The Legend Above the Clouds

The wind whistled high above the night sky, cold and constant, the kind that found every gap in a coat and made itself known. Cloud cover pressed in from all directions, thick and rolling, swallowing the stars whole and leaving only the moon to throw pale light across the deck.

Then the thunder came—not once, but again and again in overlapping waves—and lightning split the dark in jagged columns that illuminated the silhouette of the broken ship.

She had emerged from the cloud burning.

Two of her three turrets still tracked to portside, their barrels hot and smoking. The third hung at an angle it was never meant to hold, its housing cracked and blackened.

Flames licked along her starboard railing where the last hit had found her, and the crew worked against the fire with whatever they had—soaked canvas, hand pumps, bare arms shielding their faces from the heat. The ship listed slightly, not enough to alarm, but enough to feel.

On the bridge, the captain stood at the portside window and watched.

He was a rugged man, built the way working men are built—not for appearances, but for endurance. His coat was singed at the hem. A cut above his left eye had been ignored long enough to crust over.

He kept his hands clasped behind his back, a posture that cost him more effort than it showed, and fixed his gaze on the cloud below as though he could see through it by will alone. Waiting. Looking for proof that their last volley had found something worth finding.

“What are we aiming for, Captain?” one of the crew asked from behind him.

He did not answer. Did not turn.

“Captain—“

“Hush!” He cut the first mate off without looking away from the portside. “Can’t you see I’m waiting?!”

The bridge went quiet. The only sounds were the wind against the hull, the distant crackle of the fire crew below, and the low mechanical hum of the radar table spinning its endless loop.

He crossed to it in four strides and bent over the screen, one hand braced against the console edge. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the black and green glass, distorting his own reflection before it slid away.

The sweep line turned. And turned. And found nothing.

No wreckage signature. No debris bloom rising through the cloud. No second silhouette breaking the surface where their shots had gone down.

Are they in the clear? He didn’t let himself believe it. Not yet.

“Should we fire up the engines and go, Captain?” The first mate asked, quieter this time.

“Was the distress call sent out?” he asked without lifting his eyes from the screen.

A pause. Both men looked toward the communications officer at her station — young, frightened in the way people are frightened when they have had enough time to understand the situation fully.

“Yes, Captain,” she answered, steadying her voice on the back half of the sentence. “All channels. Akuran, Cornelian, even the Tang airwaves.” She hesitated. “No response.”

The sweep line turned.

“Continue putting out the fire,” he ordered, and finally straightened. He looked at his first mate. “We need to be vigilant. What’s the closest port?”

The first mate’s mouth opened and closed once before the answer came. “Ah— Cornelia .” He forced it out like a confession. “Cornelia is closest.”

He slammed the console with an open palm. The sound rang through the bridge and several heads turned. He gritted his teeth and stared at the radar screen, jaw working. Cornelia. Of all the ports it could have been. He couldn’t believe they had been caught like this — run down, outmaneuvered, set on fire like an old dry hull that nobody had bothered to put a watch on.

“Go,” he said.

“But—“

“I’ll take the blame.” He looked up and met the first mate’s eyes directly for the first time since the engagement began. “Just go.”

The order was carried. The engines cycled up beneath their feet, the deep familiar vibration rising through the deck plates, and for a moment — just a moment — it felt like it might be as simple as that. Point the bow toward Cornelia and run.

The starboard side rang like a struck bell.

The impact threw two crew members off their footing. A console sparked and died. The captain grabbed the radar table and held on as the ship lurched, shuddered, and tried to decide which direction it was falling.

“Captain, we’re hit!”

“You think I don’t know that already?!” He shoved himself upright, one hand pressed against the console. “Point cannons starboard!”

The surviving turrets ground into motion — the slow mechanical turn of gears finding new angles, barrels swinging to face what was coming from the opposite direction. The ship held its heading, still pushing for Cornelia, and the crew did what crews do: compartmentalized, ran, called the necessary things to the necessary people. Before the cannons finished turning, the stern caught it too.

The second impact hit harder than the first. Something structural gave way somewhere below with a sound like a door kicked off its hinges.

“What’s going on?!”

“How many are they?!”

“Quiet—all of you!”

The voices fell silent. He was looking forward now, through the main viewport, and he had stopped moving. Something ahead had taken shape in the darkness. A silhouette. Small. Patient. It had not been there a moment ago.

Or it had been there all along, and simply chose this moment to let itself be seen.

You could hear the breath leave every man and woman on the bridge. Their hearts dropped a beat simultaneously as they stared at the shape ahead — still, dark, doing nothing, requiring nothing. The wind continued. The fire crackled below. Somewhere aft, a pipe had started a low screaming that nobody moved to address.

“My god.” It was all he could manage.

He looked left. He looked right. On both sides, emerging from the dark in the same unhurried way, were two more. Not small. Not patient-looking. Already moving.

He had run from one ship, been caught between two, and now there were three.

He closed his eyes.

The explosions came from both sides at once, overlapping, one rolling into the next until they were indistinguishable from each other. The bridge became light and then became noise and then became neither. What remained of the ship held together for a moment longer than it had any right to, as though still deciding, and then gave up the argument entirely.

The hull broke through the surface of the cloud belt and kept going. Down through the dim, and further still, down to the ocean below — the one that no one mapped and no one returned from.

The clouds closed over it like it had never been.