Shadow Slave

The ketch was thrown into the air by the powerful current, like it had been a thousand times already, and then plummeted down. Bruised and battered, Sunny gritted his teeth and prepared to endure the violent shock of the impact - just like he had endured a thousand of them already.

The seething water seemed as hard as stone when the bottom of the wooden boat hit it. He held on to the side of the ketch, feeling a grim sense of fatigue and hopelessness overwhelm his mind. The darkness was as oppressive as it had been before, the mist was as blinding as it had been before, and the fury of the storm was as chillingly dreadful as it had been before.

However, this impact was different from all the previous ones.

...Sunny failed to see the moment the wood split, but he heard it. Even through the howling of the hurricane wind and the roaring of the falling waves, the cracking sound seemed clear and deafening.

By the time he turned, Nephis was already falling. She hit the deck with a dull thump, leaving a streak of blood on it, and tumbled forward. A split second later, her back hit the protruding fittings of the dismantled mast, violently arresting her fall.

A stifled groan escaped from her lips.

'What... what happened?!'

It took Sunny a moment to notice a jagged piece of broken wood that she was gripping with both hands, still, her knuckles white. Then, he hurriedly glanced at the stern of the ketch.

His pupils narrowed.

The steering oar... was gone. There was only the piece Nephis was holding and a scattering of wet splinters on the deck. The rest of it had shattered, and was washed away by the raging current.

Sunny froze for a moment, both terrified and relieved - relieved because it was not the deck itself that had cracked, terrified because the ketch had become completely uncontrollable now.

it directly, it was going to hit them from the side. Which meant that

next wave, and the next,

the ketch through the storm,

'Curse it!'

think,

of Twilight and the Bone Singer,

of the small stone lantern that hung on his belt, filling the ketch. There had already been shadows there, but all of them were twisted and broken, turned wrong and eerie by the

the storm returned with a deafening

dove underneath it, sending the ketch rising into the dark vastness of the raging mist. The deck tilted dangerously underneath him, threatening

in their direction before grabbing onto

surged forward. They flowed over the sides of

into an improvised ark. The opening above the deck was closed completely, cutting off the

the darkness, pierced by the soft

ketch was still tilting as it climbed higher and higher. Soon, it was going to crest the wave and either overturn, or plummet back down into

tilting deck, grabbing the fittings of the mast next to Nephis.

a firm, but elastic harness that would prevent them from flying around the dark interior of the ketch when

happened a few seconds

cold water - what little of it remained after he

It protected the ketch from being