Chương 22: The Captain’s Invitation

Cormac waited in his cabin impatiently. Róise had hinted that she wanted to speak with him thirty minutes ago, but so far she was still on deck working with Miriam. He looked around his cabin with dissatisfaction. He hated it when other people had to be in here - especially when he wasn't. So many of his things were out of order! And a fresh bottle of wine shattered! Though there had been no wine stains on the floor - perhaps the ship drank more than fórsa?

He'd been watching Miriam from afar as he flounced around the deck, being captainly. If she was playing dumb, she was going too far. No one outside of primary school failed at simple lashings. It was frankly unbelievable that anyone could… unless that outlandish fact was the consequence of her outlandish story. The Realms Above! What a fanciful idea! He would invite Miriam to dinner - Róise already said he could, though he was forbidden from trying his luck with her. Har har. Like he would do that anyway!

She was a member of his crew and no captain worth a damn would use his position to lewd advantage. Unfortunately, there were many captains out there who weren't worth a damn. No, he wanted to hear stories of the fabled land from which all the magic of the Tír flowed. How wondrous it must be! Imagine fórsa in its raw form. Think of the magic that must be commonplace to them! But… that wouldn't explain Miriam's clear lack of ability.

The only thing keeping his hope really alive was the staggering volume of power she seemed to possess. He'd once met a Fifth, and the sheer amount of power that radiated from him had felt the same as what Miriam possessed. And, he could tell that she wasn't using all of it - somehow she lacked basic fórsa manifestation skills, and her power was not dense in the least bit, but she was throttling to use only a third of what it felt like she had.

He wasn't an analyst - one of the people who had developed fórsa workings that reported information about things they wanted to inspect - but he could feel that. It opened up even more questions - any fórsa user worth her salt would never leave her complete fórsa exposed like that for all to read. All in all Miriam was a delightful enigma - or at least a worthy distraction from tedious weeks at sea. Róise opened the door and breezed in.

"Can't you even pretend that I'm your captain and show a little decorum?" Róise turned back slightly and knocked a mocking rhythm on the wrong side of the door.

"Cute. What's the verdict?" Róise sat down on another chair opposite his desk.

"I am still a terrible teacher."

"No arguments here. How is she as a student?" Róise pursed her lips.

"Interesting. She has no fundamentals, no basics. On the other hand, she seems remarkably intelligent. She's weaving her Nature by wrapping it around her bones."

"That's not normal?"

"Does it seem like I know what my spine looks like, Cormac?" He shrugged. She continued.

"It would take someone with a very fine knowledge of anatomy and meticulous control to achieve that. Most of us with Life Nature start off weaving visualizations like an image of roots spreading through your body. Surprising that of all of us the dryad doesn't."

"So you buy her story? She's from the Realms Above?"

"I didn't say that. But she is incredibly odd. We tried for an hour to get her to overcome the Perception Paradox -" Cormac made an impressed noise.

"I'm surprised you know the actual name for that phenomenon!"

"Don't be an idiot. I may have dropped out of school as a child at forty, but those forty were spent at the best academies in the Ring. I do remember some things." Róise looked actually offended. He winced.

"Sorry. Don't mean to belittle your knowledge. It's just that you've always approached things with a practical approach rather than an academic one. Easy to forget how cultured you started out." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Anyway. We spent an hour grinding away at it, but once I stepped away she had it down in only a few minutes. Made a hammer out of vines."

"That's what happened to my bottle!"

"Technically it was her bottle." Cormac scowled.

"And the lashings? I saw her working on deck all morning."

"I left her to her own devices there to see how she would do. Honestly I thought she would pick it up faster, but she finally did get it. Funny thing was that the lashings she did were incredibly strong. I had to put some actual muscle in to break them." He nodded.

"I was just thinking about her uncanny strength. Working with that much power to start would be pretty challenging."

"That's what I thought too. I don't know how she didn't blow every lashing apart before even manifesting it. She's a lot of contradictions - I would have said it would take someone with real experience to handle that power, but she obviously doesn't have real experience. Or doesn't seem to? Honestly, I'm at a loss." Cormac nodded.

"I'll invite her to dinner as we planned. Hopefully I can get her to spill the truth - with any luck." He winked.

