"Five silver, eh?" Morg was saying as they trudged back to their boat through smokey woodland.
Stump was skipping to keep pace with the lumbering dwarf. "I know, I'm not very good at haggling yet," he said.
"It's not the price at issue, it's that we'll see none of it. Them mercs are probably dead, carried out to sea."
"Maybe. But if we do find them there's a silver in it for you."
"Hm?"
"Members get two silver, though." Stump looked up to his swathed companion to gauge his reaction.
"Good thing you've got no members," said Morg, without breaking stride.
Stump bandaged his psyche from the verbal jab. "A silver then?"
"I'm supposed to return the skiff, y'know. And Reem? She's goin' to wonder where we've gone."
"We'll be back by the end of the day."
"Lot o' confidence for a gobby with no quests under his belt."
"One quest. So far."
The dwarf said nothing as they spied their boat in the sand. They dragged it to the water and hopped in, and Morg pushed off with an oar. Once they were a safe distance from the sandbar, he sighed. "A silver," he relented.
Stump smiled and extended a hand. "It can still be two silvers later if you change your—"
"Don't push it, gobby." Morg gave his hand a firm shake and then focused on guiding them out to sea.
Stump cracked open the parchment satchel Pest had given him after his meeting with Wasptongue, and unfurled the map of the isles within.
His eyes jumped from spit to spit. It was easy to read in the twilight with the faint green light of the glowcap ink. "Where do you think we should go first? There's a big lighthouse west of here. Maybe the Iron Fleece went there at some point. That's where I'd go if I was looking for ghosts."
Morg scoffed between oar strokes. "Maybe it was them who set the island afire, ever think o' that?" When Stump replied with a quizzical look over the map, Morg shrugged. "Ye don't know these hired swords like I do. They'll find any sort o' leverage they can to squeeze more glimmer from yer pockets."
"No, I don't think so," mumbled Stump. From thread to thread we defend wasn't the motto of a gang of thieves. "What if it's the hauntings themselves? The ghosts? Maybe it was them."
That drew a hearty laugh from the dwarf. "Used to be Seabrace was one, y'know?" he said.
"It was?"
"Back before Jaessun. Hundreds o' people lived here, maybe a thousand or more. It was that battle that carved it up, ye see, 'tween Jaessun and Lumensa," said Morg, his gravelly voice following the smooth undulations of the boat beneath them, as if the rocking of the skiff and the very waves themselves were telling the story. "Their fight above the isle's what tore it in 'twain, then 'twain again, and again. Floods 'n rains 'n magic beyond yer understanding, carving ribbons out o' these homes and its people. One isle turned to fifteen spits o' land overnight, and all its people dragged under."
There was a long pause. A bird cawed from some ways off. Or maybe it was a spirit. "Did anyone live?" Stump whispered.
"A couple ships escaped with some on board, I'm told. But it was a century ago, and no one remembers the ones who lived. It's the screams that make the tales. The screams and the ghosts."
Stump listened intently, growing more aware of the belly of fog they sat in, with nothing but a carved piece of wood separating their warm bodies from the cold cemetery below. He leaned cautiously overboard, looking straight down into the water, but it returned nothing but darkness.
Morg chuckled. "Put a fright in ye, did I?"
Stump swallowed hard. "It doesn't take much."
"Point bein' this is their home. They might scare ye. They might even invite ye to join 'em below, but they're not interested in harming their own past. And Wasptongue's been here a generation or more, so it's her home too." Morg returned his attention to the sea, gliding their skiff onward. "If what yer sayin' about the ghosts startin' the fire is true, it means something's gone terribly, terribly wrong."
 

 
Stump gripped both sides of the boat while he let the Words From the Sky—the system—quiet the world around him.
 
- Quest Added -
- Quest Added -
 
It was kind enough, and smart enough, to separate the two goals for him. He focused on one after the other and read the entries in the company log of his mind.
 
