Sitting up with a start, I saw a now lucid and stoic looking Sakurai sitting at the tiller of the skiff. It was still bounding across dunes of shifting silt.
Mystal was asleep at Sakurai’s feet at the bottom of the boat.
Straightening, I eyed the young woman with a flat expression. I was struggling to come to terms with this situation. After a moment I latched onto the fact that Olivia had mentioned Sakurai and let out a sharp breath as I looked out over the storm ravaged dark waves of silt.
“Is she ok?”
“Now you are concerned about her?”
Sighing, I shook my head as I said, “I am dealing with a lot right now. I don’t expect you to understand.”
She eyed me for a long moment and finally said, “Did you wake up in a strange world without the love of your life? Are you lost and confused without a single sliver of a clue to find them?”
Managing a weak smile I said, “Ok, I suppose you do have me on most of it.”
“Why were you so angry that we knew your name, Malcolm Voss?”
Staring out at the silt sea for a long moment, I finally said, “Because this is,” I paused and rephrased what I was going to say, “I thought this was a game.”
She angled the vessel so we veered around a large wave of silt and said, “I could have told you that.”
Looking at her sharply, I tapped one of the long black nails on my right hand into the wooden skiff, digging a furrow as I said, “I’m sorry for what I did.”
The warrior woman cut me off and nodded to the sleeping Mystal, “Don’t apologize to me.”
Sighing, I shook my head, “Let her sleep, I will apologize when she wakes up.”
At that Mystal, who I thought was deep in slumber, heaved herself off the bottom of the boat in my direction and wrapped her arms around my neck, “I knew you weren’t a bad man.”
She then proceeded to ugly cry into my shoulder.
Sighing, I gave her an awkward pat on the back of the head as I looked toward a bemused Sakurai.
“Tell me everything you know about me.”
With that I listened to the tale of how I had crossed the first layer of the Spiral.
Of my adventures with Sakurai, Nomura, KKG and Protag.
I learned about Valerie.
She spoke at length about how each of the players had vanished not to return, including her boyfriend Nomura.
As she spoke I tried to remember the events but the memories eluded me. How had they tampered with my mind?
Whatever they had done to me it certainly appeared to have affected Sakurai as well.
Then she spoke of Theodora, the strange NPC who had given me my abilities. My anger at her about her intimate knowledge of me and my world had been a pale reflection of the revelations I was suffering now. That knowledge had been so intrusive… Perhaps it was the knowledge of someone who actually knew what the hell was going on here. Maybe she had the answers?
As she ended her tale I asked, “Where do you think Theodora might be?”
She shook her head and looked toward the distant horizon of the floating asteroid that made up this level of the Spiral, “If anyone knows it will be Valerie.”
Nodding, I glowered up toward the sky and the center of the Spiral, “First stop, Valerie. Then we locate Nomura. Finally, we find Theodora. She has answers, I know it.”
Spinning the ring on my finger, I quietly made plans for how to face the madness of this situation. We spent the hours that passed on our way across the Silt Sea largely in silence… I say largely because Mystal was there.
“What is your world like?”
“Have you ever seen a Silt Kraken?”
“Would you like to see one?”
“Have you ever piloted a ship into a whirlpool?”
“Do you think I could become a vampire?”
“Are you excited to see Valerie?”
That last one had a distinct weight to it that was suspicious to me. It was as if she was wiggling her eyebrows and winking at me suggestively. I simply narrowed my eyes at her and considered the meaning of that statement. Had I, in whatever state I had been in before Speers and Lydia had kidnapped me, chosen to get touchy feely with an NPC?
That didn’t seem likely. Given how tense and emotional things had been with Sydney I couldn’t see myself trying to medicate my sore feelings with a virtual character.
The vow I had placed within my Ring of Eternal Bonding came back to me then:
“I vow to never betray Valerie de Lafontaine.”
Sighing, I ran a hand over my face and muttered under my breath, “I’ll have to navigate all this with care.”
After roughly five hours had passed Mystal jumped up in the boat, tilting it back and forth with her prodigious size, and waved in the direction of not just one ship, but an entire flotilla of vessels on the horizon.
