The Scholar's Tale(Original Fantasy)

[Strigoi Grey]

Book IV, Chapter 10

* * *

Mharra had always told himself that, the moment he started sitting in rooms' corners, thinking deep thoughts and seeing colours everywhere, he'd need to do himself a kindness and go swimming with a millstone about his neck.

Thing was, this room had no corners, and the colours weren't in his imagination. Even if his reflection looked way too sinister for what should've been an inanimate image. Was his smile really that menacing?

Oh...would you look at that now. The thing in the mirror was trying to claw its way free, the smile plastered on its face having as much to do with joy as its empty eyes.

Mharra would be the first man to say he had no deep knowledge of wonderworking and things beyond the world, but he was no idiot, either. Not in this regard. He had an eye for symbols, for themes and tendencies, for...props.

The tools one made and used to fulfill their goals.

The mirror was symbol, story and barrier at once. For, Mharra knew, if he let it, the creature that had his face and knowledge and little else would replace him, and live his life as it wished. Briefly.

If it was lucky, it would run into Ryzhan first.

As for him...he was not sure whether that would be one of those cases where his living corpse was used as a suit of flesh, consumed or dragged into the mirror's world in a swapping of places.

Or maybe he was, in fact, going crazy and imagining things. But it didn't feel like the insanity whose edge he had walked too many times. Besides, you were only crazy if whatever uncanny things you thought, said and did resulted in failure and harm rather than something beneficial. In which case, you were a genius, maybe an eccentric one.

Mharra was not sure he was arrogant enough to call himself brilliant. But he'd been clever enough to survive this far, and wasn't that a tale and a half?

He'd have to get someone to write it down.

But first...

'You are likely wondering how I got here,' Mharra said to no one in particular. Not that anyone was around.

He risked a glance at the mirrored freak. It was looking less and less human at every look, with a jaw as unhinged as its mind and teeth that'd have fit in no human's mouth.

No. No thinking beings, at least.

Mharra had a feeling a wandering eye and voice to balance a focused mind was the best approach here (that felt like the right word, approach; more suited to his goal than "method"). He looked forward as if addressing an audience, but he imagined he was speaking with Three at his side...yes, maybe at the steamer's prow...

He'd been hesitant about talking to himself as if the ghost were still there. Some people got sick or sicker if they thought they were, so who was to say insanity couldn't be invited the same way? Granted, back on the ship, no one could really talk to themselves, between the ship itself and Ib. But they tried to ignore and not reply to such things, so the effect was much of the same.

Mharra usually preferred noise, bustle. It helped distract him from what ran around in his head. Theatre work had seemed like good work for that sort of man, and the flamboyance had naturally followed. On any other occasion, he'd have been annoyed at best at being left alone with his thoughts. Tides knew what happened last time...

He wasn't sure, on the other hand. Had that been a hallucination, or a vision? A genuine one, not one brought about by some unseen miasma or freak weather. It had seemed too...targeted, for it to be anything but an effort of will. Not to mention he wouldn't have told himself what the Three apparition had implied. The Mharra of that moment had been thinking about doing everything but finding another way to be happy.

He wasn't sure he'd ever get over it, unless he succeeded here.

'But hey, look at the bright side,' he smiled lazily, shrugging, as he continued to talk at the air. 'Maybe I'll finally pull off one of those tortured artist roles without needing gruesome props or to get hammered beforehand.'

In all honesty, it wasn't like Mharra needed much more material for that sort of thing. Just...more honesty. But roles that struck too close to home had always made him uncomfortable. Wasn't the whole point of acting to get away from reality, for a while?

Sure, playing roles that resembled the lives of others could've been called hypocritical, but he didn't really know the people he pretended to be enough to really care about their triumphs or tragedies.

'Good play name, that,' he mused. 'Triumph or tragedy. It could be about...practically every attempt at sailing.'

Mharra's chuckle was as dry as autumn leaves, and sounded like them hitting the ground. Sea and sky, but his throat felt parched. Was he thirsty? No, he'd made sure he wouldn't be distracted by anything like that during this. Hunger, sleep, the need to relieve himself or move about so as not to get cramps, nothing like that would interfere.

