A commotion like which might be the start of a battle rocked Amelia out of a disturbingly vivid dream.

She instinctively glanced at her heirloom “tonal-sands” clock. A wholly unique timepiece gifted her father several decades ago by an old family friend whom he’d always been reticent to directly name and which had recently come down to her after her family’s sudden drastic dissolution courtesy of her mother’s middle name being Pendulum according to her eldest daughter.

At first glance it was just a standard hour-glass which contained what reasonably passed for ordinary volcanic dust. But that was as deep as its normal aspects went.

The glass itself was fitted snuggly into a mirror-hinged oblong bronze plate, with a penta-point bronze star capping the valve control at its tapered crux.

This was mounted over a tightly fitted bronze scale which itself lay on a rectangular base of ostensibly solid black marble. But like many things concerning the “Black Beast” this was a meager sampling of the truth.

Between the polished stone and the wooden box which housed the entire apparatus lived a complex order of wires and tubes to a unique piezoelectric nexel power cell, which, when activated, powered an electromagnetic coil to influence a set of unstable crystals.

The end result of all this was a precisely calibrated bell which doled out frequencies out of range of any living beast’s hearing known as infrasound.

These waves triggered an electrochemical chain reaction in the brain of anyone sleeping within its effective radius. Stimulating the slow release of acetylcholine to wake the sleeper up in a manner far less jarring and more natural-feeling than a standard alarm bell.

A series of pearly digits lined the base’s side above a well-worn bronze gear.

“Time Stamps” these were called. Albeit solely by her and her parents. They allowed her to set the sand flow rate to anywhere from five minutes to twelve hours.

She observed the sand level markers. About twenty minutes left on the eight hour run she’d set.

She glanced over to the window to see that the bright yellow cap of the second sun was just peeking out.

She sank back onto the pillow and sighed.

What unusual punishments did the world have lined up for her today?

She raised her head just enough to see past the bottom clot of her hammock and blanket. Beyond she spied Ellie sat half-dressed on her bunk.

Even with one foot still in wonderland Amelia caught the pungent whiff of professional agitation and exasperation about way the other yanked on her high boots.

She caught mutterings of foul curses as the elder teen fastened her leather bracers. Amongst which she could have also sworn she heard something like the name “Gerard” or “Jerad” or “Jerome” tickle the air as Ellie fastened the maille corset around her trim midriff.

Down the length of her back hung her long golden braid, held at the end with an emerald clasp. The braid swung as though on guard from some invisible threat.

A leather belt hung off her hips. On which was a pair of black holsters. One held her Clevette pistol. A reliable, if painfully conventional, sidearm whose pentagonal magazine block held six refined Bombash Inc. nexel pellets, or nexii as they were called conversationally.

Formed by and harvested from the nexel mollusks that spawned in the vast Erandic ice caverns, these unusually energy-dense crystals had served as global standard for small arms ammunition since before the last Divide.

No beast knew exactly how these creatures had come to be. Less still was known about how they produced these tiny amethyst wonders. And as many theories existed about their evolutionary purpose as there were minds who theorized them.

Whatever was the case, it was all sophistic noise as far as the powers that be were concerned.

To those ruthlessly industrious conglomerates whose coffers were lined yearly with money traded for barges of raw munitions or the suckling guilds who transmuted them into fuel for that most lucrative of sentient pastimes the ‘where’s, ‘how’s and ‘why’s were of no particular consequence.

What was well worth knowing, so much so that it had almost single-handedly spawned the habitual reclusively and secrecy among occultists, was that through various chemical and alchemical rites their internal crystalline latticework could be restructured so as to incite explosive instability when struck with significant force. As in a gun’s spring-loaded hammer or firing pin.

Once unleashed, the pellets bled gouts of violet alchemical fire. This allowed them not only to penetrate in the traditional sense, but also saw them able to burn through most materials.

As well, the distinctive ghostly trail had given rise to the popular expression amongst professional villains “send em a king’s star”.

Ellie’s other holster was more of a clasp, in which was held a steel bar mace with pyramid teeth studding the sides.

