The day finally caught up with them as night fell over Iliadis. Wanting to be on the very first ferry across the strait at first light, the three companions parted ways in the narrow upstairs hallway at an early hour, locking themselves inside their respective rooms.
For the first time since Limka, Katarina actually found sleep. The mental toll of the day mixed with no sleep the night before had drained her completely. As she lay in the dark, the brutal pendulum of her grief still swung back and forth. Resentment and gone. Resentment and gone. It was still there, a dull ache pulsing behind her ribs, but the overwhelming exhaustion finally dragged her under before the memories could fully consume her.
Down the hall, Anya barely managed to pull the heavy blankets over her shoulders before she crashed, slipping instantly into a deep, dreamless sleep.
In the middle room, however, Doren remained awake.
He sat on the edge of his feather-stuffed mattress, the room lit only by the dying embers in the small hearth. Resting across his knees was Meko's sword. Doren ran his hand slowly over the cold steel of the scabbard, feeling the worn leather of the hilt where Meko's grip had smoothed it down over the years.
A wave of guilt washed over him. The blade felt incredibly heavy in his lap. What he wouldn't give to just walk down the hall, knock on the door, and hand the piece of steel back to the older man. But the world didn't work like that, and the ancient magic burning in Doren's chest demanded a brutal price for its survival. With a heavy sigh, he carefully wrapped the sword in a spare piece of linen. He then tucked it safely into his pack before finally lying back and letting sleep take him.
Morning came quickly, the pale, pre-dawn light creeping through the frosted windows.
They woke early, moving with practiced efficiency. They gathered their remaining supplies and left the warmth of the Greet, Eat, and Sleep behind. The coastal air was freezing, and the terrifying roar of the Shifton Strait had notably calmed down. The island had finished its violent shift yesterday, and the waters were finally settling into a calm chop.
Before heading down to the docks, they made their way to the large, dimly lit stables attached to the side of the inn. The scent of hay and manure filled the air as they located their mounts in the back stalls. Greeg, the burly stable master Frella had mentioned the day before, was already awake and tending to the troughs.
"Morning. We're crossing the strait today," Doren told the man, pulling a heavy leather pouch from his belt. "We need to leave the mounts here." He poured a small mountain of silver and gold coins into Greeg's hand. It was easily enough wealth to buy the animals twice over. "This is for their keep," Doren instructed, making sure the man understood the gravity of the payment. "Maintain them, keep the stalls clean, and make sure they are well-fed. There is enough coin here to cover them for a couple of months."
Greeg's eyes widened slightly at the sheer amount of gold, but he gave a firm, respectful nod, pocketing the heavy pouch. "They'll be treated like royal steeds, lad. They'll be ready and waiting whenever you get back."
Doren knew that if everything went according to plan, they wouldn't be on Shifton Island for that long. But considering they were walking into a sanctuary of lethal assassins to seek out a man who used to hunt fugitives for the King, the guarantee of an escape route once they got back to the mainland was worth every single coin. With their gear secured and their mounts safely stabled, the three companions turned their backs and began the cold walk down the sloping streets toward the pier, ready to find the ferryman.
The stone pier of Iliadis was eerily quiet in the pre-dawn mist. The massive crowd from the day before was entirely gone, and the violent, thrashing waves had subsided into a heavy, rhythmic swell that slapped dully against the stone of the piers. Doren, Katarina, and Anya stood near the edge of the dock, their breath visible in the freezing air as they stared out into the thick, gray fog blanketing the Shifton Strait.
They waited in total silence for a little bit, the tension winding tight in their chests. Then, cutting through the dense mist, a massive, dark silhouette began to take shape.
It was the shadow of an approaching vessel, moving swiftly and silently across the water. As the ferry drew closer to the dock, the strange, completely unnatural mechanics of its movement became obvious. The ship had no massive canvas sails to catch the wind, and there were no oars breaking the surface of the water. Yet, the wooden ship cut through the choppy waters with terrifying speed.
As it breached the edge of the fog, the crew came into sharp focus.