Fire on Seabrace
Someone has set the Wasp & Pest Brewing Co. aflame. But who? With a visit from the Midnight Ocelots, a contract with the Iron Fleece, and the haunted phantoms of the isles, there are many who might wish to see the operation burned.
Rewards: 2.5 silver + free Lumenurgy training with Wasptongue
Assigned to: Stump
Assisted By: Morgish (unaffiliated)
 This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The Missing Mercenaries
Three swords of the Iron Fleece, hired by Wasptongue to investigate the mysteriously worsening hauntings of Seabrace, have gone missing. Their last location is unknown. Where have they gone? Are they alive?
Rewards: 2.5 silver + free Lumenurgy training with Wasptongue
Assigned to: Stump
Assisted by: Morgish (unaffiliated)
 
The skiff thudded. Stump dismissed the system.
"Lumensa's fungal ass," grumbled Morg. "Can't see a damned thing out here." He stopped rowing and prodded an oar through the waves. It cracked against something solid, and he pushed the boat away from it.
The fog conspired with the gloom to hinder visibility beyond a few feet. Stump summoned the system again and saw he had five of six virtue remaining. I've lost the virtue over my maximum, he thought. He hadn't spent any demonstrating his skill to Wasptongue until he somehow wrested control of her own lumens and used them against her. But how did I do that in the first place?
"Maybe this'll help," he said, and called a light into being.
Morg recoiled at the brightness. "Warn me next time before ye set it off," he growled.
The lumen speared through fog, unmasking a jagged stone bobbing in the water, connected by chain to a crumbling pier. Stump concentrated on his creation without spending a point on Sustain, and directed it to hover above them.
"Nifty little trick, that," Morg said, glancing at it suspiciously. "I thought I saw ye pull somethin' on old granny brewmaster."
"I don't know what I did," said Stump, carefully dividing his attention between maintaining his light and replying to the dwarf. "This is just the beginning of Lumenurgy, she told me. There's a lot more to it, like those illusions she made."
"Got to be careful with it, though. It might draw the spirits near. Mind moving it over there a ways?" Morg nodded to the left, where the water lapped against something in the mist. "Anyway, that sort of thing's out o' my shop. I'm more about the trades. I s'ppose ye saw that in yer tome."
Stump hovered the globule where Morg directed. Jutting only inches out of the water was a shingled roof corner, tilted and colonized by barnacles. "I saw more than that," said Stump. "I saw you have seventeen levels to your name. Strange that more of these companies aren't begging you to join them."
"It's just you for now," Morg chuckled dryly. He steered them away from the submerged building and urged Stump to move the light to their other side. "But as I said, I'm different. Some o' these comp'nies can't handle that, and I can't say I blame 'em. I bring me own burdens from back home."
"Borovic?"
"Aye," The dwarf said, and swiftly redirected the conversation. "Anyhow, my skills aren't as magical as yers, but the gods bestow some measure o' usefulness in the trades. I know there's land up ahead, for instance, despite not bein' able to see nothin'."
"Really?"
"Like a gull. As long as I'm in a vessel on the water, it's like I can feel the vibrations o' land, as long as it's big enough." His leather coverings squeaked when he looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, a shoreline emerged from the mist, wreathed in dim fungal light, and above it hulked shadowed trees and abandoned dwellings.
"Guess we're gettin' off," he said. "Ye might want to douse that light o' yers, lest we announce our presence to the dead."
The fog fell back in like a curtain when the lumen blinked out. The shadows of the isle took the shapes of homes and shops, or what would have been before the battle. Algae and seaweed cluttered the narrow strip of beach, while mushrooms and fungal trees reclaimed patches between hollowed buildings.
And in one of the windows a pair of small lights shimmered like coins—eyes, Stump realized, as the mist peeled away. Eyes.
And they were staring at him.
He yelped when the skiff came to a stop.
"Sorry," said Morg. "Didn't see the sandbar."
When Stump looked again the eyes were gone. He blinked and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I've never met a ghost before," he muttered.
"If we're brisk it'll stay that way." Morg hauled himself into the water and dragged the boat onto the beach.
Other than a few scattered clutches of foliage the island was mostly a strip of dirt and seagrass. Stump followed close behind the dwarf, who ducked through what was once a doorway. The frame of a house remained, but much of the walls had been gnawed by time.
"Nothin' much to be gathered here," Morg mumbled, stopping.
"Oof," said Stump, walking into his backside.
Morg swatted him away. "Don't hover so close. We split we can cover twice the ground in half the time, yeh?"
Stump reluctantly agreed. They had over a dozen islands to search, and according to the dwarf they were on one of the smaller ones.
He set off on his own expedition, keeping both the skiff and coast in sight, and Morg within earshot. "This one looks like the Tackled Hack," said Stump, stepping into a long, rectangular shell of a building. Overgrown stone dividers separated the brine-chewed remains of boats roughly the size of their own.
"Nothin' I can see o' recent habitating," replied Morg, from somewhere else.
Stump stepped around the dividers, making his way to the back of the boathouse, where only fragments of wall stood. Beyond the building and across a patch of grass was a rowboat, resting askew on the beach, twice the size of their skiff. It was clean, new, and untouched by weather.
And two pairs of footprints led to the boathouse.
"Morg…" Stump began. A clatter pulled his attention around. He spun to face a tall man, wide at the shoulders. Long greasy hair framed a scarred human face.
Germott stood outside the missing wall, rapier in hand. "Why don't you step on out here?" he said, slanting his blade in the haze.
 

