Zeus 25 - Praxis

1 - Praxis on the Northern Ocean

After sitting idle through two days of constant squalls, the Sea Lizard was finally making its way out of the bay into the Northern Ocean. The sky was still a solid dark lavender where the storm front was dumping rain, but the wind had died down.

Praxis took a lungfull of sharp salt air and thanked Poseidon for the day, though he did not believe in the Mage of the Sea as the other sailors did. He believed in the income from working the sea, income that kept his aunt Io and himself alive. He didn't even mind being bossed like a doero owned by Captain. One day, though, he'd have his own ship and sail where he wished.

Standing at the prow, he watched the doero opposite him touch the peach-pit pendant on his iron necklace, symbol of the Cult of AvoDar and its belief in the Star Word that would whisk you to AvoDar's fabled home, Shambhala, in a time of peril. He knew the doero was giving silent thanks for being on the sea at last, protected, he thought, by AvoDar and Poseidon.

Silly.

The doero's Clayman strength and the skill of Captain protected the crew, though it had not protected his father. Praxis knew the sea could take any of them into its uncaring depths whenever fate chose, but he was stronger and more careful than his father. Fate will not choose me. He shivered feeling eyes watching, yet Captain was below deck, and the doero was staring out to sea. No invisible Punisher would be aboard the Sea Lizard, despite the creeping of his flesh.

The strange feeling of being watched reminded him of Avia, the daughter of his aunt Io's neighbor, a boat builder. Twice he'd caught Avia watching him as he and the other sailors unloaded their catch. Why does she watch me? he thought. She was beautiful, but sixteen, older by a year—almost a woman.

His thoughts drifted back to the job. Chalk cliffs below the village protected all fishing vessels from fierce storms, but the crews were now restless with lost days of fishing at the height of the season. Soon the hooknose would start their annual migration up the Green River at the head of North Bay, and many Ionian farmers would net the handy fish during the two months of the migration. Captain would beach half the crew when that happened, and Praxis was the youngest —not even a Clayman. Fishing required strength in nearly every job, and Praxis knew he would never have been on the ship at all if his father hadn't been killed two years earlier, swept overboard, his hair accidentally snagged and twisted into a long-line as it raced into the ocean. The long-lines had weights to drag the baited hooks underwater, but they took his father down too.

"To the gearbox," bellowed Captain.

Following the Lizard's regular rough-weather ritual, everyone assembled about the great gearbox on its metal plate to be within the sphere of power the Captain would invoke. Captain took a grey Orb of Strength from his belt of power and placed at the center of the broad horizontal wheel that actuated the gears driving the propeller. Ironman and Rockman strength would be needed to stabilize the Sea Lizard, powering her over the breakers at the mouth of the bay.

As the crew leaned in to be included in the enhancement, the Captain intoned AvoDar's Blessing "Em..." and then "Naaaak...", and turning away from them finished with "Ja." As always, invoking the Word of Law unwrapped the Orb of Strength and bathed the crew in a twinkling magenta sphere that doubled their strength. Captain became an Ironman, and the permanent Claymen stepped up to temporary Rockmen for four hours. Even Praxis was enhanced from boy to Clayman. The expensive Orb was gone now, but the Sea Lizard, though sitting lower in the water from the crew's doubled weight, had twice the power in its crew to surge over storm breakers using Ironman and Rockman strength to drive the geared-down propeller.

Leaving and returning to North Bay were the most dangerous parts of storm days. The Sea Lizard had to crawl up over huge swells, ocean driven into mountains by the shallow sea bed, then rolling and breaking into the bay. It was a time when even enhanced crewmen could lose their footing and be lost overboard in the surf.