It was their fourth day in the mist.
With only a quarter of their fuel remaining, the warships could no longer cruise freely across the sea as they once had.
In four days, they had not seen so much as a bird in the mist, let alone a fleet.
Their food supplies dwindled with every meal, and the situation grew increasingly tense.
Jaina slumped over the wooden table, her head resting on its surface and her clear eyes dull.
She had stayed up late for three nights straight, searching for the pattern behind the mist's movements, but had yet to find any useful patterns. Exhausted in both mind and body, she looked as though she had lost all will to live.
"This is so annoying! So annoying!" Jaina scratched her head, letting her golden hair slip through her fingers.
Rowan held a pencil, sketching and writing on the nautical chart.
"Our warships have traveled in a ring on the chart. The mist's movements also follow a ring." Rhonin studied the chart, writing down a long string of incomprehensibly complex incantations and riddles.
After running through a series of formulas again and again, he finally reached a conclusion.
The sea fog followed a closed circuit. From beginning to end, it always formed a loop.
Rowan looked at the compass on the corner of the table. Its needle spun like a clock stripped of its gears, leaving him utterly puzzled.
"None of us can even tell which way we're going. How did we figure out we'd traveled in a ring?" As though he had suddenly spotted the crux of the problem, Rowan grabbed an eraser and hurriedly rubbed the route off the chart.
"I left an energy marker here," Rhonin replied. "Arcane markers don't dissipate easily."
Assuming the arcane marker would not