Dear Jveddek,
The month I spent under Firestorm Peak forced me to learn to concentrate on my prayers despite my circumstances. So, as I went through the verses I´d been taught, I was only dimly aware of commotion around me. I seemed to hear Ester´s voice yelling something like "GHOST BOAT!" distantly. I was too deep in prayer to attend to the noise and activity around me.
We were rammed with such force that I might have lost my footing if I hadn´t already been kneeling. It felt like the impact came from the port side of the sterncastle, but I did not turn to look. I still had the last verse of the morning prayers to go. I tried not to rush through it too much, but my concentration was failing. Apparently, Jvelto was willing to forgive me for some distraction, as I finally felt the surge of divine energy that I would need later. When at last I rose to assess what had happened, I could see that the sailors who ran past me were heading toward a locker on deck containing cutlasses and bucklers. Nikita was casting something on Brummet—I could hear a couple of nearby sailors grunt in disgust as they noticed her eyes rolling back in her head. It´s a pretty disturbing sight. Just beyond, I could see that Kariya had dashed up the port deck to the sterncastle, loosing a lightning bolt at the ramming ship once she arrived.
I was entirely unprepared for the sight of that ship.
I had been expecting a pirate vessel, in which case the ship would have been built for speed and loaded with just enough weaponry to threaten most commercial craft. If the ship sailed across shipping lanes rather than along them, as pirate vessels often do, that might explain why we hadn´t sighted her until just before she hit us. After all, if she had been traveling along the lanes, the people in the crow´s nest should have seen at least her masts in the distance before the fog got too thick. And a ship built for ramming must be quite stout in the timbers, probably clinker built (note to land-lubbers: the term "clinker built" refers to a shipbuilding style where timbers are layered in the hull perpendicularly to provide added strength).
Instead, the holes in her ill-used hull were man-sized in some places, and her timbers were battered and rotten. Seawater sloshed right into her hull through those holes, yet she remained afloat. She flew tatters on her masts, shredded beyond recognition of any insignia she might have flown, and if she´d ever been painted, we had no sign of it. Even the barnacles clinging to her ghostly hull had a sickly look. Truly, Old Man, more seaworthy ships lie at the bottom of the ocean.
Dear gods, she had come around again with the intent to ram. Where did she get the speed for it with no sails? How could she be afloat, let alone ramming a stout ship like Endurance? Was her captain mad? Her crew seemed anxious for the fight, oblivious to the condition of their ship: I could just make out their shapes through the fog, waving their fists at us.
Nikita raced by me to ascend the to sterncastle. She flew up the steps at top speed, asking Garvyn and Brummet for permission to cast protection from evil on them as she ran.
"Whoa! That´s creepy!" someone exclaimed from above me. She must have gotten her spells off.
The ship´s second impact knocked about a quarter of the sailors and Ralfeo, our second mate, off their feet. Kariya, Rhavin and Nikita, also on the sterncastle, remained standing. As for the ships, Endurance absorbed the blow remarkably well, except for the rail at the point of impact, while the bow of the other vessel, where it had rammed us, collapsed into its lower decks with the sick crunch of splintering wood.
As the rotten timbers gave way, the crew of the other ship began boarding Endurance. I saw gray shapes leaping dexterously over the rails onto our deck. The two vessels were now nearly side-by-side. The other craft listed toward our port side, seeming to spill its crew onto our deck. On the sterncastle, two gray-green figures had landed in front of Kariya.
Suddenly, Rhavin swung up the stairs to just barely connect with the weapon hand of the one closest to him. Its rusted saber went flying, complete with hand, to disappear into the ocean.
"Ugh!" I heard Nikita cry over the din boarding.
Rhavin´s attack allowed Kariya to do a fighting retreat down the steps to the main deck. Meanwhile, Nikita was helping Ralfeo to his feet.
What was that faint odor? Nauseating, faintly familiar…did it come with our attackers? I finally took a good look at them.
Their skin had the sickly pale gray cast of the drowned dead. At first I thought it was just a trick of the fog, but it was true. I knew that when I caught sight of bone glistening in places where bits of their flesh had rotted off or been torn away. I could only stare, flat-footed and open-mouthed.
"The captain´s in danger!" came a cry from behind me.
In my moment of hesitation, several sailors rushed past me to aid the captain on the sterncastle. I was trapped between the men crowding the stairs and the starboard rail, keeping me out of the combat for what seemed like hours.
The other sailors lined the port rail, waiting stoically for the remainder of the dead-looking crew to board. A few of them were complaining about the smell, which must have been stronger over there. Above them, Canliss had extricated himself from the rigging to move to the aft mast crow´s nest platform. Basil came up on deck, cleaver at the ready, and just beyond him, Koresh loaded his crossbow. Kariya, across the deck from me, was making her way forward toward the middle of the main deck.
As the rotting ship´s forward timbers further crumpled, more dead sailors boarded us. Ready to leap aboard behind them stood another gray figure barely restraining three or four skeletal dogs…at least, they used to be dogs…probably.
I caught another whiff of the stench I´d noticed before, and now I recognized it as the smell of carrion. The revelation made the hair on my neck stand up. I inched my way along the starboard rail toward the middle of the deck, hoping to squeeze past the crowd of sailors pushing to get up to the sterncastle.
