Chaos seeped through the cracks in the Protective Sphere, like smoke drifting from the flame. Or perhaps more like fog rolling in from the river. Yuriko didn’t know what to do.

The sailors exposed to the greenish clouds paled and they staggered away from their stations, causing the cracks to widen instead of close. The sphere’s cracks obscured the outside, but there was barely anything to see this high up anyway.

“Return to stations!” Svitlanna screamed even as she ran towards a particularly stricken sailor. The man’s hand turned greenish, then black. Then parts of it started to dissolve. Aidan and Riley, along with Zoey and Jonir hurried to the emptied perimeter station, hastily injecting their Animus into the mechanism. The cracks stopped spreading but did not recede.

Yuriko made to move towards a station, but the Bosun stopped her. “You aren’t trained to do that,” she said curtly.

“How hard could it be?”

The woman snorted in derision. “The wrong image in your mind would shatter the sphere rather than repair it. Keep watch instead.” She seemed to hesitate for a moment before saying, “The way you protected the Horizon from the ramming spearship…that was well done.”

“Oh…” Yuriko nodded, feeling a flush come up to her cheeks. It was rare that an adult praised her for independent action and that caught her off guard. Honestly, she had been waiting for someone to say that her action had been unnecessary and that the ship would have avoided the attack another way. She patted Fri’Avgi’s blade and smiled. Svitlanna nodded and turned away.

Yuriko returned her attention to the seeping Chaos. She felt the artefact tremble in her grasp and felt the desire to stick the weapon into the miasma. She took a couple of steps towards the railing and lifted Fri’Avgi over her head. The red gem set in the crossguard flashed and the nearby Chaos was siphoned into it. In a few minutes, all of the corrosive Chaos had been devoured by the artefact. Streamers continued from the cracks. It was eye-catching and ostentatious, but it was better than letting it poison the crew. With their stations clear, the sailors rushed back and fought to repair the sphere.

The Ebon Horizon shuddered as they hit some kind of turbulence. Yuriko managed to keep to her feet, but she reflexively stabbed Fri’Avgi into the deck. Thankfully, without the sword dances, the artefact didn’t have an edge. Unfortunately, it was heavy enough that a plank cracked anyway, accompanied by a brief spark of escaping Animus.

“Uhh…” She glanced around but nobody saw.

Taking a couple of steps back, she lifted the artefact and kept it absorbing corrosive Chaos. She didn’t know how much Fri’Avgi could take, and she fervently hoped it wouldn’t dump the excess into her Anima. But then again, it was a chance to strengthen herself further, and she couldn’t say no to that.

The Veil was thicker than she thought. Or perhaps like the Tidelands, space and distance fluctuated. Either way, it took nearly an hour before the Ebon Horizon burst out of the Veil, but then, their troubles were only starting.

________

Captain Esha Tavalik of the Storm’s Deceit was troubled. On one hand, it was highly unusual to let prey escape like that. The White Tide and Poisoned Rose both failed in blocking the Verdanian ship from escaping into the Veil.

Verdanians. If she had complete control of her body, she would have spat on the deck. A deckhand would immediately clean it up, of course, before she or anyone else could step on her spittle. But at the moment, her head rested against the back of her throne, and thin tendrils pierced her skull at three equidistant points.

Those tendrils effectively allowed her mind to merge with the Storm’s Deceit, an artificial floating island that lumbered worse than a scow when inside a plane. When at the Chaos Sea, however, the Deceit controlled far more ground than any Chaos ship of her rating was normally capable of.

The Holy Yabrath sensed something of interest in that Chaos ship.

A voice whispered in her mind. A thick, gravelly voice that scratched at her Anima. Her Geist, an enormous Weeping Willow, gently covered the scores with its leaves, a soothing balm.

‘What does the Most Holy sense?’ She asked through her connection.

The Core of the Storm’s Deceit pulsed and hummed, but its animating spirit didn’t answer. Such were the ways of the Avos, she mused, dropping tantalising hints but often no more than that. Why, she was sure chasing after that fleeing Chaos ship would only be like chasing shadows and glimmers, entertaining while it lasted but ultimately hollow.

Still, the plane of Riwuc wasn’t heavily trafficked. It was a mostly untethered plane, with some connections to neutrals. As for the Xylarchy, Holy Yabrath’s desire for territory is insatiable. Already, the Holy One had roots worming their way into Riwuc, and also the plane of Bella. It would be the work of centuries though, to properly bring those planes into the fold.

Esha gestured with a lifted finger, one of the few parts of her that she could move while in Gestalt, and wiggled it in finger-code. The attendant, a nubile young man barely into adulthood, gasped and knelt in supplication, before rushing out of the bridge.

In the meantime, Esha brought the Deceit closer to the Tide and the Rose. The fourth ship, the Abandoned Shadow, drifted on the threshold of the Chaos Channel, its captain too meek to bring her completely into the plane.

Once the distance between the Deceit and the Rose was less than two hundred paces, Esha felt the other’s captain send a tendril of thought, requesting to confer. Esha waited until the Tide came close before she accepted the call.

She closed her eyes and in her mind’s eye, she found herself as though she were the Storm’s Deceit. She could see the Rose and the Tide, could feel their captains and their animating spirits.

“Captain Esha,” Ayar Gajin, captain of the White Tide said. “A rousing failure.”

