The island itself was easy to find; they had meticulously detailed the parchment map regarding its location, and its outline. What the chart didn’t tell was of the hidden rock formations, stretching below the waterline, waiting to trap unsuspecting mariners - unsuspecting mariners like us.

The storm, too, had appeared from nowhere; the heavy, black clouds rolling over us… covering us… like a blanket thrown over a birdcage. The lightning came instantly, striking our masts, setting alight the sails, and bringing fiery death from above. As the wind and rain buffeted us from either side, the waves raised and lowered us with a violence that seemed—if you were a believer of such things—a deliberate, malevolent act of destruction.

A flaming shower from the skies, or a crushing death on the jagged rocks stabbing through the splintering hull of our battered and creaking ship. As the burning masts snapped and folded down upon us, the choice was no choice at all; many took their chances in the water, only to find the brutal tides as unforgiving as the flames. Their screams—piercing out from the sea, louder than even the roars of the waves—as the fragility of their soft skin and bones thrashed against the rocks, will haunt me until my death, which, I feel, may only be moments away.

I cling to the prow, cursing my vanity, cursing my naivety at allowing Mercar to convince me to make this voyage into damnation. ‘Who am I?’ I think, watching those who trusted my hubris, and arrogance of my abilities and worthiness, meet their doom without fight, without hope. It was to me, assured the priest, that the responsibility lay for saving the princess, Madellaine. None other than I could navigate the straits and make landfall, thus providing the means of escape for the young would-be queen; imprisoned on this desolate isle by the vile usurper, Hagan.

It would be to me, and only me, that the angels would release the woman. I can see them, perhaps fifty or more, standing in a line along the cliff face, waiting for my landing. They are beautiful to behold, these statuesque guardians; their pearlescent hair, as golden as I have ever seen; their white robes glowing, as if the sun shone on naught but them; their feathered wings fluttering gently as they now hover in anticipation. Behind them, I can now clearly see our princess and her captor approaching the land’s end. They stroll, arm in arm, a nonchalance to their bearing belying all that we had been told.

As the angels look to their mistress, the truth dawns on me at last; Madellaine is no prisoner. She smiles at her pets, gesturing for them to feed and then, as if a murmuration of interlinked starlings, they throw themselves into flight. Downwards, downwards toward the dead and dying; plucking up the feast delivered them by the skies and the waters.

I look at Madellaine, for a last time, as the waterline now climbs up my legs, the ocean subsuming the tattered splinters of what was once my ship.

She smiles at me, then turns, without a word, back to her treasured island; the threat of capture once again averted.