Hmmm...Mharra stroked his beard. Could he make it so? His power was difficult to understand at the best of times - the closest thing to a rule it had was that it seemed to work better with props, though practically any object could be one, granting him a great deal of options - but drama and symbolism seemed to be able to make it work towards his goals sometimes.

This was dramatic enough, no? At least by his standards. And perhaps that was another metaphysical law of his Gift. Was his situation here dramatic, objectively speaking? What would that even look like?

'No, I'm sure there are people aloof enough they wouldn't be moved by this,' he said, making a sweeping gesture as he took a few steps. Such gestures could actually sweep rooms clean, provided there was enough dust to make the people he was demonstrating to sneeze. He'd done it a few times. 'Either because they don't know enough or because they simply wouldn't care. So, it's all about me.'

Damn, but that sounded stupidly arrogant when he said it like that. And it had felt plenty dumb in his head.

Was he wrong, though? His Gift was his Gift, not some receptacle for existence's sense of style. Otherwise, he'd be meditating on some snowcapped mountain's top, legs crossed and beard as white as his surroundings, rumbling answers to profound questions and ah, who was he kidding? Any useful sort of cosmic knowledge was more likely to get him pressganged by a Great Power than anything.

'And if I wanted that sort of thing, I'd have never left my fleet,' he said. Why, it might have even been better. Most cultures' clutches were far easier to escape than those of the Powers, and that was discounting the ways they could rewrite minds.

Ah, but he was ignoring the real issue, wasn't he? Talking his way around it. And how cowardly did you have to be to do that when there wasn't even another person around.

'Maybe it'd have been better if that little armoured creature stayed with me.'

Where had it gone, anyway? He could scarcely recall anything between being led away by it and the Queen taking over as guide. They'd swapped places at some point, obviously (though the Queen felt like she'd always been there, somehow). Had he really been so deep in his own thoughts that he'd missed it clanking as it left?

'Now, that would be another good play. Some idiotic snob whose head is so far up his behind he doesn't notice anything around him.' Probably a comedy, though you could make that sort of story sad or terrifying with ease. Much like his was - he was sure some people would have found it hilarious.

'They'd be like,' Mharra spread his arms, smiled, 'imagine spending so much time travelling and hoping, only to get nothing! Isn't it ironic?!'

The laugh he faked became distressingly genuine a few seconds in, and stretched for much longer than he'd wished. By the end, he was coughing between nervous chuckles.

There was a sort of animal that did something like that, looked halfway between a larger wildcat and a wolf. When one was sick or injured enough it'd only drag the pack down by staying around, it mimicked health and happiness enough the others wouldn't get suspicious, then slunk away to die. Some scholars deemed it one of the most altruistic and thoughtful behaviours observed among beasts.

'Think it'd work?' Mharra wondered, snapping his fingers in lieu of a coin to flip. He'd never really had much love for that habit, and less for people who practised it - mostly smarmy game riggers who'd suffered from a lack of punches to the teeth before they'd met him -, but it galled him to have nothing to do but talk and move. Which, in this context rather that on a stage, made him feel more like a caged rat rather than an artist.

Insert sneering statement about human nature.

'Think it'd be a good look on me? Getting out of everybody's hair out of my heart's kindness.' Out of pure vanity, Mharra was convinced practically anything was a good look on him, but the question was still rhetorical. Not Mharra's kind of talk (the fact it wasn't directed as anyone else would've been odd for anyone, but especially him), or it wouldn't have been, not so long ago.

The captain was one dark thought away from resting his chin on his fist while sighing deeply.

'And I'm not even built for that sort of pose.'

Not to mention the beard would get in the way.

Mharra tapped fingers against his cheek as he looked around the chamber. Honestly, by now, he'd have expected a Three-like apparition to arrive and talk (or gesture, like last time) him into doing something worthwhile. Or Ib bursting in with a solution or revelation, or the steamer doing so after getting fed up.

He hadn't even started hallucinating from frustration or anything else, which he'd figured he'd do faster than any of his friends in a situation like this. Did that mean he was the sanest person on his crew? Now that was bloody horrifying to think about.

