Chapter 127: Finding Home
Later, when the excitement had calmed and the monster’s remains had been scraped from the deck, the crew finally had a chance to pester Elisa with combat-relevant questions. Riv leaned against the railing, his big hands gesturing wildly as he asked every question he could think of, whether it made sense or not.
“So what exactly can you do now? That fire blanket. Was that just fire magic or something weirder?” he asked.
Elisa shrugged in false modesty, though her eyes showed the lie.
“It’s more about how I apply the same energy. I can trade raw power for other qualities. If I want to strike far, I can stretch it outward. I can actually stretch it outward as far as I want, in theory, but it's limited by my actual power, and every little bit of distance costs me power. If I want it to cover a wider area, I lose both range and power.”
“So you can make a small flame hit a whole field?” Aethe tilted her head, curious.
“It won’t burn as hot, but if the point is to disrupt or to push enemies back and coverage matters more than intensity, then yeah, I can blanket our foes. Or something like that. I may not have actually thought up a use case for it all yet.”
“And what about that ice? It looked like you dragged it out longer than usual.”
“That’s another trick,” Elisa admitted. “I can stretch duration. It’s the same energy, but instead of a single burst of lightning, I can make it sticky. Send it crawling over metal for minutes instead of seconds.”
Riv gave a low whistle. “That sounds nasty. And useful. Your lightning never did much damage, but it's really hard to concentrate when it's on you.”
“Right,” Elisa said. “There’s always a trade-off. More time means less punch. More distance means less coverage. It’s a balancing act, and the system lets me choose on the fly.”
Aethe’s eyes narrowed in thought. “So if you were facing a swarm like that tar beast, you’d sacrifice strength to spread the damage out?”
“Right. Or I could make a single spell echo, repeating itself in pulses. Same total energy, but distributed. That’s better for wearing down something durable over time. Probably.”
"Probably?" Marco gave Elisa a look. She wasn't usually a probably-type of girl, especially when it came to things she could experiment with. "How confident are you in all of this being useful?"
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. That fight was the first time I've really been able to experiment with some of the weirder effects. And it worked! I should have never been able to take out an outer seas beast by myself. And now I have.”
The crew exchanged glances, impressed despite themselves. Elisa tucked the notebook back under her arm, her expression turning serious like it did when she was coming up on the bad part of an explanation
“It’s not unlimited. Every adjustment costs something. But it means I can probably adapt to whatever we face. Big monster, many small enemies, armored foes, whatever. I can tune my power to fit the situation.”
“Good,” Riv said firmly. “Because I have a feeling we’re going to need all those tricks before this trip is done.”
The weeks that followed were marked by long stretches of mostly boring travel. Unlike their earlier expeditions, the worry of running out of supplies simply wasn’t an issue. The ship’s new magical storage was an answer to problems they had once thought unavoidable. Food and water were stored in huge magical quantities, sealed against decay and time.
They had more than enough to last them, even if the journey took months. Better, they had variety, That abundance changed the mood. There were no tense discussions over rationing, as rare as those had already been. There was no need to hunt for streams on islands or to get wet trying to set up to gather rainwater. Eggs from their small clutch of chickens supplemented the diet further, and when Riv or Marco thought to cast a line over the side of the ship, they often had fish on the table as well. Meals became more leisurely events, and for once the crew could eat without counting bites or dealing with the boring monotony of their normal dried rations.
Repairs, too, were just handled. The same magical storage that held food could be told to hold materials, and it didn't take long to top up that stock, too. Marco had even discovered that if he designated the stored wood specifically as repair stock, the ship itself seemed to draw from the supply whenever it needed it. A cracked spar or worn deckboard would be mysteriously whole the next morning, the materials quietly consumed without the crew needing to take them out of storage. The Foolish Endeavor was maintaining itself, even if Riv and Marco still found moments to help it do that a little bitter.
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What trouble there was actually came in the form of an absence of trouble, somehow. Elisa had expected, based on her maps and her studies, that they would encounter at least four or five temples along their route. Temples were not exactly plotted out like squares on a chessboard, but they did tend to follow certain rules. Every so many islands, you were bound to find one. Yet in weeks of steady sailing, they found only one.
