[bake-kujira] crown of poseidon [isonade]

In the space between slumber and wakefulness, Vashti’s mind raced. She kept dreaming of storms, and blood, and endless endless turmoil. Her brow furrowed as she whimpered, tossing and turning. She kept grasping for things, in an endless search for something that she didn’t know what it was. Soon she shot up, breathing hard and staring out of her window. For a moment, she thought she was in a dream. She was sideways, and everything was sliding to the right. The sky was boiling pot of purple and black, and she ship was lurching from side to side. Vashti slid the the side of the bed, only the swift hand latching out to grip the poster of her bed keeping her from crashing against the wall like her things were.

“Goddess bless…” She murmured, staring at the sea raging against it’s self. This storm had come on suddenly, angrily. Vashti had just gone to sleep not but four hours ago, and the sea had been calm. Scrambling to her feet, she didn’t even bother to get dressed, the silk robe, yanking it closer to her as she ran to her kit. Grabbing the leather bag, she yanked open her door and ran.

Vashti passed by a bellowing Dev, seeing him climb to tie things down on the deck. He was still wearing a snake as a headband, and Vashti barked out surprised laughter. Nemsi was down closer to her, and she would have frozen in place if she wasn’t in such a hurry. He must have been sleeping, because the water plastered his clothes to his form and highlighted every line and dip. She shook off her distraction, and ran up to the ship’s wheel. It was empty, waiting for the captain, but she had no time to wait.

Kneeling on the ground, her leg hooked against the deck, Va dug into her bag. Pulling a box out that was the size of the palm of her hand, she slammed it on the ground. Light shot from the jewel embedded in the top, and a map appeared in the air. It showed that they were surrounded on all sides by storms, the runic classifications glowing in a precise replication of the night sky. She wanted to curse, but they needed to get out of the center of the storms.

Vashti grabbed the robe that was wrapped on the railing. Slippery fingers tried and fail to wrap the rope around her waist, and she growled in frustration. Slipping, and about to fall back down again, she gasped when a strong arm yanked her close, and the rope was wrapped around her waist tightly. Light coloured eyes flicked upwards to meet the dark focused gaze, and a brilliant smile rippled across her face.

“Captain~! Isn’t this exciting? We’re in the middle of a storm …” Exhilaration pulsed through her, and she grinned.

Isonade didn’t hear storms anymore.

He barely heard the thunder or even felt the wind on his boiling skin. It was all so far away to him now. Possibly worst of all: sometimes it was like he could barely even see the oceans even when its beautiful blue waves were surrounding the ship on all sides. The ocean and this ship were the only things he had left in the world, and it felt like they were slowly being pulled away from him. He tried to cling it, like a child clinging to his mother’s hand, terrified without the safe embrace of the familiar. Sometimes he felt like he was in a daze, as if there was a thick plate of glass in front of his eyes, building a wall between his heart and the outside. He woke up. He slept. He ate. He talked to the crew. Sometimes he laughed. They were all things he had done for decades, but there were times when he felt like it was his first time opening his eyes after a long slumber, like he had been trapped in stone for centuries and was just waking up again.

After so many years at sea, he had learned how to sleep on a rocking boat, even when it was being thrown around in a storm like a tadpole in rapids. Sleep felt so good and he was so weary. He was tired of looking around only to see a captain’s desk without Goro sitting behind it, a deck without Tetsu looking out over the railings, and a bed without Niamh. These absences blocked out what was there, and it pained him to open his eyes every morning and see nothing but what wasn’t. So he shut his eyes. He shut out the world. His body needed sleep to keep him alive, to keep up his strength in the fight that was always raging within, between him and the version of him that he did not recognize.

Ba-dump… Ba-dump…

Iso may have been deaf to a storm, but not even he could block out the call of his ship. He was the captain after all. Dark eyes wrenched open and quickly darted around the room, suddenly alert and clear. The hard scale over his heart was pulsating painfully, as if it wanted to jump out of his skin and run away. He sat up immediately, only to be thrown over by the ship rolling jerkily to starboard. He looked around, at the overturned boxes and mess that was med bay. Now awake, he could hear everything.

