The Navigator's Throne

  Nocturna League

  Episode Seven:

  The Navigator’s Throne

  By Kell Inkston

  Copyright 2019 by Kell Inkston

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Oliviaprodesign.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, eldritch entities, businesses, places, death gods masking as ship captains, events, locales, naughty mermaids, other characters, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For Murielle, who’s supported me with well-wishes and stalwart grammar corrections, you are truly the slave-driver that constructs the glorious pyramids.

  “Eldritch? Yes, I have heard that name. Tricksters, the lot of them. Arrogant fools that would dare say they are beyond the hand of a true overlord. I will show them. They’re but craven beasts wearing the capes of divinity. They do not even know what they want themselves, and they mask it as extending intelligences. It is truly pitiful, for they do not even understand what I am. Even a human could do that!” – High Overlord Chaos, Slayer of Billions and Trans-Dimensional Predator of Gods

  Nervous Anticipation

  The strong breeze of the tropical day has died down to a mellow, cloudy-gray cover.

  “Nice weather for a dive,” Engineer Luisoix says with a sardonic pulse of his lure-light.

  “Oh, wanna take my place?” Grancis asks with a gentle, barely crass smile while she practices moving about in the suit. It’s an unpleasant, synthetic fabric canvas article, that makes her look like a burlap sack struck by crippling depression; this is all before the helmet is connected to the suit.

  Luisoix’s little light blinks. “Fat chance, kiddo. I don’t work well with scares.”

  “So you think I do?” Grancis asks, her typical nervous smile now broad on her face.

  “Relax, at least it’s not a night dive,” Luisoix says.

  A few of the nearby jobbers give reaffirming glances to the statement. At least it’s not a night dive.

  Grancis doesn’t even need to ask to guess just how terrible it’d be. She’s seen things down in the water in the day time that would make a hardened sailor’s skin crawl right off his back and hide right back into his bunk; the things she’s seen in the night, though, surpass most forms of human acknowledgment.

  “That’s true,” she says, “but I’m really, really not up for this.”

  “Hey, at least you’ll be armed.” Leaning over on the life-support systems console, he points over to a rack of harpoon guns.

  “Those are… guns?” she asks, looking over the glinting, sharp points of the bolts. Now that she really sees them, they do look like the kind of nasty thing you would point at someone to ruin their day.

  “Never seen a harpoon rifle before?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Don’t blame you. They’re not all that popular above water nowadays. Rifles are a lot better in the air, especially when you’re tryin’ to bang up someone’s hull at five hundred meters,” he mentions, pointing next to the rather intimidating pairs of fifty caliber, wet-fire machine guns seated at both sides of the main deck.

  She glances at them with trepidation, like looking at something so dangerous and scary it’s somehow embarrassing to even acknowledge it. “Right. So we’ll be shooting these at the… eldritch?”

  Luisoix shrugs. “If your word for eldritch is anything that moves, then yeah. Undersea fightin’s a different vibe, kiddo.”

  “Y-yeah?”

  “Yeah, you’re gonna be slow down there, and cover doesn’t really matter. The things that’ll be down there are made for the sea, and you can trust me that they’ll be fast as sushi in front of Dunklestein.”

  “Ew.”

  “Whatever, kid. We all have our tastes. Anyway the only thing you got to match that speed is your rifle, so use it like you mean it. Shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “But what if they’re… you know, not evil?” she asks.

  Luisoix fires off a smarmy gaze, and she sighs.

  “Nevermind.”

  “Yeah, you’re not making any friends down there. None of them like you. If you’re lucky they won’t think you’re food and you can just shoot them without them expecting it, but most of the time you’ll look like food.”

  She looks down at her suit. “A traveling bag?”

  Luisoix laughs. “Soulweave, kid. It blocks out most of your spiritual signature. They still know there’s a present waiting for them, but you’re just wrapped up right tight so they can’t quite tell what’s inside.”

  “O-oh.”

  “But don’t worry. You have Cap and Boris on your side!” Luisoix spins to Boris, who is looking over the deck into the water. “Ain’t that right, Boris?”

  “OH, I WAS NOT OF THE LISTENING.”