From what little Amelia knew of weapons these were meant to concentrate the force of a blow and help the head better bite into plate armor.

Amelia was suddenly very grateful for her blanket and end post cover. She understood completely now Bon Bon’s combative reservations last night.

Ellie in her full combat dress held a sobering flame up to her formerly imaginary notions of Pyracy. A feeling no sedentary portrait or written work could ever hope to convey, however exquisite or masterful.

It was telling that Bon Bon’s hammock stood empty. Though telling of what exactly Amelia had yet to even begin to postulate.

In her conspicuous stead stood the deadpan Doe, Hemlock. She wore similar garments to Ellie’s. The only notable difference being her short black vest buttoned to just below her far ampler bosom.

Like the mineralized tree down in the courtyard, even in full daylight Hemlock was hauntingly beautiful.

True to her nickname she carried about her a vexing contrast. One which simultaneously promised a verdant nectar but yet also threatened a short and painful.

Like Ellie, the Doe also wore a pair of holsters at each hip. One of which held a standard Clevette pistol with a pouch of extra nexel cartridges. Instead of a mace, her other holster held a slender, needle-bladed spadroon.

Unbeknownst to Amelia, at that moment Hemlock also had a six-inch punch dagger hidden in each boot, a silk garrote ribbon woven into a thin metal bracelet around her left wrist. She also carried a colorful assortment of clandestine weapons in various clever states of concealment about her person, including a pair of miniature stun and shrapnel grenades gifted her, incidentally, by the very hooligans who were at present cause for concern.

Both Ellie and Hemlock looked like they could tear the limbs off a wild wyntyrdyr and would have no qualms about doing it.

A second round of booms from outside brought Amelia screeching back to the present.

She looked to Ellie, who, by then, was already halfway out the door.

“What’s all the commotion?” Amelia asked.

Ellie halted and turned back just long enough to say through a smile that wouldn’t have fooled a braindead Kitten, “nothing you need to worry about.”

Her smooth motherly conviction had gone from sounding worn to fractured in several places, like a shattered vase some beast had desperately glued back together, praying that no beast would notice.

“Don’t forget, orientation is in the gatehouse at nine!” Ellie called back.

Amelia groaned. She had forgotten all about that.

As if in answer to her unspoken comment, Ellie’s disembodied voice yelled, “you don’t want to miss it!”

Amelia rubbed her eyes and threw her legs over the side of the hammock.

She knew it was a needful thing. This school gathering. It was where she and the other Prospects would be getting their herd assignments.

Drawn from the Equestrian term for the “civilized” practice of coercive slave driving, the Pyrate Academy slang for an unofficial, unlicensed Pyrate crew had not been chosen without due etymological and cultural consideration.

Contrary to what traditional notions may suggest, a Pyrate Academy was not the sort of place one went to initiate in the philosophical and dry historical aspects of “free trade”.

Indeed, the place only had “classrooms” in the sense that the suns were literally on fire. There were rooms in which groups of students assembled for lessons, yes. But the only books that were ever involved in that process were the head-count ledgers. And that was only on days when the particular Professor was in a sour mood.

For their first semester alone Pyrate Prospects would be taught the basic ins and outs of their new profession.

For those nine months they would be coached in all the necessary rudiments of Abyssal navigation, shipboard operations, terminology, weapons and basic combat drills.

But not from the comfort of a desk. As Flint had personally carved into the stone lintels above each and every door, from the Zenith dormitory to the Nadir, “all the facts in the world won’t guard your skull from an axe.”

No. A core principle of Pyracy being natural selection, and the core of that being rapid adaptation or death, Pyrate youths were shown the ropes in the most literal and daring sense.

Their every waking hour would be spent on the Academy’s gun range, in the sparring ring, or running ship drills through the rocky crevasses of the Great Border Wall.

“Death is life to a Pyrate,” Flint had once remarked to his foremost disciple, now the Headmaster. “We die as we live. So live well or you’ll die young and stupid.”

From then until graduation, or until fate claimed her life in some untimely fashion, she and her herd would take on curated jobs for the Academy in order to gain no only live combat experience but also learn the basic essentials of contract negotiating, wage bargaining, and supply and budget management.

