“I don’t know why Prokvert insists on doing that whole bloody deal every semester,” Drake mumbled as he led them out into the common yard.
Their first stop on their “family tour” would be Tim’s lab, or so Amelia had been informed. Actually, technically Drake had used the word “lair”. Nevertheless, it sounded interesting so Amelia hadn’t pressed him for specifics.
As they cut across the field her eyes were inextricably drawn towards the Aphelern edge.
A knot of around twenty girls, several of whom Amelia recognized from the ceremony, were loitering around the far side under the clock tower’s shade. At first glance they appeared to be subsumed in conversation, but closer inspection showed them to be clandestinely watching, nay stalking, something to the Zen like a pack of hunting Wolves.
The cardinal rule of hunting is to never track a tracker. And nature very seldom grants leeway for ignorance. But if curiosity was a bridle Amelia would have been a tamed Mare.
She followed their collective trail to see what something had them so enraptured.
All she saw when she looked out there was a lanky yellow stripling running laps around the periphery. It was only when he came closer that it dawned on her what all the fuss was about.
In a word, he was gorgeous. No other term did it justice. His long, corded muscles rippled like waves beneath his sleek golden, spotted fur. He was like a work of art. A finely-tuned machine, designed and built by nature’s forge for a singular purpose. To watch him run was like seeing an accelerated sunrise.
This was a particularly apt metaphor in this case given that he was an Acinonyx. Otherwise known as a Cheetah to the planet’s less educated residents. This meant that his every cell, down to the core of his bones, was crafted solely for speed.
And speed this one had.
So able was his jaunt, that by the time her brain had completed this observation, he had reached them, smiled, waved at Drake who didn’t have time to return the gesture and was a good thirty feet into his next lap.
As he neared the Apheler side again, the other girls elapsed into what Amelia could only think to call subversive advertising. Laughing and fawning with their eyes all while hiding behind their hands and manes where applicable.
He waved as he jaunted past them. Amelia was horrified to discover that she was shrinking into her own hand while the other one fondled her purity beads.
“Adrian Kidd,” Drake said, breaking her free of his hormonal spell. “Your father probably told you about him. Around here they call him the Dream Kid. You can see why.”
Amelia could. But she refused to let herself travel down that road and further than she’d already stumbled.
She realized as they went along their way that it had probably been Drake that Adrian had been waving to, not her. Even so, she couldn’t resist stealing one last furtive glance back at him before he’d vanished behind the clock tower.
‘He’s in your herd’ her inner voice chided her. ‘You’ll have all the time in the world for sightseeing.’
She wasn’t sure quite how to feel about this. She pondered it for about as long as it took them to reach the back of the Academy’s “keep side”. At which point the newness of the surroundings paired with the conspicuous lack of living activity brought Amelia to tentatively broach the question, “where exactly are we going?”
To which Drake gave a somewhat sideways answer. “Tim’s not exactly what you would call ‘normal’,” he said. “As the beast himself puts it, ‘he’s a sitting brain born to a tribe of bouncing fists’.”
Amelia nodded like she understood.
“I admit, even around here he tends to skid the belt on both sides,” Drake continued. She nodded again.
“Apparently, they’re also not altogether thrilled with his decision to run off and become a … How’d he put it … ? A ‘roving sky snatcher’. Or something like that.”
She nodded a third time. This time with genuine empathy.
“The Headmaster lets him board up and keep shop back here in exchange for his … well, let’s just call it his ‘unique expertise’.”
At Amelia’s puzzled expression he smiled and said with a kind of honeyed sweetness he must have picked up from Ellie, “you’ll see in a minute.”
He indicated a door in a half-moon bastion just ahead. As it summoned by the gesture, an unassuming Oreamnos emerged from it right at that same moment.
Smiling pleasantly at Drake, he waved and said, “ho there Captain,” before bearing off down the way they’d just come.
“Who was that?” Amelia asked when he was gone.
Drake answered only with a raised eyebrow and a shake of his head. Amelia shrugged it off, and they kept walking.
Drake knocked on the door that the mountain goat had just come out of. A few seconds later a distant “it’s open,” came from the other side.
When they entered, the sight which met Amelia was the cerebral equivalent of a Mole stumbling across a worm and dirt factory. She blinked twice and then again just to make sure she wasn’t imagining this.
Tim’s was an Alchemy lab.
She’d heard as many tales as the average beast, probably more, being that her family’s house had been the end stop of a major shore road, about the legendary research and discoveries of alchemists over the Eras. The subject had always fascinated her even when she was still in her tale. Though up until now significant barriers had hamstrung her education to hearsay and secondhand transcriptions of fragmented abstract manuscripts. Most namely of those being the rampant government corruption and general anti-intellectualist attitudes of Amurzan political and cultural authorities. Also the equally renowned secrecy of occultic organizations, due in large part to the much avowed “terrifying power and danger their work presented to the world if left out unguarded” didn’t help.
From the base of the tower’s ogive ceiling rafters down to the heavily pitted and scarred floor, nearly every square inch of surface stone was covered by utilitarian wooden bookshelves, tables, desks and chests. Every solitary unit of which was occupied by the paraphernalia of his craft.
Scrolls, books, parts, tools, instruments, glassware of every shape and size describable by higher arithmetic.
Numerous technical diagrams and charts, along with anatomical sketches and maps with red X’s drawn on them were hung over the remainder of the mason work. Most prominently featured were a quintet of past Era maps. All but one either had whole sides missing, had chunks torn or holes seemingly torched through their centers.
Amelia recognized the complete one right off. On one of her and her sisters’ frequent market excursions they’d met a shady collector who’d claimed to possess the genuine article. However, he’d said it was back on his ship, and he would happily let Amelia come have a look at it for a few coppers.
She and the younger, Evie, had all but handed him their money when the eldest had intervened. Amelia vividly recalled the cutting edge in Talia’s voice as she’d herded them off.
“Any beast who sells you something you can’t see is scum.”
