Swamped

SILENCE.

That's close. If it were any other phrase, you might wonder if it were a regional variant.

But this phrase goes back to the Aedran Empire. The words themselves were carried over directly from Aedran. And "silence" is definitely not an Aedran word.

Is it just a message? Are they telling you not to say any more? That would be rather rude, especially if they're being ambiguous about it.

Well, they appear to understand Common, at least, so you can send something back. Best to keep it short. You settle on I NEED TIME.

The reply is quick. NO TIME TO GIVE.

At first you think it's an unwillingness to negotiate, but then you realize it may rather be saying they can't do it. Perhaps they don't know how to use time magic either.

If that's the case, then you might have to settle for just getting what you most need out of your guest before sending him on his way. You had a few high priorities, but now you doubt you'll have a chance at more than one.

Well, it's clear enough what that one matter is, so best to get on with it.

A message from the Mantiss family

This man still has a message for you. The last time you asked, he didn't seem to know what it was.

But now, for the first time, you can get a good look at his face. And you think you understand. You've seen a sailor with a face much like his.

A sailor who had to flee from the Guild, leaving his family behind.

Children that young who get mixed up with the Guild tend to end up as couriers. Which is another word for a messenger.

Right now, he seems dazed. Probably by all the ether flowing through him as you try to keep him here and they try to pull him back. Maybe you can work with that.

"Boy!" you say. "Have you a message for me?"

The man looks at you. He seems a bit confused, but he pats his pouch.

"Right here," he says. He reaches in, and looks baffled.

"I thought it was here. Maybe I hid it in a deeper pocket?"

He starts rummaging around, and soon pulls out a folded piece of paper.

The last message he was to deliver before he left his old life. You imagine it's something of importance to him, so you think you'd best not hold onto it too long. Instead, you just look over the message and commit it to memory before handing it back.

"Thank you. Go ahead and keep that, it's of no use any more."

He looks like he's about to say something, but then he vanishes. Leaving you only to ponder the strange message that the Mantiss family wanted delivered to someone named Alexander Long.

You write it down while it's still fresh in your mind, and then look over the message again.

Our friends from the distant east have made us an interesting offer. We think you may wish to hear it, as well.

So here's a message from an unknown time, that a dream told you to expect. Why is it important?

Well, for one, the "distant east" is more than likely where you're headed. Which means whoever these "friends" are, they have a way to communicate with one of the richest merchant families in Kroska.

At least, they were when you left. Though if they're getting "interesting offers", then they probably still have considerable influence at whatever time this message was sent.

Beyond that, you're not sure what you can work out. Though, you notice that a sheet from a notepad has fallen from where the man out of time vanished. Must be from the present, and couldn't go back with him.

It seems to be in Resk's handwriting. A list of observations. One of them mentions Lou's birthday gift... hold on, his birthday was today, wasn't it? And several of the other topics are clearly from today, as well. Perhaps they all are.

Hold on, though. If this is all from today, then one of these topics doesn't make much sense.

It's a note about the attendees at the mission's launch party, when they christened the ship with a new name.

There's a line here that says "Who attended naming ceremony?"

Now, you may not be the most sociable person, but you do pay attention to what's going on. If someone had given birth on board, you'd have heard about it. Especially if there was a whole ceremony about it.

There was, however, a ceremony for renaming the ship. But that was all the way back when you set sail. Why would it be on a list that's otherwise filled with events from today?

Perhaps it's naming something else? What, though? You can't think of anything else people would make such a big fuss about naming.

Or perhaps it's just that something about recent events has put the ship's naming ceremony in a new light. Again, you're having trouble imagining what that could be.

Wait. Now that you're looking at the list as a whole, you realize that Resk told you about most of these topics a little while ago. Did he mention something about this and it just slipped your mind?

You think back, and you're fairly sure he didn't mention a naming ceremony. But maybe he mentioned something related to it and that's just how he wrote it down.

Then it strikes you. He did mention someone who was at the naming ceremony, didn't he. Someone quite prominent. He just brought them up in a different context.

In fact, what he said at the time was so odd that you can remember the exact words.

Lansor's finest? More like Lansor's dynast. Eh, Wiz?

"I'm sure some of those sailors wanted a union like they said, but there's too many of Drake's cronies for that to be the real plan here."

"Drake? You'll have to refresh my memory on who that is. One of the sailors?"

"Not hardly, he'd probably drop dead if he actually had to set foot on a ship. I'm talking Emil Drake, the Justice Minister of Lansor. Pretty sure you've met him. Pompous, muscular fellow. Always going on about how his police officers are keeping things under control. Last I saw him, his arm was in a sling."

