Dawn of a Red Sky

by Ryan Gilbert

  At that moment, two glowing orbs manifested themselves in Every’s eye sockets. With tiny wisps of smoke still rising from his bones, the skeleton flexed its fingers, each knuckle cracking as Henry Every was resurrected. Immediately, the raucous of Riggs crawling across the treasure-laden floor caught the dead man’s attention. The King of Pirates reached up and yanked the golden sword out of his ribcage, eager for a fight.

  Gathering his courage, Riggs ripped his own sword out of his scabbard, ready to attack the skeleton. He needed to put a stop to this horror immediately.

  As Every pushed off of his chair to stand up, Riggs swung his sword at the skeleton. The blade sliced between the vertebrae, and Every’s skull fell onto the table. The rest of the bony body remained standing, presumably to fall at any moment. As he stood there with his sword in his hand, the young captain was not really sure what to expect next.

  To his dismay, the skeleton did not crumble to the ground, even after several seconds. Instead, it felt around on the table, grabbed onto the skull, and rammed it back in place. The lights in Every’s sockets glared at the three as his jaw opened to let out a laugh that echoed throughout the room.

  Backing into Coral Jack and Ripper, Riggs gasped, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  The three ran out onto the main deck as the entire cavern started to glow red. All around them, the bones of the skeletons were starting to shake. Some of the corpses were even starting to come alive, trying to catch hold of the fleeing pirates. Kicking a bony hand away from him, Riggs grabbed onto a rope and leapt off the ship, followed closely by Coral Jack and Ripper. They could still hear the cackling of the skeletal Henry Every as they landed on the ground, joining the rest of the crew as they dashed into the tunnel. They did not even notice the swirls of black that had suddenly appeared in the clear water. They just wanted to escape with their lives.

  What had they unleashed?

  Rain was starting to pound against the deck of the Red Sky as the crew waited for the search party to return. Clint kept a steady eye on the sea surrounding them, but no ships had appeared to attack. Eli sat next to a cannon, carving a tiny dog out of wood to pass the time. Beside him was Valera, stretching out on the deck to let the rain soak into her skin. From what they could tell, the search for the treasure seemed like it would be rather uneventful.

  SSSHHHHBOOOOOOOOOOM

  A red beam of light blasted out of the ground, shooting up into the clouds. The sudden noise shocked the crew into running to the rail, some of the men unsure of what was happening. Clint, Eli, and Valera were all too familiar with what that light meant.

  “Hoist the anchor!” the navigator yelled, “Prepare to fight!”

  In front of them, a rocky cliff started to crumble, revealing a large cave. Torrents of black water poured out of the opening as the waves of the ocean crashed against the rocks.

  Out of the corner of their vision, the crew saw the search party rushing back to the longboat, all of them piling into it as quickly as they could. A few men were missing, presumably caught in the collapsing tunnel.

  “Hurry, you bilge rats,” Clint ordered frantically, “We need to get them out o’ here.”

  “Clint?” asked Valera, tugging at the pirate’s sleeve.

  “Get the ship ready to leave, girl. Once we get ‘em onboard, we ain’t sticking around to find out what caused that blast.”

  Valera ignored what the navigator said, again asking, “Clint?”

  She yanked on his sleeve, but he pulled away.

  KEBOOM

  “Clint!”

  The mermaid tackled him to the ground, just barely saving them both from a cannonball. Clint sat up in shock, just in time to see the rebirth of a nightmare.

  Henry Every’s legendary ship, the Fancy, glided out of the cave, caught in the rush of the black water. The black sails immediately filled with the winds of the storm. The dark brown hull, covered in battle scars, broke through the waves, the mist and foam of the waters splashing onto the bones of a reborn skeleton crew. As the pirates watched, they could hear the hollow laughs emanating from between the skeletons’ teeth.

  KEBOOM

  The cannon fire brought the crew of the Red Sky back to their grim reality. Clint rushed to the helm, turning the ship away from the Fancy as quickly as he could.

