For a monument to individual sovereignty, Flint’s Pyrate Academy was even grander inside than it was without. Depending on where they stood, some had called this ironic, others appropriate. A few had even called it a great artistic metaphor. Though they had clearly known its namesake as well as a tree knows the color of snow.

Towering at least six stories at its highest point, the hexagonal walls were ribbed in gothic style flutes which culminated in a brass circlet crown cradling a translucent fractal crystal hemisphere.

The walls were no less beautiful. Every inch was draped in lavish tapestries and paintings depicting scenes of mythic encounters and epic adventures.

Brave sailors of notably all mammalian descent were shown battling ferocious, often slick and scaly, monsters atop the decks of their mighty galleons. In older tapestries legions of noble, majestic, in some cases angelic, warriors with presumably magick weapons were lashing back against the Mother Goddess’s favorite flaying belt, the sky.

Spread along the polished brown floor slabs were long, slightly faded ribbons of carpet that stretched across both the length and breadth of the chamber and continued down one of two adjoining hallways.

On the wall adjacent from the towering doors, there hung a twenty-foot-high color portrait of the Academy’s namesake. A slim yet sturdy Schnauzer robed in a flowing black coat with a fully bearded silver muzzle and a pelt of bristling salt-and pepper. His lone piercing eye held the kind of mesmerizing golden intensity as a candle burning in a dark room.

He held a chesty pose as his outdoor counterpart, but his aura in here was one of proud guardianship rather than brackish attack. That could have been just the lighting.

Amelia couldn’t help but spare a morsel of respect for the artistry. The portrait of Flint’s undecorated hangar was aimed squarely at the doors. But the scale and angle of the work gave it the impression of aiming just over the heads of any who entered. His teeth were thus given the inferred effect of being bared defiantly against any ill or parasitic winds that might try and follow them through.

He looked just as Amelia had seen in like he could do anything and take on whatever the world threw at him.

Though not nearly as colossal as the weathered bronze sentinel outside, the portrait’s subject still held an invisible iron grip on her psyche. She watched as if from a sentry guard tower as nerve sensations retreated from her extremities in the shadow of its overwhelming splendor.

Or it could have been Drake’s presence. It was hard to tell.

By the light of … whatever was keeping this space so immaculately lit, Amelia could see clearly the face of her rescuer.

His long black muzzle was strong and sculpted, but it was perfectly offset by his soft ebony scruff and his kind eyes.

When he again pulled off his sodden hood he revealed a pair of tall, pointed ears. They were almost lost in his long obsidian mane that seemed to swallow any light that was shone on it.

Amelia’s attention was torn away from Drake by a cacophony of voices coming from just beyond Flint’s portrait. It was a semi-circular group of her “fellow” Prospects.

These were the same beasts who had, not ten minutes ago, unrepentantly used her body as a catwalk. Thankfully, and much to her relief, the ram who had ground her hand with his heel was not among the collected assemblage.

At the head of the assembled crowd stood another Canid. A tall, slender female with silky golden locks and floppy ears, her bright, desert color pallet and sleek aura serendipitously struck Amelia as the perfect counterpoint to Drake’s dark, mysterious persona.

As the two soaked stragglers approached, Drake called over to the sunspot lass, “I found our last Runt!”

Amelia balked privately behind her forehead.

‘Runt?’

Well, that sounded more like Pyrate talk if she’d ever heard it. Granted, she hadn’t. Her only basis for this assumption was the “historically inspired” ‘Tales From the Infinite Woods’ book she'd read on the first ferry leg between Amurza and the Horntooth stopgap port of Dhablai.

The tall lass turned around, and her genuine smile told Amelia that this was a warm and tender soul. Contrasting Drake, she had a gently rounded muzzle, soft floppy ears, and a coat of luscious honey-gold fur, all of which framed her dark chocolate-brown eyes.

She wore a buff, maille-girded jerkin over a loose-fitting white linen shirt, with black trousers and high-top boots. But even her dense attire and thick fur did little to suppress the steely musculature beneath.

She looked the pair over and asked with genuine relief, “where was she?” To which Drake answered in a hushed breath so the delinquent throng couldn't hear, “sitting in a puddle of her own tears.”