"Sounds a little familiar, but I can't say anything he said stood out to me."

"Ha! Not surprising. They call him Lansor's finest, but he acts more like Lansor's dynast. Thinks himself above everyone, and that he'll be running the whole show soon enough. I suppose he could be by now, it has been six months."

"And he's got sailors on this ship?"

"Not that surprising, Wiz. Every bigwig in Lansor's done the same thing. But most of them just want their people around so they can claim a share of the glory if we succeed. I've come to think Drake wants something more than that. For one, it's looking like there are more sailors working for him than we already knew about."

Drake was at the naming ceremony. He talked your ear off without saying anything of substance, as far as you could tell, which was why you'd put the whole thing out of mind. Resk must think the other attendees are the likely suspects.

You can't see why he'd want the messenger to ask you about that, though, especially when he worded it in such a confusing way. You don't have any particular insight on it.

Though it does remind you that Resk pays more attention to the political situation than you do. Maybe he has some idea who Alexander Long is. You should definitely get to the bridge and pass the message along, since it's apparently the main reason the man was sent here.

But first, you've got one more thing to take care of here.

Recording your observations!

You think you've seen all you can from here in regards to magic, so you need to write it all down. And you need to still be here so you can double-check things you're not sure about.

The results are disappointing, frankly. You have a lot of information, but you can't make sense of any of it. And there's no one on the ship with enough magical expertise to look over it for anything you may have missed.

Hmm... but you do notice one oddity. And double-checking confirms the relevant numbers are correct. You run through your calculations again to be sure, and arrive at the same unusual result.

It's so strange you have to triple-check it, and the result is the same. The only way these numbers can work is if the flight symbol is also the source of the concealment spell.

Or at least, if they're in the same place. You suppose there could be another symbol under the floor. Of course, it would be hard to check that without disturbing the flight symbol.

Either way, it would be nearly impossible for that to happen coincidentally. Which suggests that the whole setup - the flight symbol, whatever's making you sink, and the concealment spell on the sinking - is meant to work this way. Someone, somehow, benefits from your ship going up and down.

Well, that's definitely something worth talking to the captain about. You hope someone on the bridge has more of an idea what to make of it than you do.

You start walking to the bridge. There's not really anything more productive you can do down here.

To your surprise, though, when you arrive, there's someone here besides the captain, Bertha, and Resk. Someone who wouldn't usually be here.

Chip?

It's Chip, the navigator. Who doesn't usually come to the bridge unless something important has come up about the route, and isn't looking particularly good right now either.

"South," Chip mutters. "South!"

Before you can ask what's going on, Donnie rushes in behind you. He's dressed in full surgical gear, and has blood all over his gloves.

"I don't know why Chip's wandered this far, but now that I'm done, I'll be sure to get our navigator back to rest," he says.

"How's the patient?" Bertha asks.

"She's stable, but not much better than that," he says. "Should be fine for at least three hours, which means I can get back to my other patients. Wouldn't hurt if I could get some help there, too."

"You know better than I do who's reliable in the infirmary," Resk says. "So go take them along."

"I would, but most of the sailors with experience there are already patients. I was going to ask Buster and Haley, but they're busy overseeing the cannons. I wasn't going to take them off that without your approval."

"Mr. Resk, do you think we need both on the cannons?" the captain asks. "They do have expertise there."

"Probably not both. They work well together, but I'm sure Ms. Haley can manage fine with another assistant. Go ahead and take Mr. Buster with you and fill him in on the patients' needs."

"Thank you, sir," Donnie says. He puts his gloves in a thick pouch and grabs Chip by the arm, then walks off.

"Did I miss something?" you ask.

"Medical emergency. Couldn't move the patient from her room. Don't see a reason to go into further detail about it, it's pretty much taken care of the best we can manage right now," Resk says. "Got anything for me, Wiz?"

"Well, I managed to work one thing out, but I haven't the faintest idea what it means. As best as I can tell, the flight symbol is what's concealing the spell that's pulling us down."

Resk blinks a few times.

"Now, Wiz, magic isn't exactly my specialty, so clarify something for me? How does that work? I didn't think magic symbols could do more than one thing at a time."

"That was my understanding as well. My best guess is that it's not the symbol itself, just that the source is in the same place. Possibly a second symbol under the floorboards. But I can't say for sure."

"Not without digging up the floorboards, I imagine," Resk grumbles. "And let me guess, that would mess with the symbol and maybe sink the ship."

"Quite possibly. Though I believe there may be enough space for a grebling under the floorboards."

