Book 1 - Chapter 1

Kinna

It's probably just nerves, Kinna told herself as she retched over the side of the ship from atop a stack of boxes that the captain had helped her up onto. Yes, just nerves, nothing more. All would be well once they set sail, and in the meantime, she just had to get the anxiety out of her system. Right?

"Alright there, little miss?" The captain - a human man in his early thirties with curly mop of brown hair - leaned on the rail near her, a bemused, piteous smile tugging at one corner of his mouth while the other side busied itself chewing tar.

Kinna spat into the harbor below and tried to wipe her nose on her sleeve with as much discretion as she could muster. "Fine!" she squeaked as she straightened up, flashing him a grin that she hoped didn't look as forced as it felt. "I'm swell!"

She watched as his dark brows knitted an inch closer together. "Yanno," he said, "I can hold the boat for you, if you wanna disembark."

"What do you mean?"

The captain shrugged and scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "Just that there'll be a heap more where that came from once we set sail," he motioned with a dirty, weather-worn finger at her breakfast in the surf. "It's a long way from here to Sheer Harbor, and this is about as calm as the water's gonna get. You sure you don't wanna hire a Ranger instead? It'd keep your feet on the ground, and your lunch down, besides." He grinned at her. "I'd even be willing to give you, say... half of your money back for the canceled voyage, seeing as how I'm feeling nice."

Kinna chewed on her bottom lip and sunk into herself at the thought. "Um... no, no thank you, that won't be necessary," she said. "I'd rather get a little sick once in a while than travel on foot through the W-Wilderness. Besides, I wouldn't have enough money to hire a Ranger, anyway, with only half of my money back-"

"Well," the captain tilted his head, "realistically, more like a third - gotta cover costs, and all that."

"Oh, yes, of course, of course." She climbed down from the stack of boxes and looked a full three feet up at the captain, who must have been comfortable in the position he had taken, for he didn't move except to look down his nose at her. "And, um... either way, I feel completely safe in your capable hands, Mr. Calico."

He grimaced and rolled his eyes, leaning toward her against the railing with a smile that Kinna wasn't certain was genuine. "Captain Calico," he reminded her in a sweet tone. Then he winked at her and added, "But you can just call me 'Jack', little miss."

She blushed and nodded, busying herself with smoothing out a wrinkle on her dress. "Right, yes, of course, I'm sorry."

"That's quite alright." He pushed away from the railing and adjusted his patchwork tunic. "At any rate, we'll be shoving off soon. If you haven't already snagged yourself a bunk and made yourself comfortable below deck, you might as well do it now - save yourself some trouble this evening, when the boat's rocking in the waves."

Kinna's stomach did a half flip at the thought, but she managed to swallow down a dry heave. "Oh, yes, that's a good idea." She bent down and collected her bags, hugging the lot of them to her chest and casting a cheerful grin up at the captain. "Thank you again for transporting me."

He nodded at her. "No trouble, little miss - halflings hardly count toward the ol' girl's weight capacity, and it's easy to fit you in with the rest of the cargo, besides." He shook a finger in her face. "Just don't let me catch you smushed under a box down in the hold, you hear? A lot of the goods we're transporting could crush a tiny thing like you, if you go wandering when a choice wave hits the boat."

"Oh! That's a good point. I'll be careful!"

"Matter of fact, it's probably for the best if you don't go down into the hold at all," he added. "Just keep yourself to the crew quarters, the mess, and the top deck, and you'll be safe as a kitten in a soft feather bed."

"The crew quarters, the mess, and the top deck," Kinna repeated under her breath. "Got it."

Captain Calico gestured toward the stairs leading below deck, and Kinna scampered off without a word, jumping in alarm when he began to bellow orders to his crew.

~*~*~

It was cooler below deck, and a bit damp. The smell of mildew and foot fungus wafted into Kinna's nose every time she dared take a breath in the part of the ship which had been cordoned off and designated the crew's quarters. What's more, all of the cots and hammocks were peppered with stains from either mold or old bodily fluids that she tried her best not to think about. She lingered for a moment at the edge of the area, fingers clenched into the canvas of her two little bags until her knuckles turned white, and chewed on her lip to prevent herself from whimpering.

She hated this already. The grand adventure she had imagined when she had first set out from the village now reared an ugly head at her. What was she supposed to do, anyway? Was she even going in the right direction? What if one of the others found a suitable Guardian first? And, a more frightening thought: what if, when they did find one, they were never able to track her down to tell her to come home?

Had Sherry been better prepared for her journey, or Parkin? Had Filo? She wasn't sure. They all left with the same supplies as Kinna, and with equal blessings. More to the point, no one else wielded the kind of magic that she, Sherry, Parkin, and Filo now did. The other three all seemed excited enough when they parted ways in the town square. Determined enough.

