Thirty-nine n and four won sat bound in ropes on the remaining docks of Dreadheart Cove. Blood and burns marred their bodies as Jimbo looked over them with a deep frown. From the armory to where Wick's crew landed was half-burned down and they dragged everyone back toward the barricade before it started to collapse.
Cira's newest battleship was docked next to them and took up most of the view while Jimbo deliberated with his imdiate crew. "Gah, I wish Jas was here. He's much better at this stuff."
"If there's any way I can help, Captains, just let know." A young man just a few years older than Cira by her estimate stood with them. He had descended from the flagship alone as when they finally got close enough to help again, the battle was over. The young Captain of the Far Shore pirates had light blue hair the color of the morning sky or breaking waves, while his face was soft with delicate features—nothing like the rugged pirates Cira had co to know.
"Reverend Shores, was it?" Cira inspected him with scrutiny. There must have been a reason Jimbo said he didn't like them, and I think I might understand.
"Please, just Shores to you, Lady Saint." His smile froze as he saw a less than welcoming expression on Cira's face.
"I'm no saint and you will not refer to as such." As her gaze bore into him, he started to wither.
"M-my apologies, er, Captain!" Now he too had fallen to his knees, "I only wish to swear my eternal allegiance to the blessed one, foretold of in the scripture!"
She let out a long sigh, "Great… I don't have ti to ask what that's about." With her arms crossed, Cira paced around and grumbled for a few seconds, "I've got it. You and all your n start clearing out this base. Put anything you can call treasure on Jimbo's ship and everything else on yours. Prepare to weigh anchor on my word."
"Yes, Captain!" He saluted and ran off toward his ship again. anwhile the thirty or forty pirates that went on a treasure hunt with them filed off and started to help with disaster relief—mainly moving bodies and tending to the wounded.
The atmosphere across the hideout was heavy. It was a victory in that they weren't annihilated, but about a third of the Stick Brigade was confird dead, while a few handfuls more would live with their injuries for the rest of their life. So were in such a state where they may never walk or wield a blade again.
Any of Wick's n confird dead were stripped and tossed into the clouds. Cira watched the Far Shore in their tan-sched and surprisingly well-kempt pirate rags hoofing any salvageable pieces of their black and gold painted armor while tossing the rest off the edge.
"We need to get out of here." Cira interrupted Jimbo's conversation with Tom and the rest, "With this much smoke, I bet the whole island's coming."
The fires had died out, but a thick pillar of black smoke still lood overhead. It stained the veil of mist above them and slowly spread out on the breeze.
"What do you plan on doing with them?" She pressed.
"P-please don't kill us!" They were all stricken with fear, but one man's cry broke the floodgates and they all started to plead for their lives. "We never wanted to work for Wick!"
"You don't know him like we know him!" Another tried to convince them, "He's crazy! If we didn't co, we'd be dead!"
"He ain't even back yet!" Jimbo rebutted.
"He got back yesterday." The pirate broke down, sobbing as he begged. "Y-you know , Jimbo! We went to school together! I don't wanna die for a bastard like that!"
I always thought of pirates as nomadic, but when they gather on an island like this, I guess it makes sense that childhood friends could end up on enemy crews. I'm glad I didn't grow up on the Noose.
"The fact remains," Jimbo's expression was difficult to read, but it was clear he was troubled. "You killed a lot of my friends. So assholes too, but they were all my n."
Easily a hundred of Wick's crew had perished during this raid, many of them likely this man's friend, but the aggressor didn't have the luxury to complain about that. The sniveling man had no recourse.
"You know, I used to work for Captain Wick," Joe had lost Larry's shirt at so point during the last minutes of battle and looked at Cira, who was trying her best to stay out of the deliberations. "Until Jimbo kicked my ass. You may be new here, but not many choose to work for Wick. He stashed mom 'n' little sister away sowhere and made to go out on hits like this."
Good to know. The guy is worse than Don. Still, how do you deal with that? When a captain sends an order, it's still the ones in front of us who pull the trigger. The ones with our crew's blood quite literally on their hands.
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When Cira didn't reply, Joe continued his tale, "He spotted the coin to send 'em up to Porta Bora and helped get 'em back."
"Are you saying he should give everyone a chance?" Cira didn't expect this angle from the crew. She herself was pissed, but she also didn't expect the opposition to be the product of such tyranny.
"Hell no." Joe laughed, "So of these guys are real pieces o' shit."
"How do you tell them apart?" Either way, we can't possibly break out fifty wives and children from wherever so skeevy pirate king keeps them. How would that even work?
"That's the hard part." Jimbo shook his head and groaned. "I can't just dump everyone off the side. That's what Wick'd do."
"Yeah, I don't know how I feel about mass sky burials." Cira shuddered to think how impossibly far one would have to fall before dying that way.
