As A Stranger Or A Friend?: The Swallow And The Drowned Sailor

Axtapor - 9 Sun's Dawn, 1246 A.D.

I let out a puff of smoke and sighed as I continued plotting our course. To say that I was deeply unsettled by what I'd learned was an understatement. I wished we could leave now, but this was something that needed to be planned with care to avoid Mariel's capture. If the Pale Navy were prowling these waters, as I was sure they were, they would probably form a perimeter around this and other nearby territories to prevent survivors from escaping. That meant travel of any kind, especially aboard a crowded passenger ship, would be impossible without being subjected to thorough searches. But even if there were no survivors, the reward for her capture loomed overhead. With this many people coming and going after the conclusion of Solas Week, it would be the perfect opportunity for someone like her to try to slip away unnoticed.

But surely there had to be some survivors because damned as Fay was, she would not abandon her own. The Son of the Moon must have been there too, and he followed her faithfully, so I doubted he would leave her people to their own devices if he wanted to remain in her good graces. But there had been no news of her from what I'd read; did that mean she was really dead? There was no way. For some reason, I felt like she should live forever, if only because so many had tried and failed to kill her in the past. She was practically a myth come to life! Surely even The Pale Kings couldn't be her undoing! The Scaled Siren, The Krakenrider, The Wraith of the Deep, The Witch of the Drowned Forest...how could someone with so many names, so many personas, and such skill and cunning be gone? Impossible!

But if it had been her end, I supposed being burned alive was quite poetic. Perhaps some tall tale about how she was affixed to the mast of her ship as she burned would begin to float about the waves, and she would earn herself another title from the grave. But if she had survived, what was left? Had the Siren's Marauders gone down with her? And her guild, were they all gone too? And what about the Mirage itself? A pity if she had been lost. That ship was precious and not just because of its storied history of captains but because of its legendary speed.

I'd been aboard only once and realized that it wasn't just fast because of the lack of iron used in its construction, but because the wood used was a special one that could only be sourced from the Savaniel Forests. It was lightweight but durable at the same time, not to mention highly illegal to use for the purposes of construction. The material was sacred to elves and used primarily for rituals, so creating a ship out of it was quite an insult, despite it being a masterpiece. Mirage aside, I wondered, what was the fate of the Son of the Moon? He'd done that wretched thing to Mariel, so there was part of me that hoped he'd died in the attack, but another, much more reasonable part knew he must still be alive. Just like his wife, but for his own reasons, he was not someone easy to kill.

He'd earned his moniker not just for his rare pale coloring but because of his legendary win at the Battle of Farset. The battle was not the classic tale of being outnumbered or cornered; he was far too sharp when it came to tactics to wind up in a situation like that. Instead, what made it notable was something many argued to be supernatural. That day when the sun was at its highest, the sky darkened seemingly from nowhere, and while all fixed their eyes skyward to observe the cosmic phenomenon, he urged his men forward, cleaving the enemy forces in half. It was said that he danced about the shaded battlefield, sending one hundred and fifty men to their graves before even one could land a single blow on him. And in those dark minutes, the city of Farset was stormed, its warlords murdered in cold blood, and victory claimed the moment the sky gave way to light once more.

To this day, it was unknown why everything darkened as it did. Many believed him to be one to command the sun to dim in his presence, just as the moon did every night since the dawn of time. Others believed he made a pact with the moon to borrow her mantle of darkness to secure his win. Some even believed that he was the moon itself because whenever he appeared on the battlefield, there would not remain even a single soul that could utter a plea for help, mimicking the silence of the black expanse that he called home. Whatever truly happened, The Battle of Farset marked the decisive end of the bloodiest civil war in The Empire's history. Following this extramundane victory, he was bestowed his title by Emperor Quetza himself, along with more riches, land, and honor than a single man could ever hope to make use of in one hundred lifetimes. But the hero, who all expected to revel in his glory, didn't. Instead, he disappeared.

I was a boy of six at the time, and when I'd heard of his mysterious departure, I was just as confused as the rest of The Empire. How could someone from Clan Sikthax, a minor clan of the House of Law, and a fatherless boy with no other accomplishments to account for, walk away from such glory? He had perhaps done what any man could only dream of and willingly left it behind. It was not until I became older and left The Empire myself that I understood why. And it wasn't because I'd spoken to or investigated him. It was because I met Fay.

I could still recall how I hungrily drank in her shape the first time I saw her. She was raw and dangerous, like a maddened racing hound, and her schemes, vaudevillian in nature, captivated me like the brightness of her golden eyes. Up to then, I'd not met a woman like her. Most women I'd grown up around were caged, pitiful creatures, but she, she was something else entirely. Her appetite for destruction and reputation for cruelty and malice were delights I'd only ever seen exhibited by men, and her taste for them even came to surpass theirs in many cases.

But rather disappointingly for me back then, and any other man that laid eyes on her was how unabashedly in love she and he were with one another. To her, he glittered far more than gold or any other sort of treasure she might set her sights on. And he registered her every movement as if it were scripture in motion and worshipped, almost unnaturally, anything she did. Each of them was stricken with the same lovesickness and driven to the point of delirium whenever they were near one another. But things were not always so rosy between them.

Most of the time, they were like flint and keg powder, constantly falling out, disagreeing with or cursing one another. In the time I'd known Fay, some six or so years, they'd flown apart at least as many times, perhaps more. But anyone who knew them knew that they could not remain apart for long, if only because they would eventually arrive at the same scheme and be brought together once again. Their minds, as different as they were, ticked to the same tune, and their hunger for spoils was equally boundless. So, if The Pale Kings wanted to declare victory after destroying their home, they should hope they were buried somewhere under all that rubble.