Part One: The Morning After the Ocean Left
Jandar awoke face-down on the deck of the Storm’s Fury, cheek pressed into the cold wood, the faint sting of salt on his lips. For a moment, he smiled. Probably a good night. Probably won that drinking contest with the dwarven twins from… somewhere. He didn’t actually remember. He reached out blindly for his hat, found it resting atop a coil of rope, and pulled it back onto his head with practiced flair.
Then he frowned.
The ship wasn’t moving.
There was no creaking. No waves. No wind. No gulls. Just silence—thick, heavy, unnatural.
He sat up slowly and blinked.
There was no ocean.
The Storm’s Fury stood tilted slightly to port, resting like a stranded leviathan on an endless, sun-bleached sea of cracked salt and glistening barnacle-stained seafloor. Fish bones and tangled kelp clung to the hull. The sails hung limp in the dead air. And the horizon—every direction—stretched into blinding nothingness.
“Well,” he said, dusting himself off and standing, “I definitely won the drinking contest.”
From below deck came a series of metallic clanks and one very aggressive curse. Deacon Bruce emerged holding both hand crossbows and a mug of lukewarm tea. His eyes narrowed at the view.
“Jandar.”
“Deacon.”
“…Where’s the damn ocean?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
Behind them, the ship’s crew stirred. Zook popped out of a barrel near the stern looking only mildly surprised. “I was wondering why it smelled like old clams down there,” he said, shaking out his beard.
Vegon Shadowseer stepped onto the deck, his green robes flowing like someone had cast “Dramatic Entrance” without telling him. He blinked twice, looked at the horizon, and muttered, “Hm. Curious.”
Next came Xil, silent as always, his eyes glowing faintly in the strange light. He didn’t speak, just raised one white eyebrow at the vista of salt and seabed, then turned and walked to the edge of the ship without a word.
Then came the dragons.
Kerzog, currently shaped like a smug, shirtless human with bronze skin and far too many necklaces, strolled up with a bowl of something suspiciously tropical.
“Morning, lads. Bit dry today, yeah?”
Kragorn followed, taller and older in appearance, dressed like a royal judge from some forgotten empire. He glanced at the horizon, took a slow bite of hardtack, and said flatly, “I believe we may have misplaced the sea.”
“Misplaced it?” Jandar said. “How do you misplace an ocean?”
“About the same way you misplace Vulmog’s warhorn,” Deacon growled, giving him a pointed look.
“That was borrowed. Temporarily.”
Vegon was already casting detection spells, arms outstretched, runes trailing from his fingers in threads of starlight. “No tides, no pressure system. The moon is… oddly silent. This was not natural.”
“Of course it wasn’t natural,” Zook said. “If it were natural, I’d have a fishing rod and a hangover.”
There was a pause. Everyone slowly looked at him.
“What? I brought bait.”
The ship’s lookout, a wiry woman named Nessa, finally scrambled down from the crow’s nest. “No ships. No birds. No water. Just… whatever this is.”
She pointed toward the eastern horizon. In the distance, faint and glimmering against the salt flats, a structure—impossibly far, impossibly still. Not a ship. Not a ruin. Something tall. Watching.
“Right,” Jandar said, clapping his hands. “We’re going exploring.”
“Of course we are,” Deacon muttered, already reloading his crossbows.
Xil stepped over a dried stingray and picked up a shell, holding it to his ear. He didn’t speak, but his face went slightly paler than usual.
“What is it?” Jandar asked.
Xil handed him the shell. Jandar held it to his ear.
He heard music.
Distant. Slow. A waltz played on broken instruments and whispered through water that wasn’t there.
He looked up. “Well that’s not ominous.”
Kragorn nodded. “Best put on boots you don’t mind losing. We’re not alone out here.”
And so, the Hand of the Storm—and the bewildered, salt-sprinkled crew of the Storm’s Fury—stepped down from the hull and began their search for answers.
Because the sea was gone. And something else had taken its place.
Part Two: Bound to the Fury
Jandar knelt in the crunching salt, running his gloved fingers along a barnacle-crusted shard of coral. His boots left prints on the white crust, trailing back to the Storm’s Fury, which now looked like a bizarre ship-in-a-bottle left in the middle of nowhere.
“Still think it was me?” Zook called from several yards off, poking at the skeletal remains of a giant squid. “Because I distinctly remember not casting any sea-draining spells before bed.”