  “Fire the port cannons,” he shouted, trying to manage the chaos as best as possible.

  BOOM BOOM

  One cannonball flew across the deck of the Pirate King’s ship while the other collided with the starboard side. As the exchange of fire occurred, the longboat reached the Red Sky, thankfully able to avoid Every’s bombardment. All of its occupants scrambled to get back onboard, Riggs being the first to reach the safety of the deck.

  As the Fancy started to turn out onto the open sea, Riggs yelled, “Run out the bow cannons. I want that monster restin’ at the bottom of the ocean before sundown.”

  At Riggs’ command, Clint directed the ship to face the enemy. The cannons rolled into their places, the rumbling of their wheels reverberating off of the wooden deck.

  “Bow cannons, fire!” the Captain shouted.

  BOOM BOOM

  The cannonballs flew toward the Fancy. There was no way they could miss.

  Just as they were about to hit Every’s ship, the cannonballs exploded in midair. Snatching a spyglass, Riggs peered through it, trying to see what caused the sudden explosion. Yellow and purple smoke surrounded the blast. To Riggs, that could only mean one thing.

  Henry Every had started to use the magic in his artifacts.

  “Damn it,” Riggs growled, pounding his fist on the rail.

  “What should we do, Captain?” asked Clint, still in shock from what he had just seen.

  With a scowl on his face, Riggs gruffly said, “After ‘im. I’m not goin’ to let another freak reign over these seas while I’m around.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Captain Henry Every peered back at the Red Sky, unsure of what to make of it. If they were truly the ones to have awoken him, then he pitied them. They could not have known the horrors that they had brought to light. After years of trying to hide from the sweet embrace of death, Every knew that the respect that had once been awarded to him was now long gone. He would have to start from the beginning.

  “Such poor fools,” he muttered to himself.

  He looked down at his hands… or rather, the bones that made up his hands. He clenched his fingers, watching as the bones moved. Barely noticeable wisps of yellow and purple smoke arose from the joints. If he had not spent years staring at the blood and gore of battle, then he would have been frightened by what laid in front of him.

  Instead, his condition intrigued him.

  People would surely be brought to their knees once they rested their eyes on his skeletal form, but their fear would not be for the right reasons. He wanted to rise to his former notoriety, not because of his horrific form, but because of the chaos he could commit as a human.

  “Where to, Captain?” asked Morrison the navigator, still plucking his fingers from the deck.

  Every started to say something, but stopped himself, scratching at his jaw. After being dead for so many years, he was unsure of where free ports had been established. The places with which he had been so familiar might no longer exist. Searching through his memories, he tried to recall a place they could go.

  Something clicked in his skull as the lights in his eye sockets grew bright.

  Turning to his navigator, he ordered, “Set sail for Jamaica. I seem to recall there being a new port… Rebday or some other poppycock.”

  “Aye, sir,” Morrison said, bringing a three-fingered hand to his brow.

  As he walked down the stairs to his quarters, Every could not take his eyes off his own bones. With each passing moment, he wanted more and more to be able to feel the hair on his arms once more… to be able to feel the cool breeze on his skin. Now, everything was hard, like his entire body was numb. He wanted to become himself once
again.

  That was one of the reasons he needed to go to Jamaica.

  Years ago, he had heard whispers of a woman who could perform feats that nobody had ever attempted to try. She knew a whole different kind of magic than that which Every possessed, and she knew how to use it. If anyone would know how to regain the King of Pirates’ humanity, then it would surely be her.

  Watching the bones in his hand move, Every stopped in front of the open doorway to his cabin, the door still laying in pieces on the ground. Annoyed, he thrust his hand at the pile of broken wood and shattered glass and said, “Repatione.”

  Instantly, the door started to piece itself back together as tendrils of yellow and purple smoke whirled around the wood. In mere seconds, it looked like it had never been broken.

