The Princess and the Blood of Eternity

Chapter 14: An Iron Miracle

The maelstrom continued to grow in strength and size. Cleo watched on, unable to believe the visual before his eyes. A bowl-shaped massive depression in the ocean was swallowing an island's worth of seawater. The watery vortex of death had become a force of its own as it steadily rocked the boat from side to side as the sails vainly tried to pull them away from the center.

His life had not prepared him for this. A life working aboard a small fishing boat, then a middling trade business across the western trade, was not the experience that lent itself to catastrophic world-ending events.

Storms he could handle. Swells large enough to toss his ship, ya sure. The world was supposed to function logically with the tides and the seasons behaving in a steady and predictable manner. He should be able to look at a map to find his location and destination. Islands weren't supposed to break apart and disappear. As far as he was concerned, the world had stopped functioning as it should.

And then there were his personal issues. He should be dead. No ifs, ands, or buts. His body had sustained enough damage for the blood loss to have killed him, let alone the rest of his injuries. Those creatures had ripped him apart, and unless his memory had been altered, he distinctly remembered bleeding out on the beach. He might even remember the release of dying, not a pleasant thing to mull over.

Being overwhelmed for the past few weeks, he was feeling numb. Trapped, and no escape. The slow descent of the maelstrom felt like it could go on forever.

He couldn't help but wonder if there was anything he could've done differently. The journey, conversations, and decisions. However, even neck-deep in pessimism, he couldn't see how predicting a maelstrom was possible, not when their existence was universally called into question.

Then there were the revelations imparted by Marius. To say his words had left him confused might be an understatement. His parents, or rather his people, had perished in a volcanic eruption that had destroyed their entire island? Had Marius lied about his whereabouts during the event? And what was this nonsense about being a keeper? Marius claimed the title had once been important.

And imagining himself as anything loftier than a ship captain felt like a waste of time, and all together foolish. What'd happened to his life as a simple trader? The thing he'd been so proud of. He preferred having nothing but his next voyage waiting for him on the horizon. Freedom, simplicity. And here he was, nearly dying and thinking he could be with a princess. He needed to stop lying.

In the past, the reason he'd always accepted his "uncle's" detail-starved explanation was because of his young age and a need to avoid confrontation. Now that he was older, he required something more, a better explanation, more details. It didn't help that Marius had always been distant, fragmented, like a book with half the pages torn out.

Not knowing his home, family, or people certainly had made the story easier to swallow. But to learn it had been a lie, or a different version of the truth... He just wished reality could be less unpredictable, an impossibility in the current climate. While he was at it, might as well wish his "uncle" Marius was a powerful god, and Lilith wasn't a princess, but a beautiful maiden in search of a promising sailor.

At least he'd learned the truth before it was too late. Too late for what? The thought echoed its mockery. Marius losing his mind? Cleo didn't know how to interpret the indiscriminate threat. Did that mean he was dying? Regardless of whether they were blood related. The old fool had always been there for him, food and shelter—he'd provided meaning to his life.

Thus, no matter what happened, Cleo would never turn his back on him. Not to mention the pain of losing him might be more than he could handle.

Marius represented a piece of his identity, a connection to a people he'd lost. Growing up, he remembered the first time Marius had shown him how to fish, back when they'd only owned a small rowboat. That day had ended in utter failure. They hadn't caught a thing, mostly because they had spent half the morning trying to get the bottom of their hull unstuck from reeds along the shallows of an island in the Sea of Car'rakan. Marius had lacked the patience to be a proper parent, but he'd still done the best job he could. And despite how he acted, the old fool was his only family. Losing him would signify he was truly alone in the world.