Insert Heroics Here - Chapter 2
*Chapter 2: Nocturne Bay *
I've been on boat rides much longer than this one but I have never seen the scenery change so drastically within a day. Lothvig wasn't the prettiest place on Earth but it was a shimmering palace compared to the fishing hamlet that could be seen on the horizon. Even from afar you could tell that the village was horribly damaged by something, and upon closer inspection when my feet touched the ground, it was clear what that offensive element was: flooding. The wood paneling on the houses were soaked, stretched and snapped open by the cold water that must have constantly come from the sea. Upon looking towards the beaches, the ocean was constantly shifting and thrashing about, creating wave and wave of bitterly chilly water to crash past the sands and into the homes of the lunatics who choose to stay here.
Wooden planks and steel bolts held up homes that would otherwise be sinking into the sand, and the entire town had a gap in the middle where most of the flooded water seemed to go. That might have been the intent, but from the look of the homes and my general uneasiness on the sturdiness of the wood platforms, it doesn't seem to have worked. There weren't even any locals outside to greet us or chase us away with pitchforks.
"You sure we had to come here?" I asked Morrigan.
"Yes, but I can see why you'd be skeptical on that." My companion scanned the area and scrunched up her nose, as if disgusted by the excessive amount of fish that littered the wooden platforms as well. Some were in states of decay, implying that no one had cleaned this up in a while. Pulling out a photo of the couple, Morrigan and I started knocking on doors to see if we could get any information. The first three doors were duds but the fourth one opened to reveal an old hare with a horrific gash over her eye.
"Oh thank the gods." She spoke, voice cracking as if it struggles to escape her throat. "We've needed some good Church servants like you for a while. The bay hasn't been the same since the mages left. "
"The mages were still here?" I asked. "But the original bards and mages who performed the song of the sea should be far dead by now."
"What are you gabbing on about?" She retorted. "Those men and women are immortal; they'd been here longer than I've been breathing."
Breathing with a pufferfish down her throat clearly. "When did these mages disappear?"
She put a finger to her lips and bit at her fingernails. "Three weeks ago I believe."
"You believe?" Morrigan said, pulling out a scroll to write on.
"Don't badger an old fur for having a bad memory!" She shouted, her hand grasping onto the door knob, ready to slam it shut.
"Sorry ma'am. We're just trying to figure out what's going on here." The mage replied, calm in tone but was probably ready to punch the hag.
"We were actually sent here to look for a missing couple. We can look for the mages as well." Morrigan continued.
"Couple? Are they from one of the kingdoms?" Her perplexed expression wiped away the previous scorn on her face. "Gerald!" An old fox and a younger hare showed up at the door. "These folks are asking about a missing couple and I don't remember such a thing."
Off to a flying start. "Here's a picture of them: their names are Leonardo and Maria." Morrigan handed them the picture and they all scanned it with confused expressions on their face.
"I had never seen anyone like them, they seem like nobles." Gerald responded.
"I think I saw them." The child said. "They were with Fisher Thomas, I think."
"Who's Fisher Thomas?" I asked, bending my knees to meet the child's gaze. "Do you know why Leo and Maria were here?"
"No." He nodded while taking a step back. "But they seemed to be asking for a boat. Don't know anything after that, I swear."
"No need to be afraid, dearie." His mother or grandmother assured.
"You can find Thomas on the beach. He lives in an old shack. Just be careful because the tide might soak your legs." Gerald, said, hanging the photo back." Especially bad for a kitty like yourself." He added with a laugh.
With the door slammed shut and what sounded like a lock being turned, Morrigan and I continued down the damp deck.
"Like being soaked is a cat exclusive issue." Morrigan said, trying to keep her tail from touching the wet wood.
"It's like adding an unpleasant and uncomfortable weight on top of your actual skin. Not sure how anyone can deal with it every hour of every day."
"Well these people don't exactly seem sane." Listing down Thomas and the responses we just got from one family, we proceeded off of the deck and onto the uncovered sands of this village. Barrels of fish and strange looking creatures lined up against the exit of the hamlet, secured with some concrete like substance. Some looked to be black and purple while others showed signs of rot.
A shed with barely enough space to maybe fit a few rakes and a canoe laid on top of a large dune in the sand; high enough to avoid most of the tide but not enough to escape damage entirely from the more chaotic days. Morrigan knocked on the door and an eccentric amount of locks for such a small building loudly came undone. After what felt like five locks being turned, out emerged a fox that was even more disfigured than the old hare that we intervened earlier. Fur that would have once been orange or red was mostly gray and patchy, only about one third of his face was covered in actual fur, the rest being bare skin or dirty bandages.
"What do you want? I didn't do anything to you, and I won't do anything for you." He was twitching and looking at our feet when talking.
"We're looking for someone, two people actually." I said, passing the photo to the fox. "Leo and Maria were reported here and no one has seen or heard from them in days."
The fox scanned the photo and handed it back. "Yeah, I remember them. They were asking me for a boat, wanted to look for an island they claimed was just farther South from here."
"You didn't believe them? You don't think there's an island?" Morrigan chimed in.
"Not sure. I'd never seen one, not even through a telescope. They wouldn't even tell me why they were going there. Just kept me giving me vague answers and saying malarkey like they just had to find something there."
Morrigan and I looked at each other, as if we both had no idea how to proceed from here. If we left, that's time and money wasted but if we go looking for the couple in the ocean with these constantly erratic tides, we could very well drown and waste our lives.
