Alex broke the water''s surface and began to windmill his arms and kick his legs. He gasped in a quick breath as he looked over the surface. Water streamed down his face, and he blinked to clear his eyes. He had the faint feeling of cold nipping across his skin, but it was muted.


    Splash.


    "Hooh." Erin broke the surface second, gasping for breath. "I''m going to kill both of you."


    Her voice shook as she spoke, and Alex realized the water had to be really cold. Sayed broke the surface seconds later, laughing after he, too, gasped for breath. Alex smiled. It hadn''t been that bad of an idea.


    "I''m telling you, it was the best option," Alex said as he trod water. "Now, where''s your ship?"


    "Yes, before the cold takes you both," Sayed said, though he seemed perfectly fine.


    Granted, his curse was probably chugging away, pushing back the cold. Alex shook his head as he searched the horizon but couldn''t see Erin''s ship. He hadn''t seen it when they jumped off the cliff either.


    "It''s..." her teeth clattered together. "In a cave. Over there."


    She began to swim, and Alex followed after her. Alex noticed Sayed was looking up toward the top of the cliff, but he followed soon after. The way Alex saw it, they didn''t have to worry about the guards anymore.


    They were running more for convenience than the area''s actual strength anyway. Alex was confident that there weren''t any people at the manor who posed a threat.


    They emerged from the water at the beach. Erin clutched her arms tight around herself as she led them down the beach toward a cave burrowed into the cliffside. They made it there quickly, and Alex got a good look at Erin''s slipship as it sat moored in the cave.


    It was about as small as the fisherman''s slipship but built differently. There was a small deck on the back and what looked like the glass cockpit of an old fighter plane on the front. Small light sails covered the top and sides of the ship, coming out from practically tiny masts across the almost tube-like design, and there were four lodestones in total, both front and back.


    "That''s the weirdest design I''ve ever seen," Alex said as he looked it over.


    "It is built off older designs," Erin said as she walked over to the rope ladder hanging off the back end. "We have some genius in our organization who made it work, but it isn''t something that most people could scrape together."


    "It is very tiny," Sayed said as she climbed the ladder and stepped up on the deck.


    "You''ll both have to squeeze in the back," Erin said as she looked down from the deck as Sayed started climbing it. "I''ll be in the pilot''s seat, of course."


    She ducked inside from the back deck, and Alex started climbing after Sayed. His wet hands and clothes made it more difficult, but it was better than nothing. He was about halfway up the ladder when he noticed something strange at the mouth of the cave.


    A shadowy figure hung down from the roof, suspended by two long lines as it lowered itself to about halfway through the cave. Alex squinted to better understand what it was, but all he could make out was that it was hanging off the cave walls.


    "We may have company," Alex said to Sayed as he came up to the deck.


    "Noodle Web!"


    Shadows covered the entire cave in darkness as lines shot out from the figure all across the cave entrance. Even the figure dropped out of sight against the sudden wall, and Alex grabbed hold of the nearest railing to keep his sense of direction.


    "You fools!" A man''s voice echoed through the entire cavern. "I am the Head Chef of the manor, Antonio Fettuccine! You will not escape this island alive!"


    "Sayed," Alex said as he opened his gate.


    Electricity pulsed through his heart and out through his body in rhythmic waves, charging his limbs like a lightning strike with each pulse. Instantly, the world around him came alive in his senses, and he could sense the man out in the air in front of the cave. Beside him, Sayed''s sword began to glow, giving light to the cave.


    "I will handle it, brother," Sayed said. "Just be prepared to catch me."


    "I got you." Alex nodded.


    "Foul demon!" Sayed stepped up on top of the ship, standing over the cockpit. "You will not stop our escape!"


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "What''s he doing?" Erin yelled through the open door.


    "Get us closer," Alex said, leaning his head inside. "He''ll take care of whoever that is. Just be ready to hit it when the way clears."


    Hrrm.


    The ship rose into the air, humming with power as the lodestones pushed it up and forward.


    "We will carve a path forward!" Sayed yelled, his sword glowing brightly as they approached the wall of noodles covering the cave. "Demon''s Divide!"


    Sayed jumped up high in the air and came down with his sword. An orange line flashed as he came down and cut through the noodles, the noodles falling away uselessly as he fell all the way down into the water below.


    Splash. Sizzle.


    "Now!" Alex yelled as he ran for the back of the ship and reached out along the magnetic fields below him.


    The ship shot forward, and he grabbed hold of Sayed''s swords with his mind, pulling them up after him and carrying Sayed as they blew past the man who had blocked their path. Sayed floated up through the air behind the ship, clutching his sword as Alex brought him in against the wind resistance.


    "Might." Alex''s grip bent the metal railing as he struggled to hold against the ship''s momentum. "Grah."