“Your memory isn’t exactly flawless,” Deacon replied, dragging a rusted anchor chain behind him. “You once forgot your own wedding.”
“I was busy. That goblin uprising was time sensitive.”
Kragorn, standing nearby in his long gray robes, was staring at the sky with his hands folded behind his back. “There is no sun,” he said simply.
Everyone paused.
“Sure there is,” Jandar said, squinting upward.
“No,” the gold dragon said. “There is light. But no source. No warmth. Just… an idea of sun.”
Vegon, further out and knee-deep in a kelp-choked trench, reached for a scroll in his robes and began muttering. “Enough of this. I’ll cast Teleport—we return to Storm’s Rest and gather information. This may be planar.”
He snapped the scroll. Light surged around him—crackling, arcing—
And died.
Nothing happened.
Vegon blinked. “Hm. That’s… not possible.”
“You’re sure you said the right words?” Jandar asked.
“I invented half the words in that spell, Jandar.”
“Just checking.”
A few paces away, Xil stood at a stone outcropping, hands raised in silent incantation. A ripple of golden power bent the air in front of him, forming a swirling ring: a Gate. His pale eyes narrowed in focus—
And the spell fizzled like a candle in a storm. Gone.
The drow’s face remained impassive, but he turned slowly to look at the others. “We are tethered.”
“Tethered?” Deacon asked, brow furrowing.
“Bound. Not to this place. To that.” Xil nodded toward the Storm’s Fury.
As if on cue, a gust of wind that hadn’t existed moments ago swept across the salt plain, sending flurries of sea dust into the air. Jandar’s cape billowed dramatically, purely on instinct.
Then came the bell.
A deep, resonant gong.
It echoed across the open expanse, too loud for the empty air, too far away to be real—yet somehow near enough to rattle the ribs.
Another GONG. Lower. Slower. Counting.
“Where’s that coming from?” Zook asked, spinning around.
“Not from any bell on our ship,” Deacon said grimly.
Kragorn extended his hand and let a single flake of salt land on his palm. It vibrated in time with the next toll. “This is not a warning bell,” he said softly.
Kerzog, still chewing on something that might’ve been dried mango, finally stopped and looked serious for the first time that morning. “That’s a starting bell.”
Jandar raised an eyebrow. “Starting… what?”
Before anyone could answer, the air to the west shimmered. On the horizon—where before there had been only salt and ruin—new shapes emerged. Jagged silhouettes. Masts. Prowls. Massive land-bound vessels of impossible design—floating without water, each one moving slowly, gliding across the seafloor toward them.
One resembled a beetle carved of obsidian. Another looked like a rusted train given claws. A third was made entirely of brass and bone, pulled by something beneath the salt. Each of them bore a banner no one recognized.
A fifth bell tolled.
“They’re coming,” Xil said.
“For us?” Jandar asked.
“No,” Vegon said, voice low. “For the race.”
A sixth bell. The tone deepened.
Far above, the sky began to ripple like water.
Part Three: And the Ground Began to Flow
The seventh bell hadn’t finished echoing before the salt under their boots began to crack.
Not break.
Ripple.
“Back to the Fury!” Deacon shouted, already sprinting, crossbows tucked tight to his sides.
Zook didn’t wait—he dove into a forward roll, sprang up, and started booking it with surprising speed for someone with such short legs. “Haven’t run this fast since the time the bugbears found me in the chicken coop!”
The air had gone dense, syrupy. Every sound dulled. The crunch of salt became a squelch. The white sea floor was no longer solid—it was shifting, bubbling, becoming something. Not water. Not quite.
Beneath Jandar’s boots, the salt cracked open—and a channel of dark liquid surged upward. It flowed without source or gravity, carving a serpentine path straight toward the ship.
The eighth bell rang.
The ground under the Storm’s Fury groaned.
Vegon was mid-air, levitating back toward the deck, his staff glowing like a star. “That is not water,” he said aloud. “And it’s choosing the direction.”
Xil reached the ship’s boarding line and simply stepped—vanishing from where he was and reappearing on the upper deck in a single blink of pale light. “We have seconds.”
Kragorn and Kerzog transformed mid-run—wings of gold and bronze tearing from their human forms in a burst of blinding radiance.
“I’ll lift the stern!” Kerzog bellowed, already banking hard and slamming claws into the hull.
Kragorn’s voice was colder. “I’ll steer.”
