Trace jolted awake as a thunderous crash split the night and the ship shuddered beneath him. The overhead light globes flickered on as he rolled out of his bunk, and a muffled clamor began sounding before he was even halfway to the door.

Reaching the exit, he cracked the hatch and poked his head out into the hallway.  Lurid red lights lit up the corridor while the piercing klaxon made his head ring. He inhaled sharply, coughing as an acrid tang invaded his lungs.  He stiffened as his mind caught up to the meaning of that particular wailing tone. [i]Fire[/i].

He slammed the hatch closed and ran over to the closet just long enough to throw on a bare minimum of clothes and a pair of shoes before racing to the bridge.  He offered up a brief prayer of thanks that he encountered no further signs of trouble his way there.  

He burst into the bridge, panting.  The chief Arcanist Jade was absent, but Captain Narasin was at the wheel.  Behind him, the assistant Arcanist, Avri was huddled over her scryer.  Trace joined her at his own scrying station, quickly setting the carved bone circlet on his head.  The runes above his eyes obediently lit up before the obsidian slate in front of him followed suit, displaying an image of the ship that made his eyes go wide.  The starboard midships hull glowed a lurid red and was plastered with sigils warning of flooding and thaumatic disruption.

"This is bad.  What happened?"

Though she sat beside him, Avri’s voice resonated in his head more mentally than verbally. "Pirates."

Captain Narasin spoke without turning.  "Whoever it is didn’t know the extent of our defenses.  We drove them off, and I don’t think they’ll be back, but unfortunately one of their sprites got a fireball through first."

Avri nodded, chiming in. "CThe main thaumatic conversion matrix is down, but we still have some energy stored in the crystal arrays, so we can move and fight if need be – for now.  The chief Arcanist is headed down to conversion matrix room now, to asses the situation and see what she can do."

Just then, the door clanged open and the first mate, Liz entered the room, wordlessly taking her station by the Captain.  He nodded, and Trace focused back on his own station, where a cup of coffee had mysteriously appeared.

Trace gave a brief smile, before pausing as the ship lurched drunkenly in the swell.  As the wave passed, the ship rolled back sluggishly, still listing slightly, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Just how bad is the flooding?"

Avri frowned, her crystal control bracelets glinting as she gestured.  "More than I’d like, but under control.  The fireball hit amidships and breached the central cargo hold. We took on some water, but I’ve already got some golems working to repair the planking."

Tyson nodded.

Avri swore.  "There’s some secondary damage, though.  The starboard crystal array is discharging – it could cascade."

"I'm on it." Trace wasted no time strapping on his own control gauntlets.  The glittering crystals flashed as the metal tracery molded itself to his fingers and wrists. Once they were settled, he flexed his hands and touched one of the runes on his circlet, mentally reaching out to possess one of the labor golems.  The circlet on his brow flashed and he saw with its eyes, just as its hands mirrored his motions.  With practiced ease, he willed it up from its resting cradle and into the main corridor.

The golem bay was centrally located, and it took him only a few moments to arrive at the correct hatchway. Billowing smoke enveloped him as soon as he cracked the seal, and he switched over to thaumatic vision.  The world redrew itself in ghostly outlines, the only color supplied by the golem’s ability to see heat.  It was disconcerting, but better than roiling inky smoke that was his alternative.

He headed down the hallway, noting the outline of a body.   He leaned down peering closely enough make out the face. 

"I found Martin," he said, quickly dropping an emergency healing amulet over the prone crewman’s head.  He then turned and lifted him in a fireman’s carry, carefully retracing his steps until he reached the central corridor.  He was met at the entrance by one of the other deckhands, who quickly lifted Martin away and closed the hatch, leaving Trace’s golem standing in the smoky darkness.

"Is that everyone?"

"Yes, everyone’s been accounted for."  Avri paused.  "One way or another."

Her tone made him pause. "I don’t like the sound of that."

Her reply was uncharacteristically quiet.  "Khart was in the hold when we took the hit."

Trace’s breath caught in his throat, and he involuntarily sagged against the wall.  He and Khart didn’t work together often, but on a ship this size everyone was a little bit family.

