The first couple of days on board were slow, for Wilhelm at least. He spent most of his time practicing The Gambler’s Delight, and helping out around the ship where it was needed. Every time he stopped training to assist in repairing a barrel, adjusting the sails, tying knots, or anything really, the others working on the ask seemed shocked. He even had to command a couple of them to start working again after they had frozen up when he had arrived.

He was starting to think that Captain Absalom’s ship wasn’t exactly the norm.

Wilhelm was a bit slow.

The Rothwells were blessedly tolerable, merely pawning off all of their work to others while spending their time lounging around. Wilhelm couldn’t imagine that was a good strategy to pass the exam, but they only seemed concerned with keeping the ship running when Headmaster Adrik or Director Alarie made their rounds. Still, Georges and Harrold seemed competent at least.

Oro, on the other hand, was having a terrible time.

“Not quite,” Director Alarie said from behind him as he stood at the wheel. Oro squinted at the sails, trying to spot the difference between air currents to get into the right one that took them on their patrol route. The Director was being gentle in his guidance, but Oro couldn’t help but feel like he was being judged constantly, and bleeding points.

He continued adjusting the wheel, slowly and carefully just as he had been instructed, this time in basically a random direction. He had no idea where the center of the air current was, and none of the signs the Director could somehow see were visible to him.

The Captain shook his head lightly.

“Not there either. Here, I’ll show you,” He took over the wheel and turned it immediately to the left, close to where Oro had it before.

“You were almost there. It’s a good start,”

“Respectfully, sir,” Oro began, “I have no idea what I’m doing, and was just turning the wheel randomly. If I got close, it was on chance alone.”

Captain Alarie shook his head. “No, you weren’t. If you had been turning it randomly, I would have been able to tell. Navigation is a difficult skill, one that is as subconscious as it is conscious; even when your conscious brain can’t spot the air currents, you have an instinctual feel for them. Even if you didn’t realize it, you were subtly moving in that direction the entire time. Until the end that is, when you really did move it randomly.”

Oro frowned. The Director was different than he had expected; he was much more…gentle, than he first assumed. He wasn’t kind necessarily, but he wasn’t cruel like other Captains could be. He seemed primarily concerned with conducting the exam in a fair way, something that made sense considering his occupation.

He was thankful for it since it meant letting an entirely unprepared Navigator fail almost guaranteed went against his personal code of fairness. Oro nodded to the Captain that he could keep it from here – maintaining a course was much easier than adjusting or setting one in his experience – and studied the sails and sea around him with newfound interest.

If he was going to be the Navigator, he may as well be good at it.

* * *

With the fourth day came commotion. From the crow’s nest arrived a yell,

“Captain! Island eastern bound, a town is being ravaged by an Irek swarm!”

Director Alarie swept down the steps. He had transformed, he now wore an intricate but practical Captain’s uniform the same color as as all naval issues, and a wide brimmed hat favored by western sailors rested on his head. He had a rapier to his side – uncommon in this region as far as Wilhelm knew – and looked at everything with a different intensity than when he had studied them at the Academy.

“We pursue. Navigator Oro,” the Sedi stumbled over himself to salute,

“Follow Rory’s directions and bring us to that island. The rest of you,” His coat flapped in the wind as he turned in their direction, “Arm yourselves for the fight to come. Irek are individually weak, but they are numerous. Large swarms can strip a town of life in minutes if we aren’t lucky. I aim to avoid that outcome. Our first goal is preserving human life. Get ready.”

He stared out at the horizon after his speech, ignoring the clamor brewing behind him. Headmaster Adrik stepped in, shouting at individual sailors to get back to work and to follow the Captain’s orders, acting like the whip to Alarie’s words.

Wilhelm did his best to calm himself for what was to come. This was always inevitable; he knew it was coming since the day he agreed to join Absalom’s crew. But, knowing you will fight in a life-or-death situation and actually being confronted with it were two different things entirely.

His hands shook, and he forced them into his lap as he sat, pulling strands of fire out of his soul and into his veins, cycling them to every part of his body. He attempted to get lost in the rhythm of the act, but the pit in his stomach never seemed to disappear entirely.

“The first time you fight, you will be nervous.” Jieming had told him before they had docked,

“It’s a hard thing, especially since, from what you’ve told me, your life was fairly free of conflict before the navy. It will be a sharp change, having to fight, but like all things you will get used to it. Anybody who tells you they don’t get at least a little nervous before a fight is lying. The only thing that changes is how well you deal with it. Being a sailor means learning to roll with the punches – but that knowledge won’t make the first couple of gut punches any less painful.”

While Wilhelm thought Jieming sounded more like a veteran boxer than a sailor after their talk, he knew he would be an idiot to discard the advice entirely. Jieming knew what he was talking about when it came to combat, of that Wilhelm was sure.

The island came into view not long after, small enough that he could barely see the other shore than the one they were approaching, ringed by white beaches with dense jungle inhabiting the center. Manmade clearings were obvious, gaps in nature’s tapestry where housing and businesses had been constructed, with a wooden palisade around the outside. It was at the entrance to this town that they approached, and with the aid of a spyglass, Wilhelm saw the dozens of Irek’s immediately.

