It was very early when we finally docked at Crystalis. We had traveled across the ocean through midnight and now we had reached the first island of the Merchant Archipelago.
The dock itself was little more than thick wooden planks hammered into the sea and held up by barnacle-crusted posts. The boards were sun-bleached, cracked, and damp near the edges where the water lapped against them. Ropes lay coiled and fraying, tied to rusted iron rings, and the air smelled of salt, algae, and old wood. Dozens of boats and ships bobbed gently beside it, knocking softly against the posts, their hulls weathered to the same gray-brown as everything else here.
'So this is the famous Merchant Archipelago.'
It looked like the ocean had been chewing on it for a hundred years.
