“So we’re sailing towards occupied territory.” Riv said.

“Yes.” Marco had his hand on the wheel, but was hardly paying attention to the sailing. The ship was moving fast in the direction they wanted to to go, and that was good enough for the moment. “We are.”

“And we don’t know what that territory is occupied by. Could be people, monsters, monsters of people.” Riv said as he raised his hands above his head to make an imposing pose. “Undead gods. Terrors of the sea. Anything.”

“Right. Although it’s probably people.”

Marco didn’t have a sense of their target like he had gotten looking for Thatch’s temple. They just had a coordinate of sorts, something that Elisa was able to decode but that was too general for a precise location. He could only hope that there wouldn’t be multiple islands when they got to the general area the coordinates described. If there were, he’d have to examine every single island in the area one-by-one to figure out which one it was.

“So why are we doing this?” Riv asked. “Honestly. Because there’s a lot of ocean that we could be visiting.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Aethe said.

“Because Elisa said so. She explained it to me,” Marco said with complete confidence.

“Marco, you have to do better than that. They aren’t you.” Elisa came up from below decks shaking her head. “You have to do better than that.”

“Actually, not for me,” Aethe added. “If you think it’s a good idea it probably is. Just wanted to make sure that you were heard.”

“Yeah,” Riv said. “That’s fine.”

“See? I know my crew.” Marco cracked a smile. “That’s all they wanted to hear.”

Elisa looked at all three of them in the face in turn before she started yelling.

“No. Absolutely not. That’s not okay, guys!” Elisa stalked the decks flexing fire-filled hands. “That amount of trust is not okay. It’s not justified!”

Riv looked at Aethe in confusion. She raised her hands, palm up, to indicate she had nothing.

“You’ve always been right before. Why would that change?” Riv asked.

“You have to listen to the plan,” Elisa said, exasperated. “And at least try to think of objections. That’s non-negotiable.”

“Okay.” Aethe smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “If that makes you feel better.”

“It does. It really does.” Elisa shook her head and took a deep breath. “The way it works is like this. This entire ocean is more or less occupied. We’ve fought killer birds. We’ve fought giant squids. On the way to this island, we’ll fight other things. Maybe big things. Maybe things that might kill us.”

“The occupier of an entire island sounds like the kind of thing that might kill us too,” Riv added.

“It does. But it could also be something else. Remember Thatch? He was the occupier of an entire island and wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Couldn’t have hurt a fly. The occupier might be a living god, or a bunny rabbit, or anything in between. Same as anything we’d run into out in the ocean, or on another island. The only difference is the power we’ll get out of it.”

“Power?” Marco asked.

“Yes. I know you must have noticed where we are the most powerful.”

Everyone looked at each other.

“Gods of the ocean below and the sky above,” Elisa cursed. She paced a bit more frantically around. “On the ship. We are the most powerful on the ship. Marco, do you never check the ship screen anymore?”

“I mean, it hasn’t changed. Not since I added Aethe to the crew.”

“Are you sure? Because if you don’t check it…”

“Fine, fine,” Marco surrendered. “I’ll look.”

“Ah. So it’s different. By a lot.” Marco confirmed after squinting at the screen. "I hadn't seen this version of it before."

"That’s why we’re going to the next temple. We can keep stacking these bonuses. We get stronger every time. Even just owning the region gives us advantages that carry outside of it. Stronger is safer. This is how we get strong fast," Elisa explained.

Riv leaned back against the rigging, arms folded.

"That makes a little more sense. Everywhere can crush us, so we need to get to where we can crush everywhere as quickly as possible."

"Exactly. And the more of these territories we hold, the easier it will be to take the next. And the next."

Aethe raised an eyebrow.

"Are you trying to build an empire, Elisa?" she asked. “Either way, I’m in for whatever you think is best.”

"No. I'm trying to not die. And to keep sailing, because that's what seems to make Marco happy," Elisa said, in quiet resignation that the task of convincing the ship’s crew to her way of thinking would be a long process.

The conversation drifted off as they all returned to their tasks. Riv began inspecting the ropes and pulleys, making sure nothing had worn down during the past few days. Elisa disappeared below deck for a while, muttering something about figuring out how to get more elemental power out of the cannon.

