Chapter 1 - The Light

After a few hours of peaceful sailing, the Fading Dawn leaves the still raging storm behind them.

Consulting their chart, they notice that they're fairly close to the marked destination by now. If they increase speed, they might make it there before sundown. At their current speed, they would probably arrive late into the night, a few hours before sunrise.

They will also at this point have to dive down below the surface of the waves. Traveling through the Tangle will be much less pleasant - increased temperatures, huge insects - but the Fading Dawn is well equipped to keep the outside out while mowing through the thick branches and many twigs.

The Fading Dawn slowly sinks under the surface of the waves and into the Tangle. Progress is slower here as there is more in the way that needs to be cut. It's impossible for the sailors to be on deck now. The whipping branches and huge insects mean that attempting to stand on deck would be almost certain death.
The temperature inside the ship increases, as does the temperature outside. The Tangle is uncomfortably hot and humid.

After a few hours, the Dawn breaks through the Tangle and finds itself right next to one of the most awe-inspiring sights its sailors have ever seen.
It's rare but not unheard of to come across a rift, a hole in the wildsea created when a tree dies and falls. They're usually fairly small and close as quickly as they appear. Not so this one. A tallshank fell and on its way, tore a huge scar into the sea that still hasn't healed, the same one that Elrenna saw before from the distance. From up close, it is much, much more terrifying. The sailors can look downwards even beyond the thick Tangle and the thinner Sink underneath. They see the Drown, the horrifying layer where almost no branches exist, only the massive trunks of the ironroot trees that make up the wildsea. Fortunately, the light does not reach down deep enough for them to get a glimpse of the Darkness-Under-Eaves, the place of terrible legends far below the wildsea where, allegedly, the trees sprout from firm ground.

Shaw involuntarily shudders as he looks at the rift. Just seeing the destruction humbles him. It's almost as if he can hears the whispers of a scream in his mind.

Caitriona stares into the void in the sea, far below faint ethereal shapes rise up out of the darkness as elemental forces work to fill the rift back in. Geometry, the ghostly forms of hard angles, smooth lines, alien and unfamiliar slowly being consumed once again by the sea. There had been people down there, a thousand thousand spirits tormented and trapped, the rift had freed some from the darkness perhaps created the storm but there were so many more being consumed.

A faint voice whispers into her ear, When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Caitriona tears her eyes away from the darkness, from the shapes and the spirits that exist down there but not before seeing the eyes looking back at her. She shudders and looks away.

Seeing the various stratum of the Sea unnerves Elrenna in a way that nothing she has seen before has managed. She shudders and sets her jaw, fighting the urge to let her lips draw back in a snarl. Her gaze lowers down, all the way to the Drown, and then back up again, lingering on the Sink and the Tangle... She'd never heard, never felt the call this hard before, what called she did not know but nonetheless it called, beckoning from the leafy darkness, practically begging her to give in and allow nature to reclaim her the way it had reclaimed everything Pre-V, to let the Crezzerin tear into her body and see if she is fit to survive under its mutative devouring, to become whatever Tangle-beast or Sink-monstrosity she was actually meant to be born as. It is only when she painfully wrenches her eyes away that Elrenna realizes she is growling, just barely audible but full of fear and rage, a sound not properly belonging to her specie at all, and yet there it is emenating from her nonetheless. "Guh... I always hate moments like this." She violently shakes her head, getting her bearings back and trying to shake off the lingering psychological impetus to no avail.

Finally tearing their eyes off the breach in the wildsea, the sailors decide to continue their journey. According to their chart, the colony they're headed towards is located on the other side of the breach. While it seems impossible to cross the scar in the sea that it makes up, they are fortunately very close to one end of it and circling around it won't be much of an inconvenience.

After only half an hour of sailing, the sailors find another fascinating sight: The crown of the fallen tallshank, wide enough to reach the canopy of the wildsea, even as the shank is lying on the floor, possibly kilometers below them. The surrounding waves have woven themselves into the tallshank's crown, integrating it - at least the part of it that reaches beyond the Drown into the Sink and Tangle - inseparably into the sea. The Fading Dawn begins its travel through this crown to cross to the other side of the Breach when Shaw calls out for the ship to be stopped. Once the engines have come to a halt, the others see what he spotted as well.

Thick, pale ropes have been strung between trees and branches, not quite a net, more like many tripwires all over the area. They are covered in insects and leaves that seem stuck to them and make them almost invisible in the extra thick Tangle here. At higher speeds, the Fading Dawn would have sawed its way through them before any of them would have had a chance to notice them. Even at this speed, looking back, the sailors notice they have already unknowingly passed a few of the ropes, leaving them surrounded by them on all sides, not densely enough to make it impossible to avoid them - if that is what the sailors want to do - but enough to make that a difficult challenge. Of course, they could also just cut right through them. Who knows what - if any - purpose they serve. Maybe sailing right through wouldn't be a problem after all...

I don't like the looks of those vines. See how the leaves and insects...seem stuck to them. Shaw points out some of the closer vines, to prove his point. We may be able to saw our way through, but I'm not fond of finding out how bad they'll gum up the blades and other moving parts.

"Up to you, I'm fine with going through but it likely means we'll have to spend some time cleaning out what's left of them later, but we could also try to avoid them. Just be careful not to let anything important get caught on those sticky vines." She frowns more deeply than usual, sticky, grasping vines aren't exactly something that one can fight directly, and so she is stuck with giving advice and hoping for the best.

Shaw stands there listening to El. How far away are we from the village? Worse case..we can always clean up, once we get there.

You're pretty close. Unless they really mess up your bite to the point where you can't keep moving, you'll be there in less than two hours.

"What's this we stuff?" Cait says with a grin, "you're the Rattlehand."

"Why don't we try to bite through the edges of it, mitigate how much of that crap we get into the jaw, I mean as much as I'd love to climb that shank I'd really rather not get trapped by sticky vines this close to our destination."