Deacon, now on deck, barked at the crew. “Raise sail! Rig whatever’s left—we’re riding a godsdamned miracle!”
Jandar was last up. He grabbed the boarding rope, vaulted the rail, landed with a flourish and said, “I’m naming this phenomenon the Jandar Current. No objections.”
No one had time to object.
The Storm’s Fury groaned again—then lurched forward, as if the world itself had kicked it from behind.
The channel below it surged like black ink under ice, cradling the keel in liquid motion. With impossible speed, the ship slid into the serpentine trench, following its every turn with dreamlike momentum.
“Full sails!” Vegon shouted, and magical wind blasted down into the canvas with a concussive boom. The ship snapped forward like a fired bolt.
Zook ran past him dragging a net of glowing fish bones and threw it over the bow. “Don’t ask—just go faster!”
Deacon loaded a rune bolt, slammed it into the forecastle deck, and yelled, “Move!” The bolt detonated in a controlled burst of force, kicking the ship faster along the unnatural current.
Jandar ran to the wheel—just as it spun on its own, guided by Kragorn’s clawed hand.
“You’re late,” the dragon muttered.
“I’m dramatic.”
Behind them, the seafloor collapsed in a radius—massive rings opening like a blooming flower. But the Storm’s Fury was already gone, racing impossibly fast along a path that shouldn’t exist.
The ninth bell rang.
Then the tenth.
The channel widened. The ship surged faster.
And somewhere behind them, just beyond sight, more vessels began to wake.
Where Did the Water Go?
Part Four: The Wind and the Wake
The Storm’s Fury tore across the shifting channel, sails billowing with conjured wind, hull shuddering with speed no mortal ship should endure.
Jandar gripped the wheel, every muscle taut, every instinct locked in. The ship responded like a living thing, tilting just before each curve, catching every draft. His coat snapped behind him like a captain’s banner, his hat never budging an inch.
“This—this is the best day of my life,” he grinned, teeth white against the salt-scorched sky.
“You say that every time you steal something,” Deacon grunted from mid-deck, hammering runes into the wood as sparks of propulsion magic surged beneath him.
“Yeah,” Jandar called back. “And I’m always right.”
Zook was halfway up the rigging, feeding handfuls of glowing dust into the wind channels while barking directions to a crew that barely understood him. “More power to the fore! Brace the starboard arc! What do you mean that net was alive?!”
Below, Vegon stood in a circle of arcane sigils etched into the deck, channeling a spell so potent the air around him warped. Lightning danced across the ropes like veins of raw magic.
“We are not in the Material Plane,” he shouted over the roaring wind. “We are somewhere else. This channel is built—carved through reality.”
“Helpful, thanks!” Jandar called back. “How about you build me a map!?”
Xil knelt near the bow, one hand on the strange not-water beneath them. His lips moved in prayer, and from his palm, radiant light spilled—stabilizing the strange current, calming the madness just enough to guide their path.
Kragorn flew above, golden wings glinting. “We are reaching terminal velocity.”
“We’ve already passed terminal velocity!” Kerzog howled from behind the ship, flapping hard to keep up. “This is beyond physics! This is style!”
Then the sound changed.
It was subtle at first—less a roar, more a hum. Like distant drums echoing through the bones of the ship. The current beneath them widened. The walls of salt and coral began to fall away.
Jandar’s grip tightened. “Brace. We’re about to hit open channel.”
The Fury blasted through a narrowing like a cork from a bottle and burst into a massive salt basin—flat, glimmering, impossibly wide. The current no longer guided them.
Now, it tested them.
The ship dipped, rose, and twisted as the basin rolled with unnatural swells. Jandar leaned into the wheel, every muscle remembering currents that no longer existed.
And that’s when he saw it.
Off the port side—low, dark, and fast.
A massive vessel shaped like a beetle’s shell, black as oil and churning forward on dozens of jointed limbs. Carved along its side were shifting glyphs that rewrote themselves as it moved.
Then another—starboard. A wide, rusted hulk with no sails at all, floating six inches above the not-water, trailing chains that sparked and hissed.
And behind them, more shadows in the mist.
The competition had arrived.
“Captain?” called Nessa from the crow’s nest.
Jandar didn’t look away from the helm. “Yeah?”
“They’re faster than us.”
Jandar’s smile widened. “Good. It means we get to earn this.”
