Seaborn

I came to slowly, drifting out of my haze like a ship slipping free of a thick fog. The turbulent motion that had been the last movements the ship was making were gone. I felt like I was suspended in the deep, which made the cabin furnishings surrounding me confusing.

I realized there were two eyes peering at me intently, and my brain stuttered and flashed into cognition as a response. Sadeo nodded from his perch on the chair by my bedside.

“’Bout time you came around.”

I swallowed. It seemed the only reason my throat wasn’t parched was because of how my body was hydrated in the sea. “I was out a long time?”

“The rest of the storm.”

As his words sank in, I cursed. Not finding a single expletive to be satisfactory, I subjected Sadeo’s ears to the profanity that only an experienced sailor can produce.

“What’s the status of the crew and ship?” I almost got up to see for myself, but the difficulty I had in moving my arms convinced me to listen to a report first. Passively, I started my healing spell.

“Well, when you got hit by those honking big lighting bolts you were thrown clear of the mast! We wouldn’t have been able to do a thing for you, except the ship submerged to match whatever depth you were at. Soon as you sunk deep enough we were able to get the ship around to pick you up.”

He gestured to my bandaged arms. “Those probably don’t need to be on, they haven’t needed changing in a while.”

Stiffly, I started to unwrap my arms. I hissed quietly through my teeth at what I saw.

Starting from the tips of my fingers, around my hands and up my arms were ugly purple and black bruising surrounding branching figures like a fern. The design looked like it had blistered and was nearing the last stage of recovery, the bruises much worse looking but concerned me less.

I could see how the lighting had flowed through my skin! “You said there was more than one lightning bolt?”

“Yes, a pair of them. One from in front of you and the other from the side.”

It seemed that a bolt had struck each of my hands and traveled up my arms. I could see where some lighting had crawled down over the right side of my chest, but no matter how I craned my neck around I couldn’t see its effect on my back.

Sadeo watched me for a minute before asking, “You sure you want to see?”

If someone asks me that of course I’m going to want to see it! Sadeo used a hand mirror to help me see the spot I couldn’t feel. At the base of my neck the two fern-like designs lanced together in an angry circle that was numb to my touch. “How …”

Sadeo shrugged. “Ask a lightning wizard, maybe they know. Maybe they canceled each other out?”

“Doesn’t work that way,” I muttered. “They must’ve both left my body together …”

“What are the odds of you getting struck by two lighting bolts at once?”

I didn’t mentioned that I’d been messing with magic, or that I suspected the dragon of playing with me. Maybe it had struck me as it saw me fiddling with its light show. Maybe something about how I created the lightning flow made two. Maybe there weren’t really two, and a single bolt had passed through my body like I’d seen it pass around the dragon. I’d ask someone who had enough expertise to guide me.

If I ever felt up to admitting how foolish I’d been.

I had a prompt waiting for me, and I accepted it.

Congratulations! You have learned the spell Shocking Touch!

I hadn’t learned to cast lightning, but my foolhardy experiment had netted me something. I would experiment with this spell – when I wasn’t so jumpy at the thought. And not in water.

“Burdette took over while you were recuperating,” Sadeo said. “He directed us around to pick you up.”

As if mentioning him had summoned him, Burdette stepped into the cabin. He didn’t knock, but given that I’d been unconscious for his other visits and he’d never needed to knock on that door before, I ignored that.

“Captain,” the man nodded. “I thought I heard voices.”

“Report, Mr. Burdette.”

Burdette glanced at Sadeo before taking the other chair in the cabin and pulling it to my bed. I had yet to even stand and didn’t feel like attempting it with Burdette in the room.

“After your accident, the Death’s Consort submerged. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was matching your depth. It turns out none of the crew has control over the ship’s depth, for all that we control the sails.”

I nodded. “It is one of my professional abilities.”

