B6 Chapter 30: Uncharted Seas

As punishment for the kid’s excitement, I had him wait a few days before we addressed his skills. I could tell he was eager, but to his credit, he maintained discipline. All that time training under the guards and Ventus had helped him practice patience, albeit with a few slip-ups.

On the fourth day of being on the ship, I sat near the front of the ship, overlooking the sea as we sailed forward. Despite being near noon, the sky was a blanket of grey leeching into black while lightning cracked in the distance. 

Another thunderclap struck somewhere along the horizon and I closed my eyes, waiting.

Storm, approaching. Thundering coil, blasting skies. Angry. Disturbed!

I tried to process the rest of the feedback of the perk, but the mana faded as quickly as it came. Sighing, I stared at the sky, watching the sails billow.

What use is a perk that tells you the sky is angry? What do I do with that?

If Eodyne was here, she could have flown into the air and tasted the wind on her skin. I knew she had some rituals from her village, ones that let her communicate in a way similar to the perk. Except she wasn’t here…

Thankfully, I had the next best thing! With a simple mental shove, mana threaded and generated the flesh and scales for my familiar. The dragonling uncoiled and rose upward, a cascade of water and electricity flowing behind him like a cloak. 

The workers nearby paused and began to pull out their weapons, but some of the smarter ones eyed me first and begrudgingly looked away. When their friends didn’t join them to defend against the unknown threat, those who were ready to fight backed down.

I extended my arm and Sturmrorex coiled around it before settling over my neck like a living scarf.

“Good job, Sturm. Thank you for not including the thunder. Flashy lights are one thing, flashy sounds are another,” I said while scratching at the base of his horns.

My familiar coo’d. “Of course! They need to learn to fear you, Master! Ask and I shall show them true terror!”

I bopped his nose, causing him to flinch. “Enough of that. They’ve behaved so far. If they step out of line, I grant you full permission to make them crispy. Alright?”

“Understood!”

I turned and faced the distant storm. Thanks to all the practice with Eraztis and Galarion, segmenting packets of memories was almost child's play. I sent over the details of my perk, its feeling and how the ambient mana interacted with my own. 

Sturmrorex turned his head to the side, sparks rippling down his scales in a way I knew meant he was thinking. 

“Permission to fly?”

I chuckled. “Aren’t you a king? A king needs not permission to roam the skies he was born to rule.”

The explosive flood of pride-filled joy that radiated down the link almost overwhelmed me. Sturmrorex grinned widely and flew into the air as visible wind trailed behind him. He rose higher and higher past the ship’s sails and into the open sky. 

I caught the captain’s stare from across the ship, but ignored her as Sturmrorex released a roar. The clouds above started to darken, the faint crackling of lightning filling the air with a static buzz. Across the ship, people started to rub at their skin or arms, the air screaming with an itch that rose in crescendo.

Strurmrorex glanced down, his eyes glowing azure orbs. I nodded and he raised his head to the sky.

I felt it before I saw it. The singular bolt of lightning flashed and struck Sturmrorex’s horns before he disappeared behind a wall of plasma.

Around me, groans and yelps filled the air following the snap of thunder. I extended my arm and welcomed my familiar back around my body. He was hot and smelled like ozone, but he held dominion over his element, letting the sparks gently ripple across my clothes and discharge into the wood.

He snuggled into my neck and closed his eyes. Information processed through the spirit’s instincts and sensed differently from mine. In a way, he made my perk feel like a toddler communicating through a cup with a string attached.

Information he sent through the link painted a clearer story. 

I turned and signaled to Ellena, along with Sereza, who had emerged to watch the show. 

It was time to meet that divination expert and see what they had to say.

***

Ellena sat in her chair, practically a statue as she waited. Khrem, Sereza, and Zog occupied the other chairs while Teldrin sat on the floor. On the table, a female human with a forgettable face was busy sketching out the map.

We were still waiting on two more guests to arrive, but I was content in letting the captain sweat it out. Even underneath her mask of indifference, Galarion let me know just how badly the curiosity burned inside her head.

The female crew member stood back and wiped sweat from their brow. The pencil in their hand stopped glowing purple as the tool crumbled into grey sludge.

“I’m finished, mam.”

“Very good, Gaela. You may take your leave,” Ellena commanded.

Gaela nodded and rushed out of the room. Ellena had a chain to carry the freshly drawn map and held it up for the others to see.

“Interesting power. I knew a beastkin who used ink mana to maintain a ledger for the hotel, but that skill of hers is purely mental,” I said.

