"Now," You point your finger straight up to the gathering dark clouds. "The Dajufeng is a place few have entered and even fewer have ever left. If anything's alive in there, it's strong and resilient enough to handle an eternally changing storm that has never once let up, not in all of recorded history. That includes the slavers we're hunting."
You pause, then clear your throat. "An attack is coming for us, something big."
Caihong raises an eyebrow but says nothing.
"They think they're ready for us, that they're going to catch us off guard. Understand this, though: They ain't ready for me. They ain't ready for you, neither! They hide in the storm. But what they don't know is that we are the Storm!" You raise your sword and point it towards the center of the storm. "We're gonna sail right through that storm like we were made to!"
Han roars approval, Maia pounds her chest and laughs, Eun is looking at you with a softly glowing smile, and Caihong nods. Mei is with some of the new recruits, laughing with her arms around them.
"Okay people!" You say, clapping your hands together." You yell. "When the attack comes, be ready for anything. Follow my orders to the letter. And when we beat back this threat we'll make our way into the heart of this Cult's machinations and slit their throats! You scurvy-ridden deck-swabbers with me?! Plunder, murder and booty await!"
Han whoops. Eun raises a fist. Some stranger you've never met holds up his rifle. The crew is shouting.
It isn't your best speech, but the crew seems rallied, that's all that matters.
"Alright!" You laugh. "Knew I could count on ye. Now listen, cuz when this comes for us, things are gonna happen fast!"
-
The crew scrambles to reef the sails and prepare the cannons. You have a brief moment of calm reflection as the winds grow stronger and the rain begins to come down harder. You haven't dealt with storms often in your life, but you do know how to navigate them. The rain comes down in sheets, but you shout directions to Caihong, who follows your instructions to the letter.
Speaking of, Caihong steps up to you, leaving the wheel to Eun of all people. "Shanwei, there's something I need to tell you bef-"
You bristle. "Do you have an issue with my orders?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Are you here to apologize?"
"… no sir."
"Then I don't care." You growl. "Get back on the wheel, we're going to need to make minute adjustments a lot before we're out of this mess."
She doesn't answer. She just turns and walks away. As she does you hear her mutter, "Fine, I'll handle it."
-
The waves striking the sides of your boat are massive, and non-essential crew is already below decks. The storm could be a lot worse, but this is still pretty bad, especially by your standards.
You look out your spyglass, scanning the distance for any signs of the attack you're sure is coming.
Nothing. You're in sight of a small island that Jiang Wei has directed you towards, but the torrential downpour has kept the water disturbed and roiling. The sky is only barely light, the sun just barely managing to shine through thick storm clouds above.
You grip the ratline tighter. Where is the attack? Would it come on the way out instead? No, of course no, that'd be too late for them. Is Jiang Wei leading you into a trap? Possible, but Caihong seems convinced he's genuine and while she doesn't like you she's got a good head on her shoulders otherwise (that's why she's your first mate).
Hrm. Doesn't stop her from making a mistake, though.
… Or maybe Delai lied to you. You snort. Good thing you ignored her about the reefing, then. If-
KRRNCH
The entire ship lurches to port, and you're the only one aboard who doesn't stumble.
Before anyone but you recovers, mottled white tentacles erupt from the waves and start wrapping around the ship.
Depths below, she'd told the truth.
"ALL CANNONS!" You yell.
Nothing happens and you feel panic for a single heart-stopping moment, then you hear the cannons erupt. Two of the seven tentacles are ripped apart, but the rest recoil and slip down into the ocean. But you can feel it; whatever it did at first has already hurt the Dagger. She's taking on water below and sinking. Slowly, but inevitably.
"Mei, Ping, get to cargo, it's punched a hole in our hull! I'm going into the water." You toss your hat to Eun. "Keep this safe for me."
"Y-yessir." She says, looking a little dazed. Although in fairness, so does the rest of the crew.
"Shanwei-" Caihong begins, pulling herself to her feet.
"No arguing. If that thing destroys the keel we're all dead and this was pointless." You point back at Caihong as you move towards the starboard railing. "Put our heading onto that island, then get everyone to the gun deck and give me some cover if you can. I'll be back soon."
You run to the gunwale and dive into the water, and it parts before you as easily as air. This is what you were made for; you can feel it in your bones.
Mottled white tentacles swing at your vessel, going for another blow. You quickly shoot towards them, drawing your blade as you go. The power field makes the water boil around you as it activates, and as you slice through the tentacles you hear a deep booming roar down below.
