Elephant Pond 14:

The Last Savage Verse (1)

The air below the deck of Bora’s ship was no less swollen than it was the night before. The atmosphere surrounding the captured was stuffy and altogether claustrophobic with a palpable uneasiness that had festered overnight. All five floors of captives murmured and whispered worries from one cell to another like they had the night before, and tapped restless feet and overgrown nails on iron bars and wooden walls making an erratic, humdrum beat echo through the ship’s hull.

Like shepherds watching over sheep, the pirate guards recognized the nervous anticipation almost instantly. Yet they smiled, as they happily put it up to the prior night’s disappointment and the fear of the ends they’d each meet in Korenth. To them it was another small victory, pennies on the mountain of coins awaiting the deal they were basically guaranteed to complete now.

Morgan lay on his side in his cot facing the wall away from his father. Lead-bearing eye lids were propped open by what felt like a few moments of sleep. Bottle smashing and the high points of shanties had woken him up several times throughout the night. Yet it was his father’s confession and his mother’s complicity that had stolen the most sleep from him. His eyes had been open for most of that night, staring up into the wooden ceiling, peering into the moments past that they now recognized as lies.

“Morgan, wake up,” Typhon whispered.

“I’m awake,” he said as he rolled onto his back to look at his father.

“Everyone who has chosen to help us has been given their instructions. Are you ready?”

Morgan sat up in his cot. “Not until you tell me what you saw in that crack and everything else that made you lose faith.”

“Morgan, we are not having that discussion now. First and foremost we have a battle to win. Everything else comes later.”

“What if there won’t be a later? We are sea smiths, peace sworn. We can’t kill or even hurt anyone even if our lives depend on it. How can we possibly fight back or even survive this?”

“Those are the cards we have been dealt in this life, the people sworn to abstain from battle no matter the cost. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ll have people you need to protect just like everyone else. You have to find ways of protecting them without hurting others. And if there’s no other choice…you will have to be willing to go past that.”

“Don’t I deserve to know the truth? Why should I spend months or even years searching for what you have already found?”

“Because arriving at an answer isn’t nearly as important as how you arrived at it. That’s the one thing your mother and I agreed on. So the best I can do is set you on a shorter path. If we are delivered to our would-be buyer, after all, then you’ll have to find a man in Korenth named Coleston Barge. He’s the owner of the Swallow Tail Company and a friend that owes me many favors. He will direct you to the first of the secrets of Khantani and the old world. That path will eventually lead you back to that crack, where my search for the truth began and where your journey’s end, lays further inside.”

Morgan took a second to take all of that information in. Being told a life-changing truth is one thing, but taking on a journey for it was entirely different. Even if he managed to survive in the outside world, what would he have actually gained? What has his father gained from knowing the truth?

“The guards are switching.” Morgan’s mother whispered from her cell.

The guard that had been posted on their floor for the night just before the stairs, stood from his chair. He scratched at his beard, and yawned as he turned and made his way up the steps where Morgan glimpsed the boots of another pirate coming down. Just behind where the first guard had sat, Morgan saw a hand press a small metal block onto their cell’s lock, followed by a soft *clink*, just as the new guard set foot on the sixth floor.

While they had been able to whisper the plans of the revolt up through gaps in the boards above their heads, none were big enough to fit the ‘key’ Maya had made on the workbench and smuggled into the ship. That aside, even passing it between the captives ran the risk of being seen by the guards, and Typhon was especially reluctant to stake their escape on the stealth and sleight of hand of strangers. So instead, they opted to open for just one.

A bare foot kicked the cell door flying open and a blonde haired, wide eyed man, leaped out. The guard turned his head just in time to see Tibbles coming.

In one swift movement he deftly grabbed the knife at the pirate’s waist before he could reach for it himself and stabbed him in the throat.

“That’s for all the times you did nothing to my bread, you miserable sack of dung!” he exclaimed.

Morgan cringed and looked away as the blood gushed from his throat. He heard the pirate’s body drop to the floor and Tibbles’ giggle. The slap of bare feet against wood followed as he approached their cells and Morgan returned his eyes to the criminal once again.

“Tibbles at your service, sea smiths,” he said bowing with a giddy smile and a bloody hand on his chest.

Fortunately Tibbles’ had been quiet, aside from his last outburst, taking out the guard, so they had no need to rush. Within a few minutes the rest of the cells were open and all of the captives of the sixth floor stood in the walkway, face to face for the first time.

