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ask-de-writer · 4 years ago

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SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : Part 77 of 83 : World of Sea

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SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

Part 77 of 83

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

written 2007

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story? Read from the beginning. PART 1 is here

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Kurin turned to face the pure white Great Sea Dragon by the rail. “Blind Mecat, you and I talked once about whether I could trust what Captain Barad told me. What did you tell me about trusting him?”

Blind Mecat’s mellow voice answered, “I said that you would have to make up your own mind, Little Fish. I also said that I trusted him.”

“Thank you, Cat. Now, Captain Barad, why did you get the Ord and whose idea was it?”

“Mister Morgu first approached me about getting revenge on the Longin about nine Wohans ago. The Ord was to be the agency of that revenge. The plot was to kill you as a covert means of striking at the Longin. The circle of the conspiracy was very small. Only myself, Mister Morgu and one other, chosen by Mister Morgu and unknown to me, actually knew the real reason for obtaining it.

“Everybody else believed that it was for the fishing experiments that it actually was used for.”

“A moment, please Captain. Captain Sarfin, these parchments detail the exhaustive experiments carried out. Their failure, along with the reasons for it, and the disposal of the Ord. Your honor will notice the highlighted passage where one spine was reported as lost overboard. Note also the witness statements that Mister Morgu was involved in that loss.” Sarfin took the new batch of parchment and spent a few minutes reviewing it with Captain Sula.

Sula looked up grimly and said, “You are admitting to the plot against Kurin?”

“We are not done yet, Captain Sula,” said Kurin softly.

“If you wish to spare his life, I hope not,” Sula said dourly.

“Captain Barad, please continue,” Kurin asked.

“Even I did not know who Mister Morgu recruited or how he did it. I left those details to him. I did not know about the making of the deadly awl in that sewing kit. Chena’s death came as complete shock. It was a totally unnecessary test, and done without my consent. When Merk, Master Selked’s apprentice was found dead the next morning, I guessed who had made the deadly tool but still did not know what it was. I just let the normal course of events conceal the cause of his death.

“I stopped by the sickbay to look in on Tanlin’s condition and there I found Kurti being put on the invalid list for a resistant lung parasite infection. I took her in as my cabin- girl because it was the lightest duty on the ship and she,” Captain Barad paused and his shoulders shook as he appeared to fight for control, “hated being useless. She began by mending things in my cabin. Apparently, she approached Master Selked for a sewing kit and got the deadly kit in all innocence. She never needed the awl for the light work that she did.

“We kept her illness secret from the crew and hoped that one of the treatments would take. I’d have married her were it possible but she was Grandalor born and the Law is clear. Besides, we had no time. Her fatal attack had a sudden onset, as some parasite bored into a vein and her lungs began to fill with blood.

“The whale sang for her, leaping and calling for hours. Tanlin woke as Kurti failed. Tanlin had lost all memory of the people of the Arrakan fleet. She remembers all else. Blind Mecat says that those memories are gone forever. In every other respect she is whole. At first, because of the great similarity between them, I looked in on her progress and tried to help. It was swiftly apparent that she and Kurti were nothing alike, still, as I worked with her, I fell in love again. All of this time the kit sat on the shelf in my cabin, and neither I nor any other guessed it’s deadly nature.

“I had never thought to love anybody after Teralat died of fire cough twenty five Gatherings ago. Suddenly, I fell in love twice in quick succession. There was no impediment to marrying the Lady Tanlin, and I did so. We had an Arrakan style Wedding Feast at the Longin food booth. That is crucial to understanding what followed.

“This is the part that the Court will find hard to accept. I was bothered by the plot to harm Kurin. It preyed on me. I took my wife and Master Selked into my confidence about the scheme. Each had serious and different objections.

“Master Selked pointed out that my hate was for Captain Mord Halyn, not the Longin. Further, I was holding a grudge for the one time that I had bested him completely. No real basis for a grievance.

“Lady Tanlin’s objection was likewise fundamental. Captain Mord and Kurin were both invited guests at our Announcement Feast. Under Arrakan Law and Custom, all grudges between invited guests and the celebrators die at such a feast. If they do not, all the vows taken at the feast are forsworn and the couple must part and can never marry each other again.

“To keep my wife, I declared the plot done and issued Logged orders that if the deadly spine be found, it must be turned in to Doctor Corin for destruction. Any other use being mutiny. Remember, I did not know that it had been made into a sewing tool.

“During this same time, the sorry mess with Silor Elon was playing itself out. I felt that I owed him an assist because he was my eyes and ears aboard the Longin for the last five Gatherings. We went and picked him up. I was going to send him to the Arrakan fleet, where I do believe he would have done well. I should have just let him sail away.

