The crew was more on-edge than Owin… despite him, quite literally, hanging off the ship’s railing. He was trying to get a good look at the direction they’d come from.

There was something… off about it.

“I’m no mage, Cloud,” he said, “but I think there’s some kind of thing back there. Am I crazy?”

Cloud huffed.

“Yeah, call me crazy then.” No crazier than the rest of the crew, he thought, stepping back and walking down from the helm. In other news, Pablo actually had thrown Hector overboard. He’d seen it from the crow’s nest. The man just looked at him, said something, then scooped him up like a sack of fruit and tossed him off the side.

Since then, people had treated Pablo terribly—and that behavior had started extending to everyone who had once been a tightly knit crew. Fewer mugs of mead clinked at suppertime. Fewer shanties were sung. They acted as if they’d been stung by bees too many times to approach the hive, the hive being each other.

“Bark if ye see anything I don’t, alright?”

Cloud nipped at his ankle and sat, giving Owin side-eye. “I get ye there,” Owin said before he climbed the ladder. “I get ye there.”

Once up in the crow’s nest, he sat back in the sun, tired of the world and its crap. Who would snap next? And would it be worse?

Why was it even happening?

It made Owin angry. He didn’t leave the homeland for this kind of nonsense. The danger should come from the sea—the monsters and weather. Who could have predicted that the monsters would be man?

He bit his lip at that, spitting off the side of the nest. Luckily, it didn’t hit anyone below—but Cloud ran to the spot, licking it up.

“Right nasty, foul hound,” he said down to him. Cloud looked up and woofed. “I oughta sheer ya!” His coat was getting long.

Another woof.

“Yeah yeah,” Owin waved at him, sliding back into the nest. “Pipe down.” He should have been watching, but he wasn’t for now. Too much on the mind.

So he dozed.

...

He awoke slowly, not with a jolt—though if he had known what lie behind the ship he would have jumped right out of his skin.

The first thing he noted was the wind. Cold, wet, and blowing with the force of a thousand angry gods. Owin stood; only to see a deep red that had dyed the sky ahead, on their course. On his toes, peering over the sails, he saw swirling black clouds and bolts of crimson lightning.

Good gods and Gadha!

He turned around, about to climb down… but someone was standing at the helm—

He realized it was Caspia—but looked only for a moment. Something far more captivating was trailing the ship. And that… was another ship.

But exactly like the storm, it was off. Not right. As far as Owin was concerned, no normal ship could stay afloat when so beaten up. Holes littered the hull, shards of wood splintered out like branches of a tree. The masts were crooked, sails torn into hanging wet threads, but most noticeable of course was the vessel’s top-to-bottom glow—like flame. Dim flame, dyed the shade of the sea.

Owin pried the spyglass mounted to the crow’s nest off its stand, peering at the oncoming vessel. A man stood on deck, as did many others—and like blood or ink when dripped in water, the hue and shape of their clothes pulled away in strands, gliding through the air as they moved. The men produced light as well.

A lump formed in his throat.

The man he noticed was certainly the captain. It could not have been anyone else. His cloak was thick, draped to his boots. His beard was long, tied into knots. His hat wasn’t a tricorn, but something long and shaped like a hill. But above all, what stood out was not his clothes.

It was his face. No eyes. No flesh. Just bone.

He was looking at Owin.

Owin dropped the spyglass, a shiver barreling down his spine. Only several hundred paces away, he could see the faint light of the crew shifting the sails to take in the wind. It worked, somehow, but even as the spectral masts turned, it didn’t look like they were getting hit with anything. He looked down at Caspia again, her attention fixed on the ship.

“Captain!” he shrieked, ringing the bell. He didn’t stop ringing it.

Caspia spun around at once, shock etched into her face. Owin supposed she hadn’t even known he was there.

No one came to wake me up?

He kept ringing, hoping the crew would hear—but the storm was getting stronger. They usually kept sailing at night to complete their journey faster, opting for routinely switching out sailors. For whatever reason the only one on deck at the moment was Caspia, which could spell disaster if there were only two pairs of hands.