“Take whatever weapons and leather armor you can find in the storage above us, “Typhon said. “Once you get onto the deck, don’t stray from the entrance. Stay there and guard it until the rest of us can get out, so they don’t restrict our assault and pick us off while we try to get out. After that, we’ll split into the two groups I picked out before.”

The men and women nodded, though they seemed obviously distracted by each other and being free of their cells for the first time in weeks or more.

“Okay, get moving, and try not to alert any guards while you’re still on the lower floors. You’ll need as much time as you can get to free the others before they try to stop us.”

Most of them nodded and they went off, the footsteps continued slapped against the wooden floor boards over their heads.

“Should I really open these two cells?” Maya called from in front of D’s cell. Instead of the bare iron bars that all of the other cells had, D’s was a solid iron door fashioned, only interrupted by a rectangular peeping hole at the top and another at the bottom, with 6 unique locks going up its length.

“Open it.” Typhon said and Maya got to work, pressing the metal block against each lock. When Typhon pulled the door swung forward with a grating sound, as the hinge of the door was pushed past rust. Inside was a man, D, obscenely skinny, sitting with his legs folded and long matted brown hair touching the ground on either side of him. He had symbols tattooed all along his body, and up his neck, everywhere but his face, and continued below his hole-ridden clothes. None of them were remotely reminiscent of runes, prompting Morgan to wonder if Plain-walkers had unique runes of their own.

That was when Morgan noticed his cell wasn’t like any of the others. It transitioned seamlessly from wall to wall, to floor and ceiling in one uninterrupted piece of iron. He rose to his feet and staggered out of the cell meekly, wobbling on stilt-thin legs. He obviously hadn’t had decent use of them in months.

Morgan heard the footsteps coalesce at one point over their heads, before they spilled out onto the deck and the metallic clatter of blades clashing echoed all the way down to them. The pirates must have been trying to stop them as they got out onto the deck.

“Cloven, come with us, we could use a shaper on our side,” D called to the identical cell next to his.

“No.”

“The past is the past, fight with me again. Together we can win and return to the Plains, make things right even,” D offered.

“You chose not to fight when we needed you the most. I can never forgive you for that.”

“You’re being a fool. You’ll die in here!” D shouted.

“I’d rather die a fool, right here than help you ever again.” Cloven said quietly.

D shook his head and said: “Goodbye.”

Morgan and his father helped the Plain-walker up each set of steps level by level, stepping over the fresh bodies and still warm blood of the captives, guards and the pirates that had come below deck to their aid.

When the family finally stepped out onto into the sunlight, the fighting had gradually spread out across the entire deck. Morgan had never seen a fight, at least not between anything besides sea creatures. None of them had, aside from Typhon, especially not people fighting to the death.

Pirates clashed with their former prisoners that outnumbered them almost two to one swords and daggers clashing and some hacked at limbs and pierced bellies.

“Second group, break off and retrieve what we need for the backup plan.” Typhon yelled over the battle.

Ten of them disengaged from the pirates they were already facing and went sprinting towards the back of Daiah’s Lockers. The rest of the captives shifted to form a loose circle around D and the sea smiths, repelling any that tried to get to them.

The second group split off from theirs, running up towards Bora’s cabin at the very back of the ship, where the key piece of father’s backup plan was. Morgan looked at their path to the cabin and saw Bora there. The brown-skinned man’s face was creased and contorted in a rage as he swept through the crowd. Bora swung his flail and the spiked metal ball bashed in a man’s chest. And then swung it again, and shattered a woman’s knee, if not most of her leg. He swept through the crowd ending battles decisively with single swings.

In front of them, they were starting to get pushed back. On a diet of stale bread and cheap cheese and little to no exercise for weeks on end, the advantage of numbers had been just enough to even the odds but now with lesser numbers and weaker allies, they were in trouble.

“D, can you help?” Morgan asked.

D was staring ahead, his cracked lips moving as if talking to some invisible person in front of them. Added to the fact that his eyes were glazed over, Morgan began to wonder if he had somehow gone senile on their way up the stairs.

“…..” D mumbled.

“What’s that?” Morgan leaned in to put his ear closer to the man.

“…………...” he said unintelligibly once again.

“I can’t hear you,” Morgan shouted over men’s screams.

He stood up straight, off of Morgan’s and his father’s shoulders and spoke clearly this time: “Domain...” Except it didn’t seem to come from him at all, the whisper echoed up from the floor boards, mast and sails, in a hundred voices as if the ship itself had answered his request. The entirety of the ship squealing and shifting, like loose floor boards.

