Chapter 495 - Leaving Urandel

Sorry for the delay. Was my birthday yesterday and I forgot to announce a delay before I was out of internet range.

Everything was going to plan. Captain Hadbur’s ship had been stocked with all they would need. Acalin had recruited a number of pathfinders to their cause. High Priest Jerard had even arranged for a few Holy Ones, including Runesmith Tatsi, to accompany them and look after their equipment and any runecraft needs that may arise. They had their gear—new potions, single use artifacts, repairs to their weapons. Tatsi had even managed to rid Hump’s staff of the Tree of Damnation’s residual power.

All was perfect.

Until the day of boarding.

When the king himself arrived and demanded Prince Marcoff accompany them too.

Hump stared at Urandel, growing more distant by the minute. Floating islands passed beneath them as Captain Hadbur steered them ahead. Distantly, he could hear Prince Marcoff arguing with Princess Urella—another member of the ship far from eager to have him aboard. Perhaps that might prove entertaining, but all Hump felt was tired. An arrogant noble, whether baron or prince, was all it took to quash the moral of an expedition.

“Why?” Hump said to Bud. “Why do annoying nobles always ruin everything?”

Bud gave him the side eye. “Is that directed at me too?”

“Do you think you’re annoying?”

Bud frowned. “Occasionally.”

Hump snorted. “You’re one of the good ones. It’s the ones who got here because of their parents. You were little more than a rusty bucket when I found you.”

“You mean when I found you.”

“At best, I’ll give it to Asoltef. Your horse had good sense to come to a wizard like me.”

“I’m trapped in another world and questioning everything I believe in thanks to that bloody horse. I’m not so sure.”

Hump frowned too. “Hold on a second. Is Asoltef to blame for everything? If we hadn’t met, I probably wouldn’t be here either. Demons. Warlocks. Princes. If we never met—if Asoltef hadn’t bound us together—none of it would have been our problem.”

“You’d have never met me or Nisha,” Celaine said, approaching behind them.

“We’d have met,” Hump said. “I was heading to the dungeon.”

Celaine scrunched her nose. “We only took you because of Bud though.”

“That’s lovely. Thanks. Well we only joined you cause Vamir was paying.”

“We both know that’s not true.” Celaine smirked.

“Do we now?”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you staring at me even the first time we met. You weren’t very subtle then either.”

“It was just unusual seeing a young lady such as yourself approaching a dungeon,” Hump said defensively. “And you and Vamir looked quite fancy. I’m simply observant.”

“Uh-huh. What about the other times you were staring?”

“Confirming my observations.”

Celaine took a step closer to him. “Enlighten me.”

Hump smiled back confidently. “For a start, you were obviously trouble—”

“—Would you two stop flirting,” Bud interrupted. “Please! I’m trying to brood over our next steps and you’re ruining it.”

“Like you can talk,” Celaine snapped. “You were reminiscing over how the two of you met. I just joined in.”

“Bud and I have something special,” Hump said. “Don’t be jealous.”

“Are you picking on my fiancé?” Emilia asked. “Get him Nisha.”

Nisha ran ahead of her.

Dylan followed behind, laughing. “It’s so nice to be able to play with her again with two hands. I can actually wrestle.”

Hump tilted his head to look at his arm. “Your prosthetic has teeth marks.”

Dylan glanced at it. “Oh yeah.” He channelled essence into it, a few runes on the arm glowing green. The marks healed over, the wood growing back to its previous form. “Amazing, isn’t it? It has a series of self-repair runes that I can enhance the effect of. If left alone, it’ll fix itself from most damage however, as long as the core isn’t destroyed, and one of the runes remains.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of any self-repair system that’s even comparable to that,” Hump said. “Multiple runes is smart, but I wonder how they get them to work together.”

Dylan shook his head. “I’ve been struggling to figure out how this works for a long time.”

“Plenty of time to look at it as we travel,” Emilia said. “For now, I want us all to greet the prince.”

“Why?” Hump, Celaine, and Dylan all asked at the same time.

She looked between them exasperated. “Because if we’re to make this trip palatable, we need everyone working together. And if he happens to not be on our side, then we need to know him even more. If we’re to avoid an attack like those monsters, the best thing we can do is know everybody we’re travelling with.”

“Celaine plans to poke them if they try that again,” Dylan said.

Emilia frowned at him, then turned to Celaine. “What?”

“We’ve talked about what to do if anyone tries to stop us again,” Celaine said. “Leave them alone until they come for us, and then we strike back hard.”

Emilia narrowed her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like you’re usual sort of plan.”

“I think she wanted to leave Urandel,” Hump said. “Didn’t want us sticking around to figure out who’s be stalking us.”

“Ah. Good, then we can go with my idea instead. I’ll assign everyone people to get to know. We’ve got a month of travel ahead of us. By the end of it I expect you to be able to tell me the names of their parents.”

“You’re kidding,” Hump said. “I don’t even know Bud’s dad’s name.”

Emilia’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “Really? It’s Robert, Hump.”

“It’s not my bloody fault! Why do nobles always give their kids the same name.”

“We’ve had this conversation before,” Bud said. “I think it was on our way to Bledsbury Dungeon even. You whinged about it then too.”

