Bowhunter – Chapter 5

The Mane, The Unclaimed Waters between Fohalin and Nauberta – Typhon Resurgence, Day 17

Of all the myths within the great ocean between The Mane and The Sigel, tales of the Daemon Flamingo refused to age or even convolute themselves with hyperbole. Any tale of the immortal ship did not require exaggeration or the help of any poor wordsmith looking for an ale in exchange for a yarn.

Defeating the Floating Palace of The Wraith Baron and preventing a ghoulish insurgency upon The Mane; single handedly routing the seventy-seven strong armada sent by the Salt State to capture Nauberta; detoxifying the impurities poured into the ocean by the Havicore Volcano chain that ran along the southern most boarder of the ocean, where it met with the Ceaseless Depths – to name a few.

Ghouls, sirens, warships of renown, horrific weather events; all had been crushed by the Daemon Flamingo.

Where the ship came from, nobody knew. When it was built, again, no one had that knowledge. For the last three centuries, the Daemon Flamingo was at the forefront of every spectacular adventure not only around The Mane, but in every other ocean at one time or another.

Captains and crew members came and went, serving at the eerily material will of the ship. It claimed its own crew and held them to account for their own legends and talents. Upon the decks of the Daemon Flamingo, it was to be more than a pirate, to go beyond the role of an aquatic brigand for the ship lusted after legend.

Currently captain of the legendary ship, Egil Pearce was a sphinx, originally from The Maw – one of the unoccupied states, Frerlin, far from the lascivious hunger of the Dytrentian Empire. Seven feet tall, he was an organic infusion of human and big cat, bipedal, with gloriously leucistic wings, warmly tinged here and there with regal pink. Covering even the human elements to his physiology, was cloudy golden fur, replete with searing silverish rings beneath, much like that of a leopard. Ivory coloured fangs protruded from an equally sharp mouth, beneath a flat nose and warm brown eyes. From behind, his black furred tail swished impatiently, its muddy-gold tip like a much-used paint brush.

Whilst the captain would often keep his torso bare – with his glossy fur and demi-god musculature, he considered it an offense – he did take the to the decks in thick leather hoes, dyed dark pink and padded with further decoration in the form of ebon and orange reliefs. Upon his taloned feet were steel lined boots, all the better for making a thunderous entrance with, and to keep his toe talons from scratching the decks of his own ship.

Sitting on a belt of silverish feral-siren skin, was a scabbard of venom-hot green basilisk leather, decorated with shards of wood, and rags of cloth sails from defeated war ships worthy enough to grace his person. Fitted within this record of achievement, was Seas Asunder, his legendary sabre. The steal, with diamond edging, had been forged within the heat of a living Leviathan’s heart, by terrifying magic cast from the Dread Opera Order of Sirens. Its hilt had been hewn from coral infused with obsidian birthed from a fissure in the world’s mantle. Upon the pommel of the hilt, hanging loosely by golden thread, was fixed the porcelain-white scalp of the Great Mer-Tyrant, whom Egil had bested in single combat, thus preventing decades of conflict, and countless deaths.

Following in the wake of each slash, and swish of the blade, came the rough tang of the salty sea air. Nothing else teased Egil’s strong sense of smell like the sharp scent of the sea air. It was valediction to the mundanity of a life he could have so easily slipped into.

Upon the ocean, upon the Daemon Flamingo, he was free.

Yet now, the vast reach of darkly rolling sea was heavy with the acridness of cannon smoke, metallic whisps of blood recently shed, and that cloying, festering odour of decay.

Since the arrival of the Vainglory Typhon, his kindred had entered into a new era of piracy and plunder. Wealth poured into Nauberta as unrelentingly as a tsunami, taken from the desperate merchant ships rerouted further south of Fohalin.

Not only was it liquid wealth, but it gave the pirates more ships and greater ordinance too. Escorts not destroyed were captured, growing the size of some pirate fleets. Nauberta was swiftly being warped into something beyond a den of decadency and debauchery, into something sickeningly gluttonous.

And it was all too easy… And Egil did not like to sully his spirit with the word, but without any honour too, he supposed.