Many of the long tables were littered with similarly coated parchments and notebooks which undoubtedly contained more of the same. On others there were strange instruments and devices whose origins had come from the pages of either a very graphic horror novel or some archaic manual for torture.
Her eyes were drawn along were long strings of glass retorts hooked up to glass vials strung together by glass tubing, through which colorful fluids oozed and gasses vapored in concert to the cyclic dances of Jabir candles.
Some concoctions bubbled, others fizzed. Still more crackled and popped seemingly at random. They filled the entire space with the odorous rank of vinegar and dead fish. The latter was not an easy thing to come by on a planet whose surface area was less than ten percent liquid water.
In the middle of all this mess stood a towering Macropodid. He wore a long-necked, loose-knit sweater and a pair of black thick-framed reading glasses.
When he eventually looked away from his work which happened only when Drake cleared his throat so forcefully that one could be forgiven for thinking he was hacking a hairball he regarded Drake with a disconcerted reverence. The look only a beast who spends all his days squinting at bubbles can muster.
He paused to dredge his mind up from whatever contemplative realm it had inhabited. “Ah, Drake. Perfect timing. Look, have I got something to show you!”
Without waiting for a response, and with surprising grace, he whirled and snatched a small circular item from one of the overcrowded tables behind him. He presented it to Drake with a blatant prideful smirk.
“Can you guess what it’s for?” he asked in the manner of one who knew the answer but derived infinitely more satisfaction from hearing it said aloud.
Drake took the strange device and looked it over with feigned interest. When he looked back at Tim his distant stare said as much as his absent tone. “You’ll have to enlighten me.”
Before Tim could respond with what Amelia correctly intuited was a well-rehearsed monologue, Drake snipped it off with a raised hand. “But later. Right now, I have a beast here to introduce to you.”
He gestured for Amelia to come forward. When she did, he said as if speaking to a stubborn pet, “Tim, meet Amelia. Our new Runt.”
Amelia compressed a snort by crinkling her nose. She doubted she would ever get used to being called Runt. One would think that growing up around Anurans would foster some mental callouses, provided one didn’t think too hard about it that is.
The Kangaroo looked down on her from as near the ceiling were they in a normal house with the expression that suggested he expected her to jump up and bite him.
When she made no moves of the kind, he fished about uncertainly for words. “Uh, hi”, was what he finally landed on. He followed this up with a wave in case she didn’t get the message.
Amelia mirrored him and forced a cordial smile. ‘And dad said I need to get out more.’
This evaporated when a gravelly voice behind her called out, “hey! Why don’t you say hi to me? I’ve got feelings too!”
Amelia whirled towards the voice, but when she saw no one she got that suspicion that tends to creep up on many artists and philosophers from time to time that her handle on reality might be a few nails short of load-bearing.
When it spoke again after a question silence it sounded more impatient than angry. “Helloooo! Hey! Tinker Bell! Up here!”
One thing was certain, wherever this apparitional voice hailed from, it was not any part of her imagination.
After another intense scry over the place revealed no hint of a possible source, the voice starting getting aggravated. Or was it amused? If she was already questioning one element of her facility to reason, why not two?
“No, no, no. Up here ya bloomin’ water melon! Ugh! Will some beast get this Runt a chair or something?!”
Amelia threw a look at the boys. Drake hoisted her up by the armpits onto a tall stool Tim dutifully provided.
Once released, she retook to her search for her chastiser with all the petulant vengeance early pubescence could proffer.
First, all she saw from her new vantage point was an obscene amount of dust. But then she spotted a pale white skull sat precariously on a pile of dusty books. The largest of which’s spine was spelled out in large gold italics: On The Natural Origins of the Brain by: Ivan Feral.
Amelia knew the skull to be that of an extinct Primate, but no more than that. That was until she read the flavorfully inscrolled brass on the dusty wooden display plate just to the right.
Mandrillus Sphinx
The skull’s copper-rimmed eye sockets were inset with delicate circular matrices of copper wires and translucent gemstones of hues spiraling backwards down the rainbow list towards the pupils. Twin opals whose cores blazed with fractal lightning.
The bone’s pallid chalky finish pointed to it being a plaster or painted wood replica rather than a genuine fossil.
She leaned in to examine its enlarged incisors when its jaw started moving, nearly causing her to fall back onto an array of technical apparati.
“There ya go,” the skull said. The glow in its eye bulbs faded and relit in freakish imitation of a blink. “Hi ya Runt. And a fair mornin’ too as long as we’re on the subject.”
After a moment of drinking in her bewilderment, the skull decided to help by offering her a hint. “Aren’t ya gonna introduce yerself?”
She blinked, swallowed her initial thought and began again. “I, uh, I-I’m Amelia,” she sputtered, unaware that her mouth was hanging at an off angle. She blinked again.
“Who are you?”
This was likely the most cohesive response he could expect. Something the skull appeared to comprehend.
“Name’s Loránce de Chameleón,” he said, enunciating a facetious grin. “But everybody just calls me Steve.”
He bobbled about on his pointy jaw bone. If he’d had regular eyeballs Amelia guessed they’d be rolling like cast marbles.
“I can’t imagine why,” Amelia answered before she could think not to.
Steve snorted, a noise sounding like a fire log belching. “Neither can I.”
Tim then interrupted saying, “She is part of our herd, apparently.” Steve shot back, “hey bright eyes! Do I interrupt when you’re giving one of your saarding lectures?”
Before Tim could cobble together a reply, Steve kept rolling. “Now, where was I? Oh yeah … So Runt, I hear you're new around here.”
To which Amelia replied, “I just arrived on the ship yesterday.” She looked over at Drake, and he smiled back at her, knowingly. Amelia then asked, “Steve, how long have you been here?”
Steve responded with an implicit sneer. “I’ve been stuck on this shelf for five saarding years!”
Tim tried to respond but Steve was too quick on the draw.
