The ship emerged from the horizon slowly, like a predator drifting toward its prey. Its hull was dark, almost black, weathered but solid, the color of wet charcoal after rain. The lines of the bow were sharp, purposeful, and the sails, tattered and pale, sagged in uneven patches of repair. Every mast stood straight, rigging drawn taut, yet no human shapes moved across the deck or aloft in the lines.
The cannons were the first detail 99 noticed. Black mouths gaped from open gunports along the hull, aimed in his direction. They did not smoke, they did not roar, but their silent presence pressed down on him like the gaze of something ready to kill without hesitation. The waves slapping against the ship's hull echoed like slow, hollow heartbeats.
99's mind worked fast.
'That ship is encroaching on me at a speed faster than I can swim… So, if I try to escape, they'll catch me before I can get far…If I dive and swim under, I'll still have to surface for air, and when I do, they'll blow me apart. Even if they miss, the shockwave from a cannonball would break bones, making me a sitting duck for following bombardments or the horrors that lurk in the depths…
His gaze slid to the corpses beside him, the puppet shark and the Nocthorn.
'These are all I have. My kills. My proof that I'm not some helpless piece of driftwood. If they're hostile, maybe I can barter with them. Show them I killed these and hope they see me as worth keeping alive.'
It wasn't much of a plan. But it was the only one.
'If I fight, I die to those cannons. If I flee, I die to those cannons. So I'll gamble. Show strength, hide desperation. And if they want the carcasses, they'll have to take me with them.'
'Ofcourse, this is based on the premise that they don't kill me on the spot, taking the monster carcasses with them, whilst my corpse drifts into the sea, becoming monster food…'
'No, if they were planning on being hostile, they could have shot at me from afar. This proves that they're tentative, apprehensive even? Perhaps they're weary of a man who was crazy enough to take a casual swim in the depths of the ocean and don't want to anger me?'
'Yes, that could be it… But they could also be out of cannon balls, hence not shooting me from afar? But if they are out of cannon balls, then I can swim away… However, this is all based on conjecture based on assumption. Plus, the ship looks somewhat grandiose, so I doubt they'd be out of ammunition. Yes… The best choice of action is to feign strength and act like a powerhouse, this way they wouldn't want to be on my bad side, I can use the monster corpses as evidence of my strength…'
He summoned the spirit into his hands, forcing it to take on the form of rope. The pale strand shimmered faintly, humming with a pressure that gnawed at his chest. One end he looped around the Nocthorn's torso, positioning its horn so it faced away from him. The other end he tied around his own waist.
He began to tow the Nocthorn toward the puppet shark. The corpses rolled and bobbed, waves nudging them like lazy animals. He tried to bind them together with the spirit again, weaving it into tight knots, but the longer he kept it corporeal, the weaker he felt. His legs trembled, the corners of his vision darkened, and a thin cold crept through his arms.
'No. This is draining me too fast. If I keep this up, I'll collapse.'
He let the spirit dissolve and tore a strip from his shirt, the fabric already frayed from the Nocthorn fight. Twisting it into a crude cord, he tied the carcasses together, looping through fins and around the root of the Nocthorn's wing. The knots were ugly but firm.
The result was a raft of sorts, uneven, unstable, but large enough to stand on.
He climbed onto it carefully, testing each shift of weight. It wobbled under his feet, but it held. From this platform, he wouldn't have to plunge into the water again unless forced, and every moment spent out of the ocean was another moment away from whatever worse things that he suspected to lurk below.
The ship loomed closer now. Its cannons, its size, its silent forward motion, all of it pressed into his senses like a threat. His body was tense, ready to spring or brace for a killing blow.
The ship slowed when it reached him, the sails slackening as though it had been commanded to stop. Still, no figures leaned over the rail, no orders were barked, no sound came from the deck.
That was when 99 realized: there was no one.
The tension in his chest shifted, not disappearing, but changing shape. No crew meant no obvious threat, but also no answers.
If he wanted on board, he'd have to climb. He forced the spirit into a different form, small, square footholds, each just large enough for a single foot. They clung to the ship's hull like the protruding grips on an indoor climbing wall. But he could only keep one corporeal at a time due to the draining effect it had on him. The moment his foot left it, the foothold vanished, and the next appeared higher up.
Step. Vanish. Step. Vanish.
It was slow, grueling work. The wood was slick with spray, and each motion pulled at his muscles and his reserves alike. But he didn't look down.
He hauled himself over the rail and landed on the deck with a heavy breath. The boards were grainy with salt, weathered yet firm. Coiled ropes hung in neat bundles from the rail. The wheel at the stern stood fixed in place, lashed tightly with tarred rope. The figurehead at the bow was a veiled woman with an indescribable allure, an almost divine level of beauty which was abnormally odd because the woman's face was veiled, only her arched torso could be seen… The figurehead was carved so finely the stone veil seemed almost sheer, as though her face waited just beyond sight.
