Chapter 15: A vessel to cross the mighty seas

For Jaeger, the morning came quickly, and he got up as soon as the sun arrived on the horizon, heading down to choose a ship. However, on the empty quay-side, the majority of people were still comfortably in bed, and only one looked ready to sail.

It was roughly one hundred and thirty feet from end to end, bore no masts, and had a single deck running along its top, sporting two locations where masts could be clipped into. There were two of these long, wooden beams lying at either side of the ship's deck to be put up in the direst of situations along with a small dinghy. The main form of propulsion actually came from eight giant paddles that thrust out of the lower side of the hull and into the waters beneath. They were so large that Jaeger couldn't possibly see how they could have been moved by people, but their presence made sense. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for strong winds to build up in smaller worlds, so sails were often only used as a last resort if your crew was too sick to row, as travel using them was far slower.

The vessel didn't seem to have much in the way of luxuries. The only gaps in the hull, aside from where the oars protruded, were at the ship's rear in the form of a dozen glass windows looking into what was likely the captain's cabin. Whilst Jaeger was not searching for luxury, he still had to find a way to pay them for their troubles if they were to drop him off where he wanted them to.

A wooden gangway had been put down between the dock and the ship so that people could move across, it had to be quite long to span the full length of the oars, and it bent slightly under his weight as he headed for the deck. There were several people atop it, moving about their various tasks and checking that everything was in order and that all ropes had been securely fastened so that nothing would start to move once they were underway.

Spotting him, one approached to ask, "What are you doing on this ship?"

To which Jaeger responded, full well knowing that he couldn't pay them nearly enough if they weren't already headed in the relevant direction, "Which way are you sailing?"

"Rowing more like," the crewman replied, "We're heading northeast, why?"

"Ah, excellent," Jaeger told him, "I'm heading that way too. There's a gate over there, you see, and I needed a way to get to it."

"You'd have to talk to the captain about this…" said the man, as he wiped the back of his hand against his brow because his day had already been a long one.

Just like that, Jaeger was then led over to where the captain stood by the ship's wheel directing the work of his men. The rest of the crew had mostly been clothed only in white shirts, but he had a black jacket for himself and high boots to try and demonstrate wealth. He also had a black beard, but Jaeger decided that he was not a pirate. Now, this could be a problem, Jaeger thought. The only funding that he had were the leftover coins taking from the preaching wolves. It was hardly a large sum, not even enough to pay for a night at an inn, but he still guessed that it might work out for him. He didn't need to eat, not in a conventional sense anyway, and he was happy sleeping out on the deck, so he would cost them absolutely nothing, especially if his course was the same as their own anyway.

Having had the situation explained, the captain only asked, "Well, how much do you have?" and was clearly unimpressed by the handful of bronze that Jaeger produced in return. "Hmm, so you say that you want nothing in return, just to take up some space on my deck?"

"Yes, I'll try my best to keep out of your way. This money is for nothing but your patience. We seem to be going to similar destinations anyway."

Jaeger was a rather suspicious figure. He did not look like the sort of man who could be simply going somewhere, rather the type that might be going somewhere to burn it all down, but the captain had little to give as a complaint, and so he said, "Well, I haven't heard of a gate along the route we're going, you're sure there's one north-east?"

"Completely," Jaeger told him, confident in the messages.

"Fine then, just keep out of the way. This isn't much that you've got there, and I don't want to get slowed by you. Time is money on these goods." And indeed it was, as they appeared to be shipping foods from many different worlds, which would go off should it take too long to get its destination.

Around an hour later, having handed over the money, Jaeger walked to the vessel's bow and leant over it, watching the dark waters being sliced through and turned white. He even thought that he could make out some small fish-like animals racing alongside, perhaps thinking that even if the huge newcomer beside them was bigger than them at least it wasn't faster. This was a slightly annoying observation, but Jaeger supposed that he would have to be patient and that nothing else could get him where he needed to go faster.

