Driving the boat out to sea meant slow going for a while. Marco was the most bothered by the speed, and the time that had seemed so short when getting to the capsized boat dungeon now seemed like an eternity when going away from it while fighting a deadline. The rest of the crew were visibly stressed as well. Elisa was scribbling furiously in her notebook, and then just as furiously scratching out the notes she had just made. Aethe was somehow furiously looking, scanning the horizon to and fro and trying to identify any threats that came their way.

Only Riv was being truly productive with his stress, forcing the ship to heal a little faster than it otherwise would have. Once he finished smearing tar on all the cracks he could see, he went to work mounting two of the newer, bigger cannons on the port side of the boat. It was also him who broke big, high-quality pieces of wood off the sinking back half of the enemy ship before they had towed the front half to relative safety, and only him who remembered what a big load of top-quality wood would do for the ship in the future.

“Can you see them on your system screen yet?” Riv yelled forward, pounding large nails through the mounting plates of the cannons, securing them to the deck. “The system won’t let us use them if we don’t.”

“I see them,” Marco said. “But they aren’t operational yet.”

The number was ticking up every several seconds, and so long as whatever new threat didn’t attack from almost exactly under them, Marco thought it would probably be fine. They eventually cleared the edge of the dead zone. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the more natural wind started filling the sails, carrying them in a new direction at a right angle to any they had traveled so far.

“It’s going to be even better when we get back out in the the natural world,” Marco said. “Just watch. I wish I could show you now.”

“That’s the most ship’s captain thing I’ve heard you say yet,” Riv said. “It’s reassuring. Is there really any difference, though?”

“There will be,” Marco promised with his hand still on the wheel. “Even if I’m dreaming it, I can just tell. This ship wants real wind. It will be faster with it. I’ll make sure of that.”

They sailed for most of the remaining time, tense with anticipation. The enemy captain had been more informative than Marco had thought he would be, but he had steadfastly refused to reveal how many more ships were in the water searching for them.

“There might not be any more ships, you know. That might have been the only ship that could come in,” Elisa said.

“Maybe.” Marco looked forward. He somehow knew what was coming. “But I don’t feel that lucky, Elisa. Do you?”

Things got quiet for a few more minutes before the other shoe dropped. Aethe was the first person to see it, predictably. The others might have noticed it too, since the sail was big enough to do a reasonable impression of a cloud as it rose over the curvature of the horizon.

“It’s huge. What ship is that big?” Aethe asked.

“Peacekeeper ships,” Marco said. “Big war galleons. Crew complements of hundreds. There aren’t many of them and there aren’t many people who can captain them in the first place.”

“You met one before?”

“Oh, not personally. I asked Garrick about it once. Gulf Isle didn’t see them because there just wasn’t anything dangerous enough to justify it being around there.”

“But you are?” Riv shook his head. “Marco, I just don’t see it. At first I didn’t really know whether or not to believe it when you said that you were in trouble, but if anything, you are just… well, boring.”

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome. The point is that there’s no way they sent that after you, right?” Riv gawked at the sheer size of the ship as the bottom parts of it rose into view. “It’s here for some other reason, or something.”

“Probably not. Incoming.” Aethe pointed. “And it’s coming in fast.”

An orb of pure light flew from the other ship like an arrow, beelining towards The Foolish Endeavor like a well-aimed cannonball. Only the sheer distance involved kept it from being there instantly.

“Everyone down!” Marco yelled.

“No!” Elisa said. “It’s not an attack. Even they couldn’t do that from this far. It’s a message.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“A what?”

The answer came not from Elisa, but from the ball itself hitting the deck and bathing them all in a blinding light for a moment. When the flash resolved, a tall, powerfully built, glasses-wearing man was standing at the point of impact, staring directly at Marco.

“Marco?” the man asked expectantly. He was nobody Marco had ever seen before, but that did little to lessen the feeling that the man was entitled to an answer. “Of Gulf Isle?”

“Under the communications clause of the international nautical law, my captain…”

“Hells, girl. This isn’t civilized country.” The man shook his head. “Even asking was a formality.”

“You can’t just shrug off centuries of legal…”

The man shrugged them off, and Elisa entirely as well. Ignoring her, he turned to Marco and snorted. “You’ve had a good run, son. I’m here to bring you in.”

“Like hell you are,” Marco snapped. “I haven’t had so much as a single word of explanation from anyone on what’s happening here. Now you’re coming after me with a floating city. Me. I just started leveling something like a week ago.”

“That’s neither here nor there. I have more guns than your ship has nails, boy. You are coming with me.”

“Captain… I’m sorry. I didn’t ask your name.” Marco bowed slightly in formal greeting. “What was it?”

“Frisk.”

