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The story begins like this: Gill disappears.
His saltwater barrel is empty one morning, and a dozen more after that. Chip spends that week-and-a-half in a frantic haze — upending the ship from top-to-bottom, taping poorly-drawn ‘Missing’ posters around every island they dock at, and yelling Gill’s name out into the open sea until his throat goes raw. At one point, he almost dives overboard to search, but Jay hauls him back. Her worries are kept at bay; a wild storm battering at a seawall. But Chip can sense traces of it in her clipped words, in the tense set of her shoulders, in the hours that she spends up in the crow’s nest, scanning the horizon with red-rimmed eyes. Sometimes, she stays up there all night. Chip doesn’t nag her about getting proper rest because he’d be a hypocrite otherwise.
Earl remains more-or-less functional. He has no doubt that Gill will be back, and chides Chip and Jay for making a mountain out of a molehill. That’s easy for him to say — he doesn’t know about the black-hued promise etched on Gill’s wrist, the crescent moon that cuts over his lifeline. Chip and Jay, on some unspoken agreement, decide not to tell him. Their crew needs a steadying presence; an anchor.
It begins with a storm. It begins with roiling tides, slate-grey clouds and lashing rain. Lightning cleaves the sky apart. Thunder rattles the Millennium Chipper down to every bolt and nail, and the wood creaks like the laboured breaths of a dying creature.
Earl takes shelter belowdecks. Jay lashes herself to the main mast to keep an eye on Chip. And Chip, the unfortunate soul, remains at the helm to steer.
The rainwater obscures his vision, and the deck almost slips out from underneath him. He steadies himself with the wheel, keeping a white-knuckled grip on it, uncaring of the painful indents that the wood leaves in his palms.
It’s because of the rain that he doesn’t notice immediately. It’s because of the wind, screaming its urgent refrain into his ear, it’s because of the waves, the way they thrash and writhe, chillingly similar to a storm he encountered ten years ago.
Jay shrieks.
Chip snaps to attention, casting his gaze wildly around the ship, searching for the shape of Jay being tossed overboard, or a tentacle rising from the sea, or—
But Jay is fine. She’s clutching to the mast for dear life, but her face is turned toward something over the railing, her features contorted into a mask of fear.
No, not something. Someone.
As Chip watches, uncomprehending, an arm appears over the railing. Then another. Followed by a head, then a torso — someone is heaving themself overboard.
The light that filters through the clouds is watery and weak. It matches the grey of the tides, illuminating nothing more than a vague shape, the outline of a humanoid figure.
Rainwater runs into Chip’s eyes, but he doesn’t dare to blink.
“Who are you?!” he yells.
The air stills. The pungent smell of ozone is all the warning that Chip gets before the sky sets itself ablaze. When he looks up, the jagged column of a lightning strike fills his vision, and he only has a split-second to spare for any parting thoughts — but for all the grievances he’s had in his life, for all his regrets and joys and memories, one thought outweighs them all: I hope Gill’s alright.
Light envelops the deck of the ship. Chip squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the impact, the pain, but—
Nothing.
He opens his eyes. What he sees makes his stomach drop, because the lightning strike has found its mark, but not in him.
The stranger has their arm raised, a sword in their grip and pointed skyward. Electricity courses through them, enveloping them in a sick, yellow glow. It illuminates a coral crown, webbed ears, and throws a muscular figure in sharp relief against the darkness of their surroundings — revealing an all-too-familiar silhouette.
“Gill!”
The name wrenches itself from Chip’s throat, carrying over the thunder and rain, and Gill — he’s back, he’s back — looks up.
Chip’s next breath freezes in his throat.
The lightning strike crackles to an end, as abrupt as it came. Its light gutters out, plunging them back into the dark, but Gill’s eyes are aglow with an unnatural brightness, cutting through the shadows; it’s the bioluminescence of deep-sea things, shot through with electricity, all iris without pupil.
“Chip,” he says without inflection, and Chip barely recognises it.
“Gill!” calls Jay. “Is that you?!”
The distant rumble of thunder reaches Chip’s ears. The deck rocks underneath him, and he steadies himself without flinching. He notes, distantly, that the storm seems to be calming, like they’ve escaped to its fringes — or sailed right into the eye.
Gill smiles. It’s a small, close-lipped thing. It doesn’t reach his eyes. Chip tries to connect this Gill with his memories, struggles to slot him with his previous incarnations; noble and radiant, forthright to his own detriment, the pinnacle of a prophesied hero.
