The sea bellowed in fury, lashing winds drawing its waves higher and higher as they came crashing down over and over again in the gale.
The rain fell sideways, blown off course by powerful winds, stinging the panicked sailors in their unprotected eyes and sea-chill eaten faces.
The ship lurched from side to side, groaning in displeasure all the time like the great sea beast that it was.
Occasionally an unlucky deckhand with nothing to grab hold of was flung aside, to be battered and drowned in the frothing waters below.
No one even bothered trying to save them anymore, not for years.
Had they tried, their imperious captain would have intervened.
He stood at the helm even now, eyes set on the way ahead, barely sparing the struggling men a glance in the maelstrom.
Clyburn Skreel hadn’t always been a man of the sea, in fact he had lived in constant fear of it all for years.
But that little life he lived amongst the landlocked endless plains and hills of Yakun were lost to him now. His obsession with avoiding the sea, born of fear, and weakness, could not last.
The great migratory Warlords of Yakun turned their insatiable lust for conquest and warfare towards his patch of land, his small country, and turned it into a blood-drenched battlefield with their rampaging slave armies of Bak-Taj bird-apes, creatures like great baboons with colorful plumage and scythe-like beaks.
The warlords themselves swinging their liquid metal star-water swords aloft like living gods of war.
He had to charter a crossing of the Dying Sea, he realized, if his family were ever to have a chance to survive the slaughter.
He would have to cross the water.
A useless fear he realized now, for the sea held no dangers of its own, it was only a mirror of those who looked into it.
He had seen nothing at all.
The passage to the Dragon Continent --as the people of Yakun called it-- was a dangerous proposition for all but an armed fleet of trade ships, which he could not afford, even with the wealth his status as an astrologer provided him.
He believed that to migrate his family to the wealth and safety of the lands far to the North-West was their best chance at peace and prosperity.
In the end the ship had been taken.
Pirates boarded the vessels with grappling hooks and boarding planks in the midst of a great storm, making quick work of any armed resistance with harpoon and sickle and sword.
Fighting practically in rags, wielding scavenged weapons and sharpened tools, they killed the guards to a man.
Then they stripped everyone of their belongings, gathering gold and jewels, and anything else they thought they might be able to sell.
The pirates lined everyone up, passengers and crew, along the sides of the ship in rows, fronts pressed to the railing, heads turned away from their captors and towards the sea.
When anyone tried to flee, or squirmed a little, they cut the prisoner down with a ruthlessness Clyburn had never seen before.
The Dying Sea pirates began interviewing the assembled host.
The captain, then a man called Red-Eye, who they said could make men boil alive with a look, was searching for experienced sailors who were willing and able to work aboard one of the many ships in Red-Eye’s fleet.
In the end, they found 6 suitable candidates out of 48 to fill the openings, and began to slit the remaining prisoners' throats one by one, content to leave them behind. Pushing their hemorrhaging bodies over the railing and into the hungry water, for waiting sharks to reduce to bloody chum.
The prisoners began to panic, screaming, fighting, but the pirates were at their backs now and there was little they could do but make noise and wait for their turn.
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He had watched his wife and son still thrashing as they hit the water, disappearing in the next instant in a tide of frenzied, impatient hunger.
Sharks ate well in the Dying Sea.
He was sure to make himself useful after that.
To become someone useful.
To face his fear, to fight and master the waves. He wouldn’t be sent to the sharks.
And the Red-Eye had so very, very much to teach him.
“Captain! We can’t take much more of this storm! Not The Kingfisher and not us! Please sir, we've got to give the men a rest!” A man screamed over the storm, bringing him back to the present.
He gave the man a scrutinizing look, and to his mounting anger saw it was only a deckhand, obviously a fresh face.
His big hands released the helm and lashed out to grab the sailor by the throat, his eyes shot wide, and he kicked at Clyburn, trying to dig his nails and fingers under Clyburn's own, trying desperately to fight for a moment's breath.
Clyburn walked with the man in his grip, over to the side-railing, and carefully teetered him over the edge head first.
He was only held on solid ground at all by his feet, which kicked out wildly. A few kicks landed in Clyburn’s ribs, and knee, and he grunted faintly.
His only response.
He let one hand free, still easily clutching the man’s neck in but a single massive fist, and drew his free hand to the hilt of a curved short-sword with a gleaming red ruby in its gilded hilt.