  Every opened the newly repaired door to his cabin and said to himself, “I will become the pirate that all others had feared. I will regain my rightful place as the most dangerous man to ever sail the seas…”

  He slammed the door behind him, his eyes drawn to the treasure that lay strewn over his cabin floor. If he had flesh, then he would have smiled, but unfortunately, the yellowed and stained teeth could only do so much. Henry Every wanted his old life back.

  “… and I will do everything in my power to make that happen.”

  For several days, the Fancy evaded the Red Sky, using tricks that even Clint did not know. Even though the Sky was faster, Every was sneaky, using the environment and magic to his advantage. He did not even have to attack the pirates to slow them down. At one point, he goaded the Red Sky into sailing directly onto a patch of sand, grounding the ship. It did not even take thirty minutes for the Fancy to escape out of sight.

  As the crew tried to free the ship from the sand, Riggs retreated to his cabin. Once he had closed the doors, he felt his temper start to take control. Not knowing what to do, he grabbed a chair and tossed it across the room. In his fury, he overturned a table, crashing bottles and spilling papers and maps onto the floor. The uncontrollable Captain pounded his fists against the walls until he felt pain, followed by something warm on his fingers. Looking down, he saw his hand stained red with his own blood, tiny droplets falling from his clenched fingers.

  Riggs grabbed a chair and sat down in it, breathing heavily as he tried to wipe the blood away. He just wanted it to stop.

  “Well ain’t that just what I like to see.”

  The Captain looked up and saw Garrett standing over him, his arms crossed and his hook resting on his forearm. His former crewmate was grinning, mocking Riggs as blood dripped into a puddle at his feet.

  “I’m keepin’ it under control,” Riggs told himself.

  “Are ye though? That’s ain’t what it looks like to me,” Garrett laughed.

  Riggs applied more pressure to the wound, trying to focus more on that than on what his hallucination was saying to him.

  Leaning against the wall next to Riggs, Garrett looked down at his former captain. His gaze made the young pirate uncomfortable, even though Riggs knew that the traitor was not actually in the room.

  “What are ye trying to do, Riggs?”

  “What?”

  “Why’re you obsessing over Every? Are ye trying to atone fer everything that you’ve done? Trying to rid yerself of that guilt over the death o’ your lil’ lass?”

  Riggs quickly stood up, standing face to face with Garrett.

  “Shut yer mouth, you wretch,” he snarled.

  With a smile on his face, Garrett spat, “No, Riggs. You and I know that wench’s death was your fault, and I’m not gonna stop driving that knife through your heart.”

  Grabbing onto his sword, Riggs shouted, “Get out o’ my…”

  SLAM

  Coral Jack rushed into the room just as Riggs was about to yank his sword out of its scabbard. His crewmate’s sudden appearance shocked the Captain back to reality. His eyes darted around the room. Garrett had disappeared.

  Directing his attention to Jack, Riggs hastily asked, “What is it?”

  His gruff demeanor caught his friend off guard.

  “I-I just wanted to tell ye that the crew’s close to getting the ship free… I think.”

  Riggs took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. He did not want to have Jack thinking he was angry with him.

  “Thank you, Jack,” he said quietly, “but we need to get after Every as soon as possible.”

  Coral Jack nodded and said, “We’re trying as hard as we can, Captain.”

  “I know, just… just keep doin’ what you’re doin’,” Riggs said, waving his hand to dismiss his crewmate.

  The Red Sky was stranded for several more hours.

  For the entirety of that time, Riggs tried to keep calm, needing to shut his hallucinations away in the farthest recesses of his mind. He could not have himself losing his composure, not with a living bag of bones sailing the seas.

  When the ship was freed from the patch of sand, the Fancy was long gone. Riggs ripped a spyglass from his coat pocket and searched the horizon for something, anything that could help them find the location to which the King of Pirates had fled. Unfortunately, there was not one single thing that could help them.

  “We’re sorry, Captain,” said Eli, “We all tried everything we could.”

  Riggs said nothing. Silently, he set the spyglass aside and pressed his fingers against his eyelids as stress overwhelmed him.

  “Do ye think ye could’ve done it a bit faster?” he snapped, speaking to no one in particular.

