by Kell Inkston
Grancis regains her bearings, and she hates what she sees. Two people she loves, literally tearing each other apart. She sees the knife flung aside from the intensity of the conflict, but somehow intuitively she understands that physical violence isn’t the way to stop this.
Suddenly, she feels a movement, and it’s inside of her.
It is the very same movement telling her how to talk to Pertalaine yesterday, the stuff she enjoys talking about in the way she enjoys it. It is the movement that told her to look into the mirror to get The Black Eye. It is the movement that gave her dreams of Lady Irefall as a child.
Grancis doesn’t understand why these words are appearing in her head, but she knows how to stop the senseless destruction of Colette and Martaine.
“Pertalaine,” she says, promptly ignored by the two as they continue to gain dominance and tear off the other’s head if possible. Grancis takes a deep breath. “YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IS YELLOW!”
Like a spell, the two break off the fight and look at Grancis; Martaine stares with absolute disbelief, and Colette, with horror.
“What… what did you say?” Martaine asks, trembling.
“You fool!” Colette says, ramming back into Martaine, but the control is already leaving Martaine to leave a young man bleeding to death. Martaine cannot speak due to the damage to his body, only blood comes up. He only spares a thankful glance to Grancis before he falls over.
“M-Martaine!” Grancis runs for him, but Colette lifts her back into a full stride. “If you want any of us to live you’ll run with me as fast as you possibly can!” Colette instructs as she slides to pick up The Black Eye and dashes down with Grancis. She doesn’t question her friend’s words, and tears down the hall with Colette as an abrupt flush of light illuminates the hallway with a crash. Pertalaine, a distorted eldritch mess of limbs, teeth, muscle, and other wonderful things, smashes through a nearby wall and makes a direct bee-line for the two, with The Captain no where to be found.
It’s only seconds before Irefall is right behind them, the erratic, angry gallop of clawed feet telling their ears of the imminent danger. Colette points toward the end of the hall - a large window, spanning from the floor to the ceiling. “There! We jump through it!”
Grancis slurs in confusion. “Wwwhat!?”
“Trust me!”
Just as Irefall's fang brush her leg, Grancis feels a strong lifting sensation as Colette throws her forward, embraces her, and the two breach through the window into the cold storming dark.
They fall from the great height in the manor, at least twenty stories, plummeting toward the rain-slick oblivion of the manor grounds. Grancis is certain any second now, someone will come by to swoop in and save them. Perhaps The Captain can fly? She sees no one in the few seconds before hitting the ground, but she can hear propellers to the right side of the manor, just around the bend.
Grancis Makes a “friend” and Becomes the Recipient of Dark Foreshadowing Or: It wasn’t a coincidence (Truly, a Memorable Evening: Part Five)
Turning the corner, Her Dark Lady, The M.S. Nocturna soars through the air as a familiar spectacled something leaps to their height and grasps them. In comparison to the solid brick, The Captain is quite a soft thing to run into, Grancis decides. The weight of the two ladies crushes The Captain and splatters his sand all over The Nocturna's deck.
"Fly!" The Captain shouts with a slam on the deck to signal something below. By word and action, The Nocturna blasts off, barely avoiding the pitch of the oncoming Irefall's strike. Irefall falls down and impacts the ground with an excessive crash, but just as quickly as she landed she's back scaling the manor walls with breakneck speed.
The Nocturna flies off horizontally rather than vertically, soaring over the port and out over the sea in a matter of seconds.
The Captain laughs in relief. "Well, that was something."
"Not done yet, Captain," Dunklestein says, overseeing the gunnery team on deck.
The Captain's laugh reduces to a chuckle, and he sort of nods. "Sort of" in this case being a shift of his sandpile, considering being a fall support for the two girls more or less crushed him. His sand peaks to roll the two off so he can reconstruct his frame of bandages.
Grancis sighs in relief and shock as The Captain forms a hand and gestures Estradia over.
The slimy electric eel seasort, looking fat as always under his white lab doctor's coat, smiles morbidly as he takes a sip of coffee. "Looks like it's time for Colette's monthly check up," he says dryly. He picks up the devastated Colette as The Captain secures the orb from her grip.