"Two more questions." Morrigan said, bringing up her scroll again.
The fox glared at Morrigan before saying: "No, I don't have the time to waste on you pretentious priests and mages." Threatening to slam the door on us, I reached my hand in and grabbed him by the throat, pulling him out of the doorway and face down into the sand. "Agh, get your filthy hands off of me!"
"Now you listen here, we did not come all this way to have our time wasted by a bunch of ugly, smelly, rot-skinned villagers. You are going to answer my partner's questions or I will burn off what remains of your fur!"
The fisherman struggled and then chuckled. "Burn me with what? Your kitty claws?"
A flick of my fingers beckoned a flame into my hand, holding the fire right above the back of his neck. He started to scream and struggle even more, trying to grab at the sand to pull himself out of my grasp but Morrigan slammed her foot into one of his wrists, prompting his voice to get caught in his throat, attempting to scream louder.
"Sick! Sick! Cursed! The lot of you! Defiled and sick!"
"Question one:" Morrigan begins, still holding her foot on his wrist while the other still tries to grab at wet sand. "Do you know of the bards and mages that used to be out here?"
He stopped struggling and sighed, letting his body sink a little further into the ground. "Those folks weren't alive for a long time. They'd been dead for years, yet they walk around as corpses and play their songs on broken strings."
The flame faded from my hand while my mind was overwhelmed with confusion. "Are you saying that the mages and bards were undead?"
"Yes, the curse of the Vacuous must have spread here."
"That's an old legend." Morrigan said. "The Vacuous doesn't exist."
"Shut your mouth, do you want your questions answered or not you harlot?!?"
Beckoning the flame again, I press it close it enough to his back to singe off some of the fur. Screams rise from his throat again and Morrigan slams her remaining foot onto his other wrist. He attempted to struggle some more and a few townsfolk walked out of their houses to see what was going on but quickly went back inside.
"Question two:" Morrigan starts turning one of her feet onto the fisherman's left wrist, causing him to squirm and cry into the ground. "When did the couple and bards disappear?"
"The couple, a week ago." He replied, through weary breaths. "The bards and mages, 3 weeks ago. Ever since they left the tides have only gotten worse and it's washed away some of the children that used to live here. None of the little buggers have even washed up on the shore."
"Any idea where the bards were going?"
"Same direction as the couple, straight out. If they were dead, they probably would have washed up by now."
"Are those all the questions, Morrigan?" I said, ready to take my hand off of the fox's neck.
"Yep." She wrote on her scroll and packed it away. "Let him go."
I released my grip and the man slowly pushed himself back up. He glared at us for a brief moment before cursing at us, calling us defiled and sick once again. Morrigan pulled her staff off of her back and slammed the bottom of it into his face, sending him flying into his shed. Giggling, she turned around and I soon followed.
"You seemed to have a lot of fun with that. Would you have stopped me if I burned him too much?"
That mischievous grin came upon her face again. "Maybe, but I would have definitely stopped you if you had too much of the fun."
"Of course you would."
We walked along the beach for a while and ruminated on what we should do. Morrigan bit onto her thumb and pulled the staff off of her back, a black pole with a purple orb on top with a set of circles surrounding it, pushed it into the ground and closed her eyes. Suddenly A blue glow emanated from the sand and made the veins underneath her skin glow bright white. She opened her eyes and they too were white, without pupils. She raised her staff to the sky and the orb on top shot a light of white and blue into the distance. A confused expression came across her face as she lowered her staff.
"What's wrong?"
"It seems there's something that is preventing my perception spell from traveling any further."
"That's odd." Mostly because that spell can see for miles and miles for anyone. "Magic barrier, perhaps?"
"If that's the case, this might be more troublesome than we thought." Biting onto her thumb again, the mage stared out at the rampaging tides. "Maybe we shouldn't do this. Get those actual church folk to risk their lives."
"Yeah, but who knows if they'll even do that. The entire city gave up the search."
"You seriously want to risk your life for two people that could already be dead?" She said, wearing an expression that clearly showed what she wanted to do.
"Fair enough, I'll just visit Aerendale when it's burned down and take what treasure might be left to last me a while."
She nodded and we headed back to the steamboat but nothing seemed to want to cooperate with us today because the ship seemed to be ransacked and broken.
"Ugh." Morrigan said. "It'll take bloody days to walk back to Lothvig."
"I know." Before being able to think about how exhausting that would be, I felt a cold sensation run down my spine, followed by my legs twitching erratically and my arms going numb. My hearing was fading and I could just barely hear screaming as my vision blurred and my knees hit the ground. I looked around to see if there was anyone attacking me with something but all I saw was Morrigan face down on the ground and the light of the world disappearing from my sight.
My eyes started to slowly open as an odd rocking sensation ran through my body. A wolf with gray and cyan fur came into sight as she was seemingly trying to shake me awake. A ringing sensation overpowered her voice for a few seconds before hearing her loud and clear.
"Lulu, are you ok?!? Thank the maker you're awake! We've got a problem!"
I propped myself up and realized that the rocking sensation wasn't just Morrigan shaking me. We were in a tiny boat out in the middle of the raging seas, and the clouds had suddenly turned from simply grey to enraged with lightning and thunder. I looked over the boat and saw the water start to swirl into a vortex. Morrigan and I looked at each other with distress but didn't know what to do, opting to hold onto each other and embrace the water as we get sucked into the storm. The water came over our bodies but all the light in the world faded to black immediately, followed by my grip on Morrigan breaking.