They looked like nautical Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies. Squat, hunched humanoids with pale grey skin, they looked perpetually damp. Their eyes were large and pitch black, and the gills on their neck sputtered in overtime – Wilhelm guessed they weren’t evolved to stay on land for very long. Each had webbed feet and hands, with the latter ending in sharp claws. They bounded forward on all fours, growling guttural sounds the closer they got to the town. Scratch marks were plainly visible on the surrounding palisade, and the only reason the Irek weren’t able to overwhelm the town entirely was the sheer number of their fallen species that were piled at the entrance to the village.

The deck went quiet at the sight, and Wilhelm knew they were all thinking the same thing.

Were they too late?

“Steel yourselves.” Adrik snapped, “We entire and find any survivors, and eradicate the swarm. A force this large must be culled, lest a flock is created. The forces of this region would be incapable of handling something of that magnitude, which means the problem must be dealt with now. It’s a poor sign they even got to this size.” He added at the end in a mutter, blue eyes locked on the beach.

The dinghies were lowered, Wilhelm inside one, and they approached the back of the swarm. He felt like a soldier on D-Day as he looked out at the already apparent carnage; blue blood stained the sands all around, arrows and crossbow bolts embedded in fallen Irek corpses. The further ahead he looked, the deeper his frown became. The blue blood was paired now by human red, mixing in some places to make a disturbingly pretty royal purple.

The dinghies hit land, and they all immediately disembarked. Cutlasses were drawn, crossbows strung, and bolts knocked, and they approached the back of the swarm. Every footstep felt like weights were strapped to his legs, like he was causing craters in the sands through the sheer impact of his feet against the ground, but Wilhelm forced himself forward. He held no weapon, only cycling a small amount of the Shard of Fire throughout his veins.

He saw the first body not soon after.

An aging man with grey hair wore old, partially rusted armor, the helmet missing giving Wilhelm a clear view of his face. His beard was stained with blue blood, and grey eyes stared forward from his position slumped against a tree. A deep wound was visible in his neck, and a lethal amount of blood stained the sands beside him.

The Aspect in his soul roared, the strands thickening from hair-thin to tight rope, and he dashed forward ahead of the rest of their force, a few sailors stumbling back from the sand he kicked up along the way spraying them in the face.

He arrived just behind the somewhat sparsely populated Irek before they even noticed. Up close they were even more disturbing; their skin was translucent allowing him to see arteries beneath, pulsing with a rhythm far beyond even his own anxiety ridden heart. One turned its head, its face registering comical surprise. They had no noses, only smooth skin where one would be, and their mouths contained rows of shark-like teeth without a tongue.

It didn’t even get to cry out before a wave of fire poured from Wilhelm’s hands, roasting it in an instant. It gargled a response as it burnt, but it was a charred black body a moment later.

Still, Wilhelm’s actions were far from silent, and a dozen of the Irek turned their heads in his direction after his attack on their companion.

He swallowed hard. His fight or flight was screaming heavily for the latter, but he planted his feet and instinctively let out a yell that he hoped sounded more like a war cry than a small child’s wails.

Either way, the Ireks needed little encouragement as they let out screeches of their own and bounded towards him on all fours. The impact of Jieming and Calypso’s training was immediately apparent as his instincts kicked in; he stepped back while sending bursts of fire to each Irek, never stopping his movement, constantly keeping them at bay lest they receive a painful burn.

One finally had enough and dove at him, but he was ready for it. They hadn’t only prepared him to fight pirates, but monsters as well.

“The thing you need to remember about monsters is that they don’t think, most of the time.” Calypso had told him one day. “They don’t do the smart thing, they do what their instincts tell them to, and their instincts are stupid. Be less stupid than them, anticipate their stupidity, and you’ll be fine.”

Another quick step backwards paired by a concentrated beam of fire nearly cored it like an apple as it soared through the air, landing with a sickeningly wet thud as it slid a foot in his direction, leaving a trail of blue as it went.

The Irek’s friends were enraged by its death, and they all followed its lead.

Just as Wilhelm thought he would be overwhelmed, his crew arrived to help him.

One by one the Irek’s were all cut down, nobody suffering much more than a surface level scratch in terms of injuries. Director Alarie was right; they aren’t very dangerous individually, but he could easily see how someone who couldn’t throw literal fire would be easily overwhelmed by even a small group.

He glanced back at the dead guard. No doubt it was a man with years – decades, even – of experience, just to be snuffed out by one unlucky encounter. His only consolation was that by the near dozen Irek bodies near the site of his death, he hadn’t gone down without a fight, and his armor had protected him from being feasted upon in the aftermath.

Georges glanced at the burned Ireks, then at Wilhelm, and gave him a terse nod. The man grunted and jerked his chin towards the town’s open gates, the other mercenaries immediately moving in that direction, while the crew took a moment.

“Take that you stupid Irek!” Taylor shouted as he stomped on one of their corpses. Blue blood splattered from the impact, covering the front of his pristine naval uniform. He looked down in shock, glaring at the crowd where a dangerous snort had been heard.

“No time to waste. Come.” Georges said with an accent from ahead, his companions already cutting down more Irek in methodical motions. Taylor was left with Olivia, who consoled him with gentle pats while wiping blue blood off of her sword.

Wilhelm jogged back to the front of the group beside the mercenaries, and went back to thinning the horde.