Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.
Content warnings:
Death, murder.
The drums sound at first light but you are already awake. Today is the day you will finally meet the Goddess. She’ll either embrace you, ripping you apart and reforming you into a being of magic and flame, as mercurial as the sea, or She’ll withhold her blessing and never again will you walk upon land. You take a breath and hold the humid, tropical air deep in your lungs before releasing it and dressing in your ceremonial leathers. You knot the leather straps around your chest, replicating the geometric patterns favored by your beloved cousin, Sindr. The one who disappeared. The one whose name has been stricken from all family annals.
You step outside your hut and weave through the tangled mangroves toward the coast. Though the sky remains dark over the island, the sun scuttles low on the horizon and climbs ever higher. It spills creamy light over the archipelago to your right but cannot illuminate the snarling force that prowls on your far left. There, the Goddess thrashes above the ocean, cloaked between folds of churning black clouds. Her children spark and thunder around Her, hazing that horizon with lashing rain, waves that rival mountains, and whips of lightning that have sunk many a ship foolish enough to brave the storm without the Goddess’s blessing.
A shiver of fear spools down your spine, snagging against long-buried secrets. Certainly the Goddess will understand why you and Sindr had no choice but to do what you did. You study the Eternal Storm a moment longer before pushing aside your fear. You are also a descendent of the Goddess. You will prove this.
The drums speed up, racing like heartbeats as more tribes gather at the island’s oldest port. A sacred site, it is the traditional harbor your people use to embark on this holy pilgrimage. The colorful tribal banners of Laskoe, Opse, and Aurelian snap in the wind alongside the standards of tribes Viis and Bakaal. Anchored to the dock bob six schooners, burlap sacks of provisions piled along their gangways and their wards shimmering with freshly renewed magic. You do not know which one you’ll be assigned, but you hope it’s the Adjacent or perhaps The Golden Swell. Any but the Seconds Between Light and Sound. Its slip lurks towards the very back, segregated from its siblings so that its presence doesn’t contaminate them.
You form a loose group with the others who will partake in the ceremony while the tribal elders take their positions around the dais. One of the warriors sounds the horn. Silence submerges the village and all eyes focus on the Revered Talesh xe Ysma as she ascends the platform. She clutches a leather bag in her hands, its eldritch magic a subtle blue. Everyone holds their breath as the Revered reaches inside and presents the first talisman. The smooth, bleached jawbone of a fish. She shouts a name, Fon child of Urten, before placing the jawbone on the sacred pedestal, a monolith with the names of the Goddess carved into its weathered face. A movement in the crowd draws your eye. Fon xe Urten hugs his mother, Urten, before shouldering his way through the crowd to kneel before the elders.
While you listen to the Revered Talesh xe Ysma rattle her bag and call names, the anxiety in you crests. It tingles across the scar along your inner wrist and you force yourself not to scratch it. Other village youths fight their smiles as their names are trumpeted and look pleased at the thunderous response of their tribes.
At last you spot it: A braided length of shimmering black rope, the kind coveted by the most celebrated pirates. You hear your name. The weight of it is delicious. You swim through the crowd, barely acknowledging the hesitant pats, the half-heard whispers, the anemic applause. The anticipation of the moment is a sweet burn as you wait to see what vessel you’ll use to introduce yourself to the Goddess.
The Revered’s gaze is solemn and as you take your place at her feet, you finally glimpse the aura of magic that shrouds your talisman. An aura that matches a ship moored to the outskirts of the dock, shunned by the others. The Revered’s announcement rings like a death knell:
“The Seconds Between Light and Sound.”
• • • •
The salty spray of the Phian Sea slaps you in the face as you steer towards the heart of the Eternal Storm. The Seconds Between Light and Sound navigates the monstrous waves with a dexterity that surprises you. The other six unlucky companions dump water overboard, but it isn’t much help against the Goddess’s children.
