The System Seas

“So we’re sailing towards occupied territory.” Riv said.

“Yes.” Marco had his hand on the wheel, but was hardly paying attention to the sailing. The ship was moving fast in the direction they wanted to to go, and that was good enough for the moment. “We are.”

“And we don’t know what that territory is occupied by. Could be people, monsters, monsters of people.” Riv said as he raised his hands above his head to make an imposing pose. “Undead gods. Terrors of the sea. Anything.”

“Right. Although it’s probably people.”

Marco didn’t have a sense of their target like he had gotten looking for Thatch’s temple. They just had a coordinate of sorts, something that Elisa was able to decode but that was too general for a precise location. He could only hope that there wouldn’t be multiple islands when they got to the general area the coordinates described. If there were, he’d have to examine every single island in the area one-by-one to figure out which one it was.

“So why are we doing this?” Riv asked. “Honestly. Because there’s a lot of ocean that we could be visiting.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Aethe said.

“Because Elisa said so. She explained it to me,” Marco said with complete confidence.

“Marco, you have to do better than that. They aren’t you.” Elisa came up from below decks shaking her head. “You have to do better than that.”

“Actually, not for me,” Aethe added. “If you think it’s a good idea it probably is. Just wanted to make sure that you were heard.”

“Yeah,” Riv said. “That’s fine.”

“See? I know my crew.” Marco cracked a smile. “That’s all they wanted to hear.”

Elisa looked at all three of them in the face in turn before she started yelling.

“No. Absolutely not. That’s not okay, guys!” Elisa stalked the decks flexing fire-filled hands. “That amount of trust is not okay. It’s not justified!”

Riv looked at Aethe in confusion. She raised her hands, palm up, to indicate she had nothing.

“You’ve always been right before. Why would that change?” Riv asked.

“You have to listen to the plan,” Elisa said, exasperated. “And at least try to think of objections. That’s non-negotiable.”

“Okay.” Aethe smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “If that makes you feel better.”

“It does. It really does.” Elisa shook her head and took a deep breath. “The way it works is like this. This entire ocean is more or less occupied. We’ve fought killer birds. We’ve fought giant squids. On the way to this island, we’ll fight other things. Maybe big things. Maybe things that might kill us.”

“The occupier of an entire island sounds like the kind of thing that might kill us too,” Riv added.

“It does. But it could also be something else. Remember Thatch? He was the occupier of an entire island and wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Couldn’t have hurt a fly. The occupier might be a living god, or a bunny rabbit, or anything in between. Same as anything we’d run into out in the ocean, or on another island. The only difference is the power we’ll get out of it.”

“Power?” Marco asked.

“Yes. I know you must have noticed where we are the most powerful.”

Everyone looked at each other.

“Gods of the ocean below and the sky above,” Elisa cursed. She paced a bit more frantically around. “On the ship. We are the most powerful on the ship. Marco, do you never check the ship screen anymore?”

“I mean, it hasn’t changed. Not since I added Aethe to the crew.”

“Are you sure? Because if you don’t check it…”

“Fine, fine,” Marco surrendered. “I’ll look.”