I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the action on Endurance´s crowded sterncastle. All three dead sailors attacking the captain with their rusted sabers missed him, so I guess Nikita´s protection from evil was working. Far to port on the sterncastle, Rhavin was still contending with the two…zombies (?) that had attacked Kariya. The one which still had a weapon hand slashed wildly, missing him, while the other one leaped at him in a blur. It pummeled my paladin friend with its oozing stump. Rhavin seemed momentarily stunned, but he quickly shook it off and positioned himself for a counterattack. The stump left behind a black stain in the center of Rhavin´s shirt. These undead were incredibly fast compared to the sluggish skeletons in the Plains of Despair!
In the center of the deck, Brummet was also fighting a pair of disgusting corpses, one of which sliced into him with its weapon. Seeing his peril, Ester stepped in to help. She absorbed some of the damage that would have gone to Brummet, as both zombies connected with their battered and rusted cutlasses.
"Kick ass!" she cried as she dealt back her own damage to the zombies. The force of her blow sent one overboard into the narrowing space between the ships. The other´s arm, complete with the withered, gray-brown musculature of the shoulderblade, fell off with a disgusting goosh when she sliced into it.
Meanwhile, Captain Garvyn hacked into one of his attackers, but Ralfeo, trying to help, missed wildly and uttered a curse. Another crewman on the sterncastle also missed the zombie he´d attacked. Maybe they were a bit rattled themselves: how often does one come across a boatload of zombies?
Kariya, now in the middle of Endurance´s deck, let another lightning bolt fly from her fingers. She looked like she was aiming at the zombie-dogs. They were still on the deck of the other ship, but just barely: they strained against the thin ropes clutched by their zombie keeper. They snapped their jaws full of unnaturally long, sharp teeth at us, occasionally shaking off patches of moldering fur where the ropes chafed. These vile things had never been happy little puppies, had they? Yuck!
"Aim high, Kariya!" I shouted. I doubted Endurance could suffer the kind of damage she tends cause with that spell. A fire or falling masts would kill us all just as dead as swords. Somehow, she managed to miss the masts and the rigging of both ships. One of the zombie-types who had already boarded Endurance exploded into thousands of pieces, spraying the deck with black pellets of long-clotted blood and pale bits of slick sinew. Another one, at our port rail, dropped its weather-beaten battleaxe as her lightning cooked its remaining flesh—charred zombie guts didn´t improve the smell on deck at all, I promise you. As the same bolt reached the other ship, two of the zombie-dogs were scorched to cinders and another huge hole opened up in the listing deck. Presumably, there was also a new hole in the hull, where the bolt exited, but that didn´t seem to make a difference. Back on the packed sterncastle, Rhavin had cut into the zombie-thing with the stump, slicing its rotting body to bits. From above, magic missiles flew down at one of two largest corpses in the middle of the deck. They could only be from Canliss, attacking from the aft crow´s nest. The missiles burned several holes into the large zombie´s remaining flesh, causing it to pause long enough to stick its tongue out at Canliss. My stomach turned over at the sight of that inhumanly long, black tongue—it was making a threat to Canliss, not registering casual disgust (when I stick my tongue out at Canliss it´s out of casual disgust. Mostly). I caught sight of Brummet in the thick of the fight at mid-deck. He suddenly paled and looked ready to retch. The smell was getting to him. I pushed past the sailors in front of me to get to him. I began casting a slow poison spell as I lurched forward, but he spun away from my fingertips while dodging a zombie´s blow. I felt the magical energy drain out of me, wasted.
Magic missiles from Kariya flew over my head to hit the big zombie Canliss had already partially cooked with his missiles. Her lightning bolts do more damage, but there were too many live sailors and a friendly giantess in between Kariya and her target to risk them. Nearby, Ester hacked the zombie she´d been working on into small enough pieces that it no longer posed a threat (how does one kill something that´s already dead?) and landed a blow on another that should have knocked it on its bony ass. Instead, it simply swayed with the impact. Ester scowled—she´s not the brightest lure in the tacklebox, but she knows when something should fall down.
"Ugh!" Nikita yelled from the sterncastle, followed by, "OOWW!!"
A zombie had bitten her. Nikita froze with what was, no doubt, an expression of disgust on her face (I was too far away to perceive a grimace, however). A glint of silver from her weapon hand suggested that she had attacked the thing with her silver dagger…and hit? Nikita never hits anything, but I hoped this time had been an exception.
In front of Nikita, Ralfeo was backed against the starboard rail of the sterncastle, swinging at the zombie nearest him. It attacked him with its cutlass, but missed him. I found out later than Nikita had gotten a protection from evil spell off for him, too, before things got too ugly.
Meanwhile, two more gruesome zombies attacked Rhavin with their bent and notched cutlasses. Two additional zombies I mean—they could scarcely have been more gruesome than the other zombies, especially the ones with the tongues.
Ester, on the other hand, was having better luck in avoiding strikes from those wicked-looking notched blades. The zombie who had just swung at her missed entirely. Ester finished off her zombie, and its remains crashed to the deck with the clatter of naked bones—she´d carved off most of its flesh on one side. Behind her, I could see two especially large zombies, their skin intact compared to the other ones, preparing to board us.
I suddenly caught sight of a sailor with a bottle and a crazed grin. Was that guy just wandering around, drinking? I hoped he´d get a grip. Even the novices at Ebb Tide know that you fight first, then you get trashed. He was going to die drinking really bad rum, poor bastard. I hope my last drink is of better quality.