    He threw Sayed over the railing, and he could feel the wet touch of blood on his lips dribbling out of his nose. He closed his gate and collapsed to the ground, breathing hard as the ship shot off and left the island as a dot in the distance.


    <hr>


    Sayed found himself packed away against a wall, hunched over inside of the ship beside Alex and with a few bags of supplies surrounding him. His open gate radiated heat off of him, and he let it fill the room to help Alex and Erin not succumb to the cold.


    "We''re approaching the nightsea," Erin said from her pilot''s seat at the front of the ship. "Brace yourself."


    The ship shook and shuddered as the blue sky faded and became transparent before the blackness of the nightsea consumed it. In the distance, spots of light, like islands in the darkness, stretched out all around the ship, and wispy white trails stretched out from them and out into the nightsea itself.


    Sayed adjusted his neck to get a better view, but the view from the glass was small, and there were no other windows in the metal, tubular room.


    "And we''re out." Erin pressed a few buttons on her console before she turned back to them. "You two going to be okay?"


    "Yeah," Alex said. "Bit cramped, but we''ll be fine. Good cut back there, Sayed."


    "Your assistance was appreciated as well." Sayed grinned, looking down at Alex. "You got me back onto the deck perfectly."


    "That guy was cursed to control spaghetti, right?" Alex looked between them. "I''m not going crazy."


    "Curses are a lot of different things," Erin said. "Some are simple and elemental, like Sayed''s heat."


    "Mine is no curse. It is a blessing from God." Sayed corrected.


    He had his blessing since he came to the nightsea as a blessing from his God. The heat was a sign that he was favored. The dry heat of the desert itself was what he commanded.


    "Right," Erin said. "Others are more weird. I wish we knew more about them, but they almost seem like random quirks. No one has any idea where they come from."


    "Like bugs in a system," Alex said, and Sayed raised his eyebrow.


    He liked Alex. After they fought together in Glory Plateau, they formed a working partnership. However, sometimes, the man said things that made no sense. How could insects be a part of a system?


    "Don''t worry about it," Alex said, looking between the two of them. "More importantly, do we know where we''re going? Cragg Hollow?"


    "Right." Erin turned her seat back around and hit a few buttons.


    A screen above her to the right came to life, and what looked like a chart of the stars came up. A glowing line cut across the screen, looping from a triangle at its center and off the chart. Erin pointed up to it.


    "That''s our path," Erin said. "I''ll keep us on it. Won''t even take a day in this thing."


    "You''re that fast?" Alex stood up and made his way behind her chair to look over the screens. "What kind of ship is this?"


    Bump.


    Sayed tried to move, but he just hit his head on the ceiling. He settled himself back into his hunched position. Thankfully, he did not think that they would be on this small ship long. If he had to spend his life aboard something this small, he would never be able to get the soreness out of his cramped muscles.


    "The best way to describe it is a corvette. That''s what the plans it was built from called the design," Erin said. "This one is a one-person design, made to run fast and avoid bigger ships."


    "Could not the inside be bigger?" Sayed asked as he hugged his arms around his knees.


    "Sorry." Erin turned back and smiled at him. "If I had known, I would have at least emptied out some supplies. No one in their right mind would have expected you two to show up."


    "Yeah, feels like too much of a coincidence," Alex said.


    "All things are guided by the hand of God," Sayed whispered but didn''t say it too loudly.


    He was sure that they would meet again after they parted ways at Glory Plateau. Erin had been the only of the three to go off on their own, but Sayed knew they would meet again. Even in the great, wide, vastness of the nightsea, nothing could stop brothers in arms from coming together again.


    "I don''t know who ''Tania'' is or whether that is her real name, but we''ve got bigger problems than that. What do you two know about Cragg Hollow?"


    "Nothing," Alex said.


    Sayed just shrugged and tried to move out one of his legs before it fell asleep. His leg couldn''t extend fully across the small space, so he had to lean it at an angle. God preserve him. He would get out of the tiny space soon enough.


    "My people have limited intelligence on it. It is a Military Police outpost, for sure, and there are a few ships there for the base," Erin said as she leaned back in her chair. "We don''t have any real contacts there, though. Every time we''ve sent a person in, they''ve not come back out. They don''t seem to be caught; no one gets sent off to the Clink, but they also don''t come back out."


    "Well, that''s great," Alex said. "Sounds like something is going down there besides just the logbook being there."


    "Sounds like the beginnings of a frightful tale," Sayed added. "Mysterious and treacherous is the path ahead."


    "We''ll have to be careful in the approach," Erin said. "None of what you two were doing today."


    "Hey, my middle name is careful," Alex said, looking back to Sayed. "And Sayed knows how to follow along with a story."


    "Very true," Sayed said. "I will adopt the role of a sneak thief if need be, though we are not going in to steal but to liberate a wrongfully stolen possession."


    "See?" Alex said.


    "Fine then," Erin said. "We''ll go in together. Just make sure I don''t regret this."