“Mister Morgu somehow recruited him. Morgu did know about the kit but had lost track of it. He ran a number of audits and inventories of the tool stock, apparently trying to find it. He finally realized that the kit in my cabin was the only kit not checked and sent Silor to get it.

“When Silor, who had been ordered to stay out of sight, jumped ship with Mister Morgu, Tanlin realized that something was very wrong and came to me in the Captain’s Council. That was when I left my proxy with Captain Mord. I was trying to let you all know that my grudge with him was over.

“My whole crew searched the Gathering, trying to find either Mister Morgu, Silor or both. We failed. Later, we found that they had hidden inside one of the floats of the Gathering rafts. The next day, we caught up to them just moments after they had accomplished their goal.

“All that we could do was watch and pray to the Dragons that Kurin had not eaten the poisoned part of her lunch. When she collapsed into Captain Sula’s arms, we knew that we were doomed.

“Neither myself or my ship are popular. I was certain that the rush to rid the Naral fleet of us would have little to do with Great Law or fleet Law. Events have proved me correct. You have earned your name as Sarfin the Wise and even you failed to see the flaws in what you all did.

“I had arraigned a link up with the Fauline in her Spring Waters.”

Sarfin interrupted with, “They lay a charge of ramming to enforce piracy against you.”

“I know that, your Honor. It is not true. You know that they had a hull-secured loan with us. Due to a survivorship clause in favor of the Naral fleet, that loan is registered in the fleet Archive. They were over two Gatherings in arrears. The unpaid interest alone was somewhat over ten thousand Strong Skins. I also know that they failed to pay their full share tax this Gathering, pleading poverty.

“They gave us a payment of one thousand Strong Skins, two thousand five hundred glue blocks and a small, one and a half ton, Hag. They had it in their holds during the Gathering where I learned of it from an informant in the Fauline’s crew.

“They lied to you about inability to pay their share tax. They also gave us information about the blatantly illegal Edict of Outlawry and the search for us. In return, we gave them a full quitclaim on the loan.

“At that point, they seized both myself and the Lady Tanlin. They also attempted an attack on the Grandalor with a prize crew smuggled aboard ostensibly to help load the payment. Our crew took exception to the attempted capture, took the prize crew prisoner, and rammed the Fauline at an oblique angle with a bowsprit hook-out. This damaged the main mast’s running and standing rigging, disabling the ship. After our crew got us back safe aboard, we saw the Coriolis storm coming, so we rendered aid. We fixed the rigging and some minor hull damage.

“We did not charge for that. The price of not doing it would have been a ship and all the lives aboard. Some things are too costly to leave undone.”

Urson interrupted sarcastically, “So says the most notorious Captain of the whole fleet. I have known Captain Skua for many Gatherings and I find his account to be far more credible. It is, after all, only your word against his.”

“We do have three impartial witnesses,” said Kurin calmly.

“They are separate from either ship. They observed the encounter and are present to testify.”

“Impossible!” snapped Farrol. “No other vessel was in sight to provide these mythical witnesses!”

“Dark Iren, are you, Blind Mecat and Frath mythical?” Kurin called out lightly.

“The last time that I looked, no. None of us are mythical,” Dark Iren replied in a voice seemingly too soft for so large a creature.

“A question of fact, not opinion, then,” Kurin said with the surety of one who already knows the answer. “Did your Orcas report the encounter between the Fauline and the Grandalor to you?”

“Indeed they did, matters of conflict between ships can have major ecological consequences. Such confrontations are reported in full detail.”

“Did Captain Barad’s account seem substantially true to your reports?” Kurin inquired.

“All of his facts and the order of them are accurate. My reports were more detailed, of course.”

“Thank you, Dark Iren,” said Kurin and turned to Blind Mecat and Frath. “Blind Mecat, were you accompanying Frath as he was steering the recent Coriolis Storm?”

“Of course, Little Fish. You know that. I asked Frath to steer it nearly nine hundred miles out of its planned path in order to have speech with Barad and Tanlin. I had to be there for two reasons. One I just gave you, the other, and most important, was to ensure that the storm would still meet its ecological goals.”

All of the audience except for Sarfin, Barad and Tanlin were outraged. “Ecological goals! That storm hit and scattered our fleet!”

Sarfin threw a bucket of icy water on them by calmly asking, “And whose world is it? Do you really think that Sea manages itself? These Dragons make it possible for us to live at all. Trust them. They actually do know what they’re doing.”

Frath said, “Thank you, Captain Sarfin. I do try to miss fleets when I can. Humans are now widespread across the surface of Sea and it is not always possible. The storms are necessarily big. Curiously, Tanlin upbraided me for exactly the same thing even though the Naral fleet was trying to hunt her down and kill her.”

