by Noah Layton
My fingertips took a hold of the wooden edge of the ladder.
But one of my feet had landed in the mud.
It was like dipping my toes into syrup.
Last I had checked I could do 20 pull-ups in a row, and that was even considering the fact that I weighed 220lbs – with my diet over the past few weeks it was now probably closer to 210 – but pulling myself from the mud made me feel like my arms were about to snap in half.
‘What the fuck is this stuff?’ I called out.
‘Don’t panic,’ Lola said. ‘Put your back into it.’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’
I clamped my hands around the ladder, tensed my biceps and my back, and wrenched myself up as hard as I could.
I screamed out like I had never done before, not even back when the wolf at the Rourke Homestead had ripped a patch of skin from my arm.
My muscles yelled with pain, and with all my might I pulled myself from the mud.
My body had done the job.
And one of my fingernails had snapped off.
Half of the one on my middle finger, anyway. It had come loose completely cleanly, exposing a bed of blood.
I hauled myself onto the deck and staggered over, falling onto my back and panting hard.
‘Are you okay?’ Lara shouted.
‘Yeah, but I’m going to need some disinfectant when I get back.’
‘We have some at camp,’ Lola said.
‘Thanks. How much rope do I have?’
‘About fourteen yards.’
‘Okay. I’m heading inside.’
‘Be careful,’ Lara shouted.
I retrieved the scimitar from my inventory and headed across the deck. Now I felt like a real pirate.
The point where the vessel had broken in two exposed a mass of chipped wood and splintered edges, but there was enough room for me to get down there and into the hold beneath the deck.
Taking half of my nail off was one thing, but I really didn’t feel like filling my hands with splinters. After rooting through my mess of an inventory I found one useful thing that I had left in there – harvesting gloves.
They had come with the harvesting shed, the very first totem that I had unlocked on my land.
I pulled them on and lowered myself carefully through the break in the wood, sliding my body against the sharpened blades that stabbed me lightly as I squirmed through and into the hold.
Dropping down and landing below deck, I chanced a look into where the two halves of the boat had pressed against each other. There was something down there that was keeping both sides of the boat from slipping into the mud. It should have sank much further than it had done.
CRE-E-E-A-A-K.
The entire boat shuddered around me. Vibrations coursed through the wood and into my boots, resonating into my body.
‘What was that?’ I called outside. ‘Can you girls see anything?’
‘It’s you,’ Lola shouted. ‘Your weight is shifting the boat. Move slowly.’
I did as I was told, but not before taking a single step and hitting a heavy box.
No way, I told myself. The chest can’t be lying here…
That would have been way too easy – and it turned out that I was exactly right.
I reached down, surprised to find the box lying lidless.
Carefully, I felt for the innards of the crate.
Touching the first object, the inventory for the contents appeared, and even though it was almost pitch black down here I knew my face had gone white as a sheet.
Small explosive x37
I gulped, remaining perfectly still. Even if they were stored in here, they were still exposed. They could easily explode if afforded the opportunity.
I had no intention of clogging up my inventory with more stacks of items, even if these could prove useful. I had to prioritise, and there was much more bountiful treasure to be found on board the vessel.
But it was all the more reason to be as careful as possible.
I started with the hull. The inward-collapsing of the boat meant that I was walking on a slight incline. Every one of my footsteps was calculated. If the slightest movement of my weight resulted in a creak, I adjusted my route towards the square opening ahead.
After a minute I reached the door and moved through, searching in near-total darkness.
I had the means to light a fire, but there was no way that that was going to happen: one, because it could set the boat on fire, and two, there was no way I was going to light an open flame anywhere near a store of bombs and alcohol that could blow this entire ship out of the Black Patch and back into the river from where it had come.
Fumbling in the dark with my hands before me, I crouched down and searched for any object that I could find.
I quickly hit broken barrels and crates. I feared the worst, that the stash of Old Molly had been smashed to pieces, until…
Crunch.
I had just stepped on something slim and solid, rolling beneath leather. My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, but the moment I made out the shape, I knew what I was looking at.
It was a skeleton.
‘Holy shit…’
What I had stepped on was what remained of its leg… But that was the only leg left. Half a torso remained too, and the lower half of the jaw, and only a single other arm remained.
And its arm was lying over a crate.
‘Have you found anything, Master Jack?’ Ariadne called out.
‘Give me a second…!’
I approached the crate, kneeling and carefully moving the skeleton’s arm from it.
Seeing the silhouettes of the sailor’s remains, my mind immediately went to the sirens. They stripped flesh from bone, just like Lola had said.
I kept my guard up.
Sliding the tip of the scimitar into the lid of the crate, I pressed my weight down to create some leverage. The more I pushed, the more the creaking escalated, and I had no idea if it was coming from the crate or the boat.
Or both.
Crunch.
The lid finally gave. I halted for a second, waiting for the creaking to stop, then carefully removed the blade and lifted the lid from the crate.