“Oh can it ya great blaggard! Ya know, if you’d talk to me occasionally, I might be able to justify my meager existence.”
Had it been possible for Amelia’s interest in a magickally verbose skull to wane, this new insight would have charged it with such Herculean vitality, it could have taken a page from the Felinistic demigod’s book and forged a new Abyssal trade route through a mountain with a single punch.
She had always been a natural shut-away. Generally content to live inside her own head and books, preferring their cold comfort to the hot commotion of the outside.
However, in more recent days she had come into more profoundly intimate terms with the counter-side of isolation. At least her solitude was mostly self-inflicted. The idea of having been called into existence only to be continuously neglected by your creator was something that struck at a particularly vital nerve.
Feeling like her heart was freezing over, in a dry voice Amelia asked, “how do you go on like that?”
Steve rocked back and forth vigorously on his perch, causing a cloud of gray dust to rise around him. “Habit, I think, in all honesty.”
Then Steve started hacking and tried vainly to swat away the dust. But he quickly realized that was futile. “You’d think he’d at least think to dust over here every once and a while but noooo.”
He huffed and gave what must have been the cranial equivalent of the cold shoulder. “It’s no wonder he doesn’t get many visitors. He just sits there and plays with his cockles all day and night. So I’m left up here to keep the dust and wood shavings company.”
Though logically he could not have been said to breathe as such, he emitted a sound that came to the ear as a truly pitiful sigh. “It’s just a good thing I learned to hibernate here like an inanimate trophy!” He practically spat the last word. “Sometimes I wonder why he even made me in …”
Without thinking, Amelia hoisted the dejected anthro-abomination down by his temples and smothered his ranting lament in her breast.
She was barely cognizant of the fact that her cheeks were wet, and was totally ignorant of how Drake and Tim were systematically checking every lid, top, valve and cork they could find in case any were permitting awkward fumes.
They were not.
Concluding as much first, Drake marveled at the surreal beauty of the sight. An adolescent poisonous Frog hugging a depressed, magickally-animated skull named Steve made by his herd’s mad scientist Ensign.
Steve himself marveled silently, too, for a moment. After that he began to purr. As he did, the whole of his being lit up as if some beast had just doused him in Magnolsis fuel and set an open flame to him. If Ursai came out of hibernation this way, no beast would ever consider stealing their porridge.
Amelia, astounding even herself, didn’t so much as flinch. She calmly set Steve back down on his rest, but not before wiping it clear of dust with her sleeve.
She locked eyes with the skull. His inarticulate countenance made his thoughts unreadable. But Amelia intuited a burdening coalescence deep within.
What exactly that meant she would have been at a loss to tell. Such labyrinthine emotional wells made her miss the nauseating rock and roll of the ferry. It coming from an animate macabre deco sculpture didn’t assuage the unsettling tide at all.
When the light of saliency again was kindled in his phosphorescent eyes, she perceived in them comprehension—one that invisibly bridged her cerebral cognition with his. Steve then looked down at Tim and announced icily, “you could learn a thing or two from this one.”
Amelia’s knees went to water in that moment. Sensing the danger, Drake caught Amelia down from her perch. At least she’d have a shorter way to fall if worse came to worst.
He opened his mouth to say, “we need to go” but he stopped when he realized that Tim was far too absorbed in his own introspection to hear.
They silently took their leave. After Drake shut the door as gingerly as if it were made of fine porcelain, he said, “promise you'll never tell Bon Bon about this place.”
Amelia did not need to be told why. She could readily imagine the chaos that Bon Bon in a room packed full of potions, poisons, elixirs and every type of electrical and explosive device would have wrought. She nodded and Drake snorted in begrudging approval.
Then a question came unbidden to the front of her mind. She opened her mouth to ask it, but Drake beat her to the punch. “This lab is not exactly ‘sanctioned’, if you catch my meaning.” He gesticulated the quotes with his fingers. “But like I said, the Headmaster overlooks it because Tim has nowhere else to go. And he is a right bloody mad genius.”
He aimed a sidelong glance her way. Reading an upcoming question in her face, but falsely inferring its subject, he added in what he probably meant as an assuring tone that came out as rudely dismissive, “and Prokvert ignores it because Avlon told him too.”
She answered this with what must have seemed like a thought from a disparate strand of reality altogether. “Why do there have to be so many secrets?”
It may have just been her thinking aloud, but it wasn’t long after the very first syllables had entered into the cosmic audio corpus that she wished for the power to retract them. But like the proverbial butterfly having flapped its wing, she fluttered haplessly in space and watched as the cyclone unfurled itself, then waited for the repercussion she knew was short in coming.
Fortunately, if Drake noticed anything untoward about this comment he didn’t seem overly concerned. Instead, he simply shrugged and stated bluntly, “beasts don’t call Pyrates radicals for nothing.”
As they walked, they got to talking about other topics: The Academy, Captain Flint, their lessons, boys, and all manner of other things which somehow became infinitely more interesting now that they had become relevant.
Suddenly, their parley was interrupted by a terrifically resounding BANG!!! Much like the one that had robbed her from sleep that morning. Only now, being much closer to its source, it was loud enough to humble the First Divide.
Much the way Ellie had done, Drake peeled off towards the noise at a straight sprint. Leaving Amelia to make up the expounding gap in brief, albeit admirable, bounds.
She trailed him like a meteorite fragment back towards the boys’ dorm tower. Veering off down a long flight of smooth, stone steps that led to a small door out the Zen-Aphelern side.
Not having yet learned the virtue of caution, Amelia forget her patience, practically fell out onto a cobblestone step path and flew down it like a fledgling bird through a free-standing stone archway to land at a precipitous halt above a wide court of sparkling white-gold sand.
There, after pausing a breath to get reacclimatized to reason, she looked around. Finding herself surrounded by luscious greenery and bounded on three sides by a flat-topped berm of white-lime-coated cobblestone.
