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  He scurried the rest of the way down the mast, his bare feet landing on the wet deck with a loud slap. Cinders continued to rain down around him, and an eerie orange-red light above told him that the heavy canvas sails had caught fire. They would burn slowly with the wet weather, but once they were lit, it was going to be impossible to put them out.

  Dedrick suddenly realized that something was wrong. The bulky form of the enemy ship rode high on a wave as it advanced, but the firing of magic had stopped. If they were simply going to sink the ship, the enemy could have done it from long range. There were no magicians on board his own vessel that he knew of, and if there were, they were probably already dead. They would have responded with a counterattack of their own already otherwise. Even more troubling, however, was the sudden realization that sea had grown unnervingly quiet. The ship had been tossed about for hours as he sat lashed to the mast keeping watch. It had been thrown about at such unsightly angles that even he, a seasoned sailor, had questioned whether or not they would capsize on more than one occasion. Now, however, those roaring high-crested waves had all but disappeared, and the ocean was as calm as when they had set sail three days ago.

  They’re not going to sink us. They’re going to board us! They used magic and the storm to mask their approach! I can’t believe they have someone aboard who’s powerful enough to control the weather that way . . . What type of monster is this? What type of monster is aboard this ship . . .?

  He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and a ball of lead replace it as he realized what was about to happen—and he wasn’t the only one. Another sailor approached him and pressed a sword into his hand, and he quickly sheathed his knife and grabbed a small shield from another.

  “Prepare to receive boarders!” someone shouted from the foredeck.

  There was a clamor of swords being banged on shields, and the men started cheering. This was the most emotion he had seen out of the crew in three days, and he wondered how they could find the energy to pump themselves up after so many restless nights. He had only been aboard for a short while, and fatigue already plagued him every time he closed his eyes.

  “It’s only the Alliance!” one yelled, throwing back his head and laughing.

  “We’ll kill ‘em all!” another cried.

  He positioned himself toward the rear, letting some of the younger and more eager men take point, and watched as the galleon grew closer and closer. Finally, there was a series of shouts from men on the other ship, and the two vessels collided. The prow of the other ship slammed into the hull, violently crunching through the wood and lodging in place. Grappling hooks and ropes were suddenly thrown over the railing, and the two ships were tied together in a struggle for life and death. Even if they successfully repelled the attack, there was still a good chance that they would sink to the bottom of the ocean. The two ships were joined together, and even if the other ship were to back away, and there was no way to repair that while at sea. If they were going to live through the night, they were not only going to have to repel the attack, but they were also going to have to board the other ship and take control of it.

  The first of the Alliance members swung down onto the deck, and they were met with a flurry of shouts and swords. Dedrick watched as men along the line locked themselves in battle, hacking and slashing at one another for all they were worth. The line held for a moment, but then others soon started swinging down onto the deck to join their comrades in the attack. There was no telling how many crewmen were on a ship that large, and compared to their own, the attackers would have a seemingly-limitless supply of men to throw at them.

  Dedrick watched as one of his own sailors was run through, his stomach slashed open by a nasty-looking curved blade. The pirate wielding it stepped forward into the hole left by the dying sailor and turned to attack the next man in the line. Unable to defend himself from two angles at once, another sailor went down under the combined attack from different fronts. Dedrick swallowed down his fear and rushed to fill the hole left behind by the two fallen men before he had time to think about what he was doing.

  CHAPTER 1

  Madison let out a long sigh as he stood up, pressed his hands against the small of his back, and twisted from side to side, cracking his back. He rubbed a knuckle into a particularly-sore spot next to his spine as he stared out of the window and tried to imagine what he was missing out on by being at work on a Friday night. He could only remember what it was like to feel the rush that came before a night out partying or the nervousness that accompanied a first date. It felt like ages since he had experienced either, and it would likely be forever before he had the chance again. Still, he had outgrown the party scene several years ago when he graduated from university, and he wasn’t compelled to go out on random first dates trying to meet random girls any longer.

  Otherwise, he knew exactly what was out there and what he was missing out on: possibilities. There was no part of the world that was undiscovered at this point. The age of exploration had come and gone long ago, and all of the world’s map had been uncovered. There were no more continents to be revealed, passageways or trade routes to be charted, and no more mountains left to climb. It was safe to say that, at this point, the entire world had been discovered.

  He had read about it in all books, of course, he had seen it in movies, and he had gone through so many videos on the Internet that he could almost tell you the lay of the land in certain parks and valleys where he hoped to visit one day. But none of that was even remotely close to knowing any of it for himself. Being somewhere, understanding it and becoming familiar with it, was completely different than simply learning about it over the Internet or seeing pictures in a book. Feeling the air, breathing in the different scents, touching the ground, tasting the food and water, and meeting the local people were all part of the experience that made each place unique and different. Those things were all part of what made up the world. That’s why he believed that, until someone actually experienced it for himself firsthand, he never really knew what was out there.