“Figured as much. Anyhow, once below the storm we managed the ship easily enough. We turned it around and found you. Again, it wouldn’t have been possible if the ship didn’t match your depth. We got you aboard and the ship has stayed the same level since.” My first mate met my eyes levelly. “There was talk amongst some of leaving you. That or killing you and seeing if your curse lifted. We pounded it into the fools heads that anything bad happening to you – even if it lifted the curse – meant we were released below the surface on a ship that would never sail again. We kept it in hand. That and ...” he looked a bit uncomfortable. “It seemed like anyone who actually made up his mind to hurt you froze up and couldn’t do it.”

I wanted to get a more detailed report on that later. For now, I waved him on.

“We rode the currents south to the point you’d indicated to me. I …” he faltered for a moment. “I made level 25. Just like you promised. I didn’t expect to for two years or more but … well I did. That sailing we did, stars, it was something else!” He glanced at me again and shifted in his seat. “Anyway. When I hit level 25 I developed new skills. I’ve been able to read shoal waters for years, but now … now I can read the topography of the ocean like I put it there, and see how it affects water pressure, temperature, how that makes currents … so yeah. We didn’t make as good of time as we might have on the surface, but we still made it faster than I ever imagined. I made sure to run the crew through their paces like you wanted, and they’ve come along admirably. We’re just off the Falai Cliffs now – about two days of travel. We can’t get closer at our current depth.”

I nodded and with a mental flex the ship started surfacing slowly. “Let’s go up top then.”

I thanked the stars that when I pushed myself to my feet they didn’t betray me. Burdette stopped me before I went out.

“There’s just one more thing Captain,” he said. “Day before last we encountered a pod of Liopleuros. We passed them and thought that was it. It wasn’t. They were stalking us. They took one of the men straight from the rigging – Billy. We’ve been playing turtle ever since. They’re still stalking us. With a minimum crew above decks – ready to dash for the nearest hatch – we’ve avoided any other casualties, but I recommend surfacing before you go out there.”

I stopped, and I stopped the ship’s ascent with me. I didn’t immediately follow through with the rash decision I wanted to do. I carefully considered my rash decision, then did it.

“Mr. Burdette, Sadeo, I recommend you stay here.” And then I went out.

I looked about carefully. The sails were stowed, the ship’s wheel secured in place. We were drifting slowly with the currents but had no other movement. A glance showed that Sadeo was hugging the bulkhead and gunwale but following me. Burdette stood just outside my cabin door, neither flagrantly following nor staying back. Smart.

Burdette was just too bloody capable.

I hated that I’d put control of the ship back into his hands after establishing myself as the new Captain. Not only that, I’d needed him to take command after I’d publicly humiliated him.

What bothered me most was that if I’d told him to do it, then what he did was perfect. He did everything exactly as I’d wanted him to. My only problem was that I had been the idiot to play with magic and get myself laid up. I had been the one to foist control back into his hands.

Maybe I was worrying for naught. Maybe I was seeing seeds that weren’t there. Burdette didn’t seem like he was trying to resume control. He’d gotten his next level – proof of what I promised sailing under me would provide. He was struggling, but he seemed to be trying to find his place under me.

I just wanted to blame someone besides myself.

I was a capable sailor. I couldn’t even begin to doubt that about myself. But a capable Captain? I wanted to cut myself some slack, make excuses for my mistakes, but I was not in any sort of position to be making mistakes. I needed to be more than competent as a Captain – I needed to be bloody exceptional at it.

And I didn’t really know how.

My musing did not interfere with my awareness. I was looking for predators, and predators I found – in the form of a blur streaking towards me. The huge, streamlined creature just brushed against the gunwale and cracked it, its maw opening wide. Even with all my movement capabilities, I barely avoided its snapping teeth as it adjusted its strike almost as quickly as I moved. It brushed some rigging as its massive body sailed across the ships beam.

