NOVEL NEXT 35 – Make it So
“I signed your employment contract, cherry boy,” she said before urging him on. “Now c’mon, what is my mother paying you for?”
Reluctantly, the young bodyguard came over and helped her wrangle the couch through the doorway, getting it in place on the topmost portion of the top deck just in time. It was utterly deserted, even the few crewmen that normally worked the rigging and kept watch had retreated below deck. So it was that Ezaryl had to, with Theris’s help, manipulate some of the rigging to move a sail out of the way and open up the view of the sky.
Finally, she could lie down on the couch and watch the lightshow, instead of doing as she was supposed to and hiding in her cabin. Even so, she made a brief jaunt to that over-decorated place, scanning the room and instantly making a beeline for her target - a lacquered wood box sitting atop a chest of drawers along some of her other possessions. From its generously padded interior she took a long ornamental pipe and a much smaller wooden box, then finally returned to the deck and reclined on the sofa.
A small pinch of the family pipe filling, a spark of lightning to ignite it, and a long, light toke. The flavor was light yet complex, the scent infinitely less odious than those smoking-weeds popular in the west, the effects subtle. Colours grew more saturated, the edges of things more distinct, the body relaxed while the mind sharpened. Ezaryl had always thought of it as inhaling a herbal tea, perhaps because the mixture involved the same herbs.
With each passing moment the sound of throat-singing intensified, and the air filled with more spontaneously-manifesting Fog wisps. Soon enough, a sort of monochromatic aurora swirled overhead and everything became enveloped in a pallid glow. The singing cut off, then returned as a chant.
The Serpent’s Head slowly moved ahead and the view of its surroundings deformed, as if it were pushing through a membrane overlaid overtop reality. A slimy, lurching feeling washed over her, then was overtaken by the familiar warmth that arose from Fog in one’s lungs.
Fog-sailing had always fascinated her, if only because it would remain forever out of reach for one without the proper blood. Ezaryl had gone through the months-long process of learning to Fog-walk, if only for short distances, but as useful as it was, it was nothing compared to this.
Whence one strode into the Sea of Fog, one but dipped their toes in the cosmic waters - but the realm of natural law is but a speck floating atop the cosmic ocean, and venturing from the edge threatens to sink one into the depths, as so many arcane vessels had - be they called dungeons or aught else.
The Fog-sailors knew better. They knew to fortify their minds with alchemic concoctions, with trepanation and glyphs etched on the insides of their skulls and talismans embedded in their brains. So it was that each and every Fog-sailor had a silver coin covering the hole in their skull, for all it took was to drill holes around the edges of the coin and affix it in the trepanation hole for the body to grow bone through the holes of its own accord. What had begun as a mere measure of necessity was now a ritual of passage, each and every full-fledged Fog-sailor possessing their own special coin. The outward-facing side showed the person’s family name and public name, while the inside depicted something deeply personal chosen by the individual through a days-long ritual involving innumerable hallucinogens.
Fog-sailors knew a great many things, a great many things specific to the craft of guiding vessels on their jaults through the Sea of Fog. Expanding upon the island analogy, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say they were tracing the shoreline of the material world, just far enough that the shore was always well within sight lest some eldritch horror try to drag the sailors under. Whilst to the passengers it was a boring and uneventful journey, the Fog-sailors could neither eat nor drink all throughout. It was through this pressure that the First Fog-sailor was said to have taken upon herself aspects of each and every thing that lived in the desolate corners of the world, passing such abilities down through her line for generations uncounted.
All knew this to be folklore, and none cared - it wasn’t the myth that mattered, but the golden grains of truth that lay at the foundation. Much in the same way, none cared whether the First Fog-sailor had truly strode across the Sea of Fog from another world, or whether such claims were merely meant to punctuate her at-the-time unique capabilities. Fog-sailors were inheritors of long lines, cultivated over generations for survival without sustenance and unrivaled navigation skills - whether or not those lines all began at a single nigh-deific predecessor mattered little.
The Krishorns were not Fog-sailors.
They were sellswords-turned-merchants, their roots so old and deep their detractors said they would “One day drag down the Floating City of Karga”.
The city, too, played a part of the Fog-sailor’s craft. It was half-submerged in the Fog-Sea, its great spires were but metaphysical scaffolds and hubs, filled by stairways and myriad Fog Gates behind indestructible doors.
“It’s done. We’re sailing,” she said to herself, then got up to go look over the railings. A grin spread across her face when she reached the edge and saw the Fog-shrouded waters stretching out as far as the eye can see. The chanting was gone, replaced by the Fog-sailors’ entranced throat-singing once more.
Right now there was nothing more to be done, so Ezaryl retreated from the edge and sat down on the couch. The heiress relaxed her mind and, recalling a song meant to be accompanied by throat-singing, put her pipe away and began to strum away at her instrument once again.
