I saw the strangest thing last night.
Aboard a floating tomb.
All but me, were gone from sight.
Emptied, all the rooms.
The smell of death seemed absent, yet...
The air was full of doom.
Edicius woke up with a start, slamming his head into the bunk above his own. He groaned quietly and rolled out of his tiny cot, landing with a light thud on the loose wooden planks making up the floor of the pathetic sleeping quarters. He'd had a dream, and though it seemed very real and vivid at the time, it seemed his mind had begun to distort it. He remembered being aboard this ship, and discovering every other passenger and crew had disappeared. He remembered searching the ship for some clue and discovering his own mutilated and bleeding body impaled upon an ancient weapon not unlike those the nobles of his homeland tended to carry as a sign of power and status.
In a haze Ed stumbled out of the room and down a shifting hallway, nauseous and longing for the touch of earth under his weary bones. Ed, whose power relied on contact with the ground, had never done well on boats, or airships, or gondolas for that matter. He made his way to the deck of the ship, to relieve his uneasy stomach by any means necessary.
The sloshing of fresh sick into choppy waters was hardly the relief he'd hoped for, and he found himself thinking of another youth on board, roughly the same age as he. She was dying, this much was clear from the knowledge he'd gained while still benefiting from the education offered to a noble's son, disowned though he was. She would make the journey, most likely, and die shortly after their arrival in Kalmarden. She had perhaps a week to live.
Edicius felt for the girl, for he had died once, a horrible and painful death at the hands of his father. He was born into a society where one's gifts were a sign of not only their heritage, but their status in society. Those who were blessed with the ability to harness magic, and bend it to their will considered more valuable, more important than normal citizens. And with these abilities being genetic, families often rose to power based solely on their ability to reproduce and spawn more entities capable of controlling the supernatural.
Edicius was a victim of this society. From birth, he had no apparent gifts to speak of, and thus, by name and action was sentenced to death by his own father so as to protect the family's image. His mother, who was an outsider initially, but blessed with impressive powers which promised her a position as a noble. Unlike the others, however, her control was over life and death itself. She could manipulate, heal, and even save the human body from any physical afflictions. The supernatural sicknesses that were borne of inbreeding, and other genetic diseases that were bonded to one's abilities and gifts, however, were beyond her reach.
Edicius, tragically, was thought to be one such subject, if metaphorically. However through cruel and fatal assault, Edicius was able to provide with his mother's silent shielding. He pretended to die, as part of her plan to appease their family, and society. Afterward she smuggled his tattered body out of the country where he would presumably be safe. And yet, this was not the end of his suffering. He was recruited into a miserable war between similarly gifted individuals. Survival and escape became his companions once again, the second time before he reached the age of ten standard years.
His body began to deteriorate over time, the result of inferior genetics mostly to blame. Though his mind thrived, as did his ability. Ed was shaped into a weapon, before he was half the minimum age of a soldier in most countries. And so now he found himself enduring the miserable concept of sea travel to go to a place where disease and war were merely nonexistent. A land steeped in legend and superstition, where people claimed to believe in monsters, and various sorts of evil creatures.
Perhaps there was a reason for the way this place existed. Perhaps their culture was advanced beyond what he had experienced in the past. Perhaps they had an answer for his wilting body, and inferior eyesight. Perhaps they could cure that girl, and maybe the reason for their peace was a superior intellect, some ultimate, universal secret that allowed Kalmarden to seem so ideal to anyone who'd done their research. Edicius could only guess, and hope that his suffering was nearly over.