Isonade raced topside, throwing the hatch open as he emerged from below decks to set foot on the main deck. Around him, the wind roared and raged like a mighty beast, whipping the choppy white water into towering furies of waves that threatened to overturn the boat. And were doing their damndest to try. This storm had come out of nowhere, and there was something almost unnatural about it. Isonade moved forward, the strong wind nearly toppling him the moment he lifted his foot from the wood. The rain fell hard, almost like daggers against his skin, and he shed his jacket before making a break for the sterncastle, for the wheel.

He didn’t even bother with the stairs, using his inhuman strength to propel himself up and over, landing squarely along the railing. There was a flash of bluish black hair and Iso leapt forward, grabbing the small navigator by the waist and hauling her up a few inches off the ground, flush against him. With his non-bandaged hand he looped the lifeline to her waist and double, triple knotted it into a makeshift harness. He handled her roughly, before setting her back down and pushing her toward her storm runes, some of the slack on her lifeline now wrapped around his palm.

“Exciting? Are you out of your mind, woman?!” he shouted over the wind, grabbing hold of the rain-slicked wheel. With a mighty pull, he wrenched the ship to port, against the wave that was trying to flip them on their starboard side and the ship responded, though sluggishly. Even with his demon arm, fighting against the full force of the ocean took his whole body. Sweat was beading down his face, mixing with the furious slurry of rain battering his bare chest and face. There was clarity in his eyes, dark and focused like the razor edge of his katana, as he glared out at the darkened sky. He was awake now.

He turned to Vashti, for the first time noticing her soaked night robe and disheveled appearance. And even as the pin-sharp rain hit his eyes, he couldn’t manage to close them. Then he turned away, gritting his teeth as the wheel nearly slipped out of his hands. “I can’t keep this up forever!” he shouted, gripping her lifeline and the wheel in his demon hand. With great effort, he leaned them on their side as another wave crashed over them and flooded the decks before running off as the storm tossed them to the other side.

“Which way am I going!?”

Slippery fingers connected the leather belt that held her box on the railing, allowing both she and the captain to see the map. Her hair was pulled back out of her face as she stared at the different storms systems. Instead of one big storm, which would have been hellish to get out of, the weather was being affected by different things. Luckily, they were a little bit separated, and she could see a potential escape. Hell, she could see a few, but with the way the storms were evolving, each path changed with only a second’s notice.

She sent the Isonade a big bright smile, and laughed again. “Can’t you feel it?” She could feel the electricity from each lightning bolt against her skin. It caused excitement and euphoria, and her heart was throbbing. Pulsing. She wanted to run, wanted to dance. But she could see things sliding around the deck, and knew that people didn’t feel the same way about the weather that she did. She tried to steel her face, be serious, but it was hard. She wanted her people safe, however.

At his bellow, she nodded. Her eyes traced the paths, and she saw a pattern. If they began turning, they could head towards this gap in the storms. She watched it open and close, and there was enough time for them to get through, only if they could get there. Vashti began fiddling with dials, putting in coordinates. If she aimed for the center of that space, they’d get there. When she was done, and everything was perfect, she slammed her hand on the big jewel in the center. The map that floated in the air disappeared, only to be replaced with a blinding white light, pointing them in the direction that they needed to travel.

“That way!” She sung, looking up at her captain. “Is the light bright enough for you? I can make it brighter.” She grinned at him, hands clutching her lifeline. Her eyes shot to the bandaged arm, and she gazed at the runic marks. The water rolled off of it like it was water protected, and that was good. Nodding, she petted his back, and pointed in the direction. “If we go that way, we can get to stormless sea. It’s about 20 miles out.”

It had been many years since Iso had seen the sky this angry. Dark grey clouds shrouded the horizon in its shadowed embrace, the wind threatening to rips the ship apart if the waves didn’t punch a hole through the decks first. His hands closed around the wheel in an iron grip and he widened his stance, grounding himself against the slippery wooden floor beneath him. The storm wasn’t just stirring up the water around them. His blood was running hot in his veins, the rain starting to steam off his body as soon as it touched his skin. His heart was beating fast now, like it did when he was in battle or afraid. His arm could sense his fear and his panic, and the little tendrils of magic began to worm their way out from under the wrappings and up his neck in thick black veins.