Hail lashes your scales, stinging like island wasps. Ayine, the god of rain, pours a deluge so thick that you can only see a few feet ahead. The five ships around you look like phantasms, disappearing and materializing with each crashing wave. Lightning crackles, forking through the sky as Ingra tries to chase you away from the Goddess. Her twin sister Uwen bellows warnings in a voice heavy and loud; you feel it vibrate down the masts to rattle your bones. Ingra’s lightning screeches by so close you can taste the tang of ozone against your tongue. You could swallow down her magic, making Ingra’s power part of your own. Remind her that you are one of the Uxe and you, too, are beloved of the Goddess. Instead, its electrical current makes your braids stand on end and your scales itch, but you ignore it and wrestle with the helm, careful to keep the waves from capsizing your vessel.
The Golden Swell cuts through the water on your port side. It sails near enough that you can see the ship’s magic spit saffron-colored sparks each time its defensive wards deflect a god’s attack. The helmswoman, her voice an elegant contralto, sings strength and speed into the glyphs that line the hull. The Golden Swell pulls ahead. You bare your teeth, accepting the unspoken challenge.
The Seconds Between Light and Sound responds to your every command, plunging headlong into the fracas, navigating the tumultuous nature of the Goddess’s twin set of twins. You whoop as your belly flops, following the bow up and over a wave’s crest, shrieking in delight at the precious seconds of weightlessness before you crash back down into a trough so dark it looks like ashes from a cairn.
Nde howls around you and black clouds press in close, directing more wind your way. Nde’s targeted assault drains two of the glyphs that secure the rigging. It would spell disaster if the sails broke free.
You start to shout a warning, but Uwen rumbles over you and Nde’s twin brother, Ayine, lobs a mouthful of rain down your throat and instead you can only sputter and choke. Your shipmate notices the danger and rushes towards the rigging, pouring magic into the damaged glyphs until they once again shimmer with arcane power.
Crisis averted, you grit your teeth and steady the wheel, keeping on course for the heart of the hurricane’s eyewall. You wonder about the others who have made the pilgrimage before you, the ones unlucky enough to board the Seconds Between Light and Sound.
Very few of them have ever returned. More often than not, the Seconds Between Light and Sound was found drifting towards the harbor, undamaged but empty, her defensive magics depleted. Long has it been whispered that the Goddess herself placed a malediction upon the ship, though those pilgrims who’ve sailed her and returned insist that the Seconds Between Light and Sound is blessed. They believe the Goddess deliberately abducts the crew, sealing them deep within Her storm to serve as Stormriders, Her personal priests and priestesses.
Or so the rumors go.
Your cousin Sindr was one of those pilgrims doomed never to return. Your family never mentions her, shamed that she had been found unworthy of the Goddess’s favor. You do not agree. Rather than wipe away her memory like the tide washing away a sandcastle, you cherish it. She’d always been your role model. You wanted to look just like her. You let your hair grow long and braided it around your horns; you wrapped your leathers in the same patterns she favored. The pair of you played at pillaging villages and sailing the untamed seas to hunt for foreign merchant ships and claim their spoils as offerings for the Goddess. Once, you even pretended to explore the vast continent Reza, where the Goddess does not tread, and a bone-white ocean of sand hides yokarre and other vicious demons.
You wanted to become a pirate because that’s what she wanted. Excitement always seasoned her voice whenever she spoke of captaining. Of reaching the age where she could meet the Goddess and be allowed to join a crew. Of finally adding the coveted moniker “et”—“shipchild”—to her name.
On the day of her ceremony, your uncle, her father, squeezed your hand. Both your hearts pounded in your throats when the Revered shouted her name. Despite being called to sail the Seconds Between Light and Sound, your cousin’s enthusiasm never wavered. You will always remember the playful wink she gave you before she vanished aboard the doomed ship.
A searing flash lights up the corner of your vision. Shouts ring out and you turn to watch. Ingra has managed to unbraid the Adjacent’s defensive wards and score a direct hit to its mast. Flames char the decking and it lists to port. Another lightning bolt slams against the hull and you gawk at the form your mind can barely contain. Hewn from jagged edges and unforgiving sparks, Ingra wreaks havoc across the deck, hurling ribbons of magic and lightning at fleeing forms.
