Elf had worked on dozens of ships in his life, with dozens of different crews, and all of them had been particular about the sailors they employed. In the early days, selling himself as a jack-of-all-trades had caused many cantankerous old captains to wave him away, until one saw Islite blood in him and figured someone born on a rock in the ocean probably knew something about the ocean. When he had won Ossory in a gamble he couldn’t afford to lose, he hadn’t been as selective. His crew had fallen into his lap one way or another, one day latching themselves to the ship and refusing to leave, but Elf couldn’t ask for a better lot.

They stood around him now, the chest in the middle like a lady in a circle of shame. Aitan Reitif stood tall, a quiet man who hadn’t said a word about the chest in question. His skin was dark, his eyes pale and intense, easy to get lost in. He had a bullring on his nose and his shirts, though worn, always managed to stay a crisp white. He had grown up in the desert countries to the south, where sailing had been limited to canals and rivers. Yet, he flourished in the archipelago, able to navigate the rockiest of reefs and the roughest of paths. The fact they now sat alone in these waters, with no land or ship in sight, was a testimate to his skill.

Jian lay on the couch, moving around as though he had no injury at all, but clearly bothered by it. Elf had met him with a different crew, acting as a local guide through the eastern islands, and when that job had ended, Jian had simply stuck around. The man had changed dramatically over the years, through appearance and demeanour, an ever-forming island of personality. The one skill Elf really cared about was his ability to make a sail from anything, and he could make it work in any weather. Downstairs somewhere, probably making a storm of her own, was Mihri.

Elf moaned at the thought of Mihri. He didn’t know what to do with her. She had been a hire for their last official job, and it was clear with every passing moment that her hatred for being trapped here with the rest of them was only growing stronger. When Elf had first bought her aboard, she had been proper and proud, a strong lady of the land, and it was obvious the changes brought by the curse weren’t ones she welcomed. If he could, he’d drop her off at the nearest port and tell her to get lost, but he couldn’t.

Elf ran his hands through his hair and regarded the chest. He wanted to know as much as Jian did what was inside it. He wanted to know what price he was bargaining with to end this once and for all, but at the same time, the less he knew the better. The last thing he needed was for the insides to be as cursed as everything else and for him to be back at the beginning. He needed to walk away.

‘So, we’re not opening it?’ Jian asked.

‘Let’s do what we need to do first,’ Elf said. ‘I’ll see how this next part goes.’

‘You up for this, cap’n?’ Aitan asked.

No, he wasn’t. Elf had decided even before the curse that he despised magic, that it was nothing for any human to be playing with. The way it made him feel only confirmed that it was something to be left in the deep. He nodded.

Pulling his sleeve up, he exposed the ring on his wrist, and both Aitan and Jian lifted their sleeves to show the same mark. Both of them touched two fingers to the centre of the ring. Elf closed his eyes, locking his hands around both his wrists and holding his breath. He knew his brain had to be empty - and that had never been a challenge - but Elf found it easier to picture destruction. He filled his mind with images of water crashing into shores, of typhoons that tore boats apart, of great sharks defending their territory and giant squids in great battle.

He waited.

Nothing happened.

Opening his eyes, he still saw the common room of Ossory, with Aitan and Jian staring at him, waiting for something to happen. Elf bit his lip, then shook his head, letting loose the grip on his wrists.

‘I thought he wanted the chest,’ Aitan said.

‘Obviously not,’ Elf said. He gave the chest a loose kick, the thud echoing through the room. He paused, and Jian grinned. Elf stamped his foot onto the floor, sending out another thud, then another, then another, until a steady beat pulsed through the room. Jian, still grinning, dropped his fist onto the top of the chest and matched the rhythm. Both of them turned to Aitan, who watched them with a blank expression.

‘Come on, mate,’ Elf said. ‘Let’s piss him off. You know I can’t sing.’

Aitan shook his head, then cleared his throat. When he sang, his voice was deep and throaty, echoing through the room as though the walls were joining in chorus.

There’s a monster of the deep who sits in wait,

Made of chains and rum and hate.

