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I started this story to create a narrative around my character in Everquest 2. As things progressed, I sort of dropped that pretense and continued writing for its own sake. This may seem a little heavy handed, but that's part of why I'm sharing it right now. While the end of this work is far out of sight for me at the moment, I seek any opinions that people might have on it. I'm a student of business, formerly of software engineering, so my literary experience is essentially nill. Forgive me for that.<
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A large sailing boat rocked uneasily on sullen waters. Wind whipped across the bow. The surrounding atmosphere was unmistakable; a storm was nearing.<
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A man, hanging from the rail, stood looking straight down over the edge, a defeated expression plainly visible on his haggard face. He stood, pondering the depths of the water below. The water appeared eternally cold and dark. The man spat bitterly into the wind. A bitter globule of saliva found its mark on his right cheek, smearing over an old scar. Naturally.<
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The wet wind was now quite strong, howling so loud as to drown out his shouting to any mortal being who might have heard him otherwise. Everyone but the man had gone below deck after taking down the sails. The old man did not care; this was between him and his god. “Why have you forsaken me? Why do you prefer turmoil to peace? Wrong to right? Despondence to happiness?� A gust began that was strong enough to force the man to remove his clenched fist from the air and put it to use in order to keep him aboard the ship.<
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His delirious diatribe continued, “I will not stand this torturous existence any longer.� With that, he kicked a lever aboard the ship, which set the anchor in motion towards the ocean floor. In a second, he was pulled over the edge and down with it. The long anchor chain uncoiled furiously. A few hundred feet of it slipped into the water. Then once the end of the tether was reached, a large chunk of wood and planks around it to which the anchor was fastened was gorily ripped off and quickly sank into the black-blue depths.<
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An anchor was lost.<
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A 13 year old boy stared over the side of a boat. He was barely tall enough to put his chin just over the railing so that he could see. He was short for his age, but what he lacked in height he made up for in daring and vehemence.<
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He looked around the boat warily then turned his attention to the notches on the inside of the boat just under the railing. He wanted a better view and would risk a more precarious position to get one. The notches started about half way up the side, so he really had to get up there if he was going to get up at all. There was no half way for him. Balancing and teetering, he now felt much better situated to observe his environment.<
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Nusken was not disappointed by what he saw. The dark blue water passed nearly silent under the sailing vessel’s bow, passing farther and farther until it met the horizon. The ship was traveling at a considerable speed. Waves were split quickly and often by the ambitious and unrelenting bow. The sea seemed to reach into eternity.<
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He could see clearly what he perceived to be a distance of a few meters into the water. A whale lazily swam in the opposite direction as the ship a few yards off. Yet he was keenly aware that he could not see through to the bottom. This disturbed him a little. Nusken was entranced and vaguely scared by the new depths of which he had just become viscerally aware. Somewhere, under that blue black veil, lay the bottom.<
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The fact that he could not see the bottom fueled his imagination. Was it actually there? How could he even tell the difference if it was? He knew from what his father had told him that most of the ocean they were sailing over was at least a mile deep. This idea had sufficiently satisfied his platonic curiosity about the matter when he was on land. But somehow it all seemed chillingly different when he found himself staring into the stygian haze of a mile or more of water.<
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Despite his morose inclinations towards the water, he would stare at it for hours at a time. There wasn’t much else for him to do. As if specifically aimed to please him, a seagull body, floating belly up, washed by the waterline of the boat. Being a young boy, Nusken was intrigued. As the body passed the bow, Nusken climbed down from his perch to go to the back of the boat, a few hundred feet, to see it tossed around in the boat's wash.<
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As he was getting situated on the back railing, he was suddenly startled by his mother's call. He knew she would not and in fact did not appreciate the sight of him on the railing again. A sudden gust of wind tipped the boat considerably. Even more unbalanced, he made a quick motion to get off the railing and succeeded, just on the wrong side.<
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Nusken was a decent swimmer. He could definitely keep himself afloat and move about. At home, or what was home up until recently, he would swim at the beach. Complying with his parents' wishes, he would always take a friend along, for the safety of having a buddy. Nusken suspected his parents were merely doing the neighbors a favor - all the kids that ever accompanied him were younger by at least a couple years and would logically, at such ages, not be able to do much to help him if he were in trouble.<