With the movement of the lid the crate shook, and the unmistakable sound of glass clinking greeted my ears.
I brushed my hands over the contents, which was neatly allocated in rows.
Rook had wanted 5 bottles of the Old Molly.
There were 20 in the crate.
I laughed nervously and lowered my head, thanking whichever of Agraria’s gods were watching.
20 freaking bottles. If I deliver all of these to Rook the apartment will only cost me 955GP. Hell, I can keep 5 for myself and still pay less than 1500GP.
The bottles stacked in piles of 10 in my inventory, only taking up two spaces in total.
I returned to the spot below the deck and calculated my jump.
‘Just hold steady for me, girl,’ I whispered. ‘Please just hold steady for me.’
I hoisted myself up with minimal sounds from the ship and arrived on the deck.
‘Do you have it?’ Ariadne called over.
‘Yep,’ I shouted across. I pulled a bottle from inventory, checking it in the firelight that gleamed up from the path.
Old Molly was printed across a parchment label stamped onto the glass bottle. Everything about it said quality – the craftsmanship of the bottle, the engraved markings, even the perfect orange-brown of the liquor within.
‘Great,’ Lara called over. ‘How do we get it back over here?’
I looked around for a possible solution. The six yards between the boat and the end of the path where the girls stood had seemed big when I had been attempting to jump it, but now it was enormous.
‘I’m going to throw it across to you.’
‘What?!’
‘Bottle by bottle. You can put it in your inventories.’
‘Just put it in your inventory.’
‘If
I die getting back over there we’ll have come here for nothing.’
‘You’re not going to die.’
‘Just catch this stuff. It won’t take any time at all.’
We piloted the idea first. The bottles were heavy, but with a steady swing from the deck the height of my position made up for the distance. Together we worked into a system, and by the end we hadn’t lost a single bottle.
‘Great,’ Ariadne said. ‘Now use that crate as a stepping stone and get back here.’
I nodded, then turned to look over my shoulder.
‘Wait…’
Something had bothered me about the skeleton, and it wasn’t the fact that its body seemed to have been ripped apart for no apparent reason.
I turned to head back.
‘What are you doing?’ Lara shouted. ‘We got what we came here for.’
‘No, we didn’t. We said that we would come out here if there was something valuable on top of the Old Molly. Otherwise I risked my life for 20 bottles of liquor.’
I returned to the hold and headed along the path that I knew was safe. In the darkness beneath the ship I arrived at the skeletal remains and tapped my finger against it.
Before my eyes the body’s inventory appeared. There were a limited number of items.
Rusty scimitar x1
Leather rags x2
Scrap of parchment x1
Chest key x1
My eyes widened at the sight of the last item.
The crate of Old Molly had had no lock on it. It was only nailed shut.
Which meant that there was something else around here that the smugglers felt was valuable enough to lock up.
Carefully checking the hull further, I found only ruined scraps of leather and broken wood. I returned to the broken centre of the ship and looked to the stern.
While the entrance to the hull had been relatively easy to access, the broken wooden panels of the deck overhead had snapped and covered the gap that led to the front of the ship.
I lowered myself to the ground and managed to find an opening that I could slide through, snagging myself on as many splintered edges as I did when I had lowered myself below deck in the first place.
The darkness in the stern was even more oppressive than that of the hull. I inched forward bit by bit as the walls closed in with the narrowing front of the ship.
My foot suddenly snagged on a jutting piece of wood, and I slammed forward into the ground.
The vessel creaked brutally once again. I could only lie where I was as I waited for it to subside, or to take me down into the mud with it.
It stopped once again.
Luckily something had broken my fall, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable. I turned and ran my hands over the ground.
A series of bumps moved between my fingers.
No, not rocks.
They were bones.
A lot more bones.
I stood sharply, almost falling off-balance in the process. As I moved over the ground I found more and more. Leather clothes, skeletal remains, and none of them connected. Just like the man with his arm over the crate of liquor, bones were missing from where they should have been.
They were stacked together like the decades-untouched remains of a massacre.
But this ship had only been here for a few months.
There was only one explanation for it; the sirens, just like with the first skeleton that I had found. I didn’t know if they were nearby, but I had no intention of waiting around to find out.
I moved forward through the darkness. The rope quickly began to tighten and strain around my waist.
Against my better judgement, I untied the rope and cast it aside, then pressed on until finally I hit something large and heavy. My boot clunked against its surface.
I had found what I was looking for.
I took a knee and ran my hands over the surface of the chest. Even considering the months the Mossley had been out here in the humidity, the varnished wood surface and steel lining was intact.
And so was the large padlock wrapped stubbornly around the latch.
Fortunately, the key in my inventory was even more stubborn.
I pulled out the key and worked it into the slot of the padlock. It turned mechanically, perfectly, ending with a satisfying click as it finished a full cycle.
