The torrent exhausted most of its material before it reached Dirant in his boat and, failing to capsize it, merely hurried it away from the islet. Though a course more in the direction of Combem would have been preferred, the oversight was susceptible to correction. So he believed before another ring arose farther from the Daughter, and another, and another after that. Each of them buffeted his stalwart boat which endured the swells to stay afloat as reliably as people could but hope their banks would.
Improbable liquid configurations began to arise, no longer centered around the collision, and the person who felt consoled by his conviction the sailors who escaped the earlier upheaval must be caught in the later deserved what he was getting. As for the victim distressed about the region's economic outlook if the fish responded to the sudden alteration of local conditions by mass migration, he perhaps would benefit if he addressed the immediate and practical before pondering the remote, as important as it was. Another type clung to his boat and composed prayers whose effectiveness was never more needed, and to it Dirant belonged. His supplications of his patron, ever-serene Holzd, and the god of travelers, Ipalospastisken, occupied his mind and throat while his hands gripped hard enough to pain him and his eyelids shut to preserve him a welcome remnant of ignorance.
The rings did not subside because he stopped looking at them, but they did subside. The world's processes afterward attempted to restore their usual influence over the sea, and that tumultuous assumption of supremacy involved watery cliffs and rolling dunes which propelled the boat farther from Combem, and closer, and farther again. Even with his eyes open, a compass, and a library of sea charts, Dirant would have been unable to track his position, and still less did he realize the speed attained by his maelstrom-driven boat exceeded what Urvs Beutands would insert in every lecture henceforth should one of his designs maintain it for as much as an hour.
As reliable an ally as his boat had been and no doubt wished to continue being, the ferocity of the cloudless storm overcame its powers of resistance at last. The horrible screams of normally silent wood persuaded Dirant to remove his shoes and to resume looking that he might judge which section of the many into which the hull was separating would support him the longest.
His eyes disliked the spray, his ears opposed the sound, his skin blamed both his soggy clothes and the general conditions for the discomfort to which it was subjected, and altogether he would have voted against the entire experience if it came up in an assembly. His grip on his chosen plank lacked something of the tenacity the Warm Body class was able to exhibit, so much so that he slipped off repeatedly. At times he drifted away and paddled back, at others he sank and bobbed back up a short time later with no effort on his part aside from refraining from panic, heroically it might be said.
Though the living things who endured the episode believed themselves to have experienced eternity, the Northern Sea required not a month, a week, a day, or even a long lunch to regain its typical aspect. Milder swells replaced the more severe until the usual waves periodically gave Dirant's head a complimentary rinse, a service insisted upon despite his protests much as when a host urges upon his guests “one last dish” for the fifth time in an evening.
The end of the tumult long preceded Dirant's recognition of it, but eventually he accepted the altered circumstance and began his determination of his best approach to solving his present problems. He looked in a direction he decided must be north for his own convenience and saw water. The south also had water as its dominant or rather sole feature aside from the sky, and as for the west and east, the results of his survey fulfilled his expectations.
“Holzd reached by countless roads, your priest thanks you for the ritual and its related abilities, which are yours, and does not complain about their inapplicability to the situation, which is his, and beseeches that you not permit your priest to overlook in his preference for what is complex over what is simple a point of potential succor.” With that abbreviated prayer completed, the prelude to a longer before he resorted to Divine Guidance (Hunch), Dirant peered along the horizon with care.
Toward what he had labeled the southwest but was in fact the opposite in both aspects, he saw, not land or a ship, and not anything he recognized, but unquestionably an object. Opting to consider that a divine response, he made it his goal and began swimming.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Ability Swimming (Basic) gained.
There was the completion of his childhood exertions in the Ontoffemmiror and the various streams which rushed to meet that great river like sycophants when their patron leaves his front door, impeccable in his dress and his mastery of local affairs. Optimism became Dirant's companion for all that swimming enthusiasts who tested their limits by challenging seas rather than rivers typically possessed a rather higher rank of that ability, not to mention a suite of others which pertained to endurance and not being eaten by sharks. In lieu of permitting himself to be dispirited by that knowledge, he reviewed his status multiple times as he swam to reassure himself he had indeed gained that ability of supreme immediate importance.