And then a sudden surge of brilliant green light from D. Morgan looked away, covering his eyes from the blinding light but the pressure of D’s magic still rippled through the air, buffeting him. Within the green blaze, Morgan heard: “Earth Shaping: Paper Tomb.”

The light vanished, as abruptly as it had come, then the deck immediately around D began to crack and splinter as pieces of the wooden planks around him peeled off, jagged ends pointing to the sky. Then they thinned, hardening and compressing till they were slim and paper-thin like ribbons and no wider than Morgan’s arm. Countless peels wrapped around his limbs and torso, bandaging D’s thin frame in the beige of Daiah’s Locker till only his eyes were visible, glimmering through a slit.

People around him either stole awed glances at D as he marched forward or shrunk away. He stepped out from his circle of allies, as slowly as he had walked before, into the fight on the lower deck.

D staggered forward towards the pirates. He sent the peels of wood slicing through bellies, before any could reach him and dismembering all that dared.

Ransom’s men had noticed the light as well. His ship had gradually slowed and then began to turn around. Anxiousness welled up in Morgan’s stomach as he watched Ransom’s ragged crew approach on the Burning Lady, armed to the teeth and eager. Things were going exactly to plan so far, but Morgan wasn’t sure they could actually survive his father’s plan.

Morgan peered through the battle again, trying to determine the progress the second team had made. He saw one of them running back to them with the piece of their boat in hand but there were only four of them with him. The rest lay in broken heaps behind a charging Bora, chasing the remaining men with two of his crewmen in tow. They weren’t going to make it.

One of Bora’s crew threw his spear and caught one of the five in the small of his back and he tumbled. Bora threw the ball of his flail and managed to hit the man running with the piece of their boat in the knee. He crashed to the ground and the shimmering blue flew piece of wood fell from his hand, clattering to the deck.

D is powerful, Morgan thought. Yet, he didn’t feel reassured by D’s strength at all. Even within all of the sea smith’s allies strength and protection them, Morgan still felt exposed. He felt helpless. And the familiar restlessness that had plagued him before swelled in his limbs. So without another thought Morgan ran forward, slipping past the captives guarding them and into the fray.

“Morgan wait!” Maya yelled.

He dodged grasping hands, and gave each individual battle as wide a berth as he could. Morgan’s eyes met Bora’s locked onto the shimmering piece of their boat as he made his way to it. He had to get to the piece of the boat before Bora did

Morgan was confident he’d make it there first, but he would have to rely on his value as a sea smith to keep him alive. Although maimed would still qualify.

He was almost there, meager meters away when someone tackled him from his right. They fell together, rolling onto the deck. A heavy set bearded man got on top of Morgan, drew a dagger and stabbed at his chest. Morgan pushed back against the hilt of the dagger with both hands. But with the man pressing his weight into it, the blade inched closer to his chest by the second.

Morgan heard heavy footsteps, the rattle of a chain and a long shadow cast over the two of them, seconds before a crunch. Morgan looked up to see Bora standing over the two of them. Bora had smashed the spiked ball over his own crewmate’s back to save him.

“Sorry Shardy, this cargo is worth more than you.” Bora said as he pulled his crewmate’s body off of Morgan. “Either way you should have known better.”

Bora leaped back as the last man returned and passed his knife at his belly, responding with swing at the man’s head. He ducked under it and while his body was still lowered, lunged at Bora’s midsection. With a split second’s reaction Bora caught the blade of the knife in one of his flail’s chain links. He twisted the chain and wrenched the knife from the man’s hand and swung the flail at him again.

The man managed to lean back just in time as the spiked metal ball whisked by within an inch of his face. Bora seized the opportunity to stomp his foot onto the captive’s, pinning him in place as he brought the flail back around, at the man’s widening eyes.

Blood splattered onto Morgan’s face where he lay, and bits; some hard and white and the other soft and a pink hued fell around him. His stomach wretched at the grizzly contact and as he squeezed his eyes closed as what remained of the man fell onto its knees and collapsed right in front of him. Morgan lay paralyzed as Bora towered over him, bloody flail in hand.

“This is the locker of the one true god; filth like you won’t win here while I’m still captain!” Bora shouted.

“Oh, you haven’t noticed? I am the captain now and there’s a debt I’d like to repay.” D called as he approached.