An unnatural wave, one more massive than any of the others so far, swells along the ship’s starboard side. Through the haze of rain, you watch as the wave forms a wide, hungry mouth an instant before the swell breaks over the deck. Blinking through the stinging downpour, you wait for the Adjacent to reappear.
It never does. Instead, the dark form of a lone survivor bobs along the violent waves, fighting to stay afloat. His screams and pleas for help cut through the raging storm and you recognize his voice. Fon xe Urten. Your hands flex around the helm, talons digging into the wood. You shove Fon’s cries from your mind. It is forbidden to interfere.
Let the Goddess’s will be done.
• • • •
Your arms shake with exhaustion. You’ve been navigating for hours, singing magic into the ship’s protective wards, pouring your own will into battling the elements and the deities that seek your death.
A crewmate offers to take your place at the helm and you grunt with relief, but the work isn’t over. Instead, you go to relieve yet another shipmate; you prowl the deck, putting out any fires Ingra manages to start. These flames water cannot touch, but you can douse them through other means. Through a break in the curtain of hail and rain, in the deepest section of the hurricane’s eyewall, you spot your destination: a picturesque, tiny island that holds the Goddess’s temple. The most holy of holy places.
A bubble of divine magic encircles the island. Within it, sunlight, warm and golden, spills over its gentle mountain peaks, and nary a ripple mars the sea’s placid surface. But this tranquil sanctuary remains miles off, disappearing and reappearing with the apex of each swell.
As you crest your dozenth wave, horror turns your hot blood cold. Nde whirls in a vortex up into the clouds, dancing with his siblings in a cyclone of thunder, rain, wind, and lightning. The Phian Sea churns below them, birthing a maelstrom a mile wide and rotating at least forty knots. From inside its swirling waters you glimpse the corpses of wrecked ships, their twisted and broken hulls jutting out of the seafloor like teeth.
Beside you, someone makes the sign of the Goddess against their brow and murmurs, “Eternal Storm preserve us.”
Everyone springs into action. You sprint for the helm, fear lending you speed. Your crewmate fights the wheel, turning the schooner to evade the maelstrom’s rim and avert the doom of getting caught in the current’s inexorable pull, but you know it’s useless even before Uwen’s thunderous bellow cracks the wards and Ingra boards your vessel. For an impossible moment you gape at her and she at you. Her visage is fierce and terrible. Her eyes crackle lightning in crooked forks. Her mouth, a circle of rowed teeth like a shark’s, spreads wide with mirth. She reaches into the folds of her robe of clouds and thunder, a gift from her sister, and frees a mace that thrums with divine magic, crepitating with the tumultuous essence of the Storm.
And then she’s moving, running and smashing. In one hit, the foremast shatters. Another takes out a portion of the portside railing. A third rips a hole in the decking. A lightning bolt careens just over your shoulder. Your teeth clench and the muscles along your left side bunch, cramping up. Not exactly sure how you’re going to survive this, you launch yourself at Ingra.
Your magic is eager and willing and your fingers fold, thumb curving towards middle, sixth crossing with fourth. You summon forth the flame of your blood, refining it with the pattern of your intertwined fingers, and launch the lick of arcane power at the godling. Ingra is so startled by your audacity that she doesn’t deflect the assault. Magic hits her square in the throat like an iron anchor and pins her to the deck with enough force to split wood. You land atop her, your anger foolish and reckless. You call on your mana and growl the incantation. An aura of green buffets you, sinking between your scales, into your joints, and enhancing your speed. Not enough to face a godling, but it is better than nothing. Your talons extend to their full length, shredding up from beneath your nailbed, and you strike, hacking and slashing.
Ingra bellows and a wave of divine power starbursts out of her. Lightning punches into you, forking across your body and burning away your magic. Your muscles seize—burning, burning—and Ingra launches you up and over with a casual flick of her wrist; the horrified expressions of your shipmates blur as you tumble head over tail between broken masts and ruined sails.