“Storm ahead!” he said, the ghosts behind gaining speed.

“Stay there!” she shouted at him, running below deck. Panicking now, Owin could only watch as they approached the red storm, chased into it by a crew long dead. He needed to get out of there. He looked down and—

He stopped. Where’s Cloud?

“CLOUD?!” He looked all around. “CLOUD? COME ON BUDDY!”

He whistled. In moments, Caspia had returned with most of the crew—some half-naked from their beds, others groggy and bumbling—but soon realizing what was at stake, and taking action as quick as they could. Jarra pushed through the crowd, walking up the steps to the quarterdeck. Cloud emerged from the doorway and barked.

“Cloud!”

Owin didn’t care how loudly he’d get yelled at for leaving his post. Cloud needed to stay inside.

The crew was manning their stations, chaos erupting on deck. Lightning and thunder drowned out the shouting, with the intensity of the sea forcing the vessel to rock like a hammock in swing.

“Cloud!”

His dog barked and barked, jumping up at him in a raging snarl.

“Stay inside!”

He shoved Cloud toward the door. He slipped with the sway of the boat. Cloud bit his forearm, drawing blood. He shouted at the dog, but couldn’t even hear his own voice above the oncoming wind.

“Down! Down! Listen to me!”

Fountains of water splashed up over the side. Cloud fought, wriggled like a snake when grabbed by the neck. Owin tried to kick the door in and throw him into the cabin—tried to grab at him—but this storm had gotten worse than the last one in mere seconds. The ship leaned, Owin and his rainwolf slipping on their feet, knocking against the wall—then tumbling toward the rail.

Owin grabbed Cloud by the wool, and held him tight.

This wasn’t rain. It was the tears of the gods, fueled with rage and hate. It lashed them like tiny daggers, needles and knives. Men shrieked. Owin could do nothing to save the men that flew overboard into the waves as the ship lipped astern.

Owin didn’t know who the sea had claimed—he hadn’t seen their faces.

And he didn’t have time to think about it. The ship rocked back into place, then leaned the other direction. Owin slipped again, tumbling back the other way—he hooked his hand into a stray rope and pressed Cloud against his chest, the small dog whining and crying like a babe.

He saw who fell this time—Ardt. First he was hit in the head by a wayward pole, then he went tumbling into the waves. Bud slipped and got caught between the railing, shrieking in throes of terror before the sea claimed him too.

Red lightning raced across the sky.

“HEAVE!”

Caspia.

Thoughts slashed into bits, clicking and crackling like fire, Owin steadied as best he could when the ship found even ground again. Water had flooded most of the deck. The sky bled, all light they could see turning crimson and angry.

The ghosts behind them were but feet away, as Owin spied from their slight tilt. The captain, calm and stoic, stood at the bowsprit with his arms behind his back. Beneath him, a detail Owin didn’t notice before, was the statue of a beautiful woman. Blindfolded, holding a scale, sword in hand.

Their flag was not one he recognized. A black field, in the center a depiction of a skull and crossed bones. It was littered with holes.

The ship went rocking again.

Owin paced himself, sopping wet, holding both the heavy weight of his backpack on his shoulders and Cloud in his arms. He dare not put the wolf on the deck. Dare not. He almost whispered to Cloud; It will be okay.

But it wouldn’t.

Because when he looked out past the bow, the men on deck doing their best to capture the wind, he saw what lie ahead.

A maelstrom. A whirlpool larger than anything he’d seen, spiraling down into the sea like a funnel. A ship larger than their galleon would look like a fly on the edge of a bowl, the sea beasts they’d seen just days ago like a man’s pinky finger.

Owin gave up at the sight. Unknowable terror bled through his brain.

Is this… the edge of the world?

But there was sea beyond the funnel—and by the size of the waves, it looked like a lot yet.

Then what…

Owin got his answer in the form of teeth. Teeth like sharp jagged rocks, as large as sails and as many as hundreds, rose out of the water at once. They lined the edge of the maelstrom like a ring.

With them came a bellow so loud that Owin could feel his skull vibrating beneath his skin.

The whirlpool belched, a mountainous geyser spewing from the center. It reached well over several miles into the sky.