The far end of the field precipitated a sheer cliff bounded by a low wall of pale stone just high enough to stop the sands spilling off into bottomless Abyss.
Amelia stared at the thousands of empty leagues of gray between Flint’s intrepid paradise and the frozen Erandic desert and shuddered against a rush of cold existential dread.
Each of the flanking bulwark arms which grew out from the island’s natural rocky incline culminated in a forty foot pillar of iron encased within a solid black pentagonal marble obelisk with lantern-cage crowns encasing a black steel ring large enough to be a walk-in portal.
Threaded through each of these and down through a winch that would make a hydraulic mill’s turbine feel inadequate and anchored at the inland end was one half of a pair of iron link chains some three hundred yards long.
At the far end of each was leashed a miniature island of necrophagic rock whose sole inhabitant was an immense, roughly geometric, black slate tombstone about the size of an upturned Galleon.
Amelia skidded to a halt beneath the archway. There she found Drake standing alongside Ellie. They stopped talking just long enough to acknowledge her presence, then quickly renewed their conversation.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Was that a fifty-pounder?” Ellie asked in a hissing growl.
Amelia instinctively shrunk back from her tone. Ellie reminded her of her mother when she was mad. It didn’t happen often, but when it did even Black Bart himself treaded on eggshells.
Drake remained stone-faced. He didn’t even bother trying to speak. He had jokingly called Ellie a “hearth-throb” the first time they’d been together. It didn’t take most observers long to work out his reason or why he’d only done it once.
She was like a sentient fireplace. Warm and reassuring after a long day, but prone to maleficent spurts when excessively prodded.
“How many times do I need to tell those blockheads?!” she fumed. “Nothing above twenty on the island! Save it for the damned course!”
When he was sure she was good and vented, Drake took an opportunity to say, “from the sound I’d say it couldn’t have been more than thirty” in an almost playful tone that would have earned near anyone else a swift clap across the muzzle.
Although spared her physical wrath, at least for the moment, her edgy bristle made clear he was still treading dangerously close to the fire. A point he didn’t fail to catch and almost didn’t fail to recover from.
“I think it was one of those new Textar mortar bombs,” he said with not so much sobriety as flat levity. Which would have put him in the clear, except that he added with a smile which sprouted out of a weed-like fondness, “they can’t keep their paws off the bloody things.”
Just then, a tiny striped head appeared over Drake’s right shoulder, making Amelia and Ellie jump back in alarm and surprise. Then a near identical head popped up over Drake’s left side, causing Amelia to do a double take. They were twins, as she would soon learn. The “Blunder” variety. But for the life of her, Amelia couldn’t pinpoint their actual species.
They were feline, that much, at least, was beyond contest. But they weren’t like any cats she’d ever seen or read about. It didn’t help that they were both unkempt and ragged. They looked as if they’d lit themselves on fire on more than one occasion.
Amelia winced internally as she recalled how the crowd that morning had reacted to the mere mention of these two. As if Bon Bon didn’t already radically stretch her tolerances for crazy in every possible dimension, now she'd have two bomb-happy Cats prowling around onboard with her.
All in all, she was starting to think she’d stumbled onto the stage of a bad comedy play than into the Pyratical arena.
“The mind is its own place. And under the proper charms it can make a pleasant bath out of an infernal cauldron.”
‘Milton Benjamin would have had an absolute field day with this place’, Amelia thought.
Ellie clenched her hands into fists. Placing them on her hips, she stood scowling at the Twins. Not that either of them took any notice. Instead, they turned their matted, disheveled faces to Drake and in one voice shouted, “did someone say Textar?!”
Drake shook them off with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. Rather than discouraging them, this lack of pleasantries simply sent them scurrying around in front of their Captain.
They weren’t much taller than Amelia and were just as plainly dressed. From this perspective, Amelia could see that they each had one emerald eye and one steely blue one, but on opposite sides. Also they carried enough weapons to arm an Imperial detachment.
They wore Detachable Extended Basket Threaded, or DEBT, enabled blunderbuss carbines slung over their shoulders with at least three other handguns of ranging makes, models and calibers hooked at their thighs, hips and across their spindly chests.
Their various belts and bandoliers sported encyclopedic varietals of explosive and what older Pyrate students learned to call “reactive” devices. Spring triggers, spring razors, spring traps, spring launchers and other bold mechanical defiances of the Hypocritic and Geneva Statutes.
Some of these Amelia could actually name, but most appeared as alien instruments of either torture or scandal or a combination.
Each boy also carried a long, trapezoidal seax down an integral leather pocket on his boot and a stocky gunstock war club slung that same thigh.
Amazingly, even in all this kit the pair were exact mirror images of one another. One had to be of a particularly detective persuasion to notice this, and even more so to spot the few odd little discrepancies, such as a tiny black patch in front of the one’s left ear and an apple-shaded scar across the back of his left hand.
Realizing that her “impatient teacher” stare wasn't making any headway, Ellie reverted to her tried-and-true tactic of “just what the saard do you two think you’re doing?” To which they replied in disquietingly-perfect synch, “practicing.”
At that moment, the twin with the odd patch pulled out a fist-sized cast-iron ball. On top of it was attached a thumb-sized wooden box with a long pin jutting out of it.
Before Drake or Ellie could so much as move or speak, the other twin yanked out the pin. The first one then shouted, “hot poc!”, then through a tightly coordinated effort they hurled the now very armed and deadly device as high as they could into the air.
In the hanging second which followed, Ellie was the first to react while Drake was the first to respond. “Son of a … !” was as far as she got before he threw her and Amelia to the ground shouting “down!” Then subsequently pinning and shielding them both from the impending blast with his own body.
Amelia’s chest felt hollow. Her heart was somehow beating both faster and slower at the same time. Images flashed through her mind too fast to contemplate, turning her reason rancid. She harkened back to her father’s tutelage.
Though she had never nurtured any particular interest in weapons or battle in general, Talia, had always insisted that knowledge of them would come in very handy.
