Rift

Chapter 4: Silver and Grey

J flicks her top hat and nods enthusiastically. "Indeed I do! We've gotta take a boat there, though! So, I hope you're all ready for—"

"No!" Edith whines, but it's too late.

J poofs out in a puff of pink and reappears as the form they first saw her in.

"Harold of the Seven Seas!" Harold exclaims.

Edith lowers her head to the surface of the table, groaning in agony.

Cree points at J – or Harold – while staring at Colin. "What the fuck is this thing?"

"A Hex," Colin mumbles. "An insufferable one."

Harold winks at him. "C'mon, Loverboy. You love me and you know it."

"You abandoned me at the shipyard and left me to get caught by Jane, and your justification was that you did it 'because you were bored.'"

"It's a valid excuse!" Harold huffs.

May pinches the bridge of her nose. "So, you have a boat, J?"

"Harold!" he corrects.

May shakes her head. "Yeah I'm not doing that," she deadpans. "Do you have a boat?"

Harold rolls his eyes and nods. "Yes I do! Quite a beauty, at that! In fact, I can show you guys!" he claps his hands.

"You're going to summon a boat in the middle of the kitchen?!" Edith exclaims.

Harold shakes his head and grabs the table that they are all gathered around. It takes them a moment to understand what he's doing, when all of them suddenly see nothing but pink.

When they can see again, they're still sitting at the table, only outside and by a small wooden dock on the edge of Nerawin and into the Orinas Sea.

Cree jumps from his seat and looks around, patting himself to make sure he's not dead before whipping his angry glare to Harold, but he seems to have vanished.

He goes to question where he went, when they all see Harold sitting in a plastic bucket holding a cracked wooden paddle, rowing towards the dock.

"All aboard!" he shouts.

Now both Edith and Colin lower their heads, and Cree and Regan just stare down at Harold in raw unbridled confusion. And May just sighs.

"The worst part is that she's not joking... This is her boat," she says impassively.

"We're fucked," Cree groans.

Regan gets up from his chair. "If only Giovanni left the boat with us before she went off on her mission to find help on the five minor continents of Aramora..."

Harold huffs and glares up at him. "Excuse me?! This is a fine sea vessel!"

Edith sighs and looks over at May. "I don't suppose you've got a boat just laying around."

May shakes her head. "'Fraid not."

"Great..." Colin mutters.

Cree stares past them all, over the sea, with a quizzical gaze and he tilts his head. He taps Edith's shoulder without looking away from whatever has caught his attention.

"Is that..." he squints to look closer. "...A pirate ship?"

Not just Edith, but all of them turn and look at what he's talking about, and they see that he's not insane. Coming from around the bend of the shore is a massive ship bearing a black skull and crossbones flag.

Colin's eyes widen and he lightly chuckles. "That's... from Aramora."

Harold scoffs and flips off the massive ship. "Little bitch boat! Kiss my ass!" he slaps the side of his bucket. He picks up a small rock and chucks it towards the ship but it's way too far away to hit. "Eat shit, piss ass!"