"Co to think of it…" Jimbo squinted his eyes and peered at her suspiciously, "You were actin' pretty weird that whole fight. What was up with that?"
"Yeah, I seen it to." Skipper thought to add, "Sothin' in her eyes."
"Tch. Nobody asked you, Skipper." Cira tried to look away, but she was flanked by pirates on either side, "I had never taken a life before today."
"Seriously?!" With shock plain on his face, Jimbo startled her with his questions, "With all that power?!"
"Well… Not since before my father found —I think…" Wait, what was that? Did that really happen? The dark slate that was usually her mories of that ti rippled like the surface of a moonlit sea. At tis, she recalled those twisted faces Gazen plucked her from, but rarely in detail.
The sun never rose in those lands until he arrived, and now in the back of her mind, streams of moonlight illuminated the faces of those that never lived to see it. The weak, the failed, the rejected… all t their death eventually, wherever they lay. Often in the street or swept to the gutters if they were in the way. So made it ho, but others couldn't make it up the steps.
Why… why am I seeing this? This didn't happen… But this is my ho—my holand. At least it used to be. Could this be… that day? The faces were clear in her mind now. They were n and won from town, children she knew by na. All of them withered or deford. All of them were still. Unmoving as the cold breeze tickled Cira's skin. She rembered it was cold out this evening, but she didn't feel uncomfortable.
There's no way I… I didn't do—
"Such small hands could never do this." It was the first ti she ever heard her father's voice. It was firm but his tone was soft. Cira stared into his bright golden irises, entranced by a gaze that seed to see right through her. The man seed so different from everyone else on the island. So different from her—
Cira shook the thoughts out of her head before loudly continuing to her crew, "I'd rather not reminisce."
The past doesn't matter. No one's fate belongs to .
"Whoa." Jimbo looked at her and raised an eyebrow, "Touchy subject."
"Whatever." Cira quickly steered the conversation in another direction, "I've been aning to ask. What's this 'Porta Bora' place I keep hearing about?"
"Ah, that's what people down the Boreal call 'Port Gandeux'."
"Hmm… I like that better." Cira sounded it out, "It rolls off the tongue. How do you even pronounce Gandeux anyway?"
"I think it depends on where you're from. Those nobles up there really make a show of it, though. As you can see, I just call it Gondo. Don't know what that 'x' is supposed to do."
"Well, I think it's silent either way…" Cira decided to walk away for a little to clear her head. "Figure out what to do with these guys and get ready to leave."
With muddled thoughts, she took a stroll along the dock as boards creaked beneath her and stood against the charred edge. She knew there were things she didn't want to see hidden away sowhere, but why now? Is it because my soul is burning up that these mories resurface? It's not like it changes anything. I just need to figure out the soul forge and all will be well.
Sothing nagged her about all this. She had read of those who lost their lives to a broken soul in the past and it wasn't unheard of for the aethereal damage to cause adverse effects within the mind, but it was not typical of the early stages of soul immolation. This ant one of two things. Either the studies she read weren't very thorough—which would be difficult to achieve with such a rare ailnt—or she was much further along than she thought.
Didn't that spider say sothing like that? That I'll die much sooner than I think. She didn't want to believe the evil creature in her archive's words, but every good liar used the truth as a tool. The big question was what the spider wanted—past freedom, that is. It would be counterintuitive to help Cira when she was devoid of mana. Her broken soul was basically a once in a lifeti chance for the imprisoned spider.
What really worried her if its words were true was what ca next—that she would need a powerful soul to nd her own. Just as you wouldn't want soone to spit in your mouth, you wouldn't want to slop a piece of soone's soul onto your own. The very thought of it made her skin crawl.
Depending on how powerful a soul she needed, it could beco quite difficult to acquire even after she got over the moral quandary of removing a soul from the cycle by her own hand. Doing so was basically super-murder, so she hoped it didn't end up being so rare, majestic creature, though she certainly would not want to taint her soul with that of a vile beast. There was no winning that one.
"This is all Pappy's fault." She grumbled, "And Earth Vein's."
Twenty minutes later the hideout was totally cleaned out and Jimbo's ship ascended from the lower levels. Slowly, she noted, from the deck of her new flagship which as of a few weeks ago bore the na "Wings of the Saint."
Cira didn't like the na, but it didn't matter because it would only host her until they reached Breeze Haven. All of the royal pirates from before were loaded up as prisoners below deck as this was the largest vessel of two.
It was decided nobody had ti for prisoners yet, and according to Jimbo, there was a fair chance any hostages could be let go if the one they were ant to be leverage for was thought dead. It was as simple as saving money that would be spent feeding unnecessary mouths.
For now, she watched the smoldering hideout from above. Cira looked down on the destruction and crimson-stained wooden docks. It was the aftermath of a battle that never should have happened and many lives that shouldn't have been were wrapped up in it.
You will be seeing , Captain Wick. But it will not be today.
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