by A. J. Markam
As soon as Dorp got up on deck, he said, “This is another great triumph for you, boss!”
I sighed. “I told you not to call me ‘boss.’ And please, just stop talking.”
“But it’s a whole new part of your legend! First the emancipation of Abaddon, and now the freeing of the Revenge! Ian the Warlock, friend to the enslaved, the powerless, the oppressed – ”
“Dude, you’re not a bard. Cut it out.”
“…okay.”
Dorp was silent for about five seconds. Then –
“Just think of all the injustice you’ve righted in the world, all the amazing things you’ve done for demonkind – ”
“Dorp? Seriously – shut up or I’m gonna have them keelhaul you again.”
“…okay,” he murmured sadly.
Ten seconds later he started up again.
“Think of all the new lands we could visit on this flying pirate ship – freeing slaves, helping demons – ”
Krug looked down at me. “Can I?”
I grunted in exasperation. “Be my guest.”
Krug grabbed Dorp like Tom Brady would a deflated football, then tossed him over the side of the ship – still with the rope tied around his leg.
We could still hear his annoying helium voice squeaking, first on one side of the ship, then on the other, as he swung back-and-forth like a pendulum.
“It’s okay, boss… I forgive you… I deserved it… I just can’t stop… telling the world… how awesome you are…”
“Oh God,” I muttered, closing my eyes in irritation.
“You have quite the fan,” Alaria said.
“No – fanboy,” Stig sneered. Then he lifted up his bottle of rum enthusiastically. “I’m an alcoholic!”
Alaria half-frowned, half-smiled in amusement. “Good for you.”
“That’s all right, we can drown him out,” Krug said, then yelled, “Make the music louder!”
The monkey-demon on accordion was joined by a fiddler, and a dozen demons began to chant:
We sail the seven skies
And pillage all we can
We take when taking’s good
From any woman, child, or man
You’ll not find us on land that much,
And rarely on the sea –
Don’t cross me, fool, you’ll surely die –
A demon pirate’s life for me!
“So what’s our first destination?” Krug asked.
“The Northern Wastes,” Alaria answered.
Krug almost choked on his rum – as did Stig and about ten other pirates who overheard her.
“The Northern Wastes?! What the hell do you want there?!” Krug demanded.
The entire crew heard that, and they stopped carousing to listen.
“That’s where my next target is,” Alaria said.
“What, living on top of a glacier?!”
“More or less. In the Kingdom of the Frost Elves, to be precise.”
A hush fell over the entire ship.
Well, except for Dorp, whose faraway voice asked, “Is that bad?”
“Very bad,” Krug roared, then turned back to Alaria. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“We’re not going there,” Krug snarled.
“Too late. You already agreed,” Alaria smirked.
“I never agreed to go to the Northern Wastes!”
“No, but you didn’t ask about the locations when you swore by the Seven Hells. Should have read the fine print first.”
“Damn devil wench,” Krug grumbled.
“What’s the big deal?” I asked, confused.
“If the world had an asshole, and the asshole spewed ice, the Northern Wastes would be the shitter,” Krug said grumpily.
“So?”
“So demons hate cold,” Alaria said.
“Ohhhhh.” That made sense.
“We call it the Eighth Hell because it’s the place most demons would hate having to go. We don’t mind the others – we all come from one of the Hells, after all – but the Wastes are actual torture for us.”
Shee the Banshee chimed in. “The cold may be bad, but the frost elves are worse. If the Northern Wastes are the shithouse, the frost elves are the vipers in the shit.”
I frowned and thought back to my years playing OtherWorld. “I’ve met frost elves before. They’re not that bad.”
“Not these frost elves,” Krug grumbled. “At least, not Saykir.”
“Say-kur?”
“My ex-master,” Alaria said. “The ruler of the Kingdom of Frost.”
“He or a she?” I asked, having learned my lesson after last time.
“He.” She gave me a look like she knew what I was thinking – except instead of jokey, she was deadly grim. “It’s not going to be like it was with Tarka.”
I checked my quest list. Yup, there he was, right after the pirate queen – whose quest hadn’t been fulfilled yet. I guess we had to kill her first.
Tarka was worth 20,000 XP – which hurt to lose, though it was mitigated by the weird, kinky sex.
Saykir was worth double. 40,000 XP.
Nice.
I might even level up twice just from killing him alone.
But for that much XP, and given what the others were saying about him, this sounded like it was going to be a hellacious quest.
Krug scowled. “We’re not going.”
“Yes you are,” Alaria said. “You already promised, and there’s no way we’re letting you out of it. Break out the cold weather gear, boys – it’s about get chilly.”
9
The voyage to the Northern Wastes took several days. The Revenge stayed over open water to avoid military ships that patrolled the shoreline, but in all that time, we didn’t see any other airships – probably because nobody in their right minds would head where we were going.
Though nothing exciting happened, Alaria and I had plenty of fun along the way – and by ‘fun’ I mean ‘just the two of us.’
However, true to her word, Alaria still roped me into a couple more… um, ‘encounters’ with Tarka. They played out much the same way the first time had, although a riding crop got introduced the third time around.