Out in the seas in the past week and a half he had seen crews of surrendering vessels executed, to cackling laughter and shrill hooting. There were even rumours circulating that some captains were enslaving captives, a disgustingly hateful thought, and if true would need to be rectified. They weren’t brigands, or sneaks. They were the Pirate Lords of The Mane. There were laws, even amongst themselves, to be upheld.

Instead, too many captains and their crews were drunk on the wealth and bloodshed, the sudden unearned power they now held over weaker, desperate people. True colours came from people in times of trial, certainly, but they poured from the soul just as surely in times of great prosperity. Too few were worthy of the ports afforded their vessels it had been revealed.

Despite the surge in fortune, Nauberta was in fact dying, poisoning and eating itself to death like any glutton.

Worse, all of the Maytoni’s remarkable work was slowing being undone.

Then came the inkling of thorny guilt, embedded deep in Egil’s psyche, lodged and shifting uncomfortably with every thought.

All of this was, in part, was his fault.

While at the helm of the Daemon Flamingo Egil had tried to prevent Orion Aldenberg, that wicked creature, a cancerous cell to the body of the natural world, from slaying the vampire holding back the Typhon.

It had begun as a favour to a long-departed creature of myth, the Grand Raptor of the Seas, The Lady of Feathers, Ksenia Kiamount, the Daemon Flamingo’s former Quartermaster. She had brought with her to Nauberta an old friend from before her life as a pirate – and though unlikely to admit it, Egil was jealous of the notion on anyone being a friend of Ksenia longer than he. This archer was hoping to prevent disaster and slay the great hunter Orion Aldenberg.

The Phoenix Archer, he had been called. And what a marvellous sight he made with those flesh mangled burn scars; melted flesh coated in a jewel like sheen. A man with his own legend brewing.

Whilst the deathly barrier keeping the beast at bay had fallen, The Phoenix Archer had managed to slay Orion Aldenberg – though not without wavering upon the boarder of the afterworld himself. And as Egil and his crew were close be becoming overwhelmed by the great hunter’s security forces, The Phoenix Archer had loosed the terror fletched arrows he was renowned for in their aid, obliterating the mercenaries and Orion’s flagship.

As the Typhon had surfaced close by, Egil managed to get the battered remnants of the Daemon Flamingo into a withdrawal, and back to Nauberta.

The ship’s wounds healed fast, not only due to the efforts of his crew, but because of that supernatural force which lay within the ship. A force both unknown to Egil, and yet something he was so intimately connected to.

He doubted anyone would ever know what it was.

But this left something unfinished, something the ship could not tolerate. They had retreated from the beast, and wisely so. The Daemon Flamingo had been in no condition to battle such a colossus, and The Pheonix Archer needed greater medical aid than Egil’s practitioners could provide.

As soon as they arrived back in Nauberta, Egil could feel it, dense in his bones and swirling in his spirt, counter to the natural spin of his soul, that the ship was not content. That the duel with this beast was unfinished. Certainly, if the intrusive thorns of guilt weren’t enough, the Daemon Flamingo was seeking vindication, and an end to the Vainglory Typhon’s reign.

The Daemon Flamingo had faced and defeated many adversaries of legend, but nothing with a reputation as irrefutable as that of a Vainglory Typhon. Egil could feel the ship’s energy, its impatience, at getting back into the ocean.

It meant sailing with a reduced crew. The battle against Orion’s security forces had taken its toll. They were pirates, not professional soldiers, succeeding and surviving by hit and run, guerrilla tactics. Of the seventy sailors, Egil had fifty to crew the great ship in the here and now – and ten of them had been new recruits picked up after the clash with Orion.

In total the crew of the Daemon Flamingo could be as many as eighty, with several decks and many cannons to be operated. Now the number of available guns had been reduced, and even the mages who operated the ancient weather warping relic had not been replaced either. Fredricka van der Veer, his quartermaster told him that the ship was at half of its strength, the decks were far sparser, the ambient banter weaker. All of the clatter, hoots, profanity, and laughter had receded, leaving a mournful air over the ship.

There were plenty of armaments upon the Daemon Flamingo, certainly; broadside and forward flamethrowers, magically woven shields to intercept attacks, a ramming horn in the shape of a flamingo’s beak at the prow, mounted mortars to launch short range grenades, and a mighty ballista at the rear capable of punching through a small island. These complemented the many intangible attachments such as the weather warping relic, the ships own repair functionality, and a magnetic force that would hold captured ships at the Flamingo’s mercy. These particular weapons were as innate to the ship as lungs and a beating heart where to Egil.

