Principles of Contracts and Sacrifices

Listening to Tyrion's account, Duncan fell into a long silence and deep thought.

The Lost Homeland seemed to fall silent along with its captain. The low creaking from deep within the ship gradually subsided, and an ethereal, half-real quality enveloped the vessel as it silently skimmed across the sea, passing through an equally silent world.

After a long while, Duncan slowly lowered his head and looked beneath his feet.

He could not see it, but he could imagine it—in the depths beneath layer upon layer of decks, deeper than the shattered structures of the hold, beyond the borders of reality, Sasloca's spine still lay submerged in the dark Subspace. And what that spine had replaced was the Lost Homeland's original keel—the keel Duncan Abnormall had called a "little twig."

That "little twig" had sunk into the depths of Subspace along with the original Lost Homeland during the disaster a century ago.

"Father..." Tyrion's slightly uneasy voice sounded in his mind, interrupting Duncan's thoughts. "Do you have any other questions?"

"One last question," Duncan said. "After the Lost Homeland was completed, some of the craftsmen involved in its construction should still have been alive. I mean the elves who were responsible for working on the keel..."

"Most of them should still be alive, but they will probably be difficult to find anytime soon," Tyrion replied. "After the Lost Homeland 'met with an accident,' everything related to that ship became taboo, including the construction project from those days.

"The craftsmen who had participated in building the Lost Homeland either changed professions or went to other city-states. Even those elves chose to conceal their identities and move far away. The blueprints were sealed away and, along with all the records, treated as 'Sealed Objects' and hidden deep within the Grand Cathedral...

"People said