“It's been a day,” Elisa said. "I've been keeping track. It's only been a day."

"How is that possible?" To Marco, it had been a week. The island had been getting better and better at its job, showing them worse and worse things. It went from finding existing fears, like Riv's dreams about the undead trying to drown him, to making new ones.

Elisa had not known she was afraid of being covered in black ooze until it had happened, and only their constant conversations about reacting effectively instead of fearfully had given her the frame of mind she needed to burn it off. Aethe had not known how afraid of being found by her people she was, especially when it meant being commanded away from The Foolish Endeavor. It was worse because, as she put it, everyone agreed with the elves who had come out of nowhere. Every one of her new friends had wanted her to go and had no more emotion about it than a lump of lead.

The worst of it was, it felt real.

—

Riv hadn’t spoken much since the first nightmare, and Elisa had to pull him out of that. Whatever the island was doing to them, it had gone beyond dreams. He had stood on the deck staring at everyone else's corpses for minutes before the others had realized it was his turn and that they were leaving him alone to handle it himself. They hadn’t been, of course, both in the sense that they were alive and that they hadn't left him alone. But to him it was just as real as it had been to everyone else. In the moment, there was no way to control the sense that these things were really happening.

Marco didn’t know what to do about it besides sail on. Somehow, the direction was never in question. It had started out as a faint hunch about where they needed to head, but it had grown over time into a cloud of fear trying to push him away from a certain course. The others weren't affected, but he knew exactly where the island was trying to get him to turn back from.

He could feel the direction they needed to go pulling at him like a lodestone. His confidence was shot. His hands didn’t shake when he steered, but he could feel the anxiety thrumming behind his ribs, always there. He was as scared and stressed as he had ever been, but his anger kept him going. He was going to get to the center of this place and torch whatever was causing it. In their more lucid moments, the crew agreed.

The island had eventually really come closer, moving closer and closer until they were engulfed in the illusion of it. It was a fog of sorts, nothing that harmed them but something that limited their vision to several yards on any side of the ship.

"It's not actually dangerous," Marco said to Elisa during one break. "It's never anything more than an illusion. We've fought, but it's always been easy so long as we were willing to fight. How did this kill the other ships that came this way?"

"It probably scared them into mistakes. Made them flee and then led them around in circles, or forced them off their boat, or told them the cannon powder was something frightening that needed to be burned."

"And they just gave up and did it?" Marco said. "They broke?"

“We’re breaking,” Elisa said flatly. "We just haven't broken completely yet."

Marco didn’t argue. It was true.

“We need to hit the end of this place. We need something to happen. But I think we are. We've been pushing through, and I think we are getting close,” Marco said finally.

It did.

It was a light, a blue orb about the size of a church bell. It hovered just above the water, distant but visible. Marco adjusted course without thinking, pointing the ship dead-on at its center. In normal times, it might have felt like a possible threat. In this moment, it was the only thing he had seen in a day that hadn't been horrifying. This wasn't the island's next trick. It was what it was trying to hide.

No one else responded with anything other than movement. Aethe was already climbing up the mast to get a better view, her bow slung across her back. Elisa grabbed her magic book, seeing if it had anything to say about this kind of thing. Riv gripped his club so hard his knuckles turned white, not out of anger but sheer rage.

They came up on it fast. The fog thinned as they got near to it, eventually giving them a clear view of their quarry.

"Which attacks are system powered?" Marco asked. "Just your elemental stuff?"

"Oh, no," Elisa said. "Anything, really. Anything connected to a skill at all."

"Oh. Got it. First come, first serve then, I guess."

The crew didn't have to be compelled to get moving at all. Aethe's arrows hit about the time the first of Marco's bullets did, pulling little sparks from the orb of energy as it destroyed her ammo and absorbed his shots. Every single impact made little ripples through the orb, and a few shots in, Marco could tell they were building on themselves. Given enough of this punishment, the thing would collapse eventually.