He turned the wheel hard, guiding the Storm’s Fury into the open channel. Behind him, the crew sprang into motion.
Zook dumped the last of his glowing fish dust into the elemental engine with a dramatic flourish. “If this explodes, it was very nice knowing all of you.”
“More sails!” Deacon shouted. “Give it everything!”
Kerzog dove, clamping his claws onto the rear rigging and pouring lightning into the hull, shouting, “Hold on, pretties!”
Vegon extended his arms wide and called to the stars, speaking a name he hadn't dared utter since before Tiamat fell. The wind obeyed. The sky cracked.
Xil stood at the bow, robes whipping around him, and whispered a word that slowed time—for just a moment. Enough for Jandar to see the gap. Enough for him to take it.
The Storm’s Fury surged forward, slicing through the current like a blade through silk, leaving the basin’s edge behind in a frothing wake.
Cheers rang out across the deck.
They were pulling ahead.
Then a shadow rose beside them.
A rival ship. Massive, elegant, and wrong. Shaped like a crescent moon turned sideways, built of black glass and pulsing obsidian, it glided over the salt like a ghost. No crew visible. No sails. No sound.
Its figurehead was a faceless being with too many arms, each one reaching out—not to grasp—but to welcome.
It matched their speed exactly.
Kerzog looked over the railing. “I don’t like that one.”
Kragorn’s golden form circled once overhead. “That one... is not from this world.”
Jandar cracked his knuckles and smiled at the horizon. “Good.”
Where Did the Water Go?
Part Five: Engines of Madness
The rival ship drifted beside them, silent and seamless.
It made no sound as it moved. No ripple, no creak, not even the whisper of displaced air. Just the faint vibration of something ancient and awake.
Its hull was glassy black, its surface shifting like oil on a mirror. Runes—long-dead languages and impossible shapes—rippled across the sides, not written on it, but in it, like scars remembered by reality.
The Storm’s Fury thundered beside it—sails full, dragons overhead, the crew working in frantic unison.
“They’re not gaining,” Deacon growled, gripping the rigging as the hull shuddered beneath his boots.
“They’re not falling behind either,” Vegon added grimly. “Which means they’re toying with us.”
As if to prove the point, the rival ship’s prow turned toward them—without banking, without movement. It simply reoriented in space like a god flipping a page.
Then, without warning, it spoke.
Not aloud. Not in a voice. But in thought.
YOU MOVE THROUGH THE FORGOTTEN PATH. YOU HAVE BEEN MEASURED.
Every crew member staggered, clutching their heads. The message wasn’t sound—it was sensation. Pressure, gravity, memory.
Jandar held the wheel through sheer stubbornness. “Alright, who let Vegon name the spooky ship?”
“That wasn’t me,” Vegon hissed, rubbing his temples. “It’s communicating through layered psionic imprint. It’s… a language of intention.”
“Great,” Zook muttered. “Intention’s always where the trouble starts.”
The rival ship pulsed.
A beam—not light, not magic, not even visible—lashed across the deck of the Storm’s Fury. The air warped. Reality stretched.
Suddenly, three sailors were gone. Not dead. Not vaporized. Just… misplaced. A second later, they reappeared in the crow’s nest, inside barrels, upside-down and screaming.
“Dimensional skip!” Vegon shouted. “They’re folding space!”
Deacon raised both crossbows and fired rune-bolts into the air above them. The bolts exploded in radiant glyphs that settled around the ship like protective wards. “Let’s see how they like holy geometry.”
Above, Kerzog roared and dove, crashing into the side of the rival vessel. His claws skidded harmlessly across its hull, as if it wasn’t there at all. He rebounded midair, snarling.
Kragorn flew higher, then unleashed a radiant burst of golden fire down into the channel. It didn’t strike the enemy ship—but the water beneath them shifted, reacting like a living thing.
It pushed the Fury forward.
“Ride it!” Kragorn boomed.
Xil stood at the bow, arms out, channeling a divine surge through the strange channel. His voice echoed with layered syllables as he shouted, “Drive us! Burn forward! Let their lies fail!”
Zook sprinted across the deck dragging a rope of animated kelp and slammed it into the elemental coils. “I don’t know what I’m doing but it feels right!”
The ship howled. Not the wood, not the crew—the ship itself. A groan of will and force and purpose. The sails snapped taut. The hull shimmered.
Jandar let out a whoop. “NOW we’re cooking!”