This specimen was about 35 feet long. If my time whaling and hunting had taught me anything, it was an older adult, evidenced by the handful of teeth it was missing. It still had plenty to tear me apart in its maw that was one-fifth its body length. Its rear paddle-like fins were about twice the size of its two front ones. It wasn’t an endurance beast, as evidenced by its relatively low stamina, but they were speed hunters.

I’d seen them hunt whales – and we hadn’t contested their chosen meal. They would strike as they blazed by, then once the whale was nearly dead, they latched on to a mouthful and rolled, tearing the mouthful of flesh away like a crocodile. With something as small as a humanoid, a large beast might swallow us whole. If they were feeling generous, they might let a pod-mate take half.

The predator swam alongside the ship at a distance, watching me. It seemed like it was curious, wondering who walked the deck alone and didn’t flee.

“Starboard side!” Sadeo called.

I spun and immediately hit the deck, rolling as another strike narrowly missed. This time the jaw of the creature hit the deck with a crack. The wood cracked, anyway. I think the Liopleuro was fine.

The second beast was slow to get out of range, lackadaisical even. It saw everyone on board as easy prey. I pulled out a bow. The prick of an arrow forced it to reconsider its opinion, even if it wasn’t particularly effective.

I looked from one side of the ship to the other. The first beast had disappeared.

I snarled. Pack tactics. That creature had played me. It distracted me, kept my focus, while its buddy had lined up their own strike. I trotted back to my cabin. Burdette was giving me a look that didn’t quite say “you’re an idiot” but it came close.

“Well?” Sadeo said. “I’d love to pick ‘em off for you but you don’t have anything on board that will do the job.”

“We could pick up this stash of yours, Captain.” Burdette suggested. “Get some artillery on board and let the kitsune have his way.”

“No,” I said. “They’ll have left us by then – unless they pick off a few more of us to stay interested, and I refuse to let that happen!”

“You want to fight them.” Burdette said flatly. “Alone or with the crew?”

I shook my head. “Not a straight open fight. I’m the fastest on board and I couldn’t keep pace with them long enough to whittle them down.”

“Curse them?” Sadeo suggested. At my look he shrugged. “What? It’s a cursed ship, we’re your cursed crew, can’t you just curse them? Make them rot away or something? Or better yet, tame them into your pets?”

“I wish,” I said. “But taming things was a different profession, and I didn’t have any luck when I had the time to experiment. I don’t have curses, they’re just … a side effect of my nature. The nature of my profession.”

Sadeo lifted his paws. “Can’t say I understand the ins and outs of it, but ok.”

“Can your magic make you faster?” Burdette asked.

“That was my magic making me faster.”

He nodded. “It was pretty fast. I thought you were done for.”

“I can’t get any faster, but that’s not the point. I can slow them down a bit with one of my water spells if they stay in range long enough. I normally use that to make the difference in speed between me and my opponents even greater.”

“Take away their mobility.” Sadeo said. “I like it. Makes the targets easy.”

“My spell can’t do that much. Although …”

There could be a non-magical way of doing it. My traps skill was underutilized, having not been part of my training regimen in Tulisang. I liked traps though. How to adapt my 10 levels in traps to stop a large predator in its tracks, perhaps utilize my knowledge of the magical components I’d gained on hitting level 10?

I was thinking magic again. It was hard not to, but by thinking too creatively I missed the simple answer right in front of me.

“Burdette, here’s what’s going to happen. I want you to prepare the crew.”

It only took me an hour to set my trap. I’d surfaced until the tips of my masts were poking through the surface – which was still filled with heavy swells in the wake of the storm. I wanted to be able to swim about, so I didn’t surface completely. I had a few people keep watch for anything that thought I’d make an easy meal.

In the end I rigged a simple snare – just supersized. I just needed to take away the Liopleuro’s mobility. The snare was half of that. If it worked, the other half would fall into place too.

Being aboard a ship I had plenty of line to work with. I looked through my bag to check the materials there that its original owner had left, but they weren’t up for anything on this scale.

