Ghost Ship Part 2

Link to Ghost Ship Part 1.

Ghost Ship is set four and a quarter centuries before Mage Errant. I really like writing horror stories like this (which you also might have noticed parts of in ME4 and ME5)- how does everyone feel about it? Would you be interested in more horror stories in the future?

--------------------------------

Day 20: 

The illusion hasn’t degraded at all. Not a flicker, not a shift, no warping at all.

It just keeps eating the horizon, and the irrational fear gets worse and worse whenever you look at it.

The shrinkage has reached the level of the deck, now. It’s small, and even I have to struggle to notice the difference, but it’s there. 

I’m the only one who has been able to make it up to the drake’s nest since last night. The horizon up there…

Well, it’s barely larger than the ship. At times, the prow actually dips outside the horizon. It hurts to watch as the sky bites a chunk out of my ship. I have never been afraid of heights, but now, my heart races and my brow is drenched with sweat, and I have to struggle to convince myself that the sky isn’t about to devour me.

Any confidence the crew has is swiftly vanishing. Mutterings have started, and a fearful crew is an unpredictable crew.

Day 23:

I should have paid more attention to the quartermaster’s anger. Several good sailors would still be alive if I had.

The mutineers were not fool enough to fight me directly— I am no true warrior, but neither were they, and my illusions gave me far too great of an advantage if needed.

They drugged me instead with my evening meal, the night of my last entry.

I’m unsure why they kept me comatose for days, rather than killing me— perhaps they were too squeamish, perhaps Andras thought I still might be necessary. It didn’t stop them from throwing my first mate overboard when he objected.

Seron was a good man. Not the cleverest officer I’ve ever had under my command, but by far the most dependable and loyal.

The accounts of my crew were confused and often contradictory, as they each tried to persuade me that they weren’t involved, that they’d been forced against their will to act by Andras.

Here is, to the best I can gather, the order of events:

After killing Seron and consolidating control over the ship, Andras immediately ordered the mages to attempt a high-speed escape.

It went exactly as wrong as I had feared, and two of our water mages lost control. One just for a moment, another more completely, but even a momentary gap in the watershield around our hull shook the entire ship, threw it off course, and badly damaged the ship. The foremast was badly damaged, the hull suffered several breaches, and, worst of all, the keel was cracked. No one died, but there were a host of minor injuries.

I have heard conflicting reports about whether the illusion broke at all.

I’m not sure how Andras maintained control, but the crew came together on the pumps for a day and a half until the ship’s carpenters managed to fix the hull with their magic. The Mule’s hull enchantments are no easy fix that can be repaired in an hour or two.

The following hours were, from what I could gather, filled with growing recriminations and arguments. I’m not sure I’ll ever get a clear picture of what happened, but the results were clear enough:

Andras was bound and thrown into a makeshift brig in the cargo hold, and a sailor named Leras took command until I woke from the most recent dose of the drugs they fed me. He seems to have appointed himself my new first mate, which…

To be frank, I’m not sure I trust Leras. He’s charismatic and skillful, but he’s new to the ship, and… well, I’m not sure I can explain my uncertainty, but something feels off about him. 

At the least, his obvious ambition worries me.

I’ve decided to let the blame for the mutiny fall solely on Andras’ shoulders. We cannot afford to lose more crew to this insanity, not when we hang under the pall of this horrid illusion.

Repairs on the keel will take several more days. It would be faster in dry dock, where the carpenters could work on its enchantments directly, but the bilge is sufficiently close enough to the keel for their wood magic to reach it. They’re hardly happy about spending so much time in the bilge, but they understand its necessity, and aren’t complaining.

I’ve set aside extra rum rations for the carpenters.

I remain uncertain of what to do with Andas. We are no warship, and I am not one to try to rule my crew by force, nor execute dissenters… but nor have I ever suffered a mutiny like this, before.

I’ve… avoided talking of the horizon, so far.

It’s eaten the drake’s nest almost entirely.

It can still be entered, but peering out of it shows nothing but sky in every direction, save straight down, and even then, there’s only a narrow corridor around the mast left. The deck is hardly visible from above.

And from the deck itself… the horizon is closer by a third than it should be.

No dream illusionist should be this powerful, should be able to maintain a spell for this long.

Not save one of the Great Powers.

Day 24:

We have lost another sailor today, but none of us know the circumstances, nor when the last time any of us saw Able Lee last. A few crewmembers believe they saw here after the conclusion of the mutiny, but none have seen her since last night, and a search of the ship has turned up nothing.