I got jostled away from his direction to face the sterncastle again. I´d never been in such a crowded battle before. Sure, I´ve been in bar brawls, but that´s different: in a bar brawl, people aren´t rotting all over you or threatening to paralyze you with a bite. It´s a little less dangerous to bump up against even your meaner tavern patrons than these disgusting things.
A zombie grinned ravenously as it started to munch on Nikita´s arm. Its sharp teeth tore into her wrist.
I´m sure she would have screamed if she´d been able. I might have screamed for her.
The remaining zombies that had focused on Rhavin missed with both tooth and claw—well, I had begun to think of the long, curving, blackened fingernails as claws.
The two remaining zombie-dogs had made it aboard Endurance by this time, and leaped to attack the two nearby sailors, Stubbs and another (Skinny Pete?) I knew from the party on deck. The two men jumped away just in time.
Directly in front of me, Brummet was starting to puke. He looked terrible. I redoubled my effort to get to him, but I had trouble wriggling through the riot of blades and elbows in my path. I was also trying to avoid stepping in the various puddles of vomit—Brummet wasn´t the only one who´d tossed his morning oatmeal—but I soon gave that up and just tried not to get hurt while I reached for the first mate.
One of the big zombies had made its way to Ester. It sliced into her with its bent cutlass. As if that wasn´t bad enough, it also bit her. Nothing should be able to move with such speed! The bite seemed astonishingly large, but the ready flow of blood may have distorted my perception. That, and my fear. I forced myself to take a deep breath and reassess. She didn´t look too awful yet, thankfully. I continued to keep an eye on her, though.
About ten feet to my right, another zombie eviscerated a man with its two claws. It picked him up and tore right through his organs to puncture the skin of his back. He was the sailor I had told the barmaid and frog joke to the other night. I never caught his name. I can still see those long sharp teeth sink into the man´s entrails while he screamed for the last time. Drops of blood and bile spattered me, even from ten feet away, when it shook…something…free of its vasculature. Aside from the screaming, the process of ripping a live man to pieces was remarkably silent. That sight brought me to a full stop. Dead sailors do not eat men. This was not happening.
I jerked myself back into the rest of events on deck. Basil took a bad bite and was paralyzed, but Toothless Charlie, just next to him, was knocked down by one of the zombies. The only visible part of his body under the massive zombie was his bare foot, which stopped twitching after a few seconds. Thankfully, the zombie ate with its back to me, but I knew what was going on. Koresh fired a crossbow bolt squarely between its shoulders, but the thing kept eating, squatting in the coagulating pool of Charlie´s blood.
Far toward the bow, I could just make out another zombie eating a sailor with whom I had only exchanged a few words. All the zombies appeared to be aboard Endurance now. I doubt I would be here, writing this letter, if there had been more.
I turned away from the grisly feast just in time to see magic missiles stream down from high above the main deck to blast the zombie that had been nibbling on Nikita´s wrist. It seemed to dance as each missile hit, until it finally fell over the rail.
With that bit of encouragement, I rallied enough to finally grab our violently ill first mate and haul him away to the starboard rail. He nodded in gratitude as he leaned over to vomit again. I could hear others retching behind us. The deck was becoming slippery with blood and vomit.
Kariya fired another round of lightning at the huge zombie in front of her. It was scorched, but still [the word "alive" has been scratched out] animated. Now it was also pissed off. Their eyes met as it looked up from its meal, and it brandished the dismembered arm it was holding at her like a club.
"Don´t worry Kariya!" I heard Ester yell, "I´ll save you!"
The sailor between them missed the zombie who was attacking him. Gods, those things were fast! Ester grimaced at the sailor´s poor sword technique, impatient to get to the beautiful mage standing in harm´s way.
"I´m coming, Kariya!" the giantess tried to assure her.
Kariya wasn´t waiting around, however. In desperation, she threw another bolt of lightning at it. The bolt blew through its chest as it leaped toward her and sent the thing flying over the rails. Kariya stood gasping for air, staring at the spot where it had been.
The sterncastle was still crowded with zombies. Three of them were menacing Rhavin. The one that looked especially damaged made another slash at Rhavin. Another had dug its claws into Ralfeo again, and he was struggling to extricate himself.
In that instant that I looked away from Ester and Kariya, another zombie had attacked the giantess, further delaying her progress toward Kariya. It missed with both claw and tooth, but I noticed that she was looking even worse.
A few of the sailors in the rigging began to climb down to Basil´s defense. The popular cook was still paralyzed, cleaver raised over his head in mid-chop. Poor guy, if he survived, he´d be really stiff in the morning. One of the sailors, Dirty Tucker, was immediately paralyzed with a bite when he tried to come to Basil´s aid. Tuck was pulled out of the way by one of his comrades.
The last of the big zombies noticed Kariya and made for her. Its claws tore into her before she could get away. Fortunately, she wrenched herself free after that attack, but those claw marks bled profusely. Far to the bow, I could see through the fog that three zombies had pounced on a man. They appeared to be eating him, too. My insides turned over. I turned away to look at Brummet. The first mate still looked dreadful, spewing his morning oatmeal over the rail. Watching someone vomit is not the way to settle one´s stomach, but it was definitely better than watching dead sailors dine on human flesh.
"Now that you´re standing still," I muttered to Brummet before I cast my slow poison spell. He missed my editorial remark while he puked again, but he did look better instantly.