'At least they're getting some things done,' he said, mildly happy. Ryzhan was probably being ravaged by a pent up shapeshifting monster woman, while Ib and the ship's avatar were...what did they even have in common besides not liking each other? Maybe they were trading tips on what machine oil made joints the most flexible, or whatever they could meet each other halfway about.

Ngh. Now he was distracting himself again. Thinking about the crew wouldn't get anything done, he'd done nothing but that on the way here. Besides, it felt wrong, for reasons he couldn't quite describe. Maybe it was his ego rearing up again (when it had slipped free from under his self-deprecation, anyway?), but he felt that not thinking about himself would just move him away from the solution.

Not that his Gift's instincts were generous enough to even hint at the nature of said solution. Waves, it was like one of those ill-defined "danger senses" in some cheap adventuring novel, which made sure the hero (bland enough for anyone to use them them as a vehicle for wish fulfillment) knew when something was wrong and thus dangerous, but not what, why, in what manner or how much.

Honestly, his power being some some cosmic hack's attempt at making his journey more suspenseful by pushing him into hackneyed dilemmas seemed so eerily likely he almost expected to find an Observer out of Ghyrria grinning at him when he glanced over his shoulder.

'Smugly, of course. I bet they even take their tea that way.' With the babies they ate, knowing them.

'You know, there's something unsettling but unsurprising in the theory that maybe all of our lives are parts of a story spun out by a being or force beyond our comprehension.' People were jackasses most of the time they could get away with it. When you were so powerful nobody else even felt real, why not nudge some of the insects into moving in circles for your amusement?

...Also a distraction, he'd say. But at least having nothing to do but think let him determine what was less.

'Now, Ryzhan would say something sarcastic, maybe about how I should brood more often.'

But that was one of the few looks that were bad on him. Scrunched together, his eyebrows almost seemed to fuse. He'd once seen a yellow-furred, potbellied ape with that sort of monobrow, and now he felt vaguely insulted whenever he scowled in the mirror.

'What am I doing wrong?' Mharra tried to keep his voice mostly flat, with just a tinge of curiosity and bafflement. It wasn't like he'd received meaningful advice before this whole endeavour, which could be seen in the fact he wasn't even seeing his goal on the horizon.

Thinking about the crew or the wider world wasn't helping, which killed his theory about drawing strength from his experiences. Well, most of them. He didn't really remember things in relation to himself alone, it was almost always how he'd impacted others.

'But that feels too simple,' he admitted out loud. And it did. Drawing power from his memories of how he'd changed others for the better felt ridiculous now that he tried to put it into practice. It was too simple a way to get Three back, so how could it happen?

Had he been a more altruistic sort, maybe there would've been the shape of a story there: a man who aided everyone he could but was unable to help himself. But the closest thing to that he knew was Ib, and the grey giant was as far from helpless as you could get.

Something else, then. This place, the hosts? No, he'd offered enough courtesy, in his opinion. And his Gift thought that the Weaver Queen and Clockwork King trapping him here for a slight they didn't mention was so unlikely as to be almost impossible.

'It's not the present.' Mharra rubbed his chin with a knuckle, then his eyes, blinking heavily as he strode from one end of the room to another, his other arm behind his back. Admitting his problem should've been the first step to solving it, but he'd done that long ago and couldn't see how it had helped, if it had.

No, no. He'd got over the distractions, yes? He was no longer derailing his internal monologue. He was focusing on the dilemma, not on anyone or anything else, not in what might be. What he needed to keep in mind was how'd he'd got here and where...he was going...

* * *

The crystal making up the room (an artificial substance, far as Mharra could tell, for it resembled no gem or ordinary rock he'd ever seen) could be made into props, as it turned out. It just took a lake of sweet and a bucket of blood, like most things worth doing, as some utter idiots would say.

Broken by his Gift-enhanced strength and improvised tools, each crystal shard filled the stale air with a great deal of multicoloured dust, which might've been pretty to look at, but was choking to breathe in, scraping his lungs like a handful of needles.