Grancis fails to draw in enough breath to ask them if Colette will be okay, and is regardless addressed by The Captain.
"Well, we're almost done. All we need now is to hand over the soul."
Grancis slowly pulls herself to her feet as The Captain finishes putting himself back together.
She has so many questions as they soar away from port. "But is Colette going to be okay?"
The Captain nods. "Definitely, now come here before that Chaos fellow makes his way over here."
Grancis looks back through the dark, and can see the lights of Irefall manor rising through the air. "The mansion's taking off."
"Yes, yes, dear. Pertalane will be here soon, but the overlord sooner... Take this," The Captain hands Grancis The Black Eye.
Grancis picks up the dark, horrific orb, and holds it with both hands. "Now what?"
"You need to offer it your soul," The Captain says with a nod and a hurrying gesture of the hand.
Grancis just stares.
"You heard me, didn’t you? Give it your soul."
Her expression sours."...No!"
"My dear, you haven't the slightest idea what is going on right now. You just need to trust me, concentrate on the eye, and offer-."
Marcus La'coss slams into the deck from the clouds.
"Al-ready?" The Captain asks in frustration.
Marcus coughs up some thing Grancis is sure must be like blood from under his mask. "In his case the reality is worse than the legends," Marcus says.
"Stronger than you expected?"
"The fucker's got a scythe!"
The Captain snaps to look at Marcus. "You mean to say that-"
"Yes! He's killed reapers!"
The Captain sighs. "This is going to be... more difficult than I imagined."
"I wholeheartedly agree," Chaos, having swapped his blade for a scythe from his large collection, says from behind The Captain.
"Wh-"
Before he can swing around, The Captain is split through and scattered across deck in an abrupt, devastating burst of energy. Chaos raises his runic scythe for another strike, but Marcus knows better- or at least he thinks he does.
"Don't kill us!" Marcus yells as sailors scatter off deck, even Dunklestein the Daring.
"Oh?" Chaos coos in a professorly tone. "Then I suppose you think you can buy your beloved captain time by exchanging words?"
Marcus flinches. "There's no need to kill the rest of us. You only want The Captain, don't you?"
Chaos scoffs. "It seems time really is all you care about. Very well, I'll deprive you of just that."
"Wait, wa-" Marcus receives a blink fast strike to the side by Chaos, swinging the gray scythe through the legendary assassin and spinning him off deck in a dramatic mess of blood.
There's no one on the deck except Grancis and Chaos; who else would dare step out?
Still holding The Eye neatly in her hands, she stares as Chaos looks over to her. "Now I suppose you're next, aren't you?"
"I… I suppose I am." Grancis is certain running is useless, so she'll have to fight back with her character, whatever that’s worth.
Chaos laughs. "You've signed yourself away already? You know, neither of them are dead, but because of your soul this scythe will split into it. Your soul will be rent from your corpse, and anything could happen to you."
She smirks — she hasn't lost her will to live. She just wants to
see Colette again. "Is that so?"
Chaos smirks back courteously as he looks her over. "Why, yes. I could take your little soul and drop you off in any hell I'd find fit. A slovenly meat-bag human like you would-" Upon inspecting her, The Overlord stops speaking. Rather, he looks through and inside of her. Grancis has no idea what to do rather than stand still and see where he's going as he then looks to The Black Eye. Lastly, he looks back to Irefall Manor, flying slowly through the air and pluming with smoke of mechanical malfunction.
As if mystically, a look of realization crosses Chaos' face. He folds the scythe under his arm and crouches from his staggering height to look equal to Grancis. "Young lady... You are quite certain that, if I were to cut you with this scythe, you would lose your soul?"
Grancis smiles. "What the hell kind of question is that?" She thinks. "Well, obviously, Mister Overlord. Everyone has a soul, don't they?"
As dozens stare out onto the decks from the portholes of various rooms, Chaos gains a look of comprehensive pity— already he knows something she doesn't. There is little that truly scares Grancis, but that look upon The High Overlord's face is truly terrifying, not because of how it looks, but for what it implies. Her fate is so dark, that in all of the overlord’s cruelty, even he must stop when that twinge of humanity calls out to him in her need of sympathy.
