The Scholar's Tale (Original Fantasy)

Book III, Chapter 7

My brooding ended with a growl, not with a whimper - something that hadn't changed from my fugitive days.

For all my cowardice in using every imaginable avenue to escape from my imaginary pursuers, I had never been able to feel sorry for myself. Not in the sense most people I had met did.

Whenever I contemplated my life, which had actually been fairly rosy for a Midworlder, I ended up gnashing my teeth in rage, not fear or despair.

Usually, that was a sign of being a sheltered idiot, but I was too busy fuming over daily inconveniences, or being hunted for what I saw as a wholly justified deed, to be scared.

As such, when I rose from the deck, I looked more like I was about to hit something than cry. Obviously, tears were not out of the question, depending what I chose.

'Amends, friend?' Ib rumbled musically from behind me. 'With...?'

For a moment, I almost thought it had forgotten Aina's name, or that it was loath to use it, for whatever reason. Being disgusted at her, perhaps, or not wanting to set me off.

A small part of me scoffed at the idea - I wasn't  that volatile, especially around my crewmates -, but a larger part was offended on Aina's behalf. If Ib had blamed her for her madness, I'd have challenged it to a duel, and damn its power and our friendship.

Tch. Maybe I  was easy to set off, as long as my old friend was the one being brought up. It felt...strange, I decided, to still think of her as someone I loved. It wasn't that I was opposed to the idea, far from it, but...

I had crushed on her, yes, as children were wont to on close friends. At that age, it had been far too early to understand love, much less know if I actually loved her. A relationship? Out of the question.

But now...so many years had passed, and we'd both changed beyond recognition - me more than her, ironically. Yes, she might have become physically inhuman, but appearance was the shallowest of things. It wasn't even the fact I knew Ib that made me say that; it was the fact I had, hilariously, been told I look honest. More than once.

Mostly by people I had later ditched when they had become too inquisitive or confrontational about my secretiveness.

And if a snake like me could look honest, why couldn't she remain the same kind soul, no matter her mortal coil?

If it was still mortal...

I had to keep believing Aina was the same selfless girl (well, woman, now) I had known as a boy. If only because reuniting with her was one of the few things I was looking forward to, alongside finding Three, if I could, or at least some closure.

I, on the other hand, had changed considerably. I had always been a selfish rat, otherwise I wouldn't have left her, but my selfishness had blossomed on the sea, to the point I wasn't sure she would still see me the same way, or accept me if she did.

'Ryz,' Ib prompted gently. 'If you're going to drift off this badly, I might as well put you on a raft.'

I half-turned to glare at the wordplay, only to see one of the giant's hands become a blocky-looking boat. When it made a grabbing motion with another, I jumped backwards, grumbling.

'I asked you a question,' it pointed out reasonably, not that reason has ever been particularly effective on me. It got in the way of paranoia, you see.

I bit back a retort about just letting its power give me the answer, beginning to wonder whether Ib's power was fully passive, or rather, out of its control. Could it be directed not to remove certain restrictions? I imagined that would've been useful, if Ib wanted challenges in life. It had amused itself with feats of power for as long as I had known it. I imagined being able to do anything would've made such endeavours boring.

And, maybe, Ib had asked for my benefit. Altruism was no longer such a distant thing, mused upon in rare moments of rest or only witnessed from a distance. I had both acted upon and been affected by it, as strange as the first fact still felt.

Maybe Ib had asked to get me thinking, not because it hadn't already known the answer. Gods, spirits and other such beings often did that, in stories.

Not wanting to start comparing my friend to any god, I decided that maybe it just wanted some conversation. That also served to assuage my pride: look, mother! People want to talk to me!

Not that you'd know what that's like, you rotten bitch...

'Indeed.' I cleared my throat, eyes on the grey being in case it tried to put me on a raft again. 'And it's understandable that you are confused. I am not that sure myself, to be honest...' I scratched my beard, which had become a duller green from all the recent awful weather. I'd have to clean myself, and not just physically.

'Most of the people I've wronged over the years are dead.' I'd killed more indirectly than directly, It was easier to rack up the count that way, for me, with my admittedly weak magic at the time. 'Of the few who have survived, even fewer would be willing to meet with me, much less talk, let alone forgive me.'

'You don't seem overly-concerned with their forgiveness,' Ib remarked.

'Are you concerned with being forgiven by any innocent Free Fleet sailors?' I asked, looking up at it with a hard smirk.

Its face didn't morph, but its voice was sour when it spoke. 'Well, no,' it admitted. 'Though you'd be hard-pressed to prove any of them are innocent.' I could already hear its arguments: they knowingly support a nightmarish regime, instead of striking out of their own. Even if they might die, or worse, it is better to fall fighting than live in chains.