He once was a man of the land and sea,

Till his ego turned his fate to spite.

Hear the children call to the ears of all,

Don’t you challenge the seas of old.

The monster of the deep, he sits in wait,

To remind us all what it means to hate,

To drown in a sea of rum and spite,

To challenge the land and sea and fate.

Elf felt a cold wave wash over him, the chill of an icy sea cutting straight through him as though to tear him to pieces. A gasp escaped him, robbing his breath as his chest grew tight. He stamped his foot harder, locking his hands around his wrists once more. Aitan joined in with the stamping, and with a dry laugh, Jian joined on the next verse with him.

The monster of the deep, you’ll find him near,

A call from the children who run in fear,

Watch out for that mean old Quot’nir.

The man of chains and rum and sprite.

Here’s the fate of the challengers heart,

Don’t test the strength of the oceans part.

Remember our wives, our lives, our rum,

Remember our fate to the ocean comes.

Water crashed over him in a blast of ice and salt, and Elf gasped as it sank into his bones, his muscles, enveloping him completely and stripping the flesh from his bones. He fell with the water and kept falling, down and down into darkness. Pressure collapsed his form, pressed into him from all sides. It crushed him, pulled him down, further and further into nothing. Water filled his lungs, charged through his blood, seeped into the lines of his brain. He wanted to scream, to thrash, to struggle, but the ocean around him only grew heavier, holding him in place as he sank further down.

Elf shut his eyes tight, though it made no difference in the darkening abyss. He was outside of his own body, he knew that - he knew he was nothing more than a spirit caught in the pull of the waves - but his mind only knew his body, and his body couldn’t exist here.

Light pierced through his eyes and he blinked, and when he pulled them open he saw Quotinir floating in front of him. Deep in the darkest parts of he ocean, he was lit only by a single, yellow light that swung from a fin atop his head. His grey skin sickly against the swinging bulb, he looked as much like a man as he did a monster, scarred and chipped around the edges, with strands of white hair like seaweed flowing around his narrow face. His human waist merged with the rubbery flesh of a shark, the tail four times larger than any fish Elf had ever seen. Though, Quotinir himself was four times larger than any man - the last true giant - trapped under the pressure of the ocean with only his light for company. Slitted, white eyes locked onto Elf as they both floated, suspended in the darkness.

‘Hey, ugly,’ Elf said.

Blue luminescent lights flashed under his fleshy, scarred arms. ‘You dare insult me with childish rhymes?’

‘I asked nicely first.’

‘I am not a pet here for your beckoning,’ Quotinir growled. ‘You answer to me.’

‘Do you want the chest or not?’

At this the lights under his skin flashed quicker, ripples that lined his muscles like fish scurrying up a river. A small stream of bubbles escaped from his nostrils. He didn’t say anything, but Elf could tell he had the old monster’s attention.

‘You received the chest?’ Quotinir asked.

‘If you didn’t think I could, then why did you ask me?’

‘Don’t you be smart with me!’ The words came with another flair of light, turning the thick scars along his skin dark. It reminded Elf of deep caverns that dropped below seemingly safe shores. If Elf wasn’t simple sea mist, floating in a strange state of astral projection, he would have flinched.

Quotinir reached forward with a gnarled, clawed hand the same size as Elf’s whole body and waved it towards her chest. Once again, the water was running through his body, bleeding through every part of him as the hand seized him and he was flung forward, the pressure flaying him with the motion. There was no sense of distance here, no sign of light from the world above, no rocky ground beneath his feet, no other fish to scale the great beast, but Elf now hung close to Quotinir’s face, fitting evenly in the space between his eyes.

‘You will bring that chest to me,’ he growled.

Elf’s chest squeezed tight. He was used to a body, and a body underwater had lungs that needed air, and couldn’t breathe for this long. Yet, he had no lungs to pull air in, and his phantom lungs only pulled tighter. His next words escaped in a gasp. ‘What about my crew?’

The lights under Quotinir’s skin dimmed, but his eyes narrowed. ‘You bargain with me.’