  Luisoix raises a squat, scaly brow. “…Yeah?”

  “I WAS JUST OF THE THINKING HOW PRETTY ALL THE COLORINGS ARE DOWN IN THE REEF.”

  Luisoix smiles and looks at Grancis, who is already smiling; both are the kind of smile a soldier has when they realize they’d pulled the pin on their grenade, two and a half seconds ago.

  “H-he’s a good guy to have in your corner.”

  “I know,” she responds nervously.

  “Really.”

  “I know, Luisoix,” she repeats with the same tone.

  “But you will have Dunks, t-”

  The door to the common sleeping quarters screeches open, and a piss-faced drunk looking shark man comes lumbering out.

  “Ahhhright time t’ fish n’ chips n’ shit.”

  Luisoix and Grancis exchange another, regretful look.

  “Feeling ready to dive in?” Luisoix asks with a smug, sharp smile.

  “Gonna kill all those bitches.”

  The two shorter ones sigh.

  “You sure are,” Luisoix adds sarcastically.

  “Hey, Boris,” Dunklestein grunts.

  Boris, again gazing over the deck, looks back up. “WHAT IS OF THE UP?”

  “You ready to shoot some… bitches?”

  Boris looks over to Luisoix, who is usually kind enough to clue Boris in on things like social cues. Luisoix just shrugs, so Boris looks back to the drunken shark. “YOU SHOULD BE OF THE MORE RESPONSIBLE. DEVIL DRINK IS NOT OF THE GOOD IDEA BEFORE WE WOULD BE OF THE DIVING INTO THE-”

  “Aww,” Dunklestein lays against Boris, pressing down on his armored shoulder, “relax, man. It was only a fifth of it.”

  “A FIFTH OF THE WHAT?”

  “A fifth, like the whole bottle, dude.”

  Boris raises a massive claw and just gently pats Dunklestein on his leathery scaled head. “DON’T BE OF THE WORRYING. THE CAPTAIN AND I WILL BE OF THE PROTECTING YOU. BUT HAVE YOU BEEN OF THE SEEING OF THIS CORAL? IT IS SO OF THE PRETTY!” Boris leads Dunklestein to the railing, and Dunklestein’s eyes light up with the fascination and wonder of a child who just downed a bottle of vodka and is somehow still among the living.

  “Yooooo,” Dunklestein mutters. “That’s soooo pretty.”

  “I AM OF THE KNOWING, RIGHT?”

  Grancis and Luisoix watch on with almost parental gazes of jaded disappointment.

  “I mean,” Luisoix says, “Colett-”

  “Cole,” Grancis cuts.

  “Right. He’s pretty sharp nowadays ain’t h-”

  Like clockwork, Cole comes down from the infirmary. A wrapping of fresh bandages around his arm.

  Grancis jolts at the sight, simultaneously wanting to ask what happened, but also remembering that she’s angry at him.

  “That body’s not yours to harm, you know,” Grancis says, looking away.

/>   Cole doesn’t say anything, his intense gaze focused on the other suit laying on the system’s rack.

  “Hell happened to you?” Luisoix asks.

  The white-haired boy sharpens his gaze. “Just a little mental preparation.”

  Luisoix sighs. “You haven’t been talking to that existential nut job Marcus, have you?”

  Cole glances over from his fatalist trance. “You knew?”

  “Dude, there are way better ways to express yourself. Self-harm is nasty, and as crazy as he is I’m pretty sure that’s not what he was referring to with whatever bullshit he’s been shillin’ ya’.”

  “It’s the only thing I can do,” Cole says defensively. “As if you’d know how to deal with eldritch.”

  Luisoix scoffs. “Mate, do I need to take you into another closet and talk you down?”

  Cole squints. “What?”

  “Irefall’s manor?”

  He recalls now. “Right, no I’m okay, really.”

  “You can get all sorts of diseases from that, you know,” Luisoix says, glancing down to Cole’s bandages.

  “Uh, sure.”

  “No, like, really.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cole scoffs with a smile— surprisingly relaxed.

