The iron diving bell rang as it plunged into the warm Rythmin sea, Ninia’s body lurching at the impact. She held onto the handles with white knuckles. This wasn’t her first experience in a diving bell, she had spent many hours scrubbing the inside of this one specifically, but this was her first experience sinking into the sea in one. The light seeping from the small window embedded into the bell shifted from blue to a deep emerald green as the water overtook the glass.

  Clothing rustled on the opposite side of the bell, Ninia’s attention being drawn to the man sitting there. Tall and lean, he had long brown hair that was tied in a tail and a ragged scar that reached from the corner of his mouth to his ear, starkly visible on his sun darkened skin. He dropped his maroon cloak into a basket set beside his bench, then pulled off two pistols that were strapped to his chest via a leather harness. This left a length of metal set into its own holster attached to the same harness.

  Captain Alinyaln took a deep breath of the iron scented air. One boot came off as he pulled it, then the other, leaving his feet bare, and Ninia followed suit. “Are you ready, lass?” The man asked, his voice kind as he addressed her.

  “Aye, Captain.” Ninia said, giving him a small salute, fist raised to her chest.

  “And you know what to do?”

  Ninia nodded. “Swim out, cut the rope, then swim back with the chest.”

  Alinyaln raised an eyebrow, waiting for something.

  Uncertain, Ninia tried to think of what she was missing. “And… Don’t drown?”

  “Don’t touch the coral.” The Captain said, small disapproval in his voice.

  “Oh, right.” She blushed at this. Swim out, cut the rope, swim back, don’t touch the coral.”

  “Good lass.” Alinyaln said with a smile. “This’ll be quick, just try and relax.”

  As soon as Alinyaln said to relax, Ninia found that she couldn’t. Her breathing began to come more rapidly, which was only heightening the realization that the air inside of the diving bell was limited. She closed her eyes and sat back, consciously restricting her breathing, but still trying to draw in enough air for the dive.

  With a lurch, the diving bell stopped sinking into the sea.

  “Let’s go.” Alinyaln said, preparing to drop into the dark green waters.

  “So, I just swim out there?” Ninia asked, unsure of herself now.

  Captain Alinyaln laughed. “I thought you knew the plan!” He winked and then vanished.

  Ninia nodded, took a deep breath, then dropped into the water. Instinctively, she kept her eyes shut, but given enough thought she slowly opened her eyes and was struck by the sight she saw. Rays of green light illuminated the ocean depths, streaming from the ever-burning sun above. Small bulletfish swam amongst a school of far larger musks, the deep blue scales seeming to take in the green sunlight. Fire eels with their vibrant orange manes swam in pairs past her, circling the diving bell. And covering the surface of the sea floor was the Burian Coral, pale green with small glittering black stones dispersed throughout. It rose above patches of rock and seaweed. One touch was said to paralyze instantly, the victim entombed by the coral for eternity.

  Ninia gasped from the beauty of the sight, but then retched as the salty fish water entered her mouth. Bubbles carrying her life rose from her mouth soaring back into the diving bell overhead. She shook her head, shivering from the disgusting taste of the ocean, then saw Alinyaln in the distance. He watched her, holding onto the rope weighing down a small chest of plunder, the end sitting on top of the Burian Coral was wrapped around a rock.

  It was a short swim, though made longer by the Captain’s judgement of her. She arrived and grabbed hold of the buoyant chest, hoping it will keep her in place. She pulled out a small knife which was strapped to the inside of her wrist and began to saw at the rope connecting the chest to the stone below, but after a moment she felt the scraping of metal against metal and realized that the rope was actually a chain.

  Alinyaln noticed this before Ninia, then pulled out the length of metal he had kept with him. Roughly a foot long, it was thicker than a club and the shaft had dozens of small spikes protruding from the metal. He inspected the instrument for a long moment, then tossed it to Ninia. It moved toward her and then began to sink rapidly. She barely managed to catch it before it has sunken too far and had landed upon the deadly coral below.