The Storm’s Fury surged forward again—pulling ahead.
The rival ship didn’t follow.
It merely… paused. Floating.
Watching.
Then, slowly, it turned away—sliding behind a wall of shimmering salt mist, vanishing like a dream forgotten in the morning.
It wasn’t retreating.
It was waiting.
Part Six: The Turning Sea
The channel narrowed again—then tilted.
Not a curve. Not a slope.
Tilted.
The black not-water rose like a ramp before the Storm’s Fury, winding into the sky in a twisting arc of wet shimmer. The horizon curled like a paper scroll being rolled upward by a god with poor impulse control.
“It’s not supposed to do that,” Zook whispered.
Jandar grinned. “Then it’s our kind of course.”
From the helm, he wrestled the wheel as the ship began its climb, the keel humming with strain. The sails groaned. The sea itself spun around them—up became forward, forward became through.
Behind them, the salt basin vanished in distance. Ahead? Only the Turning Sea.
A spiraling wave of liquid that rose in impossible geometry—a loop, a funnel, a wheel made of ocean that wasn’t ocean.
And then came the drop.
It appeared ahead without warning—a sudden break in the curve. A massive, yawning chasm that fell away into glowing abyss. Water—if it could be called that—cascaded downward in glittering streams, stretching hundreds of feet down into spinning void.
The Storm’s Fury was aimed directly for it.
“Oh no,” Vegon muttered. “No no no no—”
“Oh YES,” Jandar shouted, throwing his whole body into the wheel. “HOLD ON!”
The ship launched.
It crested the final curve of the Turning Sea, airborne for a breathless moment—sails flared wide, ropes snapping in the wind, dragons banking in wide arcs behind them—
—then dropped.
The Fury fell into the waterfall spiral, catching just enough of the stream to ride the curve. It spun sideways, then righted. It skimmed a tunnel of liquid vortex as it plunged, turning and twisting through reef-like hazards of glass coral that jutted from the walls.
Massive structures spun past them—crystalline arches, drowned statues with a thousand eyes, barnacle-covered ruins of ships that never made the turn.
Lightning crackled across the wake. The hull rattled with magic and motion.
“LEFT!” Deacon shouted.
“THAT IS LEFT!” Jandar shouted back, leaning into the spin.
Xil stood center-deck, casting radiant wards that deflected splinters of time—fragments of moments breaking loose from the sea itself and flying like shrapnel.
Zook climbed the mast, leapt, and sliced a net tangled in the sails with his shortsword. “We lose that sail, we lose the ride!”
Kerzog swept low in dragon-form, blasting a tunnel through the coral reef with a fork of thunder.
Kragorn kept pace above, his voice calm over the commotion. “Three turns remain. Then impact. Then silence.”
“What does that mean?” Jandar yelled.
Kragorn just smiled. “You’ll know.”
The Storm’s Fury dipped into the final spiral, surrounded by crashing energy and a waterfall that flowed upward and downward at once. The hull screamed. The sails tore slightly.
Jandar’s arms locked, jaw set, eyes gleaming.
“This is what we were built for!” he howled into the roaring current.
And with a final spin and drop, the ship burst free from the Turning Sea—catapulted into open sky, windless and vast.
Then, gently, impossibly…
It landed.
The channel resumed, flat again. The sea was calm.
The ship held together. Barely.
Everyone stood frozen. No one cheered. Not yet.
The bell rang again. Slowly. Once.
They weren’t done.
Where Did the Water Go?
Part Seven: Blades, Bells, and Boarding Hooks
The calm didn’t last.
The channel flattened, yes. The wind stilled. But the sky changed—darkened—not to night, but to judgment. The air thickened with the taste of old storms and burning ink.
Then they saw it.
Rising from the horizon, framed by spiraling salt clouds, stood a tower.
Impossible in scale, obsidian black, faceted like a gemstone carved from regret. Dozens of ships—wrecked, abandoned, preserved in time—were embedded in its base like fossilized challengers who had come before.
It had no doors. No windows. No obvious entry.
But it called.
Reach the Spire. Know the Purpose.
The voice rang out in every mind again—louder this time, like a verdict already passed.
“That’s our finish line,” Deacon muttered.
“It’s more than that,” Vegon said. “It’s the reason.”
Off the starboard bow, the obsidian ship returned—hovering like a shadow torn loose from its anchor.