She took Drake’s sympathetic tone and reflected its feeling back to Amelia through her eyes.

“Looks like some gutter fruit gave her a taste of their boot on the way off,” he said.

Ellie touched a hand to her heart, but said nothing. She knew the unrelenting cruelty of insecure adolescents, and Pyrate youths were no exceptions. She dared not infantilize Amelia in front of her peers by coddling her, lest they use it as an excuse to make her life even more painful than it already had been.

Drake fully removed his cloak. Revealing a black vest with a brown trousers and shirt combo. He took a second to shake himself free of any residual moisture. Amelia started to give her borrowed cloak back to him, but he side-stepped her attempt with the brusque but well-meant assurance of, “keep it. There's plenty more where that came from.”

Amelia didn’t object. It was a nice cloak. She nodded her appreciation and folded it dutifully into her own jacket pocket as Drake began addressing the Prospects.

“First things first, we’ll get you all into your dorms.”

He gestured like he was clearing a shelf of its contents. “Lads, if you’ll all kindly follow me. Ladies, you'll go with Ellie.”

When he then turned to Ellie and gave her a brisk, affectionate peck on the cheek, contradictory waves of admiration and jealousy washed over Amelia’s heart. Per this and the ambient chatter she almost didn’t hear Drake whisper, “meet me under the bell tower later tonight. I’ve got something I need to show you.”

While Ellie’s only conscious response was a short nod, she couldn’t stop an impish grin from momentarily tweaking the corners of her mouth.

Apparently oblivious to this dilemma, Drake turned and strode away, taking the male section of the new group with him like as many trailing anchor weights.

He had a casual strength about him which, combined with his physique, flowing cloak and magnificent black tail, made him an intimidating specimen. He carried the aura of a beast who was willing and clearly able to take command.

Ellie and the other females watched him go. Ellie most of all.

When he was out of view the honey matron then proceeded to lead the remaining group down the opposite corridor through yet another magnificent set of wood and iron doors.

This left Amelia with a veritable deluge of questions and no time to explore any of them. She and the gaggle of chattering females were quickly ushered through the gigantic doors before they shut tightly behind them.

Amelia was starting to notice a troubling trend.

“One thing I need to make sure we’re all clear on,” Ellie said, suddenly stopping and spinning around, as though only just realizing she was being followed. “This is a Pyrate Academy. That’s Pyrate with a ‘Y’ for those whose parents signed their enrollment papers for them.”

She looked into the wide eyes like an exhausted parent. “Contrary to what many will tell you, we’re not criminals or barbarians. We’re independent contractors. We do NOT steal from or harm the innocent. We do NOT take what we aren’t contractually owed. And we do NOT kill unless our own lives depend on it.”

She threw a final critical scan over the group before asking “any questions?” in a tone that clearly suggested it was very much rhetorical.

When nobody proved stupid enough to take the bait, Ellie nodded approvingly and continued on the tour as though nothing had happened.

They walked down hallway after endless hallway. All the while Ellie recited, as if from an actual encyclopedia, trivial facts about the Academy. Side facts about a variety of subjects ranging from its founding, its history, and the significance behind every portrait, tapestry and decoration.

Most of the other girls had stopped listening before they’d gone fifty paces. The last one lasted only two more minutes before finally dropping her ears.

Even Amelia kept up a charade of interest solely out of what she idealistically refrained from calling pity. It didn’t help that Ellie’s own enthusiasm for the subject seemed somewhat hollow.

“A dozen baths an hour will deplete the well in a day.” – Jackson Sanders

At last, after what had felt like hours, but had actually been only twenty minutes, they stopped in front of a narrow stone spiral staircase. Ellie took a moment to inform them that its counterclockwise rotation was a deliberate design decision.

In the event of an invasion, it would allow the defenders coming down from above to use their swords, while denying this advantage to their attackers coming up the stairs.

By this point even Ellie’s docent mask was looking a bit threadbare. It took only a few moments of uncomfortable silence for her to finally come to the ultimate point of their tour.