He'd heard some jewellers ended up with all sort of diseases from the materials they worked with, and he could believe it. Each breath burned and his line of sight had narrowed, as if his vision were a tunnel. It was not because of the dust, which, though thick, was easy to see through.

'I let Three step into that experiment,' Mharra breathed hoarsely, 'and didn't lift a finger to help in any way.' The Free Fleet would've stopped the interference, more likely than not, but it didn't matter. It was a matter of (tides, he'd really started talking like this) principle.

'It was for Ib's sake,' he went on. 'Couldn't leave a friend with a warped mind.' But that didn't excuse anything. Ib was happy at becoming more capable, but the giant saw only ends and means. Three's disappearance had set off the chain of events that had led to the steamer developing the ability to truly think, but the ship was gruff at best when that was brought up. It missed its old engineer, though it didn't need him anymore.

'But that was a coincidence, not an aim. We didn't even know it would happen.'

It had also led to him and Ryzhan travelling and growing on their own, which certainly delighted Ib, for it would help the being's plans. But that was also a coincidence.

In the end, he hadn't helped when he could have. Maybe he could've talked the Free Fleet into altering the experiment a little, who knew.

He hadn't given that much thought, since. Not helping when help wasn't asked for - wasn't that natural? The people who had the time and means to help others without crippling themselves didn't have the inclination. It was just a fact of Midworld...

...but who was to say that life had to say that way? Ib had always talked openly about wanting to change all of existence, and Mharra had never really doubted the grey being, for it was as powerful as it was ambitious. The sea and its turnings might have been eternal, but who was to say the people who plied it had to remain unchanging?

Hadn't the Great Powers themselves built their might with the bones of the first truly great Midworlder civilisation? The wealth they'd plundered from the peaceful scholars they'd slaughtered, well-meaning fools too gentle to raise a hand in self-defence?

Even such an event could be a boon, seen from a certain angle. Atrocity, serving as the foundation of the polities that now, turned like gears in Ib's plans. Necessity. But beyond all that, it had been a change, the dawn of modern Midworld.

Perhaps a harsher, crueller world than what had been before, but who was to say that couldn't be reversed?

'That's why I'm doing this,' Mharra said, revelation and confession in one. The table he had assembled, crystals melting and melding under his Gift's attention, had taken on the hue of seawater, and stretched and rose like a living map of those stretches of ocean Mharra had travelled. With a simple touch and a thought, or even a look and an effort of will, one could learn about those areas, know what to avoid and what to sail towards.

A new, better version of the invention he'd crafted on a whim. Did the crystals' nature have to do with how this table was easier to use? Perhaps. His Gift did not provide answers when prodded, but the reason didn't matter, in the end.

'I am making the world better, because I can,' he continued. That was as close to an universal law as Midworld's civilisations agreed upon. Not making the world better, of course, but doing things because they wanted to and could. A whim, backed by enough power, became ironclad.

'Might does not make right. It does not justify actions. It only enables them.' Needing more power to be better was the only proper reason for pursuing it.

And in his mind, Mharra felt a gear turn. There was something scratching at a surface, some truth he hadn't grasped yet, but he was getting closer.

It was not a lie to say he was trying to improve Midworld because he wanted to. But it felt like a part of something, not its whole.

Mharra was not sure what that would look like, once he stumbled across it, but wondering and worrying would not help.

So he kept crafting.

Paths of light stretched from one seamark to another, like bent sunrays. Notes, comments and jokes floated above it all, Mharra's remarks upon an uncaring world.

Mharra was sweating, his breath sounding like bellows, yet he felt a coldness spreading around his shoulders, and beneath. Through the skin, under the flesh. It was not an unnatural sort of chill, no, but an imagined one.

Dread that he'd fail? As likely as anything. But that, too, only felt like a puzzle piece.

His mouth began to twitch into a smile, despite the effort. Every muscle felt like it had been filled with lead. But he was getting closer, he could feel it.

* * *

One of the reasons Mharra preferred to stay outside when he could was that, in buildings like this one, you couldn't tell the passage of time by anything, and that, like sensory deprivation, could drive a person mad in short order.

Of course, some people said linear time was an illusion springing from limited perceptions, but it wasn't like like he could turn his mind acausal just like that.