You soar beyond the Seconds Between Light and Sound’s reach to join the corpses of those who have displeased the Goddess.
• • • •
The cold almost kills you. There is a saying among your people, better to drown than to grow cold. You refuse to do either. The maelstrom squeezes you, yanking you lower, and you don’t fight. You allow it to toss you around and around until you spot what you were hoping to find. Inside a sunken ship, its ruined hull ripped into thirds, you catch a flash of pink light. You angle towards it, battling the intense current when you need to, letting it ferry you along when you don’t. Your lungs burn for a gulp of air. Even with the fire that boils in your veins, the cold dark of the ocean steals more energy than you’d like. You latch onto a chunk of driftwood. It scrapes against your scales but doesn’t cut you. Your vision sloshes sideways. You take a breath before you can stop yourself and caustic water floods through your mouth and into your lungs. Ayine, the youngest of the Goddess’s divine children, cackles. His glee is palpable as he twists the sea to his will and tries to drown you by rain and hail.
But you’ve arrived at the pulsating light now, and, ignoring the patter of your heart and the burn of saltwater in your lungs, you curl your fingers around a metal pyramid. Its rosy glyphs throb in the darkness and you send them a blast of your mana and weep from relief when they flicker to life. An anemic bubble cocoons you, shoving away the heavy press of the ocean and clearing a space just wide enough for you to collapse. You purge grey seawater from air-starved lungs. It tastes of brine and dead things and smells as foul as a fisherman’s week-old catch. You blink the last of the spots from your vision and slowly the heat of the pyramid stirs your blood, chasing away the chill.
You shake with fading adrenaline. The beacon’s power won’t last for long, not long enough to fight the sea back to the surface. Not long enough to finish your pilgrimage to the Goddess’s island.
You slump against the sodden ground. Barnacles dig into the back of your thighs. Around you, things with glowing eyes and gnashing teeth dart from one dark hole to another. An eel slithers out of the mouth of a cracked skull tangled inside a nest of kelp and rigging.
You try not to look at the bones. Try not to imagine your cousin trapped here in the deep. Try not to imagine you joining her here forever.
• • • •
Somehow you doze. It’s the only way you can explain the unexpected appearance of Sindr xe Lessandr. She squats just outside the beacon’s chrysalis of magic, her dark scales luminous like refracted moonlight through cresting waves. Her braids loop around her horns and her eyes glimmer like endless pools of still water.
“Hello, little cousin.”
Her voice is deeper, more resonant than you remember, almost as if she has been taking lessons from Uwen. She scoots closer to the cocoon of light but is careful not to touch it. “Wise to activate a beacon, but what do you intend to do now?”
You open your mouth but no sound comes out. You blink back tears and wrestle with your unsettled heart. For years you had prayed, whispering to the waves that crashed against the sand near your hut, begging to hear her voice just once. To see her again, just once. To confide all the things that had remained unsaid between you, but now that she crouches before you, words fail.
Something flickers across her features and a teasing smile bends her lips. From that expression, you realize she knows. That she has heard you when you spoke to the tide. She glances around at the sunken ship and her nose wrinkles. “You mean to stay here, then? Do you give up?”
“No, never.”
Your voice is hoarse and dry from saltwater and fear and despondency. Sindr stands and you see she wears a wrap of shells and kelp. She looks skeletal, nearly translucent. Nothing like the hale and hardy Sindr you knew from before. An unstoppable force, the embodiment of her name.
“I will open a way to Her temple. Come. The beacon’s power is almost spent, and the Goddess would like to see you.”
It takes a moment for her words to register. Your heart kicks against your ribs and you stagger to your feet. Your knees threaten to buckle and you reach out to steady yourself on something that was once a barrel but has now calcified into a home for small crustaceans. The beacon’s magic flickers then holds steady. You do not know if this is what you should do, but you will trust your cousin. She has never steered you wrong, no matter what the village has said.