“They made it too,” Zook said. “Dammit.”
The two ships drifted toward the same path—both aimed at the tower.
And then?
They screamed.
Not words. Not challenge. Something ancient and guttural erupted from the black ship—an alien warcry that struck the air like a blade through a bell. Lights flickered across its hull.
“Brace!” Xil shouted. “They’re not racing anymore!”
Sickly green harpoons of crystallized force launched from the rival ship. One struck the Fury’s upper sail, slicing it in half. Another skimmed the deck, carving a line through solid oak and nearly taking Zook’s ear.
Jandar turned to the crew, grinning like a madman. “Boarding party!”
Deacon didn’t look up from reloading. “Of course.”
“Who’s steering the ship?!” Nessa yelled.
From behind the wheel came a familiar voice. “I got it.”
Talia Vey stepped up, one foot braced on the helm, hair windswept, bandana slightly askew, eyes gleaming.
She grinned and spun the wheel lazily. “Try not to get stabbed, boys. I’d hate to actually be in charge.”
The Fury veered hard to port, closing the gap with the enemy ship. Chains rattled. Grappling hooks launched. Dragons circled overhead, roaring defiance.
Jandar drew Moon-Lightning, the stormforged blade singing with energy.
“Permission to be dramatic?” he called over his shoulder.
Talia smirked. “You’re Jandar. You never ask.”
With a wild yell, he leapt the gap between ships, blade flashing as he landed atop the obsidian vessel—straight into the fray.
He was met by... creatures.
Not men.
Elongated forms wrapped in armor that bent light. Faces hidden beneath porcelain masks, each featureless and cracked, like mourners carved by forgetting. Their weapons hummed—not steel, not magic—just wrong.
One raised its blade.
Jandar raised his.
“Let’s dance, nightmares.”
And the ships clashed as one.
Where Did the Water Go?
Part Eight: The Tower Knows
Steel clashed against the impossible.
Jandar’s boots hit the black glass deck of the alien ship with a sound like breaking mirrors. He didn’t wait—he lunged, Moon-Lightning flashing with silver arcs and a hiss of storm energy. The first masked figure blocked him with a blade that shimmered between forms—a spear, a hook, a whisper—and still, Jandar pressed in.
Behind him, the Storm’s Fury had locked side-to-side, ropes and boards slammed between the hulls. The channel beneath them twisted and widened, carrying both ships forward like leaves in a flood.
The Spire loomed ahead, pulsing faintly now, calling.
A final bell began to toll.
The last bell.
On the deck of the Fury, Deacon Bruce fired rune bolts into the enemy ship’s hull. Each one cracked a line into the glass, but the ship seemed to heal—as if time rewound the damage.
“Nothing real about this boat,” he growled. “Let’s give it something divine.”
He drew his dagger, whispered a prayer, and leapt onto the enemy ship, slamming into the masked warriors with steel and fire. One hissed as its mask cracked open—revealing only stars behind it.
Vegon hovered above the mast, robes flaring, eyes glowing with raw arcana. His hands traced a sigil in midair—a spell not meant to be cast in this plane.
“Your geometry is imperfect!” he shouted, and hurled a meteor of golden light into the rival ship’s bow.
The deck buckled, and two of the porcelain-masked beings vanished in the blast.
Xil stood at the line between the ships, calling down radiant flame with every breath. He moved like judgment made flesh—silent, unrelenting.
One of the creatures raised its blade—and froze, caught mid-strike, as light poured from its eyes and it shattered like brittle glass.
He whispered, “Only one storm ends.”
Zook, sword and shield flashing, darted beneath a swirling glaive-thing and took the leg out from under a masked figure. “Too slow, spaceman!”
Another charged—and Zook vaulted it, kicked off its back, and hurled a dagger into what passed for its spine.
“Still got it,” he panted, grinning.
Kerzog, in dragon form again, circled overhead, breathing blasts of thunder across the enemy sails, tearing rifts through what looked like canvas and instead split open folds of space. He let out a roar.
Kragorn followed behind, fire burning in regal spirals from his maw, carving paths for the crew to push forward.
Jandar and Deacon stood back-to-back now, blades up, surrounded by broken masks and twitching not-bodies.
“We’re winning,” Jandar said.
“For now.”
And then the rival ship screamed.
Not its crew. The ship itself.
