Walking down the hallway of the ship, Maeve slurped up her noodles. The warm broth did little to improve her mood, but it was better than attending whatever meeting awaited her on an empty stomach.
Swallowing a mouthful, she turned to Kakuja.
"So, what did my father say he needed us for?"
With their hands still clasped behind their back, Kakuja was half-skipping along beside Maeve to keep pace with the taller woman's stride. They glanced up at Maeve and shrugged.
"Dunno."
Maeve squinted.
"What do you mean you don't know? Didn't my father send you to find me?"
Kakuja shook their head, pale hair swaying from side to side as they bobbed along the corridor.
"Sure, I said your father wants to see you, but it's not like I've actually spoken to him."
Maeve slowed slightly.
"What? You haven't spoken to him?"
"Nope. I bumped into a messenger. They asked me if I knew where you were. I said yes. They said your father wanted to see you."
Another shrug.
"So I figured I'd save them the journey and pass the message along."
Maeve stared at them for several seconds, then she rubbed her forehead.
"So let me get this straight."
"Mhm."
"You have no idea why my father wants to see me."
"Nope."
"You haven't spoken to him."
"Nope."
"You spoke to a messenger."
"Yep."
"And now we're walking across half the ship because of second-hand information."
Kakuja considered that.
"Technically, you heard it from me, so it's third-hand information."
Maeve's eye twitched.
"Technically, I don't care."
"Aw."
Kakuja looked genuinely disappointed.
"I thought that was a pretty important distinction."
Maeve let out a long sigh and shoved another mouthful of noodles into her mouth.
"So you became the messenger's messenger?"
Holding a finger to their lips for a moment in contemplation, Kakuja giggled.
"I guess I am."
Softly shaking her head, Maeve let out a small sigh and turned down one of the branching passages that cut through the ship. She took several steps before realising the sound of Kakuja's footsteps had vanished.
Maeve turned around.
Kakuja was still standing at the junction they had just reached, hands clasped behind their back as they stared at her with obvious confusion. Their head slowly tilted to one side.
"Where're you going, Maeve?"
In response, she pointed down the corridor she had just entered.
"To… see my father? This way is the fastest to the water."
Kakuja nodded.
"It is the fastest way to the water, Maeve. But Bloodwave isn't in the water."
They pointed up.
"He's up top."
Maeve's brow furrowed as she processed Kakuja's words.
"He's... not in the water?"
Maeve slowed her pace slightly.
"That's unlike him."
A thoughtful frown crossed her face.
"My father is always in the water when he's using his transformation. Unless he's gone ashore to speak with someone, or..."
Her voice trailed off.
"...he's troubled by something."
That possibility immediately put her on edge.
Saint Bloodwave wasn't the sort of person who became troubled easily. The man had stared down Nightmare Creatures powerful enough to devastate entire fleets and at most emerged from the encounter looking mildly inconvenienced, at worst covered in blood from head to toe.
If something had managed to disturb him… Maeve wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was.
Bringing the pot noodle to her lips, she drank the last of the broth. The warmth spread through her chest. Swallowing, she licked her lips before raising her head, as if she could look through the ceiling and see the decks above them.
Toward where her father would likely be.
Her expression soured.
"This isn't going to be good..."
----
Standing upon the bow of the mighty vessel, Saint Bloodwave stared out across the Antarctic sea.
The powerful winds sweeping across the deck tugged at his coat, carrying with them the scent of salt, ice, and distant storms. Beyond the vessel, the dark waters stretched endlessly toward the horizon, broken only by drifting icebergs and the occasional swell rolling beneath the overcast sky.
His attention was directed away from the settlement of Falcon Scott and toward the ocean beyond, as though searching for something hidden amongst the waves.
Or perhaps simply lost in thought.
He cut an imposing figure. Tall and broad-shouldered, with the build of a man who had spent decades fighting for survival in one of the harshest regions on Earth.
For several moments after Maeve and Kakuja came to a stop behind him, Bloodwave remained silent.
He simply stood there, watching the water.
The sea rolled endlessly beneath the vessel, dark waves rising and falling as sheets of ice drifted across the surface. The wind howled across the bow, carrying with it the bitter chill of Antarctica.
Maeve found herself rubbing her arms together.
The gesture was more habit than necessity. As a Master, the cold posed little threat to her, yet the persistent wind still managed to worm its way beneath her wetsuit and brush against her skin.
Beside her, Kakuja reacted in their own way.
The smaller Ascended immediately grabbed the edges of their hood and pulled it tighter over their head, attempting to protect their pale hair from the relentless wind that seemed determined to throw it in every possible direction.
For a few seconds, they fought a losing battle against the Antarctic breeze. They gave up and simply held the hood in place with both hands.
The silence stretched long enough for Maeve's unease to grow.
Her father wasn't a man who wasted time. If he had summoned her here only to stand around staring at the ocean, then whatever occupied his thoughts was either important, troubling, or worse, both of those two things.
Eventually, Maeve cleared her throat.
"Father?"
Without turning around, he asked a question.
"Do either of you know how many ships the First Evacuation Army brought with it during the first voyage to Antarctica?"
Maeve blinked, her brow furrowing.