Bolts of light seethed across the black clouds above. Owin witnessed many things fall from the whirlpool’s geyser. Pieces of stone. The skeletons of massive whales and fish. A whole ship, and pieces of others. Owin didn’t get a good look at them before they landed like comets, the splashback enough to send wet debris flying onto the deck, despite making contact with the sea a great many leagues away. Splatters of seawater so tall it looked like the world was ending.

Foul-smelling hunks of flesh and bone collided with the planks, sliding away as the ship rocked. Panels of wood and steel—in big boulders of pressed-together waste—met the sails and masts. Men were crushed. Sedd, the man closest Owin, took something large and heavy to the head, landing dead at his feet. Owin could feel Cloud’s hot urine pool on his belly.

That’s when his breathing really started to take over. Quick, dry heaves. The helplessness was unlike any sensation he’d felt.

Other things landed on Queen Camila’s deck. A two-wheeled frame, with what looked like handles and a curiously small bell that chimed as it made impact. A box of black glass, with buttons and cords inside its shattered body. What looked like a wheel, covered in a thick black rubber.

Owin didn’t know what these things were. But he knew what would happen when he saw Jarra, Brann, and Caspia readying the lifeboats on the side of the ship facing the waves.

Before he knew it, he was sitting in one as it fell against the water. Others sat amongst him, but Caspia was still aboard the ship. She looked at the lifeboat, as it paddled away from Queen Camila.

A captain goes down with her ship. Owin did, above all else, remember that.

She smiled in the red moonlight.

The men aboard the boat were screaming for their captain. Some of them. Others rowed against the storm.

“This is some mess, isn’t it?”

Owin turned around. Narlan, hood down and legs crossed, sat against the edge of the boat. No one noticed him.

Owin seethed at him. He only smiled.

“No, don’t look at me. You’re missing the show.”

Owin turned back toward the ship.

Caspia was gone. The ship, still with much of the crew, crashed against a massive, monstrous tooth. It pulled it apart in shreds, splintered and broken. Though in truth, Owin had a hard time seeing it all through the spray of mist.

The ghosts were nowhere to be seen.

Jarra, standing just beside Owin, stood and put out his arms, eyes closed. The tiny pink circles on his amulet glowed with the power of his strain.

A portal opened in the air before them. Only a few feet above the deck of the lifeboat—but big enough for a person. Owin could see through it—it looked like the captain’s quarters of a ship. He needn’t think more to realize which ship—and when Caspia came tumbling out he was one of the first to catch her. Cloud, at his feet, shook and whined.

When she was in the boat, shocked and furious, Jarra made as if to punch the air. The half-ring rune on his amulet glowed white.

Just like that, their tiny lifeboat went barreling across the ocean at speeds unknown, leaving the maelstrom, the monster, and the ship to finish its story without them. Owin saw no ghosts, either. Only wind and rain.

...

When Owin awoke, he found that he had almost forgotten what had happened. Like a bad dream that didn’t linger long enough to stay… an afterimage. Then, he thought of home. Drart’s kitchens. Marniko. His dad could be just beyond the mess hall door, back from a journey to say hello.

That didn’t last.

The sky was free of its red color. The sea was calm this far from the… Owin didn’t quite know what to call it. Catastrophe. So far, indeed, that he couldn’t see any hint of what had happened—no distant black clouds, no distant red sky. Of course, the waves made their little boat nudge down and up, the remaining crew sprayed with seawater with each forward dip. He had no crow’s nest to climb.

Speaking of who was left;

He and Cloud, for one. His poor little Cloud, forced to live through danger undefined. Dragged through hell and back, a Gadha of water and wind. He held his pup close.

Jarra, for seconds. Exhausted, ancient, saintly Jarra.

Marrow. Sergio. Happy Ken. Benni, who had packed them three boxes of food and supplies. Rodney. Jev. And, of course, Captain Caspia.

Hours after Owin had awoken for the first time, Happy Ken broke the silence.

“So… what now?”

Caspia looked upon Ken with cold indifference. “We sail.”

And sail they did.