The atmosphere was still. The late streaks of moonlight filtered their way into the candle-lit room. Night had seemed to stretch on for days. "So..." I started into the silence. "Do you not have electricity in this dimension?". Lennon quietly worked with an assortment of items I didn't recognise. Herbs, oils and different foreign objects. 

"It's a ship, don't be silly." Lennon spoke quietly, not looking up from her work. 

"Well, considering this ship can fly, I don't think electric lights are too hard of an ask." I spoke to fill the silence. It was unlike me, but the silence wasn't peaceful. It was tense with the unknown. 

"Fire is more reliable. It goes out, and you turn it back on. Once this ship gets wet, electricity won't be safe or reliable." She responded, still expressionless. I wondered if this was how others felt when they spoke to me.

"Okay. Are you ready?" She asked, looking up for the first time. The herbs were cut and mixed in oil. This mixture sat in a cloth that held it all in. 

"Ready for what?" I asked, leaning back, away from the bag of wet grass.  

"It will help you remember. The memories will primarily come out in your sleep. We call it echo-walking. It won't be comfortable." She explained, looking back at her concoction in the cloth. "I can't control what memories will come out. Just that they will. In the best case, it will be an uncomfortable experience for your brain to retrieve these memories." I swallowed a nervous lump in my throat. I wasn't sure why I was nervous, just that the way she spoke so forebodingly of this magical memory treatment didn't make me feel any better.

"So, you want me to sleep?" I asked, to which she nodded. I sighed. I'd been up all night; this should be easy. I lay back on the mat that decorated her workspace floor. It was made of some sort of straw and slightly cushioned the wooden floor. 

"Don't stress. It will induce sleep." She nodded at the concoction. I waited silently as she placed the ingredients wrapped in cloth on my forehead. It was only slightly wet from the bits of oil that managed to escape the cloth. The smell of the herbs reminded me of freshly cut grass, but so much stronger. My eyes and nose stung from the smell, but I kept silent and waited as Lennon grabbed a small vile of clear liquid and added a single drop onto the cloth. Nothing seemed to change at first, but within a few seconds, my eyes began to feel heavy, then my chest, like something was weighing down on it. Then, finally, as my head became tense from the weight, I drifted into a compelled, deep sleep.

~Einar Yarrow's POV~

The floor was sticky, along with my own skin, warm and wet from the man's blood. He was stubborn; I would admit that. He can't have become who he is if he buckled under pressure. His eyes were downcast, almost hollow with exhaustion. My blade moved up from his stomach to his neck. It was a shame; I had been convinced he would give me the answers I was looking for. Just as my blade touched his neck, he began to mumble something. I felt the corner of my lip twitch in both annoyance and satisfaction. "One more time, Mr Corvus." I said, quiet and threatening. 

"I- I don't know." He stuttered under his breath, too exhausted to speak clearly. This time, I felt my brows twitching down.

"'I don't know' won't save you, Mr Corvus." I whispered, my voice barely managing to stay even. 

"N-no! Please! Please!" He begged, wiggling around in his chair with all his remaining strength as he saw the decisiveness in my eyes. Loose ends weren't worth it if I didn't get answers. My hand pulled back in a swift motion, ready to strike his neck, only to be interrupted, but this time, by a voice from behind me.

"Einar Yarrow," my uncle called from the doorway. I flinched at the sound, then mentally kicked myself for it. I turned around to see him standing in the doorway of this dark room. His features were only partially illuminated: his greying black hair that was tied in a high ponytail in the back, while the sides rested on his shoulders. His eyes were blue, an exact copy of mine. His face was contorted in a permanent frown, the wrinkles of his face focused between his browns and under his lips, in a constant display of anger and disapproval. "Our spies from Eastilas got word of the locket. It's currently making its way above the Ecethian sea." He said, his words somehow sounding like an order.

Hastily, I wiped my knife against my pants before re-sheathing it. "Who has it?" I asked, hurrying to my feet, my boots making a quiet splashing sound as they made contact with the blood that pooled around them. My uncle grinned wickedly.