I pulled the padlock away and dug seven of eight unbroken fingernails into the lid’s gap. Briefly I thought back to the manticap cave that Ariadne, Lara and I had raided, and the practically empty chest at the end of it all.
The lid creaked on its hinges. I lowered it back but couldn’t see into its dark contents. For all I knew there could have been another Alorion lurking in there, just as I had found him when I had first arrived at the land.
I tapped the chest, and its inventory appeared.
Now it was all worth it.
Gold pieces x4237
Idol of Tormund the Betrayer x1
Dagger of Concealment x1
Pearl necklace x1
Skeleton Key x3
All of that made my eyes go wide, but there was one more object that sent my mouth falling open.
Spell: Telekinetic Blast
This stuff was worth a small fortune.
But there was no time to mess around congratulating myself.
I quickly piled everything into my inventory, trying to drag my eyes away from the fact that my gold stores had just ticked up to 6692GP. There would be plenty of time later to examine it all.
‘Jack…!’
‘I’m coming out!’
I stood from the chest, happy with my spoils.
Then a rattling sounded out.
It was louder and more protracted this time, and as it drifted off and quietened it took on the tone of something that was less inanimate and more… Alive.
I turned slowly, pulling out Ariadne’s scimitar once more and facing the source of the sound. I moved forwards to the broken wood. The gap that I had come through was only five yards away.
My foot suddenly slipped. Looking down I could make out more broken wood beneath me, but this time it didn’t concave inwards – it was sticking up and into the air. If I had fallen on it, I would have been impaled.
But how could it break upward? Unless…
Unless the thing breaking it had come from beneath the boat.
I gulped and arced around the hole carefully. Every creak of the floorboards set my nerves on fire.
I was almost there.
‘RA-A-A-A-R-R-K!!!’
I backed up against the wall. My passage to the exit was blocked.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I could make out a hand emerging from the hole and grabbing hold of a smooth length of wood.
It wasn’t clawed like I had expected. It was pale and smooth and slender, and its grasp allowed its owner to pull itself up and into view.
It belonged to the last person I expected to see – a stunning blonde supermodel. Blonde hair flowed over her shoulders, and her eyes were the most magnificent blue I had ever seen. As she rose up from the hole I realized that she was completely naked – her large, firm breasts missed the broken wood by inches as she arose.
She climbed onto the deck, revealing legs that were scattered with fins and scales.
‘Oh, fuck…’
She was only a few feet away from me when I realized what I was being confronted with.
Every fibre in my being made me want to grab her and fuck her on the ground right there, to use her body for my own pleasure. But that was how sirens worked.
My willpower was the only thing that could save me.
My body felt like it weighed a ton, but in seconds I whipped open my inventory, produced a torch and lit it - and it took more effort than it had in dragging myself onto the boat in the first place, but somehow I managed to raise it up.
Plunging a torch into the torso of this unbelievably hot woman felt like the most unnatural and horrible thing I had ever done, but the moment I did, the image
of her vanished.
Her face contorted and transformed into an horrific, animalistic maw. Scarred and chapped scales sharply crawled over her body.
‘RA-A-A-A-R-R-K!!!’
This was a god-damned siren.
I swept out at the creature with the scimitar. The blade cut through its scales, releasing another screech, but I felt how tough its skin was. The creature was damaged but easily able to persist on.
I raised the torch and it backed off a little. It hissed and covered its eyes, receding towards the hole.
Just as I thought I was safe to make a break for the exit, another of the sirens appeared, clawing its way up.
Then another.
There were no illusions now. They were all in their true forms.
I edged around the room, keeping the fire before me as I crouched by the exit. Timing it on the spot, I hurled the fire at the creatures and pushed through the gap, back into the cracked middle of the deck.
I jumped up, threw the sword forwards and grabbed hold of the wood, then wrenched myself upwards.
‘Jack, what’s happening?’
‘Just grab the rope! I’m jumping!’
I snatched up my sword from the deck and hurried to the back of the boat, then calculated my run-up. No sooner did I reach it than the sirens burst through the cracked wood at an insane speed and blocked my path, crawling like lizards across the deck.
Shit.
Even if I could make it past them, it wouldn’t matter.
Because the rope was no longer tied around my waist.
I had taken it off in the hold.
The ship’s rumbling suddenly escalated. The whole vessel shook with the weight of the scrambling sirens, but they didn’t look worried.
They were smiling.
Both ends of the ship suddenly concaved inwards too quickly. I fell to the side, the sirens going with me.
‘JACK!’
The ground felt like it had vanished. Whatever the mud pit was resting on was completely unstable, and suddenly I, the sirens and the entirety of the Mossley’s wreck were falling into a dark abyss beneath the swamp, plummeting into nothingness.
Chapter Five
I awoke to the sound of lightly running water and warm firelight flickering over my eyes. I was on my back, and as I shifted slightly my right arm and hip ached brutally. Beyond that, I was seemingly unharmed.