The Last Voyage To The Western Promontory

• Kyan Johansen, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2021

The dark clouds drifted forth from the horizon like smoke from a distant fire. For many of the crew this was a comforting sight, Pseuma on the other hand, was more educated than the rest of the crew combined (excluding a few) and knew this would only make life harder in the coming voyage, which now only seemed to stretch painfully into the foreseeable future. The journey to Eveland would usually have taken but 5 or 6 weeks, yet with an unskilled crew, a seemingly vicious storm, constant magical disturbances, and a partial food shortage due to the war effort, their chances weren't exactly heartening.

Pseuma's job was technically to be the archetype of a ship mage, providing spiritual help while establishing and maintaining relations with the necessary subtlekin. In reality she was one of the few members of the Imperial vessel "Ichthyoid" competent enough to take up any positions above 'physical labourer'. Consequently, she was effectively the captain's right hand woman, taking over risk assessment, food-tending, as well as working with the captain to herd the disgustingly disorganized party. While fully accepting and of course, acing these responsibilities, she found her more paraphysical duties were becoming ever more difficult to execute.

It had started a few days before the launch of Ichthyoid. First it was small and precise; scheduled rains would end up coming at the wrong time, place, or even not at all. Shortly after, all magical methods of communication instantaneously ceased to function. She had even heard that on the most precise of magical receivers, a quiet screaming could be heard endlessly crying out. The Fathomfolk vehemently denied the truth of these rumours, so of course, Pseuma didn't believe them. Soon after that, in fact a few hours before the Ichthyoid had departed from the bay, she had noticed irregularities in the behaviour of the spirit population on board. The blue flames, once imbued with the strength of a northern blizzard, now had a lowe of barely the strength to cast an oceanic blue sheet of light across the adjacent wall. "It should be fine" Pseuma had thought but hadn't believed. Thoughts like that were simply to clear the spirit of Barbos from her mind. However, mistakenly, she had cleansed it from her mind but not from her actions, leading to a display of internal insincerity.

But before she could deal with it, there was work. Endless work. She was plagued with visions, pains, tickles, touches, strokes, prods, pushes and the like. An assortment of activity from an assortment of very angry, confused, and hungry spirits, who demanded prayer, incense, a percentage of the energy from the workers. These were their desires that is, which were felt through Pseuma, but not genuinely communicated at all. In the end, a state somewhat satisfactory was achieved, leaving her emotionally dead while a slightly more exhausted (than they had to be otherwise) working crew toiled on. Yes, this was not going to be an easy voyage.

Dark clouds advanced overhead.