Trials Resume

Stunned by the impact, Raum races out of the brig and onto the deck to escape the watery inflow and try and figure out what has happened. Toreas follows shortly behind him.

Plainly, the boat has hit something, or been hit by something, and is now taking on water. That is to say, it is sinking. Raum finds his footing on the deck slightly uneven as the boat has already begun to list. It won’t be long before the entire thing blips to nothing in the flat expanse of the harbour, swallowed completely underwater.

Over the few minutes spent in the brig, the sky has become overcast and a light mist has settled over the water. Out of the mist, in the distance, appears another ship blocking the exit of the harbour. Still shaken by the suddenness of the event, Raum fails to decode the relevance of this ship until a massive, iron projectile comes flying from it towards his and Toreas’s vessel. Though it misses, crashing into the water with a violent spray and ferocious peal, it succinctly informs Raum what is happening. That ship wants to sink them, and is attacking them.

Before he can even feel confused, the Lord’s words flash through his mind. Drown him in salt water. Contingency plan. This ship, with its deck canopied by a thick glass dome to repel rainwater while sailing, could function as an enclosed tomb if one wished to conceive it as such. Obviously it does have exits, the number of which increases with every impact of a cannonball to the hull, but it seems the chance of this potentially working to kill Toreas, and moreover the opportunity the situation presents, is worth more than both the material cost of this boat and the shame of not even trying.

Despite himself, and despite having dismissed Toreas as utterly unreliable, Raum looks to him for guidance reflexively. Toreas’ face, being an iron helmet, is unreadable. But his intentions are perfectly clear as he proclaims that Raum will not be recycled, and draws his sword, singing shrilly out of its scabbard. Revealed, its blade is black as a reaper’s gown, and held aloft, it exudes an overwhelming pressure more commonly experienced before a god or a king. This weapon knows its own celebrity, having feasted on the lives of hundreds, and gorged on the blood of thousands.

That count imminently includes Raum.

Raum backs up — his spine bumps the railing — trying to placate Toreas. It’s fruitless, as Toreas raises his blade—

BOOM! The boat lurches violently as another cannonball crashes through its hull. Raum promptly grabs the railing behind him as everything on the severely listed deck slides downwards, leaving him at the top of the slope. Toreas, unable to anchor himself on anything, tumbles down the deck and crashes through the glass canopy. As the rest of him disappears over the railing, a glimpse his gauntleted hand reaches out — the runes of which are glowing, as if aflame. A wall of smothering heat surges across the deck and chokes Raum as oppressively as a desert blaze — the canopy warps, glass expands, and the entire thing shatters.

Glass shards and shrapnel fly everywhere, like the detonation of a grenade. With only one arm free to shield himself, which he reflexively curls over his head, Raum prays for no flying glass to skewer his guts, heart, jugular, or anywhere else all that vital.

A lash of pain sears across the back of his hand. When he uncurls himself, and hurriedly assesses the damage, Raum is amazed to find he has survived with only this reasonable, treatable injury. An awed sob chokes itself out of his throat as the blood streams out, splattering across the tilted deck, and Raum finds his feet slipping, and himself hanging off the railing on the vertical. The boat has listed completely on its side, and the deck faces him like the sheer face of a cliff.

Though treated with painkilling ointments, Raum’s burned shoulders explode with incandescent agony, so intense and unbearable that the pain of his injured hand doesn’t register as he frantically hoists himself over the railing and onto the side of the ship. It presently sits like an island, a landmass floating in an expanse of water, and Raum finally has a moment to breathe.

Staring at the flat desert of the harbour waters, the distant gunboat, the clouded grey sky, and the rising mist, Raum screams into his fist to vent out the pain. A cold, incredible dread churns in his stomach, freezing his insides to glaciers despite the heat pulsating across most of his skin.

Natural water is poison here, idiot.

There is no rescue if he stays here. He will sink and die of poison before he can even drown. His teeth chatter violently, even as a torrent of hot tears sear down his face. His mind is muddled; thoughts struggle to form, but the underlying sentiment is uniform: I can’t die here! Please god no! No! I don’t wanna die!

Breathing heavy, and only marginally composed, Raum tears a wooden board off the damaged hull of the ship. His every nerve and instinct screams against it, but — ultimately, he does slide himself into the flat water, using the board as a life preserver. He closes his mouth, closes his eyes, and buries his nose in the crook of his raised, injured arm, all while quietly praying for the bandages to be thick enough, and the burns to be localised enough on his shoulders, that no water can get into them.

With the Majordomo’s maps in his mind, he blindly, and carefully, paddles for land.

He isn’t getting anywhere.

The current, though mild, overpowers his weak swimming easily. Cross-referencing the maps with his innate direction sense, he perceives himself being swept along parallel to the coast, in a trajectory that will eventually shunt him out of the harbour and into open sea. He needs to swim more aggressively — but having lived in a city all his life, far from any large bodies of water, Raum can barely even swim mildly. And especially can’t swim without breaking the precarious equilibrium that is keeping his important parts dry.

He dares to squint his eyes open, desperate to spy anything that could save him — maybe a boat, a fishing platform, even some utter nonsense like a friendly dolphin. There are none. He squeaks loudly to summon dolphins. None come, and he feels ridiculous.

The water bobs him gently. The sky overhead is a curtain of grey. Looks like it’s going to rain, Raum thinks idly, and sobs.

Out of the mist, like a ghost fading in, there arises a towering bridge. Raum’s heart quickens. The current is lazily sweeping him toward it — and as he drifts closer, he successfully catches himself against one of the concrete bases of the bridge’s support beams. The top of the base is high, but not out of his reach, if he jumps…

…Without a stable foothold to propel himself off of, he can’t exactly ‘jump’.