But then, so had she. And now she was standing in the hull of a ship, packed and ready for the most important journey that anyone from her village had embarked upon since the Wild Eruption, and instead of feeling courageous, she felt terrified. She was even starting to cry, for pity's sake. Determined, indeed.

Where was she even supposed to look for a gold dragon, anyway?

"Ye alright, there, lass?" Kinna yelped and felt as if she had jumped out of her own skin. She hadn't seen him kneeling beside a cot near the back of the crew quarters, dim as the light was below deck. Now, of course, after he had already startled her, she could see him clear as day: a stocky dwarf with light, freckled skin, clad in greys and dark blues with a braided orange beard and green eyes that furrowed at her from beneath a loose hood.

"Ach, sorry," he said, "Didnae mean ta startle ye."

"No no no, it's okay, really," Kinna replied, fumbling to pick up one of the bags that she had dropped. "I just... I just didn't see you there."

He nodded at her. "Lookin' fer a place ta settle in?" He pointed at a cot near the entrance to the space. "Tha one's a bit less dirty, from what I saw. Still not the best, but better than the alternative, if ye ask me."

At last Kinna managed to make her trembling fingers cooperate long enough to seize the strap on her fallen bag, and she moved toward where he had indicated. "Thank you. Truly."

The dwarf shrugged and went back to rummaging through a pack of his own. "'S no problem. Glad ta help."

True to his word, the cot was cleaner than its counterparts. Kinna opened her pack, selected the blanket that she cared the least about, and laid it down first before beginning to unload the rest of her few belongings. "Are you a member of the crew?" she asked after a moment of silence.

"Not I," the dwarf said. "Just a traveler - like you, I'd reckon."

"That's nice. Where are you headed? Sheer Harbor?"

"For the time bein', sure."

She spun around, hands clasped in front of her. "Oh! Are you visiting family?"

The dwarf snorted with laughter. "Ach, no - The opposite, actually. I'm lookin' ta get as far away as I can. Sheer Harbor's just the first stop on tha' road, as far as I'm concerned." He buckled his luggage closed, slung an object that she couldn't quite make out in the dim light onto his back with a thunk, and started making his way out of the crew quarters.

"Oh..." Kinna pursed her lips and looked down at her feet as he passed her. "I'm sorry."

He paused and shrugged. "Don' be. I'm better off without 'em, trust me."

Better off without family. She couldn't even imagine. Memories began to flood unbidden into her mind, and she struggled to build a dam around them before they wept from her eyes. She'd only been away from home for a week, and already she missed it - the fields of flowers, the mountains on the horizon. Her family, her friends. Her little sister. It was all she could do to bear being away from them now, let alone having to consider the concept of leaving with no intent to return.

But that's what she was doing, wasn't it? She knew what she was getting into when she left. And if ever she was able to come home, she knew that she might return to a ruined town carpeted with graveflowers.

The dwarf recoiled an inch as she started to cry, guilt flashing across his face, and he took a step forward, setting down the heavy object from his back with another thunk as he knelt beside her. "Ach, lass, I didnae mean ta--"

"I'm okay!" Kinna yelped, and the dwarf jumped. She pulled another blanket from her pack and dabbed her eyes with it. "I'm sorry. I'm being silly."

He paused. "Ye got any friends in Sheer Harbor?"

Kinna sniffed. "No."

"What's yer name?"

"Kinna?"

He held up a hand to her. "Ciaran." When she pressed her tiny palm against his, he shot her a twinkling smile, the whiskers of his beard twisting upward. "Now ye've got at least one friend, aye?"

She laughed for the first time in days, and her face went beat red. "Thank you."

"Welcome." Ciaran released her hand and stood, lifting his gear and hefting it back over his shoulder. Now that her eyes had stopped watering, Kinna could see that the item was an ornate battle axe almost as tall as she was with a leather sheath slid over the blade and a belt affixed to both ends of the haft for easy transportation. "Stick close ta me, I'll keep ye happy as I can - and safe, besides." He turned to peer up the stairs leading to the deck. "Between you and me," he muttered, "I don' trust these men farther than I can throw 'em."

Kinna hopped to her feet, ready to follow him back outside. "Why's that? They seemed plenty nice to me."

Ciaran shot her a sideways glance that she had trouble reading. "I dunno," he replied. "Just somethin' about that Calico Jack don't sit right in me bones."

She couldn't imagine what he was talking about - the Captain seemed like a decent fellow, as far as she was concerned. Still, better not to argue with a brand new friend. She followed Ciaran back up the stairs and out into the noon sun, just in time to watch the ship begin to pull away from its moorings and out into the ocean.