“If Black Sky or Conshorta ever decide to show their ugly faces around here,” she, and eventually Evie, had enjoyed saying, “we’ll show ‘em why father’s called ‘the Daemon of the Depths’”.
Amelia had sometimes wondered if Talia was actually a girl. Maybe she was like the character in the Tail Island story of Haramasutra, in which an arrogant prince was transformed by a slighted sorceress into a peasant girl in order to teach him some humility and restraint.
It also hadn’t flown past her that Talia’s boast might not quite mean what she thought it meant. But even so, strange and unfortunate as it was to think now given all that had happened and was about to happen, Talia had been far wiser than either Amelia or her mother had given her credit for. Even if she herself would have denied it.
‘Strange what goes through your mind when you’re about to die.’
Also strange was that she wasn’t afraid. Of course the reason for this was that the chemical correspondents of fear took longer to travel through the body than simple abstract impulses clustered in the mind. But merely eight solid years of learning hadn’t quite brought her up to that level of speed yet.
However, thanks to her piratical parentage, Amelia’s familiarity with archetypical bomb construction was a solid mark ahead of most other civilized youths her age.
She knew the integral three-second fuse would slowly burn down until it reached its nexel trigger. Once activated, nexel would deliver a high-intensity burst of radiant energy. It was less than what was used as ammunition, but still more than sufficient to set off the volatile Udor gel inside the grenade’s chamber.
The resulting blast would lacerate them with dozens of molten iron shrapnel bits before the shock wave turned their soft flesh into pulp. Then the heat wave would instantly boil their fluids and set anything remotely flammable on fire.
The good news was that all this would happen in a fraction of a blink. They would be dead five separate ways before their nerves could transmit their agony signals.
Four seconds gone.
Amelia closed her eyes and waited for death’s embrace.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, much to the surprise of all, especially the Blunder Twins, from out of the air there came a loud POP!! It was followed almost instantly by the sound of the iron orb thumping harmlessly onto the sand.
Still fully expectant of meeting the looming reaper’s scythe the three beasts eased slowly to their feet as if scared to wake the slumbering bomb.
When, upon reaching near full verticality they had failed to disintegrate, they crept on furtive toes over to inspect the conspicuously inert object, with Drake leading, still acting as their improvised shield.
Hardship and life, as often as not working as a shield pair, had forged the utmost caution into the Canid pair and had further bred it into an ironclad instinct tantamount to hunger or sexual arousal.
They had survived enough of the Blunder Twins’ antics in their years to know in not so many words that chance was a fool’s friend and they’d been Pyrates in general long enough to know that fools tended to exit their world in short order and in pieces.
However, as they approached, it became clear that the danger had been summarily excised through a clean, straight hole of roughly matrimonial size through the grenade’s detonator housing block.
Drake, Ellie, Amelia and the Twins shared a lengthy confused silence. During this time, the Twins stared agape while Drake and Ellie silently conversed. Meanwhile, Amelia, having neither a lover nor a sibling present to stare at, instead stared intently at their would-be grave warden.
A surreal blanket fell over Amelia’s thoughts such that she didn’t hear Drake say, “you see where they got their nicknames.”
Right on cue, as if posing for a portrait, the Twins pompously presented themselves. Each with theatrically puffed out chest and striking a dramatic pose. Both their faces slashed with grins widely displaying pseudometalic, needle-like teeth.
But Amelia was far more interested in the nature and origins of their onomatopoeic messiah.
Observing the hole, it took her less than a hummingbird’s heartbeat to recognize it as the work of an incendiary nexii round.
Looking about, accounting for the fact that the bomb was in the air when the shot had hit its target, she deduced the most likely location for the shooter and turned her eyes back towards the Academy building.
Sure enough, blacked out against the silver clouds between the crenels of the dorm tower a tall, slim figure stood overlooking the range.
She couldn’t make out much more detail for lack of a spyglass or a raptor’s optical birthright. But the figure’s general posture suggested that what perspective had compressed to a long stick was more probably a rifle.
No sooner had she decided to alert the others than she saw her hand point and heard her voice say “look up there” to nobody. Drake and Ellie had already followed her same reasoned course and to a far more precise conclusion.
With palpable relief and respect they said in perfect accord, “Crow”.
Upon hearing this, the Twins folded their arms and pouted. The one with the scarred hand mumbled something under his breath that strongly resembled, “spoil sport”.
Then Drake led the group, bothersome bandits and all, back into the school and round the bend towards the Zenith tower.
On the way Amelia had devised little in the way of expectations. This entire expedition thus far had been nothing if not conventionally upturning. And she was, after all, nothing if not a quick study.
But Drake patting a seemingly random section of brick near the door and showing it to be no more than an artfully made façade of wood and plaster by pulling it open, revealing a drowsy little cabin of a corridor beyond forced her to tear up the conservative list she had composed.
As would be explained to her on the ascent, this was one of many strategically located “secret” entrances to the Academy’s vascular tunnel system known to the student body as the “Quick Walk”.
“I.E, ‘I’m gonna take a Quick Walk to class’. Or up to the dorm as it were,” in Ellie’s words.
Originally designated the Servants’ Pass in all official designs, of which there was exactly one copy in existence. Most of the faculty, with the sole exception of the Headmaster himself, believed it a perfect secret.
“Evidently,” Avlon had joked when he’d caught a batch of Troves sneaking out of the kitchen entrance, “not one of those beasts had a very regular childhood”.
Flint had designed “the Pass”, as the Professors called it, as a means for guards and menials to go about their work without interfering or being interfered with by daily school processes.
But the world, and consequently the Academy, had been a far different place in those days. Like its host castle, the Quick Walk had changed with the times. Long overlooked and for all practical sakes abandoned when it was discovered that, from inside, one could easily overhear everything that went on in the rooms around and even clear across campus if one knew what pipes to press their ears to.