It reared up like an animal, sections of the deck rising like spines, air folding around it. The remaining masked crew linked arms and chanted in a voice that wasn’t theirs.
ONLY ONE. ONLY ONE. ONLY ONE.
The Spire towered over them now. A cliff of dark crystal. A finish line drawn with a god’s finger.
“Fall back!” Talia shouted from the helm. “Get off that ship!”
The party ran.
Xil held the link with a shield of light. Deacon covered their retreat. Zook scooped a wounded crew member without breaking stride. Vegon teleported Jandar back to the Fury in a flash of arcane static—right before a ripple of force detonated the front of the alien ship.
The Storm’s Fury surged ahead.
Behind them, the rival vessel buckled—twisting in on itself, hull folding like a flower closing at dusk. The masked crew didn't scream. They simply watched.
And then—
Gone.
No explosion. No wreckage.
Just gone.
The final bell tolled.
The Fury coasted to a stop at the Spire’s base.
The tower said nothing. The wind died.
The Storm’s Fury was the only ship left.
They had won.
But no one cheered.
Not yet.
Because now… they would learn why they raced.
Where Did the Water Go?
Part Nine: The Spire Opens
The base of the Spire yawned open with no sound.
No door. No grand fanfare. Just a vertical seam splitting across the black glass, and then the tower… peeled, folding outward like a blooming flower in reverse.
Inside: darkness. Not hostile. Not cold. Just waiting.
The crew stood silent on the deck of the Storm’s Fury. No salt wind. No motion. The channel that had carried them here had dried behind them, as though it had never existed.
Jandar stepped down first.
His boots clicked on obsidian. “Well,” he said, adjusting his coat, “either we’re about to get answers, or this is the most elaborate ghost story ever told.”
Deacon joined him, eyes scanning the threshold. “We came all this way. No sense turning back now.”
“One winner,” Xil reminded quietly.
“But the prize was never gold,” Vegon said, stepping beside him.
Talia threw a quick salute from the helm. “Go find out what you really won, boys.”
Inside the Spire, the walls bent in ways they shouldn’t. Straight corridors warped upward. Stairs spiraled sideways. The light was sourceless—but always just enough.
No threats. No traps.
Only… reflections.
Not mirrors. Windows.
As they passed, each member of the Hand of the Storm saw themselves—not how they looked, but how they had been.
Zook, in his younger days, standing atop a dragon’s corpse, shield raised—alone.
Vegon, still cloaked in arrogance, fireballing a mountain to silence a council.
Xil, cradling a broken symbol of his faith, whispering, “Why not me?”
Deacon, holding the burned remnants of Ashrun in his arms, face blank.
Jandar—standing in a ship’s brig, staring at his reflection in the bars, wondering if this was how pirates ended after all.
No one spoke of what they saw.
They climbed for what felt like hours. Or seconds. Time bent.
Then they reached it.
A circular chamber. No throne. No dais. No god.
Just a presence.
It stood in the center, featureless. A humanoid shape of shimmering light and shifting shadow. Not form. Not flesh. Just understanding.
It spoke.
Not in words. In thought. Like the bell. Like the current.
You have arrived. You were chosen. You chose. You ran. You fought. You survived. You won. Now you must decide what winning means.
The being raised its hand, and suddenly:
They were alone.
Each of them. Separate. Standing in the Spire’s chamber—alone with the being.
Each saw a different face.
Zook saw his children. Deacon saw Vulmog, his old mentor. Vegon saw Elthelyn, laughing as she vanished again. Xil saw his mother. Jandar… saw no one.
Just the empty brig again.
And the voice spoke directly.
You seek purpose. You believe in legacy. You crave redemption. You fear stillness. You are all the same in this. Heroes, pirates, kings, shadows. You chase the storm because you do not know how to stop. So choose. One truth. One gift. One burden.
Each of them had to choose what they wanted.
Knowledge. Power. Rest. Return. Meaning.
The Spire would grant it—but not freely. Not without change.
Not without cost.
Where Did the Water Go?
Part Ten: Storm’s End
Zook
The Spire showed him his family—his wife, his children, his quiet home with chickens and morning sun.
You could go back. You could forget the storm. Wake up in the field. This never happened.
Zook closed his eyes. “I like the storm. I like fighting beside them. I like being underestimated.”
He looked at his reflection—short, scarred, smiling.
“I’ll go home when the story ends. Not before.”
Then your gift is time. More than most get.