• • • •
It isn’t exactly the land of the dead, but it is close enough. From around countless hearths you’d heard tales of this place: Ayine’s Heart. A sanctum at the bottom of the Phian Sea that has never been touched by sunlight, never been sullied by air. Some believe a temple hides in these depths, one tended by the Velah, distant cousins of elves who dwell in the water with tails like fish and hair the shade of gemstones. Others claim it is no temple that lies within Ayine’s Heart, but a sepulcher; its keepers are the drowned, pressed into eternal service. As you peer at the dead drifting towards you, you are inclined to believe the latter tale hits closest to the mark.
The ghosts of those who have gone before watch you with haunted black eyes. They blend in so well with the current of darkness surrounding you that if not for the beacon you clutch in your hand, you would not have seen them. Their scales look ashen and cold, their movements grim as they follow you. The ocean presses in all around you and despite the warmth of your blood, you shiver with the cold. You wonder what became of your ship and your crewmates. Were they able to escape the dual threats of Ingra and the maelstrom or are they even now sinking towards the abyss, drawn here by Ayine’s bloated fingers?
You stagger up a jagged incline so steep it leaves you gasping. The pyramid’s magic continues to shove at the ocean, clearing a damp trail that reeks of brine and algae, but the beacon’s light dims more steadily now and the basket of air it manages to wrangle from the Phian Sea folds in on itself smaller and smaller with each passing yard. Soon its bulwark will fail. You must be out before then.
You will be out.
You trip over something dark and flat and focus on the path ahead. Sindr paces just outside the barrier, weaving through the dead and darkness towards something you can just barely see. An aura of not-light, of less-gloom. Maybe of salvation.
As you crest the hill and gaze at the spectacle below you, you realize that neither tale of Ayine’s Heart is grand enough to hold the wonder and horror of this place. A dead coral reef arches up out of a trench like the corpse of a whale. Sea vents spew scalding gas and minerals into the water, their colors stark against the corpse-white of the reef. Though you spy no Velah, other monstrous and extraordinary creatures the likes of which you never could have fathomed swim in lazy corkscrews, drawn towards that strange not-light within the reef.
You follow Sindr, picking your way down a treacherous slope. The ghosts whisper now, and more crowd you. You cannot decipher their words, just the hollow click of throats no longer capable of speech, and the cold hiss of death. None reach out to touch you. All flinch away from Sindr. Many stop before the bleached reef, unwilling to venture further.
Your cousin guides you inside the reef towards six arches that twist out of the seabed like the petrified tentacles of a kraken. They look like a series of portcullises, all knotted into one another. It reminds you of an antiquated sailor’s glyph the elders called erski—“immure.” Your barrier flickers and a stream of sea water trickles inside, stinging your feet with cold foam before the beacon flares back to life. Sindr stops and waits beside the twined gates. The expression on her face alarms you. Cold. Implacable. Determined. The face she wore when she gutted the day’s catch.
The face she wore when she strangled that foreigner. She had used the outsider’s hair as her offering. Later, you would use the black rope as yours.
The dead that have followed you inside suddenly part and a shape—bigger than the reef, bigger than any ship swollen with magic and unfurled sails—slinks forward on too many tentacles. They extend from its torso like wings. An eight-fingered hand the length of a dock slithers forth, and you step back. Fear locks your throat. Eyeless sockets in a face your mind can’t register bores through you, stripping away the lies you would hide behind, to peer at your exposed essence. There is no malice in its assessment, but neither is there welcome. Instead, an oppressive expectancy settles over you like newly crafted, too-tight leathers.
Sindr steps into the gap between you and the god. In her eyes—or, where her eyes should be, now that the god’s magic has stripped her of enchantment and instead exposed a horned skull worn smooth by the depths—lurks a whisper of regret.
“My Lord Ayine will not let you continue,” she states simply, “unless you pay a toll.”
You start to ask what the toll could be, but then you know. The restless ghosts around you stand as testament.
Temple. Sepulcher.
Has there ever been a difference?
Before you can escape—fleeing exactly where, you don’t know—Sindr lunges. Her talons shred the bulwark of light and the pyramid’s tenuous magic disintegrates.