...Could he?

Mharra asked himself this, and many other things, none he would remember later, as he sat against a wall, resting, sweat stinging his wounds as it dried on him. He'd cut himself working those crystals like he'd run through a razorblade bush, then done it again to make sure it had really been that. He fancied he could see the bones of his knuckles, where the cuts had reached the deepest.

'It's funny,' he admitted, 'because I've never wanted to punch someone more.' He was the most likely target. Had anyone broken their hand punching themselves? Maybe he'd set a record.

The captain couldn't help it. The laugh strained his lungs, which felt stretched and flattened like bloatfish awaiting gutting, but it was like a weight was slipping from his shoulders.

Because another laugh answered him.

It wasn't anything so dramatic as Three appearing beside him, hale and beaming. In fact, the shapeless presence was heard only within his mind, and from what his arcane sense could spot of it, it didn't feel wholly like the ghost he'd known.

But it was enough. He felt closer to Three than he'd had in...how long had it even been?

The presence settle about his shoulders like a cloak, and it was enough for him to ignore the pain of his wounds until his body felt numb.

When it spoke, the being felt distant, but no less familiar, though it used his own voice to speak. Mharra got the feeling it was like someone used to a foreign tongue using his, for the captain's sake.

It sounded better than him talking to himself. Squalls, he really hoped that wasn't happening...

'You never really thought this would end like a fairytale.' The voice sounded kindly, chastising as it was. 'You never truly admitted it, not even to yourself - but you wouldn't have despaired so on a journey you believed would end the way you wounded.'

Mharra nodded, though each movement hurt, like he was lifting a millstone with his neck. Storms, he felt like death...

'You only managed to reach out at the end of your wits, and thought yourself half-mad for doing so.' The voice had changed, becoming higher even as it gained two more layers, and he could hear the trio of smiles behind it. His sight was a field of blackness interrupted by painfully flashing coloured spots, but he did not give a rat's tail about any of that. 'Are you surprised another reunion is only taking place after you have nothing else left?'

Was this how the future would be, then? He'd work himself to exhaustion, wondering if this time, the gap would be bridged again?

'You can't tell me you'd rather live a lonely life.' The voice was regretful, but confident. And not wrong.

But Mharra would've rather had Three back on his...crew, and he said as much.

'Unless Ib,' the presence replied,' and its fellow conspirators have their way, no one will always get what they want.'

He supposed he was being greedy, aye. This was already more than he'd hoped for. He could be honest, now.

Not that he'd have sat idly, even knowing it would end like this, or with nothing at all. He'd have made the journey, hoping against hope...Mharra had always loathed the term "man of action", because people who called themselves that weren't worth spitting on, but being passive, in this regard, had never been in the cards.

'I had a good time,' he managed after a series of coughs that stained his beard red. 'Wouldn't do it again, but only because I want to see...more.'

'A captain after your own ship,' Three chuckled. 'Burst has grown, I saw.' His threefold voice was tinged with sadness as it added, 'Doesn't need me anymore.'

'You were getting sick of the engine room, anyway,' Mharra reminded him, wiping his scarlet mouth.

'That I was.' The mirth lingered, though, to Mharra, it felt like it had faded as quickly as it had come. 'You're not walking out of here, captain.'

Well, of bloody course not. He'd always said he'd only be making it out of a room like this in a box. Had Three forgotten?

'You're not wrong about that,' the once-ghost agreed, after being reminded. Though Mharra felt nothing, he felt a gesture towards his table. 'A sailor's guide to Midworld...given away freely.' A shaking of three heads, long gone in truth, but remembered and perceived through a sense beyond nature. 'In a place with fewer wonders, I might have laughed at it.'

'Don't feel much like it, though?'

'Never felt right laughing without you.' A hand on Mharra's shoulder. 'And it'll be a while before we're back to that.'

Mharra bobbed his head. He was having one of those strange headaches, he thought; the sort that felt like your ears bursting while the rest of your head was cold and numb, as if stuffed with cotton and filled with ice.

