Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-Four - Piracy's a Crime and Crime Doesn't Pay

We descended the staircase to the distant sound of fighting echoing down from above us. I imagined that Bastion and the other squads had encountered a few pirates already. We had been lucky so far, the spiral staircase was free of any sort of guards or curious pirates, and as we reached the ground floor, we found the stairs ending at a final door.

One of Caprica’s guards pressed up against the door and closed his eyes. “I hear three on the other side,” he said. “More within.”

“We’ll have to assume they’re hostiles,” Caprica said. She adjusted her shield and then stretched the shoulder of her sword-arm. “We’ll try not to kill anyone, but if the choice is between you and them... well, they’re pirates.”

I nodded, relcutantly. I didn’t like it, not one bit, but I understood where she was coming from. If I had to choose between my friends and some meanies, the choice wasn’t hard to make, just hard to live with.

“We’ll stick together where we can,” Caprica said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to clear things room-by-room without too much trouble. Everyone ready?”

“Yup,” Calamity said.

Awen nodded, and Amaryllis said, “I suppose so.”

“I’m ready too,” I said as I tightened my grip on Weedbane’s staff.

Caprica gestured, and her guard carefully and silently opened the door, then stepped into the room as if he belonged there. We filed in after him.

As it turned out, the layout for this floor was similar to the one above. There was a large space with octagonal walls and corridors radiating outward. The passage leading to the exterior gate was wider than the rest, but otherwise, it seemed as if maybe the entire tower was made of identical floors.

Three pirates were loitering next to the door, and all three turned around and stared with slack-jawed surprise as we walked in.

“Hey, you’re not–” the closest began.

Caprica’s guard bashed him in the nose with the pommel of his sword, then swept his legs out from under him. The other guard flew straight towards the furthest of the pirates who was fumbling a knife out of a hip-sheath, which left the middle-most one for Caprica.

The princess grinned and her wings buzzed as she suddenly darted forwards and rammed her shield into the pirate’s stomach. He folded in half and fell onto his bum.

I looked around. The ground floor had plenty of crates and boxes laying around, as well as cages and some couches. Those couches were occupied.

A dozen pirates were lingering around a big hookah with long tubes and little pipette-thingies. They stared for a moment as three of their friends went down, then one of them slurred, “Invaders!”

“Oh good, they’re all in one place,” Amaryllis said. The air around her crackled.

“Wait,” I said before I jumped up and onto one of the crates. The pirates were still a little distance away, so I was safe, probably. “Hello everyone!” I called. “My name is Captain Broccoli Bunch, and you’re all under arrest for piracy and kidnapping and for doing the kinds of stuff that pirates generally do. If you surrender nicely and let us tie you up, I’m sure we can make it so that no one needs to get hurt.”

One of the pirates flung something at me, and I flinched aside, almost tripping off the edge of the crate. I needn't have bothered, though: there was a whistle, and an arrow struck the item out of the air. Both projectiles ricocheted off at wild angles. The arrow slammed into a couch, and nasty, serrated knife smacked into the crate I was standing on.

“Don’t seem like they’re wanting ta surrender, captain,” Calamity said as he casually nocked another arrow.

“I guess not,” I said. That was disappointing, but no one couldn’t say that I didn’t try.

“There’s just a few of them!” One of the pirates yelled. “Get ‘em!”

I jumped back as the pirates ran across the room, some stopping to pick up clubs or short, curved swords. Most of the pirates, I noticed, were human, but there was a harpy and two sylph there as well. One of the sylph buzzed up into the air, then charged right at me, sword-first.

I batted the sword aside, made myself small so that he flew right through where I was a moment before, then I spun while returning to my normal height and bonked him across the back with Weedbane’s staff.

His violently flapping wings caught on Weedbane and I heard a series of brittle cracks. Howling, he smashed face-first into the stone floor, blood splattering out from a broken nose.

The fight erupted into chaos. Awen’s crossbow thunked and a pirate went down screaming, then Calamity sprinted along the outer edge of the room, followed by a pair of pirates while he fired arrows so fast his hands were a blur. They hit more often than not, too.

Amaryllis cast a big spell, and the corner of the room where the pirates had been relaxing exploded with questing arcs of bright-blue electricity that ground themselves in the slower pirates.

They shouted and dropped their weapons as they went spasming onto the ground.

Caprica and her guards moved up, cutting off the pirate’s charge with a wall of immovable shields and quick, expert takedowns.

Not to be undone, I started flinging cleanballs at the enemy. They wouldn’t hurt any, but the pirates didn’t know that, and they tended to jump out of the way to dodge and that left them prone for the others to take them out.

One of the doors to the side burst open, and I glanced over just in time to see six more pirates run into the room howling with their arms raised.

Awen eeped and spun, firing a bolt that thumped into one of the pirates wearing an ill-fitting breastplate. He flopped forwards, arms cartwheeling as he lost his footing and sprawled into his buddies.

“Broccoli, distract them!” Amaryllis called out.

“Got it!” I said before I bounced over to the pirates. I landed on a crate before them, then flicked Weedbane out, the blade snapping in place with a very final, very dangerous sound. Then I pushed some mana into the weapon and it started to glow, with wisps of cleaning magic flickering off the edges like barely contained fires. "Surrender please!" I shouted.

The pirates scrambled to a halt, watching me warily.