On Tarka, not on me.
The threesomes left me feeling uneasy, confused, and weirded out – although I can’t say I didn’t enjoy them. In fact, there was a part of me that looked forward to them almost as much as sex with Alaria. The experiences were really hot – not in spite of seeming so wrong, but probably because of it.
Unfortunately, I had to put up with Tarka’s constant pestering. We stowed her in an unused storage room when we weren’t… uh, ‘using’ her, and every time I passed by it was the same.
“Psst, bilge rat,” she would call out. “Wanna stick it in? I won’t tell your hell-whore.”
“No, I’m good,” I would say.
“You ball-less eunuch – invade my harbor, you son of a bitch! Pound my shores with your man o’ war!”
Needless to say, I didn’t ‘invade her harbor’ or ‘pound her shores’ unless Alaria was present.
Speaking of uncomfortable situations, Alaria kept trying to continue our talk from the other day – the one about sleeping with other people. I kept dodging her attempts, which was easy to do: I’d just pull off her thong and go down on her.
That usually led to sex, and voila, she didn’t want to talk for the next two hours except to say “Harder!” and “Faster!” and “Want to go get Tarka?”
After one marathon session as we lay naked together in bed – just the two of us – she scolded me, “You just do that to distract me.”
“I learned from the best.”
“Seriously, though, we need to talk about – ”
I put my head in her lap and began licking, and soon we weren’t talking anymore.
As long as we’re tallying up all the less-than-perfect situations, Dorp kept testing the limits of my patience. We would haul him up on deck every few hours to see if he
could keep quiet, but no, he would start chattering about Abaddon again. I would warn him he would get keelhauled if he didn’t shut up, he would stay quiet for a minute or two – and then it would be right back to the verbal diarrhea.
As a result, Dorp got keelhauled a lot. Like, 99% of the time we were in the air.
I also spent a good portion of the voyage wandering the Revenge. By day three, I knew every deck and storage compartment.
The trip to the treasure room was disappointingly short. The ship only kept a small amount of gold coins on hand in case they got raided, and virtually no magical artifacts. Certainly nothing of any use to me. Everything else was buried on remote islands scattered across OtherWorld – something the big grey bastard had neglected to mention when we agreed to our pact.
“Looks like you didn’t read the fine print, either,” he growled when I confronted him about it.
On the third morning of the trip we reached our destination. I was assuming that the Northern Wastes were OtherWorld’s version of Antarctica, and I was more or less right. The land was just a never-ending expanse of white with a thin fringe of rocky shoreline. From this high up we could see a great deal – or we would have, if the storm clouds in the distance didn’t meld with the landscape into one giant grey-white blur.
As we approached the coast we saw some sort of fishing village where tiny wooden structures dotted the shores.
“We’re setting down there,” Krug said.
“What are you talking about?!” Alaria demanded. “We can fly right to Saykir’s palace in this thing!”
“Not with those snowstorms on the horizon.”
“What?! A bunch of big, bad demon pirates, and you’re afraid of a little squall?!”
“I’m not taking the Revenge into that. At these temperatures the turbines could freeze up, and then we’d be done for.”
I remembered how violent it had been when my lifeboat crashed on the ship’s deck. Then I imagined what it would be like if the giant engines stopped working and sent our full-size wooden frigate plummeting to the ground from a mile up.
I shuddered.
“But it’s at least ten miles to Saykir’s domain!” Alaria exclaimed.
“Enjoy your walk.”
“You swore by the Seven Hells to take us to our destinations!”
“And I have. You said the Northern Wastes, and here we are. Nothing in our agreement says anything about you changing the destination, or dropping you at specific points right in the middle of wherever you want to go.”
Alaria fumed, but the new captain was right: she had only said ‘the Northern Wastes,’ and here we were.
Krug was employing his own version of ‘I abide by the letter of the law, not the spirit of it.’ Now Alaria was experiencing firsthand how frustrating it was when she and Stig interpreted my commands whatever way benefitted them.
“Besides,” Krug added, “are you really going to endanger your next five trips because you don’t want to walk ten miles?”
“Ten miles in freezing temperatures,” she shot back.
For the first time ever, I saw the giant grey demon smile. “We’ll break out the cold weather gear just for you… since you’re about to get chilly.”
Krug settled the Revenge down over the water a couple thousand feet from shore. As the ship lowered, the force of the engines’ exhaust carved out a bowl-shaped depression in the ocean, sending waves rushing outwards in a giant circle.
“Cut the engines!” Krug yelled.
Another demon shouted back, “Engines cut!”
The turbines cycled down, and the ship dropped 15 feet into the ocean with a tsunami-like splash.
Stig puked rum across the deck as we sloshed around.
“You’re cleaning that up,” Krug barked.
I looked over at Alaria, who had braced herself by grabbing hold of the rigging. And Dorp –
Oh shit.
“Uh… did we ever get Dorp off the keelhaul line?” I asked Krug.
“No.”
I ran over to the rope, which was dangling over the railing but no longer taut. When I pulled on it, the rope came up from the ocean depths way too easily.