“Gaela’s skill is called Precision Charter. A rather rare form of a cartography-based skill. Her’s allows her to empower the instrument; she channels her skill into the ability to adjust its color, width, and material. The actual drawing skills is her own boosted by enhanced focus.”

“Useful. I know the cartographer guild and the explorer’s guild would pay her well. So how did she end up here?” Sereza asked.

“By being tricked. A noble fancied her, but she did not. It turned out that he wanted her skill for his family’s personal use. A common tale. He was relentless and she wouldn’t relent. In the end, he engineered a public incident that besmercher her name and made a lot of families angry. I accepted her within our ranks and she has been loyal ever since.”

Ellena glanced at the map, and then at me. “Is this what your spirit showed you?”

“His name is Sturmrorex. Use it,” I ordered.

“My apologies. Is this information accurate to Sturmrorex’s senses? What exactly is it that he did? If you don’t mind me asking.”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t really tell you. It’s all instinctual. He’s a storm dragon who’s contract is based of a storm-aspected skill. For him, reading the sky and the storms is natural. I also have  a perk that let’s the wind talk to me. It was more of a vague impression. I thought the sea was angry, and that there’d be a lot of lightning.”

“But what’s with the four glowing dots? There’s two blues, one green, and a pink,” Sereza asked.

“Can’t tell? Should be obvious.”

“Rifts,” Zog interrupted. “The colors correspond to the rift difficulty.”

Sereza glanced at the map and sighed. “You attract them. Are you sure there’s not a perk for that?”

“Just my existence,” I scoffed. I raised my hand and pointed at the blue rifts. “Are these known? I didn’t see them on any map before.”

“No,” Ellena said, shaking her head. “As far as we know, there should be no rifts or dungeons within the next two days of travel. Granted, it is impossible to know if there are hidden portals in the deeper parts of the ocean, and without specialized teams to scan the areas, we cannot be certain. With that said, the sea level doesn’t drop deep enough for at least three more days. There’s a reason why the coastline of Terracka has so many cities. They base their ports off nearby dungeons. To my knowledge only one port has a rift within rowing distance. It’s closely guarded and granted only to a select few every few months.”

“Then these are either unexplored because they haven’t been catalogued or–”

“They are new,” Sereza interrupted. She ignored my glare and pointed to the pink rift. “We can confirm this is new. Wild rifts break after they are cleared. But, if all these rifts are new, why is there only one pink?”

“Impossible to tell,” Khrem said.

“That’s annoying.”

“Those rifts don’t matter anyway. Unless we go out of our way to explore them, we have no reason to care that they are there.”

Sereza whirled on me. Disbelief and anger in her eyes.  I could read the playful smirk from her thoughts, but she was a good actor. Her emotions looked genuine enough that the captain almost believed her.

“Rifts are opportunities. Especially easy ones. We could clear them and still sell the information. They are almost always time-dilated!” she argued.

“You can’t guarantee that.”

“It doesn’t matter if we can or not!”

“Oh, so his life doesn’t matter to you all of a sudden?” I growled. 

Sereza flinched, and her anger left as she looked away. “You know that isn’t true.”

“Then start acting like it.”

Sereza crossed her arms and retreated to a wall where she glared. Poor Teldrin looked lost, even if he knew it was all an act, his conflicted expression hurt to see. 

Zog chuckled. “That isn’t why you called this meeting. If you didn’t care about the standard rifts, you wanted to draw our attention to something else. It’s the same reason why the storm has been chasing us, isn’t it?”

Ellena looked up at Zog’s words, her attention snapping toward me like a hawk.

“Correct,” I said with an annoyed smirk, making sure to linger on Sereza longer than the others. “I don’t care about the other rifts in the slightest. It’s the wild rift that matters.”

“The wild rift… Why? It is the furthest out of our way. We can avoid its radius if you are worried about the beasts the rift will stir up. No leviathins or deep monsters would be around either; the seabed is too elevated,” Ellena said.

“That’s because–”

Slam!

In came a figure dressed in a ratty cloak. Wild hair slicked with sweat and some kind of ooze dripped water as they barged in, a shaky, curved cane hammering into the wood.

“Captain!” they croaked. “The silver coin is approaching. There’s a rift and–”

Hazy, glowing eyes with a dull sheen of red focused on me. With a strangled gasp, the bewildered interuptor took one step back and collapsed as a garbled scream spat brown bile across the floor.

“Huh,” Teldrin said as the cane rolled to a stop next to his boot.