I was sailing on one of the Aether’s vast oceans, enormous shelves of stone and overgrowth visible on the sea’s edge as I approached land where the small village resided. We had set sail from a distant island first thing that morning, as soon as the nocturnal beasts went back into hiding so we could go back to the upper deck of the boat.

As I stood at the helm, and as I looked into the water in front of the prow, just to the left, I saw a piece of floating driftwood, with a person hanging onto it, unconscious.

I yelled to the men and left the helm, sliding down the rope cast into the water, hooking my foot into the loop at the end.

Down in the water, I could see both the girl and the wood more clearly. The wood was from the side of a ship, still splintered on its edges. The girl had dark brown hair, soaked by the salty waves, and fair skin. She wore a black scale shirt and pants with an empty scabbard on her belt.

I carefully lifted her, one arm around her waist and my other hand holding the rope. The men lifted us up to the deck and I laid the girl down on the wooden boards, moving the hair from her face.

I checked her breathing and watched her chest rise and fall regularly, but when I felt her skin, she was ice cold.

I looked up at one of the men and said, “Go below deck and fix one of the beds, and get a lantern close to it. She needs to get warm, fast.”

He nods and runs below deck as I lift the girl again, fearing she has hypothermia, and take her to the ready bed, making sure she is fully covered by the sheets and that the lantern is burning its hottest.

I grab a few more sheets from the adjacent beds and place them on her before sitting down on the bed across from hers. Unsure of what else I could do with the boat’s limited supplies, I just sat and waited.

Her breathing stays normal, and the longer she laid there, the softer and more relaxed her expression became as she warmed up. Eventually I got up and rubbed her shoulder to wake her. Her eyelids fluttered and cracked open in a squint from the lantern’s light. When they opened fully, I saw her eyes were a beautiful light blue. I had a sudden flashback to thousands of years ago, but it faded instantly.

“Who are—where am I?” she stuttered, trying to sit up.

“You’re on board the Interceptor,” I reply. “You’re safe. What happened to you? You were adrift on a piece of debris.”

She blinked hard a few times, trying to adjust her eyes before responding. “I was on a different boat with the crew and Captain Windhelm, and we got caught out at sea when night fell.”

Listening to her was like listening to silver. I found myself adoring her voice along with her face.

“The boat was swarmed by sea serpents and giant aquatic arthropods. They tore the ship apart and killed everyone else aboard. I don’t even know how I survived. I fell from the ship’s riggings while climbing down from the crow’s nest, knocked off by a sea serpent’s tail, and I went under the water. Somehow the creatures didn’t notice me, even though all nocturnal Aether creatures can smell you from a mile away. They destroyed the boat and ate the other crew members, and I climbed onto the nearest piece of debris to stay afloat.”

I almost missed it when she stopped talking. Her beautiful voice had triggered my flashbacks again.

“That sounds horrible,” I say, then change the topic slightly. “So then you were at sea at least a full day, right?”

“I don’t know. I suppose if I’m still alive it must have only been one day.”

“Are you still cold?”

I reach for her hand to feel her skin as she says, “I feel warm enough, thank you.”

But her skin is still too cold, and I tell her this. Tapping into my Primordial magic, I conduct warmth from my hand to her.

“Oh my goodness,” she says, surprised at the heat. “You’re so warm!” She scoots closer to me on the bedside, pressing herself against my arm, practically hugging me. I place my arm around her shoulder and she moves closer, leaning her head onto my shoulder.

I can feel her body beginning to warm now, the cold leaving her.

“What’s your name?” I ask her as she lays her head on me.

“Valerie. Yours?”

“Matthew. You can call me Matt.”

Even her name reminds me of my past, over four thousand years prior.

Suddenly we hear a knock on the cabin door. Valeria quickly moves away from me right before one of the crew pokes his head in and says, “The sun is setting, captain. The shore is still a fifteen minute trip out before we reach the docks.”

My brow furrowed as I went to the upper deck, Valerie following. The sun had just touched the ocean’s horizon, and I could easily make out the explorers on the shore ahead.