"The Sea Warden."

~Kota's POV~

It was dark, like a sleepless dream, yet I was ever-conscious of it. It was everywhere. All around my, suffocating. But where was I? Was I even here? I tried to look around, but I was nowhere, nothing. I had no eyes to see, no head to turn, no hands to claw at the darkness around me. It was just my thoughts, floating endlessly for an eternity. I couldn't tell time, but I knew it stretched on, mocking me. My heart hammered so hard, my blood pumping so hot and fast that my head began to throb it.

Head. Heart. Blood. I looked down at my hands as they materialised. The darkness pulled back, slow and taunting. My hands were small. I was in my room. My old room. It was just as plain as all the ones after it. Crying. I could hear crying. I walked toward the exit of my room, following the noise. Each step was laborious like my breathing, like I was wading my way through deep water, my feet sinking into the mud below. The crying got louder as I stopped at the entrance of a room. Everything towered above me: the furniture, the walls, my mother. Pictures of horses hung dusty on the walls, and vases filled with dried flowers decorated every surface. Everything went dark again for a moment, and then my vision returned. I swayed from it, the feeling of my body and my world ceasing to exist, then returning again, unchanged. 

My mother wept loudly on the single bed; its sheets printed with pictures of horses running through a stream of water. Water. I felt like I was drowning as her gaze locked onto mine, her eyes red from crying. But she only got louder. The world went dark again, then returned, causing me to lose balance and fall to my hands and knees. The world swayed from side to side, like a ship in a storm. "You!" She screeched through her tears, pointing a long finger down at me. "You did this to her! You killed my baby!" 

My heart pounded harder until it hurt. My vision swam, rocking in opposing directions to the swaying room. Bile rose up in my throat as I saw blood. On my hands, on the floor. My mothers voice became distant, a loud echoing thrum that made me cover my ears. No matter how hard I pressed my hands into my ears or how hard I closed my eyes, it wouldn't stop. The noise. The swaying. The dizziness. The fear. The guilt. 

Light suddenly flooded my vision, bright and blinding. Finally, my body gave in, and my stomach contents found their way out of my mouth and into a bowl placed strategically in front of me. A wave of nausea hit me like a truck, and the vomit came again, violent and desperate. My body shook, sweat rolled freely down my skin, and suddenly, I became aware of my surroundings. A wooden room, a colourful straw rug. Lennon held a bowl in front of my face, her eyes downcast as usual, wetting a cloth in a separate bowl of water. My skin was numb as the cloth made contact with it. If I didn't see it, I wouldn't have known it was there.

I slumped back onto the floor, looking straight up at the high wooden ceiling, heaving deep laboured breaths, each one tearing at my lungs. A few minutes passed in silence, the only sound was my breathing until I was confident enough to speak without vomiting once more. "What was that?" I snapped, too shaken to be more frustrated.

"As I said, echo-walking is hard. The more your mind wants to keep the memory buried, the harder it is." She said, seemingly unfazed as she tidied up her mat. "You're fighting it." She stated. I turned my head to the side to look at her. 

"What?" I asked, still breathless.

"The memories, you're fighting them. It makes it harder if you don't want to remember." 

I frowned, sweat dripping down my forehead from the movement. It had been some time since I'd thought about my parents. Or my sister. Pricillia. I shook my head, trying to get rid of the thought. "Hm," Lennon hummed in response. I knew what she was thinking. Even awake, I was trying to avoid remembering.

"It's not about the Leviathans Hoard." I stated as I sat up, trying not to react to the new wave of nausea that hit me. "It wasn't to do with Gran Shelly at all." With that, I dusted myself off and made for the exit, the first rays of sunrise stretching across the floor in front of me.

-Interdimensional Pirates
-April Bluebird/@BlueWhiskers1
-22/Oct/2025
-Chapter 13: Echo-walking
-1612 words
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