The propulsion of the massive vessel was entirely handled by two figures standing on either side of the ship's wide deck. They wore dark, heavy cloaks, their faces completely obscured. Their hands were outstretched over the dark water, their fingers moving in fluid motions. They were water elementalists, directly manipulating the heavy currents of the strait to grab the hull and push the massive ferry smoothly forward toward the docks.
But the true spectacle was the man standing at the helm. He was a wildly animated figure, practically vibrating with energy. As the ferry glided toward the stone pier, the man was literally jumping up and down by the heavy wooden wheel, shouting rapid-fire commands and gesturing frantically at the air.
He was dressed in the exact same rugged, dark leather armor that Urduun had worn the day before. However, the biggest difference was that this captain's deep cowl was pulled completely down, exposing his face to the freezing wind. He possessed incredibly sharp, deeply weathered features along his dark skin, heavily lined by years of sun and salt water. He had a pair of wide, manic eyes that darted constantly around the docks.
Katarina's hand instinctively drifted toward the pommel of her dagger as the strange vessel coasted perfectly up to the stone edge of the pier. The two water elementalists dropped their hands in unison. The water stilled, stopping the massive ship exactly where it needed to be.
The manic captain vaulted over the wheel with surprising agility for someone his age, landing lightly on the deck before bounding over to the gangplank. He kicked it down onto the cobblestones. It landed with a loud thud. He then stared wide-eyed at the three travelers waiting to board.
"oi, you t'ree goin' ova to de island yeah?" He said with an accent that was entirely unfamiliar to the group. Doren nodded. "Yes we are," he rustled around his sack of gold and handed him six pieces. "Extra for when we come back to Iliadis."
The ferry captain snatched up the pieces with a quick lethalness. He lifted them into the air. "Dat is, if you all make it back." He teased and slid the coin into his own sack of gold. "We wait a little bit. Will let ya know when we leave. Go on. Sit."
The ominous implication of the captain's words hung thick in the freezing air. Katarina's eyes narrowed into a glare. Her hand twitched near her belt, absolutely unamused by the joke, but she clamped her jaw shut. She had enough sense to know that picking a fight with a crew of water elementalists while standing on a boat in the middle of a deadly strait was a spectacularly bad idea.
Anya shivered, whether from the biting coastal fog or the captain's grim teasing, it was hard to tell. She quickly pulled her eyes away from the man's manic grin and looked down at the wooden planks.
"Come on," Doren murmured, gesturing for the girls to go first.
They carefully crossed the gangplank, their boots thudding against the hollow wood of the deck. Up close, the ferry was surprisingly bare. Without the massive mast, rigging, and sails that usually cluttered a ship of this size, the deck felt unnervingly open. The two cloaked elementalists standing at the port and starboard rails hadn't moved an inch since the ship docked, standing as still as statues.
Doren led Katarina and Anya toward the center of the vessel, where a row of low, heavy wooden benches was bolted directly into the deck. They took their seats, huddling slightly closer together as the cold dampness of the ocean seeped through the wood.
Back on the dock, the animated captain didn't stay still for a single second. He paced back and forth, whistling a disjointed tune through his teeth while he scanned the fog covered docks of Iliadis for any stragglers.
"Make yourselves comfortable!" the captain yelled over his shoulder, his melodic accent echoing across the empty deck. "We wait for de sun to break de fog! Den, we ride de waves!"
They sat in silence as the sky slowly began to transition from dark grey to a bruised purple. The rhythmic, rocking swell of the Shifton Strait gently tossed the boat beneath them. Behind them, the warm, glowing hearths of the Greet, Eat, and Sleep began to flicker to life through the distant town windows. Ahead of them lay the churning water and the moving island. The waiting had begun.
"Flotsam, you beautiful maniac," a gruff, deeply familiar voice echoed from the cobblestone docks, cutting above the slapping of the waves.
At the sound of the voice, the tension on the wooden benches instantly spiked. Katarina's posture snapped to rigid in a fraction of a second. Her hand drifted right back toward the dagger at her hip.