It's in pain. Good.
The tentacles pull away from the ship. You take a moment to glance back at the damage. The keel's still intact, but there's holes in the hull. It's going to have to find land soon or it'll sink. And worse, you can see bodies swimming up onto the vessel. Some of them look back at you, and your skin crawls at the sight, though they don't go for you. Instead they keep climbing onto your ship.
Rage blazes in your chest at this personal affront. No time for games, then, and more importantly no wish. No one fucks with your ship.
It's the more important target. Your crew can handle whatever is climbing aboard, at least for now, but if that thing gets another good hit, you're screwed.
The Shiraken turns over in the deep water, lazily circling around. Its milky white eyes are turned directly towards you, and though you initially thought them blind, the eye stays fixed on you even as you move through the water.
It's taking your measure.
Interesting. Even the smartest animals generally act by instinct. Sharks will attack swimming humans, but few will actually eat them; they will take a bite, realize they haven't bitten a seal, and then swim away. Had the shiraken been a normal animal, it likely would've already fled.
Seems Delai was telling the truth, then. This creature was no ordinary animal.
-
Caihong curses as her captain dives into the water. Great. Just what she needs, the best fighter on the ship abandoning it to take on an undead kraken. He wouldn't die down there, of course, the prick.
Thought he was so cool. She remembered when he'd first been brought into the fleet, holding mama's hand with that stupid wide-eyed stare.
… She'd told him that she'd always remember he got his captaincy out of nepotism rather than skill. She regrets saying it. It's not like her to let something as petty as getting passed over for promotion to make her angry, and he did have all the skill needed.
If he hadn't literally fallen out of the sky this ship would've been hers. How was she to prove her worth when a literal gods-damned legend was-
Tentacles burst from the water, going straight towards the Cutting Dagger-
"Starboard guns!" Caihong yells. What in the hells was she thinking?! This was no time to reminisce!
Maia fires the guns, and the tentacles are torn to bits. The kraken pulls its tentacles under with a speed that defies belief.
"CAIHONG!" Han shouts, "THERE'S SOMETHING ON THE HULL!"
Ah, depths.
She looks over the gunwale, and her eyes widen with horror.
Whatever is crawling up the ship's hull, it looks human, but its disgusting form is anything but. And as she looks, it's joined by another. Then another. And another… then a dozen, crawling their way up, ignoring the surf.
The once-men were heavily blistered and greenish black, with swollen, bleached hands and feet (when they had them at any rate). They were covered in wrinkles, and their torso were heavily bloated, like they were filled with gas. Their bodies were covered in tiny shrimp and one even has a crab on its back that falls as it climbs aboard the ship.
They bear faces she recognizes, from the slavers of the Rude Awakening they had slain. But that doesn't make any sense. The bodies are obviously heavily decayed, but they were slain less than 2 weeks ago and miles away from here.
She curses and fires her pistol, blowing off the head of one of the creatures IT'S STILL FUCKING CLIMBING she pulls back towards the stairs down, drawing her blade instead.
She takes a moment to check their heading. They're going straight for the island. She locks the wheel in place; it's no guarantee against a storm but it's the best she can do.
"Everyone to the gun deck, now!" She yells. "Keep them off the cannons!!"
-
Its tentacles lash out, and you dance aside with ease, foam filling the water as you strike back. Blood and ichor balloons out from the severed tentacle. It unfurls its many arms and tentacles, all reaching for you, and though you cut a dozen apart, one of them manages to wrap around you and drag you down deeper.
Of course, you're in no real danger of drowning. Every time you've tried to see how long you could hold your breath underwater, you've gotten bored and decided to do something else before you even felt the strain in your lungs.
You hear booms above, and the tentacles reaching past towards the boat recoil in evident pain. Ha! Nice.
The creature's tentacle squeezes, fleshy barbs scraping against your skin. You push back against the pressure, but to your surprise the creature does not immediately release you, instead trying to squeeze even tighter.
The audacity.
This time you push without holding back, and the creature's tentacle tears apart like wet paper, rotted flesh filling the water around you like blood. Shocked and surprised, the creature turns and flees deeper into the water.
Hells no, it's not getting away.
You dive down deeper, blade in hand, shooting down like a bullet. You see the kraken's massive, half-rotted beak, and you dive straight in, plunging your blade straight down into its eye. Blood erupts around you…
…And then something black fills the water as well. You can still see, but there's a black mist in the water that's making an already difficult visual environment into an impossible one. In the same moment you realize this, tentacles wrap around you again, and barbs pierce your skin.