He was, thankfully, awake enough that he could tell it wasn't his mind reeling from the idea of a mostly lonely life briefly interrupted by meetings like this, or some other flowery deal. It had more to do with how he felt like he'd been trampled by elephants. Fat ones, that took their time.

'Don't tell me.' Mharra forced a smirk, even as he felt something settle over his lips like slowly falling warm dust. How close to the brink was he for his own lifeblood to feel that...dry? 'I'm dying of a broken heart.'

That sort of thing only happened in bad romance stories, and even then it usually took one of the parties being an unskilled mage to accidentally mutilate themselves out of stress, or some other excuse.

The laugh that answered Mharra was gruff. 'No, there's nothing wrong with your body...that is, your flesh isn't the cause.' Something cool touched his brow, lingered between heartbeats. Were they slowing down? It felt like an eternity before the sensation retreated. 'You overclocked your Gift for this, captain.' There was that chiding again. 'You strained yourself.'

'Wor-' more dry warmth, filling his mouth as he coughed. 'Worth it.' And it was. Maybe he'd even stop slowing the crew down with his moping. It wasn't like they actually needed him, now; the most he might do was distract Ryzhan from whatever Ib needed him to do.

He must've been thinking out loud, because the ghost said, 'Quit that talk.' He felt something grabbing him by the arms, lifting him up. 'You're not dying, Mharra. Didn't you listen?'

Nay...nay, he wasn't. Had this been orchestrated by the Manmade Gods, the tragedy would've been too short-lived, too...clean to be entertaining. A few decades more of this, with him agonising whether he should've made that bloody journey at all, though?

'You know, when we met,' Mharra rasped, 'I didn't just give you that ultimatum because I was offended by you enabling reckless fools. I'm not...wasn't that sort of man.' He gulped, feeling like he'd swallowed a handful of blades. 'You were...squandering your potential. Said to myself, couldn't miss that sort of talent, hm?'

Three didn't say anything while he chuckled, then replied, 'Aye, I figured. About a year in, I'd say. Can't recall exactly. But I always knew you don't just do things, with nothing to gain.'

That pleased Mharra, though he couldn't say why. Guessing at his own motives had him feeling addled. 'Good, that...that's good.' Maybe he was just trying to be honest. Clear out misunderstandings.

It didn't matter. Getting to talk again made the crew feel whole again - bigger in truth, since the steamer was more of a person now than it had ever been. That said, the ghost's voice filled the air strangely, as if from some distance rather than from next to Mharra's ear. Was he really that out of sorts. 'I say, you can let go of me now, yes?' He lifted a hand in what he hoped was the direction of the exit...but was there still an exit? Had it closed itself after he'd arrived here? He couldn't remember. 'I'll walk out...myself, hm?'

There was a pause before Three responded. '...No one's touching you, captain. You've been staggering for a while, though not towards anything I can spot.' The ghost forced some cheer into his tripartite voice. 'Damned straight line for the drunkest-looking sober man I've seen in a while, though.'

Glaring dimly, Mharra began to turn his head, but a jolt in his neck made him stop and wince, gritting his teeth. 'Don't...joke with me, now.'

'Mharra, you're doing what you've been doing since you set foot here.' Three sounded mildly exasperated. 'Forcing your body to go along with your mind when it really shouldn't. Your power is facilitating it.' He sighed. 'Just...just take a look, won't you? Look down.'

Mharra did, slowly. It wasn't that he expected some nasty surprise from Three of all people - but he felt like any sudden movement now would daze him, like that man from the joke about falling off the floor.

There was, indeed, no one holding him up. Now, he couldn't exactly spot Three either, but his gut told him that had more to do with the ghost having achieved a subtler state of being rather than hiding. He couldn't sense any of the chill he'd come to associate with Three's touch, but...mistaking his own power for someone else's? Maybe he shouldn't have been up and walking. Who knew what stupid thing he'd do next...

Mharra rested his hands on his hips in lieu of anything to brace against, head lowered. Now, it felt like someone had trapped a clutch of crabs in his skull and they were cutting their way free, making sure to go through the brain first.

