46.

A memory

The ship rocked gently in the waves. The ocean was serene, sparkling crystalline blue as they sailed over it, only a few wispy white clouds passing above their heads.

Dominic took a deep breath. The scent of salt, unclouded by the ashen aftertaste that came with the fog, engulfed his senses. This was a scent he hadn’t smelled in months, a scent that nobody in Hesia had known for the past thousand years. The untainted, open ocean.

The deck was fairly empty. The sailing was boring at the moment, leaving most people down in their quarters passing the day doing other things. A few sailors were hanging out on the other side of the ship, leaving Dominic alone at the bow.

He glanced down at himself. His halinium gloves, naturally, were missing. The necklace he’d taken from the treasury was gone too. He was in white and grey, wearing a uniform with the Ashan symbol printed on the black cape. The ship had been commissioned under the church for their annual survey of the ocean currents, so all who were hired received them. He felt uncomfortable seeing it again. For a moment he thought about taking the cape off and burning it, but quickly shook the thought out of his head. This was only a memory.

Dominic looked up and stepped further towards the front of the ship, looking over the edge and into the waves. He reached out his senses as far as he could, passing mana signatures that felt like sharks and whales and schools of fish, but he still couldn’t find the bottom. Just like before.

That meant that they were coming. It had been about this time back then. Dominic touched a thick bracelet he had around his wrist, almost like a manacle, with a deep red stone embedded it the center. He waited a moment, then injected his mana into it—so much that the stone cracked and broke.

Alarms began ringing below deck, alongside panicked shouts and a cascade of footsteps.

“They’re here!” Dominic yelled.

He could feel their presences below now—huge, serpentine bodies winding and thrashing, shooting towards the surface. This had been his job all along. They wouldn’t have hired some no-name kid on a church-sanctioned expedition without a reason. He was in charge of watching for serpents. In one way, he was their lifeline.

In another way, he was their first sacrifice.

A fully matured sea serpent, scales and horns the color of aquamarine, burst out of the water, rising so high that its head blocked out the Sun. It looked down, fixed its eyes on Dominic, and charged.

He threw himself to the side, rolling out of the way as its jaw snapped at the spot he had just been. Mages spilled out onto the deck, preparing to defend the ship from these beasts so large they could qualify as natural disasters. They didn’t pay him any heed. Dominic was lost in the fray, just one small presence between tens of thrashing bodies. Every time a serpent dove down to snatch him, he dodged, tumbling around the deck, bruising his arms and knees, leaving long scrapes across his palms. He bled. He let himself bleed.

The mages, almost all of the water affinity, began casting their magic, chanting to activate spells. Spears of ice shot out and shattered against the serpents’ sides, a few managing to find their way in through cracks in their scales. The ocean water froze around their bellies, around the hull of the ship, and kept them from coming too close. The lone fire mage lobbed balls of flame down any open gullet she could find. It was chaos, but the monsters were slowly being pushed back.

With one last indignant roar, the serpents turned and dove down into the water, retreating from the ship. Dominic, on his hands and knees, exhausted from tossing himself around for so long, felt their presences slowly disappear into the depths. None of them had been fatally wounded—only mildly annoyed. They probably would’ve come back, if the ship had still been intact by then.

The mages regrouped, checking on the wounded. A healer warily peeked up from below, then threw the latch open and crawled out to help them. There were scratches, broken bones, one man who had gotten his leg chomped off below the knee. He was yelling out in pain, barely even conscious.

The healer crouched down beside him and cast an anesthetic, then a healing spell. The missing skin slowly grew out. But instead of the bone and muscle extending and reshaping into the man’s calf and foot, the stump just smoothed over, leg still missing.

Dominic watched. This was the limit of most healers in Vaine. Some could do better, but there was no way they’d ever be found on such a dangerous expedition. He could have fixed it too, but instead he just stared, the mages not even noticing his presence, and stayed silent. He didn’t even heal himself, the cuts across his arms and legs left red and stinging. He couldn’t, or else they’d realize he was a mage. Nobody knew. Nobody except Mars.

He was starting to understand why Largo had sent him here. This unresolved guilt. He could have done so much, and yet he had chosen to hide himself instead. Dominic still believed that it was the right decision. But that didn’t mean he'd just forget.

The fire mage helped the injured man up. She scanned the deck to assess the damage, then finally spotted Dominic, crouched near the railing.

“Hey, the sentry is alive!” she shouted, getting the healer’s attention.

The healer, a thin blond man, turned to him and started making his way over, but Dominic shook his head and stood.

“It’s just scratches,” he said.

“You should still receive treatment,” the fire mage insisted.

“Your mana is limited,” he replied, pushing the healer’s hand away. “Don’t waste it on this.”

The man stared at him, and a look of pity flashed across his face momentarily. Dominic must have looked like a child in his eyes, a child who had volunteered for his own death on this dangerous expedition.

