“Serah! Merah! Raise the sails! Black Ink to the prow!” Bilal’s orders echoed across the ship. Even to where I stood atop the top half of the prow. I glanced over my shoulder to see Ersel approaching me. Her eyes were wide upon what lay ahead of me. I had simply gotten bored of it.

Ersel reached the space beside me and I returned my gaze to what lay ahead.

The boat had slowed once more, and as if we had traveled back in time, dawn had returned to us. Only now, we were on the open sea. Nothing, but the sky above our heads and the waves beneath the hull. Crashing from all sides.

Ersel swallowed hard, “There’s no going back now, huh?”

I adopted her overused phrase, “Aye.”

Bilal’s steps sounded behind us, “Behold the sight of the sea! The taste of salt and the sway of waves. Ah, I live for this!” He stepped beside me, standing on the other side of Ersel, “Unfortunately we entered a clam channel. Lest we get a good gale by the evening, we’ll be stuck here for the night.”

The captain looked over his shoulder and cried out once more, “Black Ink, where we be?”

“Forty leagues from Daemon’s Isle Cap’n. If we stop there, it’ll take about two days.”

“No stops,” replied Bilal without looking back, “we go forward.”

“Aye Cap’n.”

It did not matter to me whether we stopped or not, though I imagined mortals needed that sort of thing. Food, was it? Whatever Bilal was planning it was either to his folly or experience. His crew seemed to follow him to the letter, so perhaps he had a little more than a bounty to his name.

Then I remembered that name, specifically what his bounty had read, ‘Bilal, Prince of Pirates’.

I looked at the strange man, thinking not only of him, but of the many questions I’d yet had. “You’re a prince?”

He laughed as he met my gaze. “Now where did you hear that?”

Ersel pushed past me, seemingly surprised. Oh right, she did not know. Her voice confirmed her surprise, “Is it true?”

Bilal leaned his back against the railing, “What it is, is a long story, and my own story at that. I am not much of a story teller.” He looked down, “If you’ll excuse me, I have some tasks I need to attend to.”

When he left, I expected that to be the end of it, though that was before Liawynn leaned besides me.

She hissed as she eyed the departing Bilal, “I do not understand why he is so afraid to tell his story. It is quite an interesting one.”

“What is it then?” shot Ersel.

I must admit, I was rather curious as well. Bilal, despite his open nature, left almost everything to the imagination.

Liawynn’s eyes shifted to the sky. She store at it for impossible seconds. Thinking perhaps. She licked her lips, “I will not bore you of my life before I met him, but I will tell when that miserable life first saw light. I met on him on a slave ship.”

“A prince then a slave?” I asked.

“He wasn’t the slave.” She laughed, “I was in one of cages beneath the decks. I heard it all from there, just below a small split in the planks. The shouts of my captors as they ran amuck above me. The steps of new men as they jumped on the planks. The clash of steel.

It was as if a storm had brewed above us. Our fate unknown to us. Most of us had already broken. For all we knew we may have traded our old masters for new ones. I did not want to find out. As the men above us fought, I carefully picked the locks, I knew this was my chance. I turned to my fellow slaves asked if any would join me.” Liawynn shook her head, “I wish some had. They were already lost when I left.

I ran up the stairs, I had a plan you see. I would steal a sword and kill one of my captors. Perhaps then the attackers would take mercy on me, see me as something other than a slave. Though right before I reached the top, the battle, that storm of blades went silent.

It took me one more step to find out what happened. Even then I did not believe what I saw. The crew, even the boarding party, all were kneeling towards a single man in the middle of the deck. A man who had a cut across his shirt which revealed his right shoulder.

He store at me as I was the only one standing.” She smiled, clicking once, “I would have kneeled too if I had got gotten there sooner. What stood before me was a prince. A prince named Bilal, and he had the lion’s tooth on his shoulder. The birth mark of Ilvari royalty.”

The word ‘Ilvari’, I had heard that time and time again. Notably it was an empire which was older than even I.

Liawynn sighed hard, “I had never believed the extent of that family’s power until then. To stop an entire battle with just their presence. To drive fear into the minds of pirates and slave traders alike. His name afforded more power than I had ever known. And to think he abandoned it, a man born second eldest to the Ilivari Dynasty!” She continued.

I cocked my head. Why did that matter?

“G-gods.” Stuttered Ersel. I rose a brow at her. Odd. Her eyes were wider than I had seen before, her expression a sudden mess. This from a girl who had insulted a god without a second thought.

“Why did he become a pirate then? Why did he abandon such power?” pestered Ersel. Though her curiosity was warranted.

“Simple,” answered Liawynn “He hated his country and what it became. He wanted to rid himself of any ties to it, but his first attempt only brought him back. So later on he removed those ties permanently. As for how we are where we are” Liawynn stood up, and her white bangs tossed with her “He left the ship after the assault. He knew no-one would attack him. Attacking one of the Ilivari dynasty was suicide. But before he left, he asked me to come with him. I told him about the others before I even thought of escaping, but he merely said, ‘I can only take one’. The rest was history. We sailed back to his homeland, stole the Calypso, and started a crew of our own.”

She store at us, laughing once more “Do you know how hard it is sailing back to land for three days on a rowboat? Anyways Bilal had a title after that. ‘The Prince among Pirates’ they called him. Though lately even that name has changed.”

Liawynn stretched her arms, yawning once.

“What do they call him now?” asked Ersel.

The answer was delayed by yet another call, “Liawynn!” Shouted Mossman from below, “We need you down here!”

“Aye, I’ll be there.” Liawynn leapt from her position and made for the stairs. Before she got there, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder, “The Prince of Pirates.”