We have only lost three crew so far, including Seron during the mutiny, but the toll weighs far more heavily. I have lost twice so many sailors in a single voyage to storms or monster attacks in the past, but even then the decks of the Mule never felt so gloomy.

The illusion presses down upon us all, and Leras reports rumors among the crew— mutterings of something in the sky, slowly descending to devour us all. 

The repairs go slowly.

---------------------------------------

Captain Winethief found himself distracted by shouting on the deck, and immediately tucked the log of Captain Slate into his pocket.

His crew was already nervous enough, between finding the ghost ship and the captain’s body down in the hold. If one of them got their hands on the journal…

Well, best that didn’t happen.

The shouting turned out to be due to an accident— a crate of glass had broken apart, and one of his sailors had gashed her arm open. Winethief was able to heal the wound easily enough, but…

He couldn’t say he was particularly comfortable with the fact that his initial reaction to the injury had been relief.

The sky was still normal above the Kraken’s Maw and the Three-Legged Mule.

-------------------------------

Day 25:

The drake’s nest is gone completely, along with the upper third of the masts. It cannot be climbed into, nor can I even scry it with my magic.

Worse, my magic struggles, more and more, to get past the horizon. This makes no sense to me— I have never heard of dream magic interfering with light-based scrying like this before.

Two more sailors vanished in the night. Leras claims no one saw anything, and I have no logical reason to mistrust him, but I do. Were the missing sailors among those who had opposed Andras’ mutiny? Is Leras planning one of his own? 

No, that is paranoia and madness. I must not let my fears rule me— Leras may be ambitious, but he needed not have awoken me from my drugged stupor when he overthrew Andras’ mutiny.

The crew struggles with their own fear, though, and I fear it rules them. Most of them avoid looking up at the sky, and few of them will climb into the rigging at any height, no matter how Leras or I cajole them. Until we finish the keel repairs, there is little to do up there… but I fear whether we will even have a rigging by then, or whether the sky will have devoured it entirely.

Day 26: 

Another two sailors, gone.

This time we know what happened to them, at least.

Just before dawn, Inked Soren began climbing the rigging, as though possessed. He didn’t even seem to hear the calls of his shipmates as he climbed, though when one pursued him up, he fought them off, kicking them until they fell. (They caught themselves on a spar and were uninjured, thankfully.)

Soren simply vanished into the sky above as we watched. He never spoke, nor made a sound, and we never saw him again. Dawn came and went, and all there was to see was the masts above us, fading away into the sky above, as though they’d been chopped off halfway down.

The long, miserable wait was interrupted by screaming. Uls the Braggart began yelling about seeing teeth in the sky, teeth that had devoured Soren. Though several other sailors tried to restrain him, Uls forced himself through the crowd and threw himself overboard in a blind panic.

Uls, like most of my non-water mage sailors, cannot swim. He never surfaced.

I… want to believe that Uls had broken under the pressure, that he had deluded himself into thinking he’d seen something in the sky above us. That the fear and paranoia had gotten to him.

But what’s the alternative? 

Is Inked Soren simply hanging there in the rigging? Does he stare blindly into the sky, still, as he awaits a slow death by dehydration?

I do not know which fate is worse.

Day 27:

Three more dead, now. Or four, perhaps? I do not know. Two more ascended into the rigging, at least one more overboard in terror.

Why can my water mages not find the victims when they plunge into the sea? They are none of them powerful, but surely this is not beyond them.

Are they working with Leras? Andras? Are the drowned victims those loyal to me?

Most of the crew will not leave the hold, now. Work on the keel is almost done, but I fear that there is no escape, even once it is done.

I struggle to sleep at night. Nightmares of the sky descending towards me, full of teeth, plague me every night. Even when I retreat below decks in my dreams, the sky follows, tearing apart the ship to get at me.

The horizon is so close now. How will it feel when it rolls in for good? Will I feel it, or will I simply be lost in the sky?

Day 27:

There is another mutiny coming. I can feel it. Leras plots against me, and I will not have it.

I must strike first. I will kill him, and toss him overboard, and I will hide it with an illusion of him ascending into the sky.

I… no. No. I need proof. I need evidence.

Day 27:

I do not know the last time I have slept. I…

The nightmares are only the action of whatever enemy dream mage has trapped us here. Nothing more. There are no teeth in the sky, nothing waits for us above.

I have skipped writing in this log the last few days because I have been watching my new first mate for signs of betrayal. I have cloaked myself in illusion, followed Leras for hours at a time invisibly as he goes around his duties. I am sure he is plotting against me, but he is cautious. Does he know I suspect him?