"You know you're not clever, don't you?" ✧✧✧ Miriam tried not to be nervous as she approached the captain's cabin for the second time that day. She had spent the rest of the day working on the ropes. Again, the concept was incredibly easy - vines were already ropes, basically - but getting it to sustain independently was vexing. In the case of the lashing, it was a sort of closed system - the fórsa was drawn into the void and propelled itself through the rest of the lash, because it was inherently a loop.

The rope was a straight line - any fórsa she pumped in just came right out the other end. She tried to recall the word for this - topology. The study of surfaces. A study she had previously thought a huge waste of time - who cares if a straight pipe has one hole or two? Now she wished she had taken more of an interest back when she had access to libraries. She had tried a litany of experiments, most of which had to do with kind of faking a closed system by connecting the rope after it crossed over the yardarm.

It kind of stuck, but she could tell this was not the solution Róise was looking for - at least not what she demonstrated. Miriam had finished the day frustrated and not a little embarrassed as the rest of the crew looked on as she failed at what they must think of as children's puzzles. Cormac's invitation was worrying. She had assumed such an invitation would be forthcoming - Róise had put way too much time into her today at the expense of her other duties.

Clearly she and the captain were suspicious of her, and she expected to be grilled over dinner. She just hoped Cormac wasn't as much of a cad as he seemed to be - looking at Róise's strength as an example, if he was indeed a fellow Third, there was little she would be able to do to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. Unless maybe… she unleashed the Blight. She shook her head. Not an option worth thinking about. She knocked on the door gingerly.

"Come in! Come in!" The captain's cabin was much like she had seen it before. The bed was still leaned against the wall, but in its stead a table that must somehow fold away had been placed with two chairs positioned opposite one another. Two sets of dinnerware were cluttered onto the small surface along with two wine glasses. Cormac sat in one chair already, beckoning her in.

It seemed he had gone out of his way to not make this dinner appear romantic - she had feared a smoky ambiance with only a handful of lit candles, but instead the room was bright, with four hanging lanterns providing illumination.

"Thank you for the invitation," Miriam said, sinking down into the open seat.

"Absolutely! I try to get to know all of our new crew members, but you're a particularly interesting catch - if you'll pardon a fishing pun!" Cormac uncorked the other of Miriam's bottles and poured.

"Róise also tells me you're curious about the Third Ring. I was hoping we could spend a pleasant evening swapping stories. Unless you're too exhausted from your training today?" Miriam shrugged.

"It wasn't too hard really. Mostly just trying and failing to make ropes."

"Would it surprise you to know that I can't do it either?" Cormac took a hearty swig of his wine. Miriam started.

"Yes, it very much would."

"I have a very rare fórsa nature," Cormac explained, idly making the cork dance over his fingers.

"It has no physical manifestations at all." Miriam leaned forward, fascinated. It must be one of the "weird ones" Róise had mentioned.

"What is it?" Cormac grimaced somewhat performatively, but took out a deck of cards from his pocket.

"I don't like telling people too much, because then they assume that whatever I succeed in, I'm cheating."

"Are you?" He grinned, shuffling the deck.

"Absolutely. Pick a card."

"Your fórsa nature is card tricks?"

"Kind of, yes! Pick a card and don't show it to me." Unsure of where this was going, Miriam took the deck from him and selected a card from the middle. It was not a suit she was familiar with - it had a lurid printing of an octopus on it.

"Ok. Now put the card back in the deck and shuffle it." Miriam did as she was asked.

"Great. Now pick the top card." Miriam took the top card - and it was the octopus again.

"How did.."

"Interesting, right? Shuffle it again. Great. Now take the bottom card." The same octopus.

"Is this some sort of magic deck? Or is it just full of octopi?" Miriam handed the deck back to Cormac.

"Nope. Standard deck. Picked it up two ports ago, but for some reason no one wants to ever play with me." He smiled.

"My fórsa nature is Luck."

"Luck?"

"Yeah, I know - how is that even a fórsa nature? Honestly I don't know. I'm the only one I've ever met that has it." Cormac poured himself more wine - Miriam hadn't even touched hers yet.

"Both Róise and I are pretty unique, I guess. Might be one reason we ended up together." He grinned at her.

"How about this? I'll fetch dinner, and then I'll tell you our story. In return, you tell me yours? That sounds like a great evening to me." Miriam only picked up her glass and clinked it against his.

"I can honestly say I can't wait."