  Her lungs were beginning to burn. Ninia had spent far too much time gawking at the ocean around her, using up her precious air and now the diving bell was too far away to justify getting more. She shook her head, then pulled the small switch on the handle of the sword, causing the crystal within to spin rapidly and heat up. Alinyaln nodded to her, a sign that she could open the cover on it by sliding the switch across as opposed to back toward her. This opened the top of the sword and a brilliant jet of white light erupted from the end of the handle.

  Gripping the chest again as she began to be pushed backward, Ninia took the torrent of light and pointed it at the spot she was beginning to cut. Alinyaln put a hand on her arm and shook his head, then pointed at the bottom of the chest. Of course. Ninia hadn’t considered that she could potentially destroy the chest with the weapon of fire.

  She pointed it at the new spot on the chain and the rope coating burned away in an instant. Boiling water surrounded the “blade” as the bubbles rose up to the surface. The chain went from dull gray to vibrant orange on a matter of seconds, then melted and separated as the chest floated upward.

  The spiked section of the sword handle in her hand began to turn orange, faint but rapidly growing in intensity. She closed the cover as she had been instructed to do, trapping the flames within. Sliding the switch the opposite way caused a small grinding sound, one she felt more than heard under the water, which made the crystal inside stop burning, the motion ceased. The metal handle cooled rapidly in the depths, residual heat boiling off into the water.

  The swords of fire had always fascinated Ninia, their true name being quiat swords, or more simply, a quiat. Named after the lowering of the sun over the world by the false God, the luminescence that burned from within was reminiscent of rays of sunlight, only stoppered by the two ever circling moons overhead, Midin and Syphys.

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  Captain Alinyaln grabbed one side of the chest—the cursed man didn’t even look to be starved for breath while Ninia’s lungs were beginning to burn—and began to swim back toward the metal diving bell. Ninia caught up to the man and grabbed the other handle, helping him swim it to the bell.

  The chest rose up and out of the water, Ninia following as her chest began to convulse from the lack of air. Her head erupted from the surface of the water and she gasped, drinking in the glorious metallic air. Gripping one of the handles for support, she held her head above the surface of the water. There was a push on one of her legs, a sign from the Captain. Ninia moved out of the center of the bell and allowed Captain Alinyaln to emerge from the waters.

  With a graceful pull, Alinyaln dropped onto his bench and pulled the chest along with him. It wasn’t particularly large, but it must have been important for the merchant vessel to try and hide it.

  Ninia pulled herself up onto her bench, hurting her backside as she did so. She was still breathing hard, trying to fill her body back up with air. “Tarnation,” She whispered, head thumping on the side of the bell.

  “I take it you’re not doing yer breathing exercises.” Alinyaln said disparagingly.

  Ninia shook her head. “I have been,” she lied. “I forgot to—wheeze—take a big enough breath.” She was too out of breath to make more of an argument for herself. She had meant to do her exercises, it was important for a privateer to be able to hold their breath for an extended period of time. Ninia had just forgotten. Surely it wasn’t that big of a deal.

  “You need to make sure you’re doing them, lass. I don’t want you drowning on me the next time you get tossed overboard.” Alinyaln said, squeezing seawater out of his flowing white undershirt.

  “That happened once.”

  “And when you live on a ship in the middle of the cursed ocean, it’ll happen again.” The Captain said firmly. “I’m not teaching you just to have you die on me.”

  Ninia crossed her arms in front of her. “It’s not like you’ve been doing much of that anyways, Captain.”

  Captain Alinyaln grew quiet at that. He stared at her with his brown eyes. They seemed to peer into her very soul, the depth of them almost beautiful. He huffed and then returned to drying his shirt, strapping the pistols back onto his harness and then draped his coat over both.

  “I’m sorry.” Ninia said softly in the quiet sloshing of the diving bell. “You’re right, Captain, I need to be doing my exercises.”

  Alinyaln shook his head. “No, you’re right, lass.” He said to her. “I’ve been neglectful of my duty to teach you.”