That was okay. Simple was good. Which was why when the ship started descending again, the only bait in the middle of the snare was me. It wasn’t just for my own catharsis either; we had no other bait except people, and I was the only one who could reliably avoid the predators.

It was still cathartic, though. I hadn’t known Billy that well, and my passing interactions didn’t give me cause to like him. Still, I had no reason to wish for him to be picked off by sea creatures. He was one of my crew. Had been, anyway. I’d tried raising him again to no luck. Either I couldn’t raise the same person twice, or Billy’s spirit had fled beyond my reach.

I still had two people on watch for me so I wasn’t blindsided as bait, though they were only peeking through hatches, looking to either side for attack. After a boring 15 minutes, I saw it before either of them.

“Port side!”

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before I was sliding out of the path of the charging creature – a creature that had never before encountered something as devious as the snare boys on the surface used to catch little rabbits.

The noose stuck tight behind its head, in front of its first pair of flippers. Its momentum was halted with a crack, and I was glad I’d thought not to dangle the noose from the masts above like I’d initially planned, copying the traditional design. They wouldn’t have held.

It thrashed, but even as it did I began surfacing. I couldn’t surface as speedily as I could spring a trap, but I was inexorably dragging the water-breathing creature to the air above. Crewmembers poured out of the hatches to toss lines over it and cinch them down, securing the creature to the deck. It laid across the beam of the ship, its head and tail both over the sides.

By the time we broke the surface, the beast’s doom was already sealed.

I had generated a quest with my leadership skill: Defend the Ship. My rather low levels of the skill meant the rewards for completing the quest wouldn’t be as good as someone with 10 or 15 levels of leadership, nor could I tailor the quest beyond a very simple and generic mission, but it was something.

As we surfaced onto the rolling ocean with our struggling cargo straddling the ship, I took a deep breath of the cleansing sea air. I could smell the creature. After so much time hunting creatures aboard different vessels, I knew what came next, and the scents assaulted my nose through my memory.

Lots and lots of blood.

I had every member of the crew get at least one strike at the beast to inflict some damage, securing their participation in the quest. They would get the flat reward for the mission being a success.

I then had the lowest level crewmembers hack and slash at the creature’s vital spots while it gasped. A creature like it could still survive half a day hung out to dry like it was. I wasn’t sure at first what the cause of its death would be, but I hadn’t accounted for part of my ship’s status:

Blood Payment: the commander of this ship spilled his blood upon its decks. The ship remembers and demands compensation. Bleed effects within the ships’ sphere of influence are worsened and harder to staunch.

The gouts of blood I’d expected hadn’t needed to be washed from the decks – the wood soaked it all up. No, ‘soaked’ was the wrong word. It sucked the blood in, and the Liopleuro lost its life essence faster than we could have anticipated.

My crew killed it long before it asphyxiated, netting them higher XP for a greater contribution to a higher-level monster.

I ordered the butchering to begin as we set sail. We took the best cuts of meat and left everything else – all the potential alchemy ingredients, all the bone and guts, everything – sinking in our wake behind us. It hurt the business-minded self I’d been a year ago to do such waste, but I wasn’t going to be pulling into port to sell. I needed the meat to feed my crew … and I needed the carcass to be bait for our return in a few days.

Our arrival at the sunken galleon Alayne and the former drowner hive nest was uneventful. Ships from Tulisang had tried to hunt down the kraken I’d spotted months ago only to find the dunkleosteus had done their job for them. The only thing of note in the cave was a giant crab with a shell almost four feet wide, but the overgrown crustacean was easily taken and added to the larder.

I took Sadeo to where I’d stashed the valuables from the Alayne and he combed through it, then pointed out what we could take. I’d hoped we could take all of it, but that was unreasonable. The Death’s Consort might be a cursed ship on its way to being legend but it was a bloody carrack, not a galleon. The difference was while both could carry lots of cargo, one was a multifunctional platform just as capable with dealing death as it was hauling bananas and the other was a floating bathtub – at least in my opinion.

