Chapter Text
It was a freezing night in the Nimbus Sea.
The wind was howling, as per usual when one is so close to the Dark Sea. The wind was also howling, however, with the screams of shipwrecked sailors. The merchant ship The Smiling Lion had encountered a storm of extreme severity, and it had been almost totally annihilated. Its crew was floating about on shreds of hull or makeshift rafts constructed of sails and barrels, all either starving, dying of thirst, or both.
However, they soon wished to be dead from those ailments, as it soon became obvious that that would be the preferred option to what was currently on the horizon.
A monstrous vessel, twice the size of a navy warship, flying black sails with a white circle upon them. Its inky black hull blended in with the water so well that for a moment, the sailors thought that they were going mad. These thoughts were dissuaded when a low horn blasted, and a voice came over the water.
"All who remain alive hold position. You are safe now."
The voice was distinctly feminine, but that was where normalcy ended. There was no tone, no emotion in the voice. Just pure nothingness; a void of all things that make language anything other than a method of communication.
The captain of the vessel, Kieran Ijkar, was currently lying on a floating plank of what was once his quarters. He was badly injured; his leg was twisted in a way that sickened all who looked at it. He believed himself already dead, for he was shipwrecked in an area that no one is brave enough to sail into. For during the storm, he had realized where he was. He was just offshore of Tidecliff Isle, which was supposedly controlled by the Prescence. No one had stepped foot onto the island in over ten years, for fear of encountering her. He knew that she would kill every man on the ship, should she come upon them.
So, when he saw the vessel come toward them; heard the voice carry through the air, he felt disbelief. Surely the Prescence was to kill him and his crew; they were trespassing in her sea.
But his beliefs were challenged when the vessel arrived and dispensed a flotilla of rowboats, all with crew bearing stretchers and medical supplies, calling for survivors.
"Over..." He coughed, blood launching from his mouth into the cold ocean "Over here!"
A rowboat turned, a lantern grew brighter until two men came into view.
One asked "Can you walk?"
The other smacked him upside the head and said "Argyn you dunce, look at his leg. Praise Poseidon that he's even alive. Get him up here"
He felt strong hands grab him, move him onto a stretcher. It was a lot more comfortable than the plank he was lying on, he was sure of that.
"I'm Argyn Stevenson, first mate of the Epicurean. Welcome aboard...?"
"Kieran Ijkar, captain of The Smiling Lion" he pauses "How many men survived?"
Argyn looks over at his yet unnamed compatriot, who looks back with a negative expression on his face. "Seven, captain."
Kieran felt the number like a punch in the gut. Their crew was thirty men strong, and he knew all of them personally from sailing with them for decades. To hear that seven remain was like telling him his family was dead, and to an extent, it was.
"Gods...."
The rowboat stopped smoothly in front of the vessel, and it was promptly lifted out of the water. Kieran would have found this unremarkable, except there were no cranes or rope or any fastening mechanism to lift it. As he looked around the main deck, he saw the seven men lined up on stretchers. Some looked in good health, some less so, some barely alive.
"Captain, this is the head of the wrecked vessel."
He heard Argyn speak, and turned to look at who he spoke to, and faltered.
It was a woman, easily two meters tall, dressed in black armor with a hood and cloak to match. She wore a mask like the night sky itself, absorbing all light.
This, he knew, was the Prescence. The most feared entity in the War Seas. The destroyer of Bedris Island, razer of Inskra City. His savior.
"Greetings, Captain. Where shall we bring you and your men?"
Her voice was similarly unsettling up close. There was no emotion, no feeling behind it. It was as if she only spoke to relay information and not express anything at all.
"...Sameria, please. Al Jahili, if you can."
She nods once, turns her head to Argyn. "To Sameria, then. Inform the crew. I will be in my chambers if I am needed."
With that, she implodes into a cloud of purple energy that dissipates as fast as she did.
"You heard her, men. Set sail for Sameria!"
Rear Admiral Amelia was sitting in her office, staring at three separate budget forms that all requested egregious amounts of money for sequentially stupider things. She was about to write strongly worded notes to the fools who wrote them, then take great pleasure in crushing the forms into nothing, when she was rudely interrupted by her first mate, Ivan, who barged through her door like a man on fire.
"This better be good, Ivan." she said, while still staring at the budget forms.
Panting, he exclaims "The Lion's crew is back!"
Her head snaps up.
"What? Kieran has been gone for weeks, the storm that they hit was ridiculously..."
She pauses
"...what do you mean by crew?"
"Exactly that, ma'am. The crew is currently in the Sun Serai getting very drunk. There is a small problem, though."
"Oh?"
"There's eight of them left."
She sighs.
"Damn. I had hoped more would survive. Did they say what helped them?"
"No, I've yet to speak to them. I assumed you'd want to accompany me?"
"You would be correct."
With that, Amelia dons her cloak. She decides to let her hair run free for the day; it is very hot in Sameria, after all.