Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 15: I Gotta Have Faith-a-Faith-a-Faith-ah, Part 3

The deep blue was a place of warranted, and majestic, awe. Around the Ash isle, there were sunken shuttles and other advanced machinery that did not dissolve with sea water, ruins of buildings that were once meant to be. It was beautiful, if eerie, and the sea life was just as grand.

I saw the sharks, the swordfish and schools, the bizarre supermonsters that live under the water and people write legends about. I saw many a thing, but my mind became a little lost as the propellers sent me through the waters. I had nothing else to do but think, no one to talk to and the driving being little more than keeping a straight line and following the trajectory.

What, then, did I think of?

I thought of family, of allies and friends. I didn't really have friends—well, not until recently. I wondered if they thought themselves my friend, or if they saw me a means to an end? Would it make any difference? I had no one but myself to blame, really, for my loneliness, I'd killed and alienated whoever I could to get to the top.

What of family?

My mom and dad were not bad people. If I could ever talk with them, I'd tell them that. Naïve, yes, but that doesn't make a person evil. It makes them complicit, but not evil. Then that had me thinking about the kid, and of Lil. You know, Lil had the right idea. Maybe—just maybe—we should take care of her, give her the family she never had. The one I never made. It isn't so bad having a succubus around, either—Lil, at least.

I thought of all the cool things we could do as father and daughter. We could throw firecrackers at Thimble and play pranks on the cultists. I could teach her magic, if she had the aptitude for it, and we could terrorize—well, we can't terrorize anymore, but we could aid the villagers and give mystical pseudointellectual advice to superstitious buffoons. It'd be fun, wouldn't it, to have a kid that looks up to you? To know you're not alone, and so they're not alone. To have a family.

Now before you ask, I mean we'll take care of Keith too. I couldn't leave him out, despite the fact he wanted to annihilate me.

With thinking of family came thinking of wants; the want of better days, the want that the bad would pass. In retrospect, everything I seemed to have wanted to do was such small fry compared to the grand scheme of things. Things like Ishmael trying to save his misbegotten people, or the fact that older gods lingered out in the vast unknown, out in space, ready to eat us up.

Ah, things for a better time. My thoughts had wasted me away as I reached the Barrier. It seemed that this sub was faster than the ship Nebby gave us.

The Barrier was a bunch of pylons spaced out evenly around the waters of the island, meant to fry the engines of any ship that went through it. The tall pylons met with a thin sheet of magnetic energy or some such; I don't know what it was, exactly, but I did know it fried a lot of ships.

Usually the Mainlanders had ways of getting in and out, being able to bypass the Barrier, but some unlucky fool-merchant would sometimes stray on in and lose his ship's power. That was ripe pickings for pirates and villains. I was just hoping my engine didn't fry out, I didn't want to be out here this far away and sink to the bottom.

It didn't though. This is where I had a choice: continue on to the Carcer or take a chance and ride on to the Mainland.

I had a new lease on life, I could escape to the Mainland, but I wouldn't. I assumed no one else would, either. I had dreams now, aspirations, goals that I could reach. I had want of a family, of friends, of my home. My home, inadvertently, was the Carcer, for better or worse. I was never one of the crowd at the Mainland, and all I knew and all I began to care for was there at that little dirt pile I called a kingdom.