Excerpt: For the Wielder-of-Wonders and the Rapture of Ravens

Chapter One

The Sea charges the shore again and again in a fit of madness. Her waters have gone dark with the sky; the waves crashing, colliding with the jagged rocks, producing white foam - like that from the mouth of a rapid dog - that bubbles and churns. It is the sinister persona of the Sea; the sharp tines of Poseidon’s trident. She is ravenous and somewhere in her belly there are a thousand shark teeth grinding with impatience, hungering for their pound of sailor’s flesh.

This is the Sea that is the Demon; the nameless wyrm that brought Beowulf’s epic to an end; the Nightmare that haunts the dreams of mariners.

She will only stop when her hunger has been satiated. When waves of blood pour from Her victim’s breast and Death has been born from Her murderous embrace. She is a vampire that must feed on the blood of men, Her deadly kiss pushing beyond the lips and tongue, down into the lungs where She suffocates Life. Only then will She be placated and regain her calm composure.

She thirsts for blood and flesh. The rotting, bloated corpses of her victims used to feed the benign and malignant that call her many bodies home.

The Sea has killed too many to count. She has had centuries upon centuries to feast on both the weak and strong; to devour ships, gold and bone alike. And in Her womb nests the Ancients, the Kraken, the monsters and Colossus of the deep that will one day again walk the Earth and take back all that man thought his in the End Time. The Sea will boil and run red with the blood of billions in those horror-filled last moments, and I doubt even then will She be satisfied.

She will demand more. It seems that no amount of human sacrifice is ever enough.

The Sea has murdered all that I cherish. She has shred iron and steel, and pulled those souls closest to mine down into Her black depths where the behemoths dream their dreams of destruction. I worshipped Her then and still I worship Her now. That is Her power and Her charm. That is the terrible hold She has on men like myself. The Sea will destroy all that you hold dear and you will still love Her. You will still yearn to glide gently across the length of Her skin and to share your life with Her. You will forgive Her. It is a relationship full of violence and beauty, and you will always be too weak to call it quits. The brutality and deaths are a simple fact of life; a simple fact of love. In the end, the only difference is that you will respect Her more and She will treat you no different.

It is a dance of madness. A love that can only be defined by insanity. I have sailed with men whose fathers and uncles, whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers and men even further back were each taken by the Sea. She made single mothers and widows out of an increasingly longer line of marriages. And yet, the sons grew up with the same love and devotion for Her as their fathers, only to die in turn at the Mistress’ hands. I know when the Sea ultimately took them, they were happy to go, full of joy not to die anywhere else but in Her arms. It is the only end a mariner can hope for.

It is the death I wish for myself.

I have tried, but I can’t escape Her. In my decades of wandering from one hemisphere of the globe and around again, I eventually find myself in a port or a seaside town where I can see Her from my home’s window; where I can hear Her heartbeat, whether it’s calm or racing, thumping against the shore. The smell of salt water is an aphrodisiac, a pheromone that pulls me into Her clutches time after time after time. Her waters cool kisses that I long for. I am happy when I am near Her.

I am happiest when I am at sea.

I am at home when I can feel her underneath me, when I can stand atop the endless darkness and be held captive by Her immensity. She is a giantess. She is the Universe. She is Everything and Land can never compare.

I know when I eventually perish She will be the one to take me. And I will go without despair. I will be joined beneath the surface by millions of souls, becoming part of the mass swaying with Her in a hypnotic rhythm, like we are all making love to Her in unison for all of eternity.

There is no other dream of the afterlife I could ever imagine.

I did not begin life as a mariner or a disciple of the Sea. I found Her after an existence full of early struggles, those of which are already detailed in other tomes. I discovered Her as a stowaway, as I sought to escape all the horrors Land had enthusiastically bestowed upon me and which I readily accepted. When I snuck my way onboard an ill-fated cargo ship named The One-Armed Trollop, I came into contact with the two greatest joys of my life: the Sea and the friends She eventually took from me. But without Her, I wouldn’t have met them, so I can’t hold a grudge against my Goddess. She has given me great joy and great sorrow. Without the Sea, I wouldn’t have met Annika. I wouldn’t have had my life in Madrid.

Without the Sea, I wouldn’t have these tales to tell.