"You..." He turns away with a scoff. "Foolish animals," he mutters before turning back to her. "What's your name, young lady? You look rather familiar."
Grancis' eyes widen. She's heard of witches and warlocks that can own a person by learning their name, but she has a creeping suspicion that, whatever Chaos is, he'd be able to find out if she were lying.
"Name's Grancis Vereyrty, sir."
Chaos smiles but his eyes, like brilliant moons suspended in his everlasting black night sky of a body, appear sad. "Well, Grancis, I wish you the very best in your life. You have a hard path ahead of you... A matter of fact it reminds me quite a bit of myself."
Grancis' frown is unmoving. "You had a hard life, sir?"
He chuckles. "I am not sure if it would seem that way to you. After all, my story has just begun. However, I can say that you, Grancis, will have quite a few challenges to face down the road."
"So..." She takes a breath. "You're not going to kill me?"
Chaos laughs as he waves a hand over her, closing the bullet’s entry and exit wounds leaving only the scarcest line a of scar. "No, I suppose I will not... I feel I judged you all too quickly... Rather, I will keep an eye on you all to discern if you and your crew are fit to exist. Perhaps it is simply that pretender who is evil; That dirty Raider, Ohkiij child." He stands to full height and starts off to the side of the deck. "For now, consider me a faithful observer. Farewell!"
She watches him step off the deck, walking on air as The Nocturna soars off without him. "Goodbye," she says with a wave.
She looks to the orb, then to Irefall's airship mansion. The airship is now on fire, billowing smoke and the sounds of sirens. She expects The Captain had no small part in sabotaging it for this exact situation. However, she can see something, or someone leap off the airship and sprout wings. She can take a fair guess who it is.
As The Captain begins shifting back into something vaguely resembling a person, Grancis looks back to The Eye.
Truly, a Memorable Midnight
“Well done,” The Captain says. “You’re quite skilled with your words, Miss Vereyrty.” He slowly, waveringly climbs to his feet. “I’ve heard stories of that… gentleman in particular being easy to turn around, but I thought them to be rumors. Perhaps he really is as foolish as they say… No matter, now’s the time to act.”
Grancis stares into the eye, but she feels nothing. She expected holding this in her hands would be a shaking, horrible experience, but it just feels like an unusually-cool glass ball to her. “I don’t want to.”
The Captain scoffs. “Well ‘wanting’ has nothing to do with it. I’m your Captain and that’s an order.” He limps forward as a saggy husk of his usually tight-knit personage.
“You can’t make me give that away, Captain. It’s my soul.”
The Captain pauses to adjust his glasses. “I suppose I can’t, not that it’s really yours to begin with.”
Grancis steps back. “What? Yes it is!”
“Come here, I’ll show you,” The Captain says, reaching for Grancis.
She leans back and starts stepping away- she’s lost so much blood she can hardly stand, but she manages to reach the steps at a pace double that of the galumphing Captain. “I’ll keep my soul for myself, thank you.”
There’s a rustling up on the second floor, Grancis can hear Estradia shriek as the sounds of metal and glass devices tumbling and crashing about spew from the closed door. “Captain! What the hell are you doing!?” He yells as the door slams open to the outside to reveal Colette, still drenched in blood and dead in the eyes.
Grancis stops in horror as she sees the corpse of her own friend being used against her. "Captain! You have no right!"
"On the contrary, Miss Vereyrty," The Captain says, now at the base of the stairs, "I have all the right in the world to use the body of a contractee, even after death."
Grancis' mind races in horror as Colette deftly sprints to the top of the stairs and, with a single tap, pushes Grancis down. She tumbles just low enough to catch her grip the second The Captain catches her. "No!" she says as she watches Colette turn back coldly to the infirmary. “No!"
The Captain holds her arms behind her back as he sets her against his knee. "Stay still, young lady. This is your only hope!"
"Getting my soul stolen?!"
"It's not even your own soul!"
"That doesn't make any sense! Please don't!"
"She'll be here any second. Open wide," The Captain says, pinning her against the stairs and removing his coat.
"Op- what?!" Grancis starts kicking into the Captain, but he feels more like a sandbag and less like someone you can hurt with blows alone.