Ester carved the last zombie who´d attacked her into tiny bits, and rushed over toward Kariya. The giantess stepped in some of the rotting flesh she´d sliced away from the zombies with a loud squish but didn´t stop to shake it off.
On the sterncastle, Rhavin hacked further into his zombie, which finally slumped against the rail to lay in the way. The black stain from where he´d been pummeled with the stump was gone, but bloodstains had replaced it. He moved on, but Skinny Pete came by to kick the zombie remains off to the side.
Canliss magic missiled the large zombie menacing Kariya. The magic missiles missed. Magic missiles don´t miss. They seemed to travel on a bent course, streaming around the large zombie to fall harmlessly onto the deck. That should never happen. Magic was supposed to work out here.
Brummet had taken a few deep breaths and was ready to wade back into the fight. Unlike me, he had no trouble marching right into the thick of it. In fact, the sailors who noticed him heading back into battle with cutlass in hand rallied at the sight.
Now that I was done watching the first mate´s back so he could throw up, it was time for me to return to the battle. I didn´t know where to start.
I looked up to the sterncastle. Garvyn was looking pretty bad, but still swinging his cutlass furiously.
Thankfully, Rhavin stepped up to help the captain with the zombie still menacing him. Behind the two men and the zombie, I could see Nikita. She was still in the same position! I hoped that Rhavin and Garvyn would be able to direct the fighting away from her corner. The sterncastle was much less crowded now, but there was still a tripping hazard from small piles of diced zombie flesh.
More magic missiles whizzed into view from above, but these didn´t hit the big zombie either. These, too, just circled him like angry fireflies before hissing innocuously to the deck. I guess Canliss was in such disbelief over the first set of missiles that he had to try it again.
A few more sailors were leaning over the starboard rail, vomiting. I recognized most of them from the party a couple of nights ago. Beyond them, a short sailor named Turtle was paralyzed by a clawing zombie. The zombie poised over him to begin eating. Nearby, another sailor with his back to me went down under a similar attack. Koresh pumped a crossbow bolt into the zombie on Turtle. Nearby, Basil took another slash from a cutlass. Poor Tuck, who´d tried to defend Basil and was paralyzed for his trouble, looked worse than the cook by now. He took another hit from a cutlass. Other zombies all around them were still finishing up their meals.
The zombie focusing on Kariya slashed at her, but even more revolting was its long black tongue raking across her chest. That revolting tongue left a trail of blood, but at least Kariya wasn´t paralyzed—I could tell by the expression of disgust that quickly formed on her face.
The drunk sailor was still up and alive, weaving in and out of battle. I watched him wander aft, but I lost sight of him before he got to the sterncastle.
One of the dogs attacked Baby Bill on the sterncastle stairs, biting into his arm as he screamed. I think the young man may have screamed "Mommy!" but in the heat of battle, who can tell?
Rhavin had two zombies left who were actively attacking him. Garvyn seemed to have a moment to catch his breath as Fishboy, a young sailor who helped Basil in the galley, climbed up to the sterncastle to help. Despite the help, the captain got clawed. He kept fighting, though. Next to him, Ralfeo took a paralyzing slash with a claw. Rhavin got one more solid hit on the zombie attacking Garvyn, and the thing went down in two moldy pieces. Garvyn still looked terrible, and there were more zombies on the sterncastle. I ran to mid-deck, weaving my way toward the sterncastle.
"Cap´n doesn´t look good!" I yelled to rally more sailors to his aid.
As I ran past, I spotted Kariya firing magic missiles into the zombie that had been attacking her. Her missiles also whizzed around the gruesome thing, buzzed around Ester momentarily, then flew off toward the horizon.
"Man," Kariya uttered as she saw the lights disappear into the fog. I guess neither mage could believe that such a reliable spell could have no effect.
I turned to continue toward the sterncastle. Garvyn and Fishboy, on the stairs, both swung their cutlasses, but neither connected. For his trouble, Fishboy was promptly paralyzed with a bite. Baby Bill had stopped yelling for his mother long enough to make a panicked slash at a zombie dog. His cutlass sank into the dog´s rotting flesh, and it actually yelped like a live dog. I wish it had made a different sound. I like dogs.
In the meantime, Koresh dropped one of the eating zombies with a crossbow, taking its repulsive head off its shoulders in mid-chew. Nearby, Ester hacked into the zombie that had attacked Kariya. Still more magic missiles from above streamed by uselessly. Why did they keep firing those things at the big dead bastard? Kariya wisely changed her target to the beat-up zombie just beyond her instead of the big guy. Lots of holes burned though the beat-up zombie as the missiles whizzed into him. Ester remained focused on the big zombie.
I chanted the spell for the ice spikes. My right fist frosted over, then became encased in a big, spiky chunk of ice. I swung at a zombie with its back turned to me because it stood in my path to the sterncastle. I didn´t really want to touch it, even with a few inches of solid ice between us. I missed it by almost a foot, and almost lost my balance from the inertia of the heavy ice on the end of my arm. It didn´t even notice that I was there.
Rhavin sliced into a zombie that hadn´t taken any damage until then. Behind me, I heard renewed screams as the zombies toward the bow leaped onto the men there. Another zombie poised to attack the ill sailors at the starboard rail. Its bite paralyzed one of them in mid-retch. Two zombies closed in on the gunner, while Basil, against all odds, took only a nick from a rusty cutlass…well, a solid nick, but it definitely wasn´t bad.
