuckle.  “Neither of us have had a chance to bathe in a couple of days, and that isn’t going to change for a while.  As bad as I smell, it’s only going to get worse over the next couple of weeks.”

Dissatisfaction.

“Sorry buddy,” Micah replied, patting the deer’s flank.  “You’ll have to live with it. Just another one of the sacrifices made in service of our quest to save the world.”

A board creaked, drawing Micah’s attention as a silhouette climbed down the wooden stairs from the aft-castle.  For a second, his muscles tensed, the words to a spell on the tip of his tongue as his mind spiraled back into the previous attack.

Then he relaxed, recognizing the shape of Hanna, the ship’s captain.  She nodded at him, reaching the main deck before calling out for his attention.

“Out enjoying the stars Mr. Silver?”

“After a fashion.”  He shot her a smile, left hand still rhythmically stroking through Telivern’s fur.  “I was performing an augury in the room you set aside for my workshop, and something went wrong.  I thought visiting with old friends and some fresh air might clear my head.”

“What went wrong with the augury?” She questioned, drawing closer.  Hanna was about a hand shorter than Micah, but she carried herself like she was twice Drekt’s size, ordering the sailors around with a casual but unquestioned authority.

“I don’t have to worry about you accidentally summoning a hurricane or something, do I?”  Hannah asked him nervously, her eyes darted back and forth across the mostly dark deck.  “The Amelia can cross the ocean without too many problems, but she only has two masts.  I usually only use her for coastal trade during monsoon season.”

“I can use air magic,” Micah reassured her, “but I’m far from a weather mage.  I don’t even know how to make a hurricane, let alone actually summon one.”

“Then what did you mean by augury?”  She walked next to Micah, pressing her back against the wood of the castle.  “Last time you talked about performing one of those, it was right before you warned me about that squall outside of Janamyr.  As I recall, your warning came a couple hours before it happened.  That sounds like a weather mage to me.”

“I have some time magic actually,” Micah said, trying to keep his voice casual.  “It’s not perfect but it can give me some insight into the near future as it relates to me.  The spell can’t peer more than a week into the future, and even then it’s more a matter of probability than anything certain.”

“That sounds-” Hanna trailed off, frowning at him.  “What level did you say you were again Mr. Silver?  You mentioned that you were an adventurer of some sort, and you had the attunement to finish outfitting the Amelia for one of our yearly trips across the Emerald Ocean so I didn’t ask that many questions, but that sounds like some serious magic.”

“I didn’t mention my level actually,” Micah answered easily, moving his hand down Telivern’s back to start scratching its fur just around the base of its neck.  “Once you get into my circles, information like your level and class are generally treated as secrets.  I’m sure there’s a dossier somewhere listing my demonstrated abilities, but I’m not going to give a gift to the intelligence agencies keeping tabs on me by just volunteering what I can do.”

For a minute, she didn’t respond.  The sound of the waves and the flapping canvas of the sail the only sounds as Hanna frantically searched for a response.

“What circles would those be Mr. Silver?”  Her voice cracked as she stared at the mast, unwilling to even look at him.

“Nothing too nefarious,” he replied.  “I run a guild in Red Sands.  We’ve had a lot of work cleaning up the dungeons along the major caravan routes and made a bit of a name for ourselves.  I’m not wanted in Saravok if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I couldn’t help but notice that you were awfully specific about the country you weren’t wanted in for someone with a foreign accent.”  Hannah squinted off into the distance, eyes fixed on the moonlit waves.

“I may have had a dispute with a noble in Pereston.”  Micah let a wry smile play itself across his face.  “I didn’t break any laws, but in Pereston that doesn’t always matter.  So long as we avoid the Horn Coast, there shouldn’t be any problems.”

Telivern snorted, raising its head to guide Micah’s hand toward a particularly itchy spot that it wanted scratched.

“Can I at least ask why you wanted to cross the Emerald Ocean?”  Hanna questioned as she took a step away from the aft-castle, leaning forward slightly to stare at something out on the water.  “If you’re a big shot in a guild, it doesn’t make sense for you to drop all of your affairs for something inconsequential.”

“It’s a treasure hunt of sorts,” Micah replied.  “A rival and I have both discovered the location of some ancient ruins.  The ruins themselves will be dangerous to explore so we can’t send one of our lower-leveled teams, and at the same time, if I waited too long someone else would jump my claim.  As much as I didn’t want to drop everything and spend a good chunk of attunement hiring you on short notice, it was the best option available to me.”

Rather than reply, Hanna ran to the side of the ship, gripping the railing as she stared in horror out into the ocean.

“By the Sixteen, no,” she muttered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the sails.

Micah frowned slightly, unsettling Telivern as he peeled himself away from the animal enclosure to follow her.  The stag huffed at him, signalling its displeasure before laying back down next to Ravi.

“Anders, hard port NOW!” Hanna screamed, turning back from the water, her eyes as big as dinner plates.  Behind her, the water swelled as the dagger head of an elder daskin broke the surface, its light green scales glittering in the moonlight.

The monster opened its mouth, revealing a maw as big as an adult man, lined with curved fangs the size of Micah’s forearm.  Distantly, Micah heard a lookout screaming as he tried to rally the sailors onboard the ship to arms, but it barely even registered.

“This isn’t right,” he muttered to himself, reaching up with his left hand to grip his enchanted necklace.  “I’ve been using weave of fate every other night to look out for major hurdles like serious monster attacks, and this scenario never came up.  Something must have changed.”