Perfect for close-quarters aboard a ship, or gutting a fish.
He flashed the blade across the man’s throat, slipping the blade back into its leathers in almost the same motion, and with the lightest shove and a spray of red mist quickly lost to the rain, sent the man gurgling and clawing at his throat tumbling backwards into the drink.
Before he even hit the water, a Ravager Shark, twice the mans size and all chitinous barbed armor and gnashing mandibles, tore out from the maelstrom leaping through the air and bit deeply into the sailor’s flailing lower half.
It pulled him bleeding and screaming into the dark depths of the sea, where he was silenced immediately by the crashing of waves, and the sounds of crackling thunder as the storm grew angrier.
Many of the men stopped what they were doing, and stood merely staring, terrified that they might be next.
“Unless you stinking fucking failures would like to explain to The Dread PERSONALLY why and how we have failed in this most vital of tasks, I suggest you pick up THE FUCKING PACE IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU, EH?!!” Clyburn roared, low voice booming even over the thunder above, stomping the length of the ship’s castle.
“Gentleman, you must remember, the great work that comes will soon be written about in the history books! The Kingfisher and its crew will be feared throughout the Dying Sea and beyond! And all that besides, you are being paid a ransom fit to make us all freemen and kings!” The men nearly cheered, but most merely let out something of an approving growl or the cracking of knuckles in reply.
If they succeeded then they would be known the world over, nevermind the Dying Sea.
They might even be revered and rewarded by Yscasa the Dread herself, master of all Dying Sea pirates and their myriad fleets.
That would make them like Clyburn.
A captain.
A kingslayer.
“We’re on our way to cement Dying Sea power in the West, and to teach those dragon lords a good lesson about trying to tell the Dying Sea where they can and can’t sail. And what they can and CAN’T take?! Eh?!!?”
The men grumbled in vague agreement, avoiding Clyburn’s gaze.
The captain still had that wild look in his eye, something foul and yellow-orange seemed to glow in the back of his eyes.
“Now. Get back...TO WORK!” Clyburn cried and quickly began to stalk the decks.
The men exploded into action at nearly twice their previous pace.
Clyburn grinned to himself beneath the shadowy confines of his big dark hat, floppy to the point of uselessness, with a long black feather poking out of the rim.
Occasionally he broke into great bellows of rage, emphasized by smashing his heavy fist onto any available wood or stone surface available.
The men tried not to jump as they worked.
The ruthless pirate enjoyed his little splashes of eccentricity.
He thumbed the brim of his hat between his fat fingers delicately, and flicked a fleck of blood free.
He returned to the castle and gripped the helm, and smiled. His remaining natural teeth had long ago been chipped to jagged points by one too many savage blows to the face, and the remainder were capped with gold, or silver, or replaced entirely with some gem, wood replicas, or in one case the actual tooth of a small shark.
He whipped the wheel sharply to the side, just cresting the rim of a great crashing wave that would have buried them all otherwise, the ship turning almost horizontally as it flew, a cluster of men flying lost into the storm.
Clyburn howled with mad laughter that crackled with arcane power, echoing over the thunderbolts, carrying his foul promises on the screaming wind.
A bolt of yellow lightning hit the water and for a moment the sea was lit in a sickly mockery of daylight.
Amongst the crashing waves were the great corpses of the Leviathans, dark hulking bodies jutting out of the sea many times the size of the mighty vessel like jagged mountains rising from the depths, the rotting scent of death was only enhanced by the damp metallic smell of storm.
The Kingfisher crested each one, the monstrous winds and capsizing waves buffeting the supernaturally sturdy vessel this way and that, allowing it to avoid smashing into the canyon-like walls of dark glistening flesh.
Such journeys through the deepest depths of the Dying Sea required a lot of...fresh blood. But they saved a lot of time.
Most lesser ships sailed around the churning heart of the Dying Sea, the place that gave the wider ocean its name.
Clyburn knew there was nothing to fear, only corpses here.
His men, almost each and every one of them a slave and captive aboard the pirate vessel The Kingfisher, as Clyburn once was. As they worked; they prayed under silent breaths to a hundred different spirits and gods from a dozen corners of the world, for their own lives, and for any poor soul who would try to get between Clyburn Skreel and his prize.
For where Clyburn Skreel went, The Storm followed.