"I'm so glad you're here," the voice continued, accompanied by the heavy, measured thud of boots stepping onto the gangplank. "I'm ready to get the hell home."
Urduun stepped onto the ferry. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his dark leather tunic, his heavy hood still pulled low over his face to ward off the freezing coastal wind.
Flotsam let out a sharp, barking laugh, bouncing on the heels of his boots. "Urduun! Mah favorite shadow! Come aboard, come aboard! Da shift is done and da water is fine!"
Urduun nodded at the captain, "Can't wait for the calm voyage." From beneath the deep cowl, his gaze swept across the open deck to assess the ferry and pinpointed the three figures huddled on the passenger benches. He stopped dead in his tracks.
The smug, condescending swagger he had carried in the tavern the day before completely evaporated. He let out a deep groan and let his head drop backward, staring up at the bruised, purple sky as if cursing whatever gods were watching him.
"You have got to be kidding me," Urduun muttered.
Anya shrank back slightly on the bench, pulling her knees closer together. Katarina didn't flinch, her eyes locked on the assassin with a cold stare that explicitly promised violence if he took a single step closer to them.
Doren, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off an impending headache, let out a slow, exhausted sigh. Of course they were going to be trapped on a boat in the middle of a deadly, churning strait with the one man in Iliadis they had threatened to maim.
Flotsam, entirely oblivious, or simply uncaring, about the thick, murderous tension suddenly choking the deck of his ship, clapped his hands together with a loud smack.
"Alright den!" Flotsam cheered, grabbing the heavy wooden wheel and spinning it with wild enthusiasm. "Everyone is comfortable! Let's ride! We wait no longah!" Flotsam yelled, his manic grin widening as the bruised purple light of dawn hit his weathered face. With a wrinkled hand, he slapped the thick wood of the ship's wheel. "Come on, Bosco and Naro, get ya lumps a' moving!"
The two cloaked assassins at the rails moved in perfect unison. Without a single word, they slowly raised their arms toward the sky with their fingers spread wide. The wooden ferry gave a deep, structural groan, rocking violently back and forth as the massive volume of water beneath the hull surged upward, gripping the wood.
Then, with a sharp, synchronized snap, Bosco and Naro whipped their arms straight back behind them.
The ferry violently lurched and shot backward away from the stone pier with staggering speed, the freezing water churning fiercely around the hull. With another subtle twist of the elementalists' wrists, the massive boat spun in a tight arc, righting itself before cutting a smooth, fast path directly toward the mysterious Shifton Island.
With the ship in motion, the tension on the upper deck settled into a silent standoff.
Doren, Katarina, and Anya sat in a tight row on one side. Urduun claimed the bench directly across from them. He sprawled out, stretching his long legs and draping his arms across the backs of all three seats in his row, taking up as much space as physically possible.
It was a display of arrogant comfort. He leaned his head back against the wood, completely ignoring the fact that Katarina was staring at him. Irritation in her eyes.
For a long time, the only sound was the howling coastal wind whipping past their ears and the heavy, unnatural rushing of the water controlled by Bosco and Naro. Then, Urduun let out a slow, heavy sigh.
"What do you plan to achieve going over there?" he asked, breaking the bitter silence. His voice was flat, barely carrying over the roar of the ocean. He raised a gloved hand, pointing a thumb backward over his shoulder toward the massive, imposing island growing larger on the horizon. "Iliadis has tourists. Shifton does not. It's an island of killers, cutthroats, and creatures that won't think twice about snacking on you."
Doren kept his posture relaxed, resting his forearms on his knees as he met the void beneath Urduun's hood. He needed to be careful. The man might be arrogant, but he was still a member of some of the most dangerous men and women in the world.
"We're looking for someone," Doren answered, his voice perfectly level. "A man who lives on the island."
Urduun let out a single, humorless chuckle. "Looking for someone on Shifton usually implies you're looking to be put in the ground, or looking for someone to put somebody else in the ground. Which is it?"
"We're just looking for information," Doren responded, keeping his face entirely unreadable.
