brine-smelling water rushed beneath Fu Ran’s feet and tried to pull them out from under him. He maintained his balance and, with a glance, saw that the wave didn’t quite reach the stern, where Xu Liang remained in his meditative stance. Perhaps the wind would die too quickly if he stopped. Still, Fu Ran couldn’t help worrying that he would look back after the next wave and find that the mystic had been swept away.
“NOT YET!” YVAIN hollered to her crew from the helm. The beast rose again as it undulated through the sea, showing more of its lustrous scales this time, gleaming green and gold in the sunlight directly overhead. The strange fog was slowly falling behind them, along with whomever it concealed. The dragon stayed with them, more playfully than persistently. Dragons seemed more curious than malicious. However, their curiosity—because of their size—often proved deadly to sailors. Time would tell the outcome of this encounter.
Yvain’s gaze flitted toward the sorcerer aboard her ship, who’d maintained the presence of a specter throughout the journey thus far. Everyone knew he was there, but the days had gone by without so much as a glimpse of him as he holed himself in the tiny guest cabin and proceeded to pray.
As Yvain understood it, the Fanese people held their gods and ancestors in the same respect, believing that many of the gods began life as ordinary humans who, through leading extraordinary lives, were later deified. It was not that way in Aer. To the Aerans, heaven was known as Celestia and the ‘People of the Stars’ governed the lives beneath them. Sometimes they elected to show themselves through the eyes of mortals—one such as Yvain, whose eyes were considered several shades too brilliant to be anything but Celestian. It granted her no special talents, nor any powers—so far as she could tell—but many attributed her strong leadership skills to the star who’d given her its grace. She was the second child of her bloodline to have such eyes, a bloodline that was not purely Aeran, but crossed through an unprecedented marriage between her Aeran great-grandmother and a Neidran man.
In Neidra—the sweltering green land to the southwest of Sheng Fan—people believed in multiple gods and also worshipped their ancestors, the greatest of whom supposedly went to live among those deities after death. Yvain respected all religions and thus believed that whomever or whatever Xu Liang prayed to was listening and answering. His ‘wind god’, if such were the case, may turn out to be the salvation of her crew this day, and of the dragon, who she did not wish to harm.
The beast rose and flashed its glistening scales again. The sheen was so bright as the sunlight played off the dragon’s iridescent hide that Yvain had to close her eyes. At that precise moment she experienced a vision so sudden and so vivid that it was as if she hadn’t shielded her eyes at all from the blinding splendor of the dragon. She saw the sun rise over a cold, barren landscape. The trees were as skeletal fingers, grasping for the unreachable warmth. The land they were rooted in was as broken, unhealed skin, shrouded in an ill mist. A human figure stood alone, a silhouette against the red-orange brilliance of the ascending sun. Man or woman, child or elder, Yvain could not tell, but the sight of the individual made her instantly sad. There were tears in her eyes when she opened them again.
The dragon was gone.
The crew relaxed slowly, hesitant to release the collective breath everyone had been holding until they were certain the beast had returned to the depths of the ocean.
Fu Ran joined Yvain at the helm. The Fanese giant laughed, but he couldn’t conceal his relief. “Maybe we should consider keeping a sorcerer onboard for moments like that.”
Yvain’s moist eyes traveled past Fu Ran and stopped once again at Xu Liang. He was still in prayer, oblivious to the dragon’s departure. “I want to talk to him
“NOT YET!” YVAIN hollered to her crew from the helm. The beast rose again as it undulated through the sea, showing more of its lustrous scales this time, gleaming green and gold in the sunlight directly overhead. The strange fog was slowly falling behind them, along with whomever it concealed. The dragon stayed with them, more playfully than persistently. Dragons seemed more curious than malicious. However, their curiosity—because of their size—often proved deadly to sailors. Time would tell the outcome of this encounter.
Yvain’s gaze flitted toward the sorcerer aboard her ship, who’d maintained the presence of a specter throughout the journey thus far. Everyone knew he was there, but the days had gone by without so much as a glimpse of him as he holed himself in the tiny guest cabin and proceeded to pray.
As Yvain understood it, the Fanese people held their gods and ancestors in the same respect, believing that many of the gods began life as ordinary humans who, through leading extraordinary lives, were later deified. It was not that way in Aer. To the Aerans, heaven was known as Celestia and the ‘People of the Stars’ governed the lives beneath them. Sometimes they elected to show themselves through the eyes of mortals—one such as Yvain, whose eyes were considered several shades too brilliant to be anything but Celestian. It granted her no special talents, nor any powers—so far as she could tell—but many attributed her strong leadership skills to the star who’d given her its grace. She was the second child of her bloodline to have such eyes, a bloodline that was not purely Aeran, but crossed through an unprecedented marriage between her Aeran great-grandmother and a Neidran man.
In Neidra—the sweltering green land to the southwest of Sheng Fan—people believed in multiple gods and also worshipped their ancestors, the greatest of whom supposedly went to live among those deities after death. Yvain respected all religions and thus believed that whomever or whatever Xu Liang prayed to was listening and answering. His ‘wind god’, if such were the case, may turn out to be the salvation of her crew this day, and of the dragon, who she did not wish to harm.
The beast rose and flashed its glistening scales again. The sheen was so bright as the sunlight played off the dragon’s iridescent hide that Yvain had to close her eyes. At that precise moment she experienced a vision so sudden and so vivid that it was as if she hadn’t shielded her eyes at all from the blinding splendor of the dragon. She saw the sun rise over a cold, barren landscape. The trees were as skeletal fingers, grasping for the unreachable warmth. The land they were rooted in was as broken, unhealed skin, shrouded in an ill mist. A human figure stood alone, a silhouette against the red-orange brilliance of the ascending sun. Man or woman, child or elder, Yvain could not tell, but the sight of the individual made her instantly sad. There were tears in her eyes when she opened them again.
The dragon was gone.
The crew relaxed slowly, hesitant to release the collective breath everyone had been holding until they were certain the beast had returned to the depths of the ocean.
Fu Ran joined Yvain at the helm. The Fanese giant laughed, but he couldn’t conceal his relief. “Maybe we should consider keeping a sorcerer onboard for moments like that.”
Yvain’s moist eyes traveled past Fu Ran and stopped once again at Xu Liang. He was still in prayer, oblivious to the dragon’s departure. “I want to talk to him
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