  Some people had turned their eyes to the sky in search of the stars, but that was the last great horizon left to conquer, and not one that was likely in his lifetime. The government had whittled away funding for all space-related research over the years until there was practically nothing left, and private investors just weren’t interested in paving a road into the heavens. There wasn’t profit in it for them at the moment, and until someone figured out how to capitalize outer space, it would remain unexplored.

  In short, there were no great adventures left and no adventurers to live them. That’s also why he knew that what he was missing out on was the possibility of experiencing all those things that were already known. He would never be the first person to set foot on foreign soil or to plant a flag behind enemy lines, but he might be the first person to discover a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant or an out-of-the-way bakery that had been handed down from father to son for generations.

  Madison tore his gaze away from the dirty window and brought himself back down to reality. He smiled wanly to himself, shook his head slightly to dispel the wistful thoughts, and turned his attention back to the job that he was actually supposed to be doing: moving boxes from point A to point B. He had taken a job in a warehouse a few years ago when he was fresh out of college and unable to find work in his actual field, and at the time, he had sworn it was just until something else or something better came along. But then, before he even realized it, a few months had turned into a few years, and he was still in the same job, working the same position.

  The work wasn’t bad. It was steady, it paid decently well, and there was always plenty of it. The company he worked for, Muller and Sons, had been around for ages and had somehow resisted the numerous corporate buyouts that had occurred over the past few decades. There weren’t huge stock options, 401K investments, benefit plans or severance packages, but they were fair to their employees, and they had always treated him right. They were the typ
e of company who still valued hard work and rewarded their employees for the amount of effort they put in. Best of all, his checks always came on time, they never bounced, and he always received a bonus during the holidays.

  But that was also the problem with it.

  When he finally accepted the fact that he was going to be in the job for a lot longer than he had originally planned, he decided on working long enough to save up a nest egg and travel. But, like many other things in his life, that time never actually came. No golden goose ever walked through the door and offered him a high-paying job, Lady Luck never paid him a visit and handed him a winning lottery ticket, and no friend of a friend ever swung by with an excellent opportunity at a new firm he was starting up. No one ever seemed to mind the fact that he had been in the same position for years without ever going anywhere, and it only ever bothered him on the occasions when he couldn’t stop thinking about what might have been and what he was missing out on. His life was comfortable, and while he couldn’t afford extravagant luxuries every day of the week, he made enough to get by if he managed his finances correctly with a little extra on the side for special occasions.

  “Don’t let them catch you daydreaming again,” Brian muttered under his breath as he shuffled past, pushing a dolly with an overly-large crate. “Especially this close to quitting time.”

  “Mmm . . . Yeah,” Madison replied, sparing a quick glance for his friend.

  Brian was one of the few people that he had actually kept in touch with over the years. They had grown up together in the same neighborhood and had gone to the same high school, but they had parted ways when they went to college and didn’t talk much during the resulting years. Madison had won a scholarship to a small in-state school, and Brian had moved out of state to a large university. When they both ended up in similar situations a year out of college—unemployed and with no realistic job prospects in the immediate future—Brian had been the one to land them both jobs in the warehouse.

  Madison heaved a sigh and groaned slightly as he squatted down to pick up the empty metal canister he had been carrying. This was the part of his job he hated the most: the small things that had to be carried around and moved by hand because they weren’t big enough to justify using one of dollies or lifts. He had grown used to the physical labor over the years, and it didn’t usually bother him much anymore, but the knot in his back never seemed to go away and had been nagging him to no end lately.

  In truth, he had joked on numerous occasions that he had been built and bred for the job. He was just over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and had thick legs and a strong back. He didn’t know much of his genealogy or family history, but he assumed that he must have come from a long line of either stout farmers or Viking warriors—people who were used to physical labor and working with their hands.

  When he and Brian had first started the job, it had been absolute torture. They were both more accustomed to working with their brains rather than their backs, and neither one of them had ever put in a full day’s worth of hard labor at any point in their lives. Not wanting to lose the only paying job that either had found, however, they had buckled down and started working out at a local gym. Their philosophy at the time had been that adding on some extra muscle would make the job easier, and they had been right. Working long shifts all day and then heading to lift weights after was a bit crazy—even he admitted that—but it had become a habit that neither wanted to break. It was too easy to look around at the other workers and see what would happen if they allowed themselves to become complacent and lose focus. That’s not to say that there was a single person he worked with that was a slouch or weak in any way—they were all strong and capable men. They were also just portly, rotund, and beer-bellied.