Marco stayed at the wheel, watching the sea roll past beneath them.

Eventually, he found his mind drifting to Thatch again. The old man had dignity. Marco had to give him that. Worn-out body or no, Thatch had still walked the island every day, watching for the floating grave of all his friends. Trying to think of ways to help them.

He wondered if Thatch felt lighter now. If letting go of the temple, the island, and the guilt had given him some peace, wherever he was. He hoped so.

The wind picked up slightly, tugging at the sails. The Foolish Endeavor gained a little more speed. She was stronger now, faster, and more capable than ever before. And they’d need every bit of it.

Aethe found him after the sun went down. She leaned on the rail and watched him as he steered like that was actually interesting.

"You good?" Marco asked. "You can steer the ship if you want."

"No, I'm fine." Aethe brushed some hair out of her head. "I want to do something."

"What?"

She stood up, walked over to the wheel, and kissed him.

"Wow," Marco said. "That was… how did I earn that?"

"You didn't earn it. I just wanted to do it. And now I want to do it again."

"I have to be honest here, I don't think I'm that good looking. I'm fine, I guess, it's just."

"Shh." Aethe leaned in until her forehead touched his. "You are fine. I like you fine."

"I was actually thinking about this the other day. How I haven't been very good at romance. We've hardly done anything about it."

"I don't know," Aethe said. "Lots of time alone under the stars. That’s pretty good."

"I think I'm supposed to do more. Take you to a restaurant or something."

"Then do." Aethe said. She turned sideways and slipped her arm around his waist. "When there's a restaurant. For now, this is nice."

“And we just keep going like that? Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with it. But we might be sailing forever. Seeing new places and things but never really getting anywhere we’ll stay.”

“Nothing stays the same forever. That’s what they say. Either of us might die any day, when you think about it. Or we might live forever and eventually find we’ve conquered all we want to conquer. You might get really hurt or be strong enough that nobody wants to challenge you anymore.”

“Some of those are pretty bad.”

“And some of those are pretty good. But there’s no point in worrying about everything when anything could happen. Especially when it takes your eyes off the moment.” Aethe quieted down for a moment, her arm through Marco’s. The wind swept softly over the deck, harmonizing with the sound of the water around them. “And some of these are pretty good moments.”

For the first time in days, Marco found himself relaxing.

“Fine. You are right,” Marco said. “But I’m still taking you to a restaurant.”

“No argument here,” Aethe said. “No argument at all.”

—

The next two days were just travel, if you didn’t count the armada of tiny ships that attacked them halfway through the second.

+

Fairy Boats

Manned by tiny, nasty creatures, the fairy boats are filled with horrifying little monsters that rely on swarm tactics to succeed in attacks. The fairies are not like those you read about in books, unless your books include carnivorous fairies with paralytic venom who feel nothing but mindless aggression towards anything that moves.

Each ship is very fragile, and each fairy even more so. Any fight against the Fairy Boats and their crews is a fight against time, trying to see if you can eliminate them before they manage to overwhelm you with numbers.

+

Riv and Elisa immediately jumped to the cannons, where they made the discovery that little boats were very hard to hit and resistant enough against capsizing that the resulting waves from a near miss shot didn’t bother them much. Elisa got around this from after her very first shot by firing a lightning-infused shot, which sent the little boats careening into each other as their entire crews were stunned at once. Marco and Aethe got to work with their smaller ranged weapons, which worked much better. Marco was taking out a ship about every two shots, sometimes in a single hit if it banged against a particularly important structural element. Aethe was harpooning ship after ship, letting her arrows fly at half-power to get more of them out more quickly. It didn’t matter if they sunk once they were hit, since the fairies were powerless to remove the arrows and for the most part unable to keep their ships moving efficiently with them in.

They sunk dozens of ships in the next few seconds, but the waters around them were basically filled with the things. No amount of damage would clear them all, although they did get a huge amount of kills before the first of the ships got into Fairy-leaping range.

The little sailors were, Marco thought, the most terrifying things he had ever seen. They had all the components a fairy was supposed to, down to the wings and little leaf outfits they were drawn with in books. They also had mouths that were bigger than every other part of their heads combined, filled with little knife-sharp teeth that glinted in the sunlight.

“Gather up!” Marco yelled. “We are going back-to-back!”