What Ib failed to see, I'd gathered during our discussions about the Fleet, was that the average human would've been far more frightened in that situation than it. Less confident, definitely.

And people were willing to give up many things for survival. Enlightened self-interested had never really been something Ib believed in.

I nodded. 'Make no mistake: the people I want to be forgiven by, the kind ones? I merely left them behind, leaving as harmlessly as I could.' Whether they had suffered from my absence or not...I could not claim it wasn't my fault. I'd known full well my departure would leave them less well-defended. All I could say was that I didn't know what had actually happened to them after I'd left. If they'd survived.

'I don't actually want to be forgiven by the bastards I cut off.' I chuckled. 'I don't care about them, if they're still alive. But,' I drew myself up, back straightnening. 'I need to prove, to myself, at least, if not the world, that I can be more than a selfish traitor.'

It was a matter of principle, I decided. I didn't necessarily want to redeem myself in the eyes of whatever gods and mortals might know me. But I had done wicked things out of fear, and needed to do good, to make Midworld better, even if I couldn't erase the past.

I knew I was not a good man. Were I to be pushed far enough, separated from (or, Vhaarn forbid, abandoned by) my crew, I would do almost anything to save my own skin. But I would no longer compromise or end alliances or friendships because I was scared of my past catching up to me.

I told Ib as much, and it formed a square jaw to rub. 'I see, friend,' it muttered. 'But have you considered that maybe, in doing so much to remain unknown and alone - safe -, you actually put yourself in the danger as you feared your own people would pose?'

'What, are you asking if I've never wondered if I was making enemies by being a turncoat?' I snorted. 'Be serious, Ib. I'm too paranoid not to. But I'm also practical enough to nip any potential threats in the bud.' I glanced at the horizon. 'Trust me. Anyone who would have come after me is feeding the fishes, or so lost they won't find their own head anytime soon.'

I licked my dry lips, only to realise they were actually covered in some sort of cracking film, from the fog, and frowned. The noxious mist was already vile enough a normal human would've been dissolved into sludge in a hundredth of a heartbeat. The fact I hadn't noticed anything, much less been sickened, was proof of how much stronger I was becoming thanks to my magic.

Ib must've noticed as much, because it pointed at my mouth as it spoke, while I was wiping it. 'See, I always meant to ask, Ryzhan: even before your magic evolved, you could enhance your body indefinitely. Why did you never stop running, to take a stand against the pursuers you feared?'

Ah, there was that fearless logic again... 'Because, Ib,' I began patiently. 'I was always gutless when it came to them. I believed there were many mages on my trail, all versatile and powerful, each able to end me with a thought before I even saw them.'

'But you were never scared of setting foot or stowing away on any convenient ship?' it asked, sounding confused. 'Even if there were mages, or worse, among the crew?'

I rolled my eyes, then began rubbing them as I turned around, starting towards Mharra's cabin. 'I'm not an idiot, Ib. I never stuck around anyone I couldn't kill or outrun.' For long, anyway. 'I only kept running because I believed I was outmatched. It had little to do with my undying love of vagrancy, trust me.'

Ib began following me, covering more with a step than I did with several. In their default state, its feet resembled bulky, armoured boots, but it didn't make a sound as it walked. Its power at work, I thought, or maybe sheer skill. Midworld's sailors sometimes had to learn the damnedest things.

'If you say so,' it replied diplomatically. I could tell it still disagreed with me. But Ib had never had nightmares, or childhood fears. The closest thing it had ever had to my imaginary pursuers had been the Free Fleet, and I was fairly sure they were more scared of Ib than the reverse.

So, maybe my fear of my people's vengeance had been...unreasoning. Perhaps I had exagerrated the danger in my mind. But I could hardly be blamed. After all, there had been too many unhappy coincidences for me to believe I wasn't being pursued at the time, wrong as I had been.

And not by recent enemies. Sometimes, at noon or midnight, I could spot ships lined with or covered in copper, just on the horizon. That alone wouldn't have interested me, as many cultures used copper to build their ships. But I had felt the hatred, the contempt whenever I sat up, thinking of ways to hide, by magical or mundane means, until I could make my escape.

I had lost them every time, but...how?! There had never been anyone after me, so why had I been seeing, feeling?

Had I really been so damned scared I'd hallycitaned to a degree that could fool my arcane sense?

'A thought struck me...' Ib said, trailing off as the door to the captain's cabin came into view.

'Did it hurt?' I deadpanned, unwilling to show how much the one that had struck  me irked. Luckily, I was always such a miserable soul, it was hard to spot anything different. Even for friends.

Or so I chose to tell myself. I highly doubted there was anything I could deny Ib now, in any way. It would find out, or not. The choice was not mine.