Bora scoffed. He produced a purple flask of oil from his pocket, and emptied it onto the ball and chain before turning the handle. White flames erupted on his flail as he grimaced at D. “You better hope that wood of yours is fire proof,”

“Entomb!” D commanded. Dozens of small wooden peels ripped off the deck and moved to surround Bora. With Bora distracted, Morgan got to his feet and grabbed the piece of the boat before scurrying away to his family just before the first of the peels reached Bora.

He swung his lit flail like a mad man, burning away countless of them at a time, but they gradually surrounded him regardless The first peel to make it past his flail cut right through his ankle.

Bora fell onto one knee, gasping in pain but still swinging. Two more wrapped around his left arm and then, before he could swing the burning flail to free himself, a single peel scythed cleanly through his right wrist.

The flail dropped with his severed hand, still clutching the handle. Bora let loose a shrill, terrified scream as they wrapped around his body, encasing him where he knelt, just as they did D.

With a hand gesture, D sent four larger peels forward and they lifted Bora high above the deck, level with the bird’s nest atop the mast.

Morgan got back to his family just in time to see D look hesitantly at his father. Typhon returned a nod to which D sighed and his bony shoulders sagged but he continued anyway, “Splintered Blossom!”

Wooden spikes like cacti spines exploded inside Bora’s wrappings, piercing him from within the wrappings to protrude, stained red on the other side. His twisting and turning ceased shortly after as blood stained his wooden bindings, and trickled down the four peels holding his body up high for all too see. The dredges of Bora’s crew fled, leaping off the side of the ship, and those that stayed were quickly overwhelmed and put down. They had secured Daiah’s Locker.

“Come on.” Typhon muttered, “Come here and avenge your brother.”

The Burning Lady raced up to them faster than ever, the men aboard shouting and yelling vicious slurs.

D lobbed the corpse over the side of the ship into the ocean and shook off his disgust before he continued casting. “Meld.” Long thick tree branches burst out from lower half of Daiah’s locker ship, stretching through air until they met and fused with the oncoming, Burning Lady. And with the movement of his fingers, they began to shorten, pulling the two ships together.

Ransom’s ship halted and even tried to turn away to put distance between them but the tree limbs held them in place while they were reeled in by the limbs and D began to chant once again.

A loud bang rang out from Ransom’s ship, too soft to be a cannon shot. A second later a black ball glanced off of D’s armor and fell onto the deck. They were using pistols, the small portable version of cannons Typhon had told Morgan about.

“Uraeus Array!” D said in the echoing, bodiless voice. Thundering splintering noise echoed up to deck from below the ship. Then a chorus of cracking followed as the entire mid-section of Daiah’s Locker compressed and then peeled off in massive paper-thin sheets, layer by layer. To Morgan, it looked like almost like tentacles had perfectly surrounded the ship but the pointed tips tilting and angling in the wind reminded him more of massive snake heads.

“Careful not to cut the harness, we need that eel.”

“I know.”

“Good. Now get us a ship.” Typhon said.

While the ships pulled together, D sent the massive wooden peels slicing through the sides of the ship after which they angled up and slashed through the men on board.

They fired at them through the entirety of D’s rampage, but, while the remaining former captives and the sea smiths hunkered down behind the massive peels, D made no effort to hide. He stood out in the open, his wooden armor smoking as it withstood dozens of hot pistol shots, thin hands sending the massive paper-thin peels to massacre. The entire battle was now on his shoulders and he seemed to be handling it all with ease.

Morgan peeked out from behind one of the peels. The deck of the Burning lady was a bloody mess. Blood streaked down the sides of the ashen grey ship and less than a third of the crew remained. Ransom’s crew would be obliterated before it was dragged the rest of the way. They were moments away from taking Ransom’s ship, and then they’d be free. Morgan could hardly believe it, but the gore of it did add a twisted realism that was hard to stomach all the same.

Then he heard a cannon shot.

A black blur flew by him, followed by the whistle of the air and a sickening crunch, as it took the woman to his left with it. He stumbled backwards in shock. The cannonball had shot right through the wooden peel. A second shot ran out and Morgan heard a similar crunch and gasps. It was coming from Dagon’s black ship approaching from their right. He was too far for D to do anything but try to defend. More cannon shots followed, blowing through D’s makeshift barriers and their allies.

“Do something, they’re picking us off like flies!” a man yelled.

“Kill them!” another yelled.

“Save us, please!”

And then a cannonball hit D square in his chest.