After 50 feet, all that was left was a frayed, ragged end.
Dammit.
Now I felt horrible.
I checked my action bar. Dorp’s icon was fully lit, meaning that he had died and was off in limbo, waiting to be summoned.
I hovered my finger over the icon – hesitated…
Maybe we should wait.
I could always summon him later when he was needed. Otherwise we were going to hear about Abaddon nonstop for God knows how many hours.
Maybe accidentally leaving him down there was for the best.
I went to the bow of the ship, cast my All-Seeing Eye, and floated it over the water towards the tiny fishing village. Within 30 seconds I could see the inhabitants up close.
They were all humans in rough-hewn clothes. Hard-bitten, weathered folk living in an inhospitable landscape, with skin turned red and raw by the biting sea winds –
And they were all terrified.
The looks on their faces were like baby seals as a Great White shark comes gunning for them.
I wondered if it was because they never seen a flying ship before. Then I turned the All-Seeing Eye back on the ship itself and noticed the demonic Jolly Roger flapping in the cold Arctic winds.
Oh yeah.
Pirates tend not to make good first impressions.
“Can we take down the flag?” I asked Krug. “I think it’s scaring the villagers half out of their minds.”
“So?”
“So it would be nice to have their cooperation instead of getting attacked the minute we set foot on shore.”
“We’ll just take whatever we want,” Krug growled.
“How are you going to take information?” I snapped. “Plus you swore not to kill civilians. These are civilians.”
Krug groaned as he remembered his promise, then shouted, “Lower the flag!”
“Lowering the flag!” another pirate yelled, and the Jolly Roger began to descend.
“Is there something else you can put up instead that might put them at ease?” I asked.
Krug gave a put-upon sigh, then yelled, “Hoist the flag of peace!”
“Hoisting the flag of peace!”
Down came the Jolly Roger – and up went the most ridiculous flag I had ever seen. It was pink and yellow with embroidered flowers and a smiling unicorn. It looked like a bunch of My Little Pony bronies had designed the damn thing.
“Instead of being afraid, now they can just laugh at us,” Alaria remarked.
I ignored the flag and looked at Krug. “How many of your men are coming with us?”
“None.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“I’ll send a boat to take you to shore, but that’s it.”
Alaria frowned. “If we’re going to take on the frost elves, we’re going to need a larger landing party than just the three of us.”
Krug crossed his arms. “There was nothing in our agreement about providing you manpower for your little excursions.”
Alaria’s eyes widened – and then she scowled as she realized she’d been trumped by the letter of the law again.
“Don’t you need to stock up on provisions?” she asked. “And wouldn’t your men like to have a little shore leave?”
Krug looked dubiously at the rocky coastline and the white expanse beyond. “Not much of a shore, if you ask me.”
“You can still walk on it without it moving beneath your feet. And I’m sure they have meat and fish and alcohol of all sorts.”
“Good,” Stig interjected as he finished swabbing the deck after his ‘accident.’ “We’re running low on rum.”
Krug glared at him. “Because someone has been drinking non-stop for the last three days.”
Stig shrugged like What’re ya gonna do? “I’m an alcoholic.”
“Better stock up wh
ile you can,” Alaria said to Krug.
I whispered in Alaria’s ear. “What are you doing?”
“It’ll be easier to get them to come along if we can at least get them on land first,” she whispered back.
Krug stroked his gigantic, blocky chin – then finally relented.
“All right – shore leave for them that wants it!” he shouted.
More than half the crew wanted it, thank goodness.
We set out in five lifeboats, six to a boat. Another twenty demons stayed onboard.
Stig, Alaria, and I rode with Krug, who wasn’t above rowing despite his captain status. Actually, Shee and another demon started with the oars, but they were so slow that Krug grew frustrated and motioned them aside. Thanks to his strength, seconds later we were skimming through the water like we had an outboard motor.
The villagers gathered on the shoreline with harpoons and started screaming at us while we were still two hundred feet out.
“Keep off our shores, you damn demons!” yelled their leader, a man with an unruly beard.
The other villagers behind him were quaking in their boots, though they shouted all the same.
“We only want to pass through to the Kingdom of the Frost Elves,” I called out.
Every single villager looked bewildered.
“Why in the name of Hastorok would you want to do that?” the bearded man exclaimed.
“Revenge,” Alaria shouted.
The leader shook his head. “You might as well drown yourself at the bottom of the sea right now. It’s suicide.”
“We’ll decide that ourselves,” Alaria said.
I stepped in, trying to play the diplomat. “Although it would be nice if you could tell us how to get there and what we might encounter along the way. Also, my friends here want to buy provisions – ”
“And booze!” Stig croaked.
The villagers all looked at each other nervously.
“Well…” the bearded man said, “we don’t need your money, but we could trade for metal and wood… those things are hard to come by around here.”
“Agreed,” Krug said.
“But you’re pirates!”
Krug looked at me distastefully like, Yeah, we WERE pirates once upon a time – then turned back to the villagers. “Do you have gold or anything else worth stealing?”