Location: Varensholt Shipyards, Southern Midgard
Time: Day 184 After Alec's Arrival
The river was quiet this morning. Too quiet for a coast meant to echo with sails, with hammer-song and the roar of launching hulls. Instead, it watched. As if it too were waiting to see what would rise from its banks.
Alec stood at the edge of the makeshift dock, one hand resting on the draft plans spread across a thick plank set atop crates. Wind tugged at the corners. His eyes remained fixed on the water.
Behind him, Captain Harst, two shipwrights, Serina, and Duchess Vaelora waited in silence.
None of them spoke first.
They had all seen what was coming. They just hadn't known it would start here.
"This river touches five counties," Alec said at last, voice level but carrying over the soft lapping of the tide. "It connects two tributaries, drains into the eastern sea, and sits halfway between Selvanis' forward post and our own southern border."
He looked up.
"And yet, not a single warship in Midgard is stationed here. Not a dockyard fortified. Not one patrol vessel flies a sovereign banner."
A pause. A breath.
"That ends today."
⚓ The Proposal
Inside the drydock warehouse, the plans unfurled like strategy on parchment. Hull forms. Sail patterns. Oar and rudder configurations. Six standard models — some shallow for rivers, some curved for deeper blue-water operations. Each marked with Alec's hand.
"Naval Guard?" one of the older shipwrights asked, squinting at the fine detail.
"For now" Alec replied. "My aim is Naval supremacy"
That earned a few exchanged glances.
"You don't just want protection," Serina said, watching him. "You want control."
Alec didn't blink. "I want what only the water can give: reach. Mobility. Leverage."
Vaelora folded her arms. "You'll need more than boats for that. Sailors. Logistics. Coastal staging posts."
"And you'll have them," Alec said. "By the end of the year, we'll have three patrol flotillas. One for the northern rivers, one for trade enforcement, and one dedicated to the duchess's personal command. Eventually… a blue-water fleet."
"A blue-water fleet" Vaelora thought.
Alec had explain that term to her earlier today.
It was a frightening idea
The room quieted.
It wasn't madness.
It was audacity with a blueprint.
🛠 Naming the Guard
Two days later, the selection trials began.
Fishermen. River scouts. Dockside brawlers. Mercenaries who had seen more sailcloth than steel.
They were not ready.
But Alec didn't want them ready.
He wanted them transformable.
"We're not recruiting sailors," he said to the officers overseeing the intake. "We're engineering command of the unknown."
He didn't name it the Midgard Navy. Not yet.
He called it the Midgard Naval Guard.
A transition between what was and what would be. Flexible. Loyal. Not bound by the nobility's traditions, but under the Midgard Company's strategic eye.
🛡 Uniform. Oath. Identity.
The uniform was simple but marked: grey-tunic scale vests, water-resistant cloaks, braided cords to denote rank. Each man and woman issued a curved sideblade optimized for deck use, and a compact shortbow designed for rapid loading in confined quarters.
Alec stood before the first group — thirty-seven recruits, faces chiseled by salt and labor, not polish or rank.
"You are the beginning," he said.
"No kingdom survives without rivers. No duchy defends itself without coasts. And no one will remember who ruled Midgard if we let others command the tides."
He handed them the document.
They signed.
Each one pressed their mark beneath the name:
NAVAL GUARD OF MIDGARD
Stormborne. Sovereign. Unseen.
🌙 That Evening – Serina's Private Journal
She wrote by lamplight, in the new script Alec had taught her. Her fingers knew the forms now. Her mind, however, still lagged behind the pace of what was changing around her.
He didn't name himself Admiral. He could have. No one would've stopped him. But he didn't.He leads without needing titles. It unnerves the old guard.It unsettles me too. Because it works.
She paused.
He speaks of rivers the way poets speak of lovers.Like they're something that can be mastered, but never truly owned.
And then, beneath it, in French — still clumsy but improving:
"Il commande l'eau, pas par force, mais par destination."(He commands the water, not by force, but by purpose.)
She stared at it for a long time.
Then blew out the flame.
🗺 Military Doctrine: Alec's Summary to Vaelora (Briefing Room)
He stood at the map again, this time with colored pegs and thread.
"This is not about ships," he told her. "It's about corridor control. Resource lanes. Influence projection. When we can move faster than they can predict, we win before we're even seen."
Vaelora studied the map. "And the rest of Edenia?"
"They've never fought a navy. They don't even have a term for naval warfare. They think war ends at the riverbanks."
"And when they realize it doesn't?"
"Then they'll understand what you've built."
🕯 Final Image
At twilight, Alec returned to the river alone.
No guards. No scribes. No banners.
Just him.
And the water.
He knelt at the edge of the dock, fingers brushing the current.
"Empires built on land forget this," he murmured."But water… carries memory. And power."
The tide lapped gently against the wood.
Soon, his ships would answer it.