My World as an Ocean

It is currently around midnight and the night sky is shining beautifully onto my face. The glow of the nebulas is really something amazing to witness. As I am staring into the sky, I can hear the approach the guards in charge of patrolling the docks. Needing to hide for a bit longer, I start reviewing the steps that lead me here. Around Nine in the morning my father left for his work as the doctor in the local clinic in the village. I took that opportunity to quickly crawl from my bed to the wheelchair located right next to my bed. It was a simple designed wheelchair, with a wooden backrest with a leather seat spread across an iron frame attached to a wooden wheel with more iron for its spokes. On the left side of the wheelchair there was a pedal for my hand, to help me move my wheelchair a little faster since I only had one available hand. At first, I was a little apprehensive about it, but soon found it to be sturdy enough for my needs. I was able to grab our emergency stash of dried meet and water preserved in mana capsules.

Mana capsules were constructs made from mana which were bigger on the inside than what would make sense in the outside. Our mana capsule was high quality (adding on the suspicion that my fathers mage friend was a high level mage, since there was no way we could afford such a high quality item, it had to be a gift and things like this were customary gifts from mages). Mana capsules were hard to manufacture as they worked similar to shrink wrap from my dream world, the item needed to be enclosed in mana at the time of construction, meaning once opened the mana capsule would still hold the items but the container would continually degrading until it collapsed destroying the contents. A mana capsule could theoretically hold anything, but the larger the contents and the smaller you wanted it the more mana and mana control you would need to be able to execute the construction of the mana capsule. Either way you looked at it our mana capsule that just held about a weeks' worth of water for 3 was very expensive and I almost felt bad for stealing it. The dried meat on the other hand was just carefully wrapped in a container, and outside of the volume of dried meat and bread it wasn't anything special. I placed both of these things plus a change of clothes into a knapsack and placed it around my back, doubled secured with a rope that was tied over my left shoulder and went under and around the stump of my abdomen.

Coming back to the present I could see that the guards were leaving, heading to their shift change location. This was going to be the sketchiest part of the journey, as I had to get off my wheelchair with my backpack and crawl into an outrigger canoe. I choice this boat for two reasons, one it was popular around the continent and I assumed on the other one as well, meaning that people wouldn't be able to identify where I'm from when spotted and two, it was a really stable design and would be almost impossible to flip. If I flipped, I would just be a dead man, seeing as I can't swim (even when I wasn't crippled, I still couldn't swim, so the ocean is just the world's biggest death zone for me). For someone living on a coastal village it was a strange thing, but I was terrified of water, always have been. It might have something to do with my lack of control in the water but also a big part of it was the fact that I was terrified of the monsters that might be lurking at the bottom of the ocean. For some reason though, in this moment I don't feel fear at all, almost as if my fear of water never existed in the first place.

Shaking my head to clear my disorganized thoughts I quietly push myself off of my wheelchair and start one handedly crawling my way across the dock towards one of the few outrigger canoes still on the water and not being stored somewhere else. The dock was made of wood and as such pulling myself across it hurt, countless splinters were getting caught in my chest and my fingers were starting to hurt and I was only halfway to my destination about 10 meters down from me. I wanted to stop but I knew I couldn't the guards would soon be getting back, and while I wasn't doing anything wrong yet, they knew my father and would probably forcibly bring me back to him which was something I couldn't afford to let happen.

Keeping this in my mind I keep struggling forwards. Something I noticed was the last time I heard the voice in my head was last night before I went to bed, they haven't said anything for almost twelve hours now, which is equal parts concerning and a good thing. Once I get in the boat, I'm going to be relying on them to show me the way, so this will be interesting.

Soon I reach the canoe that I have been aiming for, carefully I pull myself over the edge and let myself fall into the canoe that was tied parallel with the dock. Quickly peaking my head up to see if anyone had noticed anything, I realize an ominous fog has rolled in which is obscuring my vision and hopefully also blocking the guard's sight.

[Wait you used daemonic powers? Will that not alert the church?]

[You had to use their soul for power huh? If you are powerful enough to manifest to create this fog and kidnap a few human children without alerting the guard, why are you working with me or better yet even bothering to living inside my mind!]

I narrow my eyes as I'm not sure if that is a threat, an inevitability, or if they will be on my side until I decide for them to leave. I decide that there is no real way I'm going to be able to decide that right now and I would just keep an eye on them until I had decided where they stood with me.

Realizing that the fog was going to disperse soon I went to grab a paddle. On the sides of the canoe there were holders for the paddles meaning I just had to slip them through the clamp and then the clamp on the side of the canoe would hold them into place. This was probably an outrigger rigged for a fisherman since most of the important part of the canoe (mainly the paddles) were meant to be dropped at a moment's notice and wouldn't be cast overboard. This was good, since to move the canoe effectively I would need to paddle on my left side, then turn around and paddle on the right side to not go into a circle.

I untie the canoe from the dock and push off with my hand as I do so, allowing myself to drift into the bay and eventually out into the sea. I give it some experimental paddles, finding a comfortable rhythm and trying not to fall over as I wasn't very stable. At this point if the waves get too bad, I might fall over. As a precaution I untie the rope around my knapsack, throwing the sack into the middle of the boat, and tie a loop around my waste and then around the seat. Worse come to worst if I fall over there will be a chance that I can pull myself up with the rope. Soon I get into a rhythm of paddling that is both efficient and won't have me swimming to my doom.

[Now that I've figured out how to row this thing where should I head?]

[Understood]

Sighing to myself for what seems like the fifteen millionth time in the past two days I focus on paddling my way to the middle of the ocean hoping to put as much distance between me and my village that held nothing for me anymore.