Deep Sea Embers

The door closed behind him, blocking the hollow gaze of the goat head from himself. Nevertheless, Duncan could still sense the Vanished in the back of his head – like the moving rudders, the adjusting sails, and the stable movement of the vessel on the water.

As he expected, the goat head had temporarily taken control and began to carry out his duties as the first mate.

But of course, the flexibility and speed of the Vanished couldn’t be compared to when Duncan headed the helm. Even so, his primary purpose was to further dispel the fog from the mapping chart. It may be slower, but that’s of no consequence.

After confirming that nothing terrible was happening with the goat head and goth doll, Duncan finally breathed a sigh of relief and glanced around this familiar captain’s room.

This was his private resting quarter on the ship and the most lavish of all the rooms. In addition to a soft, comfy bed, there’s also a large classical wardrobe and shelf against the wall opposite of the door. Sadly, there were no books on those shelves, only a few pens, and tools for writing on the main desk near the window – this area also had several hooks, which was where Duncan found the gun and pirate saber before.

Coming up to the writing desk, he placed the weapons down and opened the drawer where a box of gunpowder and pellets were stored.

Here, there’s also a small brass compass he kept stored among other things. Like usual, the needle behind the glass spun wildly as if pulled by some chaotic force field once he picked it up. Aside from this feature, there’s also a set of text inscribed at the bottom metallic casing: “We are all lost souls.”

Taking a seat as he played with the compass, Duncan began to review the new pieces of information he had gathered today. This silence continued until he casually ignited a wick of green flame at his fingertip. Gradually, the hand closest to the glow transformed and turned ghostly like he intended, confirming his theory that he could change only parts of himself at will.

Then another idea hit him. If he could extend the flame across the Vanished, then what about other items that aren’t entirely connected to the vessel? Grabbing one of those old ink pens from the table with his free hand, he slowly dipped the metal tip into the greenish flame. Instead of bursting into flame as one would expect, only a little shade of green spread across the surface and gave the Victorian-era pen an eerie glow.

Unlike when he manifested the flames across the sails and rudder, Duncan did not get any feedback from this experiment.

Silently writing this finding down in his mind, Duncan concluded the green flame doesn’t burn like traditional fire, nor does it have any temperature or feedback on ordinary objects. That brings up another question about what would happen if he tried burning items from outside the Vanished. Will the flames react?

Duncan pondered the idea for a moment, then came up with the image of the goth puppet doll. Technically, she’s not of the Vanished.

Will she be affected by this ghost fire?

But he quickly tossed the idea of burning the doll out the window. No matter if Alice was a cursed doll or a human, she’s still an independent individual with consciousness and will. Doing something so inhumane was out of Duncan’s ethical standard.

Duncan then tested this discovery a few more times to determine if the other items in the room had supernatural properties until he remembered the brass compass was still in his possession.

The item lay quietly on the table, and the needle under the glass shell spun wildly as usual. However, perhaps it’s his own illusion, but Duncan saw the pointer freeze for a split second when he shot his “malicious” gaze at the item.

Duncan: “…..”

This thing just reacted to my gaze!

Originally, he was a little afraid of the compass; after all, it had the handwriting left by the “real Captain Duncan,” and he was worried about whether the dead ghost captain had left some kind of power or “trap” behind to prevent thieves from stealing it. But now, after seeing a reaction from his gaze, he’s made up his mind regardless of the risk involved

Reaching out to grab that cold metallic case, Duncan directly placed his finger with the candlewick of green flame floating at the tip of it. Immediately, the compass ignited into a burst of ghostly fire with countless phantoms flickering inside that glow. Then it stopped. The constant rotating needle now points to a particular direction on the vast open sea.

Duncan’s heart thumped with excitement. At this moment, he could clearly sense the “feedback” from the compass, thus confirming it was an “abnormal item” that his ghost fire could dominate. But before he could examine the details from this connection, a sudden and intense “force” abruptly swept over him!

He only felt his body shake for a moment; the next, it was a total blur. The furniture in the room had turned into nothingness, and even the surrounding walls and roofs disintegrated like snowflakes on a short winter day. Now, only endless darkness remains.

Duncan stood in the middle of this hollow black void in amazement. With his heart ringing, his first reaction was to reach for the musket gun and sword placed next to himself. But to his shock and horror, his weapons were gone; instead, he only found the brass compass still clutching in his hands.

Blinking in confusion and daze, countless wisps of thin light threads suddenly filled the area around the compass and intertwined with the surrounding darkness. Before he knew it, dots of starry lights began to emerge, scattering sporadically across the whole landscape like the milky way in space.

It’s truly a magnificent scene to witness because the only way to describe it was…. a galaxy’s birth.

Right now, there were a lot of emotions swelling out of Duncan’s heart: wariness, unease, but there was never a sense of crisis about any of this…. in fact, he found peace here, a long-lost sensation since being trapped in this weird predicament.

The next second, Duncan’s gaze involuntarily looked upwards towards a cluster of stars. His impression was that it was unstable and about to fade into the darkness completely.

Duncan didn’t know why nor what compelled him to do this, but he wanted to reach out with his hands and grasp that star.

Then a huge pull ripped at him the next. Duncan’s entire figure had started to fly, rushing straight for the source of the stars at such breakneck speed that the webs of light that formed around the compass had been left behind, and the star river was no longer visible after becoming a spinning blur in his view.

In the rapid flight, he subconsciously wanted to grasp harder against the compass – which was the cause of all this – only to discover it’s gone by now. But before crashing into that fading star with no way out, an afterglow from the corner of his eyes suddenly caught Duncan’s attention.

It was a shadow that emerged near him. It didn’t seem unnatural; in fact, it was so natural it didn’t even occur to him that it could be anything otherwise. Then he finally got a better picture of that contour. It looked like a bird that was flying with its wings stretched out. Then before he could get any more details, his vision blacked out….

When Duncan finally regained a part of his consciousness, he was back in reality on the floor, cold and heavy from whatever supernatural high he had just gone through.