And I realize now that what I said next was a deadly mistake.

“Get the men rowing. Now. We’re heading to the shore before the sun sets. GO!”About a dozen crew mates went to the lowest deck and to the oars. I went to the helm as several more men re-did the ropes on the sails, allowing them to billow out fully and catch the most wind possible.

As I reached the helm, I noticed Valerie’s eyes had gone wide, and her expression was that of deep fear. I saw her slowly sidling away from the boat’s edge and up toward the deck I was on with the helm.

I looked away from her and into the water, where I could see the tops of Aether kelp plants. They had begun to take on a purple-black hue, a clear sign of nightfall.

“Are we going to make it before the sun sets?” Valerie asked me quietly, worried.

I turned to answer her and saw her fearful expression. As I said, “We better,” multiple things flashed through me.

I felt bad, having to put Valerie through this, especially after what she had just survived.

I felt regret, realizing that we wouldn’t make it to shore before the Aether turned into living hell.

And I had another flashback.

Valera gave me that same look thousands of years ago.

I hung in the pit, suspended there by solidified shadow tentacles, Valera hanging adjacent to me. The shadow tendrils were laced with binding runes, suppressing all magic. Above us, the Vampyric Overlord grinned like a child, knowing who he had just captured.

The Prince of Hrakorneau. Prince Varyakizr Kellfyre.

And the Vampyric Overlord had caught Varyakizr’s fiancé as well, Valera.

“You’ll fetch me quite a high price in the black market, Prince Kellfyre,” the Vampyric Overlord mused. “Of course, you thought I’d use you as a bargaining chip, didn’t you? I know Rikazul hates you. He only keeps you alive so the throne has an heir. And besides, if I just sold you back to him, or any Primordial, there would be no fun to watch unfold when Rikazul dies without an heir.”

My eyes stung as I turned my face away from him to glare into the abyss below me. Anger and grief boiled inside me as I heard the overlord walk away. And I heard Valera speak to me.

“Varyakizr…”

I turned to look at her, Valera’s face veiled by fear.

“Are we going to make it out of here?”

And I gave the same answer I gave Valerie, thousands of years later.

“We better.”

I noticed my breathing had increased after I answered Valerie, and I quickly averted my attention to the sea, and the shore.

We made it just over half way to the shore before I saw the last bit of the sun vanish.

The water turned black. Every plant on shore was a sickly purple color. Every bird had gone silent. Not a noise could be heard beside the paddling of the oars.

Then we heard the growl. Then a shriek. The flapping of wings. The flow of water around a sea serpent’s dorsal spines. The clicking of mandibles. The cawing of hell crows.

I looked into the water and into the sky above the boat.

I stood between Valera and the Vampyric Overlord and his royal guards, his shadow pit prisons burning with red flames, as were the palace halls surrounding us.

“You really thought you’d both escape, Prince Kellfyre?” he said mockingly. “There are thousands of Vampyrics in this city, and only two of you. And my palace is laced with sealing runes that prevent all magic except for mine and my guards’. You have no chance of winning this battle.”

“And yet your runes failed to suppress my magic,” I retorted, gesturing to the red fire surrounding us. The Vampyric Overlord glared at me, then spoke.

“I will give you one last chance to live, Varyakizr. Surrender now, and I’ll leave you both alive to be sold in the black market. Or fight me, and she dies.” He jabbed a clawed finger at Valera.

“Which will it be, Prince?”

“Don’t listen to him, Vari,” Valera said quietly to me. “Your powers are strong enough to defeat him, don’t worry about me.”

Hell crows and some horribly gruesome variant of noxcides flew above us. Sea serpents, ginormous aquatic arthropods, and undead fish swam below us.

The first sea serpent shot up in front of the boat, shrieking in hatred at the boat. Three more serpents emerged from the sea as the flying devils above us tore apart the sails.

“MEN!” I yelled as loud as possible. “ARM YOURSELVES!!! FOCUS YOUR FIRE ON THE AERIAL CREATURES!!!”My crew scrambled for their bows and crossbows, and I ran for one of the ballistae on the upper deck, targeting the lead sea serpent, firing a harpoon straight through its glowing red eye. It released a furious scream of agony, clamping its jaws down on the prow and figurehead.