‘We already had a deal, didn’t we?’ Elf struggled to push the words out. He didn’t need to breathe. He didn’t need to breathe. He couldn’t breathe. ‘I want our freedom.’

‘The freedom of who?’ Quotinir challenged. ‘You have to be specific. I do not place individuality on the rats of the land.’

Elf knew this game. Quotinir may have collected his name along with his soul - making this connection possible - but if Elf gave the rest of his crew away, they would never be free.

Quotinir raised his hands wide on either side, and Elf flinched back as light burst across the space, turning the black into a haze of blue. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the souls in Quotinir’s collection. Hundreds of them drifted around like fireflies, drifting aimlessly. Each one took the form of a shining ball no bigger than a marble, each one containing a rabid and violent ocean of colour, sea spray bursting around the cage to form a spectral images. With all of them floating together, they looked the same, though if Elf focused on them individually, he could make out the different shapes.

‘How many will I return?’ Quotinir asked.

Elf didn’t answer. There were hundreds of them, shifting and moving, all of them identical and stabbing into his eyes when he looked at them directly.

‘Is this the one you want?’

A singular light came to a stop in front of Elf’s face, and everything else slipped into nothing. He couldn’t feel the tightness in his chest, the water that sailed through him, or the primal fear growing from being outside of his own body. There was only the light, a soul. His soul. Fuzzy around it’s edges and cracked along the bottom, the images inside crashed and warped around a single, craggy rock resembling the Isle Cullian. Images flooded his brain, of being five years old and learning how to run the local lighthouse, his hands red and raw from pulling ropes and fighting the wind. He remembered being eight and breaking a sail he made from the tablecloth and almost drowning when he struck a reef. He saw nights as a teenager, navigating by the stars. He could smell the salt that constantly stained his hair, feet the brine of spray and water that clung to his skin. The ocean was as much a part of him as his own blood, all of it contained in a broken little ball in front of him.

A large, grey hand closed around the light, snuffing it out, and all at once everything else rushed back into the surface, the weight against his chest slamming into him like a runaway train. Elf struggled, scrambling for purchase on something, but he had nothing to grab or hold onto. Quotinir laughed, the sound deep and guttural like an underwater volcano bubbling to the surface.

‘You play with forces you have no way of understanding,’ he said. ‘Do not think you can bargain.’

He opened his palm, and there was the ball of Elf’s soul, too far away to pull him in, but catching his attention all the same.

‘This one is pathetic,’ Quotinir said. ‘Almost nothing more than sea spray. Is this what you want, this broken little thing?’

Elf swallowed hard. He didn’t want to know what would happen if it completely turned to sea spray, but each time he saw his soul, it only looked worse, and he didn’t want to find out. ‘My crew didn’t have anything to do with my mistake.’

‘Do not question my judgements.’

‘I want your word that you’ll give them their souls back,’ Elf pressed. ‘Promise me. I’ll give you the chest if you —‘

‘I owe you nothing,’ Quotinir growled. ‘The contents of that chest are worth much more than your soul.’

‘Then it won’t matter if you lose a couple,’ Elf pointed out.

Quotinir’s growl was low and powerful, vibrating through the waves around him. When the sound faded, his eyes narrowed into single slits on his face. ‘You have until the sixth morning after now to deliver that chest to me, or I will drag you here in person to watch me crush your soul into salt. If you are no good, I will take another just as easily.’

He closed his fist around the ball once more, and Elf’s lungs gave out, unable to pull air in, and unable to push it out. Hot coals wrapped around his chest, and the only sound that escaped him came out in strangled gasps. Quotinir squeezed his fists harder, and ice-hot fire ripped through his bones. The great beast thrust his hand out, catching Elf’s middle and throwing him back. Pain wracked through him as icy water tore through his entire body, the lights of the other souls spinning around him in every direction.

Solid wood slammed into his back as light enveloped his vision completely. Coughs shook through his body as water erupted from his lungs, crashing over his face and filling his mouth with a bile taste. Shaking and numb, he rolled across the deck of Ossory, his elbows shaking as he tried to pull himself up. He saw two, three, four copies of his hands pressed against the timber, solid, real, flesh and bone once again. He then vomited all over them.