Hump formed his lips into a tight line, the memory coming back to him. “Oh yeah.”

“Well with that highly important tangent out of the way, we can get started,” Emilia said. “Let’s go welcome the prince.”

***

Two weeks passed without much excited—they were almost at the halfway mark, and nearing their first city stop along the way. Hump had always dreaded the idea of sea travel—weeks, if not months aboard a ship, eating hard biscuits, pickled vegetables, and cured meat, with little to do, trapped inside cramped quarters with nowhere to escape. Fortunately, the Crown of the Winds was far more accommodating than the ships back home. The rooms were fairly spacious and the food much better. Still, there were only so many islands a person could drift past before that too became tiresome.

That said, a few sights had caught his attention. Many were jagged towers of stone rising into the sky like spears, honeycombed with natural tunnels and holes, each surface teeming with strange creatures. But most interesting was the sphere of water before him now, sparkling like polished crystal, a reef of brilliant colours visible inside like a snow globe. Beneath the surface, an entire ecosystem flourished, full of schools of vibrant fish darting between swaying plants as Nisha flew overhead, spooking them gleefully.

“Good morning, Wizard Humphrey.”

Hump looked over to see Pipto come to lean on the rail beside him. He was one of the crew, a lanky altari with long, braided hair that ran down to his hips, tied up with yellow and orange sashes.

As it turned out, Emilia’s suggestion had been a good one. Not just for making allies and weeding out potential threats, but for Hump’s own sanity too. Getting to know the crew made the long days bearable. Captain Hadbur ran a tight ship, but the crew were a friendly lot. Many had been curious about the tales of Hump and his companions back in Alveron. The same with the pathfinders aboard, who saw the voyage as a holy pilgrimage.

Their faith reminded Hump of when he left the Infernal Halls through the warlock rift, entering the Remnant Realm. The certainty of the Chosen with him that believed they walked the path of the gods. This time, that belief was irrefutable. Loften himself had assigned their holy mission. A pilgrimage to free the Maker and remake the world. To most aboard, Hump and his party were not just warriors. They were heralds of their gods. Symbols of divine will.

It had made for some awkward conversations at first, but most of the crew had figured out that they didn’t want to talk about it.

He smiled at the altari. “Morning, Pipto. You see that island too?”

Pipto nodded. “We call it akara in our tongue. Like water forest, full of fish.”

“We call it a reef,” Hump said. “I didn’t imagine they could exist as floating islands like this.”

“The Maker’s magic makes all possible,” Pipto said. “You like fish?”

“To eat or to look at?” Hump asked. “I suppose I quite like both. Why?”

“This not too special,” he said with a grin. “Too small to visit. You should see the Sapphire Isles. Hundreds of  reefs like this. more beautiful. We fly down from the cliffs on gliders, swim with fishes, drink sweet wine on white sands. Good times, when captain gives it to us.”

“Sounds incredible,” Hump said, trying to imagine what would make this seem dull. “Will we pass them on the way?”

The altari shook his head. “No, no. Far to south. We go east now. East is less nice. More trees, more monsters, duller water.”

Hump smiled. “That’s a shame. I’d have liked to see it.”

“You have such things in your homeland?”

“Some,” Hump said. “But I have not seen them. I come from a large country, and have never been out to sea for any length of time. We do not travel through the sky like you, but on water or land.”

“Like Ur before the Sundering,” Pipto asked. “Hard to think of now.”

“It’s much slower to travel,” Hump said. “Especially by land. We follow roads past fields of crops, up hills and into valleys, through thick forests. There are few nice places to stop like this. instead, we feast in the halls of the lords that hire us, or share stories around campfire while on quests.”

“Do you travel much?” Pipto asked.

“Since I was a boy. My master to me on, and I went with him.”

His eyes widened. “Since you were a child?”

Hump nodded.

“You escaped?” Pipto asked cautiously.

“Escaped?” Hump frowned and shook his head. “No. He died.”

His eyes widened further. “You killed him?”

Realisation struck Hump and he laughed. “I think there’s been a mistranslation. My master was my teacher, and I his apprentice. He was a good man and taught me wizardry.”

Pipto relaxed and chuckled. “Ah! To altari, a master is a slaver. It is not allowed here.”

“Nor is Alveron,” Hump assured him. “He died a couple of years ago. Killed by a powerful warlock who disguised himself as a goblin. Do you have goblins here? Little green creatures that walk on two legs,”

“We have them.” The altari bared his teeth, his next words somewhere between a hiss and a snarl. “Terrible creatures. Not so much a problem for a ship like this. They prefer little villages.”

“Just like back home,” Hump said. He frowned as Nishari flew up from the reef, her attention captured by something in the distance. She sent him a flash of concern. Investigate?

“Don’t get too close,” Hump said.

“Is something wrong?” Pipto asked.

“I’m not sure. Nisha has seen something up ahead but I can’t tell—”

An image from Nisha appeared in Hump’s mind—smoke rising in the distant. Fire blazing through it. He couldn’t make out what lay within from this distance, but he could guess.

“—where’s Captain Hadbur? He’s going to want to know this.”

“What is it?”

“Smoke. Lots of smoke. I think Nassuga City is on fire.”