Then that thought which was the stinging nettle bane of students and working beasts everywhere. What time was it?!

This sent learned waves crashing through her body and mind hard enough to throw her fully up and into her clothes before remembering that it was only quarter to eight.

Then she remembered Hemlock was still standing there like a glass idol. Watching her with eyes as sharp as flint.

“What time is it?” Amelia asked for lack of something better to say.

“Quarter to ten,” Hemlock answered in a smooth voice as hard as glass.

Why hadn’t her alarm gone off? Had she set it wrong? She looked at the dial again. No, the switch was at the eight-hour stamp. It must need a new power cell.

Great! Just perfect! She would have to tend to that later, right after scrounging up some breakfast from she knew not where. But for right now she had to go see an old Dog about a list.

Her Anuran legs carried her to the stairwell door in three large bounds. Dropping down eight or ten steps at a leg, a less learned beast would have been shocked having at one point turned to see Hemlock keeping easy pace with her. But Amelia’s elementary Native Species course had told her that Cervids were to rough and rugged terrain what Avians were to open air.

“What was all that racket?” Amelia asked as they descended.

Hemlock’s lip curled in what might have resembled a smile if one squinted at it through an alcoholic lens.

“Probably the Blunder Twins blowing themselves up again,” she said. “With any luck they'll have shot themselves off to Bora this time. Spare me or Drake the trouble.”

There was no aggression in her voice. In fact she delivered about as much emotion as a desert rock carried water. Like said rock that didn’t care a wit whether the world was cold, hot, wet, dry or had suddenly stopped turning altogether.

Although she didn’t yet understand why, Amelia found this quality to be rather appealing and refreshing.

“You coming?” she offered hopefully when they reached the bottom.

“Can’t,” Hemlock said flatly. “Got other stuff to do.” Then she whirled and strode off down the way opposite the gatehouse, towards the clock tower.

“Oh. Okay,” Amelia said to her back. Unconsciously mimicking the Doe’s emotionally bridled manner. A fact which loitered around and nipped at her mind’s prehensile parapet as if probing for a loophole to squeeze through until she reached her destination. At which point all other exterior and interior concerns vanished in what could only be surmised as a puff of unspooling reason.

She had arrived expecting the ceremony to be half over. She’d spent most of the walk here steeling herself against the prospect of being lectured or reprimanded for her tardiness. Instead she found the whole of the freshly admitted Prospect block loosely gathered in front of the Headmaster, himself displayed for all in his autumnal robes on top of a long wooden dining table, with a few loose smatterings of older students, mostly female, hovering about the periphery.

Amelia would come to learn that time was a Pyrate’s default currency. And that this was because it was life’s. Not a mere demarcation of value, but its very definition. Consequently guarded and cherished, and as often as not horded, just as jealously as any hard sociological contrivance stamped on metal or parchment. Only all the more by their ilk for they understood just how easily it could be stolen and that it could never be made back.

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“This is why we invented clocks and timers,” would say their Operative Technician Professor, one James T. Obsolong, at the merest shiver of provocation. “We can time in sand and gears and hump it around in our pockets. It is as precious as air. More! You can always take another breath. That is, until you run out of time.”

Thus, with seconds and minutes being the fundamental value quanta in life’s grand equation, it only made sense that those most fundamentally acquainted with life, them being the free and the young, would all show up to an unpopular event as late as they could and that elders of the same proclivity would, understanding this but also having used theirs to purchase greater shares int the adult facilities of discipline, foresight and resource management, set said event’s time budget accordingly.

“Unless he’s getting paid or fed, or if he’s just got somewhere he’d rather be, when a Pyrate says nine ‘o’clock, best think crest noon.”

For just now Amelia would have only the wisdom poured into her by most common experiences to go by. By which she would unknowingly put that first and dearest of the Pyrate axioms, ‘adapt and live’ into motion.

Drake was at Avlon’s right arm, naturally. It didn’t escape Amelia’s notice that a few of the elder girls had fixed him like Ferrets, one of whom actually was in point of fact, intent on plundering a ripe nest.