“This is the Zen dorm tower. Here’s where we ladies put up our racks during semesters when we’re not out on jobs.”

She kept talking despite the sniggers as she lead them up the spiraling stone stairs.

“There’s no official curfew. However, no student under fifteen is allowed outside the walls after first sundown. Officially. And it’s on your own head if your roommate doesn’t ditch the lamps until four hours into the morning. So keep your nightsticks handy.”

Locked into a single file formation, as that was the most the shoulder-width staircase would accommodate, adolescent murmurs passed up and down like rapids down a babbling brook.

According to their guide, the reason for the tight fit was the same as why they were ascending counterclockwise. The same as why the Academy itself was built on an island isolated by a thousand parayard barrier of sharp rocks and craggy islands.

Like any successful champion, piratical or otherwise, Flint had not been without powerful adversaries. He knew any legacy of his would be a prime target for assault. He also knew that his successors could prove to be a major thorn to whatever powers ruled the lands abroad.

So he’d designed the Academy as a fortress thorn bush for fledgling spirits to nest under. Unmolested by the troublesome irons of society, government and their sanctioned dogmas until they were ready to spread their wings, take off into the sunset and fight those battles themselves.

At the third landing, past a steel-braced door with an armored slot serving as a window, they recongregated in a hexagonal chamber roughly five paces to a side with an identical door on each of the five walls. All the doors, including the one to the stairway, were miniature versions of the main doors.

Made from thick, dark oak approximately two fingers wide, they were reinforced on the outside with steel slats and on the inside with gun-barrel-thick iron bolts.

Ellie turned squarely to the group and said, “alright ladies, choose your space. It’s three to a room.”

No sooner had the last word finished corrugating the air, an intangible wind blew out her pilot light of control and the girls scattered like Bees after flower nectar at the end of a long winter.

Ellie shouted the last of her practiced spiel after them. “Remember, choose wisely! Whatever bunk you pick will be yours for the next eighteen months!”

Amelia stayed plastered to the spot. Her parents hadn’t raised a fool. Jumping in with the herd had already nearly cost her a finger. Rather than making the same mistake a second time, she instead called on another piece of tried and true childhood wisdom. ‘Stick to the adult.’ Or in this case, nearest to.

She waited until the throng had fully dissipated before timidly wandering over to Ellie.

In a voice that sounded as tiny as she felt she tried to ask, “miss, is it all right if I room with you?” Though what actually came out was more like, “mrrsisst lrifI rmwyou?”

Ellie gave her a tired but wholly sincere and understanding smile. “Sure,” she said. Whether she’d guessed Amelia’s meaning correctly or was acting on experienced intuition Amelia knew not at all and cared even less.

There followed a constricting pause in which Ellie’s honeyed demeanor took on a tinge of vinegar. “If Bon Bon ever decides to show up she’ll be staying with us too.”

Amelia cocked her head. A tick she’d picked up from a Mentan missionary friend of her father’s.

Ellie didn’t appear to notice. Some hyperscopic incursion on reality in or on the far wall had drawn her into its proverbial net and was holding her fast. It took Amelia only a few moments to concoct a theory on what that something might be.

The simple but shrewd observation of Ellie’s nose and eyes twitch like she’d inhaled pepper was all it took to get the intellectual ball rolling.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It was a look Amelia had seen often enough to know that her elder was trying to come up with a response that didn’t involve a generous helping of profanity. She didn’t seem to be having very much success.

After a lengthy pause Ellie gave up her attempts at professional euphemisticsm. In acknowledging her defeat she shrugged and said, “she’s the younger sister you wish had been given up for adoption.”

Amelia bit her lip. She’d known Ellie a little over fifteen minutes, but she recognized a restrained insult when she heard one. If Amelia was to trust her judgement, and she saw no reason to stop now, this Bon Bon character was one it was in her best interest to keep at arm’s distance.

She and Ellie took a right angle left and were greeted by the sight of her dunnage piled into a neat stack in the middle of the floor. She pounced on it like a mother Bear after a lost cub, then in like manner examined her surroundings for anything that might try to jump out and bite her.

Nothing did. Which was an improvement.

She relaxed enough to take in the room itself.

