"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The scream barely had ti to finish before the splash echoed through the air. A body, flailing, disappearing into the blue waves below.
Damn. The big guy wasn't playing.
No hesitation, no second chances—just gone. Like tossing out the trash.
The crew didn't move. No one rushed to the rail. No one even looked surprised. That was telling. More telling than words.
This wasn't the first ti.
I glanced around, reading them. The subtle shifts, the way so of them stiffened just slightly, the way their hands curled into uneasy fists. No one was happy about what just happened. But no one spoke up either.
That ant one of two things:
Either he was the captain—or he was soone the crew was too afraid to cross.
Could be a classic case of nepotism, the captain's golden nephew throwing his weight around. Seen it before. The kind of guy born into power instead of earning it, holding onto control with fear instead of respect.
But sothing was off.
So of them bowed their heads. Not in respect—in submission.
Oh.
Oh, this was even better than I thought.
A tyrant.
Not just a brute who had the crew's loyalty—a dictator. A leader they didn't follow because they wanted to, but because they had no choice.
I could see it in their posture, in the way they didn't look at him directly, in the way they shrank back when he moved. They feared him, but they didn't love him.
And that? That was a weakness.
Because history had proven sothing ti and ti again:
Tyrants fall.
Always.
The more power one man hoards, the more resentnt festers in the people beneath him. Every successful governnt, no matter how strong, eventually crumbles under its own weight. Greed eats away at the foundation. Corruption seeps into the cracks.
And a ship—especially a pirate crew—is nothing but a floating kingdom of violence and shifting loyalties.
A crew under a tyrant? That's a ticking bomb.
And if history had also taught sothing else...
It doesn't take much to light the fuse.
I let the thought settle in my mind. Turned it over, let it bloom into sothing promising.
If I took out the top players—the ones that kept this delicate balance of fear intact—the rest of the crew wouldn't hesitate.
They'd turn on him. They'd rip him apart.
One good news after another.
I almost laughed. But I didn't.
The hard part wouldn't be killing him.
The hard part would be letting him live long enough to watch it all burn.
But the hardest part?
I couldn't understand a damn word they were saying.
Not the whispers slithering through the crew.
Not the grumbled, low conversation between the big guy and the one who shot .
Not even a single scrap of language that I could grab onto and make sense of.
It wasn't just an accent.
It wasn't just a dialect.
It was entirely foreign.
I tried to pick it apart, letting the sounds wash over , searching for sothing that felt remotely familiar.
No luck.
I had a rough idea of where I was in history. Sowhere between the 16th and 18th centuries, judging from the ship, the weapons, and the sheer lack of anything resembling modern civilization. Which ant even if this was English—though that was unlikely—it wouldn't be English as I knew it.
Languages don't stay still. It evolves to match the tis.
Maybe I could catch a word here or there. Maybe guess the aning behind certain sounds. But speaking it? No chance.
And yet...
Sothing about their speech nagged at .
The rhythm. The cadence.
It reminded of sothing.
North-East Asian languages.
Korean? Japanese? Maybe Chinese?
But that didn't make sense.
The crew looked nothing like they ca from those regions. Their skin tones, their features, their mannerisms—everything about them scread a different ancestry.
So what was I dealing with? A lost civilization? A rogue fleet of misfits from all over the world? A place history never recorded? Or sothing far more interesting.
I didn't know.
And honestly? I didn't care.
Not really.
Because the language barrier wasn't just my problem.
It was theirs too..
Words are just tools, after all. A convenience. Sothing that greases the wheels of civilization, lets people build their little structures of society and pretend they aren't just well-dressed animals.
But I didn't need words.
I could make do with sothing far simpler.
Far more primal.
Far more universal.
Fear.
Fear speaks in any tongue.
Fear is the quickening of breath, the darting of eyes, the way a body coils when it senses danger. It's the instinctive, unthinking language that has existed since the first creatures crawled out of the muck and realized the world wanted them dead.
And right now, even though they didn't understand and I didn't understand them—they felt it.
The way I smiled when I should have been afraid.
The way I stood when I should have crumbled.
The way I watched them like I was already planning how I'd break them apart.
That was enough.
Words weren't necessary.
Smiling at them was enough.
Enough to unnerve.
Enough to spread whispers like a slow, creeping fire.
But I wasn't here to just smile.
I was here for the love of the ga.
And what's the point of a ga if I don't play?
So, I gave them a show.
With the kind of grand, theatrical motion that demanded attention, I swept my arms outward, dragging every pair of eyes onto . The crew flinched at the sudden movent, hands twitching toward weapons. But I wasn't going for steel.
No.
I was going for sothing much better.
The big guy watched too. Angry, yes. But not just angry.
Cautious.
That wouldn't do.
I couldn't have caution.
Caution led to strategy.
Strategy led to hesitation.
And I needed recklessness.
So, I danced my fingers in the air, letting them wriggle, flex, move—a magician before the reveal.
Look.
Watch.
Pay attention.
Then, with deliberate, slow purpose, I hovered my hand over one of my wounds.
A gunshot. A lead ball buried deep inside my flesh.
They saw where my fingers lood.
They realized what I was about to do.
I could almost hear the mont their breath hitched.
Then—I plunged in.
Not a careful touch.
Not a slow exploration.
I jamd my fingers into the bullet hole, and pain exploded through my body.
A normal person would have scread.
I laughed.
The hole was too small for my fingers to fit completely, so I tore at it.
Flesh ripped beneath my nails as I gouged the wound wider, my own blood running thick over my hand. The sensation was a sickening mix of hot and wet, my muscles twitching as I carved out space.
A few of the pirates turned pale.
One gagged.
The whispers stopped.
Good.
I wasn't done.
With a final, savage twist, I dug deeper, deeper—until my fingers found it.
The foreign object lodged inside .
The lead ball.
I hooked my fingers around it, feeling its solid weight nestled in my ruined flesh.
Ti to take it back.
With a slow, wet pull, I dragged the bullet out of my body.
It left with a raw, gaping wound, a hollow where the tal had lived, but I barely felt it.
I held the blood-soaked lead between my fingers.
Dripping.
Shining in the lantern light.
Still warm from my own body.
And I smiled.
Not at the crew.
Not at the ones still frozen in place, horror painted across their faces.
At him.
At the big guy.
The cautious one. The one who thought he had this situation figured out.
I smiled at him like I already knew how this would end.
Like he was just another piece on my board.
And when his lips tightened, when his stance shifted and the muscles in his jaw tensed just a little too hard.
I knew.
He felt it.
Not caution.
Not curiosity.
Sothing else.
Sothing colder.
Sothing closer to fear.
And oh, how I loved that look.
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