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One of his favorite people to go to the beach with was a kid from two houses down the road, maybe 3 years younger, named Gwithe. The reason that this particular kid was Nusken's favorite was because he would usually bug off and do something else as soon as they got to the beach, which lay about a half a mile away from the cliffs on which their parents' houses were placed. This was unlike a few of the other kids that would sometimes be forced upon him. A particularly obnoxious one would attempt to keep a running dialog the entire trip. Nusken had no chance to enjoy a swim or to sit peacefully on the beach because of the kid's incessant yammering. Still others just liked to always hang out near him, beaming. He detested their admiration.<
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One day, after a particularly nasty storm the night before, Nusken and Gwithe were headed to the beach. Nusken always liked the beach after a good storm and was looking forward to quiet enjoyment of it. The environment was different after a storm. It always smelled, looked and felt different, fresher. This he knew was in no small part due to the fact that rotting seaweed and the array of aquatic creatures formerly strewn about the beach would be washed away. Now the beach would be freshly covered in seaweed and bodies of various creatures that still had some time left until their full pungency would assert itself once again.<
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Nusken walked at a fast clip. The afternoon was waning and he wanted to have as much time as possible before the sun went. Gwithe was straggling. They had to keep together as long as they were in sight of their parents' houses, so Nusken was forced to slow down a bit. Gwithe was not a particularly energetic or strong kid. He and Gwithe were of similar height, but Nusken looked more powerful and strong by far. Despite the overt annoyance displayed by Nusken, Gwithe would always insist upon a slow pace. Though, Nusken was more patient with this kid because for the most part he was the least troublesome of his beach-going wards.<
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They reached the beach and Gwithe departed to do what he usually did which was poke about the various bodies and items lying about on the beach or dig a little hole. Nusken didn't care. He just wanted to take a swim. This would be a good trip. The sky was still noticeably boiling and churning with remnants of the storm of last night - it had been all day.<
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Nusken watched his charge amble about randomly, picking up this and that, examining various items, then finally settle into digging a hole and sorting out all the rocks, placing them on neat piles. When Nusken was satisfied that he could leave the kid alone, he walked closer to the shore, removed all that he had on him but his swimwear, placed them on the beach and weighted them with a big stone he found, then ran into the water.<
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About 20 minutes later, he heard a cry. "Oh great, he's found another dead sea turtle or something", he thought. He surveyed the beach from his position about 10 meters away from the shore, saw no one. He simply returned to what he was doing. Another cry, definitely Gwithe, and he was excited about something. Only this time he recognized that it had not come from the direction of the shore. No, it had come from some ways out on the water past him.<
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Nusken wasn't sure whether the boy's presence in the water was ok or not. He'd never seen this particular kid try to swim. He certainly knew that no one should be out that far, let alone that scrawny little urchin. In a moment, it became all too clear that the kid was being carried out to sea, flailing and thrashing the whole way. "What made that kid come in?" thought Nusken. Regardless, he was going to have to do something about it.<
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Shouting back, telling the kid to calm down a bit, Nusken began to swim out to the frightened little delinquent. He began to notice a considerable undercurrent as he got closer. When he got to him, he looked back to the shore - not an encouraging sight. They had managed to get about 200 meters by his estimate from the shore by the time they caught up. The little kid was in a frenzy. As soon as Nusken got close enough, the kid latched onto him with surprising strength.<
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"This is no good Gwithe you're going to have to help me a little bit with this," said Nusken. They bobbed lower and lower into the water, the dead weight of this kid's bony body was not helping at all. Nusken was going to have to make this simple. "Start kicking, kid" No response, except perhaps to hold a little tighter. Nusken, expending great energy merely keeping the both of them afloat, was getting more than a little perturbed. "We're both going to die if you don't start helping me out here, kid" The water growing colder and darker below them, the ocean seemed to expand as the shore dwindled in size.<
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"I had to do something" Nusken later justified to himself. "It was either him and me or just him, right?" No comfort would come to him from this, just the realization of cold calculation. Nusken hated it, hated himself.<
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Nusken struggeled with Gwithe for a few terrifying minutes. Each trying to stay alive in the way he thought would be his best avenue of success. "The little urchin must have been on pure adrenaline" later thought Nusken. With surprising strength, every time Nusken forced him off a bit, the kid would reassert his position. Finally it came to blows. This was the part that Nusken would later agonize over. The kid didn't last long. After a few well placed hits to the head and chest, he was finished. Extremely shaken and eternally guilt-ridden, Nusken struggled to shore where he flopped just past the surf and lay for a couple hours.<
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The harrowing images of that struggle and subsequent tragedy were all that he could think of as he struggled to stay alive in his current situation. But, of course, he was clearly no match for the speed of the boat - which was now outpacing him at a tremendous and relentless rate, seemingly about ready to abandon him.<