Ester missed her zombie, but it ripped into her. She started to look a bit ill.
I whacked at that zombie in front of me again, still not really wanting to touch that rotting gray flesh, ice or no ice. I only missed by six inches this time, but it still didn´t bother to turn and attack me.
Kariya´s magic missiles whizzed into one of the zombies attacking the gunner. Beyond the gunner, Ester looked terrible from another attack. I´ve seen her look bad after a battle, but she seldom looked as bloodied and battered as she did then. Even so, she whacked the zombie which had done the damage with a solid hit. It didn´t look any better than she did…but then, it was dead already. Suddenly, I noticed the drunk guy on his hands and knees, reaching for another forgotten bottle of rum near her feet. Risking death for a bottle of bad rum? If by some miracle he survived, I was going to have to have a talk with him about having some standards.
The act of paralyzing Fishboy had drawn Rhavin´s attention to one of the zombies remaining on the sterncastle. The zombie´s flesh had been largely hacked away already. The captain hit another zombie while Rhavin hacked away at his. Just off the sterncastle, Baby Bill had made another wild swing, this time at the zombie-dog keeper.
Koresh planted a crossbow bolt in a zombie making for poor paralyzed Basil. The thing staggered from the blow, but didn´t drop. Canliss´ magic missiles burned into the zombie´s flesh, damaging it enough that it lost interest in Basil, whipping around instead to see where the attacks had originated. I think Koresh finished it off.
"For Azkal!" Ester yelled with a mighty swing of her sword, cleaving the big zombie from its shoulder through its rotten torso. Each of its two halves landed on deck with a heavy thud. A cheer went up from the sailors nearby, and relief washed over the faces of both the giantess and Kariya.
An extended celebration would have been premature, of course, so Kariya quickly assessed how many of our undead foes remained. She fired magic missiles into the first zombie she saw at the starboard rail. They scorched what little flesh it had, but it continued to menace the ill sailors there.
More magic missiles came down from Canliss, still in the crow´s nest. Three burned into the last zombie dog, which was feeding on an unrecognizable corpse, while two missiles hit its keeper.
I saw a flailing shape fly through the air and land on the sterncastle. It was a zombie, which Rhavin promptly finished off with a stab. I have no idea how one of those things went airborne, Old Man, so don´t ask.
The few remaining zombies appeared to be retreating onto their ship, such that it was. The vessel began drifting away from our ship.
"Don´t let it get away!" Rhavin yelled, noticing that the zombies´ ship was pulling away from the Endurance. I don´t know how we were supposed to do that. I couldn´t figure out how it got to us in the first place.
There was one remaining zombie on the forecastle, prone as it ate. It didn´t see Ester coming as she sank her sword into it. Meanwhile, the zombie dog and its keeper leaped back onto their ghostly ship.
Ester turned to Canliss, yelling, "Light up the guy ´cause I don´t think the dog can drive the boat!"
Once in a great while, Ester makes an excellent point.
Tiny flaming stones—somebody´s "minute meteors" Canliss calls them—flew down from his position. I groaned inwardly. Unlike magic missiles, this flaming spell could not only miss but potentially set the deck on fire. Just once I want him to think before he casts a spell.
Two stones hit the deck of the other ship rather than ours, much to my relief, but they smoldered harmlessly. The remaining stones pelted the keeper and scorched his rags without catching fire. We could now see the name of the vessel on her prow before it faded back into the fog: Eternal Torture. As if her name wasn´t disturbing enough, it had been lettered in blood or something meant to look like blood. I was betting on blood. There certainly was an abundance of it on our deck. Minute meteors chased her from above. It disappeared as if it had a good wind. I stared at it until it was entirely obscured by the fog.
When I looked around the deck again, I could see that Nikita had recovered from her paralysis and began offering healing. She turned first to Captain Garvyn, who looked patently awful.
"No," he grunted in pain, "the men."
She cast a moderate healing spell on him anyway before heading for the sailors.
Ester was still fighting the last zombie. It bit her before she could get in a good hit, and she froze, sword in mid-swing. Everyone at mid-deck rushed to her aid, and when the zombie saw Ester´s rescuers, it jumped overboard.
People were yelling for healing, mostly for Ester. She was going to have new scars from this battle, despite our best efforts. Nikita and I started to heal everyone we came to. There was no way we´d be able to cure everyone who needed attention.
Nikita apologized to the captain for running out of spells to heal the crew. Her arm was still bleeding freely. Garvyn thanked her for her efforts and said that he and the mates knew some basic healing.
Nikita´s eyebrows shot up—she´d been wanting to learn some non-magical methods of treating wounds—and she asked if they were willing to teach.
Field teaching commenced immediately with the tearing of available rags for bandages. Nikita paid close attention to Brummet, no doubt absorbing everything he said. I helped out, too, but I was too distracted by what had just transpired to learn anything.
In fact, I poured myself into the work of tearing cloth into bandages so I wouldn´t start to weep for the men whose bodies were being pushed overboard. The tactic was moderately successful at best, but you would have reminded me that my first responsibility as a priestess was to the living. Always the living, I thought, trying to ignore the splashes of corpses hitting the ocean´s surface. The losses had to be even more traumatic to those who had known the dead better than I had.
I went to Garvyn to suggest a brief memorial service for those sailors who had died in the battle. Garvyn welcomed the idea, so I put the word out that we would have a service at sunset.