~*~*~

Captain Calico Jack ran a tight ship, and his crew didn't pay Kinna much mind, so long as she stayed out from underfoot. That was fine, as far as she was concerned, because she was beginning to get a little annoyed at them as they continued to insist, day after day, that her sea legs were bound to come to her sooner or later, despite all evidence to the contrary. Far be it from Kinna to grow cross with anyone, she smothered the awful burgeoning desire to demand that they stop. No, that would be rude.

Her new friend was not of a similar mind. "Will ye shut yer great sodding pie hole and let the woman vom in peace?" Ciaran snapped at them once or twice. "It's been a bloody week - if it were gonna happen, it'd'ave happened already, and yer blasted patronizing isn't gonna settle her stomach."

"It's alright," Kinna piped up, her voice hoarse from retching. "They're just trying to help, right?"

The sailors - a crew as patchwork as Captain Calico's shirts and as colorful as the language they all favored - nodded and laughed. "Yes, of course! Just trying to help."

Ciaran snorted at them. "If ye wanna help, go fetch the lass some water, or some mint, if ye have it."

Captain Calico Jack tsked as he passed them by. "This is a cargo ship, Mr. Silverlord, not a pleasure cruise. You're both lucky that we're equipped to take on passengers at all - don't be ungrateful."

Kinna's stomach dropped, and she spun around holding up her hands. "Oh, no no no, I'm not ungrateful - we're not ungrateful!" She managed a weak smile and a curtsy at the captain and his crew. "Thank you for the encouragement, gentleman. It is much appreciated."

They laughed and bowed at her before resuming their various duties and leaving Kinna to her illness. She went back to dry heaving, and Ciaran just glowered at them from his supportive perch nearby.

Night wasn't much better. Laying down to sleep made it feel as though the world was spinning and dropping out from beneath her until she once again felt ill. She was glad that she had claimed a cot so close to the door of the crew quarters for the multiple trips above deck she required in the wee hours to toss her supper into the waves. When she did manage to fall asleep, the night shift woke her every now and again with their raucous laughter as they drank and played some complicated dice game or other. They kept Ciaran up, too - she could tell from the grumbles and growls from his bunk.

Worst of all, it was dark on the ship. Very, very dark, as no lights were permitted above deck after sundown. Among his human crew, Captain Calico employed two tieflings, who took turns spending their nights in the crow's nest, scanning the horizon for danger. Kinna had heard stories of the cat-like night vision of the Planetouched, but hadn't encountered any of their kind until she began her journey away from home. It wasn't until she lit a lantern to bring up with her for a late-night chumming that she understood, first hand, how devastating sudden light could be to eyes better suited for darkness. The tiefling on duty cried out and shouted at her to snuff the lantern, and she could hear him mumbling curses at her from above as he rubbed the spots from his vision.

Kinna hated the dark. Childish though she knew her phobia was, she had never managed to grow out of it. The dark hid things; it muffled voices and let frightening visions lurk within its shadowed pools. It played tricks on her mind, made her see and feel and hear things that were not real - could not be real. It's just the wood shifting, Kinna told herself one night as she fought to keep her eyes crammed shut and what remained of her supper down. It's not a Beast. It's not a ghost. It's not muttering, or humming, or singing...

But it sounded like singing. And it had happened every single night since they had first set sail. No one else seemed to notice it or pay it any mind, and when she had gathered the courage to ask Captain Calico whether his ship was haunted, he had laughed her off without giving her an answer, and she was forced to play off her question as if she had intended it to be in jest to save face.

It was coming from the cargo hold. No one was allowed down there, except the sailors, and they only had reason to enter when they needed some supply or other that was stashed there.

Kinna pulled her blanket up over her head and curled into a ball on her cot as the mournful sound continued. Maybe Captain Calico's warning to her about a box flattening her in the cargo hold was based in fact. Maybe some other unlucky halfling or gnome had been crushed there previously, and perhaps their ghost had seen fit to haunt her in the night.

She had to know for sure. She had to, or it would drive her mad. Kinna lay frozen in her cot for another hour, trying to make a decision. Her heart raced at the thought of disobeying the Captain's order to stay out of the hold until her indecision paralyzed her from nose to toes. At last, the insistent melody instilled her with enough courage to sit up. Then, a few moments later, to put on her slippers and stand. Then, after several additional minutes of silent hesitation and panic, to drag out her pack and rummage around inside.

A moment later, her trembling fingers produced the oiled leather pouch that the town sage had gifted her. She opened it, selected a pebble and a pinch of the glowing moss that grew in the caves near the village, and pushed the pouch and her bag back under her cot before darting out of the crew quarters and toward the stairs leading to the hold. When she was sure she was out of direct sight, she stared down at the materials in her hands.