Raum swallows back an exasperated sob as he contemplates how to finangle this. By carefully hitching the board against the side of the base, diagonally, he manages to make a slim foothold. He kicks off it, his fingers skim the top of the base, he frantically clamps down. He barely manages to hoist himself up and forward by pushing off the side of the base, using the momentum of the initial jump, and slides himself stably onto the concrete like a seal coming on land.

Though he pauses to breathe, the sight of the board drifting away with the current, and disappearing into the mist, crushes any sense of relief. Right. This may be better than drifting off to sea, but he is still very much stranded and surrounded on all sides by liquid death, with no option of swimming or paddling. He must either wait to be found and rescued, or…

…he stares up at the support beam of the bridge. It’s so tall it disappears into the mist. But it’s constructed with criss-crossed girders that, while not designed for any kind of human interaction, shouldn’t be totally impossible to climb.

Raum quietly, numbly prays for his streak of outrageous luck to continue, and for his battered body to somehow, magically, mirror even a fraction of Reyl’s acrobatic skills. He imagines himself as her, as he yanks himself up into the mist, and grits his teeth against the pain.

Eventually, he makes it to the bridge’s railing, heaves himself over, and collapses, breathless. He lays there, staring at the canopied roof of the bridge, laughing and crying with relief.

He finds the bridge empty when he finally sits up. The mist, which has grown into a fog, blocks any visual landmarks, but Raum senses himself roughly in the region around the castle. He contemplates again what to do, where to go, and how to reconvene with Reyl — since, though he’s survived the boat sinking, he’s lost most every resource he could’ve used to find her.

Maybe start with finding a hideout, stealing a radio, getting a change of clothes and twisting information out of some low-tier officials. Whichever way, he has to leave this spot, and start moving.

He fingers the red execution cord, still laced around his neck, as he approaches the end of the bridge. An odd, light pattering sound makes him pause.

Small, dark circles bloom upon the concrete before him. They multiply, and multiply, while the pattering grows louder, and louder. Raum backs off, his chest frozen, as, within seconds, the end of the bridge becomes curtained by a ferocious downpour of deadly, toxic rain.

The other end of the bridge is the same. He is stuck here until the rain subsides.

Though he’s not in immediate danger, it’s an assuredly horrible turn. Anything could be happening out there. Officials could be using this downtime to refresh and reorganise, Reyl could catch false news that he’s dead and become erratic, or Reyl could be caught in this deluge. Though he smooths over that last anxiety with assurances that Reyl would’ve seen the signs of the rain coming, and taken shelter, he still cannot temper the growing, itching sensation of stillness, powerlessness, and inertia. He paces the bridge, squeezing and pinching the flesh of his arms, his heart hammering unreasonably fast for the numbness of his mind, and for the utter nothing going on in his vicinity.

Clangg. Clangg.

The noise jerks Raum out of his numb rumination. It’s coming from the opposite end of the bridge. He cranes his head to peer, and strains his ears to listen, even as his terrified gut tells him to back up, move away, until he’s nigh in the rain.

The rhythmic clanging grows louder, joined soon by an odd, but distinctly loud sizzling. Fog swirls, disturbed, though Raum soon realises what wisps out of the wall is steam.

Because what soon emerges out of the murk, marching unphased through the veil of rainwater, is Toreas — sword in hand, runes glowing, and licks of vapour curling off his body as the air around him boils.

Raum plasters a charming smile on his face, and against his instinct, strides forward. Words flow from his mouth. Hey thank the stars and the heavens that you’re here, means we still have a chance, to—

Toreas twirls his sword, holding its point in the air inches from Raum’s neck.

—Woah woah woah, Raum continues, raising his palms. No need for that, he asserts. Though his mouth continues to speak as though they are allies, and as though they have more to gain from cooperating than from fighting, without knowing Toreas’ rationale for becoming murderously hostile towards him, and without having seeded an alternative goal for him to pursue back on the boat, Raum’s ad-hoc script finds itself meandering and unfocused. Toreas offers no hints, either, as he stays frostily silent.

Raum’s dialogue lulls mute. A moment passes.

Toreas spreads his legs into fighting posture, yanks back his arm—

Moved by instinct, Raum ducks and unhooks the cord from his neck—

—and thrusts his blade forward.

—and dodges the stab. He loops the guard of the sword in the cord, yanks it, twists it, and watches amazed as the redirected momentum of the blow sends not just the sword, but Toreas’ hand grasping it, spiralling through the air. They clatter harmlessly to a stop some ways down the bridge. The fragments of the severed cord flutter, spent, to the ground in its wake.

Toreas recovers from the shock of witnessing this absurd manoeuvre first. He drives his remaining fist into Raum’s gut — Raum, fixated on the fact that Toreas can be dismantled, grabs his incoming arm to try and yank it off. The runes across his body glow — an incredible heat, as if he’d just pressed his palms on an active stovetop, sears into Raum’s flesh. He squeals in pain, releasing Toreas, stumbling backwards, and tripping with a thunk to the ground. His back, aggravated, stabs him with more pain. Injuries across his whole body throb.

Toreas’ open palm looms above him, the air around it rippling with heat. Paralysed with fear and pain, Raum cannot roll aside to avoid it, as the heat congeals into the blaze of a furnace, molten fingers closing in to grasp and melt through his face—

Bang.

Before Raum’s swollen eyes can even blink, and certainly before his brain can comprehend, Toreas’ hand disappears. The heat ebbs alongside its departure. While he screams into his palms from pain, he peers through the gaps in his fingers.

Toreas is looking towards the end of the bridge. Raum follows his gaze.

And there, rifle raised, is Aquila.