“Where were you, during the encounter between the Grandalor and Fauline?” Kurin requested.

“Blind Mecat and I were about twenty yards under the surface, directly beneath the ships,” Frath answered.

“Then you couldn’t have seen or heard what happened aboard either of those ships!” Farrol exclaimed in triumph.

Blind Mecat replied, “Incorrect. Sight is a limited sense at best. Our hearing and echolocation are both very precise. Two echo pings occupying less than one tenth of a second in total are sufficient to locate every object larger than one inch in length on both ships. The same two pings also allow us to count the number of persons, find their location, orientation, state of health and when they last ate. This includes those up in the rigging.” She regarded Farrol for an unnervingly sightless second and added, “We’re not just big, we are very good predators.”

TO BE CONTINUED

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#SEA DRAGON’S GIFT #Part 77 of 83 #World of Sea #Written by De Writer

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lost-in-the-echo-94 · 7 years ago

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My top 10 favorite shōnen and non-BL mangas

1) Naruto / Naruto Shippūden - Kishimoto Masashi (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : Twelve years before the start of the series, the Nine-Tails attacked Konohagakure destroying much of the village and taking many lives. The leader of the village, the Fourth Hokage sacrificed his life to seal the Nine-Tails into a newborn, Naruto Uzumaki. Orphaned by the attack, Naruto was shunned by the villagers, who out of fear and anger, viewed him as the Nine-Tails itself. Though the Third Hokage outlawed speaking about anything related to the Nine-Tails, the children — taking their cues from their parents — inherited the same animosity towards Naruto. In his thirst to be acknowledged, Naruto vowed he would one day become the greatest Hokage the village had ever seen (source).

2) Boku no Hero Academia - Horikoshi Kohei (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : One day, a four-year-old boy came to a sudden realization: the world is not fair. Eighty percent of the world's population wield special abilities, known as "quirks," which have given many the power to make their childhood dreams of becoming a superhero a reality. Unfortunately, Izuku Midoriya was one of the few born without a quirk, suffering from discrimination because of it. Yet, he refuses to give up on his dream of becoming a hero; determined to do the impossible, Izuku sets his sights on the elite hero training academy, UA High. However, everything changes after a chance meeting with the number one hero and Izuku's idol, All Might. Discovering that his dream is not a dead end, the powerless boy undergoes special training, working harder than ever before. Eventually, this leads to him inheriting All Might's power, and with his newfound abilities, gets into his school of choice, beginning his grueling journey to become the successor of the best hero on the planet (source).

3) Shingeki No Kyojin - Isayama Hajime (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : Centuries ago, mankind was slaughtered to near extinction by monstrous humanoid creatures called titans, forcing humans to hide in fear behind enormous concentric walls. What makes these giants truly terrifying is that their taste for human flesh is not born out of hunger but what appears to be out of pleasure. To ensure their survival, the remnants of humanity began living within defensive barriers, resulting in one hundred years without a single titan encounter. However, that fragile calm is soon shattered when a colossal titan manages to breach the supposedly impregnable outer wall, reigniting the fight for survival against the man-eating abominations. After witnessing a horrific personal loss at the hands of the invading creatures, Eren Yeager dedicates his life to their eradication by enlisting into the Survey Corps, an elite military unit that combats the merciless humanoids outside the protection of the walls. Based on Hajime Isayama's award-winning manga, Shingeki no Kyojin follows Eren, along with his adopted sister Mikasa Ackerman and his childhood friend Armin Arlert, as they join the brutal war against the titans and race to discover a way of defeating them before the last walls are breached (source).

4) Black Clover - Tabata Yuuki (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : Asta and Yuno were abandoned together at the same church, and have been inseparable since. As children, they promised that they would compete against each other to see who would become the next Emperor Magus. However, as they grew up, some differences between them became plain. Yuno was a genius with magic, with amazing power and control, while Asta could not use magic at all, and tried to make up for his lack by training physically. When they received their Grimoires at age 15, Yuno got a spectacular book with a four-leaf clover (most people receive a three-leaf-clover), while Asta received nothing at all. However, when Yuno was threatened, the truth about Asta's power was revealed, he received a five-leaf clover Grimoire, a "black clover"! Now the two friends are heading out in the world, both seeking the same goal (source)!

5) Noragami - Adachitoka (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : As a relatively unknown minor deity without any worshippers, Delivery God Yato takes on odd jobs for only five yen, with the goal of amassing a fortune large enough to buy himself a shrine. But in addition to obscurity, he has another problem: his "Shinki," or weapon partner, has decided to resign, tired of being with a homeless god. Left with no weapon, Yato takes on more jobs, hoping to find a new partner soon. While out putting up fliers for a missing cat, Yato sees said cat and chases after him, right into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Hiyori Iki, a nearby girl, rushes to push Yato out of the way and ends up hurt herself. After waking up in the hospital, she discovers the incident has knocked her soul loose from her body. Realizing his actions caused this, Yato promises to help return Hiyori to normal—for five yen of course. But in order to return her to normal, he requires a new Shinki, which he finds in the rebellious spirit Yukine (source).