  In its own way, the extra exercise had also become a bit cathartic. They were able to work out whatever pent-up frustrations they had, whether it was about life or work or families or women, and it gave them a sense of purpose other than showing up to work and paying the bills on time. It didn’t take long for Madison to figure out that the best part about working out wasn’t staying in shape or getting stronger: it was the fact that it gave them time together to actually talk about things. Despite working together all day every day, they were constantly busy, and standing around a water cooler swapping stories wasn’t an option in their line of work. Aside from a handful of fifteen-minute breaks that were usually spent wolfing down food or in the bathroom, there wasn’t any time to talk or work things out.

  That was the second great thing about having time to talk: the planning. Both he and Brian had a nasty gaming habit that ate up most of their free time and stopped them from going out on the weekends. They still had the occasional night out at the bar, of course, but they tended to end much earlier than they had when they were younger, and he tended to remember more of what they actually did now than he had in those days. The video game industry was teeming now in a way it hadn’t in decades since the first fully-subversive virtual game had been released recently, and they spent their time in the gym planning out exactly how they were going to spend their time every night once they got home.

  Brian deftly maneuvered the pallet he was guiding around into a row with all the others and started back for another just as Madison finished lugging the empty canister over and plopped it down. That was basically how his entire shift had gone that day: a few whimsical glances out of the handful of dirty windows, fanciful dreams of foreign places, and an unwavering anticipation of quitting time and an opportunity to hang out and relax. It was his dreams that kept him moving, but no matter how much he dreamed of being somewhere else, it wouldn’t do him much good. For someone like him, there was little chance that he would ever see what was beyond the city he called a home.

  Half an hour later, he and Brian punched the clock for the day. It didn’t take long for them to vacate the floor and grab their things from their lockers. The next shift was already starting to come on, and neither of them wanted to hang around for fear of being drafted into working overtime. One of the crew members had gotten injured a few weeks back, and their team leader had been trying to wrangle everyone he could into picking up the extra hours. Madison normally would have been happy to pick up the overtime for the extra cash it promised, but he was itching to get to the gym so that he could plan out the night’s activities with his friend.

  “Hang on a minute,” Madison said, stopping as he and Brian cross the parking lot. He started searching through the small duffel bag he carried with a change of clothes and a few other items for the gym and realized that he had forgotten to bring another pair of shoes.

  “What’s up?” his friend asked. “Missing something?”

  “Yeah . . .” Madison sighed, slightly irritated at his own forgetfulness. “Looks like I’m going to have to run home first and grab my trainers. I can’t believe I forgot to throw them in my bag again.”

  “What?” Brian asked with a small groan. “That’s like the second time this week, man. Where’s your head at these days? You know we always hit up the gym on Friday nights before we log in.”

  Madison just shrugged apologetically since there was little else he could do. “I’ll make it back as fast as I can. It’s only a few blocks out of the way, so just take a little extra time warming up and wait for me.”

  Brian looked at him with a mixture of horror and disgust, as if he had told him he liked booger-flavored popsicles. “That sounds like you’re telling me to do some cardio or something,” he said, clearly repulsed.

  Madison winced. Cardio was a necessary evil, but that didn’t mean anyone actually liked doing it. “Whatever. I’ll hurry.” He made sure his bag was zipped shut and tossed it over his shoulder, taking off for his apartment at a brisk walk. He would have broken into a jog and gotten his own cardio out of the way, but running in his heavy work boots was about one of the worst ideas imaginable—especially at the end of a shift when his feet were tired already.

  Madison had a small apartment to him
self about a mile away from the warehouse where he and Brian worked, so it didn’t take very long to make it home. The warehouse was one of the older ones in town, and it had been constructed so long ago that most of the city had actually grown up around it. The end result was that it ended up being fairly close to one of the major downtown areas where there were a lot of bars and a few nightclubs. It was a bit of an eyesore and an inconvenience for delivery drivers during the heaviest hours of traffic, but its prime location made it perfect as a distribution hub for all the local businesses.

  It was still fairly early in the evening as Madison hustled down the streets, so there weren’t a lot of people out yet, but he was already starting to see the signs of a promising Friday night. Most of the bars had their doors wide open, and music was already blaring from inside. The outside patios of restaurants were filled with people enjoying dinner and cocktails, and the wonderful aromas of a variety of different foods wafted out into the streets. Truth be told, that was one of the biggest reasons Madison had chosen an apartment in this area. It was a bit more expensive for a one-bedroom than it would have been somewhere further from downtown, especially for someone who didn’t frequent the night scene very often, but the huge variety of food and culture ensured that he’d never have to eat the same Chinese takeout two nights in a row. Even if there was little chance of him getting to travel the world, he figured the least he could do was enjoy its cuisine.