The deck was still a mess, despite every able-bodied person´s efforts at cleaning up the flesh and broken weapons or swabbing the vomit and blood off Endurance´s deck timbers. Ester and Rhavin pitched in with their customary vigor. I went back to the wounded.
The men I spoke with were terribly shaken by the battle. Kariya asked a few of them if they´d ever seen anything like it, touching off a round of wild stories about undead. A few hours before, I wouldn´t have believed any of their tales, but now I wasn´t sure what to believe.
Nikita, to her credit, tried to comfort the men and steer the conversation away from this talk of undead. They kept on with the stories anyway. In fact, Orrick started telling her about a man who kept his wife´s corpse in their cottage so he could take care of it.
Disgusted, she looked at Brummet as if to ask him for intervention.
"…and a piece of the beast´s ear was in her mouth!" Orrick finished.
Wide-eyed Nikita tried to give him a reassuring smile a she rose from tending his wounds. She didn´t appreciate the sabotage to the men´s morale, but she still wanted to treat the wounded man gently. "Maybe you should get some rest."
"That isn´t anything…" started Dirty Tucker, next to him. Tuck looked quite a bit better just from being mobile again.
"That´s enough!" Brummet cut him off.
Nikita thanked him quietly, and I went back to praying with Baby Bill. Brummet walked over to say a few words to Garvyn.
"No more of these ghost stories be heard!" ordered the captain. "Childish they are!"
He commanded his crew to make themselves useful instead. For his part, Captain Garvyn walked off toward the bow, shaking his head and staring off into nothingness. I wondered what he was thinking. I didn´t suppose he had any more insight into the zombies than I did, but I could have been wrong.
Canliss used clean cantrips to clean us up, then moved on to the deck. The sailors were positively in awe of the cantrips. They shoveled off big chunks of flesh as Canliss used the gather cantrip to create piles. He followed up with clean cantrips.
By the time we´d cleaned up, it was time for our shift. Peregrine didn´t need me since we weren´t going anywhere, so I used the time to prepare for the memorial service instead. Nikita had to take her shift, of course. I found out later that she offered to take two shifts, napping herself between shifts. She certainly has taken pains to earn the approval of the officers. Brummet asked her to use her nap spell on ten men below decks instead, which she readily did.
We remained becalmed in the fog throughout the day and into the evening. It lasted through the service I held at what would have been sunset (instead the fog just got an eerie pink color). There were many tears, including my own, in that much needed catharsis. I had been thinking of how to end on a note of hope throughout the business of cleaning up, but I had no ideas other than giving thanks that our lives had been spared.
The sailor who had been swilling rum through the battle was somewhat disruptive, hurling empty bottles overboard with "and a bottle o´ rum!" to punctuate my brief sermon. I reminded myself to talk to him soon.
Afterwards, everyone went back about his business. A few sailors were working on repairing the rails blown out by Kariya´s lightning bolts. No one begrudged her the work. In the middle of the night, there was a splash.
"Man overboard!" Nikita yelled down, "Off the starboard bow!"
"Yes! There he is!" pointed a sailor.
Rhavin was among a number of men throwing ropes to the struggling figure, but the sailor couldn´t reach any of them. If he was like most sailors, he hadn´t learned to swim.
I dove overboard and, apparently Rhavin did, too. He got to the man first and hauled him to the rope. I began swimming back to the ship.
"Jven!" Rhavin called back to me, "Look at the figurehead! Look at the boat!"
I did so, immediately noticing that the figurehead was now a grotesque weeping hag rather than Jvelto. I was stunned, so it took me a few more seconds to read the name of the vessel, which no longer read Endurance. She was now clearly labeled Ship of Horrors. The paint of her hull was stripped with neglect, her sails torn, and moss hung from various points of her masts. I had to think twice about getting back on that ship now that I´d seen her in this state. Even after thinking it over, I swam for the ropes to come aboard anyway. I was beginning to crawl back aboard just in time to see Ester surrounded by terrified sailors, some of whom were crying.
"Not again," whimpered Nathaniel. I had met him at the deck party the other night. He was a wiry little guy in his late thirties.
Ester´s head spun around in his direction. Enraged, she stormed over to the poor bastard and pulled him up until his feet dangled a few inches above the deck. I couldn´t tell if he´d pissed himself from the ship´s transformation or from Ester´s rough treatment.
"What Ônot again´?!" she demanded.
"THIS!!" wailed Nathaniel. He waved his arms to indicate the ship, crying, "Look around you!"
The giantess grit her teeth.
"Please explain to me and use small words and speak slowly because I´m not very bright," she growled, giving him a hard shake to emphasize each syllable. The poor bastard just shook like a rag doll in her hands, speechless.
"What happened last time?" she asked again.
"This!" he gasped, again waving his arms. I think Ester´s grip on his collar finally started to choke him.
"So," mused Ester, trying to piece together what little the man had told her, "you ran into the zombie boat before, and then your boat turned into the zombie boat?"
Nathaniel looked awfully cross for a fellow who should be at his most cooperative.
"Well, it wasn´t the Ôzombie boat´ before. It was…that was…different…" he trailed off into sobs.
"You get a crappy boat and then you get a better boat and then you go back to where the crappy boat was?" puzzled Ester, who still wasn´t tired of dangling the sailor.
The man just stared, not sure how to even begin to answer that…question.
