The Discoverer

Letter to the Institute of History,

Dear sir. Below are the last words on Nelson spoken by my grandfather, as transcribed by my late father. Your institution has pestered my poor, elderly mother quite enough with its idle threats of disavowal and excommunication. Our faith is not your faith, but still regardless, you have scared her enough. My grandfather was a man who cared very little for who heard him talk and the manner of his speaking, so direct all complaints of the letters’ contents to his grave.

Go rot,

Gaston du Armont

"Where do I begin with him? Do I start with the homeland? Do I start with the great and petty wars of the Nobles houses? The endless power struggles that defined our age? The “great” game that consumed the attention of our kin? Do I speak on the polite warfare that consumed us and kept our eyes looking inward, at the rot in our center? No. Not there.

Do I start with his birth? His upbringing among groups of both little and high regard? His training and education? Do I spin some yarn of his great and noble purpose? Maybe. But I didn’t really know Nelson very well.

I suppose that’s an odd statement coming from someone who spent practically every day with the man. Nelson, the First Great Navigator and myself: Arnold, the Navigator of Swords. The ambitious, unstoppable man and his blood-brother and vassal. That was never our relationship. No.

I still remember the day I figured out that I loved him. We were on our first ever diplomatic assignment to another Noble House at the time. We must have been fifteen years or so, just old enough to be looked upon as men by our peers. Young men, but men all the same. He was sitting out on a hill, looking out into the Great Sea, just as twilight fell behind him. I stood there watching him a moment and was struck by how badly I wanted to hold him in my arms, but he didn’t look at me. If he’d actually looked, would things have been different? No, he focused like a shark, his eyes set on that dark horizon of endless waves, and I knew he aimed to go there. His love was out there somewhere, it wasn’t here with me. A depressive day, I recall.

Back then, there was only one nation. The Azure Towers, the center point of the world, where God rested high within the tallest mountain imaginable, shining the light of day down onto us mortals. It’s still true of course, the latter part anyways, but the idea that there could be anything else out there, past the islands of God was…heretical. There had been hints of other lands, other places…but to willingly look for them was viewed as rejecting the Holy land.

It didn’t stop Nelson though. Not for a single moment, and the ire that he started to draw with his talking of “expeditions” put a fury into just about everyone. If it hadn’t attracted such a smattering of naive scholars and the occasional maniac, I have no doubts that both he and I would’ve been killed on the spot for treason to all of humanity. In the end though, the Navigators formed, an illegal youth organization as its origin. He didn't coin the name either, that was me.

Despite raids by authorities, the large following that his ravings of “ocean currents” and our subsequent researching had everyone talking and gossiping, right up until he was exiled. The most “ironic” of fates, but then again, the high King and Church didn’t really get into their positions by intellect or poetic knowledge.

The rest? Everyone knows the rest. He was right, there was more then the Towers out there. A whole world, so big that it made those little wars seem beyond pointless. Six months after leaving, we spied land for the first time, a stretch of green so wide that it was like seeing the dawn rise.

We discovered things beyond imagination. The Great Tracts of algae that hoisted up landmasses, endless swamps and islands. The Great Kingdom of the South, so replete with wonders that it was a miracle they hadn't found us first. The dragons, monsters of magic that could devour entire islands in a single swallow. The geode sirens and the great horrors of the ancient gods, and their long-dead bone cities. Treasure beyond imagination. Scientific wonders that were comparable to the discovery of fire. People so strange and beautiful that it changed the definition.

Of course, I was there to keep the idiot safe when he decided to stick his head into a geyser or whatever hair-brained thing he decided to do. Our relationship was always joked about as "professional friends". The truth is, I enjoyed the exploring, even if it was with the thickest, hungriest fool in the world.

Many people seem to think that Nelson became satisfied by each new discovery, but no. Every time, it made him hungrier for more. He'd get that same look on his face as I'd seen on that hill, stand up, and set off in another direction, looking for something that I never knew, something I could never give him. Some followed him, others busied themselves with the near endless tasks of cataloguing and experimenting with what we'd already discovered. Some went back to the homeland with the biggest "I told you so" of the age. For it was a new age now. Our age. The Age of the Navigators.

