The captain calls out in his booming voice. "Haul it in!"

Kit shakes his head. "Only just tossed it out, and we're pulling it right back in? What a pain." Still, he and Ngāk quickly pull in the net, while Dā and Ngum watch to free the net if it gets caught coming back in.

Yep, Narāy doesn't envy them, and is real glad they hadn't pulled in a catch or he'd have to draw the shield closed and spend the next half hour shoving corruptive mana out of the ship. Instead, the shields were never pulled down and he gets to lean on the metal railing and relax until they next need checking and patching.

Once the net's back on deck, the crew moves fast. Ngum hauls on a halyard and the big rectangular sail drops from where it's bundled against the bamboo yard, the waxed bamboo-fiber cloth snapping taut as it catches the wind. Kit and Dā work the sheets, angling the sail to take the storm-wind on their quarter, while the captain leans into the steering oar.

The deck tilts beneath Narāy's feet as the Kruwē picks up speed, her steel skeleton groaning softly, the outriggers slicing through the chop. He grabs a stay to steady himself and watches the dark smear of the storm behind them. It's gaining.

They're sailing far from home, here. They've been at sea for six days already, having sailed the thousand kilometres to this more enclosed sea with markedly more fish. But that means that while he knows they're sailing towards islands, he hasn't heard from any other sailor anything about those islands, and only knows how far he is from them in the vaguest terms; ...Probably at least hundreds of kilometres, but he'd be shocked if it was more than 400.

After thirty minutes of sailing, anxiously checking and rechecking the storm behind them, and the ship's speed as reported by the mage, it's becoming clear that they're probably not going to make it to safety before the storm hits.

They keep sailing, obviously. But the dread is building, tension palpable in the air. At some point Ngum and Ngāk grabbed the oars lashed along the gunwale and started rowing. Everyone knows it won't do much, but it's better than watching that dark wall creep closer and doing nothing, and the captain hasn't called them off yet. Kit and Dā are obsessively working the sheets, trying to push the sail to its limits and get the most out of it possible, and then Kit accidentally drops his line and Dā explodes at him. Says that if he's not going to do his job, why doesn't he join the fools rowing.

"Dā. Cool it. We've got plenty enough to worry about here."

"...Sorry, Captain." Dā's jaw is still set tight, but he shuts up and the deck goes quiet for a while. It takes him twenty minutes of ranting inside his mind before he cools down enough to mutter a quiet apology to Kit.

Narāy is quiet too, now; every couple minutes he lets the captain know his new feeling on the direction and distance to the block of mana that sits under the shrine in his apartment. (Mages can get a really quite accurate feeling for how far they are from mana they've Claimed, when they've got as much practice at it as Narāy.)

And in the in-between he stirs and stirs their containers of mana, and double checks that their membranes are intact. He has the feeling he's going to need every drop.

He acknowledges each update, tracking the position of the ship in his mental map and occasionally muttering a couple lines of prayer.

Around an hour after they first spotted the storm, the wind starts building around them. It's the first touches of the storm reaching out to caress them, light things that promise their mistress will be harsher when she arrives, and laughing at them for thinking they can outrun the winds.

The captain booms out once again. "Oars away." In a slightly quieter voice (but still quite loud, really; this is a man used to shouting over the wind, despite the wind's best efforts) he says, "Rest while you can."

Ngum and Ngāk nod, getting up, stretching, taking some small sips of water, and staring quietly at the darkness, nerves twisting in their chests.

The winds are getting progressively worse, and the sky is getting darker. The sea swell is starting to build, occasionally pitching the boat severely as they hit a larger wave. And a bit past two hours in, the first small drops start landing on the deck. The rain starts deceptively light, even thirty minutes into its pattering on the bamboo flooring. Still enough to make it hard to see the approaching stormfront, though. And the waves are getting bigger.

Yeah, this looks like a big one. Keep occasionally stirring the mana containers, and hope with all his being that he'll get to sit on his daughter's verandah again, bouncing her little Krisnā on his knee.

An hour later the storm has gotten very, very close. The waves are bigger, pounding against the hull of the Kruwē, the rain getting heavier. Kit and Dā have progressively reefed the sail smaller and smaller as the wind builds. The oars are stowed, the loose gear packed away, the loose lines tied. As always, Ngum took charge of rigging the safety lines along the deck; He's been paranoid his whole life about being washed off deck.

He's checked the mana containers are bolted down. He's moved mana from each container into its lock, to have easy access.

The crew has received firm instruction to stuff their faces before it hits, and have a good drink. It'll be many hours before they get another chance.

The edge of the storm passes over them like a great beast swallowing them whole. One breath they can see the dark wall thirty metres out; the next breath they're inside it, almost blind, the rain hitting exposed skin hard enough to sting. The sea, which had been building in swells they could anticipate, turns chaotic—waves coming from angles that don't match the wind, the Kruwē lurching and dropping unpredictably beneath them.

He's tied into the safety lines, and holding on tight, squinting out desperately to spot large waves as they move in. He rubs the salt water out of his eyes as a wave breaks over the top of him, and does it again a couple seconds later, and whenever they're clear enough he's staring around and calling out the waves.

And every wave called the captain is tracking, fighting the steering oar to turn the stern towards whichever one's biggest. They take a sizeable one to the broadside and the Kruwē rolls under them, but not all the way over, just tipping back in time. She crashes back into the sea, spraying plumes of sea water to meet the rain falling from above.

The sail is mostly reefed in, but mostly is not fully, and Kit and Dā are on the sheets constantly, letting wind from dangerous gusts spill out rather than fill the sail and snap the mast, trying to keep the ship moving through the storm so they can maybe reach the islands that might be right before them, offering shelter if only they can push through.

Ngum and Ngāk are bailing water, filling their buckets and tossing them overboard with the steady rate of men who know they'll need to keep this up for many hours; they can't burn all their energy now. When a big wave overtops the wall and threatens to fill the ship they'll bring a temporary burst of effort, but mostly theirs is slow, gruelling, mindless work.

And even as he's tracking the waves and hollering to the captain, Narāy is keeping the mana in motion, breaking it up where it starts to congeal, and waits for an emergency big enough he needs to burn some to save them.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, deep roars following the flashes of light that are the only distant things in view. A strong gust hits the sail just wrong and they can all hear something tear just after the captain booms out, "Drop the sail!"