'Fret not. I would not ask for you to heal me, my callous friend.' A grey tear rolled from an empty eye socket, just as the orifice disappeared.

I clutched my chest with one hand. 'Thank Vhaarn...I can't stand people asking for help. It's  unnatural,' I hissed.

'Very pesky, those people. Aren't they?'

'Oh, don't get me started.' I flicked a hand, sneering. 'They're only good for raw materials and menial work, not that they stand still for that when I emerge from my lair.'

'The  gall!' Ib gasped.

'I know!' I shook my head. 'Oh, but I'll show them. I'll show them all!'

Mharra opened the door before either of us could knock, cutting off our banter, and my cackle.

It had been a good one, too, I thought, glaring at him.

Our captain was smiling tiredly, however, and, for once, it even reached his eyes. Relieved, I straightened up from my hunched warlock posture, thought I kept my hands together. Rubbing them helped remove the slime resulting from the fog, if nothing else.

'It's good to see you happy,' Mharra said softly, and, at a closer glance, I saw there was some sort of rounded, transparent shape over his face. The mask - helmet? - resembled the one Ib had fashioned for me in my mindscape, though it seemed thinner, and was clear as glass.

The layer extended over the rest of his body and clothes, too, and I snorted, smiling. Ib could've made him as many clothes as he wanted, even if he had chosen not to armour them, but, of course, the captain had his pride. He would rather not ask Ib to play tailor too often, even if the giant neither minded nor needed resources; he had himself.

I kind of wanted to needle Mharra about how he could balance his ego and his miserly tendencies, likely from when he'd been a poor sailor.

Maybe he'd tell me once he chose to open up more about his past.

' Someone must be,' Ib said jokingly, but I didn't miss the chiding behind its humour. I silently agreed. It did the crew no good when the captain was being gloomy, not that many could be happy with us on their ship.

'If only we could all do what we must, eh?' Mharra smiled up at it, dry voice cracking, before something strange entered it. 'You two...I've been a poor captain.' He leaned against the doorframe. 'I won't pretend I could've navigated us out of this...death trap. I'm not that arrogant. Even if we'd turned around, who knows if the sea would've been as we'd left it? Midworld's face can change in a blink.'

'Sir,' I said. 'It's good to see you're not blaming itself, but I'd rather talk inside.'

Mharra gave me a look that, to most outside observers, would've probably looked genuinely dirty. 'No stomach for dramatics, Yldii.' He sniffed. 'It's a wonder to me that you're part of my troupe.'

'It is a wonder to me too, sir,' I said with a small smile, which the captain soon returned.

I managed to duck into the cabin before a gushing Ib could sweep us up in its arms, to show how moved it was by our friendship.

The fraction of Ib that had been clinging to Mharra separated without leaving a trace or making any sound, before disappearing from my senses. Maybe it had simply returned to its progenitor faster than I could track, though it could've, just as easily, made itself imperceivable, to hide in some corner until it was necessary.

Mharra's cabin was dominated by paintings, most of seascapes, though there were a handful of islands represented, with maps framed under them. Mharra was at good at drawing as he was as painting, but lazy. Since most islands disappeared in a handful of years, maybe over a decade, drawing detailed maps of them was a waste of time, ink and paper, or whatever you used. Unless you were hoping to sell them to some collector of curios, there was really no point, the captain said, in immortalising soon-to-be-gone landscapes.

As such, most of the maps were what could generously be called abstract, but more honestly crude. I looked at one depicting Middle Mountain at the centre of the Inner Sea, and decided that the names had been the result of Mharra being in a hurry, rather than said island's people being as imaginative as I was optimistic.

Mharra sat down behind his desk, in the chair he had recently modified, allowing him to slide across the room on small, metallic wheels. Maybe he had just been looking for something to do while unable to help with our voyage or the weather, but if this was what the captain did while bored...well. Anyone creative enough to make this in order to walk less could not be called lazy, even if they tinkered so they could be.

Once again, I wondered how many skillsets, exactly, Mharra had picked up during the lonely travels of his youth.

And what he was. I'd seen him do things that would've required magic, or technology so advanced it might as well have been unnatural. Making substances float in midair with no visible means of suspension, throwing his voice in nonsensical ways, and...

Heh. Getting a grim cockroach like me to open up, and stop looking over his shoulder, for once. It warmed my heart to think one could do such things while remaining entirely human, which my senses assured me Mharra was. Curious...

Mharra put his boots up on his desk, which he almost never did while sober - he said it worsened our already abysmal manners, by force of example. He held up a finger, not for our attention, which he knew he had (respect aside, one could hardly focus on the artistic marvels on the walls, too pure to sully with our unappreciative gaze), but because it helped him focus.