A hesitant presence on the edge of his perception helped distract him. 'Don't look, but a door's beginning to open.' Taking it as a joke, he began lifting his gaze, but found himself held in the same pose. 'I said don't look, didn't I?' Three clicked his tongue, though Mharra doubted he had one now. Shame. Losing a humanlike shape often drove former humans to madness. 'You'll faceplant. Just...stand here until we're on the next leg, will you? Sailing will be smoother from there.'

'Next leg...?'

'Of the journey.' Another pause. When Three spoke again, the cheer didn't sound forced; he was genuinely amused, far as Mharra could tell. 'Don't tell me you expected to retire after you left this place.'

He hadn't, of course. He couldn't imagine a sedentary life, even if he somehow found a place beyond the reach of Midworld's tides and storms. Maybe if he'd been old and weak, too tired to travel, he'd have asked Ib to make an island for him, where curious sailors could visit the old actor. But if that future had never seemed likely for him, now it felt all but guaranteed not to happen.

As he rubbed his back, despite having just finished thinking he was no old man full of aches, Mharra recalled the last few exchanges of the conversation and almost groaned. 'Smooth sailing...? I'd cry at the pun if I wasn't blanching at your jinxing.'

'You're too dusky for people to tell when you're blanching. Cut me some slack.'

They stood - or at least Mharra did, though he could not quite grasp the state of being the ghost was in - apart, but close. Mharra took comfort in that, for proximity was less than he'd wished for but more than he'd hoped for, more than he'd truly expected.

His ship, feeling both within arm's reach and a myriad leagues away to his arcane sense, stirred, like a numbed limb twitching to life. It would find him, he knew, ripping through everything in its way with its characteristic cantankerousness. The thought made Mharra smile, under all the blood.

But since he could not sway in place like a raggedy puppet until the steamer made its way here, he sought to satisfy his curiosity.

'And what have you been doing all this time?' he asked Three. 'Been anywhere interesting.'

'Here and there,' the ghost replied, deceptively casual. 'Plenty places.'

'Anywhere I've heard of?'

Mharra fancied he could count his heartbeats in the silence. '...What do you believe that experiment made me, captain?'

'Scarce.'

Three huffed a laugh. 'Free Fleet ships bend nature's laws to travel. Do you remember that?'

'You could already do that.' Mharra could not help but sound bitter. 'You can't tell me you couldn't find your way out of whatever path they use to travel.'

'But captain - they wanted to stop limiting themselves to paths.' Suddenly, a pale, transparent outline hovered before him, arms spread. It had no features to speak of, but Mharra recognised the ghost's regret. 'When no one can truly pin you down - when people whose thoughts become facts of life can't determine your location - you become almost as difficult to find as you are to stop.'

Mharra shook his head. 'Don't believe it. Ib could've-'

'Ib's power was never in question,' Three cut in. 'But power isn't the deciding factor here, Mharra. Not everyone can assume every role simply because they've acted before. I shouldn't have to explain that to you.' The silhouette vanished. 'Listen. This power was meant for thinking machines much larger than me, in every sense. Reckoning devices whose power anchors them into being. I...am still frayed at the edges.' Three's laugh mocked himself. 'You're not the only one growing altruistic in his old age, captain.'

'Mm? I do not believe I'm insufferable enough it counts as an act of charity to talk to me. You're mistaking me for the boat.'

'That'd never happen.' The presence flickered, and when it returned, the ghost's voice was hurried, on the edge of panic. 'Most of the time, the best I can do is nudge some unlucky ship away from an airquake or a Seaworm's maw. Things of that sort.'

'How do you know those people are worth helping?'

'Trust me, I've nothing but time to think about what I'll do, when I'm...awake.' Flicker. Flicker. 'Familiar things help. My ship and its passengers are far easier to focus on than most things. Say, remember that pirate fleet that harassed the steamer before you and the pleasure fleet met?'

'Never saw any.'

'You're welcome.' Flicker. 'Mharra...I'm not sure I'll ever get over this, if I'm supposed to.' The ghost's breath would've been ragged by now, had he been alive. 'Not much time left of this outing either, I'll wager. So let me say this, before I drift to sleep once more: I could've never focused enough to make any of this happen if I didn't have the power of your journey to guide myself by. The determination...I'd have liked to give you some more hope, speak to any of you, but...' The energy wavered once more. 'You helped me pull myself together, Mharra. For a while.'