Moments passed, before a lurch shook him out of his stupor.  [i]I can’t just sit around, or it’ll be all of us.[/i]  He gave a shiver and headed back down, this time finally reaching the array room.  Cracking the door open, he found it filled with even denser smoke.  A series of overhead beams and planking had come down from the impact, spilling over the ordered ranks of crystals.  Some had broken, and their magic sputtered fitfully, building up a dangerous charge.

Near the far side, some appeared to have deteriorated further, their destabilized charge shattering the delicate structure, scattering fragments that in turn disrupted other crystals and threw off enough heat to set the deck smoldering.  

Trace swore, quickly reaching in and pulling out a magic dampener.  The explosion had disrupted the room's own safeguards, and it took three carefully placed dampeners to restore its functionality. As the protective field sprang back to life the ominous glow quickly drained away – allowing him to reach the vent controls and cut off the air supply.  The flames began to sputter, and he grabbed the hose, attacking the fire directly. It wasn’t long before the last embers were out.  

Trace pushed the headset up on his forehead to wipe the sweat from his brow; Avri slumped back in her own chair, looking just as tired.  

He glanced over at her.  "I think I’ve got the starboard crystal array taken care of.  I had to activate the dampeners, so we lost the charge, but it’s no longer a risk.  How are things elsewhere?"

"Bad," she replied.  "I’ve been helping Jade – the conversion matrix itself looks fine, but most of the supporting material is thrashed.  We had some discharges, but nothing caught fire, so we got lucky there at least."

"Great.  So what now?"

Captain Narasin looked up from the chart he was studying, though he still wore a dark expression.

"Make whatever repairs we can – we’ll be at sea for several more days.  We’re too far from Crescent City, and the wind and current are against us.  At this point, our best bet is to push on to Starford or even Trifoil."

Trace frowned.  "That’ll take at least three days."

The Captain looked like he’d sucked on a lemon.  "Even longer.  Unfortunately, we’ll have to stay well offshore until we can make repairs.  In the state we’re in right now, if any other pirates spotted us, they’d be over us like piranhas."

Trace could only nod as they raised the sails and headed north.

[hr]

The rest of the night passed in tense alertness, and Trace managed to snatch only a few hours of rest before the next day dawned. The day passed in a blur, with Trace helping to patch the gaping hole in the hold wall, as well as shifting the pitifully few charged crystals they still had left out of the starboard array. The port array hadn't taken any damage, but their power levels were already down by a third, and he worried how long they would last as the sole energy source for the ship. 

After a quick supper, Trace made his way to the bridge for a better look, where he found Captain Neito scowling out at the blood red horizon.

"Red sky at night, sailor’s delight."

Captain Narasin kept staring out.  "That’s only true in the mid-latitudes.  Here near the equator, it’s the opposite." He turned, and the lines in his face made him look a decade older. "Buckle down.  We may be in for a rough ride."

The Captain’s words proved prophetic.  In just a few hours the swell picked up.  Rain pattered on the bridge windows the as the wind howled outside.  They reefed the sails, set out the storm anchors and tried to ride before the wind.  The storm had other ideas.

Hours later, Chief Arcanist Jade stumbled into in the door and slumping into one of the bridge seats..  

Wordlessly, the Captain walked over and handed her a coffee.

She accepted it gratefully, taking a deep drink before she cleared her throat.

"We’ve finally cleared most of the wreckage from the conversion room.  The feed links ripped away from the conversion matrix, so there's no way to draw any more energy to recharge the crystals or feed the propulsion matrix.  We have the pieces we need to repair it, but the seas are just too rough right now to realign them properly."

Captain Narasin's brow creased as he paused a few moments, before replying.  "Well, it looks like it's going to get worse before it gets better. We'll just have to hold out as best we can until we have a chance to repair them."

[hr]

The next twelve hours were a liquid nightmare, and afterwards Trace was never sure how he managed to get any rest at all.  He could barely tell when the sun rose, and even then he wasn’t so sure, as after a few brief hints of light gray, the sky grew darker once more and the seas boiling with ever increasing fury.  He wasn’t prepared for when the howling veil suddenly parted, and dazzling sunlight poured in.