The simple broach at the neck of his forest cloak had been commandeered on this occasion to display a rustic steel plate with his full name, his Academy rank of Chief Junior Secretary, and the unfamiliar bold suffixed letters CJS / AC.

She made a mental note to ask about that at the next opportunity.

Around and mostly behind him there stood a handful of other assorted personalities. Like Drake they wore their names and job titles displayed on similar slats of either steel, bronze or copper fastened at their collars or breasts.

There was one in particular, a tall, lanky fellow with small rounded ears, tan fur and a long angular muzzle who caught Amelia’s eye. He wore a knee-length leather apron and tool belt over a black highway coat which ran down halfway over his brown leather boots that looked like they’d gone to and personally fought in several wars.

His face, what small parts of it were visible beneath his mask and mossy-green blast goggles that is, was laced with the marks and scars of burns and blades. And every square inch of him was caked with mud, soot, ash, various mineral tints and a few daubs of what Amelia might have been persuaded to believe, but didn’t quite get there on her own, was dried blood.

His ID badge read in big bold text:

Thomas MacCulligan

Armorer / Demolitions Prof.

There stood another behind and between Avlon and Drake Professor whose name badge Amelia could not read but whose entire wardrobe seemed to consist of pockets, belts, bags, pouches and bandoliers. Nearly every single crowded orifice in which bulged, and in more than one case literally overflowed, with pens, vials, instruments, tools, books, parchment rolls and all sorts of squiggly glassware that looked more like a clown’s paraphernalia than a learned scholar.

Still another had a helmet-mounted telescope. One even had on what only Drake and Avlon recognized as a Masonic Octoglove.

A fascinating device she’d been made to understand allowed the wearer to telepathically control any piece of mechanical equipment within a twenty-league radius.

The nature of its workings were unknown to all but its original inventors, the last of whom had died centuries ago, save for that it utilized a “complex, symmetric fusion of magick and science”. Something the Masons had called Diegesis, but which modern minds understood as alchemy.

Behind this peculiar gathering, there stood one particularly sour-looking individual who did not share the stage. He wore the same style of ornate dress-robes as the Headmaster. What’s more, he was also the same breed of canine as Avlon, but with dramatically darker fur and an even darker aura.

While she waited for the ceremony to start, Amelia decided to walk around and mingle with the crowd. This was not something she did out of enjoyment, but rather because she thought it prudent to know whom could be trusted to not cause her any grief and whom she should avoid.

Immediately her eyes caught on a familiar shape and color pallet. Another Anuran, slightly taller, roughly equivalent to her in size and build, but still very distinctly male.

However, as she drifted nearer it became apparent that, their broadly shared ancestry notwithstanding, the two of them couldn’t have been more dissimilar.

First, and most obviously, he was the color of a mid-morning sun. Backing this was that he had barely any spots. With the exception of the one muddy patch over and around his left eye, those shrinking few droplets that leaked from this pool down over his lips onto his trachea were small, easily mistaken for flecks of dirt but for one of more primal familiarity with his breed.

This, combined with the fact that he was a good head-and-a-half taller than she, meant that he was an even more deadly variant called a Phyllobates Terribillis. Known by both the common folk of Amurza and abroad as Golden Tree Frogs.

What made Phyllobates especially dangerous was that, unlike their more ground-favoring counterparts, Tree Frogs didn’t require any external additives to produce their dreaded toxins. Adding to this that their poisonous secretions were generally four to five times more potent than their cousins’, albeit at the cost of much reduced load, even unarmed and among beasts who thrive on mortal combat this one would be deemed a mortal foe.

Amelia peered at this gaudy specimen between a pair of raunchy Salamanders as though he were an upright body in an abandoned cemetery.

Something about him held her mind in a vice grip. But for her own life’s sake she couldn’t have cited it. Nothing about him physically was of such grave or awesome import, and it wasn’t like she’d never encountered boys before.

He wore a loose cotton shirt with no lace, brown trousers and black boots. Nothing abnormal there. Only his was adorned with fancy frills about the cuffs and was secured by a frilly ascot.