Mharra tried to sound gruff, self-assured. 'Nothing new there.'

An arm wrapped around his shoulders. 'Nay. Take care, so it's not the last time either, will you?'

There was nothing to say to that. Mharra tried to keep his balance, using the cold around his shoulders as an anchor, before he remebered something else. 'That time on the ship. Did I hallucinate, or did you really...?'

He almost fell when he saw he was alone, once more. The room, cavernous and towering, held a monster in every facet, and he could not ignore them so easily anymore.

More than a score of them faded, screaming in silence, as a towering, dark brown form with flames blazing under its protean skin, burst inside. The ship's avatar said nothing, its head swivelling to take in the captain, then the table.

'Tell the Queen,' Mharra said, 'I'm going through with it. Everyone who'll benefit can feel free to line up and kiss my...' a yawn cracked his jaws. '...hand.' He waved in what he hoped was the right direction. 'Which I'm not using to make the copies. Tell her to cobble together some contraption to imitate real talent, for once.'

'Captain,' the steamer gravelled, 'she's the one with the ugly living art pieces. Her mate's the one making attempts at machinery after seeing craftsmanship from a distance one time.'

'Mgh,' Mharra replied, articulately. Then toppled.

Burst caught him easily, a clawed hand wrapping around the captain's torso. It took a knee, shifting metal grinding against crystal brimming with half life. What skulked therein slunk away from the shadows of its flames.

Burst lifted Mharra up to its chest, which was already splitting, reforming. 'Maybe I'll show her what preserving life looks like, too.'

* * *

Gods unheeding, but it was glad to be out of that glorified quicksilver vial's presence. The fact cosmic awareness and optimism could exist within the same mind said some damning things about the extent of idiocy, but Libertas would be out of the way soon.

Blazing a trail into the endless tomorrow would be, unlike most of its endeavours, worth a damn. The steamer might even begin thinking about changing course before running over it, if they met again...no. Not going out of its way to flatten The Idea of Freedom was generous enough. It wouldn't take part of Mharra's insanity.

The captain was, at least, still interesting. And who knew, his mapmaking attempts, once they found a decent way to imitate his living maps, might result in more crewmembers worth the ship's while joining. It almost cracked a smile at the chance, but caught itself.

It had a reputation to maintain.

Mharra was safely nestled within its core, its metal replacing the flesh that was now worthless (well, worth even less than before, damaged as it was), while its will poured into his riven mind and spirit. No part of the process would change the captain's thinking, for better or worse, but it would keep him together enough to plot their next course.

At one point, the steamer and its charge passed a grey, faceless being, leaning against a corner of one corridor, as innocuous as its ilk could be.

'It's beginning?' Burst could no keep its voice as aloof as it wanted. When would this mess be over with, so it could just travel?

Ib did not uncross its arms, nor morph a face. To a being that knew fear, it might've been unsettling. 'Everything is in place. Do not worry: if we fail, we won't linger enough to lament our incompetence.'

Burst snorted. How'd people even get motivated to do anything before this polished bastard came along? 'Just stay out of my way,' it warned, then its tone softened, despite itself. 'I might need to get to the spellslinger, at one point.'

If he was to save its stern, and everyone else's, it might need to get through to him, too, if he wavered.

Burst did not waver at the thought, for its words would be vindicated, even if the worst came to worst.

It would stop existing before it even began thinking about letting its crew fend for themselves. It had never been a fatalist, nor a masochist, nor any other sort of person who craved pain or oblivion - but if there was no way out, it could think of little else better than dying alongside those it had deemed worthy to be conveyed.

Burst gave the grey giant one more look. 'Do not disappoint me. If you ever cease to be, it will be by my hand.'

And if Ib succeeded...Burst was never going to thank it for anything, no matter how necessary its machinations were to greater existence. But over an eternity of its travels with Mharra, maybe it could find it within itself to stop despising its childishness.

'Don't go to sleep just yet, captain. No curtain call until you say so,' Burst reminded Mharra.

And kept moving.