We took two days to get everything on board and organized. I’d dropped off several of our crewmembers on a nearby shore to prepare the meat we’d hauled – being on board might make it magically impervious to saltwater, but I imagined raw meat would still spoil – and by the time we were done we picked them and the meat up without incident.

The rest of the Liepleuro pod had left us alone, to my annoyance. Why was I annoyed? I wanted more than the pound of flesh I’d gotten. Not even for Billy’s sake. Because of that stupid order from Davy Jones. I’d gotten XP for defending my ship and for my role in trapping the creature, and his mandate made me want more. It chaffed at me, knowing that what I wanted was there because he wanted it. It made me conflicted when we returned to the site where we’d dropped the carcass.

Alright, I wasn’t conflicted. I wanted to hunt something now just as much as Jones wanted me to – if for no other reason than to vent my frustration on the matter.

We sailed into the zone armed and ready: plundered weapons from the Alayne were carried by my crew even if they didn’t know how to wield them, and armor protected their bodies even if they got stacked with debuffs for not having the related skill. At least, I had two dozen wearing armor. Everyone else needed their mobility – it was a ship after all.

The Death’s Consort was also sporting five installed and calibrated scorpion ballistae. There was space for a few more on deck, but the hull would need to be modified to create openings for an artillery deck, and you couldn’t just go cutting holes in your hull. The carpenter, Abner, knew how to get it done but it would take time. I’d told Sadeo to get as many of the small ballistae operational topside as he could before Abner made his modifications. It was time the Death’s Consort had some teeth!

Enchanted Bolt of Flame

Upon contact, causes fire damage

Enchanted Bolt of Ice

Upon contact, causes ice damage

Enchanted Bolt of Poison

Upon contact, releases a cloud that causes poison damage

Enchanted Sonic Bolt

Upon activation, causes sonic damage to surrounding area while in motion

Enchanted Shock Bolt

Upon contact, releases an electric charge

I now recognized that last bolt as the enchanted version of my new spell, shocking touch. We didn’t have as many of those and the sonic bolts as the others, so they were kept in reserve. I expected poison would be our primary weapon against sea creatures, and we had a lot of those.

I had always enjoyed and appreciated artillery. If I didn’t have my Heart at Sea perk, I probably would have done a similar route to Sadeo. While I could effectively man one of the ballistae, though, for now I left that to the professional artillerist and his handpicked team.

When I had told Sadeo to pick four others to man the other stations, he’d instantly named them. Surprised, I’d asked him how he already knew and found that the Kitsune had fantasized how to turn his slave-mates into a fighting force. The beefy laborer Carl was picked because he could load the weapons quickly. The diminutive Danielle was picked because of her skill steady hands, which Sadeo said was nice but he thought it indicated she’d have steady aim too. I let him have his way.

Before Danielle had assumed her new duties, I’d asked her to do some work for me. Now my Captain’s outfit was resplendent once again. I stood at the helm and felt at my beard – it was finally a respectable length and fullness. I looked the picture of a Captain. I felt like a Captain! A Captain that was ready to hunt.

We found the area we’d left the carcass infested with sharks of various sizes, but one creature stood out: a dagger shark. Imagine a cross between a swordfish and a great white and you have a dagger shark. This one was about 23 feet long, making is ‘dagger’ about the size of a normal swordfish’s weapon.

“Easy on the triggers, lads.” Sadeo cautioned. He stood with Carl and Danielle on the port side. His other apprentices manned the weapons on the starboard, and wouldn’t shoot unless prey came from the other direction. “Well Dom,” the kitsune said. “The big one the one you want?”

“The dagger shark, yes.”

“Right, the real big one.”

“If you get the opportunity,” I said, “Poison a few others before they get away, too.”

It was wasteful, but the XP my gunners would get from a delayed kill was worth more to me than a handful of sharks.

“We can do that. Know how any of these fishy things are going to respond to getting speared through?”

“Poorly.”