Though… perhaps I have misjudged. Perhaps he is no mutineer. 

Perhaps he works for the dream mage instead.

It makes sense. This was his first voyage with us, after all. He could be an agent of the enemy, spying on us for his master.

Or he could be the dream mage himself, but… no, this makes no sense. Leras sleeps as little as the rest of us, woken by nightmares, avoiding the sky.

Unless he fakes it, to hide his own culpability.

No. I must stop this. This mad theorizing leads to madness. All I need to know is that Leras plots against me, and is my enemy. 

The horizon creeps and creeps and creeps, as the sky pushes it closer to us.

Day 27:

Leras died in the night. Two crewmembers witnessed him climb. I did not. Is he still there, in the rigging, with so many others? Waiting silently as they stare up at the sky?

I suspected him for so long, had so much evidence against him, but it was all for naught. In the end, I had nothing to do with his death. 

I begin to suspect that this is not the work of a dream mage, nor any other illusionist.

I think we face a wardsmith, one who has found some way to inscribe their ward in the waves or sky. A cloud mage? I do not know. It explains things so much better than illusions.

Did I show enough horror and despair at Leras death when they told me? Too little? I cannot find my knife.

I cannot touch the sky by jumping yet, but I cannot imagine it will be long.

Day 27:

There are twelve of us left, and somehow, Andras is one of them.

How many of us hang in the rigging, now, staring at the sky? Blindly waiting for… I do not know what. 

It rained this morning. I hope those in the rigging drank some of it.

They must still be there in the rigging. They must. There are no teeth in the sky, I have not seen them.

I have not.

There are no teeth in the sky.

No teeth, and they do not call me.

I… digress. This is not important. Andras is what is important.

He is loose, and speaking to the crew. 

I will wrap myself in illusion again to spy on them. I cannot risk a direct confrontation.

Day 27:

Andras is dead, and I have killed him. How is he still walking on the deck? He is as dead as the mutiny leader Leras. Did Andras kill Leras only to throw his own mutiny? Why did Andras even awaken me from my own drugged sleep if he meant to take my ship for himself?

Day 27: 

Andras has convinced the crew that I am behind everything. He claims there is no enemy illusionist, no monster in the sky, no wardsmith making horrid trap wards out of clouds in the sky to fool us.

He claims that I have done this. That I have gone mad, and am killing the crew off one by one.

The mutineers will not find me. I will cloak myself with my illusions, and I will wait for the teeth in the sky to take care of them.

Day 27:

Andras and the other six mutineers have not given up their search for me yet. I can feel sleep calling me, and my illusions will not last once I slumber.

Were there more mutineers before? No matter.

I have a plan.

I shall climb into the rigging, where my loyal crew all wait for me, and outlast the mutineers there.

Day 27:

I… believe I went mad, yesterday. I almost climbed the rigging, into the grasp of the sky. It was purest chance that saved me— embarrassingly enough, I tripped and tumbled into an open hatch, down into the hold. 

I don’t know how Andras and his mutineers failed to find me as I lay insensate among the bags and crates below, but that accident was all that saved me. All that kept me alive from my own madness.

Because, if I had climbed, I would be dead, this I know.

There is no illusion above us, no wards, no tricks of any sort.

The sky hungers, and devours the horizon, and devours us, one by one. 

This is why so many of my sailors threw themselves in the sea. Better drowning than being devoured by the sky.

How did Andras and his mutineers not find me? I know they hunt me still, but they have hidden in ambush, and I fear to move about even invisibly.

Day 27:

It is just Andras and I, now. Just the two of us, and the sky.

I cannot see the horizon, now, save when I peer directly down past the railing. The sky has eaten all the sea.

I cannot even walk upright, now. I scuttle about, hunched over in half. Soon enough, I will have to crawl.

Andras lays on his back on the deck, staring silently into the sky.

He is no threat anymore.

Day 27:

Has it been a day since my last entry? Hours? Weeks? Minutes? 

I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.

The sky calls me, and I will not let it have me.

There is no sea to throw myself in, though. The sky ate the sea, like it did the rest of the world, and half the ship has been lost beyond the horizon. There is no railing to throw myself over anymore, even if I wanted to.

I have a plan, though.

I shall lock myself in the vault. Chain myself to its walls, so that I will not be tempted to feed myself to the sky.

The world is gone. I was a fool to think it was just my ship. The world is gone, and I am the last living being on it. My plan is as foolish as I am, and yet I follow it, rather than simply surrendering to the sky. I…

No. No.

