Saga II: The Log That Knows the Tide

Captain Bluetide and Gambit search for the next clue to their past, at the bottom of the sea.

Death does not grant rest it grants memory. Captain Bluetide learned this the hard way. The dream came without warning, dragging him down into a darkness deeper than the sea floor. He stood whole again flesh on bone, breath in his lungs aboard a ship he did not recognize. The deck was dry, the air still. No wind. No stars. Only a single lantern burning in the captain’s cabin, its flame frozen mid flicker. On the desk sat a logbook. Its leather cover was swollen with salt and rot, the edges gnawed by time. Bluetide felt a pull toward it, an ache behind his eyes that had nothing to do with sight. When he opened the book, the pages were blank until the quill beside it began to move. It scratched words into the parchment as he watched. Captain Elias Thorne hesitates. Bluetide recoiled. “That name is dead,” he growled. The quill did not stop. He knows the book should not exist. Yet it does. The cabin creaked. Somewhere above, timbers groaned as if the ship itself were listening. Bluetide slammed the book shut. The moment his hand touched the cover, he awoke.

The Nomad’s Gambit cut through black water beneath a moonless sky. The dream clung to him like wet chains. Gambit sat at his side, blue fire smoldering in the hound’s hollow eyes. The dog’s ears twitched, head tilting as if it too had heard the scratching of that unseen quill. “A book that writes truth as it happens,” Bluetide muttered. “Or worse… fate.” Gambit gave a low, uneasy whine. Bluetide did not understand the meaning of the dream but he knew its weight. Dreams had guided him before. Curses spoke in symbols, not answers. And this one pressed on his mind like a compass needle locked to a single direction. The logbook existed. And it waited below the waves.

The sea answered their course by growing cruel. For three nights the water churned unnaturally, waves rising and collapsing without wind. Ghost lights danced beneath the surface, drifting like lost souls denied the mercy of sinking. Gambit paced the deck, chain rattling, growling at shapes only he could see. On the fourth night, the sea broke open. The wreck lay half-buried in a grave of coral and bone a galleon split clean amidships, its mast snapped like a spine. Barnacles crusted its hull so thick it looked grown rather than built. The nameplate was gone, scraped away by time or intent. Bluetide felt it then. A presence. “This is the one,” he rasped. No anchor was dropped. The Nomad’s Gambit hovered above the wreck like a vulture, held in place by the curse that bound it to its captain’s will. Bluetide stepped off the deck and sank without a splash, Gambit leaping after him. The sea welcomed them like an old executioner. Water pressed in from all sides, heavy and absolute. Bluetide walked the ocean floor as if it were dry land, coat drifting behind him like a funeral banner. Gambit swam beside him, skeletal limbs moving with unnatural ease, blue flame trailing like dying stars. The wreck’s hull loomed ahead, split open and yawning like a mouth frozen mid-scream. They entered the hold. Inside, the water was thick with silt and shadow. Cargo lay scattered rotted crates, cannons swallowed by coral, skeletons tangled in netting. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the distant groan of shifting wood. Then the writing began. Captain Bluetide enters the hold. The words were not heard. They were felt etched directly into his mind. Bluetide spun, cutlass drawn, blue fire flaring in his eyes. “Show yerself.”

No enemy emerged. Only the book. It rested atop a fallen crate, untouched by rot or reef. Its leather cover was darker than the surrounding gloom, unmarred by barnacles or decay. A quill floated beside it, feather pristine, tip stained with fresh ink that drifted into the water like smoke. Gambit snarled, hackles raised, chain clinking softly. Bluetide approached slowly. Every instinct screamed trap but fate had teeth, and turning away only let it bite harder later. The logbook opened itself. He recognizes it now. Bluetide read the page. This book records truth as it occurs, not as it is remembered.  It does not predict.  It does not lie.  It does not forget. The quill scratched faster. The captain fears what it may one day write. “Damn you,” Bluetide hissed. “Damn whatever made you.” The water around them began to churn. Shapes rose from the shadows drowned sailors, their bodies bloated and split, eyes glowing with dull awareness. They drifted forward, drawn by the book’s presence, mouths opening in silent accusation. They come now, the log recorded calmly. Bluetide slammed the book shut and turned, cutlass flashing. Gambit lunged first, jaws tearing through water and spirit alike. The hold erupted in violence steel against spectral flesh, blue fire against drowned rot. The book did not move. It simply continued writing. The hound defends without hesitation.  The captain wonders which of them is truly cursed. Bluetide fought like a storm given form, bones cracking through wraiths, fury driving every strike. Gambit tore through the drowned with savage loyalty, chain whipping like a living thing. When the last spirit dissolved into silt, silence returned. Bluetide stood before the book once more. Slowly, carefully, he lifted it. The cover was warm. “Yer coming with me,” he said. “Whether I like what you write or not.” The quill stilled. For the first time, the page remained blank. Bluetide turned away, Gambit at his heel, and ascended from the wreck with the weight of truth cradled in his grasp. Above them, the Nomad’s Gambit waited unchanged, eternal, patient. As they broke the surface, the logbook wrote one final line on its own. The hunt has begun to hunt back. And far below, the wreck groaned as if something had just awakened.