"You recall when I said the nearest channel to a person's soul is their mouth?" He draws close to her, she can feel the sand shifting around her to get a good grip.
Grancis draws back in confusion and disgust pushing back with everything she’s got. "Y-you... bastard! There aren’t words, Captain! I trusted you! I refuse to kiss a murderer!" She says, staring directly at those glasses of his, now like slates of cruel obsidian in the stormy night sky, perceiving naught but the manners in which he shall torment those who trust him.
The Captain scoffs. "How dare you even suggest that, Miss Vereyrty. You didn't truly think I was talking about kissing when I said 'through the mouth' did you?" He asks as he shakes off a hand for rainwater.
Grancis' eyes widen in horror. "C-What are yo-"
In a flash, The Captain shoves his bandaged hand into her mouth and down her throat. "That'll work just fine."
She punches him viciously as he reaches down, but she can't do a thing to stop this.
At first it's just the hand, but The Captain's limb extends and disperses into her. He's able to push his entire forearm down her throat, and rather than stop there, only pushes further in, all the way to his shoulder. Grancis convulses in shock, stunned by the simple thought let alone it happening to her. Just as quickly, she feels something torn from her entirety. This unprecedented assault on her lasts only a couple seconds before The Captain pulls out his arm, shaped more like a tentacle by this point than a hand, twisting around a glowing, pulsing, wispy little orb, a soul.
Simultaneously, Grancis feels a rush of both trust and uncertainty toward The Captain. She's still here, feeling things, so it must not have really been her soul... but that can't make any sense, now can it?
With only seconds to spare, Lady Irefall, now an eldritch monstrosity by any definition other than by origin, lands upon the flying Nocturna's deck.
"CAPTAIN, RETURN HER TO ME!"
The cowering sailors struggle to even glance at Irefall, but Grancis
takes in a full view as The Captain dangles the little soul like a bait fish. "I feel more comfortable with completing your little bargain for you."
"DON'T YOU DARE! IT WILL END HER!"
"Well good!" The Captain grins under his bandages as he picks up The Black Eye.
"CAPTAIN!"
"I suppose this is goodbye then, isn't it?"
"CAPTAIN, I BEG OF YOU!"
The Captain looks into The Black Eye. "OF WHAT MANNER DO YOU DISTURB ME?" The Eye speaks.
"You mean to tell me you can't feel the soul you've been promised for all these decades?"
"NO!" Irefall leaps at The Captain, incomprehensible claws raised to tear him asunder, but suddenly, from Irefall, a presence reaches out, grasps the soul from The Captain's hands, and returns it into Irefall's person.
The Captain watches as Irefall tosses about on the floor, screaming at the top of her distorted lungs. She falls limp. The rains cry out against the deck, and the soulless black night gives passage to the endless howling, freezing winds. Irefall draws breath. "NOW THAT THE DEAL HAS BEEN COMPLETED AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, I SEE NO REASON TO TAKE HARBOR IN SUCH A WEAK BODY." A hyper-cognitive being yells as it tears its way out of Irefall's mouth and leaps upon the deck. Far larger and more powerful-looking than even that Chaos fellow, this creature is truly The Black Eye incarnate.
"ON THIS NIGHT, EVERY SOUL IN WRECKWIND WILL CRY IN THE FEAR OF DEATH, AS MY VASSALS WILL FEAST!" Above this horror, the riftings of a great portal begin to open.
"Captain," Grancis says, pulling herself up. "Is this it? What do we do now?"
He helps her to her feet. "It's already been done, my dear. We'll all see the morning... Colette included."
Somehow Grancis is sure that's not in the contract, and is just The Captain trying to comfort her.
"NOW ALL MORTAL CREATURES WILL KNOW WHO ARE THE TRUE MASTERS OF THE EVERSEA. LET THEM WALLOW IN THE EVERLASTING MUD OF HUMANITY. THE SQUALOR OF THEIR BIRTH SHALL BE THEIR WOMB AND THEIR GRAVE; GRASS ON THE EARTH THAT I BUT WALK ON!"
The Captain focuses as The Black Eye tosses Lady Irefall into the air, a simultaneous horn tearing from the cracking-open portal and impaling her.