He nodded and moved away. The mages headed back down to their chambers, leaving him alone again on guard duty. He watched their backs disappear below the deck. The healer had pitied him, but he was the one who had wanted to show them all that expression.

Every single one of them would be dead in the next ten minutes.

Dominic approached a section of guardrail a serpent had crushed. It was a sheer drop over the side into the ocean with nothing to stop him from falling. He sat down and swung his legs over the edge. The ocean was calm. He wouldn’t tip over while the sailing was so smooth. Even if he did, this was only a memory. Perhaps if he fell in and drowned, he’d finally snap out of it and wake up back in Largo’s lair. Perhaps that was a better option than having to stay here.

He stared down into the water. His gaze slowly moved up to the horizon, where a sunny blue sky completely contrasted his low mood. The scant clouds floating above looked like torn cotton. The waves rocking the boat were calm, almost below notice. It could’ve easily been an idyllic scene, minus the damage.

Dominic stared into the distance, the world around him falling into silence. It looked, from his precarious perch on the side of the boat, like the ocean was endless. Anyone could’ve believed it. But he knew better. He had been here once before. And this mockingly peaceful day was going to end very, very soon.

He stood and made his way slowly to the bow again. The view from the very front of the ship was no different—ocean in every direction, uninterrupted and unending. Only blue on blue on blue. But it was coming. They were sailing right into it, completely oblivious. Just ahead of them was the scent of salt mixed with ash—ash from burnt wood, ash from burnt grass, ash from burnt bodies. It was blatantly obvious to him, and it had been the same back then as well. There was a strange, confusing signature, placed right in the middle of the ocean. Nothing could exist here, especially not on any large scale, and yet whatever was in front of them was just as endless as the water it spread across. It extended to both horizons, and Dominic couldn’t sense its bounds.

He wished, for a moment, that the memory would stop here. They didn’t have to hit the barrier. They didn’t have to fall inside and sink. He didn’t have to see those scenes again; he didn’t want to. But he knew that that was exactly the reason why Largo had sent him here. Unresolved regret. Unresolved guilt. A memory he wanted to bury. Look it in the face.

He stared forward. The ship continued to sail over the peaceful blue waves. The bowsprit silently, unknown to everyone onboard, slipped into the barrier.

Dominic raised his hand. The moment the barrier hit his fingertips, he charged up his mana and broke it.

A huge explosion of energy rocked the boat as a hole was torn into that seemingly impregnable wall. Thick fog immediately seeped out through the tear, flooding his senses with the choking scent of old ash, much thicker than it was on Helwin’s shore. A couple of sailors rushed out from below, trying to figure out why they’d suddenly started shaking. Dominic bit his bottom lip hard as he saw them running towards the bow. He knew what was next.

The moment they touched the fog, their eyes rolled up, the strength seeped out of their legs, and they dropped like flies. He could feel their lives draining out of them, their mana signatures weakening, their heartbeats slowing to a stop. His lip started bleeding.

The fire mage finally ran up, looking around in confusion and shock. There were sailors dead on the deck. An inexplicable cloud of fog was rolling over their boat in the middle of the open ocean. The sentry was standing at the bow, unscathed.

Dominic remembered what he had said here, back then. He had taken one look at her, their eyes meeting, and shouted “Get away!” because he knew she would come over and die just as futilely as the rest of them. It was such a stupid command. Get away? To where? There was no place to run. They were doomed to go down here. And it was his fault.

She scanned the deck, then finally met his gaze. He wouldn’t tell her to flee this time. He only had one thing to say.

Dominic bowed his head, his eyes glued to the boards of the deck near his feet, unable to look her in the eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t forgive me.”

In the next second, before she could say anything, the world was flooded with the sound of cracking wood. The hole in the barrier snapped back into place, cutting through the middle of the ship, shattering the hull into two. In an instant, the other side was gone, left outside the barrier, the fog clouding everything. His body tipped forwards with the sinking boat. The corpses around him slid down the deck, dropping into the ocean one by one. Dominic stumbled, then quickly followed.

His back hit the water, and it closed around him—cold, hungry. This should have been where the memory ended. He didn’t know anything past this. But for some reason, he was still there, looking up towards the surface, sinking further with every passing second—awake. He waited, holding his breath, slowly running out of air. Healing could not fix drowning. But for some reason, he had survived. He waited, wondering why.

His lungs squeezed out the last of the oxygen they could muster. Just as he was about to take in a huge gulp of water, his eyes widened.

A shadow passed over him, then pierced through the surface. He remembered now. The reason. Huge, black wings, sleek and perfectly preened. Sharp talons that hooked into the front of his uniform and scratched his chest. Eyes that sparkled like obsidian, even in the darkness of the ocean.

Midi dove down and grabbed him.

“Not yet, youngest,” the owl said.

With a single, powerful flap of his wings, he shot upwards and pulled Dominic out of the water.