Also the fabric was bleached. This implied a lack of hard labor, and therefore a certain acquaintance with wealth. Not unlike her.

What such a beast could possibly want from Pyracy was any beast’s guess. Barring an existential vengeance quest or sheer restlessness. There were much easier and faster and less risky ways to earn coin than freelance grunt work. And he didn’t exactly strike her as the type to weather years of reportedly grueling physical and mental training and perpetually thread the line of primo mortem all in the service of some higher goal or for the sake of some spiritual journey either.

Maybe, she considered, she might simply go over there and ask him.

Taking this as an order, her body moved them into hailing range and she heard her mouth ask him his name.

“Ogden,” he replied shortly, then went back to his brooding.

Social ordinance may have been Amelia’s weapon of last resort, but she was practiced enough to recognize that this was all she was likely to get out of him she resorted to that old favorite habit of hers. Don’t bother, just retreat. She shoved her rampant curiosity back into the closet and instead diverted her attention to the rest of the crowd.

After a few more minutes the Headmaster cleared his throat and began to speak.

“Welcome all!” he said, his voice deep and authoritative. Not at all a sound one would expect to come from a beast his age. Even one who regularly engaged him in conversation.

But then one didn’t hold the unofficial position of Chief Pyrate for over a decade unless he had the power to command respect.

“It is my great honor and privilege to welcome you all to the Flint Pyrate Academy. My sincere hope is that you will find the road to great success within these walls, and even come to think of the Academy as your home.”

For a time Amelia thought she was the only beast who recognized the mechanical rhythmancy in his tone. That it was only clear to her that not only had her godfather given this exact speech many times before but that it must have been written by some other beast. A beast with not a poetic or charismatic bone in their body by every measurable account. And she thought it was her alone who could hazard a right guess at that ghost writer’s identity.

She was wrong on all counts. A fact which slowly announced itself to her through the insomniac auric pulses which lapsed over the crowd in gentle waves.

That said, she was one of the only two beasts present who could see the Headmaster’s admirable, if fruitless, efforts to inject some of his endemic spirit into the anemic spiel.

“Now I’m sure you’re all anxious to get under way. But before we get there I have a few minor points I’d like to address while I have your attention. Firstly, for those who don't already know, I am Headmaster Avlon. You may choose to call me either or make up something. I have no real preference. Truth be told, anything you can come up with I’ve most likely already been called, if not far worse.”

Without pausing for breath he dove right on into his next point. “Second, I’d like to introduce to you my brother.” He motioned to the sour-faced beast standing behind him. “You will know him as either Head Secretary or Prokvert if he likes you.”

Prokvert scowled. Or more precisely the scowl he’d already been wearing deepened to where it seemed his eyebrows and cheeks were about to go to war over use of his face.

Avlon cast an exaggerated frown over them. His accustomed levity having returned like water to a primed well. “Let me just warn you all straight off, NO BEAST messes with my baby brother but me.”

His words tacked a plate of ice onto the air. One which his sly wink broke, letting out a light burble of chuckling.

“Next, some of you,” his eyes landed briefly on Amelia. “may already be acquainted with my Chief Junior Secretary, Drake.”

He caught a scatter-shot eyeful of Prokvert’s contorting scowl. How he could read anything in that amorphous mess of an expression Amelia couldn’t begin to fathom. She hoped it was an acquired skill like knowing what rocks in a quarry were actually fossils.

However he did, Avlon rolled his eyes and said as if talking to someone with a severe head wound, “unless your name is Prokvert. In which case you’ll insist his name is Harold because that’s what the holy ledger says.”

Amelia didn’t see Avlon wink as Drake stepped forward. Thus misreading the latter’s covert smile and let out a decidedly ill-advised whoop. The silence which followed was as soft and as compacting as grave dirt.

He gave her a sincere smile but everyone else either fell silent or turned to stare down at her like she'd just sprouted a second head.

She contracted into herself. A tiny bug trying to blend into the proverbial reeds between her shoulders and fur collar.

The Headmaster carried on with things as if nothing had happened.

