Murin seemed impressed with my story. He had listened, rapt, throughout the full course of its telling, as I in turn became entirely engrossed in the process of relaying it. For a brief window, both of us were Vatheian settlers crossing the ocean to heed the call of something greater than ourselves.

"Very dramatic," he grinned, "that Aias fellow must've been fairly handy with a crook."

"Well, yes, I suppose he was... though I'm not, ah, sure that was entirely..."

"You tell a good tale, Perry."

I was permeated with a most rare emotion: pride; although he appeared to have misconstrued my name, I refrained from correcting the troll.

"Do you feel that?" he asked.

"Um, feel what?"

"Exactly!" Murin let out a deep chuckle, "we're through the wall."

It was true. The previously most frenetic cabin had returned to a sedate and gradual sway, and the crashing of thunder overhead could no longer be heard. In company with this most curious of travelling companions, I had passed through that fearsome maelstrom unharmed, save for some dignity. Overall, I reflected, this section of my journey was not an entirely unpleasant experience.

"I'll take my leave now, little fourth degree scholar."

"Oh! Ah, goodbye."

Murin thudded out of the cabin, and I emerged from my temporary shelter under the desk to assess the damage to my belongings.

...

Twenty-five days later, we drew within sight of the Isles. I had continued to spend time, upon occasion, with Murin over the intervening span of time, as we were both glad of some company aside from the brusque sailors. Despite my trepidations, he'd even managed to convince me to join him on the deck, and I must admit that some of the oceanic vistas did rather impress. The latest of these occasions was a starlit night, bereft of two triplets, upon which my new friend informed me in my cabin, face aglow, that he could see land in the distance.

On the deck, excepting the quiet hubbub of the crew keeping us on course, the world was serene. The sea lay flat and glassy, disrupted only by our wake, and the sky above was a pin-pricked blanket of stygian blue, with the faintest violet hem to our west where the sun had just concluded its arc. To the south-west, off the port bow, a dim and craggy mass broke the horizon, jutting from the sea at sharp angles to rise into a spine of formidable peaks. Like an enormous drake of legend slumbering upon its horde, Vatheia lay before us, a vast dormant beast toward which our little vessel steadily plowed, as though she meant to sail directly into its waiting maw and be swallowed forever. At this distance there was little hint of civilisation to be made out, save for the faintest of amber glows atop what must have been the cliffs, and their even fainter reflections upon the clouds hanging low above.

Murin, furnished with a Guild telescope he had won in some uncouth sailors' game, had a rather better view, and commented to me that he believed he could make out past the chain of mountains a faint plume of smoke: the Expedition's base camp. This feeble waft was the first sign of our long-anticipated destination, and it was strange indeed in that moment to think of passing forever from the ship which had so rapidly become my world. From his time with the crew, my companion had learned of the camp's presence atop a great pillar of rock off the coast of a small island called Skyros, yet despite our efforts we failed to spot a mote of either with the light and distance against us; the journey's end felt at once both imminent and achingly far.

I took a moment to appreciate the calm, closing my eyes and feeling the cool sea breeze blowing through my whiskers from behind- then, briefly, from in front, then not at all. Upon opening my eyes I saw the sails above me hanging slack, bereft of the gentle wind which had so reliably borne us thus far: a routine occurrence in contrast to the sight I was greeted with upon looking back to Murin. His beard, usually so cohesive as to appear hewn rather than trimmed, had puffed out into a dispersed mess which looked startlingly like a most distressed cat affixed to his jaw: every hair was stood on end as though attempting to flee. I endeavoured to recapture him from his telescope.

"Murin, your-"

He turned around at mention of his name, and cut me short with a surprised declaration of his own.

"Perry, you've puffed up."

"Well, so have you!"

Each of us peering over the railing to ascertain the other's meaning, I witnessed myself having met the same concerning fate as Murin's beard. As tiny arcs of electricity jumped across my fur I realised the pair of us had become suffused with static, and to a continually greater degree as the air rapidly became heavy and stifling, until in the mirror below me, I caught sight of a green glint. Looking up I saw, like an arrow from LAKGRAL's greatbow, a crackling viridian bolt whistle across the heavens at incredible speed from some point beyond the archipelago - seemingly on a heading to intercept us. It leapt the span of some miles in a blink, and was upon the ship. Plunging to the nadir of its arc above our heads, this fizzing streak, slowing not a hair, split into five trails which shot down like fingers of a skeletal hand to meet each mast and the bowsprit before disappearing altogether.

"Hmm," an incredulous Murin had time to conclude, before all four masts lit aflame above our heads. Around us, the deck erupted into a flurry of activity as the crew began yelling to one another in ship's cant and rushing to their stations, fetching buckets and hoses and the like in a frantic spurt of energy. Though their efforts were valiant, the Selkie's broad sails and jungle of rigging caught like tinder, and were soon engulfed by spitting sheets of fire. Amidst this chaos I found myself powerless to do much save for observing the inferno's chilling progress, and was under the impression that my companion engaged himself with a similar inactivity until he suddenly demonstrated that he had, in fact, been ruminating on the dire scene with purpose.

"They've forgotten the other passengers. They're likely sleeping, and it won't be long before the smoke makes it down there."

