"Fuff... Haaaa..."
I took a deep breath, letting the fresh morning air into my lungs.
'So, this is the air of Sodor.'
How should I say it... It felt like normal air. A little saltier than usual, maybe. But who cared? After ten years at sea, any land smelled like freedom.
Standing at the bow of the ship, I gazed at the morning sun rising behind towering port structures, cranes, warehouses, the skeletal frames of ships in dry dock.
'This... This is it.'
I was here. I was finally here.
'Hell yeah!'
Nobody knew how much hardship and boot licking I had endured to get to this point.
Every day, every morning, every night, ever since I was seven, I had been perched on Admiral Ruth's shoulder like a singing parrot.
If she needed food, I was there.
If she needed a massage, I was there.
If she needed someone to beat up, I was there, too.
Hell, I was basically her 'yes man'.
All because she'd rescued me from slave traders when I was a child.
The details of that particular chapter were blurry in the specific way unpleasant things go blurry when your brain decides you're better off without them.
My thinking? I'd repaid her more than enough. Time for my freedom.
I didn't like the sea life.
Ten years of the Admiral's drills and the crew's chores, and an unbroken horizon that never once had anything interesting on it.
I'd swabbed decks. I'd climbed rigging in weather that had opinions about me personally.
I'd eaten fish prepared in every conceivable way a fish could be prepared and several ways it shouldn't.
Things might have been different if we were pirates, but no, we were the 'guardians of the sea.' Which meant all the danger, none of the treasure.
And the sea monsters? Well, those weren't so bad. The Admiral might have been lazy, but she had the skills to back up her rank.
The only reason she was stuck on a ship instead of in some cozy office on land was her personality.
She was straightforward, aloof, slightly mischievous, and completely unhinged.
I once saw her sever a man's head with a single flick of her wrist.
That's part of the reason I never told her I wanted to leave.
But that changed today.
"Roy!"
I turned.
Dax was jogging toward me along the deck, one hand on his cap to keep it from blowing off, his round face carrying the expression he always wore when delivering news he wasn't sure how to feel about.
The Black Rose's third mate. Good man.
"Senior."
If not for my broken right arm, I would've saluted. Instead, I just bowed slightly.
Why not use the other hand? Well, these navy types found that insulting. Weirdos.
"Admiral's calling for you," he said, not minding the informality. "Her office. Now."
I steadied my racing heart.
'This is it. The moment of truth.'
"Alright!"
I bowed once more and started toward the admiral's quarters.
Dax looked at me with pity. "Better be careful. She seemed... off."
I turned and gave a small smile. "I will. Thank you."
'Hell, you just needed to add to my anxiety, didn't you?'
With heavy steps, I moved toward the outer cabinets.
Black Rose was a three-deck warship with an iron hull and humming Dust engines, aether-powered turbines that drank processed mana crystals and spat out enough thrust to outrun most things that wanted to eat us.
The ship was built for drills, chaos, and long days at sea. Every corner was familiar enough to navigate blindfolded.
At the stern, above it all, sat the Admiral's domain: polished brass stairs, a rose-handled door, and a space no one touched without permission.
I raised my hand and knocked.
Silence.
Then a stern voice from inside: "In."
I opened the door and entered.
The office was exactly as it always was. Charts pinned over older charts.
A weapons rack holding things that had no business being on a ship. Two empty mugs sitting on the desk.
The persistent smell of black coffee, old paper, and whatever that metallic undertone was that I'd spent ten years not identifying.
The only new thing was the pressure.
It was suffocating.
Suddenly, my core pulsed inside my chest, the marble-sized seed of crystallized aether grafted into my sternum when I was eight.
My Adaptation quirk kicked in automatically, adjusting my body to handle the external pressure the way it handled extreme heat, cold, or the crushing weight of deep-sea dives.
It was the main reason I'd survived so long at sea.
Admiral Ruth sat behind the desk.
Black hair, loosely tied in the way of someone who'd done it purely so it would stop being a problem. A face that was probably mid-twenties, with sharp red eyes that looked at whatever was in front of them like it owed an explanation.
Moderate build. Relaxed posture. The jacket was technically on and technically buttoned, and that was the full extent of formality she was willing to offer.
In front of her, on the desk, sitting very flat and very visible and very much not where I had left it...
...was my resignation letter.
'She found it.'
Of course she did.
But I kept my face completely still.
She looked at me. Then at the letter.
Then back at me, with the neutral tone she used when she'd already decided something and was giving you the professional courtesy of explaining it to your face.
"Sit down, Roy."
I sat.
She tapped the letter once with one finger. Not aggressively. Just marking its existence.
"This yours?"
"...Yes."
"It does have your name on it." She picked it up, read from it in the same flat tone:
"'With full respect and gratitude for the opportunities provided, I hereby formally resign my position aboard the Black Rose effective upon arrival at Sodor domain.'"
She set it down. "Full respect and gratitude."
I forced my shaking leg to stop. "I meant it sincerely."
"Mhm." She looked at me. "Explain."
Right.
Okay.
'This is it. The plan. Stick to the plan.'
I straightened slightly in the chair. Arranged my expression into something appropriately serious, not dramatic, not rehearsed, just a young man being honest about a difficult realization.
I'd practiced this.
'I can do this.'
I lifted my right arm slightly. The splint. The bandaging. The general evidence of yesterday's incident.
"Yesterday's attack," I said. "I was useless."
"I mean..." I gestured vaguely with my good hand.
"You saw it. Three sea crawlers, mid-class, and I couldn't contribute anything meaningful. Couldn't protect the cargo. Couldn't protect the crew."
I paused for effect. "Couldn't protect myself, apparently, since I came away with a broken arm from a creature that Dax handled with a cooking knife."
Ruth's expression didn't change. But she also didn't interrupt, which, with Ruth, was basically the same as being riveted.
"I've been on this ship for ten years," I continued, leaning in slightly.
"Ten years of drills, of combat training, of learning everything you've put in front of me. And yesterday, when it actually counted, I was a liability. A man down. Dead weight with a pulse."
I let that sit for a second. "I don't want to be that. You didn't pull me out of a slaver's cage so I could be dead weight with a pulse."
'Good. That was good. Keep going.'
"I've been thinking about it for a while, honestly. The runes..." I touched my chest, where the Dust core sat, quiet and unadvanced.
"They're the only way for me to get stronger. But out here on the sea, there's nobody expert enough to engrave them. On land, in the domains, there are practitioners. Masters. People who could actually..."
I made a gesture meant to convey unlock my potential without sounding like a cultivation manual.
"...help me develop properly. Get stronger. Get useful."
I sat back. "I want to go to land, find a proper school or sect or runemaster, train seriously, and come back to this ship in a few years actually worth something."
I folded my good hand in my lap.
"That's why I wrote the letter."