The ocean and the dead rush you in one massive swell.
• • • •
If you were to think about it, you would say the stories always begin with the Goddess’s radiant visage. It was said Her smile coaxed the sun to rise each morning and the moons Kie and Kondüe to turn their faces towards Her as they arced through the current of stars. Though She traveled the world and called the skies and mountains friends, the Goddess was lonely. With the end of the Age of Wild Magic, the old gods had withdrawn from the mortal world, and the Goddess longed for a place of Her own. And so She reached deep into the Phian Sea and called up an island, Uxxe. There She lived happily, giving birth first to Her twin set of divine twins before crafting Her mortal children, the Uxe, from bone, ash, and flame.
For a time, everyone lived in peace—until the hubris of scaleless foreigners from the mainland brought calamity upon the world. Yokarre overran Reza and used its people as chattel and food. The Goddess knew that the demons’ ruler, the Guthermoth, would soon turn its hunger for souls and flesh towards Her beloved home. And so in the Uxxe’s center, She sacrificed Her physical form and became the Eternal Storm, encircling the island and protecting its people. A shrine commemorates the spot where She is believed to have ascended and houses your people’s most prized relic: a bottled shard of Her essence. Surrounded by offerings and prayer scrolls, the shrine marks the holiest site on Uxxe.
The site where you and Sindr followed the foreigner that long ago afternoon.
Most foreigners were never allowed beyond Uxxe Port. Only those with the special favor of the Revered, or under the aegis of a pirate captain, could travel so unmoored. You had never seen a human up close, and you were shocked that this one lacked not only the scales of your kind but where their horns ought to be, they possessed only hair the color of winter sunlight. You wondered, did their blood also pump hot in their veins, scalding enough to set fires if spilled?
The human didn’t sense you as they knelt at the shrine, head bowed as if in fervent prayer. They didn’t see Sindr when they cast their furtive glances around to ensure there were no guards patrolling the grounds. (Why would there be? No Uxe would desecrate such a sacred space, much less take anything.) When the human removed the Goddess’s shard from its bottle and stuffed the divine relic into a dingy knapsack, they didn’t hear your surprised gasp. They didn’t notice when Sindr, her shock morphing to outrage, snatched up a nearby offering. Only when they turned to leave did they spot you, but by then it was too late. Sindr looped the shimmering black rope around the foreigner’s neck—once, twice—and yanked, snapping your people’s most sacred law.
By decree, you should have immediately hauled Sindr before the village to face execution for defiling the Goddess’s shrine with violence and death, and breaking a captain’s aegis.
Instead, you turned away from the sacrilege. You freed the Goddess’s shard from the knapsack. Her divine essence pulsated like a warm heartbeat against your palm. You exhaled a slow breath, part in marvel, part in fear. To touch the crystalline relic was to break another sacred law. The penalty? Horns severed in disgrace and forced exile.
Telling yourself She would surely forgive this trespass, you eased the shard into its bottle. A jolt of the shard’s magic nipped your palm, burrowing beneath your flesh. You yelped, nearly dropped it.
“Was it damaged?” asked Sindr. Though she’d dispatched the human with no more effort than she used to haul in her father’s catch, her eyes were wild with the magnitude of what she—what you both—had done.
Rubbing away the remainder of magic from your tingling palm, you shook your head and returned the relic to its altar. The pair of you crouched before the body and debated. By nightfall someone would realize the foreigner was missing, and the village would rally a search party. If anyone found out what you’d done . . .
Sindr gestured for you to help her carry the body away from the shrine. The pair of you pitched the foreigner down a sandbank. Expressions grim, you both slit your inner wrists, just below the hard carapace of your scales. Steaming blood welled from the injury and splashed onto the body. The foreigner’s salt-stiffened clothes ignited. Before more of the body could go up in flames, you each claimed your trophies. Sindr hacked free a lock of blond hair. You confiscated the shimmering black rope.
Neither of you speak of this incident again.
