Challenge The Proud

Nethersea Adventures

"Hungry and exhausted by a long day aloft, she fell asleep below decks on a pile of tackle and rigging, and dreamt vividly." - Challenge No.16

RUMINA'S QUEST to find her father began the moment she had been told that his ship, The Arrow, had gone missing. What could a nine year old girl do to find a ship lost in the wide and deep, never-ending purple Nethersea? She wasn't even allowed to decide her dinner menu, let alone commission a ship and go off sailing perilous waters.

An orphan, Rumina became the ward of Counselor Atreius - blessed by the Queen as ruler of the Saint Marrcus Isles, a position Rumina's father had held before his abrupt and unfortunate departure. The Counselor was a strict man, but an old family friend and Rumina felt safe as his ward. But Counselor Atreius was rarely there for her and her obsession with finding her father only grew with time and with the many books she read about the Netherseas and the creatures that supposedly inhabited those waters.

On her fifteenth birthday, Rumina was allowed access to a spending account. The Counselor was probably assuming she'd want to order her jewels, dresses and accessories on her own, and attend the opera or other social venues in search of a husband. Didn't all young women want that for themselves?

Of course, that was not the case for Rumina.

Rumina's journey to find her father began the moment she had stepped upon The Raven.

It was a murky day, as if the sky itself was trying to grab a hold of the land and sea, in search of something or someone. Rumina had sneaked away from her old chaperon - a noble gray-haired woman that usually dosed off whenever she and Rumina went out into town.

The Raven was the largest boat to drop anchor in the cozy Saint Marrcus port.

"The Hound they call him - they do. I heard that he was the richest man in the Empire and that he had The Raven built to explore the Nethersea and go where no sailor dared even imagine," a lady at the cloth shop clucked under her breath.

"Why on Gerra would he waste his fortune so?" another woman asked in a hushed tone.

"To find his son, he did. The lad was lost at sea and so, The Hound tried to sniff him out," came the answer and Rumina turned around to face the noble ladies.

"Did he? Did he find his son?" Rumina asked the woman without any thought for etiquette or civility.

"Oh, you young people. Of course he didn't. But he's long given up such dreams, having spent all of his wealth on it, and turned to trade. The Nethersea takes and never gives back."

So there she was - walking on the wooden pontoon toward the massive, dark boat silhouette that could only have been The Raven. Rumina hoped that The Hound would understand her plight and that he'd accept her money - all of it.

"What kind of money could a little girl like you offer? Ten pieces? Twenty? A hundred?" the man called The Hound barked in her direction cackling at the sums he enumerated.

The captain was an old, white-bearded man - filthy and crass, still the little girl didn't see the brute of a seaman that this old aristocrat had become, but her only hope to find her father.

"Fifty -"

"Not even a hundred?"

"Fifty thousand, sir," she revealed and pulled out a blue check from her silk pouch.

The Hound's smirk faded and his eyes sparked at the mention of the fortune before him. A blue check was a rare sight and he studied it thoroughly.

"Fine, we'll sail in search of him. But there's one condition, little girl."