You grit your teeth, and pray your crew can hold out. This might take a minute or two.
-
There's a sudden lurch as the ship slams into something.
They've run aground.
Caihong pulls herself to her feet again, casting her mind upward to the sounds of battle. Jiang Wei is shut in the captain's quarters, with the desk against the door. Caihong had ordered it and given him both a gun and a sword. It wasn't like he could get away anyway. The rest had gone down to the gun deck.
Caihong is a little worried about leaving him in that position, but if these zombies had come from the Rude Awakening, they wouldn't be going for him. She hopes.
The gun deck is being overrun. New bodies are piling in through the gunports, and nobody's close enough to shut them now. No more shots on the kraken, not that there'd been much chance to. There are bodies everywhere, and those that aren't rotted aren't moving.
The crew's been split by the incoming creatures. Caihong and a few others are on one side, closer to the cargo hold. She can't see them anymore, but some of the crew was on the other side of the gun deck and had been forced upward into the rain.
The creatures just keep coming no matter how much she hacks at them or shoots them!
Caihong can hear fighting up above, so that's a good sign. A less good sign is the face looking at her now.
The former captain of the Rude Awakening, his skull partially caved in, one eye milky and blind, tilting his head towards her.
Not that she recognizes his face, persay, but who else had had their skull caved in in such a fashion?
"Ah," the creature muses, through a distended jaw that should've have been able to produce any sound. "I think I remember ye."
Caihong feels sick looking at him. "I don't think you met me personally before your skull was caved in."
"You know so little of the Drowned." The creature rasps, and sprays seawater onto the deck. "And now ye'll die. Die like the rest of yer misbegotten kind should."
Caihong's blood boils. "Slavers don't get to talk down to anybody. Not even pirates."
The creature laughs. "Still hidin where ye came from, are ye? No matter. I know it now. I see it burning in your soul. You-"
Han's pistol barks and the former captain's jaw explodes into bits.
Caihong blinks in surprise. She hadn't known his gun was anything more than blackpowder. "Damn Han."
"Less talking more shooting!"
She brings up her pistol and fires. The creature's head explodes, but the body shambles forward towards them.
And to her horror, the creatures at the other end of the deck turn towards her as well. Apparently they decided she was the bigger threat.
"CARGO HOLD!" She shouts. "NOW!"
-
You've lost track of what in the water is blood and what's the creature's ink, there's simply too much. Your blade cuts through water, ink and blood, sizzling in the water as you slice the beast up.
A beak slams into your side, and you grab it with your arms to force it open. This creature is desperate, and trying to drag you under with it. The light was already faded from the storm, but it's almost entirely gone now; your power sword is all that lights up the ink and blood around you.
You stab upward into the flesh around its beak and give your weapon a good twist. It schreeches, and its tentacle slams into you again with the force of a cannonball.
You reel back in the water, righting yourself with a quick shake of your head. Though the darkness down here is deeper and colder than any you've seen, you can still pick out the dead thing in the water. It's swimming away now, all caution abandoned in a blind panicked need to run.
There's no time for games. Your crew's been alone up there for too long and they need you.
You dive down towards the creature like the torpedos of old, blade straight ahead. You re-activate your weapon's power field at the last moment, piercing straight through its body, coming out the other end coating in blood and ink. Quickly you kick the other direction, dodging past the desperate tentacle swipes and shooting through it again. And again. And again.
It takes you more than a dozen such strikes before the creature stops struggling and is naught but a floating corpse in the water once more.
You only spare the beast a moment or two more of attention – seeing it drift lazily downward, into a darkness even you can't see through – before you turn and kick up towards the surface.
-
The ship's overrun.
There's just so many of them. Caihong's tried to keep those she can barricaded out, keep them in narrow corridors where their numbers mean nothing. But they're so resilient that it almost doesn't matter. They claw and reach and groan and cough and it doesn't matter what the crew does. They break through.
The crew is at the end of their rope. Han's guns click but no longer fire. Eun is fighting with a sword in one hand and holding Sun-Sin's hat with the other. Mei's on the ground, unmoving and unblinking. Where's Ping? Hopefully at the other end of the ship.
Maia is being dragged down, and she's screaming. Han is yelling her name, Eun's crying out.
Caihong curses. No choice anymore.
She rips off her eyepatch, witchfire blazes in her eye socket, and it carves a path through the undead.
-
You're swimming as quickly as you can, and the currents pull you forward, as welcoming as they always have been.