“Ship!” A voice broke Egil’s reverie, loud and alarmed from the crow’s nest high above. It belonged to Vervloet, an elf with the eyes of a strato-griffin, and, paradoxically, a fear of heights.

Egil glanced up, squinting into the bright open sky to see the small shady silhouette of his look-out.

“Starboard side, forward of the prow. It looks set to sail right by us!” Egil swore he heard a break in the man’s voice and could clearly see the glowing whites upon Vervleot’s knuckles as he grasped at the rails.

Even the excitement of stripping the riches away from a fat ship, or the exhilaration of a fight were not nearly enough to assuage the dreary weight in Egil’s spirit. Nonetheless he leapt up the wooden steps to the front of the ship, taking his eyeglass from its pouch at the same time.

Quartermaster Fredricka van der Veer and First Officer Gabrijel Guseva were both present and taking an interest in the potential boon with their own eyeglasses raised. Behind them, down the vast length of the ship, the crew took to their posts and cries went up from officers to ‘encourage’ them to get there faster. Excitement was rife, emanating from the many hands as they anticipated riches, glory, and maybe a fight. This aura sent a tingle through Egil, bristling the fine hairs on his back and chest, behind his ears, and of course the prominent diamond-white whiskers on his cheeks.

“Anything worth our time?” Egil rasped, deciding not to bother with his own eyeglass. Instead, he leaned against the ivory imbued frame of the prow.

“At least Vervloet managed to get port and starboard correct this time,” Fredricka muttered. “Lesser ships wouldn’t have him.”

The current quartermaster, and the only person in the crew with the ability to argue with Egil, Fredricka van der Veer had replaced the glorious raptor that was the Lady of Feathers, Ksenia Kiamount. Whilst such a feverish creature would be difficult to follow, Fredricka had stepped into the role with a stolidly studious nature. It was her role to determine the worth of loot, counting up and working out currencies, recording their income, and most importantly, regulating the wages of the whole crew. Even Egil’s take was set by Fredricka and could not be disputed by him.

She was five and half feet tall, though stood with the sort of authoritative poise that added more inches to her height. Certainly, in Egil’s mind’s eye, Fredricka was taller than in person. She kept her molten-orange red hair woven in braids. Emerald eyes accentuated a rather grim stab scar on her left cheek, a pocketed twist of tissue tinged black by residual black-powder use. Yet her more peculiar feature were her elven ears; artificial, decorative metals to match her eyes had been fitted in place of the natural flesh and cartilage points.

Heavy green boots graced her feet, wrapped in colourful seaweed – an old superstation, the wearer believing they could not drown. A dark blue linen tunic was crossed with a simmering orange brace of ornate pistols, some bejewelled, others gaudy. The brace covered some of the stitched imagery of a whirlpool over the chest. A second brace of more worn orange sat about her waist, holding more elaborately designed pistols, above dark, seaweed green hoes tucked into her boots.

“I don’t question the will of the ship,” Egil replied curtly. “We could be nursing a future champion of some legend for all we know. I mean I was eight before I could fly – eight! Imagine the embarrassment of my parents.”

“I’d not be late to our appointment with the Siren Lords,” Gabrijel replied, keeping his eye on the distant prey. “It looks a vast beast. If they put up a fight, it’d take us the better part of the morning to subdue it. And then the rest of the day and night to record and value its inventory.”

“The rest of my day and night,” Fredricka corrected, though her voice was quick with the excitement of the thought.

Though the second in command of the Daemon Flamingo, and in line to take command should Egil fall, or become incapacitated, Gabrijel’s views were secondary to Fredricka’s ultimately. He was also much younger than Egil, though not much younger than Fredricka, at 34. Gabrijel was a wise man however, with the type of maturity and wisdom that came from surviving an abusive environment, be it the local guard in a city or even as localised as one’s parents. Egil, didn’t know, as Gabrijel never spoke of it. All Egil knew of the man was that one, the ship wanted him, and two, he was remarkably reliable and brave.

