We do as the Master commands. We go where the Master bids, even unto the mouth of Hell. So he had sworn.

  Phosis reminded himself of this as he watched another ship splinter and crack before sinking beneath the waves. The storm around them was dark and brooding, the light of the stars had been replaced with the brighter and sharper flashes of lightning as they stabbed their lethal arcs across the sky.

  Rain crashed down in great waves, drowning his hide and obscuring his sight. The ship, a low fast-running sloop, was little more than a vague shadow in the roiling storm. In his mind it was the Coatl, though it easily could have been any one of the ships in this motley fleet.

  There was disappointment in that. The captain of the Coatl had proven himself capable, useful even, in times of great strain. Yet there was relief as well, losing another sloop to these treacherous waters meant another of the fat bellied hold-ships might just make it to shore. An exchange of sorts. After all, it was not the storm sinking their ships.

  He watched the waves for it. Another monster lurking in this forsaken abyss, the only passage to the desert-land that was not patrolled by the marked ones who ruled it. They thrashed their way through a sprawling mess of shallow reefs, rock spires and deeps full of ever-more unfathomable horrors.

  Two of the Master’s Immortals stood behind him on either side, their heads following his gaze, though more out of instinctual servitude than any perceptive intelligence. Their eyes were dull, and their scaled hides were pale, near translucent. They did not even seem to notice the rain, forever unspeaking and unmoving until commanded otherwise, even as lightning crashed down around them and the sea foamed with hunger.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The Weaver slinked across the deck toward him, his pallid complexion stark and unnatural against the gloomy sky. His blackened fingers were almost invisible in the dark, twitching against one another as though the droplets of rain sent shocking pain through his hands. His build was athletic, but he kept himself hunched forward and dragged his tail along the soaking deck. “Another,” he said, a rasp tickling the edges of his voice.

  “Another,” Phosis growled in reply, not dignifying the Weaver with more than a glance.

  “This…cannot continue,” the Weaver rasped, though it sounded more of a question than a statement.

  “No.”

  “I have charted a course through the storm,” the Weaver said, gesturing with one of its oddly coloured hands towards the roiling sea. The frown on Phosis’ purple-clad, patrician features prompted him to continue. “I can see our path through the stars. You may not see them, but I do. Reflected in the waves.”

  Phosis winced at his words. The Weaver’s mentions of the stars had become stranger of late, a symptom of his mind crumbling under some great strain Phosis could not see.

  “Set every oar to work. All ahead! I shall guide us along star-lit lines through this darkness,” he babbled, his tone at once pleading and demanding, nasal and harsh on the ears.

  A heavy sigh of resignation rolled from Phosis’ chest. The Master’s servants, however deranged, could at least be trusted, he assured himself.

  Phosis looked over his shoulder, past the Immortals and toward the helmsman. He gestured his commands; words had become almost useless in the storm, a lesson learned much to their detriment days prior. The helmsman, clothes plastered tight to his body and squinting to make out the sea ahead, nodded an acknowledgement. He began his own gesturing, one arm waving wildly as he screamed uselessly into the driving wind.

  Figures moved below deck, the drumbeat began to change, and the groaning of the tortured wood changed its pitch ever so slightly beneath Phosis’ feet. The time of swimming cautiously through these depths was over, they would make all speed for the coast and damn their losses.