The boat was actually nicer than Wil had expected. It was one of those old fishing boats that ran on gasoline and probably hadn't been used for fifty years, but he was happy for it nonetheless. It was plenty fast enough to make it to Copenhagen in a day, and it looked strong enough to withstand a sea-beast attack. He didn't know how to drive a boat, but how hard could it be? He was good with horses, it couldn't be that different from a horse... except that horses don't run on gas, don't go on water, and aren't full of incomprehensible buttons and levers and lights. Eventually, though, he figured out how to start it, and it shot out towards the open sea. For the first thirty minutes of the trip, Wil gripped the steering wheel hard, white-knuckled, scanning the horizon for danger.
Slowly, eventually, he relaxed. There must be only a few thousand leviathans in the world, so what were the odds that he would happen to encounter one? As the sun set, he stopped the engine and helped himself to some canned fish. The ocean was calm, and he sat there for a while, enjoying the open expanse of blue and calming himself after the most trying day of his life. Wil was exhausted, and he found himself struggling to keep awake. Slowly, he started slipping into sleep.
A tiny pink dot rose and fell near the horizon. It was accompanied by a barely audible splash. To Wil, this tiny dot and tiny splash rang through his head like a gunshot. Despite his exhaustion, he was on his feet in an instant, and had his rifle in his hands in another. A few seconds later, he saw it again. Closer. He turned off all the lights in the boat and let his eyes get accustomed to the darkness. A splash, closer. He could see the form clearly now. A lone sea-beast, leaping out of the water. Hopefully it hadn't seen him yet. It ducked back under the surface, and Wil followed the form of the beast through the ironsights. It jumped back out, and he pulled the trigger. Click. Nothing. No shot rang out. He cursed, then covered his mouth. The gun was probably jammed, but he would have no time to clean it out before the sea-beast came. He had only one option. Stand still, stay silent, they say, and the trolls, beasts and giants might just go away.
He carefully grabbed his knife, and stood motionless. The sea-beast erupted out of the water five meters ahead of the boat, close enough that Wil was able to discern its features. It seemed to have originally been smooth and bluish, but long, pink tendrils had long since grown across most of the body and trailed behind. The eye was greatly oversized, but looked shattered and useless. He supposed it hadn't seen him, but he didn't know if it could still tell he was there. It splashed back down, and Wil followed the shape under the water. It did not circle back. The splashes continued away from the boat, and Wil watched intensely until the dot disappeared into the blackness.
Wil waited for a few more minutes, then started the engine again. He kept the lights off, and inched the boat through the water, his eyes darting around, wary of every motion in the black plane of the sea. Occasionally, he would imagine he saw a sea-beast through the dark, but when the boat drifted closer, he would see that it was just a piece of bobbing debris. Besides these interruptions, he encountered no real dangers for the rest of the night. Eventually, he spotted the Copenhagen skyline, immense buildings barely visible against the black sky. How were there ever enough people to fill that whole city? he thought. The island of Zealand alone, on which Copenhagen was situated, had enough buildings to house ten times the population of the Known World! The thought of big scary buildings full of trolls scared him, but it also excited him. He had never really developed a healthy fear of the Silent World. Denmark was mocked for its reverence of the old ways, but even there, there were few who would wish to explore the ruins just for curiosity's sake.
"I want to see what the dead cities are like," nine-year-old Wil stated as he walked to school with little Isaac Olsted and his sister Margot.
"Yeah, I want to kill all the trolls!" exclaimed Morgot, with more ferocity than most seasoned troll hunters could manage. " And burn the nests! And hear their screams as the city burns, and smell the diseased flesh of ten-story giants crackle and char! And--"
"Ewww!" interjected Isaac. "I just want to not fight out there and get bloody and covered in Rash! It's scary! Of course, someone has to do it, but not me!"
"I didn't mean to fight trolls. Well, maybe that too. But, what I meant was, wouldn't it be cool to just explore? To see how people lived in the old times? To look at all the things people made that we can't even imagine now?"
All he got was two blank stares. "Kinda," replied Isaac, "but wouldn't that be illegal or super dangerous or something?"
"Yeah, but think of all you could learn and see and experience! And plus... maybe there are other survivors! What if there's a cure or something out there that we don't know about?"
As the boat slid into shore, Wilhelm hoped that his naive nine-year-old self was right about something.