During the battle with Orion’s security, Gabrijel took to the bloodied shores, leading by might, courage, and example. He knew if he lunged in first, that others would find their courage. His body took plenty of wounds in the process, but not one slowed him. To men like Gabrijel, due to whatever environment they suffered growing up in, death was a relief, a final peace. What scared people like him, the way death scared others, was failure.

Gabrijel had dark skin with a hue of bronze, silver eyes like glowing moons, and long, luscious hair like black liquid silk, tied up in a ponytail. He wore silken robes, pink and white to match the ship he served upon, with a black band across his waist holding a brace of pistols and throwing knives. Upon his breast was woven a flamingo, drawing a curved horn-bow with its feet, set in black and diamond silk thread. A fiery orange quiver, decorated with shards of broken blades from fallen foes, was strapped to his back. Within were golden arrows, fitted with pink and black feathers, and ivory thread. Standing next to him, held by one hand at its upper limb tip, was Peasant’s Crown, a horn-bow hewn from the horns of a portal-dragon.

“They are taking some risk sailing these waters,” Fredricka muttered. She took the eyeglass away from her face to take in the wider scope of the sight, frowned and clenched her jaw, and then brought the device back to her eye. “That… It’s huge. Or my depth perception is suffering.”

“Suffering from that hangover you were winging about only moments ago,” Gabrijel quipped.

Curious now, Egil was about to raise his own eyeglass when he caught the shadow on the horizon and was struck by its size. The vessel was still far off, very far off, yet it resembled the bearing of a distant mountain.

“Any flags?” He asked, holding his eyeglass low and staring on unaided. With his free hand, he tapped this thumb across his fingers, an old and odd habit.

“I don’t see any,” Gabrijel answered. “There are masts, many, but…” His voice trailed off into a series of clucks.

“Is that…?” Fredricka began.

Egil sighed, which from a sphinx was like the hiss of a hot gas escaping a fissure. He took up his eyeglass to see for himself, and his fur stiffened, whiskers tingling as if touched by frost. “I think we can put off our meeting with the Siren Lords and risk discourteousness… This isn’t something I’d expect to see.”

Fredricka turned, dropping her eyeglass, and furrowed her brow. The dark scar on her cheek was untouched by the sunlight spilling across her face, as if repulsed by it, or perhaps the sun’s light was loathe to go near it.

Without looking, keeping his narrow eyes on the floating abnormality, Egil spoke, “That’s got to be a floating palace; some deviant’s greedy keep.”

“You think?” Fredricka replied, her voice alight with expectation.

“They stay far out in the middle of the oceans, away from anyone. They’re own little kingdoms…”

“We should take it; Siren Lords be damned. They creep me out anyhow.”

Egil turned a critical glare on Fredricka and took in a breath to recover from the sharp burst of anger. Sirens had suffered fatally from prejudice through most of known history, especially given their superficial comparison to feral sirens.

“We’re free kindred of the ocean, Quarter Master,” Egil hissed in response. “Prejudice is beneath us. It belongs to the ignorant and wretched. All are equal in the embrace of the Ocean.”

Fredricka started, though rather subtly, but Egil’s acute senses picked up on the shiver that rumbled through her shoulders.

“I didn’t mean anything prejudicial, it’s just they’re…”

“How is the Pastoral this morning?” Egil said, changing the subject to curb Fredricka’s shame.

“Breakfast!” Zane Hoxha called as he clambered into the private chambers given to Renata Zeman.

The ship’s chief medical practitioner’s voice came like a sharp tug, pulling Renata from the lucid, wavering darkness. Reluctant lids rolled back to reveal ember-orange eyes, and though warm, the purple bags hanging beneath them dulled their heat.

Rena had short blonde hair, cut short and cropped, hardly enough to grasp as she ran a hand through it. Her face was slender, though subdued cheekbones gave a gentle bulge to her cheeks as her chin narrowed. She hated her nose, seeing it as too beak like in shape. Whilst Pastorals were renowned for their youthful visages, some in their forties looking no older than in their twenties, Rena felt her age, thirty, plus ten… Or fifteen more like. For one thing, her face felt thick with grease, the skin saggy, and puffy, whilst her eyes retreated beneath her brow, which itself felt as if it was protruding far more than usual. Rena wondered how much of it was just poor sleep, and how much was simple insecurity.

