Lost at Sea Bk. 02 Ch. 14

"Hopefully they'll just give up!" Will agreed.

"You mean I did all this for nothing!" Bella shouted over the winds.

"This isn't over yet!" Captain Vex called behind her. "Whatever you're doing, keep it ready."

The mouth of the curved passage around the island loomed. The two brightly painted Akula buoys floated erratically on the thrashing waves. The calm seas between the island and the reef had given them a brief respite, but they were headed into angry waters again. Between the two bobbing markers was where it was most dangerous. An errant wave might shove them in either direction, right into the reef. They needed speed and luck. "Lace, give me as much sail as she can hold!" Captain Vex, "then get them furled again as soon as we're clear of those buoys!"

"Aye, Captain!" the Rigging Master's voice came from somewhere above. The sails began to lower, every new foot of cloth putting more strain on the masts. The Kestrel creaked loudly, protesting the sudden pressure. Everyone aboard could feel their speed starting to build again.

They passed the final curve of the island and were in the straightway toward the buoys. The ship rocked suddenly, a solid gust tipping the whole deck starboard. Swabs slid and tumbled, clutching at each other and their ropes. Riggers held on tightly, riding the sudden movement. The Captain braced herself, her legs wide, trying not to let the wheel turn with the ship. Behind her, Colin Strong grabbed the railing and clamped a strong arm around her waist to steady her. Bella tried to stop herself from sliding, but the deck was slick and the sudden change in angle was too steep. She scrambled ineffectively and found herself clinging to her horseshoe with her fingertips. Will fared better. His chair was firmly anchored. He just clamped down on the desktop with one hand and the chair with the other, bracing his legs wide like he was riding a horse.

The Kestrel tilted back the other way, finding its equilibrium and righting itself again. The crew regained control of their balance and quickly double checked their various lines that kept them safe. Bella scrambled all the way back into her circle. She swore. Sliding across the paint had smeared it badly. She pulled a grease stick out of her satchel and started trying to fix it as best she could.

"Ship ahoy! Dead ahead!" Danica called from the prow.

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"No," Janie said firmly. She'd been tempted, but it didn't seem right. "I admit I'm enjoying watching, but I'm already questioning how far I want to go. I don't want to feel like I'm letting myself be talked into something I might regret."

Tonya sighed. "It was worth a shot. Fine." She rolled her shoulders so the mark on her chest was in view again. Caine gave Janie an approving look without surfacing from between Tonya's legs. She gave him a small smile in return and started replicating the symbol.

Tonya gripped the edges of the table and tried to hold still so Janie could copy the sigil. Her lower body was squirming, but Caine had his hands clamped down on her hip bones and was holding her firmly in place.

Janie finished the sigil and decided it was good enough. She knelt down so her face was right next to the side of Tonya's head. Tonya eyed her suspiciously. "Whatcha doin?" she asked. Janie ran her fingers into the apprentice's hair and put her lips near Tonya's ear.

"I might not be joining you, but I can do this," she said in a throaty whisper. Her lips brushing Tonya's sensitive ears and her soft tickling breath sent shivers down the apprentice's spine.

"Oh fuck!" Tonya gasped, her eyes wide. Her hand came off the table and clutched uncoordinated at Janie's shoulder and the back of her head. "Oh wow!"

"Do you like it?" Janie whispered, letting the tip of her tongue lick the outer edge of Tonya's ear.

"Why is that so good?" Tonya asked, surprised and confused.

Janie's fingers knotted, gently but firmly tugging at the back of Tonya's scalp. Her laugh was a silken whisper. "Didn't Bella tell you about all the different places that feel good?"

"Well yeah, but most guys just focused on the big ones. That's usually enough," Tonya writhed.

"You need to listen to your mistress," Janie breathed, her lips grasping at Tonya's earlobe at the end of her sentence.

"Yes mistress," Tonya gasped.