Ritualist
Priest of Holzd
LV 10 320/1000
HP 320
Muscle 36 (+2)
Coordination 44 (+5)
Verve 44 (+5)
Sticktoitiveness 57 (+6)
Discernment 70 (+6)
Gumption 27 (+4)
Tit-for-Tat 43 (+2)
Receptivity 89 (+8)
Panache 47 (+5)
Class Abilities
Ritual Judgment
Ritual Completion
Ritual Memory
Ritual Delay
Ritual Substitution
Ritual Sanctity
Ritual Development
Divine Guidance (Hunch)
Ritual Applicability (Fairy)
Ritual Humility
Ritual Revelation
Ritual Flair
Divine Guidance (Emanation)
General Abilities
Adaban (Fluent)
Heweks (Fluent)
Yumin (Fluent)
Tabilidgeir (Intermediate)
Dvanj (Intermediate)
Drastlimez (Intermediate)
Usse (Intermediate)
Desurvyai (Basic)
Saueo (Basic)
Mercantile Fundamentals
Horse Riding (Intermediate)
Class Perception (Divine)
Negotiating Fundamentals
Sea Travel (Basic)
Swimming (Basic)
Closing the distance toward the uncategorized object did not, against his expectations, lesson his confusion commensurately. Every detail he picked out between strokes increased his willingness to consider the theory he had already died and entered an afterlife far more exotic than that encapsulated in the phrases “fortless lands,” “still rivers,” and “tranquil plains” common in Greater Enloffenkir. What he had first seen was the glint of the sun off something in the shape of a plate or dish, but one used to serve a creature far larger than a giant's most exaggerated description of itself in its memoirs. Closer still, he realized even a giant whose proportions matched the threat of its power and savagery could have fed at that plate along with a dozen of his fellows like pigs at a trough. He further saw an entire dinner set of those plates endlessly rotating like a wheel set in a river. Their sides fit in thin tracks which extended far above the waterline to a height enviable by architects anywhere outside Dittsen and far below as well, presumably to a like depth.
So far as he could determine, an array of chains and pulleys anchored to a mess of mast-like projections from a central main body operated those tracks. That body consisted of a large building atop four pillars far taller than the plates were broad, and as each plate reached its apogee, it flipped and dumped the sea water on the center. The meaning, purpose, and provenance of the complex required thorough explanations no one present could provide, though Divine Guidance (Emanation) contributed by alerting him that something about it might be considered unusual.
“If it is by your contrivance, much-mindful Holzd, that this bizarre construction and I encounter each other that I might be saved by infiltrating it, my gratitude is bounded by my eloquence rather than the magnitude of the blessing, and if not, you deserve the same nevertheless should you relate my thanks to whatever god is responsible, or to whatever wealthy eccentric had it built if such a work is possible for humans to contrive, which I doubt, suspecting instead that my watch will never again run properly.” The feeling of unexpected salvation overwhelmed Dirant to such a degree that he neglected to trim his prayer with an eye toward efficient delivery of pious sentiment. He failed even to notice his lapse, so fixed was his mind on deciding if he had a way to reach the core.
He believed he could. The plates passed near, or from there it looked near, an extension from the center similar to a wharf. If that idea failed, the aerial machinery might be close enough to grab, and from there he imagined himself working his way to a mast and sliding down. The “imagine” part was impossible to overlook, he knew, but not everything hard is unachievable.
The exhaustion he suffered merely from paddling forward to position himself over the next plate implied a hypothesis about his backup plan he hoped not to test. Events rescued him from that as well as from the Northern Sea. The plate came up from below, supported his weight as if he had been born and never grew afterward, and transported him upwards. When level with the platform he had espied from below, the distance between the two objects would have required a specialized ruler to measure, one employed by investigators of suspected forgeries. An easy hop restored him to stability for the first time since he left the islet.