Among the Spires of East Fleet

Prologue: The End

The waves broke gracefully across the surface of the fractured black spires, scattering a clear blanket of suds over the shallow puddles between the rocks. Jutting up out of the sand like a thicket of pitch-black thorns, it seemed as if the natural anatomy of the bay had created a shallow walkway through the mixture of jagged stones, some of which stood nearly twenty feet tall while others seemed to have been beaten down by the fury of both waves and time. However, all were unified in that they were positioned in a single direction, tilting eastward, as if facing into the ocean itself and whatever might lie beyond it.

Along the beach, a small procession had gathered, consisting mainly of a few dozen old men and women. Rallied together in silence, they gazed out at the spires as if they were searching for something in them that only they might have been able to fully appreciate.

From among them, a young woman and her child stepped forward. Holding her son by one hand and a parchment note in the other, she watched as the setting sun began to cast an orange glow across the water's edge.

Looking out among the mesmerizing splendor before her, a single spire inevitably caught her eye. There, nested in the center of that mangled mass of crystals, it prominently stood out from among its peers. Along its western face it had been polished smooth, and across its base a simple line of text had been chiseled into it.

This, and only this, was all that remained of him – something that served as an eternal reminder for anyone willing to remember his name. Or for anyone unwilling to forget it.

– HERE LIES THE BODY OF GUILE SERDIO –

FROM THE SEA HE WAS GIVEN TO US AND TO

THE SEA WE HAVE RETURNED HIM TO YOU

As all those along the beach stood motionless, the child eventually began to tug on his mother's arm.

"Mommy, why are we here?" In his voice, there was a tinge of both curiosity and fear.

Peering out past the spires and into the harbor, the woman noticed a ship preparing to dock. The flags hoisted along its stern were ones that she had only heard rumored about from a man now long gone. She shivered as her eyes flitted back and forth, tracing the entire distance between the spires and the horizon beyond them, as if she was looking for something that she was destined to never find.

Tucking the note away into her purse, she turned and knelt down next to her son.

"Let me tell you a story, my love," she softly spoke.

"About what?"

With traces of both joy and pain in her smile, a stream of tears began to roll down the young woman's face.

"About why we're here," she whispered back.