• • • •
The ocean of dead drains the heat of your life; you feel your blood cooling in your veins; your body shivers with pain and fear. Your lungs struggle for air, but you force yourself not to take that breath. Ayine watches with his eyeless face, Sindr at his side, the exit beckoning just beyond her shoulders. You cannot speak, not with the dead shoving their ghostly fingers down your throat, the cold of the ocean diffusing the little warmth you have left. Your limbs are heavy, almost as heavy as your head. Still, you manage one sluggish thought:
I also am a descendant of the Goddess.
That flicker of divine magic, the jolt that zapped into you when you returned the relic to its alcove flickers with the thought, buzzing so loud you wonder if they can hear it. Your mouth works against bloated, dead knuckles. “I give you this body, but you cannot keep me from her.”
Ayine and Sindr shrink back. At first you think it is from you, but their attention has turned towards a sudden flare of incandescence behind them. Your vision fuzzes at the edges, and your lungs no longer beg for air. You no longer feel your body. The wispy silhouette of a condensed storm strides towards you, its brightness a brand against your soul. You feel that spark inside you latch onto it like a lightning rod and you know it is Her coming to claim you.
The Goddess cradles you through the gateway and you emerge on Her island, the calm sanctuary amidst the storm. She is beautiful, and the form She wears glitters with power. Eyes the color of wind, voice like a crack of thunder, She bids you welcome. She remembers what you have done for Her.
She offers you a choice. Remain here as Her acolyte, protect her most sacred temple and guide the pilgrims who’ve come to honor Her.
You imagine yourself in this role. Similar to Sindr, who has pledged herself to Ayine, you would be immortal, dressed in the Goddess’s colors knitted from the eye of the storm, a spear forged from spiral rainbands as your weapon—
The Goddess’s smile wilts at the edges and Her attention turns to the distance, to something only She seems to see. For the first time, you notice Her divine children milling around Her, far enough away to be unobtrusive, but close enough to eavesdrop. Their expressions are unreadable. Only Ayine seems displeased. Your cousin lingers near him, her body restored to what you remember, her gaze both sad and wistful as she watches you.
The other choice is to return to your body, tie your essence and magic to the Seconds Between Light and Sound, and sail the seas. The Goddess has work that needs to be done. A new threat lurks on the horizon, just beyond Her sight, a darkness She cannot discern. She would have you face it in her stead. In exchange for gifts of untold arcane power, you would never again set foot on land, never return to Uxxe. As her Witch-Admiral, you would navigate a ghost ship crewed by Stormriders. Your life would be lonely and danger-filled, your name a curse, your tale used to frighten children.
The Goddess cannot promise you will survive what you will face.
You lower your head, your thoughts blurring together in a whirlwind. But in your heart, you know your decision. You turn to your cousin, ask if she can join you. The Goddess motions to Ayine, who twists his face but releases his claim. Sindr takes your hand in hers and the pair of you tell the Goddess your desires.
• • • •
The Seconds Between Light and Sound rides the storm with an ease you hadn’t experienced when you set sail from Uxxe. You navigate it, feeling the ship as an extension of yourself. Sensing every inch of it, the magic in its glyphs, the power in its storm-colored sails, in its expanded hull; you even sense the thoughts and minds of its sailors.
You do not need to control the helm with anything more than a thought, so instead you watch as Sindr, your first mate, barks out orders to the crew. Like you, they are not dead, but not quite alive. Each have been pressed into the Goddess’s service. When the Revered first called their names and consigned them to this ship, had they suspected their grim fates? Will your tribe mourn your loss when the Seconds Between Light and Sound fails to return to its lonely slip?
Somehow, you suspect they will be glad to see it gone.
Your gaze shifts to the horizon, to the wide possibilities that wait there beyond the anchor of land. Towards the looming danger the Goddess foresees, and the adventure you know awaits your arrival.
With the perpetual storm at your back, the Goddess’s children howling around you in thunder and wind, in rain and swells the size of mountains, you allow yourself a smile. You are a descendant of the Goddess, after all. Her Witch-Admiral.
Let Her will be done.
