Aldric Vane's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Aldric Vane needed the wrecked hull to float again. It was his only way off the island. Each dawn he walked to the shore where the shattered ship leaned in the shallows, green cracks glowing along its ruined planks. Each dawn his black eye burned before he reached the water. Today it burned worse. He carried his tools and his driftwood staff, its spiral grain warm against his palm. Salt wind pushed his loose hair. He had lost his whole crew to the storm that broke this ship. Now the sea itself would not let him mend it. He knelt at the waterline and reached for a fallen beam. The black eye flooded. His vision drowned in cold green. He saw the ocean floor, dark and endless, rushing up through his own skull. His knees buckled. Water climbed to his chest before he understood he had crawled into the surf. A shape uncoiled beneath the waves. It was the thing that had touched him during the wreck, the thing that left the void in his eye. Its body could not decide its form, shifting from serpent to something with hands. Cold light pulsed under its skin. It wanted to pull him down and finish what the storm had started. "No," Aldric said. He drove the staff into the seabed. He had run from this creature for months. He had warded his home against it and never faced it in the water. Running had gotten him nowhere. The ship would rot before he ever repaired it while the sea claimed him each morning. He chose to stop. Aldric opened his black eye wide and did not fight the flood. He let the creature's cold pour into him. Pain lanced up his silver-scarred arms. Through the staff he pushed back, matching the tide with his own magic. The wood drank the cold and warmed to a fever. The creature thrashed. Its glow guttered. For one moment Aldric saw faces trapped inside its shifting body, mouths open, silent. Then it broke apart into foam and sank. He dragged himself onto the sand and coughed seawater. His black eye no longer burned. When he looked at the shore, his vision held steady. The sea lay flat and quiet. The wreck waited. But something had changed in the water's silence. The creature had suppressed more than his sight. With it gone, faint sounds carried across the shallows. Voices. Men laughing, arguing, calling names he did not know. They came from somewhere past his home, past the wards he had raised years ago. Aldric sat up. He gripped the staff and stared inland. He had beaten the thing that guarded the wreck. Now the island itself was speaking with voices that should not exist. He could repair the ship at last. But he was no longer sure he was alone.