Chapter 9 | Part 2

Drusniel bailed water with cupped hands while the boat rocked beneath him.

The nightmare sea poured in over the gunwales, pooling at his feet, heavier than water had any right to be. Each handful he threw overboard seemed to pull at his hands, reluctant to leave, and by the time he’d cleared one section, another wave had refilled it.

The boat gives you a chance to control it.

Control. The word felt like mockery now.

He abandoned bailing and grabbed the oars again. Rowing accomplished something, even if he couldn’t measure what. Forward motion. Distance. The illusion of progress. Better than sitting still while the sea decided whether to swallow him.

Three strokes. Four. The water’s density shifted with each pull, thick as tar, thin as mist, sometimes both at once in ways that made his muscles scream confusion. The oars caught resistance that came and went without pattern.

The thing below him had stopped circling. That was worse than if it had attacked. Its attention remained fixed on him, vast and patient, but it made no move to close the distance. As if it knew something he didn’t. As if it was waiting for the inevitable.

Drusniel tried to orient himself by the light, but the light came from everywhere. He tried to gauge direction by the waves, but the waves came from angles that shouldn’t exist, sideways, diagonal, from below the hull.

He picked a direction. It was as good as any other.

Twenty strokes, he told himself. Then use magic to push forward. Pace yourself.

He counted. One, two, three—

Five happened, and five happened again, and then there was no five at all, just a gap where the number should have been.

Time wasn’t just broken here. Time was hostile.

He abandoned counting and focused on rowing. Pull. Release. Pull. Release. The rhythm should have been meditative, automatic. Instead it required constant adjustment as the oars caught phantom resistance, as the water changed density mid-stroke, as the boat rocked in directions that made his inner ear scream protest.

His water affinity stirred.

Drusniel crushed it down immediately. The memory of what had happened when he’d touched the sea magically was still fresh, that sudden, absolute attention from below. Using his air magic drew notice. Using his water magic here would be suicide.

But the instinct was strong. Water was everywhere. His training told him to control it, to smooth the currents, to ride the flow. His training was wrong. His training had been built for a world that made sense.

Another wave rose, larger this time. It approached from an angle that hurt to perceive, and Drusniel barely had time to angle the bow before it hit. The boat climbed the swell, tilted at impossible angles, hung suspended for a moment that might have been seconds or hours—

Then dropped.

The hull crashed down hard. Water exploded over both sides, drenching him, filling the boat past his ankles. The wrong-water pressed against his boots like something testing whether flesh was edible.

He needed to push forward. Needed speed. Needed to outrun whatever was circling beneath him before his strength gave out completely.

Drusniel reached for his air magic.

The working came even harder than before. The artifact seemed to recognize what he was doing now, seemed to push back with deliberate force. But Drusniel pushed harder. Not much choice in that.

Air formed behind the boat, barely. A gust that didn’t belong here, forced into existence by will alone. It caught the stern and shoved, and the boat shot forward with lurching speed that made his stomach drop.

Thirty seconds, his mind calculated. Maybe forty if the working holds.

It didn’t hold.

The artifact pulsed, hard and angry, and the magic guttered like a candle in a hurricane. The wind died, and the boat’s momentum carried it forward for three more strokes before the sea reasserted its broken physics.

Two workings remaining. Maybe one.

His reserves were draining faster than they should. The artifact wasn’t just suppressing his magic, it was grinding against it, consuming energy with every attempt. Each working cost more than it should. Each casting left him more hollow.

The thing below moved.

Not toward him. Sideways. Circling closer, maybe. Getting a better angle. Or losing interest. Drusniel couldn’t tell, and not knowing was almost worse than certainty.

He grabbed the oars and rowed. His arms screamed. His back burned. His hands were cramping around the grips, and he didn’t dare look at them because he suspected they were bleeding and he couldn’t afford to care.

He couldn’t say how far the shore was, or where he was, or whether he was even moving in the right direction. The sea offered no landmarks, no stars, no bearings of any kind.

The math didn’t offer solutions. The math offered only the certainty that he was failing by degrees he couldn’t measure.

Something brushed the bottom of the hull.

Soft and deliberate, like fingers testing the wood.

Drusniel froze, oars suspended mid-stroke. The boat rocked gently, too gently, as if something was steadying it from below. His water affinity screamed at him to sense what was there, to reach out and understand.

He didn’t. Couldn’t. Using water magic now would be like screaming into the darkness that he was here, vulnerable, alone.

The presence beneath circled once more, and then—

It dove.

Not away. Down. Deeper into the nightmare sea, as if losing interest or being called elsewhere. The vast attention that had been pressing against his consciousness lifted, and Drusniel gasped at the sudden absence of weight.

Gone. Not dead, not defeated. Just… elsewhere.

He didn’t waste time being grateful. He grabbed the oars and rowed with everything he had left, which wasn’t much, but it was enough to move the boat, to keep forward momentum, to maintain the illusion that he had any control over his survival.

His arms were numb. His back was screaming. The water in the hull sloshed around his ankles, heavy and wrong, but not rising anymore. The boat was holding. The hull was intact.

Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think about how far you’ve come or how far remains.

He rowed into greyness that went on forever.

End of Chapter 9.2 —> 9.3: The Nightmare Sea: The Silence