A wave of buttery scents blanketed Rena as she rolled about in the tangle of blankets, as if caught in a bed of gloriously soft weeds. Her legs were trapped, and her head hung over the edge of the bed, a numb arm pinned beneath her. Her head whirled, gruel in place of brains, weighed down with thicker currents. Beneath it was a mild ache.

“Another good twelve hours, my dear. You must be reckless with energy or still holding the burden of everything you have endured,” Zane’s tone turned sombre as he set the tray down on a table by the bed and dragged a stool across. The cry of wood scraping against the floor shot something hot through Rena’s guts, something alarming. She growled and clamped down on the feeling.

“I’m grand. Just wrecked. I’m not an explorer, and I was never a very good pilgrim,” Rena choaked out in a faint voice. She rose, bracing herself against the mattress, and crawled up into a sitting position by the headboard. She was glad to see Zane, however. His presence helped her to waken up, or at least to shift herself into something more human. “And don’t say, ‘holding the burden’ like it’s something someone can so easily drop. Gods, if life were so simple we’d all be emotionally stable paragons… And how dull would that be? Invite those of a wounded of mind, and I’ll throw you a banquet filled with raucousness.” She was paraphrasing, as the original writ read, ‘Invite those of a wounded mind and I’ll throw you a banquet filled with compassion.’.

Rena finally felt the courage to turn her face towards the handsome siren, waving off the insecurity that came from a beaten mind, floundering in fatigue.

Zane was tall, over six feet, with a toned, stalky frame. In place of hair, sirens had soft feathers, somewhere between downy feathers and the pinions found on wings. Over Zane’s crown ruby reds infused into darker shades, rich browns, before terminating in a pitch black, the coloured feathers pouring back into a near neck length cut. The autumn colours accentuated his pale, pearl white skin, and imbued a warmth to his black irises.

“Having daemons does make life more interesting. We would be bored without them, I’m sure,” Zane replied, with a grin. He reached to the try and took up a tankard, whips of steam escaping it, and the scent of something honey-sweet making its way to Rena’s nose. “Drink this, it should still the oncoming storm in your head.”

Rena took the tankard carefully as her arm wavered, the muscles turning to wet clay. She wanted what was in it, given the alluring scent, and was not disappointed by the sweet, caramel rich taste. Muscles tightened behind her eyes, and something tickled its way through her drooping shoulder muscles, and chest.

“What are your daemons then, Zane?” She asked, slurping more of the tonic.

“Many, and all under my heel,” the siren replied sitting back, an arm across the bedside table. “They’re not the problem here, Rena.”

Oh, he was going to want to her to talk about it… Rena’s eyes dropped, gazing into the still, steaming liquid before her. Her mind instantly slammed the portcullis shut against the tidal wave of memories. Despite that, however, her heart pounded and cold sweat stung at her shoulders and arms like frost.

“Not ready, I see,” Zane said softly, rubbing the faint down under his chin. “We can’t go charging in, you know. But eventually, you need to talk about what you saw, and experienced.” His dark eyes searched beneath her lowered gaze; Rena could feel them and couldn’t help but meet his jet eyes in the end.

“The worst things I had ever seen in life were plagues, people dying, emaciated – and those gaunt, skeletal faces stay with me… But… What happened at Gorjin…” Her breath caught in throat with a squeak, and she raised and hand to her trembling mouth. It was becoming harder to breathe as the anxiety tightened about her chest.

Zane continued to look at her, with his earnest gaze.

“Imagine you’re on a shore, cotton soft sand beneath your bare feet,” Zane continued, his tone like a silk shawl as it held Rena. “Behind you is the sun, its soft heat falling over your shoulders…” His tone began to take on a lyrical form. “Before you, the horizon, and what comes over that horizon does so only by your command, and what falls beneath the horizon does so also by your command… From this shore you can see all of your past, preformed for you as you will it.”

Rena felt the discomfort of her fatigue smooth out into a blissful tiredness, the kind experienced just before sleep begins. She found herself balanced there, between blissful rest and blind sleep. It was beautiful, every muscle relaxed, her heart a rhythmic lullaby.

Around Zane the gloomy shadows of the den disintegrated, landscape paintings and shelves crumbling to ashes, to reveal an azure vista, cut off by a golden horizon.