6) Ao no Exorcist - Kato Kazue (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : After a fight with his foster father Shirou Fujimoto, Rin Okumura's life is transformed overnight when Rin is revealed to be the son of the demon lord Satan, king of the demonic realm of Gehenna. Soon after, his foster father becomes possessed and dies at the hands of Satan, leaving Rin and his twin brother Yukio alone in the world. Seeking revenge for Fujimoto's death, Rin attends True Cross Academy with Yukio in order to become an exorcist and join the Knights of the True Cross. Rin's new path, however, is filled with many difficulties. While new classes and dealing with his peers are already troublesome enough, he is also forced to conceal his newfound demonic powers and parentage. In addition, plenty of evildoers want to use him for their own ends. One misstep could lead to disaster, as not everyone at True Cross Academy is exactly who they seem to be (source).

7) Mahou Tsukai no Yome - Yamazaki Koré (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : Chise Hatori, a 15-year-old Japanese girl, was sold for five million pounds at an auction to a tall masked gentleman. Abandoned at a young age and ridiculed by her peers for her unconventional behavior, she was ready to give herself to any buyer if it meant having a place to go home to. In chains and on her way to an unknown fate, she hears whispers from robed men along her path, gossiping and complaining that such a buyer got his hands on a rare "Slay Vega." Ignoring the murmurs, the mysterious man leads the girl to a study, where he reveals himself to be Elias Ainsworth—a magus. After a brief confrontation and a bit of teleportation magic, the two open their eyes to Elias' picturesque cottage in rural England. Greeted by fairies and surrounded by weird and wonderful beings upon her arrival, these events mark the beginning of Chise's story as the apprentice and supposed bride of the ancient magus (source).

8) Made in Abyss - Tsukushi Akihito (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : The Abyss—a gaping chasm stretching down into the depths of the earth, filled with mysterious creatures and relics from a time long past. How did it come to be? What lies at the bottom? Countless brave individuals, known as Divers, have sought to solve these mysteries of the Abyss, fearlessly descending into its darkest realms. The best and bravest of the Divers, the White Whistles, are hailed as legends by those who remain on the surface. Riko, daughter of the missing White Whistle Lyza the Annihilator, aspires to become like her mother and explore the furthest reaches of the Abyss. However, just a novice Red Whistle herself, she is only permitted to roam its most upper layer. Even so, Riko has a chance encounter with a mysterious robot with the appearance of an ordinary young boy. She comes to name him Reg, and he has no recollection of the events preceding his discovery. Certain that the technology to create Reg must come from deep within the Abyss, the two decide to venture forth into the chasm to recover his memories and see the bottom of the great pit with their own eyes. However, they know not of the harsh reality that is the true existence of the Abyss (source).

9) Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau - Umeda Abi (manga/anime)

Source

Summary : Chakuro is the 14-year-old archivist of the Mud Whale, a nigh-utopian island that floats across the surface of an endless sea of sand. Nine in ten of the inhabitants of the Mud Whale have been blessed and cursed with the ability to use saimia, special powers that doom them to an early death. Chakuro and his friends have stumbled across other islands, but they have never met, seen, or even heard of a human who wasn't from their own. One day, Chakuro visits an island as large as the Mud Whale and meets a girl who will change his destiny (source).

10) Suijin no Ikenie / no Hanayome - Toma Rei (manga)

Source

Summary : The story of a girl who slips back in time to a different era. While playing in her family's garden, Asahi gets sucked in by the small pond and when she wakes up she finds herself in a place that seems like Japan from ancient times. A powerful clan takes her in, but the reason for their kindness is that they intend to sacrifice her to the water god, the dragon, to be his bride... Now that she is at the mercy of a god who appears to know no compassion, what will Asahi's fate be (source) ?

I also recommend you :

RELIFE (webtoon/anime)

One Punch Man (manga/anime)

Bungou Stray Dogs (manga/anime)

Ajin (manga/anime)

Vanitas no Carte (manga)

Death Note (manga/anime)

Black Torch (manga)

...

#naruto #suijin no hanayome #suijin no ikenie #mahou tsukai no yome #kujira no kora wa sajou ni utau #ao no exorcist #noragami #made in abyss #boku no hero academia #shingeki no kyojin #black clover #relife #one punch man #bungou stray dogs #ajin #vanitas #death note #black torch

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ask-de-writer · 6 years ago

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SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : World of Sea : Part 77