Strong hands grabbed his collar and hauled him to his feet, sending him staggering towards the taffrail before his stomach gave up again, releasing more salt water than was naturally possible. He shivered. His clothes were soaked, his entire body drenched and numb. He didn’t know how he ended up on the deck. He didn’t want to know.

Mihri thumped him hard on the back. ‘It’s freaky when you do that,’ she said.

‘Do what?’ His voice escaped in a rasp.

‘You sleepwalk.’

He had been right; he didn’t want to know that. ‘It doesn’t feel good on my end either.’

Mihri didn’t say anything. Instead, she leaned on the guard next to him, watching out over the water. Elf followed her gaze. The water was calm, a crystal clean blue, a blanket against the bottom of the boat. Above the water, the sky was illuminated by the Twin Rings; great circles of meteorite from the ancient crashed moons that encircled the whole sky. In the daylight, they were streaks of white rock in perfect lines, no wider than the width of Ossory. He took a deep breath, the harsh, fresh air stinging his lungs.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he turned to see Jian and Aitan crossing the deck behind him. Jian was limping heavily, with Aitan ready to catch him.

‘What did he say?’ Aitan asked.

Elf shook his head hard, spraying the water from his hair. The motion made the image of his soul flash across his eyes again, and he pictured it turning to dust right in front of him. When it cleared, he saw the rest of his crew standing there, watching him. The silence was crushing, broken only by the gentle hiss of the ocean below.

Mihri sighed, hugging her arms into his chest. ‘You have to tell us, O Se.’

‘Don’t block us out,’ Jian said.

‘He’s not giving them back,’ Elf said.

The silence fell harder, and all at once Elf couldn’t breathe all over again. The hole blasted in the taffrail by the cannon was nearby, and he pulled a chunk from the edge and tossed it as hard as he could into the water.

‘We’ve got five days, max, to get across the archipelago and deliver whatever the hell is in that chest or…’ or that was it for him.

‘Se…’ Mihri warned.

‘Or one of you take my place as his patron.’

Jian shifted. ‘Which one of us?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So, we’ve got six days to figure this out?’ Mihri asked.

Elf nodded.

‘And six days to cross the archipelago to his abode,’ Aitan said.

Elf swore. He didn’t know where they were, but they had only left the dock of Opaska a few hours ago, so they couldn’t be far from its shores. The abode of Quotinir - at least, the shipwreck they had pillaged to invoke his wrath - was near the Shiyze border; they’d be lucky to make it if they tore at full speed across an ocean that didn’t fight them.

‘I can fix the sails,’ Jian said. ‘And push the engines to give Ossory a boost.’

‘If we cut through Thundercape, we can cut a day off our trip,’ Aitan added. ‘Word is the volcano has calmed down enough to make it.’

‘So, there’s a chance?’ Elf asked.

Aitan and Jian exchanged a look.

‘No,’ they chorused.

Elf sighed and ran his hands through his hair. This was a mess. He imagined what it might feel like for his soul to be crushed. He didn’t feel any different with it being outside his body, except for when he saw it. The best option was simply evaporating into nothing in a blink, with no feeling and no thought. Though, his brain couldn’t stop picturing everything he saw within that tiny ball, watching it rip away from his mind as he fought to hold onto something, anything.

‘I want to know,’ he mumbled, ‘what’s so fucking important about this thing.’

‘So, we’re opening it?’ Jian asked.

Elf nodded. ‘We’re opening it.’

***

The latches were rusted, locked tight against years of abandonment, and it took Elf, Aitan and Mihri straining against the bronze to force them open. Mihri had one of her books beneath her elbow, checking the markings carved into the edges to make sure they weren’t walking into another curse. As far as she could tell, they were only decorative, but Elf shooed the others away when the locks came open anyway. Once they were sufficiently back, he took a deep breath and dug his fingers into the joint of the wood, then lifted it open.

His blood turned cold.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘That complicates things.’