I dear reader am no slouch. Believe you me my True Deck- The Horizon Chaser’s Stride has been the death of many a gargantuan monster, and just as often the defeat of one honourless cad or another. So when I say I felt powerless before the might of this stranger please know I am more stunned to write those words than you are to read them.
-The Audacious Deck Builder's Guide to: The Ocean, The Silver Sea
Chapter 39: Loot(The Galley)
Alabaster
“You are an asshole,” Darius said handing Alley a steaming bowl of fish stew. Alley shot him his best shit-eating grin and then smelled the bowl. The scent was similar to the Brodetto his mother used to make.
“You were being a nuisance while that girl was trying to work. This town isn’t going to fix itself, you know?”
The two boys were sitting side by side at a counter adjacent to the street kitchen. The fifty or so surviving townsfolk were either hard at work repairing the town, or sitting at similar counters and long tables eating from their own steaming bowls.
“Yeah, but we are heroes at the moment. We need to take advantage before the glow wears off.”
“We?” asked Alley suspiciously.
“Well you aren’t dead so why not?”
They continued to chat as the two ate and while he had no intentions of ‘taking advantage’ Alley had to admit that Darius was right the townspeople saw them as heroes. He felt far too weak to endure the sheer number of slaps on the back and bone-crunching handshakes that he received while eating.
The pair also found themselves on the end of numerous heartfelt thank yous from the women of the settlement. Including from the trio of dark-haired women who had treated Alley’s wounds and before long both boys had goofy smiles plastered across their faces.
“Oh hey.” Said Alley putting down his bowl. “One of the women gave me a sort of cryptic warning about my cloak. Do you know what that was about?”
Darius was holding his bowl to his lips but didn’t let that stop him from responding.
“MMMM!” he said. Eyebrows raised as he clearly remembered something he was supposed to have said but hadn’t.
The red-headed boy slammed the bowl down and wiped his mouth. “Right yeah, when you passed out on that ship and I came running over that cloak it was….eating you”
“Eating me?!”
“Well, more like it was drinking your blood.”
Alley’s memories of the end of the Challenge against Karietto were hazy, yet he could recall his Dealer behaving strangely after he was stabbed by the mechkin bird. But drinking his blood? It was a lot to take in. Except that wasn’t true, it should have stunned him, should have left him horrified at the danger represented by the very clothes on his back.
Instead, Alley just filed it away as one more risk represented by his Dealer. He tried not to think about it and he certainly hadn’t mentioned it to anyone but the Cursed Deck was dangerous in ways he could never have imagined. The way that thing that had come out of the transiteration pad had taken control of it, had Manifested its Cards into reality as though the Curse Lock meant nothing at all.
That had been a lot to take in. That had been horrifying and stunning. This news was simply something he had to account for. Besides, even if Alley could separate from the Cursed Deck he knew deep down he wouldn’t. The things he had seen in that dark castle might have shaken him right to his still inactive cores. They had also filled him with an anxious kind of hope, that maybe with this Deck at his disposal, he could one day get revenge on Soren Creed, and more importantly recover the last remnant of his mother.
‘There is a way around the lock. I have no clue where to start looking for it but there is a way.’
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Alley realized his friend was looking at him awaiting a response and had been for a few awkward seconds.
“I guess I better make sure not to get cut next time.” Said Alley with a rueful grin. Both boys knew that it was more of a concern than that but Darius understood his friend well enough to know he was subtly saying to drop it. A fact Alley was more than a little grateful for.
“So this guy, who I think is the mayor, asked how they could repay our heroism.”
“And what you asked for a date with his daughter?” Said Alley with a laugh.
“Nah she's married” Darius replied without missing a beat. “ So as a consolation, I asked them to go get and repair your boat.”
That was good news, and Alley said as much, though it begged the question.
“How long have I been out for?”
Darius thought for a second.
“ Uhhh this is the morning of the third day.”
“Third?!”
“You lost a lot of blood.” Darius offered with a shrug.
After they were done eating, Alley had intended to help a little with the reconstruction. He wasn’t a metal worker like his father and uncle had been but Alley had hammered his fair share of nails. The tanned fisherfolk who populated the island simply would not let him. Each and every citizen of the town Alley learned was called Ashton’s lookout would refuse his offers of aid.
They all sighted the same rules of hospitality and spoke of how their ancestors would look upon them with shame if they allowed the men who had saved them to work. Some of the more pious even looked offended at the suggestion.
Eventually, Alley and Darius found themselves sitting outside the hall of the deep hunters league fielding all manner of questions from the town’s five remaining children. Evidently having the two ‘ heroes’ keep the children out from underfoot did not break the taboo about letting them work.
From the bench they were occupying, Alley overlooked the shattered pier that had been the site of their battle with the pirates. It was funny how a little bit of sunlight changed your perspective on a place. In the dark of the night with the moon and torches reflecting off of the water, the place had taken on a sinister visage. Looking at it in the early afternoon sun it was just a broken pier. Granted an exceptionally long one but otherwise there was nothing special or eerie about it.
“You find anything interesting in the galley?” Asked Alley directing his gaze to the ship that sat empty tied to one of the larger pier fragments.
“I didn’t loot it yet, I've been waiting till you woke up.”
Alley frowned and looked at his friend. “And you just let me wander around the town when we could have been ransacking the ship?”
Darius shrugged. “ I didn’t want to tax you yet.”
“Screw that! I beat that pirate fair and square, let's go get his stuff.”
Getting back out to the ship wasn’t challenging but the boys hardly wanted to swim back and forth with loot, so they went back into town and borrowed a dinghy. In spite of the destruction wreaked all throughout Ashton’s Lookout it was a simple request for a settlement that lived on the ocean.
Rowing back out to the galley took no time at all and the pair tied the dinghy to the same pier fragment as the galley.
Routing around the ship proved to be fairly disappointing where the boys had been envisioning a pirate’s treasure horde they mostly found supplies required for the running of a ship. While things like spare planks, tar, backup rigging, and carpentry tools were all useful things. They weren’t exactly the kind of reward one expected after a life-and-death battle.
Alley was about to call it when he noticed a box that had its own little compartment carved into the wall behind some barrels of spiced meats. Interest piqued; he slipped between the barrels to get a closer look. The box was in a spot that could be easily concealed, but it wasn’t actually hidden at the moment.
The box in question was a little smaller than the grimoire that Alley had Manifested during his Challenge against Karieto. Sliding it out of its compartment the boy was surprised to find there was no lock. After inspecting the contents for a few quiet seconds he let out a low whistle.
If his suspicions were correct this was the sort of reward one expected after winning a battle against an evil pirate captain.
“Hey Darius” Called Alley “You are the worldly one, come tell me if this is what I think it is.”
Stalking over the hunter laughed. “Worldly? You are the one who reads books and stuff.”
“Sure. “ Conceded Alley. “ but you have been places and seen things.”
The red-headed boy looked dubious at that.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking my parents ever took me somewhere that wasn’t a horrible swamp, a dark forest, or a terrifying mountain 'cause they didn’t. But if you think that is a low-tier Card Duster you’re right.”