"So dig up some other floorboards and ask one of the greblings to have a look," Resk muses. "But all our grebling sailors are busy. I suppose we could ask our special guest, but I wouldn't want to press her into doing that while we're under attack." He pauses. "Speaking of guests, has our Flaming Messenger spoken with you? I gave him a list of things we discussed."

You hold up the list.

"I'm aware. The messenger himself has vanished." You see no need to clarify what you know of how it happened. "Though I did manage to get what I believe to be the message he had for us."

"Is that so? Well, let's hear it then."

"No," the Captain says. "For my ears only."

"You're the captain," Resk says with a shrug. "Or are you making this order in your other capacity?"

The Captain doesn't say anything. Resk makes no further comment as he and Bertha leave.

You're just about to share the message with the Captain, but before you can, he has some words for you of his own.

You're not allowed to miss any more intelligence briefings.

"Wiz. You've missed a lot of intelligence briefings."

"I'm not avoiding them," you protest. "I missed the last one because a pump burst and nobody could reach it. The one before that was when strong winds threatened to tear the ship apart. And as I don't have an apprentice or a spell to be in two places at once, I can't promise future attendance either. Now, do you have anything specific to bring up, or can I pass along the message?"

The captain frowns.

"Seems odd, doesn't it? An emergency requiring the wizard's attention nearly every time there was a briefing. You were always better with numbers than me, Wiz. How likely does that seem to you?"

"It's less strange than you'd expect, when you consider how often problems pop up. I'd say we have pressing matters of one form or another popping up every six days on average, and about half of those are unreasonable to solve with nonmagical methods. And it wasn't every briefing, either. Eight out of twelve."

"But briefings don't take a whole day, and most of these problems don't take a whole day to solve," the captain muses.

"The time of day does make it a bit odder. It could just be that's when problems are most likely to be noticed. Is that all? Because I do have a message for you."

"I'm saying I think it would be good for you to come to the next briefing. No matter what."

You shrug.

"Fine, but don't expect me to go down with the ship. Right now it's not even clear we're going to get to the next briefing."

"I have faith that we will," the captain says. You know he never says that lightly. "Now, on with your message."

You don't know why he had to send Resk and Bertha out to say that part. But it doesn't especially matter. You pass the message along, explaining what you know about the context. Even the time magic.

"This messenger was from another time?" the captain asks, skeptically.

"That's right. I don't know how he got here, or even precisely what time he got here from. I have a suspicion it was the future, but in many ways it doesn't really matter."

"And the message was never intended for us."

"No, but someone thought we should hear it. What do you make of it, sir?"

Before he can reply, you suddenly hear Resk's words passing to you through the spell you cast earlier.

Wiz, is there a way I can show you what I'm seeing? I don't know how to describe this.

"Well, I recognize the recipient's name," the Captain says, barely giving you time to send a reply back. "Alexander Long owns several duck farms in Kandria. It's a booming business over there, I understand. But if this is from another time, who's to say if it's even the same man?"

If it is, then this is probably about money. Or power. But you need to get back to Resk.

Tell me where you are and I'll have a look when I'm done here, you send through the hat.

That might be too long. It seems to be running away.

Describe it as best you can.

"The part that intrigues me is 'friends from the distant east'," you tell the captain. "Even more so if the recipient is in Kandria. That's already on the east edge of the continent."

"So you think they're talking about someone out here?" the Captain muses. "Maybe these pirates."

That's pretty hard, because it doesn't have much of a form. It's like I'm seeing the damn wind itself, it's just rushing around, and I don't know what it's doing. I'm guessing it's magic. Certainly not like anything else I've ever seen.

"That would be my guess. Though they might be even further along. Still, I assume whatever forces wanted me to pass on this message expected it to guide us in some way."

The captain looks thoughtful.

"One thing comes to mind. If these 'friends' are making offers in the future, maybe they're open to making a deal with us."

"Well, if they are the pirates, that raises the question of why they're attacking us without trying to talk. And if they're somewhere past here, I don't even know how we'd contact them. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask, if we had a way to."

It's annoying to handle two conversations at once. You're already trying to think of what to say to Resk.

But then he saves you the trouble by saying something else. Something intriguing.

Praise be to Nual!

Praise be to Nual!

You're a bit confused at first. It should be difficult for him to accidentally send a message to you, and you're not all that religious.

Did something happen? you settle on asking.

Sorry. Was about to tell you something, but then I saw the strange wind, or whatever it is, block an incoming cannonball. It might be on our side?

"Praise be to Nual!" the captain suddenly says. "He has heard our prayers and sent aid."