“You didn’t see what I saw.” Captain Teshi Erasto of the Poisoned Rose, guffawed. “A Verdanian ship, and carrying within it, an Artefact!”

“Was it what repelled your attack?” Esha asked, suddenly intrigued.

“Yes, I can still feel it smarting,” Teshi said, and Esha could just picture the man rubbing his cheek, even though it wasn’t he who took the blow. The Gestalt allowed each of the captains to become one with their vessels, and through it, absolute control over their dominion, even though their power wasn’t at that level. The cost was prohibitive, of course, but nothing could be gained without an equal measure in exchange.

“Are we pursuing?” Ayar asked eagerly.

“I don’t see why not,” Esha said after a moment. “It’s not as if there are good pickings here. Unless you lot want to raid a mining camp?”

“Chaos, no!” Ayar moaned. “At least wait until they send their goods in a caravan!”

“Well, then, we should dive into the Veil.”

“Absolutely not,” Teshi protested. “I’d rather keep the Rose whole, thank you very much. We’ll pick up their trail past the Channel.”

“That could deposit us dozens of Waypoints away,” Esha noted.

“It's not as if following them through the Veil isn’t any different.”

“Ah, it's far more likely to emerge nearer where they did.”

“Damage to their Chaos ship would mean we’d have ample time to catch up,” Ayar noted. “There’s no rush. Verdanian Territory is nearly fifty Waypoints away. We have ample time.”

Esha could feel the man’s savage grin.

“Very well,” she replied. “Let us pursue.”

Esha pulled her mind away from the link and opened her eyes. Her aide had returned, carrying a platter of food cubes.

Esha pulled back from the Gestalt just enough for her to open her mouth and take the cubes from the boy’s fingers. She chewed methodically, barely tasting it. Or rather, the cubes barely had taste. Still better than the disgusting slop the Verdanions used for rations though. Esha would only eat captured food supplies if they were completely out of other supplies. And had no other choice and no way to replenish food.

While she ate, she gave the command for the Deceit to return to the Chaos Channel. The rift opened close to the ground, between the walls of a ravine that was barely wide enough to fit the disc-like shape of the White Tide. Although, given how smooth and sheer the cliff faces were, she wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising voyagers carved the gateway open.

The Rose entered the Channel first, being the fastest of the three ships. The Tide was next followed quickly by the Deceit.

There were many kinds of Chaos Channels. Tidelands were those that gradually deepened into the Sea, providing a living space that allowed Chaos dwellers to flourish. It also allowed Wyldlings a beachhead to gather and attack the planes, though in doing so, they brought nourishing Chaos shards and dust with them.

Other Chaos Channels were like rivers, providing a narrow steady path in and out of the planes. This one was like a waterfall, an abrupt change from the plane and then Deep Chaos before turning into the Primordial Sea. It was easy to leave the plane through this channel, but significantly harder to enter, which was amusing in a way, since the only way to easily enter planes was through the Channels.

The Deceit rode the turbulent currents, but always, they moved towards the Sea. Do nothing and they would eventually find themselves adrift. Try to return to the plane and one must have a firm mind, or any little distraction would find the traveller going in circles, or worse, going the other way.

Thankfully, the mechanisms of a Chaos ship voided the risk of random thought. Going back through this Channel into the plane only wasted more energy than usual, but that was it. Esha rather enjoyed the changing vista, even as it warped between her most cherished dreams and her nightmares.

Her aide shivered in his boots, unable to wrest his eyes away from whatever vision he found himself in.

While they were transitioning from the Channel to the Primordial Sea, Esha took mental stock of her forces. The aide was one of a dozen menial staff, though they were there merely to support her.

Her mind wandered into the war chamber, and she counted the slumbering Lignoculi. Nearly a hundred strong, they were tough and relentless, though they had little in the way of imagination. The drones pruning the foliage on the surface reported heavy activity from dwellers.

Normally the riffraff avoided any Chaos Ships, but it looked like they had been left unpruned too long.

She activated her catapults, grown from the Adaviren seedlings on the ship. Soon enough, boulders of ice smashed apart a horde of swarmlings and Wanderers.

'Huh, don't tell me that was a Wave?'

Well, she didn't have time to mop up the remains though she woke up her warriors to gather the shards and dust. It was the work of a few minutes, but a privateer never said no to coins.

When the Deceit emerged from the Channel, the Tide and the Rose were nowhere in sight. It looked like they exited to a different Waypoint.

The Tokens for her allied ships hung from the beams, suspended on a gossamer thread, and both started to move. The White Tide’s token, a curled swordfish around an eagle’s claw, moved to port, thirty degrees, while the Poisoned Rose’s black rose bouquet moved to starboard, nearly ninety degrees.

Esha grunted in her mind. A nasty spread. The tokens didn’t denote distance, just general direction, and even then that wasn’t too certain. In the Chaos Sea, one can move port but end up sternwards instead. What was important was that there was a connection between the ships, beyond their shared letters of marque. The small fleet had taken down many a convoy of ships. From the Verdanians and the Coalition, and from numerous independents foolish enough to believe they could live in peace while drifting on the Chaos Sea. Ah, those were fine battles.

Esha’s lips curled into a rictus smile, and she was oblivious to her aide’s shivering glances. It was time to hunt, and Holy Yabrath grant her a pleasurable kill.