I will hide in the vault, and wait for the sky to be satiated. Surely Andras will be enough. He has not moved from his place on the deck, and the sky will have him before long.

Why doesn’t he move? Why does my first mate just lay there, motionless on the deck?

And if the sky cannot be satiated by Andras, if even the vault cannot protect me…

Better the knife than the teeth.

---------------------------------------

Jack Winethief closed the log on the last words of Captain Eliza Slate, took a long, unsteady breath, and made up his mind.

The loading had finished, and his crew only waited on him to decide whether to take the Mule as a prize.

Winethief had made up his mind long since.

It was no great mystery what had happened here— stories of illusionists going mad were more than common enough.

Slate had been the dream mage, as her crew had accused her of. Why else would she have had a dream mage teacher, as she’d claimed, if she weren’t a dream mage herself? She had gone mad, killed them one by one, just as they had accused her of in the end. Just as her master had once done. Her writings, by the end, had been a deranged, barely legible scrawl.

There was no curse on this ship, no traps. It was safe to seize, safe to take with a prize crew. There was no threat holding them back from 

Winethief nodded briskly to himself, steady in his decision.

Then he grabbed a bottle of brandy from her desk, and poured it over her journal.

He soaked all its pages, then began splashing the brandy across the deck.

He repeated the process with every bottle of whiskey and rotgut in the captain’s cupboard, drenching the entire captain’s cabin.

He left the door to the captain’s cabin open behind him, and ignited the alcohol with a cantrip as he walked away.

Winethief didn’t explain his order when he told his battle mages to sink the Three-Legged Mule.

No one asked him to. The look on his face said enough.

-----------------------------------------

A hundred feet below the waves, she circled, waiting. A hundred feet below the waves, she circled, watching the debris and ruins of the Three-Legged Mule sink down.

She didn’t know it had once been called the Three-Legged Mule. She didn’t even know that it had been a ship. If she thought of it as anything, which was doubtful, it had, perhaps, been a buffet or cornucopia to her.

Never before, in all her long, slow, cold life had she eaten so well. She was used to going weeks between meals— to eat daily was a luxury she’d never known before, in the cold dark deep.

When the seafloor volcano had erupted, she had fled in pain and panic from its painful heat and poisons. Fled up, until the ocean began to relax its endless crushing grip on her, until the pressure was so small that it began to hurt her. Rather than face the heights of the sea, her newest mate among many, a thousandth her size, actually tore himself free from her side, ripped free from her skin that had been growing over him.

She feared the volcano too much to even stop to eat him.

Even as far from the surface as she had stayed, the light filtering down had pained her. She surely would have dived down again, if not for something utterly out of her experience.

A ship passed overhead, and aboard it, she felt dreams, stronger than any she had ever felt before, save the occasional kraken that hunted her kind.

She didn’t know what the sky was, never intended to craft that specific dream in her prey. But then, she never tried to plant any specific dream in her prey— she let them build their own dreams, all around the conviction that there was danger away from her, danger that could be avoided by going towards her.

The dream grew in the minds of the Mule’s crew, spread from one to another and back again, reinforcing itself with each passage.

One by one, the crew threw themselves overboard. Some climbed the rigging first before doing so, their minds so warped by the dream that they sought to give into it entirely.

And each dreamer that fell sank into her waiting mouth. 

She was a third as the smuggling ship, could have surely torn it apart with her own strength, but the thought never crossed her mind. She didn’t have dreams enough of her own to hunt any way but the way that came naturally to her. Even in those rare times she slept, she dreamed seldom, lest something hungry sense her dreams.

Though, if the ship had been a little smaller, or she had been a little larger, she would have simply devoured it whole. Her stomach could fit prey twice as large as she was. It was for the best that she hadn’t devoured the smuggling ship whole, of course— wood wasn’t likely to agree with her digestive tract.

One dreamer on the Mule had escaped her jaws, waiting beneath the waves, but no matter. She had fed better than she ever had before, her great bulk satiated for the first time in her life.

Satiation never lasted for her kind, though. Their very existence was one of desperation and near-constant starvation, down in the sterile, cold, crushing deeps. She would eat and eat and eat, even if it tore her stomach open.

By the time the Kraken’s Maw arrived, she was hungry again.

As the pirate ship sailed away from the sinking smuggler, the great anglerfish followed behind it, and her lure began to glow.

Not with light, but with dreams.

Far above the Kraken’s Maw, the constellations began to wake, to fix their gaze on the pirate ship below.