The ship was silent but not abandoned, everything was in place, every coil, every line exactly where it should be.
Below deck, the air grew cooler, touched with the scent of pitch and aged wood. The washroom was small, fitted with a brass pump over a cracked porcelain basin, and a mirror whose silver backing had blackened along the edges. The galley was compact but well-kept, an iron stove bolted to the floor and a rack of pans swinging gently. The mess had a long table bolted in place, benches marked by old knife cuts.
At the stern, the captain's cabin was larger. A bed sat under wide stern windows, bolted to the floor. A chart table dominated the room, its drawers filled with maps, navigational tools, and notebooks. A brass-cased sextant gleamed on a shelf, alongside a lantern whose glass had been polished until it shone.
'Everything is clean. No signs of rot or neglect. If this was abandoned, it wasn't long ago. So why did it come straight to me? The wind can't explain that.'
He searched thoroughly. In a green glass bottle he found water, the glass cool and flecked with tiny imperfections, the cork sealed with beeswax. The liquid inside was clear, almost luminous in the dim light. When he sipped, it was clean, faintly sweet, so pure it seemed impossible out here.
'Careful. Ration it. You can't waste this.'
He found rope, a compass with an ivory face and precise black markings, a chart of endless sea currents dotted with strange symbols, a diary with neat, slanting handwriting, bottles of rum, and a shard of glass.
The shard was the only thing that unsettled him more than the ship itself. It was translucent, almost invisible until it caught the light, and when it did, it seemed to catch him. His eyes locked to it instantly, hunger rising from nowhere, and he had to wrench his gaze away by force. He wrapped it in cloth and shoved it deep into a drawer.
He went back on deck, tied a length of rope to the ship's hull, and swam to the monster corpses. He fastened the other end around the puppet shark's tail and the base of the Nocthorn's wing. Now they were tethered. They wouldn't drift away, not while he was here, they were his spoils of war, and the only food he had in sight for the next week.'
'I should stay here for now until I have a better grasp of the area…'
With this thought, he located the ship's anchor and threw it into the ocean, anchoring the strangely still ship that seemed as if it didn't need to be anchored…
Returning to the captain's cabin, 99 dropped onto the bed which creaked then subtly moulded under his weight, as if the mattress was shaping itself to him, giving 99 much needed comfort and reprieve from his aching body and soul.
'One week. That's what the voice said. Survive. Now I have water, maybe food, shelter… But I have no idea what brought me here. No idea what's coming next. This can't be Earth, it's too abnormal, I've transmigrated like in those novels I used to read? No, it could be that Earth itself has mutated into what I see right now or I'm in some uncharted corner of Earth sealed away from the world by the government, akin to what conspiracy theorists think is inside of the US's Area 51? If the former is true, then what's happened to my friends and family… I hope they're doing okay…'
99's thoughts turned unbearably heavy, weighing on his heart and mind, almost causing it to miss a beat.
'No, I can't think like that, this definitely isn't a mutated Earth from the future, I have to believe it isn't to maintain my sanity. Yes, it might be some strange government facility that I was roped into as a test subject, in which case my friends and family are most likely safe and I have a chance at escape. But who put me here and why? If this isn't a government facility and I've transmigrated then where the f*** Am I? Why am I here? Who brought me here? Why can't I remember my name?!'
Thoughts churned in 99's mind, assaulting him and colluding with each other and the walls of his skull like the particles in a violent chemical reaction that had gone wrong.
'The coffin, the trial, other Nameless? Are they nearby? Alive? Dead? Will the sea throw more creatures at me, or something worse than creatures?'
The ship creaked faintly, as if shifting in its sleep.
'This ship found me once. If it can do that, so can other things.'
'For now, this is safety. But safety is never free. I'll need to watch the sea. Watch the horizon. This ship found me once. Who's to say nothing else will?'
He lay back, eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the ship quietly groan under the waves beneath it, the ship gently bobbed up and down, slowly and steadily, calming the anxious 99's thoughts, as if he was a baby being cradled asleep by his caring mother.
The ship's bobbing made it almost seem as if it was breathing, its diaphragm slowly contracting and relaxing, placating, pacifying and lulling 99 as he felt his eyelids grow heavy.'
During this process, the churning thoughts in 99's mind grew stiff and slow, as if the temperature had suddenly decreased, resulting in a refreshing cool that brought the chemical reaction of thoughts in his mind to a halt.
And with the stopping of his thoughts, 99 finally fell asleep.
An ethereal, ghastly voice sounded from the ship.
"Good night, my precious."