The System Seas

“It's been a day,” Elisa said. "I've been keeping track. It's only been a day."

"How is that possible?" To Marco, it had been a week. The island had been getting better and better at its job, showing them worse and worse things. It went from finding existing fears, like Riv's dreams about the undead trying to drown him, to making new ones.

Elisa had not known she was afraid of being covered in black ooze until it had happened, and only their constant conversations about reacting effectively instead of fearfully had given her the frame of mind she needed to burn it off. Aethe had not known how afraid of being found by her people she was, especially when it meant being commanded away from The Foolish Endeavor. It was worse because, as she put it, everyone agreed with the elves who had come out of nowhere. Every one of her new friends had wanted her to go and had no more emotion about it than a lump of lead.

The worst of it was, it felt real.

—

Riv hadn’t spoken much since the first nightmare, and Elisa had to pull him out of that. Whatever the island was doing to them, it had gone beyond dreams. He had stood on the deck staring at everyone else's corpses for minutes before the others had realized it was his turn and that they were leaving him alone to handle it himself. They hadn’t been, of course, both in the sense that they were alive and that they hadn't left him alone. But to him it was just as real as it had been to everyone else. In the moment, there was no way to control the sense that these things were really happening.

Marco didn’t know what to do about it besides sail on. Somehow, the direction was never in question. It had started out as a faint hunch about where they needed to head, but it had grown over time into a cloud of fear trying to push him away from a certain course. The others weren't affected, but he knew exactly where the island was trying to get him to turn back from.

He could feel the direction they needed to go pulling at him like a lodestone. His confidence was shot. His hands didn’t shake when he steered, but he could feel the anxiety thrumming behind his ribs, always there. He was as scared and stressed as he had ever been, but his anger kept him going. He was going to get to the center of this place and torch whatever was causing it. In their more lucid moments, the crew agreed.

The island had eventually really come closer, moving closer and closer until they were engulfed in the illusion of it. It was a fog of sorts, nothing that harmed them but something that limited their vision to several yards on any side of the ship.

"It's not actually dangerous," Marco said to Elisa during one break. "It's never anything more than an illusion. We've fought, but it's always been easy so long as we were willing to fight. How did this kill the other ships that came this way?"

"It probably scared them into mistakes. Made them flee and then led them around in circles, or forced them off their boat, or told them the cannon powder was something frightening that needed to be burned."

"And they just gave up and did it?" Marco said. "They broke?"

“We’re breaking,” Elisa said flatly. "We just haven't broken completely yet."

Marco didn’t argue. It was true.

“We need to hit the end of this place. We need something to happen. But I think we are. We've been pushing through, and I think we are getting close,” Marco said finally.

It did.

It was a light, a blue orb about the size of a church bell. It hovered just above the water, distant but visible. Marco adjusted course without thinking, pointing the ship dead-on at its center. In normal times, it might have felt like a possible threat. In this moment, it was the only thing he had seen in a day that hadn't been horrifying. This wasn't the island's next trick. It was what it was trying to hide.

No one else responded with anything other than movement. Aethe was already climbing up the mast to get a better view, her bow slung across her back. Elisa grabbed her magic book, seeing if it had anything to say about this kind of thing. Riv gripped his club so hard his knuckles turned white, not out of anger but sheer rage.

They came up on it fast. The fog thinned as they got near to it, eventually giving them a clear view of their quarry.