Janie froze. That was not what she'd meant. That tight anxiety rose up in her again. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head without thinking. Caine was looking at her again across the length of Tonya's body. His eyes rose above Tonya's mons and met Janie's from above Tonya's shoulder. She knew he could see the panic behind her eyes. He was shaking slightly and she realized that he was silently laughing.

She glared at him. He quietly laughed harder. She made her choice in that moment. She didn't want to back out completely, and she was already feeling defiant after thinking about her mother's sense of propriety. In for a penny, in for a pound. She pulled a bit more firmly on Tonya's hair. "Does it feel good, apprentice? Do you like his tongue between your legs?"

"Oh fuck yes," Tonya graoned. "I'm getting close."

"Hold it in." Janie commanded. "Let it build."

Tonya whined but nodded. One of Caine's hands let go of her hips and disappeared behind the curve of her butt. Janie knew the exact moment that he added his fingers to Tonya's pleasure. She chose that moment to bite Tonya's ear. The apprentice's whole body went stiff and trembling. "Fuuuuck!" she cried out.

"Not yet." Janie's voice was velvet and iron sending trails of shivers down Tonya's shaking body.

"Can't..." Tonya gasped.

"You will," Janie whispered.

"So full," Tonya whined through clenched teeth. The sigil on her chest began to glow softly.

"You can take so much more," Janie breathed. "Take it. Hold it."

Tonya thrashed her head back and forth against Janie's grip. The light from her sigil got brighter. Janie reached up with her other hand and gently took hold of Tonya's nipple, rolling it between her thumb and fingers as she nibbled her earlobe.

"Are you connected to the mirror?" Janie asked, letting each consonant pulse with with her breath against Tonya's sensitive ear.

"Yes! Fuck! Oh fuck me!" Tonya swore, clutching spasmodically at Janie's neck and back.

"Caine, give her what she wants," Janie ordered. Tonya's eyes went wide.

Caine stood up, still holding in his laughter. He brought his fingers to his mouth and then down to his hard manhood, rubbing saliva across his length. Then he rubbed the head of his cock gently back and forth against her clit. She opened her eyes and rolled her head almost like she was in agony. His thumbs pulled her wide open. His cock head slid down to her twitching entrance. He rolled his hips forward and thrust his length into her with one long, hard stroke.

"Now," Janie pinched, pulled, bit, and whispered all at once.

Tonya's mouth opened wide, but no sound came forth. Her wide eyes washed over with bright red light. Her back arched. The sigil on her chest and every carved emblem in the mirror flared to blinding brightness.

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In the dark before them the ships lanterns were lighting up the black outline of a damaged ship bearing down on them at full tattered sail.

"What the hell?!" Captain Vex swore. She forced herself to keep calm and not to turn the wheel too soon. "How did it..? Will, tell me when the buoys are even with our mizzenmast!"

"Aye, Captain. Five seconds!" Will answered, setting his eyes on the dimly-lit colorful balls the ship was just passing. "Two! One! Now!"

Captain Vex spun the wheel taking them off their collision course. At the edge of the ship's lantern light she could make out the black ship. It was roughly the same size as the Kestrel, but rose far higher in the water. It looked like it must be completely unladen. "How, you bastard?" Vex snarled. "How are you doing this?" It was under full sail with no load in a storm. It should have capsized long ago.

They were caught. If this ship was fast enough to go all the way around the reef and come about to face them in the time it took the Kestrel to get through a gently curving channel, there was no hope of escape. "Lace, get those sails up! Reeve, prepare to repel boarders!" Vex yelled.

The crew scrambled. There would be no tacking, no rope hauling now. The rudder would be the only way of directing the ship. She hoped their momentum was enough to carry them all the way clear of the reef. The sails were pulled all the way up and tied off. The riggers swarmed the deck, tying off and drawing weapons to join ranks with the swabs.

"Bella, if you've got some kind of magic up your sleeve, now's the time!" Captain Vex called over her shoulder.

"Almost ready!" the witch answered as she finished repairing the smudged circle. It would have to be good enough.

She reached her metaphysical senses to the mirror and pulled.

