“Well, how’d it go, oh fearless captain?” One of his men asked, leaning back in his chair, face flushed with too much ale as Alek Corsair stalked back onto his ship. The heavy fog wiped the town from existence as the ship rocked beneath them on dark waves.

Alek strode across the deck to the table where cards and gold still laid stacked upon the worn wood and set the pirate’s skull down upon it. For a moment, his crew simply gathered around, staring at it. “You kill someone out there?” Jean, one of the ones who’d been with his crew the longest, asked, drawing a long drag from a fancy, imported cigar. The heady smoke wafted around his head, thicker than the fog itself.

“This is Captain Blackheart.” Alek gestured to the skull. “He’s going to lead us to his treasure. Isn’t that right?” He nudged the skull who remained infuriatingly silent considering he’d been yapping the entire walk here.

“You aight, Capn?” His men crowded around him, looking at him as if he’d lost his senses. A dangerous look upon this ship.

The drunken man who called himself Gator leaned against the table and cackled as he popped open a tin of sardines, pilfered from the storeroom below. “Didn’t take this one long to crack.” He said, picking up a sardine between his meaty fingers and munching onto the fish’s head.

“We all heard it speak.” Ivan protested, standing close to his captain, one hand on his saber as if he expected a mutiny there and then. The other five nodded their heads in agreement.

Gator leaned close to the skull, staring into its hollow eyes. “’E’s got the look of a mutinous pig.” Blackheart cried out. “Better watch ‘im, oh captain boy.”

Gator leapt back with a cry, his chair leaning backwards a bit too far and spilling him onto the hard wood of the deck. He laid there, clutching the back of his head and staring up at the skull with a fear never before seen on the man’s face. He made the sign of the cross.

“Toss the cursed thing overboard!” He cried out, glancing wildly around to the rest of the crew. “It’s a bad omen. We’ll all be drowned at sea if you keep it here.”

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“It’s going to” Alek said tightly, resting his hand atop the skull “lead us to unimaginable treasure. It stays on board. I won’t dally in your superstitions.” He scooped the head into his hands and strode across the deck towards the captain’s quarters. No one followed. Not even his loyal first mate. “We leave out first thing in the morning!” He called over his shoulder as if they might forget and slammed the door behind him. He didn't care if they whispered about him or murmured accusations on his mental state. They'd all change their minds when they sailed home with hoards of gold and jewels.

Alone in his quarters with the pirate's skull, he sank down into an old wooden chair. An old map had been stuck into the table before him with a silver-hilted dagger. He sat the skull atop it. “Where’s your treasure?” He asked it, gesturing to the map. “Is it near here? In the bogs? Where?”

“Oh, me treasure, eh?” Blackheart’s voice sang mockingly. “You’d do best turning this ship around and heading home. Might be the last you’ll see of it.”

“Not happening. What do you have to lose? It’s not like you’d get to spend any of it anyway. Not in your state.”

Something sparked in those empty sockets. The lantern hanging from the wall beside his bed flickered then went out. In the sudden darkness, broken only by the pale light from the open window, Blackheart spoke. “Go back out towards the sea, sail North, and keep sailing until the waters turn blacker than night. You’ll find the treasure alright, but you may not like what else lurks in the darkness.”

To his crew’s credit, they did indeed set sail at first light though they still glanced furtively at the skull in Alek’s grasp. The sea churned against the hull, that strange fog following them until the land faded from sight behind them. Salt air clung to his tongue as he stood at the helm, his eyes on the horizon. That was how Ivan found him some hours later, a gold spyglass in his hands.

“Everything alright?” Alek asked. Ivan twisted the spyglass anxiously then presented it to Alek who took it with a bemused expression. “Shouldn’t this be in the crow’s nest with Jean?”

“It broke, Captain.” Ivan said. “Nearly took Jean’s eye out while he was looking through it.”

Alek turned it over to find the glass had indeed splintered, the other side splattered with tiny remnants of blood. He handed it back to Ivan. “I’m sure there are others on the ship. Not that we need it. Blackheart said to keep going North until the sea turns as dark as night.”

“With all due respect, Captain,” Ivan began, looking about them nervously, “the others believe it to be a bad omen. They don’t think we should go any farther.”

Alek snorted. “Cowards, the lot of them. We keep moving, and tell anyone who doesn’t wish to that they are free to jump overboard.”