The Ship That Healed

A battered sloop drifts across the lane with tattered sails—yet every cannon hole in her hull has knitted itself shut like living bark over a wound. Down in the bilge lies an exhausted wild Mender named Wren Calloway, her palms pressed flat against the keel.

"The ship was bleeding to death," Wren whispers, drained nearly to a ghost. "I didn't know flesh-mending magic would work on oak planks—and now I can't let go."

With Wren's magic withdrawn, every cannon scar on the sloop's hull rips back open at once! Three injured sailors on her deck shout for a lifeline, while six casks of refined crystal sit in her flooding hold. She will break apart in minutes.

The Undertow recruiter wraps a blanket around Wren's shoulders, eyeing her like prized timber. "We'll feed her and train her, and she'll keep our Cistern drain-engines running—whether she likes the work or not. What do you want for delivering her?"

Wild casters pay for magic with their own vitality, and healing an entire ship nearly killed Wren. Even unconscious in her bunk, her fingers instinctively reach out to touch your hull planking—knitting sprung seams shut in her sleep while draining the last of her life.

In a secret cavern beneath the docks stands a cottage-sized drain-engine whose massive oak housing is split from top to bottom. Six Undertow engineers watch eagerly as their foreman points to the crack. "Knit that oak housing shut, and we'll pay your captain in full." Exhausted, Wren stares at the massive split and then at her trembling hands.

Six stone huts cling to the sanctuary rock—but moored at the pier is an elite Crown bounty cutter! Her captain holds an arrest warrant for an unregistered wild caster who "tampered with a vessel," and he moves in to search your ship.

With a guard posted at the workshop door and Wren sitting exhausted on a cot behind the repaired engine, the recruiter counts out your reward. "Our engineers are satisfied. Do you want ninety silver in cash, or a crystal-recovery funnel bolted under your keel with six crystals?"

After a week of care among the sanctuary healers, Wren is back on her feet. Walking the length of your keel with one palm against the wood, she smiles. "I know how to pace the magic now—giving just a drop a day so the timber heals itself without draining me." Behind her, the sanctuary elder adds: "Or she could sign onto your crew and put her gift to work in the sky."