Elisa and Riv didn't want to wait for eventually. A boom blasted across the deck as Elisa got a cannon into play, sending a lightning-laced ball straight into the energy that left a huge dent in the center. It would have likely popped back out again, Marco thought, if it wasn't for Riv charging to the edge of the deck, springboarding up, and slamming his club down with what was probably the majority of the power he could feed it. Marco mentally prepared himself for a much weaker Riv until his skill let him recover his strength, but he couldn’t deny the efficacy of the hit.

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The orb never recovered. Instead of just building on each wobble from each hit like before, it was now amplifying the effect in itself, spinning more and more out of control.

Riv had just clawed his way aboard and got some more distance when the orb finally gave up the ghost, blowing apart in a halo of force that went over the top of their heads and into the distance. With it went every single bit of fog in the area. The sea was blasted clean like a swept porch, leaving nothing but clear, normal waters.

At the same time, a weight in the air was lifted. A kind of all-the-time fear they had all been experiencing even between the instances of illusions was suddenly lifted. Four simultaneous deep breaths occurred on the deck as everyone took in the relief of it.

“Well,” Riv said. “That worked.”

Then, sopping with water, he went immediately below decks to get stuff for lunch.

—

“What makes something like that?” Marco asked between bites of bread. “What could possibly make something like that?”

“There’s an obvious guess and a not so obvious guess,” Aethe said. “I think so, anyway.”

“Lay them on us.” Elisa was lying flat on her back on the deck, splayed as if she was trying to air out every part of her body. It looked like she was trying to let the sun wash off the whole experience of the last day or so. “I’m too tired to think.”

“The obvious one is obvious,” Aethe said. “That it was just a naturally occurring thing, the kind of thing that happens in the outer oceans. We are in the land of big, weird threats now. We can’t be surprised when they are big and weird.”

“Right. As much as I hate to say it that might not even be the worst thing we see this month. What’s the non-obvious guess?” Marco asked.

“That Quill did it, somehow. He sent us here. We’ve never seen anything like that before, right? We’ve seen weird monsters and weird places, but never anything that big or powerful.”

“And we never will again,” Marco said. “Not in the same way, anyway.”

“We believe you, Marco. But if it really is Quill, there’s no way this is the only power he has up his sleeve. How do we resist that?”

“I was thinking about that,” Marco said. “For starters, I just got a new skill and a couple levels from doing that. Think about it. I just destroyed an effect and we are now a lot stronger, right?”

“I hope so.”

“Where did that power come from? If it’s Quill, he probably gets something out of having an area like this up and running. Maybe he gets something for everything it kills, or something. But If I destroyed it and ate the power…”

“Then maybe he took a loss,” Aethe said. “That’s interesting. So are you proposing we go looking for more of these?”

“No. Not yet,” Marco said. “If we see one, sure. And we can take the long way back to the island. But if anything, we want to act like this was a hard job and demand our pay. Like we don’t find it weird at all. We can say… I don’t know. We can say Elisa found a way to nullify the fear, or something. That it was easy.”

“Why, though?” Riv said. “Why not just take him out?”

“Frankly? Because we can’t. I don’t know if it’s a system thing or just instincts, but he seems strong to me. Stronger than we can handle right now. And if we run, we have no idea what he might send after us. He’s still feeling us out, remember? If he doesn’t get any information from this, he’ll almost have to send us back out. He can try something different this time. See if he can’t kill us that way.”

“Sounds really fun.”

“I know, I know. But if we win, and keep winning, and keep getting stronger in the way we’ve been getting stronger? That’s a big deal, Riv. Eventually he’ll be weak enough compared to us that we can take him. We’re also doing something good for the people he would have killed, anyway.”

“And what if it’s not him?” Elisa said. “If he’s not causing this.”

“Then he’s just a nice guy with a bad vibe and foot-long claws,” Marco said. “I’d take that too.”