"Looking for information," Urduun repeated.
The childish, mocking completely vanished from his voice. He stared at Doren from beneath his hood, clearly weighing the lie against the truth. "That could mean one of two people. You're looking for Dayle, or you're looking for Fennix." Urduun let out a dry, rattling scoff. "Good luck with Dayle. And good luck finding Fennix. I'm certainly not telling you where he is." He let out a chuckle, looking between the three of them.
"We're looking for Fennix," Doren confessed softly. "I need to ask him if he can see where my father is, or what happened to him."
For a split second, Urduun stared at him. Then, he threw his head back and let out a loud laugh. "You're traveling all the way to Shifton to find your missing daddy?" Urduun wheezed, covering his eyes with one of his dark, leather gloved hands, his hidden blade coming to view. He shook his head, entertained by the sheer absurdity of it. "First you three take all the rooms because Mr. Man here isn't a real man, and then y'all want to ask directions on where your daddy is?"
He laughed again, the sound grating and cruel.
Beside Doren, the air instantly turned to ice. Katarina grew increasingly agitated by his mockery. The insult to Doren was bad enough, but reducing their journey to a joke about "daddy issues" crossed a line that could not be uncrossed. Meko hadn't bled out in the dirt of that alleyway just for their quest to be laughed at by a low level thug on a ferry.
The metallic hiss of her blade leaving its scabbard cut through the air. The steel caught the pale morning light as she leveled it toward the assassin across from them.
Urduun didn't even flinch. He didn't drop his hand from his face, and he didn't bother looking up from beneath his heavy cowl. He lifted his other hand, pointing a single finger directly at the center of Katarina's chest with terrifying, unseeing precision.
"Calm down, missy," Urduun warned. He was no longer laughing. It was a flat, dead drawl that promised absolute violence. "You draw steel on this boat, and Bosco and Naro will flip the deck before you can even take a breath. You'll be drowning in the strait, and I'll be drinking in a tavern back home."
Doren immediately shot a hand out. He gripped Katarina's wrist. "Kat, don't," Doren commanded. He pulled her arm down, forcing the tip of the blade away from Urduun. "He's right. Put it away. We can't fight here."
Katarina groaned, her eyes focused on him and so hard her jaw locked so tight her teeth audibly ground together. Her knuckles were tight around the hilt of her sword. They were surrounded by deep, freezing water, completely at the mercy of the two elementalists holding the ship together. She shoved the blade back into its scabbard, deciding peace and gritted teeth over a watery grave.
Urduun finally lowered his hand from his eyes, a smug, satisfied smirk playing on his lips. "Smart girl," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the bench. "Now sit quiet. The ride's almost over."
"Smart girl. I'll show you a smart girl," Katarina barked, her voice dropping to a vicious snarl. She leaned forward, the physical space between her and Urduun suddenly feeling dangerously small. "Keep your mouth from saying stupid shit, and I won't have to show you exactly how smart I can be."
The freezing wind was blowing in a steady, predictable gale across the strait had suddenly picked up, blowing every different direction. Erratic, violent gusts whipped across the open deck in chaotic, swirling vortexes. The sharp shift in air pressure caught the heavy wooden hull, actively fighting against the smooth, controlled currents that were being manipulated by Bosco and Naro. The massive ferry violently rocked to the side, the deck tilting at a dangerous angle as the conflicting elemental forces clashed.
Anya gasped, grabbing onto the edge of the wooden bench with both hands to keep from sliding onto the wet floorboards. Urduun's smug smirk vanished instantly. He was forced to drop his arrogant sprawl, gripping the back of the bench and bracing his heavy boots against the deck to avoid being thrown entirely out of his seat.
Up at the helm, the sudden, violent turbulence broke the captain's manic whistling. "Oi!" Flotsam yelled down from the wheel. He gripped the wooden spokes to steady himself, glaring down at the passenger benches with wide eyes. "Whicheva one of yas is using your element, knock it de hell off! You wanna end up in de watah?!"