If this were an apartment, the landlord might have picked a word like “humble” for their selling base. If that were inadequate, they’d probably drop a few dollops of “canvas”, and maybe a pinch of “renovation” and “makeover” into the pot for a bit of added sweet and spice.

Amelia wouldn’t have thought to argue.

It was a cozy little space as far as Spartan barracks went. A rounded hexagon rocket of a room, with a plain linen rug, a wooden table large enough for four on which sat a crude oil lamp, three functional wooden chairs, three nightstands, which were each just baby versions of the main communal slab, and a pair of iron-crossed windows about as tall and broad as Amelia.

The one oddity she noted was that where experience and conventional wisdom told her should be a bed actually stood what looked to be a reinforced hat rack. A closer inspection brought to light a canvas roll, a pair of blankets and a towel.

‘Hammocks.’

“Hammocks.”

A year ago this time Amelia might have thought Ellie had telepathic powers. Luckily for her the first step on the ladder towards age and wisdom, signified by her honorific dangling beads, had polished out that particular dent of childhood foolishness.

It might have even been called homy were it not for the inclement weather and it being an early autumn evening near the very top of the map.

The white plaster walls made up for some of the room’s photonic deficiency. But Ellie still had to hold the table lamp out into the common room just to find the ignition switch.

The light of the flame revealed that each night table was home to a miniature cousin of the same source. One of which Amelia instinctually went for and ignited.

She then tossed her bags down on the spot and went through them to make sure everything was present and accounted for.

Not that she had anything particularly worth taking. She had deliberately only packed a few sets of old clothes, some pocket reference books and a few personal trinkets for that very reason.

But now, here, these things were her last frugal vestiges of home. She wasn’t about to let them out of her sight. Not without a strong lock and tempered steel box between them and any potential thieves that is.

As if by some miracle of quantum sorcery, the gods or the universe or whatever powers pulled the strings of existence, had seen fit to provide her that very thing.

A flanged rectangle of riveted iron, two feet by one foot by one foot on a side, sat nestled underneath the smaller table like a hibernating Fox.

Amelia fought the mass of vault metal out into the open, placed her precious belongings in it with reverent care, then bolted it shut with the hefty brick of a padlock that came ready supplied at the bottom.

The key made a satisfying CLICK signifying its good work. She slung the brass herald by its cord around her neck and tucked it snuggly under her coat collar. Tapping it three times against her breast for added warding against thieving imps.

“Hang onto that,” Ellie said while doing similar. “There’s no extras. Lose it and, take it from me, you’ll need ten crowbars to get dressed tomorrow.”

“Or a couple of hook pins,” a voice like a sheet of ice from the doorway offered.

Both girls spun around. One surprised, the other less so, to see a tall, lanky Doe leant cross-armed against the door frame. Half silhouetted, half shadowed by the contrarian light sources.

“Amelia,” said Ellie, trying her best to sound casual after that little rush of adrenaline, “meet Henrietta Morgan. Daughter of the much acclaimed Henry Morgan. Yes, that one,” she finished, catching Amelia’s formulating question on her raised brow.

“Hemlock,” the Doe said with a trace of a smirk. Or maybe it was a sneer. It was hard to tell as her face seemed to be made out of the same material as the sword and gun she had dangling respectively from her hip and thigh.

Amelia looked at Ellie and asked, “does every Pyrate get a nickname?”

Ellie just snorted out a laugh. Hemlock actually answered. “Just the ones who earn them.”

Ellie turned to Hemlock and asked in an unconvincingly light tone, “I don’t suppose you have any idea where Bon Bon got off to?”

This time Hemlock snorted her answer. “At the bottom of the Abyss if the Gods have any sense.”

She and Ellie exchanged gestures of agreement. Then Hemlock departed.

After they had finished settling in, Ellie took out a shiny brass pocket watch and flatly stated, “I’m going to go find Bon Bon. No telling what trouble that beast is getting her fuzzy hide into.”

She turned to Amelia and with her words suggested but with her eyes pleaded, “want to tag along? It’ll help you get your bearings and maybe meet some of the Troves and Apprentices you’ll be training with.”