It was just wide enough for a single beast to squeeze through and only just high enough for one as tall as Drake to stand up in, it snaked like wild vines throughout the entire Academy.
It was a traditional rite of passage for male Prospects to be shown the Quick Walk on their first night by an older student and then be left there to his own devices. Though no specific objective would be given, the girls’ dorm tower was the favorite destination for several key reasons.
One being simple convenience, what with it being the opposite compass point.
The second and more significant was that the boy was expected to return with proof of his Pyratical prowess, usually in the form of an “acquired” item.
Though, again, very rarely was he given a specific target, it had to be something he couldn’t have picked up from just any old place. Such as an article of clothing or a small piece of jewelry. Thus the girls’ dorm was the first logical choice for most. Although some daring few over the years had made missions out of the faculty quarters. One had even successfully made free with the aeronautics Professor Trestle’s favorite bluebell handkerchief. The fact that she’d never been the wiser further solidifying the feat in the Academy’s lore.
With the first leg of his rite done, the prospective Pyrate then had to feel his way back to the boys’ dorm before the tower bell tolled a sixth and show the purloined treasure to his elders for inspection.
All done the Prospect would be granted the honorary fraternity suffix Ra. The name of the First Sun, as taken from the Ptolemaic model of horoscopic causality. His light representing the totality of forward momentum in the cosmos. Be it physical, spiritual or metaphorical. Everything that in any way engendered positive change in the universe, from the spark of fertility to invention to artistic inspiration supposedly related back to the Divine Masculine.
This whole clandestine ritual had once been referred to by older students as “taking a Quick Walk”. Hence the broader saying’s origin.
Lest one be led to believe that delinquency was reserved for male Pyrates, whilst the sorority initiation was a touch less formal it was nonetheless as informative and invasive.
Before a girl could attain the ritual suffix Dona, the feminine counter to the traditional Sekikaigatan honorific Dono, meaning “honored one”, used by one Samurai to refer to a fellow brave, she would have to “make a vital connection” in the Walk.
What exactly this meant was generally left up to individual discretion. However, generally the more carnal and intimate the experience, the better.
Amelia was being shown the way as a means of sidestepping explanation for why two girls were being allowed inside the boys’ dormitory.
They climbed a wavy set of wooden stairs which culminated in an iron-braced wooden door with a faded red sign on it that read ROOF: NO ADMITTENCE. Drake shouldered it open. Whereupon they emerged on the roof and found themselves with a magnificent specimen of Gray Wolf.
If a poet had been on hand they might have likened this beast to an anchor chain. A tall, slender length of taught steel.
An aura of cold, dispassionate menace hung about him like a drawn sword. He did not need to be holding a gun to make it clear that he was not one to be trifled with.
His exposed fur flowed in the breeze like molten silver. The rest was concealed under a close-fitting black shirt and trousers. The extremity ends of which were further covered by blackened steel vambraces, black fingerless, hard-knuckle gloves and black thigh boots with black shin wraps. One of which held a sheathed tanto, the other a small holdout pistol of a nondescript model.
Amelia’s first impression of him was less an inflexible cable to more of a living shadow. This notion being only minorly offset by the dashes of crimson about the cummerbund at his waist and the blood-red headscarf which obscured his right eye. The other of which being a spot of liquid fire that burned with the sort of calm intellect that belied only the most dangerous sort of mind.
“The mark of a hunter,” Captain Roberts had taught his daughters, “is a cunning eye and a silent tread.”
His weapon, now confirmed for a gun, Amelia further recognized as an S&F Double-Odd Bombardier. Affectionately dubbed the ‘Charger’ by the big game hunters and wild militias who favored it for its unprecedented stopping power.
Being made especially with those who tended to find themselves punching high above their weight class in mind, it held the unique distinction of being the only bolt-action side-by-side gun in existence. Although this came at the cost of worthwhile optical mounts of any sort, it did not seem to hamper this owner any.
Leaning on the barrels like a crutch, in his other hand he held aloft a stout, half-filled drinking horn of what Amelia guessed to be a variety of spiced rum, judging by the faint odor wafting over the brim.
The Wolf’s lone candle eye held steady as he watched the group approach. It’s golden candle-light color complimented his sash perfectly. Drake greeted him heartily with an outstretched hand, “I don’t know how you do that mate, but I’m glad you can.”
Crow set down his rifle and shook Drake’s offered hand with a wordless nod.
Amelia tapped Ellie on the side, and when the Canid leaned down she whispered, “not very talkative is he?”
Why exactly she’d felt the need to whisper this was beyond her. But regardless, Ellie whispered back, “far as I know, nobody’s ever heard him speak.”
“Why not?” Amelia asked in barely more than breath.
Apparently the aspects of her brain that controlled speech hadn’t yet gotten the memo that their subject was a Lupus, and therefore could still hear her words as plainly as if she’d said them right into his ear. And even notwithstanding that, his actions thus far suggested an acuity of sensory perception sufficiently above normal to be able to surgically dismantle a moving, child’s-fist-sized target from a quarter parayard away without any technological assistance.
Ellie answered through a painfully restrained grin. “He doesn't say.”
Amelia had just taken it into her head that she ought to go over and introduce herself when the words, “our new Runt” suddenly landed on her ears from somewhere like metal rain.
She reflected on the seemingly random hodgepodge of personalities they were collecting and herself strangely at ease with the whole situation.
They sat around and talked long into the afternoon hours. Or to be more precise, Drake, Ellie and Amelia talked while the Twins mostly glowered and made faces at Crow who stood by politely sipping his rum.
As the daylight began to wane and the clock tower tolled the hour, Drake pulled a silver, dual-faced timepiece from under his cloak and said, “We should probably make our way downstairs. Don't want to keep the Headmaster waiting.”
Amelia groaned right alongside the Twins. Another ceremony. And just when she was starting to get the feel for her new boots.
‘Oh well’ she thought as Drake herded them all back into the Walk, ‘at least this one’s an excuse to get drunk.’