  Ninia didn’t know how to respond to this, so she nodded toward the chest. “What’s inside?”

  “Can you guess?”

  Considering for a moment, Ninia shook her head. “It’s not heavy so it can’t be Gins or gems.”

  “So, probably not valuable.”

  “Maybe not monetarily.” Ninia said with a shrug. “Why else would they sink it?”

  Captain Alinyaln smiled at her. “That’s some good thinking, lass.” The Captain grabbed a thin rope that wound its way to the outside of the bell and gave it three sharp tugs. This would signal the crew to pull them back up.

  *

  When the lip of the bell breached the surface of the water there was a strange pop and a pull on Ninia’s ears. Water sloshed off of the bell and rained back down into the water below, then they swung around over the deck and were lowered. It stopped roughly five feet over the deck in order to allow them to crouch out from underneath it. When Ninia did so, she made sure to hurry as to not get crushed if it were to fall.

  The Captain followed suit though at a much more relaxed pace, carrying the chest by the metal handles on the sides. The wood was glistening, and the metal rivets and latches seemed to be in good condition, still sterling. Part of Ninia had worried about the chest being old, a remnant from an older voyage and used as a distraction, but the cleanliness of the chest bespoke the fiction of such a scenario.

  A woman’s voice shouted nearby and the bell lurched back into motion, the crane arm connected to the bell and winch moving by the effort of several Yishks, indentured servants aboard most vessels of the seas. It swung off to the side and rested in place against the poop deck, the highest deck of the ship. Two Yishks dressed in plain white shirts ran over to the bell and tied it down with ropes.

  Kiara, the first mate aboard the Mercy of Dradinoor, was instructing the Yishks on what to do now that the diving bell was back in place. They scurried off to do as they were told, not wanting to earn the ire of the blue haired woman. She was short but not squat, thin and almost willowy but this belied her strength. She shot Ninia a look of dislike. “Captain!” Kiara said with a strong salute. “I take it the dive went as expected?”

  “As expected, indeed.” Alinyaln said to the woman, holding the chest out. “Have some Yishks take this down to Higlim in the hold, I’ll be down for it soon.”

  “Aye, Captain!” Kiara walked off, shouting various orders as she did so, almost knocking Ninia over as she did so. The woman had never liked Ninia, that much was apparent. Was it due to the constant wars between Rythmar and Mikklid, their respective homelands? Ninia had left Rythmar when she was a child so the wars meant nothing to her. With Kiara’s bearing though, was she perhaps a veteran for the Mikklid navy?

  Ninia ran over to the rail overlooking the merchant vessel that had been raided. Ropes with hooks attached to the ends were holding the ship in place against the Mercy of Dradinoor—Captain Alinyaln’s vessel—complimenting the planks of wood that helped navigation from deck to deck. More plain clothed Yishks from both vessels were on the deck of the other ship, neither interacting with the engagement past loading goods onto the Mercy. The actual crew members of the enemy ship were bound kneeling on side by side each other, their captain tied to the mast of the ship.

  The dead, mercenaries judging on their disorderly uniforms, were being deposited into the ocean by Drags the Dragonkin. The solemn creature never spoke, his tasks having an air of reverence, especially with distasteful work like depositing the dead into the seas. Ninia looked down at the corpses, some were slowly sinking into the waters while others were far more buoyant. One man with a bullet hole in his lung had air sputtering out of him as he sank, which was a grossly fascinating sight to Ninia.

  Footsteps sounded behind Ninia and she turned, Captain Alinyaln peering over the railing alongside her to see what she had been so interested in. “A sad day,” Alinyaln said. He placed his hand on the railing. “But, they weren’t innocent in this skirmish. Remember this, lass, the innocent are to be respected, for they are the source of our income.”

  “Do you have any orders for me, Captain?” Ninia asked. Income was an… interesting way to proclaim they needed to keep people alive, though Ninia knew better than to argue with what her Captain was saying.

  Alinyaln nodded to the Captain of the other ship. “Stay and watch.”