They plowed forward, the stinging wind quickly fading as a bright blue sky beckoned ahead, but Trace couldn’t spare a thought for either.  One of the heavens is said to be laid out such that its inhabitants could watch the damned tormented in lakes of fire.  If such angels rode a Cyclone, they would doubtless be perched around the eye, for the best possible view of the churning, watery hell he now found himself in.

Though the sky was calm, Trace tried not to panic as the storm-driven waves converged from all sides, crashing into each other chaotically and rearing into the sky as ephemeral peaks, before sinking back into churning frothy pits.  The violent shifts pulled the boat from side to side, making maintaining a heading almost as useless as it was difficult. The new-found hush of the wind made the deep groans of the hull even more unsettling, as the ship twisted and heaved beneath him.

Captain Narasin swore bitterly.  "I knew the storm was drawing us in, but I’d hoped we might be able to slingshot around to the northern edge.  If we had broken away there, then the winds would be carrying us away from the direction of travel, at least.  But the western edge of the eye is no good - we’ve got to get out of here."

Liz looked worried.  "How can we get across, though?  It looks to be a good thirty miles away, the main conversion matrix is still out, and there’s not enough wind here for the sails to do us any good.  There might be enough power in the crystals to get us across, but then we wouldn’t have anything left to deal with the sea once we got there."

Captain Narasin didn’t reply; his grim look was answer enough.

Trace had nothing to contribute, either, but in his case he was engrossed in his work.  Even without the lurching of the deck beneath him, the lurid red stress lines dancing along the sympathetic ship model gave him all too clear a picture of every wave it rode.  Less obvious but more worrisome were those few spots where the structural members had gone dark.  Elsewhere, telltale sigils were springing up, warning of water intrusion.  [i]The patch on the hold breach is failing.[/i]  Trace sucked in his breath and shifted more power to the pumps.  

He looked over at a different array of indicator runes, eyes settling on the array charge.  [i]Less than eighteen percent and dropping.  I hate to spend the power, but if we’re heavy in the water, these waves will take us apart.  Pity the swell is too heavy to deploy the charge collectors.[/i]

His eyes drifted over the other sigils.  [i]I[/i] can [i]deploy the sea watcher,[/i] though, he thought, eyes going wide in sudden speculation as he tickled it awake.

As the delicate stalk extended and flashed to life, Trace had already shifted his focus to the core crystal.  He began synchronize with the surrounding ocean.  Random as the waves appeared, they were fundamentally predictable if they could be detected and identified in advance.  

Fitful impressions began coming in as the stalk fully extended, and he tapped into the ship’s sympathetic model as well, sending its impressions into the core.  With each pulse of the stalk’s sense, the core came more and more in tune to the dynamic dance of the sea surface around him. As it did so, Trace went over to the defensive matrix, plucking the forecaster crystal out of its socket.

"I need to borrow this."

Captain Narasin just raised an eyebrow as he took the orb back to his station and laid it atop the core, connecting the two with delicate thaumatic tracery.  It took some doing, but he managed to finesse a connection, attuning the forecaster to the same play of waves that the core was monitoring. Trace smiled tightly.  As the last pieces of the puzzle, he looped back into the ship’s sympathetic model to include feedback of its own movements, and then looked for equilibrium states.

As the components settled into harmony, he finally looked up, meeting Captain Neito’s inquisitive gaze.  "I think I may have something.  I’ve managed to synchronize the forecaster with the sea watcher and I think I can foretell the waves out to a short distance.  If we can work [i]with[/i] the motion, instead of against it, I think we might be able to stabilize the ship enough to pull off the realignment.

As the images of the output materialized before him, he projected the view to the Captain’s scry slate.  "Are you seeing this?"

"I am, what does it mean?"

"The map shows probable nodes – where waves and troughs will cancel each other out.  The color indicates when the node should occur; green for now shading to red in future – up to about ten seconds.  It’s not an absolute prediction; you’ve probably noticed that the red spots are bigger, but it’s the best I can do."

"So I look for a path we can take that keeps us on the right color at the right time."