"Much as I appreciate the help, I do wonder if we did anything to persuade him to intervene," you reply. You think it would be good to check in on Resk. Maybe you can see this possible divine intervention for yourself.

"All I can say for sure is that he is pleased. Most likely our service to him has not gone unnoticed."

Where are you, Resk? I want to take a look for myself.

Two levels down from the bridge. We found some unconscious cultists here earlier. Don't know if it's at all related.

Right. I think I'm done here. I'll be down soon.

"Well, I'll be sure to thank him for the help," you tell the captain. "I don't think there's much more we can get out of that message right now, so I'll go check in on Mr. Resk."

"Nual be with you," the captain says. "And tell Bertha to come back here. She's bound to be nearby."

It's strange. The captain didn't say a word about the message after Resk's prayer passed to you. And this intervention seems very sudden, not to mention it would have been nice to have earlier.

On the other hand, you can be sure that Nual had a hand in it. There's no fooling the Captain about that. Which leaves you stuck wondering what a god is thinking. That's never a place you like to be. They're far too idiosyncratic for that.

You head down two levels and spot Resk. You ask him if whatever he saw is still around.

He directs your attention to the window, where you see some kind of colorful streak flowing through the air, knocking cannonballs back at the pirate ship. And you can't sense any ether from it, which means it could well be divine in origin.

But you notice something else. Something strange.

Just a glimpse of something under the water. Is it mechanical?

You can both see and sense something moving beneath the water. But you can't see much of it from here, and you're only detecting a small trace of ether. Not enough for any spell you know of.

But what you can see has a metallic color to it. Perhaps it's ether-resistant metal and what you're sensing is the remnants of a spell that it blocked?

Except, you don't know of any metal that can hold up well against both ether and salt water. So even if that were it, you're just left with another mystery. As if you didn't already have enough of those.

You point it out to Resk and ask what he thinks. He just shrugs.

"Doesn't really look like anything to me. Can you get a better look with a spell?"

"Technically, but it's harder than you might think. For reasons I imagine you don't want me getting into."

"Probably not," Resk grumbles. "And it's just a curiosity right now. Might be important, might just be a discolored shark. And I know you don't like to cast spells frivolously. So I guess the question is, do we have any way of figuring out if it's important enough to go to that trouble?"

Save your effort. Have the spotter on crows nest check it out.

"I've used the scout's eyepiece before. Seems it ought to be strong enough to get a better look, even if he doesn't leave the crow's nest," you reply. "Could probably get a better look from the deck, of course."

"I'll send a runner, and tell them to inform you once the scout's checked," Resk says. "I've got other things to take care of right now. You probably do too."

You do. Like figuring out what's trying to drag the ship down. Though that's proven difficult, and in the meantime, the Captain asked you to do something much easier. At least in theory.

"Indeed. On which note, where's First Mate Bertha? The Captain wants her to return to the bridge."

Resk frowns.

"Don't think she can do that for a while. She's dealing with something else right now."

Interrogating an unusual captive?

"And what might that be?" you ask.

"She was asking about Ms. Rebecca's lookalike," Resk says. "Wanted to handle the questioning herself. She figured with Donnie back at work down there, she could get on that."

"Refresh my memory. A lot has happened and I don't remember much about that specific matter."

"Sailor going by Becky, of all things. Looks just like her. Might be a relative for all we know; we didn't have a strong reason to look into it. Just kept an eye on her in case she tried to pull some sort of impersonation trick. From what I've been able to gather, she ran off when Mr. Lex and Mr. Graham started questioning her. Then I chased her down and she was crawling around on the walls with webbed hands and feet. She tried to run through a strange gateway, I stopped her, heard a voice coming from it. She also left a note to the effect that the ship was going to sink and we couldn't stop it."

You think about this.

"That last point sounds like it might be highly relevant to what I've been trying to figure out. Are you sure you told me about this before?"

"I thought I did in the meeting. Maybe I missed a detail or two. At the time, I wasn't entirely sure my breather mask had worked, to be honest..." He stops. "Oh, yeah, that's one more thing. She had a breather mask with her. It looked like it went with the armor the unidentified soldier was wearing. Do you need a refresher on him, too?"

You don't answer him, because you're already rushing off. You already know two key things. First, that the soldier was pulled back to his own time; and second, that he didn't have a breather mask on him.

So now you need to check if the mask was pulled back with him. If it wasn't... well, you're not entirely sure what's going to happen, since time magic isn't something you know much about.

Which isn't to say you can't make an educated guess based on the knowledge you do have. And it's not good.

It could cause an uncontrolled translocation across some alternate dimensional axis due to ethereal snap back!