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His mind was racing. He knew that if the boat left him he had no chance. He began to scream and holler to anyone that might be on the deck. He soon found himself looking at the back of the boat, getting smaller and smaller in the distance.<
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Treading water - Expecting the worst, Nusken pondered the futility of it. The boat had now become an unrecognizable speck on the horizon. All the thrilling depths he had examined from the safety of the boat now lay inexorable below his struggling legs and feet. "Eventuality," he figured, "has me lying at the bottom."<
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It was a
ight, cloudless day. Nusken had been treading water for two hours when he noticed something. He had only seen it in his peripheral vision - he was trying not to look into the depths above which he was suspended. Yet he had to look.<
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Forcing himself to look down, he saw it. Amid the dark blue water, there was something visible. The
ight afternoon sun shone so that the light penetrated a good dozen feet or so - enough to spot this figure in the water. Almost piercing the surface, a thin and pointed stone column loomed.<
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The presence of this thing nearby only served to further alarm Nusken. He had visions of some mysterious force dragging him in and under. The pointed pillar of rock appeared to him as to be a finger, pointing, threatening him, emanating from the deep unknown. Soon he became aware of the presence of many more of these objects in the water of various sizes and depths among the looming darkness of the rest of the ocean. He could feel his fear welling up in the pit of his stomach.<
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The day wore on, evening set in. Hopeless, Nusken toyed with the idea of giving up. Surely death would be kinder than prolonging his fear as long as he could. Noncommittally, he sunk his head deeper into the water. "Well," he thought, "this depth is at least a little easier to maintain." Then he remembered that this put him in better proximity with the objects he had witnessed earlier and knew were still looming silently below. He felt like he could have jumped out above the water with fear.<
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Just as twilight was setting in, he heard a voice and saw a small light. He could hardly believe what he saw. A small row boat was heading toward him, someone on it with a small lamp. He shouted. They aimed directly for him. As they drew near, it was clear that most of them were very unhappy.<
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"You are one lucky little bastard" they told him as they pulled him out of the water. "Your parents had to be quite persuasive to get the captain to drop sails and search for you." Nusken wasn't sure which he now feared more - the sea or his parents.<
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"Magistrate, I've returned from Qeynos, and the report is in. Would you have me read it to you?" asked a young page. He was standing just inside the stone doorway to the magistrate's office. The dark hall failed to illuminate his face as he began to step inside. Drenched from head to toe, he stood there with a polite, subservient smile on his face. A storm raged outside the window, the occasional lightning bolt overpowering the candlelight in the room.<
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"Mmm..." muttered the fat, acrimonious man behind the desk without lifting his attention from his current work. This meant more or less yes.<
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"Well sir, the shipment has arrived at its destination. Payment has been arranged." He indicated this with great enthusiasm. The magistrate ignored his exuberance and uttered another short but now satisfied "Mmm...". "I will filter the money through the usual channels. But there is still the matter of this Deeduld Desalimi - you know, that simpleton guard who indicated just a little too much curiosity for safety when he happened to see what was being loaded onto the ship." The magistrate looked up, this was worth his attention. "Didn't we make it clear to him that he was to keep his mouth shut?" asked the magistrate, his anger clearly piqued.<
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The page continued, "Sir, he has been seen approaching various city officials about our activities. Luckily he has not caused much of a stir yet, but I don't know how long we can hold that off. We've got ourselves a real crusader here sir" he quipped.<
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The magistrate's expression went from reserved annoyance to one of pure contempt. "Alright, I will handle it, thank you son. You have done a good job."<
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Shortly after the aid left, the magistrate got up and paid a visit to one of the head guard offices. "Good evening Steven" the magistrate muttered. The lieutenant removed himself from his current work to greet the other man with an intimidated smile. "Hello, Magistrate" he said "What can I do for you?" The magistrate loosened up a little bit. "I’ve been having some trouble of late with one of your men, a certain Deeduld Desalimi."<
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The crew would not let Nusken below deck. They had been delayed by at least a day now thanks to him. This meant cut rations, and worse, a threat to their hard earned remuneration. This family had been a nuisance since they boarded, now they were an outright obstruction. Nusken would have to make do outside. His parents came to visit him as soon as he was
ought aboard. His mother
ought him a blanket to use while he stayed in the very dinghy he had been rescued in, now heaved upon the deck.<
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When everything calmed down and everyone but he went below deck, Nusken lay flat on his back on the bottom of the small boat and watched the stars. It was five days ago that they had set out. It was five days since Nusken had cast Gwithe away as they were being carried out to sea to drown.<