Xil
The Spire showed him the Underdark—the shadowed legacy he never claimed. His ancestors whispering. A throne of bone and memory.
Take it. Power. Legacy. The secrets of your bloodline.
Xil said nothing. He turned, facing the Spire.
“Legacy means little if it isn't chosen.”
He placed a hand on his holy symbol.
“I already have a purpose.”
Then your gift is clarity. The weight of no longer wondering.
Vegon Shadowseer
The Spire showed him Elthelyn—her laugh, her vanishing act, the spellbook she still carried.
We can return her. You will know her mind. You will understand her.
Vegon hesitated.
Then smiled.
“If I understood her, she wouldn’t be her.”
He waved a glowing hand. “Let the mystery remain.”
Then your gift is freedom from obsession. She is yours to chase, but no longer to define you.
Deacon Bruce
Ashrun burned again before him. The gnolls. The screams. His forge in ruins.
We can undo it. One moment—one change. The hammer does not fall. The village stands.
Deacon shook his head.
“No.”
He touched the scar on his shoulder.
“I am that ruin. It made me who I am. I won’t be a different man to save a place that’s already gone.”
He looked up. “But I wouldn’t mind a visit. One last forge. One last fire.”
Then your gift is remembrance. The forge waits in dreams, and your hammer will always find fire.
Jandar the Adequate
The brig was empty. No crew. No sails. Just silence.
You could be a king of the sea. Return to power. Rewrite the end. One command and the world kneels.
Jandar didn’t even hesitate.
“I already have everything I want.”
The Spire tilted.
Fame. Wealth. Command. All yours.
“I said—everything. I’ve got a crew that follows me into the abyss, a dragon that makes better jokes than me, and idiots who trust me with their lives.” He paused. “That’s treasure.”
He turned to leave.
“...also, I’m definitely taking this.”
He tucked a glowing shard from the Spire into his coat. It pulsed once. Then went still.
You may not understand what it does.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Then your gift is acceptance. And a warning. What you took will change something.
“Yeah,” he smirked. “But not me.”
Epilogue Tease – Storm’s Return
The sea came back.
Not all at once. But in a single crashing moment of impossible sound, salt and surf and sky collided—and the Storm’s Fury floated again. The Spire crumbled into memory behind them, and the current pulled them home.
They had won. Whatever that meant.
Back aboard the Fury, Talia looked at Jandar suspiciously.
“You took something, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
But later, when no one was looking, a compass in his cabin pointed somewhere no map had ever marked. And it was glowing.
Where Did the Water Go?
Epilogue: One Last Round at the Hand
The fire crackled. The mugs were full. The air smelled like roasted meat, old wood, and faintly of sea salt—though no one had brought it in.
The Welcoming Hand tavern was quiet for once. Just the Hand of the Storm around a worn circular table in the corner booth. Their booth. Scarred by knife marks, burn rings, and that one time Zook summoned a badger by accident.
They sat in worn chairs like kings on thrones they never asked for.
Deacon sipped from a dented tin mug. “So. We won a race we didn’t enter. Against creatures from a place that probably doesn’t exist.”
“And got nothing for it,” Vegon muttered.
“Got perspective,” Xil said, raising his glass.
“Got a pulled hamstring,” Zook added, rubbing his leg.
Talia dropped into the booth, sliding a bottle across the table. “You got home. That counts.”
Kerzog and Kragorn sat nearby, both in human form, both nursing drinks they had neither bought nor asked for. Dragons had a way of being served first.
Jandar leaned back, boots on the table, hat tilted low, mug in hand. “You’re all wrong.”
Everyone turned.
He raised his drink.
“We got a story.”
He let the silence sit for a moment—just long enough.
“One for the songs. For the legends. For those poor fools who’ll never believe a single word of it.”
He looked around the table, and for once, there was no joke behind his smile.
“To the ones who ran the storm. Together.”
Mugs clinked.
“To the ones who came back.”
More clinks.
And finally:
“To the Sixth Finger!”
Everyone turned to Dumak, who had been quietly sipping at the bar and suddenly froze mid-drink.
“Wait, what?” he asked, nearly choking.
Everyone laughed.
Outside, the wind picked up—gentle, not ominous. But Jandar’s stolen compass, still tucked inside his coat, pulsed once.
Softly.
Steadily.
Like it was waiting.
THE END
Or, you know…
Until the next bad decision. 🥂