Therefore I Have Sailed the Seas and Come

They descended from the mountains, into the green and rolling lowlands of Temonia, until they came to the port of Skesthes. Facing the sea southward, with a finger extended east along the coast, stood a bronze statue, green with long centuries. Its countenance was that of Antigonus III of the line of Temon, better known as Antigonus the Conqueror. It was eastward Antigonus had conquered, to the edges of the known world, and though his Temonid Empire did not long outlast him, it laid a foundation on which the Rhatian Empire still stood.

The language of Temonia was called Aponephilic, for it had come down the millennia with few changes from the tongue of the Nephiloi, specifically the informal dialect used among their human slave-caste. Many other lands spoke it in Antigonus’ day, though the strait between the Inmost Sea and the Vintner’s Sea, where Aureliopolis now stood, had marked its easternmost extent at the time. The Temonids and their successor kingdoms subsequently made it the common tongue of all the lands along the center and east of the Inmost Sea, and this had persisted as Rhatia had conquered them in turn. Rhatia co-opted many political institutions established by the Temonids; Rhatian patricians made speaking Aponephilic a mark of culture and education; and as a result, the Rhatian language never saw use in the local governance of their eastern provinces. In these latter days, now that the west was lost, Aponephilic stood as the Rhatian Empire’s sole official language.

Valens had been the last Emperor of the Rhatians to speak Rhatian natively. He had mastered the formal, courtly dialect of Aponephilic, of course, but found it now awkward to use when negotiating for passage eastward with the lowborn, rough-and-tumble sailors of Skesthes.

Valens and Hadrian had learned Aponephilic among the aristocracy; Atia had learned it from Valens; Rufio had learned it in haste from some dusty scrolls he had bought on his way out of Catonium, and now only had the three of them to fill the several gaps in his knowledge. Consequently, when a ship’s captain kept throwing out an idiom they understood as “twirling cheese curds and putting some honey on the question” to describe his plan for slipping past the sea-monster in the straight to enter the port of Aureliopolis, they had no idea what he could possibly mean. Still, he sounded confident in this plan, and approaching the city by land carried its own dangers and difficulties.

Hadrian, in particular, worried about trekking over farmland west of Aureliopolis. Such fields were in large part owned by a family called the Aplakei, who were politically powerful, rivals to the Sixti, and deeply entrenched with the established Hypatioi imperial order.

“I say we take him up on the offer.” Hadrian weighed in, after that exchange. “He’s not charging much more than I would’ve expected without the sea monster. Going the rest of the way overland will take an extra week, at least; how many more ships will the monster claim in that time? How many more opportunities for our enemies to discover you’re on your way?”

Atia frowned. “I don’t like the idea of running into a monster like this in its own hunting grounds, before we’ve had an opportunity to prepare.”

“If we try to fight it like that,” Valens said, “we’re dead. A large sea monster demands a trap, something to lure it into shallow waters where we can render it immobile, then put it out of its misery like a beached whale. Although, avoiding a fight might be possible through more than mere chance and blind faith in these sailors; the route from here to Aureliopolis is entirely coastal. Is there some trick with the Water Discipline that could let us escape it?”

“Depending on how close the ship stays to shore,” Atia said, “I could run the whole thing aground by hitting is sails with a strong enough Air spell. I would not rely on that, though, and I believe I’m the only one here well-practiced with Air. I do also know a Water spell for moving over the water’s surface quickly, in a short burst, but I could bring no more than one person to shore with me, using it.”

“I know the spell you’re talking about,” Hadrian said, “I could also take one with me. That covers the four of us, though the crew and other passengers will be on their own.”

Valens nodded.

Despite the advantages his Nephilic blood afforded in matters of magic, he had only mastered the Earth Discipline, and occasionally added a Fire spell to his repertoire, where the prerequisite knowledge and time to practice presented themselves. He had bounced off Air, Water, and the Celestial Disciplines at every attempt. Atia and Hadrian were far better with magic, overall. Atia had been afforded little opportunity to study the Celestial Disciplines, but had nonetheless developed some basic skill with the Stellar Discipline, with its strange and mind-bending manipulations of space and location. As far as the Elemental Disciplines, she had handily mastered all except Fire, though she could still manage the basics even the Discipline that least matched her temperament. Hadrian was her match with Stellar, Water, and Earth, and a skilled with Fire and Solar besides, but struggled with Air, and Lunar was an absolute mystery to all of them.

Rufio was an odd element in every respect. Valens got the impression he wanted to help them with this monster, any way he could, but only Atia seemed sure he had anything to contribute, and he expected to return to his craft as an iconographer sooner or later. With the finding of those Nephilic gauntlets, he had instantly become a potent user of Fire, if somewhat narrow in his repertoire of spells. If he did stick around, it might be worthwhile to put a second gauntlet on his other hand and train him in another Discipline– either Earth or Water, Valens thought, would be a natural fit for his way of thinking– or to get him some instruction in a Celestial Discipline. Those required neither the blood nor the artifacts of the Nephiloi to be decently potent, though the time and effort needed to learn them was far greater.

Regarding the gauntlets, they had brought four, one of each element, and left the rest for Longinus and company to use or sell as they saw fit. Besides Rufio’s Fire gauntlet, Valens wore one for Earth, Atia for Air, and Hadrian for Water. These only provided a marginal boost to their potency with that Discipline, however, and rendered any sign they made for another Discipline completely impotent, if made with the hand wearing the gauntlet. Really, the things were of particular immediate use only to Rufio and those few people like him in the world, who had decent instruction in the technique of an Elemental Discipline despite having very little Nephilic blood to lend their spells power. Someone could acquire one and subsequently learn the corresponding Discipline, of course, but the artifacts couldn’t instantly transform someone who had never touched magic into a potent elementalist, nor could they do more for the already-powerful than making it as though, say, one-tenth, rather than one-eleventh, of their ancestors of five or ten thousand years ago had been Nephiloi, and only with respect to that one Discipline.

As he ran through these matters, and not for the first time, in his mind, Valens idly examined the Earth gauntlet on his own hand, and Hadrian marked the look.

“They’re odd things, aren’t they? Created by the Nephiloi, but clearly meant to be used by humans, to close the gap in capability between the two races. I’ve generally erred on the side of the slave revolt narrative of their downfall– that they were overthrown and killed off by oppressed human subjects– but these make me wonder if the truth is something different, or at least a more nuanced version of that story.”

“I thought you were a just a scheming aristocrat, merely pretending to be a treasure-hunter to get close to an imperial claimant.”

“My interest in the Nephiloi and their lost history is sincere, and my knowledge on how to navigate their ruins was gotten through book-learning afforded by my privileged birth. When my House needed a liaison to you, my Emp– Valens, I jumped at the excuse to try it in the field.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But, do not keep me guessing, when you are being sincere and when you are wearing a mask.”

“I’m sincerely in favor of boarding this ship and sailing to Aureliopolis.”

“As am I, I think. Let’s see that captain again.”