It was a small shrine half-hidden by trees but still visible from The Foolish Endeavor. They landed, claimed it without resistance, and found that it offered nothing unusual, just the steady, familiar trickle of power every temple granted.
Elisa continued to be bothered by the absence of the temples, but something told Marco it was just the way things were. They were due for a slow patch sooner or later, and this was just as likely to be that time as any other.
They took the win and pressed on. The horizon stretched into forever in front of them. Every dawn brought gray sea then blue sky, illuminating the same ship rocking beneath their feet. The routines of sailing took over their days. Marco would have expected it to be boring if he had thought about it when he was a kid. It wasn't, at least not exactly. The days tended to melt into each other, rendering time a little more liquid than it was in other places.
Aethe kept watch from the prow, Riv and Marco managed sails and course corrections, and Elisa split her time between decoding the dead temple dweller’s notebook and practicing her volatile new powers.
There were occasional encounters along the way. They saw schools of glittering fish, had a quick social visit from a friendly passing merchant ship, and braved a sudden squall that rattled the rigging and forced them all indoors, but nothing like the constant barrage of danger they had grown accustomed to. After the tar beast, the sea seemed almost polite, like it was offering them long stretches of peace on purpose.
In some ways, it was also the first chance for Marco and Aethe to really process their new marriage. They spent time in the captain's cabin, much to Marco's infinite joy. They talked about the adventures they had so far, or what they expected from their own futures together. Luckily, for both of them that seemed to boil down to a wait-and-see sort of affair, continuing on as they had been for the foreseeable future.
They also spent a lot of time out on the deck after the others had gone to sleep, enjoying the silence while staring at the stars.
The endless supply of food meant no one went hungry, and the endless repairs meant no one had to scramble for a hammer after a random beast attack. days passed this way, marked more by Elisa’s slow progress in her translations and a slowly acclimating married couple than by anything the ocean did.
During quiet evenings, the crew gathered around lantern light on the deck, trading stories of home. Elisa had the most by far, simply as a by-product of following Marco around for years. Marco had a few about hers, mostly instances where she shamed some adult by knowing more than they did. Riv had his own set of classics from his hometown that he shared freely. A few tales were his, but more were the kind that circulated through a society, the best of the best of the goings on of his own home.
When at last familiar land appeared again on the horizon, it was almost a shock as the crew realized just how far they had come in a strangely short time. It had been weeks, yes, but the calm made it feel shorter. An unbroken thread of steady travel, one temple, countless meals, and a ship that seemed stronger than ever under their feet.
They stopped at the first island, which had no particular meaning to them besides being the first landmass they had seen. There was a good-sized settlement there, at least big enough for them to get out, stretch their legs, and get a meal they didn't have to cook themselves as Elisa oriented them on the map.
"So where to first?" Elisa asked. "We're right here, which means we are a lot closer to that first temple than we are to home. We'll pass it on the way there."
"Oh, we have to stop." Aethe said. "I want to know how things went for them after we left. That old woman was a powerhouse. I bet she's built that place up."
They decided to go the next morning, or rather the girls did once they realized that a port meant baths and bigger, fluffier beds. When Marco plunked down a handful of coins on the inn's counter to pay for their stay, the attendant gasped.
"Sir, that's too much. Ten times too much." He dropped his eyebrows in confusion, completely without context for that kind of miscalculation. "Did you think they were silver?"
"Oh, no. Sorry." Marco smiled. "We just came in from the outer seas. Things tend to cost more there. I'll tell you what, though. You keep the extra and just make sure we have a good stay, okay? We don't get into port very often, so we try to make every time count."
"Absolutely, sir." The attendant scooped up the coins with a shameless lack of reluctance that made Marco smile. "I'm your humble servant."
That statement turned out to be literally true. The man made it his mission to see they were fully seen to in every respect, ranging from the hottest water to the softest towels all the way over to keeping them fully stocked with cheese and crackers.
The next morning, they were up early and to the ship just as the sun fully cleared the surface of the sea. Elisa joined Marco at the wheel as he pointed the wheel.
"Invisible Isle, then?"
"I'm not sure that's what they call it, but yes. It's not even just about the visit."
"What is it about, then?"
"I don't know. It just feels like I should."