The Demonfish’s heart was pulsating in his chest, and suddenly there was a sharp pain. Instinctively he tore his eyes from the horizon and looked up at the main mast. There was a loud cracking noise, though it could barely be heard over the roaring wind, and the foregaff began to shudder, leaning and bending backwards, threatening to snap in half. Isonade focused his mind, and the scale in his chest hummed in response. The rigging on the main mast loosened, and a second later the black sails were unfurling fully to catch the wind and bend the gaff back, keeping it from breaking.

The wind caught under the sails and buoyed them forward. Iso turned the heavy wheel, steering them in the direction of Vashti’s light. It looked like she as sending them into the overlap between two of the smaller storms, where the wind and rain seemed to move around each other in separate currents. The space was opening and closing erratically, but it might be open just long enough to get the ship through if they hit it at just the right point. They would need to cut perpendicularly across a strong wave crest to position themselves right between the storms, and that was going to be choppy water.

Isonade glared out at the stormy water, knowing he was fighting a battle against nature itself, and there was a very good chance he would lose. The waves crashed against the side of the boat and the Demonfish moaned, its creaky masts swaying almost like grass in a breeze under the heavy wind. Not only was the wind tossing them about, but the torrential downpour that came with it was making it nearly impossible to see through the spray of stinging salt and razor rain.

“We’re going up against these eastern waves here,” Iso shouted to Vashti. “Hold on tight!” He yanked the wheel to combat the next wave that threatened to topple them. The tall pillar of water slammed down onto the surface of the ship, flooding the deck and hitting Iso square in the chest and knocking him off his feet as it swallowed him and Vashti up. He held onto the wheel with one hand, and with the other he pulled Vashti’s lifeline taut so she wouldn’t wash out to sea. He felt the reassuring weight of her small body on the other end as the wave crashed over and through them.

The water sloughed off the other end of the ship and returned to the ocean, leaving him and Vashti staggering and coughing. He blinked through the heavy rain and steam coming off his body. He gave her a crooked smile. “You were right,” he said breathlessly. “That wasn’t too—” Suddenly the ship jerked violently beneath them and then the ship’s heart began to pound against his chest in panicking alarm. He looked away from Vashti and at the course they were heading on. His eyes widened and he scrambled back to the wheel, trying to pull it off course. But it was no use: they were heading right into the storms, not where they both fell away, but right as they combined, to create a hurricane even worse than before.

The waves crashed against the starboard side and the ship lurched, threatening to topple over as gravity fell away and they began turning on their side. He held tight to the wheel even as his feet lifted off the deck. Iso felt the lifeline in his hand suddenly grow lighter and lighter. He turned to Vashti just as the length of rope between them snapped. He reached out to grab her, but her wet skin danced just along his fingertips before she was ripped backwards into the storm.

“VASHTI!”

She guess that even if she’d decided to change into real clothes before she’d jumped on the sterncastle that she would have been soaked to the bone. The fact that she was still in her nightclothes just made it seem all the worse as sharp rain shot down on her. She tried to wipe away the water from her face, pushing her hair back every second, but it didn’t help. The rain kept coming, the winds kept blowing. Vashti turned to look at Isonade when he spun the wheel towards the light, and in a moment the sea had swallowed her up, and then it was gone again. She grasped the railing, coughing out water, gagging on the sea salt. They had to get out of there, and soon.

When Iso smiled at her, she beamed back. They could do this. They could get out of there, and could make it somewhere safe. It would only take skillful maneuvering, which Isonade was good at. It wouldn’t be the first time that they’d seen a storm, even if this one was the worse that she’d been in. The ship jerked, and Va bent her knees slightly, bracing her feet. She reached her hands for the wheel as if she was going to help, but she was too far, and her arms too short. Pale amber eyes shot upward, and she stared at the eye of the storm, and every thought stopped. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t breathe. …She felt at peace.