“Now I would like to take a moment to ensure that you are all familiar with the basics of the Pyrate Code. Yes, I’m sure it will surprise some of you to hear we actually have rules. We are Pyrates, not animals. Contrary to popular belief.”

He motioned to the Head Secretary, who produced a rolled up piece of parchment and a pair of fine-chained brass spectacles from his robe pocket.

Donning the latter, the black Collie loudly cleared his throat and began to read from the former as though it were a royal decree.

“Rule one: ANY form of armed combat between students or staff outside of the sparring arena will not be tolerated on Academy grounds under ANY circumstances, including legal duels. Failure to abide will be grounds for immediate expulsion.”

Amelia glanced around to see if any beast else had heard what she had. Judging by everyone’s expressions around her, she knew many had caught on to this loophole as well. She remembered the Ram again and shuddered at the thought of having to dual one even with a weapon.

“Rule two: Any theft of or attempt to tamper with any Academy property, pending an official investigation by the Headmaster and staff, is grounds for immediate expulsion.”

“This place is made out of stone blocks bigger than a fishing schooner.” Amelia mused absently. “How can any beast tamper with that?

“And finally,” the Headmaster continued, “Rule three: Any student found to be willingly involved in the death of either another student or a faculty member, will be executed via a Vendetta Duel, or, should no avenger be forthcoming, a firing squad.”

“And now that we’ve gotten all those pleasantries out of the way,” continued Avlon, “it is time for what you have all been waiting for.”

A tremulous murmur flowed through the audience as Avlon once more yielded the stage to his brother.

Amelia had once observed a puritanical missionary perform a routine ceremony on a village shaman. It had required several years of thought for her to unpack the reasoning behind her seemingly irrational revulsion and horror.

There had been no actual physical pain imparted. Not that she could detect anyway. But she had sensed the tension. As though the dualistic spiritual figures were tugging at ends of an invisible wire so thin it might squeeze through the overture gaps in dimensional wave functions.

Every mortal fiber in the foreigner’s body had oozed with primordial pheromones. These had contrasted so sharply with his dogmatic, focal tenacity it had felt as though he were being sheared clean in two with a glass razor.

That beast seemed like a circus fool compared to how Prokvert unrolled another, much longer scroll and began reciting names and herd assignments. His tone and aura indiscriminately fluctuating between brimstone exorcist and death-row chaplain.

Amelia gulped like she had just throated a cannon shell. Her legs went soggy but didn't dare sit down in the middle of this crowd.

“Herd Alpha One Gemini,” he bellowed. Then, “Cornelius Hazelstein.”

A long, green, scaly Prospect near the front straightened up as the nearest alternative to standing. Although Amelia could not see his face, she could read in his every muscle his petrifying fear as clearly as if he’d said it to her face.

“Pazael Nawa!”

Cornelius's shoulders dropped in a release of held breath. She guessed he knew Percival, and the news that they were in a herd together relieved him. She hoped she would have similar luck.

But that seemed unlikely.

Besides Ellie and Drake, and possibly Hemlock, there was no beast at this school Amelia knew well enough to be comfortable with when crammed into the confines of a ship for possibly weeks on end.

She knew she would need to swallow that fear if she wanted to graduate into fully-fledged Pyratehood.

After all, the term “spine-bearer”, as in reference to the beast paired with the one on night watch to keep them from dozing off, had grown into a quasi-term for a close friend or family member.

And though Amelia had common sense enough to know the connotation was meant positively, a coin was nary minted with a head that lacked a tail.

Like biological relatives you often couldn’t chose whom you shared relative cabin proximity with, as Amelia had been forced to learn the hard way. And their personal affairs, both fair and ill, tended to become your problem whether you wanted them to or not.

As Prokvert read on Amelia’s thoughts started to drift. A dangerous habit she knew, especially under the circumstances, but she just couldn't help herself.

She thought of her home and of her desecrated family. Both in past now. She thought of the library and of her favorite spot sitting out among the kapok trees overlooking her house, while reading her favorite story book, as the sun set beyond the horizon.

“Amelia Roberts!”

From her distant mental palace she was aware of her body snapping to rigid attention. On the far wall of her internal retreat was hung a tablet list of all the beasts she least wanted to get stuck on a boat with.