Heading out of the inlet, steep grey cliffs closed in on either side, narrowing the channel so that the boat had to be carefully directed - by the captain himself - to avoid its oars striking the rock. Fortunately, he was clearly a rather skilful man, probably having worked at sea his whole life, and no such disaster took place. Instead, Jaeger's attention was drawn to the paddles propelling the ship themselves, as he had previously noticed they were too big for any person to be using them, and they consistently moved at a constant pace all together at the same time. It was very odd, and he spent quite some time just leant over the ship's side watching them.

Deciding that he could get a better look from the inside, carefully avoiding those at work and the ropes lacing the deck, he headed towards a set of stairs at the ship's stern that headed down within it. The first floor was evidently used by accommodation as a set of doors leading off and into the captain's cabin whilst, further along, there was a low open space for the crew's own hammocks. To get down below this, Jaeger found himself moving over twice as many sets of stairs as he would have expected and emerging in the very bowels of the ship where the cargo was stored along with the ballast, and the only light came from gently swaying lanterns.

It was a claustrophobic area made worse by how narrow the space was between its floor and ceiling. How odd, Jaeger thought, putting two and two together meant there had to be a much larger space in the ship's centre, and perhaps that was where he would find what he was interested in. Crawling along the top of the ballast, he could feel himself approaching the bow because of how the rocking of the floor increased, and he found himself a ladder going directly upwards. Naturally, in the time he had spent at the front, he had seen where this emerged and could see the light from the passage's top. Climbing it, he found an additional doorway, halfway up, too low to just be entering back into the accommodation.

Pushing it open, he found himself in a cavernous black room, much larger than any other he had been in, that was again scarcely lit and filled by a musty smell like something was in the process of decay. This was where the vessel was being propelled from however, only two people were present and they stood by where Jaeger now was. At the ship's centre was a spider. It was bigger than any Jaeger had ever seen, with its humanoid face being as wide as he was tall and each of its eight legs were attached to one of the paddles. With rhythmic movements of its abdomen and these limbs, thinly covered in brown fur, it moved them.

Every so often, a crewmember would shovel food into its mouth, being watched by wide, humanoid eyes. However, now all of the eyes were on Jaeger, the spider's as it did not recognize him and the other yokai's too as they did not know how he would react, and one had stopped with their shovel loaded to be prepared to try and calm him. He needed no such treatment.

Instead, he confidently marched over, picked up an apple from the shovel, threw the fruit far into the spider's throat whilst saying, "What a strange way to move a ship." before exiting, leaving all three bewildered creatures behind him.

After that, the oars' movements did not seem quite so synchronized but, once the captain had told him not to upset the demonic spider, which was apparently easy to annoy, they got back in order.

Settling down to sleep, the next couple of days were uneventful for him. There was not a lot to do on the ship, and the weather was unchanging, always sunny with few clouds and an extremely light breeze. A flock of white gulls circled overhead, sometimes landing on the guard rails but they soon stopped doing this when one of their number was captured and taken below decks; Jaeger would not have wanted to be that bird.

With their course set, the vessel had increased in speed by a small degree, but this was largely unnoticeable as there were no sizeable waves to be crested or crashed through. The starless night sky did not help. It was as though they were trapped within a snow globe, making no progress, and occasionally were being put into the back of a boringly dustless cupboard to be forgotten about. However, he was still assured of progress being made, and the captain was still uncertain about ever having seen a gate where Jaeger thought one ought to be.

"I have sailed these waters all my life," he told Jaeger, stood by the railings at his side, "I have never seen an entrance like the one you're describing."

The reason why this gate had never been spotted by this particular crew before was soon quite obvious. It may have been quite large, as the portals came, but it opened onto another sea much like the one they were now atop of, and so it blended quite nicely into the horizon. The problem with that was that they got a little too close to it without noticing. The edges of these gates could not be moved, and so they were more rigid than any hidden rock or iceberg.

When the ship contacted it then, bow on, despite the gate being a big one, it was not big enough for the ship to pass through and something had to give. The vessel had been speeding towards it at full tilt and had hit it with all of the momenta that it could possibly muster, and the gate was not going anywhere; it could not be moved. Therefore, all of that momentum could only go into ripping open the wooden beams of the hull, as thick as they were, allowing water to flood in both sides and causing the spider, as anxious as it usually was, to bellow in terror; filling the scene with its drowning cries.