“Captain Frisk, respectfully go drown yourself. Right in the brine.” Marco shook his head. “I’m not going with you or anyone else. Respectfully, it seems an awful lot like I’ll end up dead, or worse, if I come with you. I didn’t think there was a respectable captain out here that would go along with that. Come to think of it, there still probably isn’t.”

“You are making a bad mistake, boy.”

“Maybe. But I’m about to leave this place, and I’m guessing you can’t just yet. You probably just arrived and haven’t done any of the quests yet.” Marco turned to his navigator. “Elisa, this is a messaging ability of some kind, right?”

“Right. Pretty high level, to get that far.”

“But it can be rejected?”

The captain’s face darkened. He wasn’t used to being ignored.

“Boy, you had best not play this game. I am…”

“Dismissed.” Marco waved his hand and the man disappeared. He looked at his crew. “Now let’s get running again. We don’t want them to catch up more than they have.”

“Was that the best idea?” Aethe’s eyebrows had risen, and she looked hard at the space in which the other captain’s image had stood. “He seemed to have a great deal of authority.”

“You didn’t like Marco doing that?” Riv said. “I did.”

“No, I very much did.” Aethe gave Marco an odd look he couldn’t quite decipher. “I just wonder if there was a plan behind it.”

“The plan is to leave. Elisa, I’m assuming they might have a way out of here that doesn’t have to do with finishing the quests. Is that a thing?” Marco asked.

“It is. All the ones I know about take a lot of time, though.”

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, I think that’s our door now.”

Ahead of them, the horizon turned color. Or if it didn’t change color exactly, it was at least less tinted by whatever false reality had hemmed them in before. An arch-shaped opening now revealed a sky that was just a bit bluer and water that looked just a little more true.

The ship surged towards it as Marco poured in whatever juice he could. Any little change in this place would mean potential miles on the outside, as he understood it. That wasn’t his motivation, though. Mostly he just wanted to be out on the sea. The real sea.

A few seconds later, he had his wish.

—

“It really does look different. I didn’t believe you, you know.” Elisa was staring down at the water as the ship cut through the waves in a rough direction she had decided on with Aethe before feeding it to Marco. “Why is that, do you think?”

“I would have thought you would have known,” Marco replied.

“I doubt it’s the kind of thing most people would notice. That dungeon isn’t that well documented, but I doubt the difference in the sea would be in books about it even if it was. Too subtle.”

“Really? I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“That’s because you stare out at the sea more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Elisa laughed. “You should have seen him as a kid, Aethe. He’d spend all his time looking out at the water like it was being withheld from him. When he wasn’t running up and down mountains or carrying barrels on his shoulders. Or both. While wet.”

“Wet barrel mountain running?” Aethe furrowed her brow. “That is common for you? Humans, I mean?”

“Oh, no. Just for him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Marco was a bit of an overachiever. He wanted to save up every achievement he could to enhance his class. Captain classes tend to be a bit on the rare side, so I think he thought he could maximize his chances that way. People tended to get out of his way when he was really into it. I saw him run people with full classes down, on occasion.”

“That shouldn’t count. He was a calligrapher.” Marco’s face felt warm all of a sudden. “Almost no physical enhancements at all.”

“And so mad. So very mad.” Elisa giggled. “Just him and Marco lying on the ground covered in ink.”

“I would have liked to have seen that.” Aethe let out a small laugh, the first Marco had seen. “It worked though. You are a captain.”

“Sort of. I suppose we never really covered this. I’m an evil class, Aethe. A Glutton Marauder.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Aethe said.

“Well, you’ve seen most of what it can do. Beating up things and taking on little pieces of them to make the ship stronger,” Marco said.

“Which is very interesting, in a lot of ways, but that’s not what I meant. It’s the other thing you said that’s confusing.”

All three of the non-elf sets of eyes suddenly left their old work to focus on Aethe.

“What?” Marco asked.

“You’ve never heard of evil classes? At all?” Riv said.

“Of course not.” Aethe shook her head. “How could a class even be evil? It would be like calling a knife evil. Or a sword evil. It doesn’t even make sense.”

“They were well-known to us. At least it was something you heard about,” Riv said. “Someone would get an evil class, and then, poof, they’d be gone. You’d never hear about them again.”

“Because they did something evil?” Aethe looked doubtful. “Actually evil?”

“Well, no. It was the class itself. They were known for encouraging that kind of thing.”

“Known by who?”

The genuine nature of the question was enough to throw a new light on the entire question Marco had never applied to it before. For Aethe, this was all new. None of it was normal. She wasn’t like he was, either. In terms of knowledge, she seemed to be somewhere between him and Elisa. If this was a common thing in her world, she’d know about it, for sure.