In a single line, with Drake at his rightful place at their fore and with Ellie in hers as near to beside him as the confines would allow, the greater percentile of their herd they had thus far assembled filed down and out into the courtyard for the SSF.
Flint had never cared for acronyms, or any other manners of formality for that matter. As any of his successors could and would readily attest. Like the bulk of the tedious bookisms which had cropped up since his mysterious passing, this one’s birthplace was the Head Secretary’s office.
As a tradition the Second Sun Festival was almost as old as the non-trademarked concept of piracy. It was a banquet held at the second sunset of the new semester to welcome new arrivals.
Stories recalling Flint’s stunted stint as Headmaster, most raw recruits were lucky to survive their first day. Whether it was genuine praise or a passive-aggressive jab for those who’d managed to weather an entire day in the Pyrate’s world.
It was for this that she, Amelia, and the rest of the motley band she was to consider family gathered to commemorate with a rare license to indulge.
Tim met up with them on the way. Amelia was about to ask why Steve was not with him, but she quickly answered that herself. Adrian Kidd was right where they’d left him. Literally running laps around the rest with his ravenous fan club still frothing in the wings.
No more than an hour later the courtyard was alive with fervent activity. Volunteers put up benches and set out the tableware under the FPA's distinctive black and gold banner.
It was last light before Adrian broke his cyclical streak, jaunting merrily over to join their party.
Right, Amelia thought, that completed their gang. But soon, another figure approached whom Amelia couldn’t remember seeing before. Though his greeting smile denoted a past familiarity, even he appeared indecisive of just with whom.
A moment came and then recoiled that heard Amelia wonder silently if that undefinable twinge she caught wandering about the corners of the stranger’s eyes was melancholic or just her imagination running one of its crude simulacra.
The next moment saw her choose the latter and dismiss the thought.
He introduced himself as Jacob Rackham, the son of infamous Pirate Jack Rackham, or “Calico Jack” to his few friends and even fewer surviving enemies.
The gods only knew where that moniker had come from.
Drake offered his hand in greeting, but Jacob only stared at it like it was a math problem.
‘Do they not shake hands in Horntooth?’ Amelia wondered earnestly.
It made sense to her. Horntooth, lying to the northwest of Amurza, was widely believed to be one of the first continents if not the very first continent to take recognizable shape after the First Divide. Famous for its inhospitable terrain, the continent had birthed the entire world's population of Oreamnos and Ovids.
Both were species well accustomed to scaling rugged cliffs.
This would have left their hands ill-adapted to dexterous work. But could they not grab another beast’s hand and move their arm up and down?
Amelia shook this idea away. She could see that Drake was wrestling with the same problem.
Through his attempts to clue Jacob in to the intent of his gesture, the Oreamnos merely smiled bemusedly. Drake answered with a confused head tilt and a cocked eyebrow, as did the rest of the assembled group.
Jacob’s shoulders sagged as he rolled his eyes and then his whole head. Then he said wearily, “Drake, it’s me mate. Jacob. Your Sailing Master.”
At that moment, a look came over Drake’s face that neither Amelia nor Ellie had ever seen before. He looked as if he were about to punch the Goat and barf on him at the same time.
His mouth opened and closed as if his jaw hinged on a faulty electric circuit. But the most intelligible noise that came out was a broken series of guttural “oh’s” and “um’s”.
Normally one might have expected an exclamation of shock to come from Jacob at having his existence being forgotten by his closest friends. But nothing about this situation was normal, even by Pyratical standards. And thus the role of stupefied munchkin fell to the pack’s metaphorically green Runt.
As she would come to learn and then instantly forget, however, this was far from the first time Jacob had been subjected to such a soul-withering offence.
With a mournful smile he turned and walked away, leaving Drake et all standing there stupid. Looking and feeling as though they had just been slapped.
Then the moment passed. And with it went away all knowledge of the farse like a wet plug from a drain.
Ellie looked at Drake. Each of their faces as blank as a freshly wiped chalkboard. Then she asked of the whole group as though merely trying to fill an awkward pause, “who wants some real food?”
Like as many compass needles dialing in on a magnetic dipole, blank minds swiveled on basic impulses and moved hungry bodies in the direction of the banquet venue.
Tim and Adrian followed Drake and Ellie with Crow and Hemlock close behind flanked by Bon Bon and the Blunder Twins with Amelia bringing up the very tail. All of them utterly oblivious to their herd being one member short.
Any beast with a mind to investigate the deep financial and bureaucratic root canals of the FPA would learn that it functioned on a “decimal reserve” business model. Which meant that the Academy proper was only really meant to house a fraction of those enrolled in it at any one time. Typically around ten percent. Hence the term.
But the biannual festival of the second sun was a treat to which all up-and-coming Pyrates were entitled. And so it was naturally a tempting lure that very few hard-done scavengers were of a mind or will to pass by.
Consequently, despite being ten times the area of an Olympic arena, on this evening the courtyard was packed near to bursting. Bordered by a fence of long wooden tables with the same makeshift stage that Avlon had used that morning sat squared in front of the Penirn gatehouse.
About nine out of ten students were there, as well as staff, visitors and guests. There were beasts of a thousand colors from a thousand lands. They were clustered around the long tables, eagerly gorging themselves on the host of rare and wonderful cuisines being offered.
So redolent was the air from the aromas of so many succulent dishes that, had Amelia been blind, she couldn’t have known what she was putting into her mouth.
Fruit pies and savory cream custards from Iradyl stood alongside salty conger platters from Iralith. Huge bowls of Menta’s infamous horned stew and Plantea’s seasonal truffle delectables overrode the exotic vegetables and fruits from Amelia’s tropical homeland.
Sadly, Pink Berry was not among the vast culinary display. But this was not unexpected, as it was known to be as unappetizing as raw Magnolsis. Also, to a non-Anuran, imbibing Pink Berry had the added effect of feeling like getting smacked upside the head by a large rock.
