Chapter 17

Captain

Called it.

The captain's cabin is a lavish affair, with all of the comforts one could expect of such a position. She sits behind an ornate desk heavy with the density of its wood, in quite possibly the most comfortable-looking chair to ever have a skull mounted on it. The walls are covered with trophies and treasures that must be worth countless bars. Rolls of vellum maps are stacked on a bookshelf that matches the desk.

And the captain, herself, is everything I imagined she'd be. More, even. I no longer doubt, with any fiber of my being, that this place is far too dangerous for an unprepared man. It truly must be kept secret, lest it turn into a deadly honey trap. I'm not sexist enough to think all men that heard about it would be at risk, but enough would hear tell of a crew of beautiful pirates and come running to their deaths.

My plan to avoid this meeting ... didn't work out. There were far too many entirely too helpful crewmates between me and the hatch leading below deck. I certainly can't fault their friendliness when they think you're one of them, but they might as well have taken me by the hand and walked me here for how they ended up railroading me.

My only recourse is to act the part, so once I find my tongue, I snap a salute. "Nary a blue, Cap'n!" I've gotten enough practice in just getting here to slip right into the dialect without issue.

But the captain barely seems to pay my report any mind. Instead, she seems preoccupied with a black pearl on her desk. "Remmi Lee," she says, and my blood runs cold. She's still talking in Pirate, but it's no longer a handicap in understanding her clearly.

She turns toward me fully, and her smile is sweet, but her gaze is as sharp as a rapier. "Race, human outsider. Age, fifteen. Level, ten. Class, Gunslinger." And that gaze gets sharper still, even as the smile widens. "Status, unnerved."

I can't help it. I take a step back as if I'm expecting attack, my hand twitching toward my pistol, but my reaction just draws out a sultry laugh from the woman.

I swallow and attempt to re-steel myself. "You know Identify."

"And you recognize it," she replies easily. "It wasn't always a lost magic, but everyone who comes storming in here assumes I'm using an item. And we can understand each other. Remmi, sweet little thing, I don't suppose you're a Hero?"

I frown. This woman is far too clever by half. "I am."

She stands from her desk and steps around it. "That would explain that silver badge on your chest. Most that come through wear bronze ones. I've never seen anyone so low as level ten come through here, but if I understand the rating system, that badge means you're more on par with a level thirty. My, my, to think I'm so outclassed."

She doesn't talk or act like someone who feels outclassed.

"Let me guess," I try, "Level 20, thereabouts?"

"Twenty-two," she corrects me proudly, but then sighs. "Ah, I was higher before we ended up grounded in this accursed hole. How I wish to set sail again. An eternity of this purgatory doesn't suit me."

"You remember being ..." I flounder, though, trying to come up with an accurate term for it.

She, however, cuts to the quick without hesitation. "Human. Yes, little Hero, I remember being of mortal coil." The captain's face is even beautiful when crestfallen. "To think I once dreamed of immortality. Being chained in place like a ghost and brought back time and again as a glorified guardian is not the eternal life I had in mind."

I hesitate for a moment. "... If this is going toward a request to break you out, I don't think that's something I can do."

But the captain shakes her raven head. "I didn't expect you could. I'm merely taking the opportunity to air my troubles to an outsider that can understand them."

She regathers herself admirably with just a flip of her hair, and the authoritative woman returns, the one who thought so little of facing someone with the power of a level thirty adventurer. "Now, what brings you here, my little Hero? You didn't come here to raid the place, or you've got a very obtuse way of doing it."

"Ah." Well, if she's asking, I might as well be honest. "Your girls nabbed an elf in the caves earlier. Headed down into the hold." Somehow, I feel like it's important I don't mention Ayre's a guy, so I give the elf a mental apology. "She's a friend of mine, named Ayre. I'd like her back."

The captain's eyebrow goes up. "That's all?"

"Well, it's why I'm dressed like a swabbie," I admit, "but it's not why we came into the dungeon to start with. You're right, I'm not here to loot the place. I just need to get to the dungeon core."

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"An odd objective. You don't seem much like a religious petitioner." She shifts the way she's standing in a manner that indicates a change of topic. "Well, one matter at a time. Let's go check on your elf friend, shall we?"

And so I'm walked right back out of the cabin by the captain, herself, and led down below the deck as if on a personal tour.

"The core sees to everything," she says as we travel. "It maintains my ship, it sustains my crew, it even makes sure we're up to date. We went through an entire phase where it got the impression holds, themselves, had fallen out of style. We had to make quarters in the cave because nobody had any bunks."

"Sounds like a rough time to be bound to a nonsapient rock," I comment, and she nods.

"I can't speak to its sapience," the captain replies. "It never talks to me, nor communicates with me in any way. I just know I'm to defend it with my life, as cheap as that is when dying means so little. Perhaps if it did get chatty, we could get some actual work done down here."