Amelia weighed this offer delicately, as though some portion might turn out to be counterfeit. It made more sense than sitting here alone with nothing but her anxious thoughts for company.

Of course there was the risk they might actually run into Bon Bon. But that was bound to happen eventually, she reasoned. Better to get it off her plate now while she had expert backup.

In the end she ruled that the pros marginally outweighed the cons. So, with her acceptant nod and to Ellie’s clear thankful relief they set off.

Not long into their “search” they bumped into the remains of their male-counterpart tour group. But by now, it appeared that only half their roster was present. Drake and only three or four skittish young boys remained. The rest were likely either lounging back in their own dorm, or they had elected to explore the Academy on their own.

As Amelia would imminently come to learn, young boys operated on a hybrid system of faith and reckless hubris whose order of operations had been summarily codified by the eighth century physician and pioneering psychologist, Truk Pietzza, with the acrostic term LARP.

In literal speak: Leap, Assess, Regret, Process.

Drake caught sight of Ellie and was only too happy to dismiss his remaining bundle of charges. Who were likewise only too happy to evacuate the mandated drudgery session before the last of the setting suns swallowed up their freedom.

He strode over and asked where they were going.

Amelia tried to speak but found her tongue had been mysteriously glued to the back of her teeth.

Luckily, Ellie didn't seem to have that problem and so told him, “we’re on a holy quest. We seek to return a wayward soul from the Abyss.”

Drake smiled and theatrically rolled his eyes. “And who might this damned person be oh saintly one?”

“Only the muskiest of Muskrats my dear,” she said, sidling up to where she could have slipped inside his cloak. She pushed the heavy green canvas back, laced her arms around his neck and kissed him.

A corps of Ants raced through Amelia’s belly as she pretended to be enraptured by something in the floor grout.

Drake smiled, too and, to himself said, “I think I might join your heroic errand.” He took Ellie by the arm and whispered softly into her ear, “and maybe later we can go enjoy the view.”

He then saw Amelia and, trading the knowledge of her presence for the fact scratched nervously at some imaginary fleas.

“That is … we, um …” he started. But when every subsequent line of thought either sputtered out or reached a dead end, he fell back on the one safe conversational hill. “Let’s go.”

Amelia nodded. She knew something was going on and was resolved to get to the bottom of it. But for now, she decided it was best to just watch and listen.

Her godfather had once told her, “your eyes, ears and mind are the greatest weapons ever devised. In the right hands they have the power to make the mightiest warships obsolete.”

“I honestly don’t know how you do that every semester,” Drake remarked as their purposeful stride pulled them well ahead of Amelia. “I was ready to shoot half of them within ten minutes.”

Ellie shrugged. Then, sticking her nose in the air with sarcastic pomp, she offered, “I guess it’s just my superior wit and charm.”

Drake bit his lip teasingly and chuckled. “Maybe next time you should take the boys’ group. I'll handle the ladies instead.”

Ellie flashed him a suggestive look. “And how exactly would you ‘handle’ them? Hmm?”

This time Drake was ready and smiled. Meeting her challenge with a nipping riposte. “I can show you later.”

Their conversation quickly dissolved, as such juvenile dialogues are wont to, into taunting jousts regaled in playful banter with spasms of intimate tousling.

Most any other beast would have felt an awkward mix of dejection and envy tagging along behind, but Amelia knew only the height of transcendent wonder.

Not so vicarious as to be clinical, but not so personal as to be disarming. A floating, casual peace. She was a shadow on the bed of a clear river following a carefree raft.

They carried on in this way for a good half an hour. Amelia thought she might be better off taking a cue from the boys and exploring a bit on her own.

She briefly considered seeking out the Academy’s library when, from around the corner, a beast emerged, someone she hadn't expected to see again in a million years.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she demonstrated her species’ other, slightly less well known, biological boon. Speed. Faster than either Drake or Ellie could see, she shot forward and threw her arms around the tall robed creature. He, in turn, reciprocated.

Avlon was about Drake’s height and was outstandingly fit for a canine of his advanced years, as was evident beneath his billowing Headmaster’s robe, whose deep cherry velvet and golden embroidery almost completely concealed his traditional Abyss-faring pirate garb.