Bright pink light flares in the distance, and your eyes are able to pick out your ship and an island.
You immediately rocket through the water towards it.
-
The whispering is back. It feels so good to hear them again. Like long-lost friends that hold no grudge for how Caihong abandoned them. Before long, they will fill her head with lies and drive her to madness. But she must endure, at least until the ship is safe she won't send them away again.
What the crew couldn't do with blade and pistol, Caihong's witchfire does plenty well she knows not why. The last of the zombies to come into the room dies.
Caihong can feel how the crew is looking at her now. She's trying not to think about it.
When the crew had found the witch children, Caihong had been surprised by the fervor with which they'd protected and avenged them. Perhaps it was simply because they were young, or that they didn't have clear abilities like she did.
Han is fretting over Maia the imbecile. She's not dead, but Caihong's flame had not spared her injury. Half of her serpent tattoo is gone, and she's trembling from pain.
Caihong kneels next to Han and Maia. Han doesn't even flinch. She appreciates that, even if she'll never say it. Maia is pathetically holding on to Han like a piece of driftwood in a storm.
"She'll make it." Caihong promises without being certain herself. "Come on. We need to check the rest of the ship."
"You could've done that the whole time?" Han asks through gritted teeth, not looking at her blaming her.
"No. And it was an exceptional risk to us all." She stands, her knees weak. "Take her to medbay, then join me up top. And Eun, what are you-"
She grips the hat to her chest. "The captain told me to keep it safe."
Caihong raises an eyebrow at her. She wonders if Eun's devotion is something Sun-Sin notices and likes. The former, probably.
"Let's check on our prisoner and see where we've landed." She says instead. "…And count the bodies."
-
You step from the water, the rain pouring down around you as you run up onto the beach. Your ship has run aground, the winds are buffeting everything that isn't you, and the rain is still pouring down in in sheets.
Caihong's eye patch is in her hand, and the empty eye socket is ablaze with witchfire. She nods to you and ties the eyepatch back on, the witchfire fading.
Huh. Caihong is a witch, then. Not exactly what you would've expected from her, but everyone has their secrets, you suppose. You're not sure why she waited for you to show up, but there are more important questions.
Eun's holding out your hat. She's bloody and looks exhausted, but she's smiling at you.
"Thanks Eun." You take the hat and put it on. "Damage?"
"She'll need repairs before she's seaworthy again." Caihong says. "But the damage isn't severe."
"The enemy?"
She shrugs. "Dead or fled."
So an attack might still come, then. Shit. "How many did we lose?"
"Twenty-eight dead, another 7 will need time in medbay." Caihong says. "Not ideal, but it could've been much worse."
Not ideal indeed. Your ship's crew numbered about a hundred when you set out.
"What about our prisoner?"
Caihong nods. "He's here." She mutters, jabbing her thumb back towards the scholarly-looking navigator. She is pointedly not looking at him, though he's looking at her like he just witnessed a miracle.
… normally you'd point that out and tease her over it but this is a bad time. "And does anyone know what happened to our stowaway?"
"She's fi-" Eun's hand slapped over her own mouth, and the entire surviving crew looked at her. Caihong's look in particular is something between shock and disappointment.
You raise an eyebrow. You hadn't expected that to work. But if Delai had been telling the truth about the attack, then the stowaway was at least worth a question. "Eun."
"In my defense," she says slowly, "She snuck onboard and when I found out we were already-"
"Aye," You say. It's secret pirate code for 'shut up.'
She clamps her mouth shut.
"Who did you bring along?"
"… The anti-witch." She admits.
Ping, who has been silent so far, blanches. "You brought a child into the storm?!"
"Hey hey, I told you, she was already on board when-"
Your reaction comes quick.
-
It seems that Eun kept the presence of Fan on your ship concealed from you, and in the process the little null girl's life has been in immense danger. How do you react to your crewmate not telling you this?
[] – Angry
This fucking braintrust found out you'd brought a child into the eternal storm and didn't think to inform the captain?!
[] – Panicked/Concerned
[] - Concerned
Fan could be dead!
[] – Stern
Eun needs to be punished for keeping this a secret from you. This is done, but it can never be allowed to happen again.
[] – Whatever
What's done is done. What matters now is how you handle this going forward. You're still on an unknown island, after all.
[] – Write in
-
AN: (If you're wondering why this vote ends Sunday it's because I have a wedding to be at in another city this weekend and I will not have my laptop because it's broken.)