"Exactly."

Trace felt as Captain Narasin fed his will into the ship, which lurched in response, twisting sideways in the water.  Trace watched it orient towards one of the chains of probable calm areas.   There was a gap before it, which he felt as a great heave, but after several moments of tumult they were down on the other side on the glowing path, and the motion settled. The swell was still heavy, and now accompanied by sudden shifts in speed and direction, but the great wrenching heaves were less common.

Avri’s voice chimed in. "Crystal charge is down to sixteen percent."

Captain Narasin gritted his teeth.  "It doesn’t matter, if this buys us the stability we need to get the conversion matrix back online.  Jade, can you work with this?"

After a couple seconds, her thoughts echoed down the link.  "It’s helping, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough.  I’ll take any more you could give me."

Narasin nodded. "Trace, if you had additional impressions, could you improve your prediction?"

Trace nodded.  "The sea watcher can’t see far enough, though, even in the clear."

"What about linking to our defense sprites?"

Trace’s eyes widened.  "That could work!"

Avri leaped into action, quickly modifying their contract and harmonizing their senses to the core crystal.  Once that was done she hustled them out scouting, their senses expanding his detection range tenfold.  

Captain Narasin watched their progress somberly.  "Keep them away from the cloud wall.  We don’t want to risk losing one, and they can’t see much in the rain anyhow."

"Of course, Captain."

Trace struggled to keep up as he fed their additional sensations into the arcane matrix, blending it in with those of the sea watcher.  The crystal matrix grew warm to the touch as its sympathetic area expanded exponentially.  He dialed back the resolution as he saw the arcane construct starting to draw too much power, but even at the coarser setting, he still smiled as he saw the impact on the predictions.

"Captain, it looks like I can look ahead another twenty seconds or so.  Can you see the updated paths?"

"I can."

Trace watched as the Captain shifted, acclimatizing himself with the new information. The ship pivoted, forging ahead with new authority.

"Unavoidable swell from starboard in ten seconds – brace!" Captain Narasin barked.

They slid sideways for a moment, and then all was eerily calm.  The sea raged outside, but the ship itself only rocked gently.  It was an eerie ballet, suddenly darting forwards or backwards, only to pivot or suddenly shift to the side sideways. The motion was disconcerting, but far better than the gut wrenching heaves it had endured before.

The minutes dragged on.

"Power reserves down to eight percent."

Finally Jade chimed in. "Okay, I’ve realigned the feed links.  We’re ready to test the thaumatic converter."

Liz nodded, and with a gesture, the conversion matrix hummed to life.

There wasn’t enough energy for a cheer, but the looks they all shared said volumes.

Captain Narasin spoke in a voice tight with emotion. "Jade, how long will it take you to finish up and secure everything?"

"Another ten minutes."

He turned his eyes back to the raging sea. "Understood. Please do your best."

Trace’s link to the core gave him a perspective outside of their bubble of calm, and an all-too-good understanding of Captain Narashin's tension. Despite the Captain's best efforts, two or three times they hit a significant swell or trough, but that was nothing compared to the ocean away from the captain’s guiding hand.  

There, the fury of the storm made his blood run cold, a continuous parade of monstrous water that occasionally burst into rogue waves almost tall enough to swat one of the sprites out of the air. Time and time again, however, Captain Narasin’s path was true, dodging the worst pitfalls of the ocean, even as he edged them closer and closer to the Northern side of the storm.

The seconds ticked by with glacial slowness, but by the clock it was less time than Trace had dared hope when Jade’s voice chimed in over the link. "We’ve secured the room, and the power flow is as good as it’s going to get."

Captain Narasin’s reply was instant. "Excellent. Button up. We’re getting out of here."

Trace glanced at the system metrics. Conversion was flowing smoothly, enough to fully power the propulsion matrix, and and still have some left to charge the crystal array, which was nine percent and rising.

The bow swung to the north, and churning clouds filled the screen as the sprites landed one by one. The first blast of wind chased the sea watcher as it retreated into its housing. The ship lurched drunkenly, waves once more unforeseen as they plunged back into the tempest.