Chapter XI (11)

  The barrier dropped, slicing off the back-end of the ship. This time, Mitsuko fell to the deck and slid, crashing into a sailor’s feet.

  “Move it!” the sailor yelled at her.

  Mitsuko blinked, staring at the sailor who’d just yelled at her. Mitsuko recognized her. She had just seen her an hour ago walking out of the pyramid with the others. But…how was she here now? Another spatial anomaly? That didn’t make any sense. They were on a sinking ship. The barrier was right next to them. She was back right next to it again.

  “Passengers into the lifeboat, now!” the captain hollered. He was supposed to be dead. She’d seen the flesh ripped from his chest and his body dragged under the waves by the kraken's tentacles. But now he lacked even a scar.

  The captain spared a moment to glare at her prone form, but she wasn’t the only one knocked over by the barrier’s sudden impact. He gestured towards the lifeboats and bellowed orders at his crew.

  “This is…like before,” she said quietly. She lifted her arm, then flexed it and turned her hand about. It shouldn’t be there. She shouldn’t be alive. Perhaps this was an afterlife? The captain had died too. Were they ghosts? No. She definitely wasn’t undead.

  The father pleaded with a sailor to go rescue his son in the lower decks. She hadn’t witnessed either of them die. So they shouldn’t be in an afterlife.

  “What are you doing down there?” a familiar voice asked. Chipper, though edged with concern.

  Mitsuko looked up from where she sat on the deck at a violet haired gnome who wore a nervous smile and a playful glint in her eye.

  “Holly,” Mitsuko whispered. Her vision blurred. Unbidden, tears leaked from her eyes and streaked down her cheeks. She reached out and grabbed her friend, pulling her into a tight hug. The gnome felt real. Alive. Mitsuko took in a shaky breath and sniffled.

  “Woah, woah, Mitsuko! It’s fine!” Holly patted her on the head. “There are lifeboats. Not ideal, sure, but we’ll be safe. Probably. What’s gotten into you? You raid the captain’s liquor cabinet and not tell me? I haven’t seen you like this in years. Not since…well, nevermind that. This is all fine! It’s the start of another adventure!”

  The gnome rested a hand on Mitsuko’s shoulder, then helped Mitsuko slowly clamber to her feet.

  Mitsuko laughed. She didn’t know where it came from, but she couldn’t control it. She wiped her eyes with a sleeve, then looked around. Despite the panic all around them, people still were glancing over their shoulders at her and giving her strange looks.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said to Holly. “Just…really happy you’re alive.”

  “Me too! Let’s go get on one of the boats before we drown.”

  Her gnome friend dragged her away to a boat and they boarded. The father on the edge of their boat nervously looked back onto the ship.

  “The boy,” Mitsuko said, remembering. “He’s still inside.”

  But it was too late for that. They dropped into the water with a splash and the father wailed.

  Someone shoved oars into Mitsuko’s hands and rowed, slow and numb. Her back to the bow, she watched the ship sink and the others all escaped. All except the boy hiding in a crate in the crew’s supply room.

  “Hirachi!” the father wailed beside them. Mitsuko realized she had never known the boy’s name until now.

  Half of his body hung from the lifeboat’s stern as he stared back at the Selcouth Sable’s sinking bow. The captain dove from the wreckage, towing the ship's elementalist behind him.

  Then the orange tentacle appeared. It played out exactly as she’d seen it before. She stopped rowing and watched in horror as the tentacle ripped a circle of flesh from the captain’s chest, ribs flashing white in the sunlight before he sank under the water. Then the second tentacle dragged the elementalist under the surface. The only difference this time was that Mitsuko was now dry on a boat, not clinging to a plank of wood and kicking for her life. That, and from this angle she could see the elementalist struggling while being dragged down. Then, only bubbles remained.

  “I didn’t do anything.” Mitsuko stared at the wreckage.

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  “Silly,” Holly berated her softly. “What would you do? You can barely even swim.” But then Holly cocked her head and her purple eyebrows knit together as she looked into Mitsuko’s distant eyes. She said nothing else though.

  “My boy.” The father’s eyes were on the sinking ship as well as his body sagged. “Hirachi….”

  “The cat too,” Mitsuko muttered.

  Only Holly heard her. And, before her friend could question her, the other four tentacles burst out of the water. She watched as it capsized one of the other lifeboats. More people died. But they were drifting further and further away from the action.

  Mitsuko forced herself to look away, and realized the lifeboat was already in the grip of the current. The same one that stranded Holly and her companions on Ashen Island.