'What kind of question is that? Of all the things I thought he was going to say, trivia questions weren't on my list.'
While Maeve was still trying to figure out where this conversation was going, Kakuja answered.
"I believe it was forty ships in total, sir."
Maeve turned her head slightly to stare at Kakuja and then promptly, lightly drove her elbow into their side.
"Ow!"
Bloodwave continued with another question.
"And how many of those ships are being used to ferry civilians away from Antarctica?"
Meave answered.
"We're using all forty."
Kakuja winced slightly.
"Technically... we're using thirty-five."
Maeve glanced sideways at them; Kakuja's usual carefree demeanour had faded somewhat.
"As we've lost five ships since the evacuation began."
They said quietly.
The reminder hit harder than she would have liked.
Five entire ships had been lost since the evacuation effort had begun. Each one carrying soldiers, Awakened, government personnel – and when they were loaded – civilians desperately trying to escape the Antarctic nightmare.
Thousands of people, gone in moments.
Maeve lowered her gaze toward the deck.
"Right..."
Bloodwave's gaze lowered from the oceans, his hand moving to rest on the guard rail.
"Wrong. We are using thirty-one ships."
Maeve and Kakuja exchanged glances; the same thought had occurred to both of them.
'What does he mean thirty-one?'
"Father."
Maeve started.
"Why did you want to speak to me?"
Bloodwave was still for a few moments before he turned; his gaze rested on Kakuja for a second before he looked at his daughter.
"Four of our ships were recently sunk whilst departing from Antarctica. Lost with all hands. The entire convoy was wiped out."
The words passed through Maeve and Kakuja's minds like a mental attack.
For a moment, neither Maeve nor Kakuja could speak as they processed Bloodwave's words.
The wind howled around them. The sea, unbothered, continued to roll beneath the vessel.
Kakuja's mouth slowly fell open, their eyes widening slightly.
"No…"
The word escaped as little more than a whisper.
"If they were sunk whilst leaving Antarctica, then that would mean…"
Maeve's hands curled into fists. Her dark skin seemed to pale slightly as anger and disbelief surged through her.
She finished Kakuja's thought.
"That all the people defending it, our brothers and sisters, the government agents–"
Her jaw clenched, the muscles in her neck tightening as anger rolled through her mind.
"–the civilians. They're all dead, every single one of them."
Maeve stared out across the ocean as though willing it to deny the reality of what she had just heard.
"That's not fair!"
Her voice cracked across the deck, loud enough to carry over the relentless Antarctic wind.
Several crew members nearby instinctively turned to look. A few government agents standing near one of the railings glanced in her direction. Even a pair of wakened further along the deck raised their heads.
Maeve continued on with little regard for those around her.
"They made it to Falcon Scott! They escaped Antarctica just to die crossing its waters! How is that fair!?"
Despite outcrying fairness, in her mind, Maeve understood that nothing was ever fair. Not in the world of the Nightmare Spell. People fought, people suffered. Sometimes people survived impossible odds, and sometimes they died anyway. There was no justice, no reward, no fairness.
Just fate and its machinations.
Bloodwave's eyes narrowed slightly as he watched his daughter. His expression remained composed. The face of a Saint who had witnessed too much tragedy to allow himself the luxury of openly displaying it.
Yet Kakuja, watching him carefully, thought they saw something flicker there.
Just for an instant. A sadness so brief they thought they might have imagined it.
A father's sorrow, not merely for the dead but for the anger and helplessness he saw written across his daughter's face. A father's pain, knowing that despite all of his power, the power of a Saint, he could not banish the pain tearing through his daughter's heart.
The emotion vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Bloodwave turned his gaze back toward the sea.
"The world has never cared about what is fair. The sea doesn't care. Nightmare Creatures don't care. The Spell certainly doesn't care. The people aboard that ship died believing they had survived."
His words hung in the air.
"They died believing they were finally going home."
Even Maeve had no response to that.
"Which brings me to why I called for you, Maeve. I want you to take Kakuja and go to its remains. Discover what happened to the vessel and bring some sense of solace to those who died aboard it. I do not want you to engage whatever Nightmare Creature sunk the fleet. Just simply discovering what caused this will help us to prevent it from happening a second time."
Maeve's expression fell to the floor; biting her cheek, she mulled the order in her mind.
As something occurred to her, Maeve looked up at her father.
"You're not coming with us? Father, if something was capable of bringing down four ships with no survivors."
Bloodwave shook his head.
"I would, I want to. But I cannot. My mission is to defend this port. To ensure nothing wishing its harm reaches it, at least not in one piece. Which is why I am sending you, Maeve."
With one hand on the guard rail, Bloodwave raised his other hand to his daughter.
Looking at his hand, Maeve hesitated for a moment before taking it.
[You have received a Memory: Wayfinder's Wayfinder.]
Maeve blinked.
"You gave me a Memory?"
Bloodwave nodded.
"It is a compass, but instead of pointing north, it points towards a marked object or individual. The [Wayfinder's Wayfinder] I have just given you was used to mark one of the ships. With this, you won't have to scour the depths."
Maeve slowly nodded.
"I understand; I guess that makes our jobs somewhat easier."
Maeve held out her hand to summon the compass.