And since Pink Berry cost roughly three times more to produce than the average cocktail owing to the deliberate obscurity of its recipe, the rarity of the vital ingredient and its near total lack of value to non-Anurans restricted its sale and distribution all but utterly to the Amurzan jungle.
Amelia, however, couldn’t have cared less about the exclusion. Having just realized she hadn’t eaten a bite since this time yesterday her usually proportionately mild ectothermic appetite had grown into a rapacious beast of singular will and autonomous tenacity.
She greedily indulged in the rich variety of prepared dishes, drinks and cultivated food stuffs. Never once happening upon the thought that this was all an important lesson wedged inside of a carefully orchestrated trap. Which, of course, was the point.
Fatigue was a warrior’s most persistent and well known nemesis. Pain was his arch rival. This was less of a problem due to adrenaline. However, all three of these things could blind and paralyze, leaving the reckless fighter unbalanced or drained of vital energy and therefore helpless.
But little was it spoken of in the realms of martial academia the fault of excessive pleasure. Nary a wit or wink was ever paid to the dangerous rut of trusted safety and security. This was a fault Avlon had sought to rectify upon becoming Headmaster.
When a sword arm is tired it gets sloppy.
When it is injured it goes numb.
When the arm is in perfect health but the brain in encumbered by alcohol or atrophied by comfortable neglect, the result is just as catastrophic.
“Death has no pride,” he’d said when asked by a close companion to explain his thinking. “No pity. No preferences. It cares not for the weak, the wealthy or the innocent. As Pyrates we live alongside death so that we may better predict his moves. There’s no room for petty things in battle and so are a dangerous burden to a warrior’s heart.”
Night had well and truly fallen by the time the empty food carts and kegs were being rolled out.
Ten minutes to the stroke of midnight Avlon once more took to his stage and tapped out an aharmonic tune on the rim of his personal goblet for attention.
When he was satisfied that he had everyone’s attention, he began what started off sounding like the typical day one welcome speech. One which most of the students and staff would have inattentively tuned out. But all eyes were fixed on the Headmaster as he withdrew a crinkled scrap of yellowed parchment from one of his many concealed pockets and began to read judicially aloud from it.
“Your privilege,” he read. “Is the clay from which we are cast. And the ashes and dust to which we will return.”
Amelia’s blood ran sickly cold. Suddenly she felt like a speck of dirt staring up at a mountain whose summit was hidden above the clouds.
This wasn’t her godfather talking. Nor was it the same kindly old Claus who’d inducted them into their herds that morning.
This was the Chief Pyrate speaking. Flint’s handpicked successor. And this time his words were his own. The stage and scene his alone to helm.
Gone was his monotonous drawl. His elder sparkle. His voice was pure steel. His words were naked blades. His periods their dark scabbards.
All who still were of wit to hear him were snared by the net of his inexorable will. Even through the plaster of alcohol, invisible athames had etched Avlon’s every word into their tender brains like ritual runes.
Even the elder students, most of whom had heard this talk several times over, still were locked in the moment. Frozen in space and time under a hypnotic spell.
“Your freedom,” Avlon continued, “is to choose your own sacrifices. And what pain, what losses, what suffering you chose to bear. These things will be your true teachers.”
He paused and looked about him. The whole yard was the opposed side of a mirror. Still silence hung in plates of ethereal glass.
Even the air was as dead as ice crystal. The whole world swung by a hairline thread and the Headmaster held the blade that was to cut it free. This was the power of Word, Avlon knew. His innate gift which had promoted him to Flint’s right hand. His voice could move, if not necessarily mountains, then masses who could reduce such cumbersome obstacles to gravel on his order.
He had seen that power to work many times since. And seeing now that it was still good, he kept reading.
“The oaths you swear. The promises you make. The molds you fill or break. The wars you choose to wage. The banners you wave. The altars you kneel to. These are all yours alone.”
He paused again. The silence hung like an executioner’s axe. And when the blow finally came, the words cut straight into the hearts of all who heard it, “and when oblivion finally finds you, you will face it … alone.”
In the prickingly sober aftermath of his speech Avlon calmly rolled up the parchment and slid it back into its place. Then he clasped his hands behind him and stared out at the assemblage. His keen eyes alighting on new faces the way fire catches on the driest timber in a forest.
Avlon raised his chin, and all eyes once again gave him their undivided attention. He looked around, then said, “those were the last words Captain Flint spoke to me before sailing into Daggerpoint’s Folly. I pass them on to you now. Think of them as your first and final gift. Tomorrow you will face the first of many trials. And we will see who amongst you is fit for the Pyrate’s life …”
He paused a third and final time. By now the very walls were holding their breath. “And who will be left in the dust.”
With that final lie he disembarked the stage. Sheathing himself in the darkness behind. And with him his will, and consequently his spell, melted back into pure liquid air.
Without the strength of the Words to keep the entropic lifeforce at bay, it could slowly dissolve back into its proper vessels. Albeit not without the odd bit of uncomfortable lag or synaptic clumping.
Then the clock tolled once of twelve. That seemed to jar most cogs back into something resemblant of normal motion.
Together with the senior staff, the ones that weren’t drunk stupid anyway, and whatever senior students could still walk and talk, Drake took the Headmaster’s place and began herding the junior student portions off towards their respective ships, dormitories or temporary shelters.
Being still lucid enough to remember her earlier issues with crowds, but being too full in every sense to resist or care to, Amelia filed numbly out of the courtyard with the rest. And when she finally flopped into her bunk she let the cold vice that had been waiting take hold of her heart.
She lay awake for an unknown number of hours.
Avlon’s, or was it Flint’s, chilling words clawed and scraped inside her skull like unlubricated gyros. She needn’t have taken the time to set her alarm.
It wouldn’t be necessary. Her heart was a ball of burning ice and her head was already pounding. Neither of which owed anything to the alcohol.
She seriously doubted she would be getting any sleep tonight.