"Let him start from the beginning," I said, finally joining the show. The other sailors leaned away from me to avoid being dripped on.
"Do you want me to shake him again?" she asked me as she gave him a few more shakes.
"We´re just cursed!" he cried, "That´s it! We only travel to the land of free men just to be pulled back into this realm of curses…and terrors…and horrors!" I convinced Ester to put Nathaniel down eventually, but he (quite understandably) needed a few moments to settle down. He sat on the spot Ester had dropped him with his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, until at last he looked up.
"It´s Captain Garvyn," he whispered, "He´s cursed."
I supposed I shouldn´t have been surprised to hear this kind of nonsense, since sailors tend toward superstition. But it still caught me off-guard.
"What do you mean Ôcursed´?" I asked, squatting to look him in the eye.
"He never leaves the ship. Ever. Not even in the ports we can stock up in. He gives people a list and they have to…" he trailed off, but I got the idea.
I spotted Rhavin heading below. He had seen the whole man-shaking routine without intervening? I supposed he felt it was my place rather than his.
Thinking of Peregrine, I asked, "Do any of the other officers leave the ship?"
He nodded, but added, "Never far, though."
"How long have you been aboard?"
I didn´t get to hear his answer, as Rhavin returned with Kariya and Canliss.
"What´s going on?" Kariya demanded in her officer voice.
"How long have you been aboard?" I asked again, gently.
Nathaniel shook his head hopelessly. "I quit counting the years."
"How old were you when you came aboard? A young man?"
"A young man," he echoed, as if the time before boarding The Ship of Horrors had faded into a distant memory.
"Are you trying to get somewhere, but you never get there?" Kariya asked.
"Trying to get anywhere that isn´t this boat," Kinnat put in.
"You can´t leave the boat when you get to dock? To port, I mean."
I tried to look into his eyes when I asked, "What happens if you try to leave the boat?"
He broke off his gaze.
"I can´t talk about it."
He just helped hack a ship full of rotting dead sailors into tiny bits, but he can´t talk about this? I shuddered in spite of myself. He´d had enough. I gave his hand a squeeze and headed below deck. I really should try to sleep, and definitely pray.
Behind me, I could hear Ester sigh—I found out later that she had removed her tentacle from its wrappings to stretch it out. No one seemed to notice. Why the hell not? Dead sailors eating people…what´s a tentacle to this crew? I thought about encouraging Ester to apologize to the poor bastard for shaking him, but he´d probably had enough of her for one night. She needed a chance to cool her head anyway. The bell rang for our shift to gather in the mess for dinner.
"Oh boy! Stew!" Ester beamed, grabbing her bowl with one huge eager and a supporting tentacle. Now people stared, but not at the tentacle. We were all a bit sick of the same stew every day. Basil also had crusty bread (not hard tack! Mmm!) and some apples that weren´t entirely mushy to round out the meal. We hadn´t had those before Doubting that there were more deck parties to be had, I quaffed my rum ration with satisfaction in spite of its quality.
Nikita sought out Nathaniel at dinner. Torodinite methods of gathering information tend to be more subtle, but they require a certain amount of privacy. Consequently, we watched from a distance as she talked with him. I could tell by his expression that he remained reluctant to discuss Garvyn´s "curse" or what happens to sailors who try to leave the ship.
All hell nearly broke loose when she tried to relate to him by sharing the Mordenheim story because she admitted to him (and by that time about thirty other very interested sailors) that she doesn´t have a navel. That´s right, Old Man, no navel. Rhavin, Kariya and Canliss don´t have theirs, either, from the same adventure. I wouldn´t have believed it if I hadn´t seen Nikita´s entirely flat stomach for myself.
"…The point is," Nikita was finishing up, "we were zombies and everything, and all this horrible stuff happened to us. And we can prove it."
Oh no. That was such a bad idea. I glanced at Rhavin, who clearly thinking the same thing because he got up. Of course, they all wanted to see where Nikita´s belly button wasn´t. Rhavin and Canliss both immediately offered to bare their bellies to prove her story.
I just sighed. I swear, she gets herself into this kind of situation on purpose sometimes. I suppose I could have intervened, but Nikita needed to learn to stand up for herself with the sailors. In fact, she was going to have to now, judging by the reaction the sailors had to our male friends´ kind offer to show of their abdomens.
"No! We want to see hers!" someone cried. A few of the men tossed mushy apples at my male friends and booed.
"Bugger off!" David put in. "I asked her, not you!"
Much to my surprise, Nikita straightened up and looked him in the eye.
"Oh, sit down," she ordered. I smiled. She was learning.
The other sailors started tossing their apples at him, instead. They were making a hell of a mess, so that was probably it for apples with dinner.
"Yeah! Sit down!" they jeered.
Meanwhile, Nikita had turned back Nathaniel.
"…the doctor was dead ´cause Canliss did something stupid…"
"Hey!" cried Canliss. The rest of us laughed.
"…the point is, everything looked hopeless, and we survived; we came back. So you can´t give up," she finished.
"Tell us what´s going on," put in Kariya, who had moved in closer now that the practical part of the dialog seemed closer at hand.
Ester, scratching her back with her tentacle, added, "weird things happened to us, and we´re just fine.´ The sailors stared at Ester, wide-eyed, as if seeing that tentacle for the first time. We laughed out loud at their expressions.
