No one answered Renn's question right away. The captain stood frozen beside the helm, his eyes fixed on that column of smoke still rising straight against the now nearly dark sky, while the sailors around them stopped, one after another, whatever they were doing to look in the same direction. Simon felt the silence settle over the deck with an almost physical weight — no shouted orders, no sound of ropes being pulled, only the wood creaking under their feet and the wind hissing faintly through the still-raised sails.
"Do we change course?" one of the sailors asked, his voice uncertain.
"No," Renn said, after a pause that seemed to last longer than it should have. "We get closer. Carefully, but we get closer. If there's someone out there who needs help, better we find out before they find us in the dark."
As the ship drew nearer, the smoke revealed itself for what it truly was: not a fire still burning, but the smoldering remains of something that must have burned violently a short while before. A ship — or what was left of one — floated crookedly on the water, the mainmast snapped in half, charred sails hanging in tatters like burnt skin, but the hull, battered as it was, still seemed to hold, tilted but stable, like a wounded animal stubbornly refusing to go down completely.
Renn had taken the helm himself, eyes narrowed toward the horizon, and had ordered the speed cut well before Simon could clearly make out what they were actually looking at. The very air seemed to thicken as they approached — an acrid smell of burnt wood mixed with something more organic, briny and pungent, that Simon couldn't identify until it was too late not to.
He was the first to notice it — not the ship itself, but something beside it, half-submerged in the dark water, a shapeless mass large enough to make even the gutted ship floating next to it look small.
"Corin," he said, his voice cracking slightly, a finger rising almost against his own will to point at that shape. "What's that thing next to the boat?"
Corin followed his finger, and for an instant — just an instant, but Simon caught it anyway, because by now he'd learned to read even her smallest reactions — her expression stiffened.
As they drew closer, the details emerged one after another, each one worse than the last. First the scales — enormous, a deep blue-green that caught the sunset light in almost oily reflections, like oil spilled on water. Then something that could only be a fin, membranous and torn in one spot, that broke the surface only to fall back with a heavy splash that made the deck tremble faintly under their feet even at that distance. Finally, when they were close enough that they could no longer pretend not to see, an enormous yellow eye, half-closed, that opened lazily for an instant before shutting again, as if their presence wasn't even worth the effort of staying awake for.
"What the actual fuck is this supposed to mean," Simon said, his voice coming out higher than intended, his hands gripping the railing with excessive force. "Okay, dwarves, elves, dog-men, fine, I'm getting used to it, I've made my peace with that. But this one seems decidedly above my tolerance threshold for today. Actually, for this week. Actually, for this entire lifetime, if I'm being honest."
He had just seen, with his own eyes, what could only be a dragon. A water dragon, or something very much like one — smaller, presumably, than the legends of monsters capable of swallowing entire ships he'd already pictured in his head over the past few hours, but still big enough to make a mockery of any definition of "small" that had ever crossed his mind in his entire previous life.
"It's strange to find one here," Corin said, frowning as she studied the half-submerged creature with an attention that struck Simon as more professional than frightened — the kind of attention you'd give a problem to solve, not a danger to flee. "These currents aren't their usual territory. Something must have gone wrong to push it this far off course."
"And that's supposed to reassure me?" Simon asked, without taking his eyes off the creature.
"No," Corin said, with a bluntness that wasn't much help. "But at least you know the truth."
Renn ordered the sailors to pull alongside cautiously, keeping a respectful distance from the dark mass floating half-motionless next to the wreck. He himself climbed down into a small rowboat with two men, rowing toward the damaged ship, where a few figures moved on the tilted deck, busy patching up what they could with ropes and makeshift planks, hammering nails with the same desperate efficiency of people who know they have no time to waste.
"Who are they?" Simon asked, tilting his chin toward the shapes bustling about on the gashed deck.
Corin narrowed her eyes, focusing on a torn banner still fluttering, with effort, from what remained of the mast. "The Explorers' Guild flag," she said. "Wilhelmina Frost's guild, based in Cajin. If they're out here, they were probably working an expedition for someone willing to pay well. Not people who go to sea for fun."
Simon looked more closely at the figures on the other ship, now that they were close enough to make them out clearly. Two humans, wearing light armor of reinforced leather, practical and unadorned, each with a small emblem stitched onto an armband — the same torn symbol fluttering on the mast. An elf, recognizable at a glance even at a distance by the pale, almost white armor that hadn't given up a certain formal elegance even reduced as it was by what must have been a violent clash — a remnant of dignity that seemed to survive any disaster. And three shorter, stockier figures, wrapped in tanned hides and furs, with small bone ornaments hanging from belts and wrists — Beastmen, Simon realized, remembering the City and its residents with their pointed ears and discreet tails.
One of the humans had an arm hastily bandaged with strips of cloth already stained red. One of the Beastmen limped noticeably while dragging a crate toward the edge of the ship, teeth clenched in a grimace that didn't stop him from continuing to work all the same. None of them looked to be in particularly good shape, but all of them moved with the stubborn determination of people who've already faced worse and have no intention of being brought down by this.
Simon watched Renn exchange a few words with one of the injured humans — too far to hear what was said, but close enough to see the gestures, hands pointing first at the damaged ship, then at his own cargo, then back at the half-submerged creature nearby, as if explaining, once again, the whole disaster that had struck them.
After a few minutes, Renn gave his men a sharp nod, and they lifted two crates from the bottom of the rowboat and passed them to the adventurers on the other ship. In exchange, he received a small pouch that jingled audibly even from that distance, before tucking it back at his belt with a satisfied expression that struck Simon as out of place, given the context — injured people, a ship in pieces, and him counting coins like he'd just walked out of a lucky market deal.