This utilitarian, though slightly anachronistic getup included a loose, open-collared beige shirt, black belt, brown trousers and tall black boots.

“Just a costume,” he tended to claim. “Relic props. The funeral raiment of a much greater beast. More nostalgic than practical nowadays.”

Like Drake he had a long, full coat and mane. But unlike his understudy his soft ears were folded over. His fur was the color pallet of a collie—brown-on-black, with a magnificent white fur collar ruff. But he had a beard that was entirely too long.

In abbreviated terms, he was Drake’s older, wiser, thinner, more cunning and heterochromatic twin. Had he not been an entirely disparate breed he might have been Drake’s grandfather. But he was, so that was ruled out.

Avlon’s gunmetal eyes played with a sophisticated utensil set of emotions, delight, pride and regret mainly in this case, as they took in his young goddaughter.

Finally, he exhaled the pressure of decades’ duty and said with an accent like the wingbeats of a circling Hawk, “you’ve grown.”

This was a lie. The last time he’d seen her had been less than a year ago. Normally, female dart frogs reached their mature stature around their ninth year, if not before. And Amelia had been no exception.

She appreciated his compliment nonetheless and squeezed him even tighter.

The Headmaster acknowledged Drake and Ellie with a nod and a benevolent smile. Drake took this as an invitation to speak.

“Headmaster,” he started, looking from Dog to Frog and back again. “This is the ru … ehm, the Prospect we were missing. I found her huddled on the ferry.”

He stopped.

The Headmaster had fixed the older students with an unreadable countenance. When he spoke there was a subtle but discernable edge in his voice.

“Did you now?”

The inexplicable change in tone sent an avoidant chill wandering through Amelia’s nervous system which manifested as a systemic flinch.

Avlon didn’t appear to notice.

He looked past her to address Ellie with a smile that couldn’t quite budge his eyes. “I believe Bonnet’s young one was looking for you perhaps twenty minutes ago. She said you should find her in the Zenith dorm tower at your earliest convenience.”

Had he said this to anyone else he may as well have handed them a map from another century leading to a treasure buried in another Era. Far from having just a simple language barrier, they would have been standing in totally different worlds.

Amelia, for example, knew Avlon well enough to know that he, and only he, could refer to the scandalous Anne Bonney as “Bonnet” with a straight face. Due in no small part to their alleged fling having been the initial catalyst for the events that would start her down the old piratical path.

Likewise, Drake and Ellie both had enough experience with Bon Bon to know that she would have as soon stopped to shoot the breeze with the Headmaster as she would have gotten in a bath with a bull wyntyrdyr. Which would be on the exact same day some mad alchemist actually produced gold out of a potion mixed of sulfur, cinnabar and quicksilver.

And just to put an extra fine point on it, to Ellie’s personal understanding of her cinnamon-tinted junior the idea of her actively seeking out anyone who wasn’t either another gossip freak or a potential romance partner, or sparing an iota of thought for their convenience, was so absurd it could have inspired its own comedic subgenre.

Between that and Avlon’s unbending countenance the Pyrate pair took the hint. They bowed their heads respectfully to Avlon and Ellie left Amelia with a wave before doubling back towards the girls’ dorm tower, leaving the distended family unit behind to their private affairs.

Once they were alone the Headmaster shook his head as though trying to recall the sensation of a breeze.

Amelia waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, she plucked her dusty courage jar off the shelf and asked, “why are beasts so strange?”

Where this had come from she couldn’t say. But regardless, it brought her godfather back to his usual puppyish humor, so she didn’t think too hard about it.

He laughed. She had always loved the way he laughed. It was a pure and sweetening sound. Almost balletic in its simple yet hypnotic rhythmancy.

“My dear,” he said, putting his arm lightly around her shoulder, “most beasts are like this planet. They have their good and bad spots. Their good and their bad days. The main trick in life is learning to spot the difference.”

He quirked an eyebrow. An involuntary expression which Amelia alone knew meant that he’d had an unexpectedly edgy thought.