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Luck is, obviously, unpredictable. Even to someone like Bella, who had made understanding and trying to influence luck her life's work, it was still a largely unfathomable force. Sometimes things happened that defied any explanation. Even afterwards with the virtue of hindsight, it was sometimes impossible to sort out why and how events had transpired the way they did. Being able to predict was the key to good planning. The fact that so many plans fall apart so easily is a pretty good indication of how awful humanity is at predictions, and the inscrutability of fortune.

For instance, those seeking to understand the nature of luck often run into a lot of trouble when they try to comprehend destiny. For many, their frustrations are enough to cause them to dismiss the concept of predestination altogether. It simplifies things if we come to the conclusion that randomness doesn't have cosmological qualifiers.

As with most things, the simple answer is of course, wrong.

Destiny exists. It is just misunderstood. Destiny is a byproduct of divine power. It is the result of the gods shaping existence to a plan no human can comprehend. Sometimes people can catch glimpses of it. These people are often called mad, or prophetic. People do not have destinies. Gods have destinies, and sometimes people are a part of it, or become caught up in the wake of that power.

It is unfathomably rare that someone manages to manipulate destiny for their own designs. After all, that is the exact opposite of how destiny is supposed to work.

It is even rarer that someone manages to do such an incomprehensible, powerful, stupid thing on accident.

It can be said that luck bends itself to service of destiny. Every once in a while, luck demands that destiny return the favor.

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The circles of paint on the deck had begun to glow slightly. Bella was drawing power out of the mirror through the central circle and channeling it into the two circles that surrounded herself and Will. Binding circles weren't only for containment. When connected together they could be used to safely move the flow of power between them. Moving power like this was dangerous, and Bella was pulling that power as hard as she could. There was a great deal of resistance. The mirror did not want to give up what was bound within it, but Bella was the one who created it. It belonged to her, as did every drop of energy it held. To the laws of magic, ownership was sometimes very important. The larger outer circles bound and stabilized the whole ritual. Without them, the energy would probably have become uncontrolled and dissipated, or worse, very quickly.

"Light up that ship!" Bella yelled. "I need to see it!"

"Danica, get those lights on that ship!" Captain Vex repeated. Reeve echoed the order as well. All the prow lights refocused as the swabs aimed them at the oncoming vessel.

It was a wreck.

There was a gaping hole in the prow right at the waterline. The waves were crashing against it causing frothy water to gush in and out of the breach. One of its lower cross beams was clearly broken and swinging limply across the deck like a pendulum, the tattered sail slowly ripping more and more.

On its deck were figures, kneeling, holding onto rails and ropes, hardly moving, waving their free arms back and forth in a classic sailor's sign of distress. Their faces were masks of desperation. Their mouths gaped wide, calling wordlessly for help.

The distance was closing far too quickly. The other ship was trying to ram them. It loomed in the black.

"Will, break your mirror!" Bella shouted. "Then aim it at the other ship!"

Will didn't waste time wondering why. He pulled the mirror free and smashed it down on the corner of the desktop, then lifted it's shattered face toward the looming wreck.

Bella put both her hands on the horseshoe and let the energy fully connect and release.

The mirror was a passageway. Its entire purpose was to connect things that should be separate. Aligned with its purpose again, the resistance Bella had been feeling ended. The flow from the circles and sigils in Bastard's Bay to the circles and focuses on the Kestrel became one solid conduit of power.

The black ship rose on a wave, it's prow rose high above the Kestrel's deck. The breach in its hull gaped like a fanged maw. Then it descended.

If Bella had fully understood the forces she was dealing with she never would have attempted this desperate plan. She was filling in the blanks of her understanding with guesses and trusting her own good luck to see her through. She was a fortune witch. Gambling was her nature.

The black ship crashed into the Kestrel with a sickening crunch.

Mortals should never meddle in the affairs of divinity.

Definitely not twice.

Definitely never twice at the same time.

Destiny bent.

A great deal happened all at once, and Tonya paid the price for it.