  Mitsuko recalled the sailors telling her in her last life that there was no use fighting the current. Rather than waste the energy trying to break free, she pivoted the oars in the oarlocks until they were inside the boat, then watched the other lifeboats madly rowed in the other direction. After a few minutes, the sea monster retreated, and the boats on the horizon were no larger than her fingernail.

  The boat was somber. The only noise was the whimper and wails of the father.

  They had one sailor with them, she’d been the one to yell at Mitsuko when the barrier dropped. But now, mere minutes later, the sailor made no move to take command, huddled on the bottom of the lifeboat with knees pulled tight to their chest.

  “That was horrible,” Holly said, uncharacteristically solemn. “What happens now?”

  “The current will take us to Ashen Island,” Mitsuko said. “If we follow the beach, we should be able to reach a town.”

  The other passengers looked at her, confused, but nobody questioned her statement. They were miserable and scared. That was fine though. Mitsuko needed time to sort through her thoughts. To process what exactly she’d experienced the last few days.

  Her first thought was maybe it was an extremely powerful divination. Perhaps related to astral projection. Somehow experiencing the events of the next few days before they happened. There were a lot of holes in that idea though. For one thing, it all happened in an instant. She didn’t think her mind could process all that information within such a miniscule period. And yet…she knew precious little about the field of magic. She only knew one spell, and all it did was point her north. Perhaps it was possible under the right circumstances. And since she definitely didn’t have the blood required to support such a spell, there was the problem of who or what would have cast it on her, and why? And putting it all in her mind, rather than the spellcaster’s, meant a form of mental magic as well. There were vanishingly few mental mages in the world.

  She remembered the whisper at the end, right before she died. While it held an ethereal tone, it had been different from the juggernaut’s demanding voice. Instead, it had been quiet and calming as it beckoned her to find it. It had said ‘well done’ after she stabbed the juggernaut. That meant they were probably enemies…or it had been some sort of sick test.

  Mitsuko recalled what she had heard after that. The moment before she found herself knocked to the deck floor. Mend unlocked. Was that a spell? Not one she’d ever heard of before. And it had a level. Some sort of arbitrary grading system?

  “Have you heard of a spell called Mend?” Mitsuko asked Holly.

  The gnome snapped her attention away from gazing into the blue depths below, over to Mitsuko. She considered the question then shook her head.

  “No. Weld, yes. That’s a fire elementalist’s spell used to seal two metal objects together. And I think there’s a hex called meld, but I’ve never looked into that. Maybe Mend could be a restoration spell? Some sort of minor healing used on a person’s body. Or perhaps—”

  “My son is dead!” the father screamed at them. “You’re talking to each other like that never happened! Did a necromancer rip out your souls?”

  Holly smiled sadly at the irate man.

  “Pardon us. It might seem cold. What happened is really, really bad. But me and Mitsuko have seen lots of bad things. We sometimes forget that others are grieving. Forgive us.”

  That did not comfort the man. He screamed at them for another five minutes until another passenger told him off, and turned his anger on them instead. The rest of the survivors huddled together.

  “You’re sure the boat will go somewhere safe?” an older man asked Mitsuko. His voice was little more than a quivering whisper and went unheard by everyone else who were listening, most unwillingly, to the argument between the father and the other passenger.

  “Yes,” Mitsuko said. “I’ve…researched the currents nearby. We’ll be fine.”

  Once there they could make their way back to the town. It might be a while, but if everything went the same as before, they should be able to get over to Mauve Island eventually. They might even get lucky and find a mage on Ashen Island capable of contacting the Sailor’s Guild on Mauve. Then Wan could get wind of them and send for a rescue. They just needed to stay safe and wait.

  She glanced behind her. She could still see the barrier on the horizon, reaching skyward and arching over their heads far above. It wasn’t her problem to fix, she was just a woman with a sword. But the sight of it filled her with unease. She couldn’t shake a suspicion that it had a role in her second chance. The barrier had dropped the same moment she snapped to consciousness after she…died. Or at least the divination version of her died. Why that moment? Doubtlessly not a coincidence. Did others also experience the same sensation? She couldn’t recall anyone on the ship acting or moving any differently from before.

  It was something to discuss with Wan. He’d know what to make of it. Eventually, they’d board another ship and head back to Mauve. Or, she supposed it would actually be her going there for the first time, so ‘back’ wasn’t the right term. The vision was so real, it left her head spinning.