This included, among several she’d had cause to encounter on the ferry, Ogden, Bon Bon and that hulking Ram whose name she never wished to know but whose hoofprint was embedded in her flesh memory forever.

Unfortunately for her, whatever cosmic jesters were her story hadn’t gotten their punch lines out quite yet. True to her instincts, the very next words which came over the air were, “Charlotte Bonny!”

Amelia’s stomach dropped and caught in her upper intestinal valve. Only stopping there due to it having swelled on raw emotion like a glutenous sponge.

She bit her lip and ground her heel into the stone in frustration. So blinding was her irritation that she almost didn't hear the next name that Prokvert announced as though expelling a particularly consternate daemon, “Crow!”

That brought Amelia slamming back to reality. What sort of hair-brained parent had named their child Crow?! Even actual Corvids had more tact than that.

“Timothy Read!”

‘Ok, now there’s a name I can get behind, Amelia thought. I wonder if he plays Gvenji.’

“Harold Drake!” The sound of a defiant wind escaping through a slamming door.

Not being in the habit of repeating her mistakes, Amelia constrained her joy to a smile so intense she might have baked all the melanin out of Drake’s coat.

When the Head Secretary bellowed as if uttering a profane curse, “Elizabeth Thatch!” Amelia could have leaped into ternary orbit with the suns.

Finally, a real stroke of luck! She didn't normally lend much credence to the concept of divine intervention, but if the gods had decided to help her, then they couldn’t have picked a better moment.

“Julien and Jerome L’ Olonnais!”

At this the entire assembly froze. If there had been an Arachnid present, or if the science Professor Moriarty had thought to check his barometer, he would have detected the percentage drop in temperature and pressure ergo their sudden collective gasp.

However, only a sorcerer could have reconciled this with the laws of thermodynamics.

Those who were close enough to see Amelia sent her looks that said variations on “better you than me”. Not for the first time did Amelia get the sense that she had some major catching up to do.

“Adrian Kidd!”

Buried up past her eyes in the initiate mass, Amelia heard wafting giggles and swoons from the perimeter gaggles. She checked another box on her rapidly expanding side-quest list.

“Henrietta Morgan!”

She wasn’t sure how to feel about that one. So long as she didn’t wake up to a blade at her throat, or a hoof to her hand, she would count herself lucky. Such was how low her success bar had dropped.

By this point the Prospect horde was growing restless. They were all eager to meet their new crewmates. Also, being the fine age of thirteen their average attention span was that of a drunk Mosquito.

The allure of new world gates being thrust open before them had shorn off the vestigial haze of sleep and being forced to stand still and quietly listen to Prokvert's awkward drawl was rapidly thinning their already strapped patience down to the marrow.

Being wiser to such things, Avlon took back the lead and with the characteristic closer “happy hunting” gave them all leave to go off and find their new Pyrate herds.

Amelia closed her eyes in an instant. She knew a stampede when she felt one.

The next instant she was ten feet off the ground. Sailing over startled heads to come to a crashing halt right in between Avlon, Prokvert and Drake. The latter of whom stared down at her with an expression of astounded wonder that slowly morphed into bemused comprehension.

No beast said a word until the last of the confused crowd had disappeared. At which point, practically salivating the salty humor of premature age, Drake asked, “ready to test the waters Runt?”

Avlon smiled.

Prokvert frowned.

Amelia wriggled her nose.

So she’d already earned herself a moniker huh? Well, it wasn’t the name she would have chosen, but she supposed it could have been a lot worse.

She stood up, brushed herself down, and regarded the three with as much dignity as a radish could have had climbing into a market-bound crate.

‘When you don’t know the rules’ she thought, possibly quoting some old, dead beast whose name escaped her. ‘Follow the master.’

Instead of saying anything out loud that might give further impression she didn't know port from starboard, she let a quirk of a smile press her lip.

Drake took this as good. He removed his name badge, handed it to Avlon, tipped the Headmaster a salute and strode off.

Amelia gave the old Collie a quick squeeze then leaped into vigorous step behind.