Chip tries, but he can’t.
“Why’d you disappear?” he shouts. “And the lightning — what — how did you just do that?!”
“I am the prophecy’s intended,” says Gill. He sheathes his sword. His eyes glint with microcosmic flashes of lightning, and his smile is so, so empty. “I can do whatever I wish.”
“What?!”
A wave threatens to crest over the railing. Gill raises his hand, and magic radiates from his palm, strong enough to send a chill down Chip’s spine. The wave freezes halfway, crystallising into a jagged curve of ice. It crashes back into the ocean with a sound like splintering bone.
“Thanks!” Jay calls.
“It is my duty.” Gill lowers his hand. “After all, you must be alive to witness the glory of a fulfilled prophecy.”
The prophecy? Has Gill finally completed it? Chip expects himself to feel pride, to muster up some degree of happiness, but all he feels is… dread.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
Gill turns in Chip’s direction. His smile widens into such a horrible rictus, Chip almost flinches away.
“Born of the coral,” Gill says, just as a trickle of light filters from the skies, illuminating the bleached coral of his crown, “not in the eye of the storm, but under the light of the blue moon.”
The rain lashes down harder, thousands of ice-cold pinpricks digging into Chip’s skin, chilling him down to the bone.
“Rejoice!” Gill says, spreading his arms. “You’re witnessing the birth of a new age! The culmination of everything I’ve fought for, the completion of my destiny — the final page in this chapter of history!” The fins on his arms are tattered at the edges. It reminds Chip of decay, of the lacy edges of rot.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he says.
“The rain won’t stop,” Gill continues as if he didn’t hear Chip. “Not until the tide grows higher. Not until it overtakes every settlement and island.” His eyes flash opaque. Lightning forks through the sky behind him, burning its afterimage into Chip’s gaze. “Not until the sea returns to its rightful place.”
“You—” Jay sounds strangled. “You’re flooding the planet?!”
Gill nods.
“Why?!”
Gill freezes another wave with a flick of his wrist. It crumbles back into the sea with a sound like tendon and cartilage crunching, like the maw of a hungry beast devouring its prey. “Why not?”
“You’d be killing people!” Chip screams.
“I’ve killed for pettier reasons,” says Gill. “But this time, it’ll be for the greater good. How is that not better?”
Gill’s body is standing aboard the ship. Gill’s eyes are staring straight into Chip’s face. But is it really him? Is it not something else wearing his face, donned in his skin?
“This is wrong,” Chip says. “This — this isn’t you.”
“How do you know that?” says Gill. “How well do you know me, really?”
“I know you well enough!” Chip’s voice is torn to pieces, dredged from the bottom of his lungs, stuck somewhere near begging. Don’t make me beg, Gill. Captains don’t beg. “You don’t actually want this, do you?”
Gill fixes him with a long stare. Then he crosses the distance between them in two strides, crowding into Chip’s space, sending his heart into a panicked rhythm. But he shouldn’t be panicked, because it’s just Gill, and Gill would never hurt him, so why can’t he stop shaking—
“I have wanted many things,” Gill says lowly, his breath pluming out in the cold. “When I was younger, I wanted to forsake the title of hero. I did not think I was worthy. As I grew, I realised how futile it really was — destiny does not care about such things like want or desire.” His mouth twists into a scowl. “But we are only mortal. To live is to want. And—” Something flickers behind his eyes. “—oh, how I have wanted.”
Chip’s whole body goes freezing, then hot. When he takes a breath, his whole chest heaves with the motion. He’s never felt so wound up in his own skin, connected to every last bone and sinew. “What did you want?”
Gill’s stare drops down to Chip’s mouth. He doesn’t move a single muscle, but Chip feels the weight of that stare, the significance of it, and he parts his lips all the same. There’s a beat, a moment, a chance to turn on the hinge of that feeling.
Gill draws away, and it’s broken.
“It’s unimportant,” he says. The unspoken is writ all over his face. It cuts Chip deeper than he expected.
“Gill—”
“All that matters is the prophecy.”
“Stop this,” Chip begs, “please.”
Gill takes another step back. The wind whips his hair around his face, framing his mirthless smile, the empty glow of his eyes.
“No,” he says, “for it is my destiny.”
The story begins and ends like this: Gill disappears.
Perhaps for good.