  “No, you won’t if you keep acting like you’re about to descend into hell to fight Mega Satan or something.” Luisoix puts his little arm around Cole, now around his back rather than his shoulders considering how much taller he is with his new body. “Take it from me, kiddo. Relaxed people are smooth, and when you’re smooth, you do well.”

  Cole glances away for a moment, mulling it over. “You’re not relaxed.”

  “Yeah, kid, I am,” he says with a full-of-himself smirk. “Might not look it, but I’m a pool of serenity when it comes down to fight time.”

  Cole thinks on it, and now that he does, remembers the sewer in Wreckwind Port, also remembers Irefall’s manor, he has to admit that Luisoix kept his head on better than most of the crew. “Okay, so I should be relaxed.”

  Luisoix pats him in confirmation. “Don’t get worked up. This is a walk in the park for you.”

  The boy stares on, his eyes reflecting of how abstract the idea is for him. “Yeah….”

  “You’re in charge. This is nothing to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not about to do anything new. Just shoot some dumbass creeps in their little anime basement.”

  “Th-their what?” Cole asks with a dumbfounded, blank gaze.

  Luisoix scoffs. “Nevermind. You don’t know what it is. Anyway just keep calm and do what The Captain orders you.”

  “Gotcha, obviously.”

  Luisoix pats Cole on the back. “Now gear up, I gotta explain a few things about how the suit works.” Just as he says this, The Captain emerges from the side of the main deck leading to the lower decks.

  “Speak of the devil,” Luisoix mumbles with a smirk.

  “Five minutes before the allotted time,” The Captain says, pulling up his left sleeve to point out his watch, a rather expensive meridian self-adjustment model; quite helpful for remaining on time in The Eversea, even though everyone will still call you a liar because their own clocks are wrong.

  “And in five minutes they’ll be ready,” Luisoix notes.

  “Excellent.” The Captain reaches up for his cap and glasses and tucks them into his coat.

  “A proper captain never appears undressed,” Cole notes with a smile.

  “Oh, shut up, you. I don’t want to lose them.”

  “ARE YOU OF THE BRINGING OF YOUR COAT, CAPTAININGS?” Boris asks, glancing up from the coral beauty below at his commander’s voice.

  “I suppose I might as well.”

  “BUT AREN’T YOU REMEMBERING OF YOUR COAT FROM THE LAST OF THE TI-”

  “It’s not that important. I really thought it looked better tattered. More of a ghost ship captain appearance, you know?”

  There’s a silence over the group; they don’t know.

  “Oh, well what does it matter. If something chews up my coat then that’s that. I think it really does look finer with a little bit missing.”

  “IF YOU ARE OF THE SAYING SO, CAPTAININGS.”

  “I am of the saying so. Now chop chop, Luisoix, suit these children and let’s take our bath.”

  Luisoix salutes with a snide grin. “I’m sure they can’t wait.”

  The Dive and Barotraumatic activity, not that an Eversea Doctor would know

  Now perhaps one can argue that this is Cole and Grancis’ first real experience in The Eversea. They’ve had plenty of adventures above it, but below is where one sees the truth of the situation. They’re both about to evolve from estranged, disenfranchised hopefuls, to real, salted, Eversea sailors.

  By this standard, one could also argue that most sailors on The Eversea are not true sailors, because ninety five percent of Eversea crews would all convene neatly on the idea that going Eversea diving is completely and utterly insane. The Captain, if that’s even his real name is about to take the two of them through every stage of maturity, past old age, beyond death, crossing Heaven and Hell, and straight into the sickening crux of their world. They are about to witness the depths not as observers, but as swimmers; it will be their problem this time. They will be down there with the predators. It’s daytime, and it’s not deep, so it’s only a taste, but the taste is the most bitter, most horrible thing one could ever venture to place on their unfortunate tongue.

  The cloudy atmosphere has descended further into a sheer, thin mist over the isle, masking the two hundred meters mark in all directions with a curtain of white-gray obscurity.

  By this point, Dunklestien’s jovial relaxation is buffering out now that he’s coming to terms with what’s about to happen, and Luisoix’s stopped smiling all together.