After a moment of glancing around and finding my companions locked in combat elsewhere, the lead one firmed up and took a step forward. "Surrender? To one cutesy girl?"

I grimaced. "Surrender or... or I'll hurt you!"

He shot me a flabbergasted look with his one working eye. "Do I look like I fear pain?" he asked, gesturing with a scarred hand that was missing half its fingers.

I slumped a bit. "Well, no. Not really."

He grinned a gap-toothed grin, and took a step forward--

Amaryllis fired her splashy chain lightning spell again, catching him full in the chest. Bolts of actinic blue coursed through his skin, leaping backwards from his body and tearing into the five pirates behind him.

As they spasmed to the ground, I hopped forward and began whacking heads with the blunt side of Weedbane.

"Nice distraction," Amaryllis heaved out as she shook her arm, sparks jumping off of it.

"Eh?" I pouted. "I didn't even get to the distraction. You interrupted me."

She rolled her eyes, valiantly forcing her lips not to smile as sweat dripped from her feathery hair.

The last pirate went down with an almost comical bonk as Caprica smacked him with the middle of her shield. She stepped back, shield up and eyes peeled for trouble, but it looked as though we’d won.

“I... expected more,” she said.

“More of a challenge, or more pirates?” Calamity asked. He stepped over to a pirate nursing an arrow wound in the meat of his shoulder and yoinked the arrow out. The pirate didn’t enjoy that much and cursed Calamity, but the fight had, been beaten out of them.

“I think I was expecting more of both,” Caprica said.

“These are the dregs,” Amaryllis said. “Barely any armour, no proper weapons.”

“I suppose so. Let’s check the rooms around here, just in case.” Caprica gestured to Calamity. “Can you and Awen and one of my guards round these idiots up. Divest them of their weapons and tie them up near the centre of the room. We’ll decide what to do with them later.”

“Did any of them surrender?” I asked. “If they did, we should be nicer.”

“I don’t think any of them took that option, Broccoli,” Awen said. “Isn’t that right, mister?” She poked a groaning pirate with the toe of her boot. “Broccoli tried to be nice and you tried to kill her. That’s just bad manners.”

I made a mental note not to anger Awen in the future. She seemed a bit vindictive sometimes. “So, we clear out the rooms now?” I asked.

“In case any of them are hiding more pirates, yes,” Caprica said.

“And to loot the place,” Calamity added.

We all looked at him.

“What? They’re pirates, taking from them isn’t theft,” he defended himself.

I nodded. That was true. Plus looting sounded a but fun when it was morally justifiable!

There were lots of crates in the room. A few were open at the top, revealing things like furniture packed away for later, but some had what looked like airship parts and one, fortunately on the opposite end of the room where all the pirates were hanging out, had a rack inside of it filled with long metal-tipped bolts that looked like they belonged on a very big crossbow.

“Find some rope, get tying,” Caprica said. “Amaryllis, Broccoli, come and help me, please.”

The first room we poked into was more storage, this one filled with bags of grain and a few surprised rats.

The next looked like barracks, and we caught one pirate snoring in a bunk bed. Amaryllis and I snickered as Caprica’s guards poked him awake, then helped him to his feet and tied his hands together behind his back. He was confused the entire time and only really started waking up when we brought him back to where the other pirates were being held.

The next few rooms weren’t much to look at. We found some pirate cooks in the kitchen, brandishing knives and looking rather fierce, but I was able to convince them to drop the knives without too much trouble. We sorta outnumbered them at that point.

The last room we barged into had us all pausing.

It was a large space. This area hadn’t been subdivided into more rooms like the sleeping area, and it wasn’t a big utilitarian space like the kitchens. Instead, the room was split down the middle by a corridor. On either side and at the end were big cages.

We’d found some of the hostages.

In each cage was a huddled form of a bedraggled harpy, feathers bent and moulting. A single dim light revealed pallid skin clinging tightly to bony joints, barely covered by stained and threadbare clothing.

The smell hit me a moment, like rot and sewage, and I gagged before pushing some mana into a Cleaning aura around myself.

“It looks like they divided things by gender,” Caprica said. She sounded detached, clinical, almost. Her face didn’t have any expression that I could see, which was wholly different from the little proud smile she had a moment before.

“Yeah,” I said. I stepped into the room, then squinted around myself. We needed more light, so I started to cast lightballs and pushed them around.

That roused some of the captives. In the light, I could see sores and bruises on some of them. Others had bandages stained red and yellow. One man was missing most of his wing, laying on his back and seemingly unresponsive.

Unconsciously, I almost pulled my lights away so I wouldn't have to see. I didn't, though. I wouldn't give in.

I took a deep breath, then did the first thing I could to help. I smiled as big as I could, even if it was a little brittle, and called out, “Hi everyone! I’m Broccoli, and I’m here to help.” I flared out m Cleaning aura to start making things a little better.

More heads rose, and a few of the captives stood. They could still stand and walk ... or at least, these ones could. That was good.

How long had they been here?

Suddenly, I felt terribly guilty about every minute we wasted. “Where are the keys?” I asked.

“We should organise things,” Caprica said.

“We can do that once they’re free,” I said, a tiny smidge ruder than I wanted to. “Please, let’s just... get everyone out.” Out, fed, cleaned up a little, and flying back home as soon as we could manage it.

Even if I had to carry them all.

***