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Now, laying in the boat, he was too cold and afraid to go to sleep. What promised to be a very long night was only beginning now. As he lay under the blanket his mother had given him, he began to go over how he had gotten where he was in his mind. It all seemed to be a consequence of his struggle with Gwithe.<
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As he recalled, once Nusken revived on the beach, he realized that he was going to have to face his parents and Gwithe's at tell them what happened. As he approached where his house had been, he recognized something was amiss. He was so confused that at first he could not tell what it was. Had he taken a wrong turn somewhere? Then it became all too obvious to him. The house wasn't there.<
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The house his family lived in was more of a shack. His father was a guard in the Freeport militia, which was not exactly one of the highest paid or better respected jobs in town. The house lacked any kind of foundation and appeared to simply have been pushed off the edge of the cliff.<
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Nusken reeled. Had the townspeople already found out what he had done? How could they know? No one but him and the ocean knew, so he thought. But still, there was the creeping feeling that somehow he had gotten his family into big trouble. Gwithe's family was well respected among the townspeople, though nearly as poor as Nusken's.<
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He peered over the edge of the cliff. Pieces and splinters of his family's house were bobbing up and down in the surf as it crashed against the rocks at the bottom. The de
is was scattered for a few hundred feet, while most of it was being crushed repeatedly on the rocks. A perfectly square footprint of light sand lay where the house had stood, in stark contrast to the dark
own dirt that surrounded it. Tracks of upturned earth were exposed in the short distance from the house to the edge of the cliff.<
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As Nusken stood in bewilderment, his father came from behind and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. The man sighed in disillusionment. He knew why this had happened. Nusken, too, in his confused young mind thought he knew why it had happened and had blamed himself.<
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"Come Nusken, we must go find your mother. We should go now."<
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Nusken struggled with his memories of what he had done and how starkly his life had changed. He lay in uncomfortable stillness for a while then fell into an uncomfortable sleep. Hours later, in the pitch darkness of the moonless cloudy night, he was awoken by a stunning crash then a gut-wrenching lurch as something forced the ship to a stop. The noise continued cracking and snapping, whining and churning. The deck on Nusken’s side rose up quite disconcertingly and his little boat slid down and slammed into the other side throwing him into the dreadful and yet familiar water.<
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Nusken, stunned fully awake by the cold salt water, flailed in the water as the small boat flipped over the deck and on top of him. Surfacing
iefly in the pocket of air between upturned boat and water, he struggled back under the water and reemerged to flop over the round bottom of the little boat. Panting out of fatigue and terror, he struggled in just in time to see the last of the mast of the ship go under, the hull of the ship a black shadow superimposed over a blacker, menacing depth. The scene bore no evidence of even a single other soul of the two dozen or so onboard escaping the hull. Nusken knew he had lost everything.<
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As Nusken watched the ocean swallow the image of the ship, faintly he became aware of something else above the surface all around him. Like the fingers of stone reaching up for him when he fell in that morning, there were thousands of stone pillars piercing the surface and pointing into the cold misty sky. Looking up, the dark impressions of these towers barely set relief upon the dim stars in the darkest sky he’d ever seen. Forlorn and bedraggled, he sensed that he was floating helpless among the edifice of an unholy cathedral to an indifferent god. Nusken knew then what had caused his loss.<
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Nusken awoke in the morning to a
isk wind and an ambiguous but profound sense of dread. Where am I? What is going on? It took him some time to remove the stupor that clouded his memory of the night and days before. The pillars of the night before lay nearly over the horizon opposite the rising sun, now like a set of tiny, jagged teeth. Resigned once again to his fate, Nusken lay back down in the boat and felt the gentle swaying and listened to the wind, muffled by the small vessel’s tiny enclave.<
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One evening some number of days later, parched and starving, Nusken felt the boat knock against something solid and hollow. It gave his deprived mind a renewed shock, thinking that he was assaulted once again by the specters of his earlier experiences. He hadn’t looked over the edge of the boat in some time, contented to simply wait out his doom. And so it came as quite a surprise when a heavy coil of rope hit his stomach, easily knocking the wind out of his weakened chest.<
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“Grab the rope would ye son?� shouted a grizzly old man in a yet grizzlier looking fishing vessel. “Sorry to bump into ya and hit ya with that thar rope, but I’m in a bit of a rush,� he said, eyeing the still orange, but darkening horizon. “You’re lucky I saw ya at all; I was just about to head to port.� All Nusken could manage was a weak “Whaaaa…..?� before the man continued, “I can’t pull you in without your cooperation young man. You’re goin’ to have to hold onto that rope.� And so with all his remaining strength, Nusken tied the rope to a truss in the little boat and collapsed again into its orifice.<
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And so Nusken was extricated once again from the sea.
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