  Cole and Grancis have been fully encased in the diving suits, the helmets placed on their heads and secured. Cole had a brief struggle with hyperventilation, but calmed down once he realized Grancis wasn’t having trouble at all; he puts it up to Luisoix’s extra explanation to her about how using the suit would feel.

  He does his best to adjust himself to the feeling of being inside something so constraining, but once he’s handed his harpoon gun, his collected demeanor’s challenged once again. It’s heavy, horribly heavy, a far cry from his wonderfully-slick pistol, and even the relatively-weighty rifle of The Captain’s. It hurts so much to carry, and it’s so awkward, he could hardly imagine tucking it into his shoulder to fire for more than a few seconds before dropping it back to a lazy, low hip carry.

  Grancis fares about as well, dropping the rifle the moment it’s handed to her, and even then is only able to hold it up with the assistance of the densely-woven shoulder strap.

  “Well that’s a great start,” Cole scoffs through his suit-mic, bound inside that horrible metal helmet with a few glass sight holes to look around with.

  “I… I got it,” Grancis mutters.

  The Captain hums, stretching out for a dive. Without his hat and glasses on, Cole thinks he actually looks pretty cool. “So, are we ready?”

  “Fuck ‘em,” Dunklestein mutters with an inebriated tone, winning a cross glance from The Captain that makes the shark man straighten up on the spot.

  Cole says nothing, staring out from his large glass lens with a direct, critical stare.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Grancis peeps.

  “BORIS IS ABSOLUTELY OF THE MOST EXCITED HE CAN POSSIBLY BE OF THE BEING! WE ARE GOING TO ENJOY A MOST STROLLING OF THE LEISURELYING!”

  “Oh, Boris, I can always count on you to keep up that morale,” Luisoix mumbles with a good humor. He’s glad he’s not going down there with them, but he’s mostly worried for the two humans, especially Cole.

  “Alright, onto the bed,” The Captain orders, cracking his knuckles and giving everyone a sparse burst of obedient energy.

  Everyone but Grancis rushes over to the motorized decent bed located at the side of the ship a littl
e faster than they need to, taking up their spots while Luisoix powers on the suit systems to full, activating the automated reels and the “in dive” air supply.

  “And down we go,” The Captain notes, giving the signal to Cluton, who wraps his orange-white-striped hands around the motor control.

  “Bye,” he says with a chipper tone.

  Cole glares over to the clownfish seasort. “Shove it, dude.”

  “Ahh, don’t be nervous,” Cluton says, lowering them into the water right above the reef. “Just imagine you’re a big mean shark looking for a meal.”

  Cole nods his head over to Dunklestein, who’s just a slip away from falling off into the water with his harpoon rifle. “Thanks,” Cole sneers, “I’m beaming with hope.”

  That’s the last thing Cole hears before The Eversea salt water poison overtakes his suit.

  It’s cold. Even colder than he ever expected it to be.

  “Wet Team Alpha this is Naughty Noc. Radio check, over.”

  The Captain flexes. “Naughty Noc this is Wet One. Lima Charlie,” he says, somehow in through the mic system. Cole didn’t see him bring along a microphone… it must be hidden somewhere under those bandages.

  “Th-” There’s a sharp breath. “Naughty Noc this is Wet Two. Lima… Charlie?” Grancis says, her first time ever using a radio in this way.

  “H- why is she number two?” Cole spits.

  “Because she grabbed the second radio,” Luisoix explains in the way a parent would to a troubled child. “Also, you’re supposed to use your call signs correctly.”

  Cole sighs, the dense bubbles and sea foam passing his visor from the friction, blinding him to the depths below during the descent. “Okay so what am I.”

  “You’re Wet Four.”

  “Four?”

  “You skipped a radio on the rack,” Luisoix explains. “If you stuck around for the radio brief instead of slicing yourself up like some emo baby maybe you’d know th-”

  “Noc this is One: Excuse me now, what did you say?” The Captain asks.

  “Cole cut himself to ‘get his mind right’ or some bullshit,”

  “Mister Ketiere!”

  Cole sighs, relaxing only slightly as he feels the weight of the harpoon gun melt off his body. “It was just to get my head in the ga-”