Beautiful and Broken

15.

The least I was expecting was to be promptly banished from the ship at the moment we set shore, but inexplicably, nothing happened. Surely our less then successful magic lessons weren't the reason, and I simply couldn't think of another motive. So I was present when they brought her on the ship, a skinny little thing with white skin and dark circles under her eyes, not even allowed to remain conscious until we were far out on the sea. Mal, the tracker was captured together with her. He looked incredibly young, and he looked at us with a hatred deeper than the abyss at the bottom of the ocean. But even more disturbing was the reason he was here for: he was supposed to find the sea whip, the second one of Morozova's amplifiers.

I've spent most of my days below deck as we were sailing back towards Ravka, dreading everything that was happening around me. Genya told me how Mal wasn't willing to track the sea whip until Aleksander threatened him with hurting Alina. She told me how Alina was kept in shackles, but brought out from her prison every day, perhaps as an intended walk of shame. He told me how even Sturmhond contested Aleksander's methods. I wouldn't have thought him capable of sinking so low: what remains after you've become too cruel even for a pirate's measures? The thought of freeing Alina was on my mind, but I couldn't find a solution to what we should do after I've removed here shackles, considering that we were in the middle of the sea, and until today, even the mages of Atlantis haven't figured out a way to fly.

I've emerged to see the sea whip when they found it, though. My curiosity got the best of me, as nobody knew of any magical creatures in Atlantis. It was ancient, terrifying and beautiful the way only wordless creature could be in their infinite wisdom. Seeing it trashing in the foam of the waves, scales and teeth glittering, red eyes beaming with anger, I understood why people believed in dragons. 

They went after it with streamlined boats, Sturmhond's people throwing their harpoons with fierce precision. I've been told they were hunting it exactly like the whale hunters did for hundreds of years, except this time the bounty wasn't meant to feed dozens of people and light the lamps of a whole village, but to satisfy the whims of a single man. By the time the second ship emerged from the fog and attacked us, and it dawned on us that Sturmhond's crew was collaborating with our attackers, I was rooting for their victory.

I was going to just stand by and let it happen, let them take the ship, steal the sea dragon, free the Sun Summoner, whatever it was that they wanted. Yells, gunshots and bursts of magic filled the air around me, blinding and deafening, and all I could think about was that it's finally going to be over. But then all my senses came awake with a deep sense of alarm: I recognised a face, one that was dear to me, a face of agony. Ivan. 

Ivan was dying, at the hands of another Heartrender, one that didn't wear a kefta, someone I remembered being a part of Sturmhond's crew. I threw up a shield around both of us, as I ran to him while he collapsed, reaching for his barely beating heart, trying to strengthen it just enough for him to survive. And then I observed another young Grisha, a Fabrikator, holding out a gun he was clearly unable to shoot, faced with two pirates with a savage burn in their eyes. I threw up another shield around him. Then another, around the next Grisha soldier. And another. And another. There were too many of them and to little of me, but I wasn't gonna give up on them, as long as I had any power left in me.

I didn't observe the exact moment they've managed to get Alina aboard the other ship, I've just felt the surge of power when Aleksander summoned the nichevoya, one after another, a whole army of them, surging at the other ship, drowning it in waves of darkness. The pirates started firing their guns while their Squallers and Tidemakers moved the ship. It was clear we couldn't follow, the whaler took too many hits to do anything else but keep from sinking. 

But Aleksander didn't stop, sending one tide of shadows after another, until it was so dark we couldn't see him, just feel the source of his power. It made me uneasier with every new summoning, I sensed something on the verge of coming undone, the last moment before a volcano erupts or a tornado hits. I started walking towards where I sensed him. I took another step, than another, getting closer and closer, until I touched him – it surprised me to still feel any human warmth beyond the surge of power. I put my arms around him, a desperate gesture to hold it all together, to rein it in, and the feeling was overwhelming: I was standing in the eye of the storm. 

But it wasn't only his will I was feeling, there was something or someone else, a presence I couldn't name, not entirely human, but clearly aware of my existence. Still, there was a weird sense of familiarity to it, and it only took me moments to realise were I've felt it before – in the Fold. It was feeling me out, probing at me, trying to find an opening. I wasn't gonna let it. I felt Aleksander's arms around me, pulling me closer, my fingers gripping at the material of his black kefta. He knew what I was doing, and he was trying to help, making both of our wills stronger than the presence surging through him.

I had no idea how long it took us, it might have been hours or minutes or days, until his heart finally started slowing, the darkness around us breaking, the sound of the waves and the shouts of a seagull seeping through. His face was next to mine, his eyes closed. A deep sigh erupted from his chest, almost as a sob. "Thank you," he barely whispered. The first ray of sun touched his shiny black hair. Very gently I let go of him, and he walked away, with the steps of an old man barely holding it together. 

Only after he disappeared below deck, I took notice of the many eyes on me. Genya, on the verge of tears. Fedyor, holding Ivan, the latter still alive, but barely. The young Fabrikator with the gun. Some of them were wounded. Some of them were dead. But anyone alive was looking at me with a question in their eyes. "Let's go home," I've told them.