With this, Murin headed for the hatch, and to my credit I can say his confidence was sufficiently contagious for me to follow him without hesitation, down out of the flickering orange light and into the dim hallways of the upper, and then lower, deck. The troll, of course, was quickly proved right on the first two counts. Alongside the pair of us, the Selkie carried a motley assortment of similarly unlucky folk, largely militia soldiers and scholars from what little I saw of them, although Murin had told me a scion of house Selene was rumoured to be hiding out aboard. Either in haste to quell the fires or disregard for their passengers, the crew had entirely neglected to consider these sixty-odd souls bunked far below the blaze, whose cabins upon our arrival showed not a hint of movement.

"Fire!" my friend hollered in thundering tones, "Get up!"

Feeling superfluous, I ran to the opposite end of the snaking corridor until the echo of Murin's voice was faint, and knocked at random on the nearest door.

"Um, hello, uh-" I spotted a greatcoat with conspicuous gold epaulettes hanging next to the bed, "-sir, terribly sorry to wake you but the boat is, well, on fire."

The cabin's occupant, rolling out of bed and into the porthole's meagre light, revealed herself to be both fully-dressed and having held clasped beneath her sheets a sizeable matchlock. Staring grimly at a point on the wall in front of her, she asked, "On fire?", to which I replied in the affirmative. At this the dishevelled officer sighed, fixed her mop of auburn hair into a serviceable bun, and began rummaging through a chest which she dragged from beneath the bed. I watched in bemusement as she seized a leather powder flask and poured a measure of it down the matchlock's barrel, followed by a wad of cotton and a vigorous stab with a ramrod. She then strode clear past me out across the hallway to the soldiers' bunkroom, and as I turned sent its door slamming open with a purposeful boot. Apparently undeterred by the lack of a match in her firearm, or indeed any powder in its pan, she snapped her fingers above the touch hole, and with a bone-shudderingly loud crack it discharged a shower of sparks across the length of the bunkroom.

Ears ringing, I could just make out her shouting into the room: "Right you lot of garden-variety gods-forsaken gargoyles! We are getting up on deck!"

She turned to give me what I interpreted as an appreciative nod, before heading inside to further encourage her unfortunate troops. By this point Murin, having heard the gunfire, had made his way down to my end of the ship to bear witness to the ruckus I had unwittingly instigated.

"Good thinking, Perry," he said, "waking up Captain Stírholdt like that. I've got all the cabins down that end clear, and it sounds like this lot are about to ship out whether they like it or not."

"Erm, yes, quite," I offered.

Satisfied that I had helped, I once again followed Murin through the ship ensuring the lower deck was empty until, after some minutes, smoke began to squeeze out through the cracks in the ceiling boards and the pair of us ascended through cloying haze to the deck with considerable haste. Topside, the air was sweltering. Burning lengths of rope dripped down from the mess of rigging above like wax from a candle, and the once-stalwart masts looked burned almost to cinders. Beneath them, patches of loose cargo had set alight and were blazing fiercely in enthusiastic contribution to the general impression of having stepped out into a hadean spirit's fiery lair. The ship herself had steadily developed a list which was now so extreme that gentle waves were lapping at the posts of her port-side handrail, and yet neither this nor the raging inferno above were the strangest parts of the picture before me, for the swarm of sailors which had covered the Selkie at the time of our descent had, upon our return, vanished to a man.

Ahead of us, however, a contingent of passengers remained. Although in the distance the bobbing lights of ship's boats indicated most had launched successfully, there remained one of the port rowboats, crammed with folk, which swung slowly from its raised davits several feet above the water's surface. Sighting us, the panicked group issued various overlapping cries:

"It's stuck! It's stuck!"

"I can't swim!"

"Oi! You! Over 'ere!"

Murin's eyes glowed. "Those nautical bastards are only bothered about themselves. To think, little fennec," he looked to me, scowling, "I shared some of my brandy with 'em."

"I suppose this isn't how these sort of things are usually done, then?" I queried.

He shook his head, "Absolutely not. They've left this sorry lot to burn, and us with 'em."

"Oi! Big feller!" came an indignant shout from the boat.

With a grunt, Murin began striding over toward the closer davit, scooping up a loose cannonball from the deck part-way through his journey without breaking step.

"Took ye long enough, eh? Now why don't y-"

After stopping briefly to take stock of the situation before him, the troll drew back his arm, cannonball in palm, and with a terrifying burst of speed punched it clean through the davit's wooden arm. One end of the boat crashed down into the water, swiftly followed by the other as Murin, not troubled to walk ten paces, lobbed the cannonball at eye-watering velocity through the second arm. From my somewhat distant position, maintained lest my friend should decide I too closely resembled a piece of timber, I could just make out the piece of ammunition bounding away across the surface of the ocean like a skipping-stone.

There was little time to consider the fact that we had just launched the final boat without ourselves aboard, and were thus quite thoroughly marooned aboard a sinking stack of roaring kindling, because my thoughts were soon disrupted by a more pressing matter. From below the pair of us there came a sudden hissing, fizzing sound. I caught a flash of yellow-white light and a bulge in the deck boards as the fire finally reached the Selkie's magazine, before the world turned black.