Doren immediately shifted his weight, shooting Katarina a desperate, pleading look. "Kat," he murmured, keeping his voice strictly between them. "Deep breath. Drop it. Now."
Katarina held Urduun's gaze for one more breathless second, letting the hooded assassin feel the raw, atmospheric pressure pressing heavily against his chest. Then, with a sharp, forced exhale, she unclenched her jaw and pulled her anger back in.
As quickly as the erratic wind had flared, it died back down, seamlessly folding back into the natural, steady gale of the coast. The heavy ferry leveled out with a loud splash, the deck settling back into the smooth, terrifyingly fast rhythm dictated by the two water elementalists at the rails.
Urduun didn't say another word.
He slowly settled back into his seat, but his arrogant posture was entirely gone. He kept his hands out of his pockets, resting them on his knees. From beneath the shadow of his cowl, he stared at Katarina with a renewed, calculating look. The realization had clicked into place. This girl wasn't just some grieving traveler with a quick temper and a sharp blade. She was a genuine and lethal threat.
For the remainder of the ride, the mocking jokes ceased completely. The only sound was the rushing water against the hull as the first dock of Shifton Island appeared.
The heavy wooden ferry glided smoothly toward the beach, coming to a dead stop at the edge of a dilapidated dock on the island's Eastern side. The stone and wood pylons here were slick with fresh, dark sea moss.
"Alright, alright. Get de hell off my ship," Flotsam ordered, leaning heavily against the wheel. The manic energy from the beginning of the ride had returned to the old man, his wide smile returning.
At the rails, Bosco and Naro finally dropped their arms. The water beneath the hull instantly went slack. Their magical currents dissipated back into the natural, freezing rhythm of the strait. The two cloaked elementalists turned toward the passenger benches and offered a deep, synchronized bow. A surprisingly formal sign of respect for paying them for their service.
Urduun scoffed, already moving toward the rail. "Stop with the formalities, you two." Without waiting for the gangplank to be lowered, Urduun effortlessly hopped off the side of the ship. Even with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, he landed softly on the broken, water-logged wood of the dock with the practiced grace of a seasoned killer. "Perhaps see ya in a couple days, boys," Urduun called out, offering a lazy wave over his shoulder without bothering to look back. He melted into the thick, freezing fog that blanketed the jagged shoreline, disappearing into the sanctuary of the assassins.
Doren, Katarina, and Anya rose stiffly from the cold wooden benches. The dampness of the strait had seeped deep into their clothes, and their muscles ached from the cold of the ride. As they walked toward the exit, they offered polite nods of gratitude to Bosco and Naro, acknowledging the raw power it took to push a ship of that size through the deadly waters.
Before stepping off the ferry and onto the ominous soil of Shifton Island, Doren paused. He turned back toward the helm, looking up at the captain.
"Would you have any leads on a man named Fennix?" Doren asked, keeping his eyes on the captain.
Flotsam, who was busy uncoiling a thick mooring rope, froze. He slowly turned his head, his wide, manic eyes locking onto Doren with a mixture of disbelief and dark amusement. A jagged, unsettling grin stretched across his crusted face.
"Fennix, huh?" Flotsam said, a raspy chuckle rattling in his chest. "You t'ree survive a boat ride with Urduun just to go looking for da old ghost?" The captain tossed the heavy rope over the side of the ship, shaking his head. He lifted a finger and pointed to the tree line. "Da old man don't stay in one place long, especially not down near de docks. Too much noise," Flotsam warned. "You want Fennix, you gotta go up into da brush. But listen closely, boy. Da wildlife on dis island is bred to kill, and da people can be even worse. If Fennix don't want to be found, he won't be found." With that piece of advice, Flotsam turned his back on them to tend to his ship.
Doren looked at Katarina and Anya. The message was clear. They weren't just searching for a hermit, they were looking for a ghost through the unknown. Who knew what was our there and what was designed to murder them. With a collective, steadying breath, the three companions stepped off the ferry, their boots touching down on the rotting wood of the docks that lead to Shifton Island.