“What do you see, Rena? What of your recent past is on that horizon?”

At the furthest edge, the darker navy waters turned alarmingly dark, then wickedly red… Rena’s heart jumped, a jolt like falling in a dream. The burgundy darkness spread, seeping through the soothing colour of the still water. Burgandy turned to crimson, dark crimson on a bed of pitch black as it grew and grew. This new foul tide poured towards her, tearing into stillness of the waters with vehemence, and Rena’s arms and legs turned to icy slush, and her heart was flooded with terror-

“Stop!” She snapped, flinching as if coming out of a dream where she had been falling. Her breathing was rapid, her heart aching as it pounded. Before she could speak further, she felt Zane’s hand on her clammy cheek, and the searing terror in her veins recoiled, and dissipated. Her pulse dropped, her heart with it, back to a calmer rate.

“I’m sorry,” Zane muttered, standing, leaning over Rena.

“No, it’s okay. I… I need to deal with all this, I know… Goodness me, it’d be hypocritical of me not to, given my pastoral work, wouldn’t it?” She replied, looking up at Zane with a weak smile. “All the people I took by the hand to walk through their own trauma and pain, and here I whimper pitifully.”

“I’m glad you still see yourself as a Pastoral. Your people may have forsaken you, but your Gods have not. That is clear, at least to me.”

“You say Gods like you believe in them too?” Rena replied struggling to untangle her legs from the blankets, wafting up a stench of old sweat instead, making her nose wrinkle. Gods, I feel disgusting this morning, she thought.

“Well, many civilisations share the same fundamental foundations in their beliefs as the Maytoni – the same archetype Gods, the Divined as you call them, the conspiracy to pull the people from the tyranny of Gods, and of course the Wrathfire. Maytoni is just another interpretation of it all. There are Gods, Rena. I’ve seen too much to be convinced otherwise.”

As Zane explained his own beliefs Rena felt some abstract bond forming. She was aware that many civilisations the world over, shared similar foundations in their own religious beliefs and creation stories. Of course, whilst they shared the same beginnings, at various points they all broke away, like rivulets weaving away from the main river to form their own body.

“And I still have work to do, don’t I?” Rena sighed, unable to help herself from smiling, however.

“Of course. Now get up and eat. The captain spotted something and isn’t letting it go.”

Egil liked the Pastoral, not only for what she had done to seal the fissures in Nauberta and the surrounding waters, but because she was humble, and honest. The ship had given no opinion of her, which was strange. Anyone who stepped upon the deck of the Daemon Flamingo, the ship made sure to let Egil know, deep in his spirit, what it thought of them. It was how he and Fredricka recruited sailors. But when Rena set foot upon the deck, a few days ago, Egil was stupefied by the silence, so much so that he felt mildly dizzy.

She had been found upon an archipelago, south of Fohalin proper helping refugees onto boats from the Venom State – volunteers doing what good they could. When Rena had seen the Daemon Flamingo on the horizon, she had a time of it calming the terror fatigued people. But once the last of them had made it aboard the ships, she had one sailor take her across to it.

It was the first time he had formally met the woman. Hardly the regal ceremony she deserved, welcomed aboard the greatest pirate ship to ever sail, especially given how she resembled a forgotten corpse unburied from the sand and then left in the sun too long – and then there was the berating given to Egil over frightening the refugees.

It was thanks to Rena’s arrival upon Nauberta that the pirate capital had sealed its old fissures and lanced its boils. Of course, at first Rena was terrified, having arrived very much by accident when the ship she was on needed a port for repairs when damaged by a storm.

Egil knew all about the pirate lords – or what was left of them – within the Poet’s Sea. Barbarous creatures, upholding the ancient and outdated laws of piracy like lesser evolved beasts clinging to a more primal dogma when greater understanding pours through.

Once the Maytoni was introduced to the wider island, her views were expanded, and she began to feel more welcome. Seeing the Pastoral in Nauberta, it was like watching the pirate nation lift its lethargic body up from a mire, to collect itself and remember its strength. Pirate crews who were a sliver of gold away from going to war with one had had their grievances healed; others who stayed upon their own parts of the island, in a sullen, uneasy truce, now shared the same taverns and brothels; and no one was holding out in declaring their ‘income’ upon return, so taxes where being paid in full.