As the skiff approached I could see that the flotilla was made up of all manner of vessels from small junkers to giant ships of the line. We approached just such a vessel at Mystal’s direction. Each of them had the distinctive energy hulls we had seen on all the ships this far. However, all of the vessels in the flotilla had a charcoal grey hull as opposed to the garish fuschia of our own skiff.
As we got near a number of its crew lined the rail looking down with wide eyed interest. Most of them were Haithan but there were a few humans as well. They wore mismatched tattered clothing or leathers and carried weapons varying between cutlasses and pistols. An older Haithan woman, shorter than the typical female, with silver shot through her midnight black hair and scars and wrinkles contouring her plum colored skin glared down at the boat and growled, “Where is your damned ship Mystal?”
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A younger human man laughed and asked, “Did you sink another one?”
The young mist woman stood and glowered at him with a pout, “No! The Order sank this one!”
Several crew members laughed at that but the older woman growled, “They didn’t follow you did they?”
Mystal grabbed onto the netting hanging off the side of the ship and started climbing with some effort, “No!,” she grunted struggling with her climb as she finished, “I’m the mistress of stealth.”
I gave Sakurai a concerned look. The skeleton woman seemed to be a focus of concern amidst the crew but I couldn’t read her own expression. The growling woman spoke up from above us, “Who are those two with you?”
Mystal giggled in the rigging and spun while holding on as she said, “Tell Valerie…”
She was cut off by the growling woman, “Cap’n Lefontaine.”
“...to get her best kissing lips on!”
The crew members started to murmur at that and I waved both hands in an effort to forestall the confusion, “No, don’t tell her to do that.”
Just as the last word crossed my lips one of the men stepped aside so that another figure could join them at the railing. I was taken aback as the woman glowering down at us was Mystal’s physical twin in almost every way.
Her thick onyx colored hair was not bound into side braids but otherwise she had the same luminous golden eyes, swept back sharp ears and lavender skin. She was a physically intimidating woman with broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms.
In her disposition, however, she could not have been more different. Her thick black lips were drawn tight into a thin line and she had the bearing of a military commander. When her eyes landed on me however they widened and her lips parted slightly. Managing to give the woman my best smile and a small wave, I effortlessly climbed past Mystal and onto the deck.
The crew stood around me, glowering and resting hands on their weapons.
Valerie seemed to get her senses back and gave me a small nod, “It’s been a long time Malcolm.”
Mystal straightened and smiled, “Six years!”
Turning to her with wide eyed surprise I growled, “You didn’t say it had been that long.”
“You didn’t ask!,” she chirped.
Turning back to Valerie I said, “I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long. Mystal said you would be the one to ask if I needed to find Theodora.”
The giant Haithan woman crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at me, “Why do you need to find her?”
How open did I want to be about all this?
Before Speers and his cronies had tampered with my mind I had obviously trusted her to a degree.
“She knows something about why I’m here and how to get down the Spiral. I need to know what she knows.”
Valerie eyed me for a long moment. Her expression softened and some of the tension left her shoulders. She turned and glared around the deck before saying, “Get back to your stations lest I feed you to the deep horrors of the silt!”
The crew scurried back to their tasks with hurried apologies to their captain. As the giant skeleton warrior stepped up next to me Valerie offered her a small bow, “Sakurai, it’s good to see you again.”
“I am glad to see you as well; however, like Malcolm, a large amount of my memories seem to have vanished.”
Valerie looked at me sharply, searching my face for something. I’m not sure what.
Nodding, I offered my kindest smile, “That does seem to be the case. I am eager to catch up though.”
She nodded and looked to the severe looking older Haithan woman who still stood by at attention, “Etta, see to the crew. I’ll be in my cabin with our visitors.”
Etta clapped a fist to her chest in salute and stalked off shouting orders at the crew as Valerie beckoned to us and led us into a pair of double doors in the sterncastle of the ship. After a short walk through a hallway lined with doors Valerie pushed open the door at the far end to reveal her cabin.