Sure enough, he bent down close to her ear and whispered, “I’ll leave it to you to decide where weapons come into play.”

She smiled. There it was, she knew. The reason that her father, revered pirate captain Bartholomew Roberts, had asked Avlon to be her godfather.

Here was the only beast in the whole world to whom she could pose such an open, inarticulate question and receive a clear, yet thoroughly thought provoking answer. The one beast who would never dream of treating her like a helpless orphan, simply because that mode didn’t exist in his operational directory.

“You’d best be getting back now I think,” he said. “Got places to go. People to see. Things to do. Pyracy, remember, is nine tenths organization, ten percent frantic effort.”

She gave him another long, tight squeeze. Then she took off. Literally.

Evolution had made her parent species extraordinary bounders. A very handy trait when growing up in a part of the world where straight lines are a thing one only tends to hear about in stories.

But out in the wider world that edge mostly only counted in the vertical plane. On a level field Amelia had only her developed power and stamina to rely on.

These were clearly going to be big target areas for improvement in her Pyratical quest.

She was so hard winded by the time she’d reached the spot she nearly careened straight into the door. Though she did not, she did lean panting against it for at least half a minute afterward.

During which time Drake pecked Ellie on the cheek one last time and whispered, “remember our date” directly in her ear before turning to go.

He likely hadn’t expected Amelia to hear. Fortunately for her, while she had attained sufficient levels of normal comfort to form coherent thoughts, her diaphragm was far too backlogged on its oxygen quotas to even put thought into voicing them.

Which was for the better. When Drake passed her, for some unfathomable reason she had a mind to say something along the lines of “aren’t you coming?” A potential blunder for which she nonetheless scolded herself all the way up to the common room.

She may have been young, but she wasn't that young.

For a second, Amelia worried that somehow through her dead silence she had caused offense when Ellie blocked her path with a hand.

Then she looked and saw her elder’s gaze went not to her, but forward. Following it she herself noticed that the door to their room was slightly ajar. More, the sound of metal banging on metal was spilling out through the crack.

Ellie’s other hand automatically took up her weapon. A split second later conscious thought took over and she released her trained guard. Dropping into what Amelia had learned to call the “ranger slouch”.

Named for a wandering gunslinger turned sheriff known as Will Tanburn to the residents of Amelia’s home town and “Big Iron” to the rest of Amurza. Most famous for his somewhat gray stance on the law and truant form of justice, he was made an icon by his look and arsenal. His signature white hat, black cape, sword trap bracers, phallically oversized pistol and eternally stumped cigar were known and feared in every squalid underbelly joint from Sawbone to Draconia.

Amelia, lacking her companion’s superior insight, impatiently flung the door wide open. Revealing a scene that was equal parts appalling and vexing.

Sitting cross-legged on Amelia’s bunk spot, a violet-maned, rusty-flame-coated Vixen perhaps a year or less Ellie’s junior was deep in the process of tormenting Amelia’s lock box padlock with the consequently disfigured butt of a candlestick.

She was, by all conventional and unconventional metrics, beautiful. Nay, gorgeous. In much the same way as a land-tapping tornado. A hypnotic maelstrom of elements that somehow coherently blended into a single, solid vision of chaos.

Even by the miserly light of the thumbprint candle fires, her sleek, gymnastic figure and lively features stood out like needles through a feather pillow. The former aided by its barely modest covering. Tight thigh boots, a burnished kilt and vest, bandolier and leather chest wrap were all that separated the petite burglar from the elements.

The sudden appearance of the portable stronghold’s owner only abated the newcomer’s efforts as long as it took her to look up at them and wink.

Ellie met the scene with contemptuous blankness.

Amelia, meanwhile, stood agape. Her reason converging with her senses like a champagne bottle meeting a brick wall.

Ellie took two long steps inside and swung her arm wide in a dramatic sweep. With sarcasm layered so thick she could have frosted a cake with it she then loosely rendered the final lines of a tragic Mentan ballad, “lo there do I see woe and spoil bared before me. Forsooth methinks I’d best take my leave. O’er to my bed let me bid all haste. For there o’ shall I hope to find respite. If not there, then by the tip of mine own sword.”