As the crates changed hands, Simon leaned over the railing, unable to hold back his curiosity. "Hey," he called out, to one of the Beastmen closer to their ship, the one with the poorly bandaged paw. "Are you all right? I mean — aside from the obvious."
The figure looked up, surprised, maybe more by the tone than by the question itself — a human on a merchant ship worrying about the health of injured strangers didn't seem like something that happened often. "We'll live," he answered, in a voice roughened more by exhaustion than pain. "We lost more pride than skin, if I'm honest. It's not fun getting caught off guard by a pup slipping under the hull before you can even raise a bow."
"A pup," Simon repeated, in a tone that betrayed his complete disbelief.
"Yep," the Beastman said, with a hint of a tired smile that showed two short tusks for an instant. "Wait till you see a grown one, human, and then we'll talk about what 'big' really means."
Simon didn't know how to answer that, and the other, called back by one of his companions, went back to the repairs without adding anything more. Renn climbed back aboard shortly after, wearing the satisfied expression of someone who's just closed a profitable deal, entirely indifferent to the small exchange Simon had just allowed himself.
"Onward," he shouted to his sailors, climbing back up with an agile leap despite the rowboat's roll. "No trouble. Raise the sails."
Simon caught up with him as the ship slowly picked up speed again, pulling away from the wreck and from the dark mass still floating, half-motionless, beside it, as if not even a foreign ship's departure was worth the effort of opening that yellow eye again.
"Will there be more giant lizards on this trip?" he asked, without much preamble, still staring at that dark spot shrinking behind them. "Should we be worried about an escort or something?"
Renn nearly burst out laughing, an amused snort that struck Simon as far too relaxed given what they'd just witnessed. "No danger," he said, still counting the coins he'd just received with his fingertips. "Those adventurers were hired to hunt a water dragon pup — that's why it was so far out of its usual currents, something pushed or lured it into this area, and they were tracking it when things went wrong. They lost most of their supplies in the fight, so when they saw us coming it was a great chance to restock in exchange for a few coins. For me, a great earning opportunity — buy cheap from people who are desperate and resell in Tidecrest Haven whatever I already had in surplus."
Simon stayed quiet for a moment, digesting the information with a mix of disbelief and the beginnings of a nausea that had nothing to do with the ship's roll.
A pup, he thought. That thing was a pup, and it was as big as the entire ship we're sailing on. Jesus Christ, I don't even want to imagine how big an adult could be, or what would happen if I ever ran into one that was actually pissed off instead of asleep.
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have the strength, nor the certainty that anyone would answer in a way that would make him feel better.
The journey continued over the following hours with an almost surreal calm after everything they'd just seen — the sea going flat and quiet again, the sun finally disappearing below the waterline, leaving behind only a violet streak on the horizon, then full darkness, dotted with stars Simon didn't recognize in any of the constellations he'd learned as a child, watching the sky from a balcony that now felt like it belonged to another existence.
They ate dinner sitting on the deck, leaning against two empty crates, with a plate of cold stew one of the sailors had handed out without much ceremony. Simon ate it anyway, with an appetite that surprised even himself — fear, apparently, didn't kill his hunger as much as he'd have imagined.
"That Beastman," he said at some point, breaking the silence. "The one with the bandaged paw. He said to wait till I see a grown one, before talking about what 'big' really means."
Corin nodded, not seeming particularly surprised by the line. "He wasn't exaggerating. Adult water dragons rule whole stretches of sea, not just a passing current. What we saw today was little more than a scared, wounded infant, far from home."
"Great," Simon said, bringing another spoonful of stew to his mouth without much enthusiasm. "Let's add it to the list of things I hope to never run into for the rest of my life, right next to half-orcs with badges and dwarves with monocles trying to screw you over."
"The list will keep growing," Corin said, with a half smile Simon sensed more than saw in the dark. "Better get used to that too."
Simon didn't answer, but for the first time that phrase — heard so many times from her in so few days — didn't sound like a threat to him. Just a fact, simple and inevitable, of this new life that, willing or not, was slowly stitching itself onto him.
It was only the next morning, with new light rising pale over a finally calm sea, that Corin joined him at the railing again, pointing at a distant spot on the horizon where a dark line of land was just beginning to take shape between sky and water.
"See that?" she said, with a smile that lit up her face in a way Simon hadn't yet seen her do. "That's the port for the central lands."
Simon narrowed his eyes toward that thin line, still too far away to make out more than a shadow against the pale sky. After the island, after the City, after everything he'd already seen in so little time — a half-orc with eyes that lit up with magic, a dwarf with a monocle who could read the hidden value of a stolen object, and now a monster as big as the ship he was sailing on, asleep as if nothing were wrong — he would have expected to feel something big. Excitement, maybe. Or fear again, the same fear that had followed him from the very first instant he'd opened his eyes onto that impossible sun. Instead he felt only a quiet exhaustion, almost peaceful, as if his body had finally stopped expecting a new shock every five minutes and had resigned itself, for the moment, to simply being carried along by events, whatever they had in store.
"What's waiting for me, there?" he asked, more to himself than to her.
"Everything," Corin answered, without hesitation, her eyes still fixed on that line of land that grew, minute by minute, more defined. "Everything you haven't seen yet, and a lot of what you'd have preferred never to see. But at least from there on, you can start choosing the direction yourself, instead of just letting the current carry you."
Simon nodded slowly, without answering right away. The wind tousled his hair, carrying with it a new smell — earth, distant wood smoke, something vaguely spiced he'd never smelled before — and for the first time since he'd closed his eyes in front of that hospital door, that novelty didn't strike him as entirely threatening.
Just, for once, simply unknown. And maybe, he thought, that alone could be enough, for now.