Nelson had his own little experiments too, of course. He was, after all, a passionate biologist. He almost cared more about the plants and animals he found over his own crew, but I think it was a wrong kind of thinking. Nelson, you see, didn't understand people in the same way that we understand one another. He was too busy trying to solve and dig and...think to let people close. Save for me and a scant few others. Even then, I never felt that I really knew him, until that day.

We were in the icy North, the homeland of the newly found lizard-folk and their encampments that rested high on glacial shelves. We were preparing to head east to investigate the Eastern Tract's water spouts, the vortex ecosystems that we'd been told about. He was very excited about that one, I remember. Something about floating islands? Anyways, our laurels had long passed by then. People's interests had moved on, to the many places and things we'd found.

Then it happened. The whole world shook. The seas churned and blistered over like a soup pot set on a swing, and it was silent. We didn't know what to make of it at first, but we found out later. The South. As in: a fourth of the whole world sinking into the dark below. Entire archipelagos turning to sea-foam and silt within a single day. Almost everything lost. The trees. The islands. The people. Dead. An event so horrifying that it stopped us all dead in our tracks.

When he learned of it, he uncharacteristically dropped his plans and demanded that we travel back. "I need to see it, I need to see that it isn't true!" he'd cried out. I remember trying to stop him. He had been in a panic, a terror so profound that it had made me scared as well.

It was all true. While we'd been off gallivanting and living, things hadn't slowed down. The discovery of the wider world meant a few things to the Empire. It first meant an opportunity to expand like never before, and the current wars facing the East and West are proof of that. The South sinking was an extension of that conflict. They're still debating how exactly it occurred, but everyone knows that the Empire would never have allowed a power greater then themselves to exist, even if it meant the unthinkable. They'd found ways to sink whole islands, and this felt like an advanced state of that.

As we journeyed back through the path we'd already tread, I think that was what broke him. Nelson, he loved discovery, but he was different from most in that he respected the things he discovered. On that journey back though, across the polluted seas and deforested bogs, he saw that he was in a minority on that front. Half the unique places we'd found; the mighty coral atolls, the fens and emerald wetlands, great herds of seals and whales, all destroyed or stripped of their beauty and diaspora. The people, enslaved or resettled, re-educated, their histories set to the flame. Everything rendered down into being useful, or dead. That was before the South.

When we saw what happened there, well. How does one settle their soul after seeing complete ecological collapse, genetic aberration and destruction that only a God could cause? It was terrifying, and still is. Will be too, as I am told it hasn't changed in all the time after.

When I saw the despair on Nelson's face, I asked him if he was ok. He said to me: "I did this." No matter how much I tried to shake him from that belief, I don't know if I succeeded.

He started keeping secrets after that, from everyone. He'd discover things and start writing them in codes that only he knew, squirreling away his time in isolation, picking up and setting down at longer intervals, depriving himself of sleep to the point I thought he was going to die of mania. Then one day, deep into the Eastern Tract, he came out of his tent, looking the best I'd seen him in months. I asked him what was the matter. He looked at me and said. "It's over. I have nothing left I want to find."

He hugged me, and then he was gone. I don't know where he went, but I read his last few works before he vanished, his regrets.

I know only this for certain. He died a broken man. He'd found what he wanted, and the people who came after had decided to break it in front of him. It broke his heart, and that broke mine.

He was a figure larger than life. He'd explored almost two-thirds of our world, and he could never forgive himself the consequences of it.

I'm told that when the Empire first set down on the Southern Tract, that they said "This land is God's land." but if it was anyone's, it was his. He was the only one who cared about it properly, the only one who truly looked at what he was finding. Even if he could have claimed ownership, I have no doubt he'd reject the prospect. To him, each discovery was another brick on his road to the next. He cared about what he found.

But that's all over now. There are very little places left to explore, and many more that need protecting. Even if he wasn't there for it, the Navigators have tried their best to uphold what he stood for. For whatever remains, that is.

I myself adopted you, my son, and that was about the extent of my struggles. We all have our own searching to do I suppose, within our souls and our actions. I decided that if I was to bear part of the responsibility for how this turned out, I'd at least leave someone behind to know why it happened the way it did.

I hope, that wherever that idiot went, whatever horizon he saw next put that sparkle back in his eye. Who knows, maybe he finally discovered something he needed to about himself.

I'll never know, and frankly, I cannot bring myself to try. I've seen enough."