  “Captain, we tried…”

  “Tryin’ ain’t good enough, Eli,” Riggs said, cutting off the rest of the carpenter’s sentence.

  Surprised by his friend’s brash attitude, Eli asked, “Well… where should we sail now?”

  Disappointed in both himself and his crew, Riggs said, “Where else? Rebelde.”

  It was the only course of action they could take. They needed to reassess the situation and develop a plan of attack. Even Riggs was not entirely sure that his plan would have worked if they had caught up to Every. Cursing their luck, the unsatisfied crew set a course back to the port.

  A day later, the Red Sky arrived at Rebelde. There was no sign of Every or the Fancy, so they were safe to dock. There was no way that the King of Pirates and his skeleton crew could attack them there. With all of the other pirate ships moored at the port, it would be nearly impossible for one single ship to attack.

  Ordering his crew to follow him, Riggs led the way to one of the only safe meeting places that he knew… the Goddess of Rum tavern. At Clint’s behest, the Captain allowed several men to stay behind and guard the ship just in case Henry Every decided to show his face.

  As Riggs led the way through the streets, his crew and friends could see that their captain was visibly upset. He was not the charming, witty rogue that he had been in the months prior. After Julia’s death, his friends had been able to see through the guise of his antics. Now, he was not even bothering to hide how he felt. The treasure hunt had been meant to lighten his attitude. Instead, it had done quite the opposite. The resurrection of one of the most notorious pirates of all time had certainly brought a damper to the entire crew, most of all their captain.

  Riggs pushed open the door to the tavern, nearly bashing the door into one of the men unlucky enough to be standing close to it. Weaving in between dancing girls and drunken idiots, he arrived at the back of the room. A group of sailors were hogging the largest table, annoying the Captain with how loud they were laughing.

  In his calmest voice, Riggs asked, “Could you gents find somewhere else to sit?”

  One of the men leaned back in his chair, spitting a small stream of liquid onto Riggs’ boots.

  “We’ll sit where we damn well please, mate,” the man said, instantly breaking out in uproarious laughter with the rest of the men at the table.

  Trying to remain calm, Riggs said, “Listen to me, you sack of horse dung. I am Captain Riggs of the Red Sky, and I am orderin’ you to move… n
ow.”

  The man turned around and looked up at Riggs with a smug smile on his face. He was not intimidated by the Captain as he took another gulp of his drink.

  “Make me,” the sailor said, tipping his chair back again.

  Not wasting the opportunity, Riggs kicked the leg out from under the chair, sending the sailor crashing to the ground. Before the man could pull out a knife, the Captain lifted his boot and planted it right in the sailor’s chest, knocking the wind out of him. He writhed on the ground in pain, clutching at his chest and wheezing for air. Riggs glared at the other men surrounding the table, silently letting them know that they would meet the same fate as their friend if they did not move. They immediately stumbled away.

  Taking a seat, Riggs ran his hands through his hair, pulling it away from his eyes. He did not know what had come over him. Whatever it was, he was almost starting to enjoy it. The sense of fear that he felt emanating from those around him was empowering. He did not know what to make of it.

  Noticing the change in his captain, Clint sat down next to him and said, “Something’s wrong, Riggs. Don’t tell me there ain’t.”

  Not looking his friend in the eye, Riggs said, “I’m fine, Clint. Just let it go.”

  “I’m not letting anything go, Captain. Yer acting… strange… and it don’t feel like you.”

  Speaking under his breath, Riggs said, “Clint, I’m orderin’ ye to drop it. I’ll explain later.”

  Before his navigator could say anything further, Riggs directed his attention to the rest of his friends and crew, saying, “Alright, mateys. We need to find a way to take down Henry Every.”

  Instantly, the crew started shouting out ideas, most of which were unreasonable. Riggs and his friends knew how to fight magic, but they had never dealt with skeletons before. When the Captain had seen Every jam his skull back onto his spine after having it severed, it had frightened him so much that he could not believe it.

  “We should catch ‘im and set fire to his ship.”