"How did you get that?" Nathaniel croaked in disbelief. I could see Skinny Pete nodding—he had the same question for the giantess. Kariya stopped Ester before she could explain, saying that they´d hear the story after they told us what they knew about The Ship of Horrors.
"This happens every time we leave port," one sailor began in a low voice.
Canliss, who hadn´t been on deck for much of the shaking incident, raised an eyebrow.
"Oh?" he prompted.
"You´re attacked by zombies?" asked Nikita. She hadn´t heard any of what came of Ester´s interrogation while she was in the crow´s nest.
"The ship changes," the man continued, looking around to each of us.
Ester leaned her chin in her tentacle, a sure sign that she was listening with rapt attention, and asked, "So why do you leave port?"
"How does it change back?" Kariya wanted to know.
"Why don´t you get off the ship?" I asked, "Just leave?"
We were both ignored, largely owing to Nikita´s presence. In the sailors´ minds, there was still the off chance she might show them her tummy. We were both much less interesting compared to this idea. "How many of you have seen Jacob?" Rhavin asked in a voice too commanding to ignore.
However, no one answered. A few of the veteran sailors seemed to wince or squirm at the name. The name clearly meant something to them.
By the time the meal was over, the only thing we had determined for sure was that we needed to talk to Captain Garvyn. I suppose I was still hoping, in spite of everything I´d seen, that he could put all this "curse" nonsense to rest. I know that´s silly now. There really is something horrible about this ship, something I can only describe as evil, and it´s part of the oracle´s prophecy.
That night, I finally slept in the same cabin with Nikita. After the day we´d had, I´d immediately collapsed into a dreamless sleep. Well, after I reclaimed my blanket, that is. In retrospect, I´m surprised that the knock at the door awakened me. At least, I think that´s what awakened me.
Nikita made it to the door first. She opened it to reveal an adorable red-headed girl (even more adorable than one would expect just by virtue of her red hair, that is) in her nightdress and cap. Nikita knelt down to come to the girl´s eye level. I stood just behind. She was unusually pale, even for a fair-skinned person. Almost gray, in fact. Her eyes may have been green once, but they seemed dull to me.
"Sweetie, it´s okay. We´ll find your doll. Do you remember me? My name´s Nikita."
The girl nodded.
Lifeless child of stern mother found.
Pantheon preserve us, this was the child Nikita had mentioned at dinner! I suddenly wished that I´d paid closer attention.
"I can´t find my dolly," she wailed, but her face remained dry and colorless. It had been a long time since those eyes had shed tears, and only the living can flush with emotion. I stared, unwilling to participate in a discussion with a dead person. That would be the sure sign that I´d lost my mind—of course, that´s exactly what Nikita was doing.
"Okay. Let´s go get my friends and see if they can help us find your dolly."
"No. I have to find her now," the girl began to sob pitifully. Still no tears. Dead people don´t cry. Nikita, still trying to comfort her, picked her up and put the girl on her hip. Just because she was cuter than a zombie didn´t mean she had to pick her up. Maybe in Nikita´s mind, that´s all it takes to carry around dead people. She seemed utterly unconcerned about the kid´s non-living state, but I was definitely having trouble getting over it.
"Jven," Nikita whispered over her shoulder as she made for the door. I swallowed hard and took a step back involuntarily. I just knew she was going to ask me to touch the dead girl. "Get Rhavin."
That I could do. I was out of there like in a flash, headed for the cabin Rhavin shared with Canliss. I had to knock twice before he opened the door, and he had an indescribable expression on his face until he saw it was me. I don´t know who he was expecting. I told him to the best of my ability what was going on, which shook the weariness off him, and he led me to the place Nikita had shown them before.
When we got there, Nikita was sitting on an old crate with a distant look in her eyes. Our arrival, however, seemed to bring her back to reality. Where was the child? Even the zombies came from somewhere and occupied space. On seeing us, Nikita jumped up and hugged Rhavin, who looked a bit incredulous.
"She was here, really," she said desperately.
"It´s true," I confirmed, "I saw her too."
"She wouldn´t tell me her real name," Nikita fretted.
She probably wanted to do some sort of Torodinite divination on the girl.
"Next time you should take Jven with you," Rhavin suggested.
Nikita ignored him, expounding instead on the various methods of figuring out what the girl´s story is. She was talking so fast that I couldn´t keep up—she gets so excited when there´s a chance to indulge her curiosity.
"Slow down," I yawned. "Sleep first."
So that´s what we did, except I couldn´t sleep. I thought I´d just put a few thoughts down and finish this letter later, but it all just came pouring out. I don´t usually have a head for this much detail, but somehow everything that has happened here has stuck with me. I guess that´s because I don´t know quite what to make of most of it. It´s dawn now, my wrist hurts from writing so much, and I´m yawning so widely that my jaw is threatening to unhinge. But I´m no closer to deciding what parts of the last few days are safe to believe. I hate being afraid in such a familiar environment, and my mind seems to reject much of what I´ve seen.
We still haven´t talked to Captain Garvyn, and I have some hopes that he can offer a sensible explanation to the "curse" the men think he´s under. I doubt he´ll have much to say about the ship´s transformation into The Ship of Horrors or the zombies or the dead girl or even this Jacob. After all, he and the officers have had chances to mention any one of those topics to us, but they haven´t. The men don´t seem comfortable discussing these things, either, so I think we´re on our own.
Drink deep and pray for me,
Jven