It filled the entire upper deck of the rear of the ship and windows allowed a broad view of the starlit black dunes of the Sea of Silt. The room itself had a bed just big enough for a two meter plus tall captain and the walls were adorned with plaques bearing different kinds of weaponry. There was a massive desk that took up the area directly in front of the large windows. It was strewn with maps and tools for navigation.
She tossed her heavy leather hat onto a hook by the door and strode in letting her shoulders sag and a deep sigh escape her lips. I took the chance to analyze her.
Captain Valerie de Lafontaine Level 45, Elite
Tier E
Weakness: None
Resistance: None
HP: 16511/16511
MP: Unknown
To my surprise, she turned and wrapped her arms around me. I was stunned to find that I could feel the heat of her body… I could smell her. She smelled like sweat and some kind of sweet spice that I couldn’t name. The gesture took me off guard but I eventually returned the hug. She muttered into my shoulder, “Seven below it's good to see you. We need you back now more than ever.”
After a long moment I nodded and gave her a gentle pat on the back back, “Well, if there is one thing I’m here to do, it’s help. Tell me what’s going on.”
She broke away from me and walked around her desk to move some maps around. Looking at them the bulk of this layer of the Spiral seemed to be the Sea of Silt and an archipelago of islands. As she arranged things she spoke, “After you vanished we were forced to take this ship from the cultists. Once we secured it I returned to Lothin and L’Chasse and convinced my mother to immigrate our people here. After our victory,” her expression darkened, “the Order adopted a more extreme and militant stance with L’Chasse.”
Remembering the city I had arrived in, I winced. It had indeed been reduced to ash and ruin. It was difficult to see the city that was in what remained. As I nodded somberly, she continued, “We established a small town in a hidden cove,” she gestured at a small island on one of the maps, “and my mother and the Foixs hold court there while we keep the majority of the people moving around the Pools to avoid their patrols.”
Nodding, I tapped out a small rhythm on the desk before taking a chance on a question, “And Theodora?”
Valerie’s jaw tightened as she said, “She left us pretty soon after we arrived. She wasn’t interested in being part of the movement. She did seem adamant that you would eventually join us. Of course that little monster chose not to give a scrap of a clue as to when she expected that to happen… or about anything really.”
After a long moment she said, “We are certain of one thing, however. While she had the opportunity, Theodora escaped down the Spiral.”
After a moment pensively asked, “Why do you need to find Theodora so badly?”
A note of bitterness entered my voice as I replied, “As I said, I’ve lost a lot of my memory. There have been,” my voice was tight with anger as I continued, “developments in the ‘Elseworld’ I am from. It turns out that the people who sent me here did so with…”
Trailing off for a moment I considered how to explain and finally settled on, “Brainwashing. They are keeping me prisoner in this world for their own needs.”
Turning to Valerie, whose own expression was hardening, I said, “One thing I do remember quite well is that Theodora knew things about me that people from your world should not know. If she knew those things, she must know more about what my jailers are doing.”
After a long moment she offered a nod of assent and said, “We will do everything we can to help you find her. It certainly helps that finding Theodora and defeating the Immolated Order seem to be along the same lines.”
She shifted her maps and pointed at the largest island in the archipelago, “The Order has a fortress. They call it Ember. It’s heavily defended as it's the only way to advance to the city of Lotz, the holy dwelling of their goddess. All of their leadership is there,” she eyed me with significant weight, “Sevrin is there.”
Mystal had told me a great deal about Sevrin, and I did still have a quest to find and defeat the wicked priest. It looked like it would still be some time before I could finally find the man and have a strongly worded conversation with him.
Taking a deep breath I crossed my arms over my chest, “Alright, if Theodora somehow snuck through that fortress she is on the back burner then. We need to prepare to face this cult head down the Spiral.”
She gave me an incredulous look, “It’s been everything we could do to stay alive. They have an entire fleet of ships hunting us.”
Giving her a confident and sly grin I said, “And now you have me.”
Valerie blushed at that and then nodded, “There are always things that need doing.”
“First,” I looked at Sakurai, “we need to find Nomura.”