The kitsune rolled his eyes. “I know that! Any of them charge?”

I nodded. “The big ones.”

Sadeo took another glance at his chosen targets. “Right. Well, you might want to make a bit more distance. We should have much better range than you’ve brought us in for.”

I raised my eyebrow at the fellow as his two apprentices shot doubtful looks my way, but gave the order. Once we’d created more space, Sadeo named his targets for the others and they fired.

I wasn’t surprised to see that only Sadeo hit – he was the professional. I was surprised to see he hadn’t targeted the dagger shark, but a much smaller one. He shrugged at my question.

“First shots are freebies – may as well hit the small target.”

Despite his methodology, they got three more volleys in without creating any stir. Then Danielle actually hit her target. The dagger shark shot away, then immediately reoriented and charged. The apprentices fumbled their reloading.

“Now, now …” Sadeo said. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So long as you get it loaded, it doesn’t matter if you shoot it a foot away.” They didn’t look encouraged by the thought.

While he was talking, the kitsune loaded faster than I’d ever seen and fired a shot after seemingly only glancing at his target. The charging dagger shark flinched at the second hit and altered course slightly but continued onward. Smaller sharks were now moving to follow.

“Dom,” Sadeo said. “I reckon the big one has about 5 hits left in him.”

Analyzing the shark, I agreed. “Can you hit it five times before it gets here?”

“Nope.”

“Swell. READY ON THE DECK!”

At my command, everyone who’d been tensely watching prepared themselves to do the seemingly ridiculous – have a sword fight with a shark.

Sadeo hit the shark once more and Danielle got another hit in herself, perhaps proving Sadeo’s theory about steady eyes and hands. It was also thoroughly poisoned, losing more hit points every second. It was still going to rampage through our deck.

When it got close, Hrothgar the dwarf gave a taunt. His skill earned as a soldier before being made a slave easily attracted the attention of the beast. We hadn’t found any armor that suited the dwarf, so the only thing he had was a tall shield that he hid behind. It deflected the shark’s dagger easily, but the wide mouth of the creature was right behind it. It clamped onto the shield and shook, thrashing the dwarf around. Hrothgar was used to having his feet under him and didn’t think to switch to swimming to alter his force and momentum.

Those who hadn’t seen combat hesitated at the ferocity. Those who had were already attacking, hewing at the tough skin. I darted into the rigging directly above the shark and sent a harpoon straight down through its back. My attempt was to pin it to the deck, but my throwing arm didn’t have the force and skill to do that through the shark’s resistances. I still impaled the thing.

Then I was fighting off a smaller shark that attacked me with my trident. I’d never heard of it, but it seemed that the dagger shark had some sort of swarm skill that enlisted fellow creatures in its attacks. The crew could easily overwhelm the one dagger shark, but they were spread across the deck facing many, meaning those near the largest shark had to fight hard to steal its last hit points.

The bleeding status of the ship helped our butchery along, as did the status From Nothing which negated 3 levels of attributes form opponents. That didn’t equate to sharks the same way as humans, but it helped.

Once I had room, my harpoons rained down on the sharks still attacking. Then there were none. The sharks not caught up in the dagger shark’s swarm or the simple feeding frenzy had all realized the danger of the area and fled.

I checked that we didn’t have any fatalities and congratulated my crew. The injured were remanded to Myota’s care.

The sharks that were poisoned were shoved away and left to drift. The ones that weren’t were cut up. Everyone was keen on more meat since the only rations I could otherwise promise was hardtack.

As I set sail I couldn’t help but feel proud. It was all coming together. My ship, the crew … it was working.

“Destination, Captain?” Burdette asked from the helm. “Still the other side of Antarus?”

“No,” I said, feeling the strange amulet Jones had given me. “No, he’s moving. He’s coming south around the western side of Antarus. Towards us.”

Burdette grunted. “At least we won’t have to chase whoever it is down.”

“No,” I said to myself. “No, whatever comes next will happen soon.”