You can do it, she urged herself. You've done it before, and you know it isn't hard. Besides, a little light can't hurt.

She closed her eyes and felt the freckles on her cheeks heat up. Then she took a deep breath, rubbed the moss across the pebble, and muttered a word in draconic. The stone began to shine with a bright golden light, which Kinna willed to dim before it woke anyone around the corner. Beaming with pride and holding her makeshift candle aloft in one palm, Kinna approached the stairs and started making her way down.

The second step creaked when she stepped on it and almost made her cry out in terror. She looked back toward the slumbering crew. None had awoken, as far as she could hear. The singing had stopped, but before Kinna could turn around and decide that she was just going mad after all, it picked back up again. Now more certain than ever, and more terrified of what she might find, she pressed forward, trying to ignore her cottonmouth. Hugging the wall in the hopes that the structural stability there would make the planks a bit quieter, she continued her descent.

By the time she reached the bottom, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the muffled sound was singing. A rich yet hoarse tenor echoed across the crates toward her, loud enough to carry but soft enough that Kinna suspected the singer's intended audience was himself alone. She couldn't quite make out all the words, but could tell that he was singing of stars and beautiful women, of good conversation and better company. Of home. Emboldened and mystified, Kinna began the process of navigating her way through a veritable maze of crates.

At the back of the ship, hidden behind a wall of boxes and barrels, stood a single-cell brig. It smelled of refuse and the bars were rusty. Within the brig sat a pale man, his throat and wrists bound in a steel pillory which had been bolted to the wall and held closed with a heavy padlock. His eyes were closed, and his head lilted to one side as though he was half asleep, but his mouth moved to sound out every murmured note of the melody he managed to croak out. His long black hair had been tamed into a braid once, long ago, but it had since fallen into wild disarray. The parts of his face that were not covered in an unkempt black beard were marked with bruises and scrapes, and the clothing covering his lank, emaciated body - a once-white cotton shirt, a grey tweed vest, and a pair of dark pants - was utterly destroyed with rips and dubious stains.

Kinna's first reaction was one of pity. Her second, upon noting his pointed ears, was striking fear. What is a creature like an elf doing here, of all places? she thought, her hand too slow to stifle the tiny gasp that escaped her lips.

The elf's eyes flew open - dark, feral, and reflective in the soft glow of her magic pebble - and found Kinna, pinning her in place before she could hide even as he squinted into the light. They stared at one another for a moment. Then he pointed at her with one manacled hand.

"Unless I'm sorely mistaken," he said, "I get the impression that you're not a member of the crew." Curious - now that he was speaking rather than singing, she realized that he spoke the common tongue without an accent, a feat that not even Kinna could muster. She didn't even know that elves bothered to learn common, much less speak it with such eloquence.

Kinna licked her parched lips, but her tongue might as well have been sandpaper. "Um... N-no, I'm not. I'm... I'm just... passing through?"

He continued to stare at her, and cracked a smile. "I suppose, then, that the good captain didn't warn you not to come down here?" The way he spat the words "good captain" like venom made Kinna's blood freeze.

"Oh! Um... No, he... he did. Warn me, that is." She took a step back, clutching the pebble to her chest until the light was all but snuffed behind her fingers. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be here. I'll go-"

"No!" the elf cried, his voice cracking. He lurched forward and almost throttled himself on his collar as the chains held him back. "No, please, don't go. Please." He wheezed a laugh. "I know I must look beastly, and I know the reputation of my elven ancestry precedes me. But, please, I mean you no harm."

Kinna searched his face for answers. He looked sincere - what's more, he looked frightened. More frightened than she was, even. In the darkness, she thought she even saw tears begin to well up in his eyes, though that could have just been her imagination, or a clever trick to win her pity. Truth be told, she couldn't tell if his passion was genuine, or if it was rooted in something much more savage.

"Please," he whispered after a moment of silence passed between them. "If you do nothing else at all before you leave, then..." He paused and swallowed hard. "Then at least tell me the date."

She blinked. What a strange thing to ask. "It's... today is the 5th of Apis, in the year 418?"

Silence. The elf didn't move or breathe. "... Sorry," he said, "418?"

"Um... Yes?"

Kinna watched as he began to shake. He ground his teeth, and when he drew in a deep, ragged breath, she realized he had begun to sob.

"Two years?" was all he managed to whimper.

The elf continued to weep until she began to doubt whether he remembered she was still there. "Um... Are... Are you? A member of the crew?"

He sniffed and took another deep breath, clearing his throat, his mouth set in a grim line. "No. No, I am not."

She chewed on her bottom lip and took a tentative step forward as he worked to compose himself.

"Who... Who are you?"

---

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