And now new wounds were peeling open, self-inflicted through greed and bloodlust.

“Good morning, Rena,” Egil called, turning to greet the honoured guest upon his ship. He bowed, dropping to a knee, stretching his bright wings back.

The Pastoral, swathed in a cotton blanket, only stared.

“Get up, or I will pull your heart out through your arse,” she seethed quietly.

At the prow of the ship, Fredricka and Gabrijel sniggered. Egil glanced up, looking into the dark, narrow, and unimpressed eyes above him. Of course, he scolded himself. Maytoni resented ideologies regarding monarchy style reverence.

He rose, quickly, grinning handsomely, and spread his arms. “My apologies, Rena. I keep forgetting. But you won’t get far with threats of sodomy in these parts.”

A silly grin slipped across Rena’s beautiful face, and Egil could see all was forgiven. That was another beautiful trait with Rena, that she did not hold on to anything so toxic as a grudge.

“How are you this grand morning?” Egil continued, leaning against the prow as a faint breeze waved through the fine fur of his torso.

“It’s always a grand morning, isn’t it?” Rena replied, keeping away from the prow, and huddling beneath the blanket. Egil couldn’t possibly understand how she was always cold.

“I captain the greatest ship to ever be,” Egil replied, spreading his arms, talons rolling with white light. “I wake up every day to the best friends, as a free being!” He cried with a joyous yowl. He settled and stepped away from the prow, circling around Rena as she smirked and looked off into the enormous azure ocean before her. “As are you, my dear. Free! Isn’t it the most glorious, invigorating feeling – doesn’t it put new life into your heart!”

Egil towered over the Pastoral, but he towered over most people – and with his wings, even folded in, they accentuated his terrifyingly broad frame.

“I was free, Egil. I had all of Maytoni under my feet, and a nation of people to help and keep close to the Gods.”

“And now you are here, exiled because you saved one of those very people. Religion is such as an odd game. The rules shift and change like the weather, and frankly the Gods are just as predictable. It would take a narrow mind to see that by keeping someone from the Gods, was indeed, keeping them close to the Gods.”

“Such is life,” Rena retorted.

Hissy laughter rolled from Egil’s mouth. “True I suppose. But, Rena, my dear, there is freedom in exile! Those long-worn laws and that decrepit dogma can be thrown overboard, and you can really listen to what the world says… Or in your case, the Gods.”

Rena paced around, towards the prow, and leaned against the rail, smiling to herself. Egil felt a prodding in his chest, something uplifting at the sight of the young woman’s smile. He understood it must have been a brutal affair being thrown out of her home, but to wander in a wicked limbo, unsure of where one stood with their Gods… Well, that must have been a seemingly unescapable despair – true pain.

“Look at all you have done since you arrived. And when you arrived, what a shivering little lady you were! I was beside myself! How dare those craven creatures of the Poet’s Sea warp the reputation of all pirates, of me and my beautiful crew and ship!” As his voice peaked, his wings jerked excitedly.

“But you digress,” Rena jested, folding her arms and brining her blanket in closer to keep the cold at bay. “Evangelism is illegal under Maytoni law – which isn’t a bad thing. But there are some who would look at all I have done and call it evangelism, criminal, heretical.”

“Always coming back to such sorrowful self-criticism! Thankfully we are not those people. And since when is preforming good deeds considered religious work?”

Rena shrugged. “When the do-gooder’s heart isn’t really in the work, and they’re just trying to make more converts.”

“Indeed! There are many such fussy frauds in this world. But that is never you. You can’t help but bring good and compassion where it is needed, and for its own sake too! Who else, so gallantly, so sincerely makes for a disaster site, one ruled by a mythic beast, to do whatever they can.”

Then the light behind Rena’s eyes wavered, flickering out like a flame under the duress of a sudden breeze.

“But I openly overstep, I see,” Egil added quickly with a hiss. He approached Rena and placed a paw upon her shoulder, squeezing gently. “You are strong, my dear. Tragically we never really feel how strong we are or can be. But it’s there in your heart.”

“I was told you had spotted something,” Rena then said, changing the subject with a pang of guilt striking Egil’s gut that he’d upset her.

“Ah, yes.”

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