Then she was floating. She stared at Isonade, a shocked looked plastered across her face as she was flung away from him, straight into the air. For moments, her thoughts were blank. She was nothing, and everything at the same time. Her body felt too big, like it wasn’t made for her, like she didn’t fit. A calm smile slid across her features, then with expediency, she slammed into the deck. Vashti bounced like a smooth rock across a calm lake, before the rocking waves launched her over the side of the deck. Small hands scrambled for purchase as the ship rocked, but it was moving too fast. Blood dripped from a cut on her forehead, obscuring her vision.

Then she saw it. There was a rope flying free just beside her. She didn’t know where it’d come from, but she needed it. She grasped at it wildly, her wild magic making it jump into her hand. She wrapped it around her palm once. Twice. It stung as the rough rope scratched against her palm, digging in deeply. Va placed a bare food on the side of the ship, trying to climb. Her feet kept slipping, and she winced as her body slammed against the side, but she continued on.

Iso watched helplessly as the storm tore Vashti from his reach. Her expression was calm, almost peaceful, as she hit the deck hard. Something in Iso snapped and his blood began to boil even harder. That idiot! What is she doing! Did she just give up? In his mind, all he could see was Goro in his last seconds, smiling peacefully at Tetsu when he went to meet his death. There was no fight in him, just a look of sadness mixed with acceptance. No. He didn’t want to see that again.

When Vashti went over the edge of the ship, Iso’s heart dropped into his stomach and he felt like vomiting. His front foot went forward automatically, but his back foot stayed planted where it was on the rain-slicked deck. A captain doesn’t leave his ship in a crisis. Goro’s words echoed back to him as if he was still a little boy learning about what it took to be the Isonade. Iso growled in frustration, glaring at the sky as if this was all its fault. That wasn’t good enough for him! He wasn’t going to lose anyone else, not to the sea or anything else. He yanked the rest of the frayed lifeline loose from the railing and tied a quick harness around the wheel, so it could be controlled with a pull, then tied and looped the other end around his left wrist.

He ran for the edge of the deck where Vashti had gone over, and relief swept over him when he saw her clinging to the side of the ship, a little banged up but still alive and still within his reach. “Hang on!” he shouted above the roar of the ocean, now almost deafening as the storm raged around them. He grit his teeth as the wheel line tore at his wrist while he tried to keep them steady against the roiling water. Iso leaned over the side of the ship, using his weight to keep the wheel straight and using the tension to keep him from going overboard as well. Just as he grabbed Vashti’s wrist, a blackened shadow fell over them as a wave drew to full height over the side of the boat. The ship leaned into the wave and angry water crashed over the side of the ship, swallowing Vasti and a few seconds later, Iso himself.

Iso didn’t have a second to think. Still reeling from the force of the wave and still holding his breath, he ripped the wheel-line’s slack from his wrist and dove over the side of the ship into the black water. It was dark as night under the ocean and a sudden wave of cold dread washed over the pirate as he went into the abyss. He couldn’t see anything, not the ship, not the sky, not Vashti. He looked around blindly, the panic rising in his chest as he floated directionless in the water, only the magical hum of the scale in his chest keeping him upright and one with the ship as he held it steady in the storm. As the panic rose, so did the heat. He could feel the demon blood crawling up his neck and along the side of his face, like a parasite under his skin. The blackened veins snaked up the side of his jawline and latched onto his eyes like a spike puncturing his eyeball. He shut them in agony, but when he opened them again, he could see through the water. Four slitted red eyes, glowing like fiery embers, blinked out into the water.

Vashti was far below him, swimming for the surface but with eyes as blind as his had been a second ago. He swam down, grabbing her hard by the arm and pulling her against him as he directed her toward the hull of the Demonfish. A few long seconds later, they resurfaced, coughing and gagging. A strong wave brought them up against the ship and they slammed into the black wood. Five sharp claws covered in long black bone plates burst through the fingers of Iso’s bandages and embedded themselves into the wood as Iso held Vashti around the waist. He looked up, at where the railing of the sterncastle loomed against the horizon a few dozen meters up.

Holding Vashti hard by the arm, he flipped her out so she was flat against his back. “Hang onto me and don’t you fucking let go,” he shouted as he began to scale the side of the ship, his long black claws digging into the side of the wood of the hull as they climbed.