'We need to escape this rut,' the captain began. 'Neither I nor the ship can see a way out of this, so suggestions are welcome.' He grinned into his beard. 'Barring suicide. I used to know several people I'd rather not meet too soon, if possible.'

'Don't we all?' I said, to small chuckles. Was Ib amused by the idea of every dying? If I understood even half of its nature, it and death were probably siblings. 'Well, since no one here wants Ib to emasculate us...' I lowered my shoulders, as if deigning to perform some distasteful chore. 'I suppose I could remember sunnier seas.'

As I spoke, I cast out my arcane sense, like a fisherman throwing a net. I perceived little, as the few inner lights of whatever sea creatures swam below us were almost smothered by the mindless malevolence of the fog.

It couldn't think, as such. Or, at least, not any more than the Fleet's trained lobotomites. It could only follow its nature, and that was to corrode, to break down anything different from itself that entered its grasp. Physical, mental, spiritual...conceptual. It was even trying to eat at the edges of Ib's essence, though, thankfully, unsuccessfully.

The mist noticed the buildup to my magic, and tried to smother it, only for me to remember a sunlit stretch of sea, salty air as clean as the crystalline waters beneath.

Unfortunately, the human mind, even broadened by magic, can only picture so much. My magic could do much, but I could not imagine infinity. Not truly. And, just like there were endless numbers between one and two, two and three, and so on, stretching into what most people thought of as infinity, so did Midworld's endlessness hold smaller, but still boundless things. Such as the fog, which, my arcane sense dimly, redundantly tried to warn me, had no beginning or end.

So, the instant I cleared out the ocean around us, the fog rushed back in, with a sound like a hammer falling.

I blinked, almost startled. Not by the sound, though it would've pulverised me, had my body not been enhanced by remembered fortitude, but by how rotten our luck was. Had the fog been endless before I had tried to remove it? Somehow, the possiblity of me making things literally infinitely-wrose by trying to help did not surprise me, although it certainly pleased the jaded part of my mind.

Some people are just happy to be proven right, even about things detrimental to them. I hoped that, if I ever became like that, it would be as an old man, but...no. Most likely, I would die before then, but not of old age or sickness. After all, if I could remember strength or speed, why not youth?

'It didn't work?' Mharra asked, drawing my eyes to him. His hands were laced over his stomach as he watched me patiently, with an expression that said not to be too hard on myself. Not that I had shown any dismay, rather the opposite: my blank expression and stiff posture must've told the captain something hadn't gone as planned, otherwise I'd have at least smiled.

'Only briefly,' I replied. 'I think the fog hates us, and not metaphorically.'

I turned to Ib as I spoke. The giant gave an impression of tenseness, and, for all that it had no muscles to swell, it reminded me of those people who tried to jump gaps after a running start, in the moment their feet reached the edge.

'Waiting for me to get rid of this,' it stated rather than asked.

'Don't tell me it's beyond your power?' I arched both eyebrows, but it waved me off irritably.

'I wasn't talking to you, Ryzhan.' Before I could ask, it continued. 'But, no, there are few things I would describe as beyond me, even at this very moment. Certainly not this fetid cloud.'

'Who were you talking to, Ib?' Mharra asked amiably, only for the giant's torso to spin around, so it could face the captain.

'I was being talked at, rather than with, boss. You caught me thinking out loud there at the end.' I highly doubted Ib's mind was slow or dull enough not to catch such mistakes. 'Yes...I can remove this, and I will. Just as you intended.' At this, it snorted contemptuously. 'So clever...don't mistake malice for bad luck, Ryzhan.'

I felt the fog's poisonous nature fade away like morning dew, releasing a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding as the lingering miasma disappeared.

'Speak plainly, Ib,' I demanded, rubbing at my chest, which felt as if an anvil had been taken off it. Not the mist's aftereffects, for I had been immune to the phenomenon itself. It had been a different kind of pressure, which was now switching from crushing, but dull enough to ignore by focusing on other things, to light, but sharp, as if I'd swallowed a glass shard.

Have you ever been taken before an assembly while just knowing you are going to make a fool of yourself? With every llok and smile sent your way feeling like flensing knives?

I hadn't been, yet. I'd had nightmares that had started like that, and between them and the secondhand embarrassment from watching such gatherings, I recognised the feeling, though it was now stronger than it had ever been.

'Your magic would've been enough, Ryz,' Ib told me softly, as I felt a small piece of it detach and flow over me. 'Had the deck not been stacked. Clearly, my crew relying on me is too good a sight to pass up.'

And, just when I was thinking we could finally meet other people and put on a show before we went madder, the applause began.