 
Morg shuffled awkwardly out of a building, a knife at his throat, puppeted from behind by Sylas.
"A goblin?" the catfolk asked, surprised.
Germott shrugged. "One of Wasptongue's, maybe." He pointed the rapier at Stump, who regarded the tip with concern as it wobbled threateningly close to his lung.
Sylas narrowed his dagger thin pupils. "Is that true?"
Stump nodded. His heart was beating in his throat. He met Sylas' gaze only briefly, but it was long enough to recognize the glowing yellow eyes that had spotted him leaping from the window of the tank.
"It is… well, for me it is. He's a mercenary from the Downs," he said.
"What company?"
"Solo," grunted Morg. He seemed to wager the knife at his throat as more of a nuisance than a genuine threat to his life. "Tryin' to rebuild my reputation."
Sylas kept his eyes on Stump, unblinking. "Hired for what purpose?"
"The hauntings. They've gotten worse, haven't ye heard?" said Morg.
Germott lowered his blade, drawing a long held sigh out of Stump. But Sylas didn't ease up. His blade remained level beneath Morg's chin, and he continued his predatory study.
Stump kept his head low and his ears drooped. With any luck whatever memory of him Sylas had filed away wouldn't resurface.
"I have heard tell," said the catfolk, barely above a whisper. He was as still as a corpse, even with Morg's impatient fidgeting behind the blade's curve. Finally, he released his grasp. "I don't suppose you know anything about those fires?"
"I don't s'ppose you do?" Morg challenged, rubbing his neck.
Sylas slipped the knife into a sheath hidden up his sleeve. "We saw the flames shortly after we cast off Seabrace. We meant to return and assess the damage when we sighted a ship leaving the isle, sailing farther into the Spits."
"And none aboard," Germott added gravely.
"Ghosts?" said Stump. Pest had warned about foggy ship sightings, with seaweed hanging from its sails.
"Ghosts, mercenaries, mercenary ghosts," Sylas teased. "There were likely some aboard, but it was too far away to ascertain."
"I know what I saw," insisted Germott. "I've seen other such things, too."
"So you're here about the fire?" said Stump.
For a long moment the Ocelots shared a gaze in silent communication, neither allowing their thoughts to manifest on their faces. "We're here about the hauntings, as well," said Sylas. "We work with Wasptongue on occasion."
"Yeh? What company?" Morg pressed.
"Gilded Mace."
It would have been quick work to unspool their story. All Morg or Stump needed to do was demand they provide their badges as proof. But they weren't the only ones hiding their identity. Whether or not Sylas got a good enough look at Stump to remember him was uncertain, but Stump didn't want to press the question for either of them.
"Well, I hope the ghosts leave the two of you alone on your quest," he said, turning. "Morg, we should be going."
"Ah, so soon?" Sylas' lilt was daringly playful. "Seems a shame if we don't team up, no?"
Stump looked to Morg, whose opinion was evident despite the mask.
Even Germott blinked in confusion. "What?" he managed.
But it wasn't him Sylas was looking at. It was Stump. The catfolk smiled thinly, his eyes as sharp as knife points. "We'll search the isles together. What do you say?"