I fired a second harpoon and nailed the serpent’s eye again, driving the harpoon through its cranium and killing the monstrosity.

Then I noticed the sea spiders crawling up the side of the ship. I turned to fire on one and saw from the corner of my eye a giant crab-like horror looming behind Valerie as she sat, terrified, in the fetal position on the corner of the upper deck.

I locked an orb of green energy onto one of the Vampyric royal guards, acting as a telekinesis anchor, and hurled him across the throne room, straight through an obsidian pillar.

As I turned to deflect a cursed onyx halberd from another guard, I saw Valera was fighting two Vampyrics at once, battering them with divine light and searing their faces off. But then I saw a third guard dash behind her, his form like that of a humanoid scorpion.

As I opened my mouth to cry out her name and warn her, a guard’s weapon struck my arm, and the scorpion guard’s tail arced through Valera’s chest.

Everything stopped. Time. Movement. My breathing. My mind.

I heard her piercing scream. I heard the Vampyric Overlord laughing.

I felt myself shatter. Every fiber of my being screamed in rage.

I ignored my own bleeding and tried to cast Time Reversal, but the Vampyric Overlord was too fast. He casted Time Lock on Valera, the one spell that can kill a Primordial.

The red chains materialized in a split second, and Valera was gone.

Hung within a nameless void, her genetic reincarnation ability obsolete.

She was dead. Permanently.

I let out a war cry of pure rage, completely dropping my disguise as Matt Pearson, and I hurled a fireball so tremendous that it was a miracle the orb of fire didn’t vaporize the entire ship.

The giant crab horror was blasted to hell and back, its carapace turned into ash soup as it screamed and fell into the sea.

Valerie was staring at me in pure terror, but also in awe.

When I dropped my disguise, it showed my true self. A Primordial. Varyakizr Kellfyre.

The horrors were swarming the boat like crazy now, and my ship threatened to capsize.

Fueled by anger, grief, and hatred, I turned away from Valerie and rocketed at the nearest sea serpent, bashing its head open with a single punch to its face. I launched another cataclysmic fireball at a second serpent, completely engulfing its head in fire and it fell into the sea with a pained roar.

I threw bolt after bolt of lightning at the horrifying sea spiders on the boat, then I electrocuted the water, boiling the rest of them alive.

I targeted each flying devil with waves of fire, sculpting the area of effect to avoid the sails and the deck. The hell crows dropped like charred flies, their stench permeating the air.

But they just kept coming. The horrors continued to seek out the boat as it neared land, and I could even see dozens of land-dwelling night horrors stalking the shore, waiting for the ship to dock.

Why do I hold on to this? I asked myself. Why do I hold on to Valera’s memory so hard? She’s been gone for thousands of years. I don’t want to be reminded of her… yet so desperately I still want her back.

I stood on the chewed-up prow of the boat, fists clenched as I just watched the creatures swarm toward the boat. A cloud of devil bats descended upon it and the entire crew rushed below deck. Sea serpents battered the boat and tried to devour me before being rent in two by bolts of lightning.

The anger inside me rose until finally it exploded out in a furious punch, causing a shockwave and billions of volts of electricity to erupt from my fist, vaporizing almost two hundred monsters in an instant.

I levitated in front of my ship, glaring at it, tears threatening to fall from my eyes. I saw that Valerie was still watching me from within the ship.

Why did I save you? I growled inside my head at her.

My fists clenched until my knuckles were white and jumping with lightning and fire.

I don’t want you, I just want VALERA!!!

In rage I screamed, “You’re not Valera!”

And I threw another punch, pulverizing the entire ship with thunder and fire. I didn’t care that I killed the entire crew. I didn’t care that I killed over a dozen innocent men. All I cared was that I killed Valerie.

I called down a lightning storm on the water after the boat exploded, boiling and electrocuting every last living being within two miles of the ship, all to be sure that Valerie died.