She turns toward me as we continue our way across the deck. "Speaking of communication, how did you come to understand us?"

"Oh, well ..." I chuckle as I rub the back of my neck. "I had practice talking to a rabbit."

Little surprise even the unflappable captain looks dumbstruck by that. "... A ... rabbit?"

"Horned rabbit," I provide. "Level eighteen."

"Eighteen," she repeats in bewilderment. "Have the monsters grown so strong that my girls could lose to a rabbit?"

"Not likely," I reassure her with a shake of my head. "They're still usually level one. Kyuuga's something special, though." I grin. "He even has a class!"

"A rabbit with a class," the captain marvels, and slowly shakes her own head. "Of all of the wonders across the sea, I've never before heard of such a ridiculous thing ..."

I give a twisted grin. "You could call him a classy bunny."

The captain turns and gives me the flattest of gazes. "Don't make me run you through before the time comes."

We make our way down into the hold, and I get my first sight of Ayre's predicament.

The elf is in a cage. Not a gilded one, but it's hardly spartan, either. It's populated with pillows and a hammock stretches across the side. He has two guards, but neither of them are trying to intimidate him. Rather, they're holding up nautical-themed outfits in front of him and arguing about which would look better.

Poor Ayre obviously can't make heads or tails of what sounds like disgustingly stereotypical gibberish to his ears.

I can see other cages down here, too. A couple, toward the back of the hold and in dim light thereof, are far more like prison cells. Nothing but cold boards to lay on, assuming you aren't just bolted into one of the harnesses. In a flash of insight, I realize those would be the cells for Ayre if they hadn't mistaken him for the fairer sex.

I don't know if Ayre has realized his good fortune yet, but his panicked face over the incomprehensible bickering in front of him turns to a crestfallen expression when the captain and I come into sight.

"Oh no ... Remmi, they got you, too?!"

The pirates can't understand what he's saying, either, but his actions give away that someone just came in under the cover of their bickering, and they wheel about. They immediately snap to attention upon seeing their captain and bark a sharp, "Cap'n on deck!"

Fun fact, what they say for that and what it translates to is actually the same for once.

The captain gives a return gesture to their salute and then nods toward the cage. "That your mate?" she asks.

I nod. "Aye, Cap'n, that's her." Then I turn to Ayre and give a wave as I return to speaking normally. "Hey, Ayre! It's alright! I'm gonna get you out of there!"

The two pirates' heads perk up with blatant expressions of confusion at hearing what they thought was a fellow Swabbie speaking the surface tongue, but Ayre's ears twitch in annoyance. "You realize you're saying that while standing right next to them, right?"

"It's fine," I wave my friend off. "They can't understand us any better than you can understand them!"

"We can intuit fairly well," the captain puts in flatly, making me seize mid-wave.

That just makes Ayre's expression flatten, as well. "You shot your mouth off too soon, didn't you?"

"Ahaha," the Captain chuckles. Though, actually, she goes, "Arharhar," but tomato, tom-arr-to. "Seems she figured it out, too. Is the little Hero the slow one?"

I'm not pouting. "When did this become Pick on Remmi Day?"

"When Remmi decided to eat her foot!" Ayre calls back.

The Captain, of course, didn't understand those words, but the bemused smirk on her lips remains. No doubt she understands that I'm being ridiculed for my short-sightedness, but she moves the conversation along as she turns toward me and leans against the stairwell.

"Now, my precocious little Hero, why don't you tell me why you want to see the dungeon core so specifically?"

So the matter at hand, then. I turn toward her, as well, already having decided to withhold nothing from her on this topic. If she really is charged with defending the core, then she's my ally in this.

"Dungeons up and down the western border of the Empire are in danger," I explain. "There's a corruption infecting them. If it gets hold of a dungeon, it corrupts all of its energy and turns its monsters into ... well ..." I almost say monsters again, but fumble for a moment before coming up with, "... monstrosities. Your girls could be turned into zombies, or composite abominations, or who knows what else. It affects creatures outside of the dungeon, too, and even people."

The captain takes this information in for a moment in silence, then, "The Empire's borders must have collapsed tremendously if we're on their western edge. Assuming we're still thinking of the same one."

I nod. "It has. To the corruption. The entire Western Demesne has fallen." Her eyes widen at that, but I push forward. "The only way to prevent it from spreading is to purify the core, which shields it against being corrupted, and in turn protects the region outside of it. That's why I need to get to the core. To every core up and down the border with the Demesne."

"And then, what," the Captain counters. "You just sit there waiting for the Demesne to clear itself?"

But I shake my head this time. "No. After I've secured the defense of the rest of the Empire, I'm probably going to be sent into the Demesne to start trying to push the corruption back by purifying its dungeons, too. Purification is a preventative, but it is also a treatment if a core has already been corrupted."

"You know for a fact that you can purify one already corrupted?"

"The Forest Cavern dungeon was corrupted," I say. "It was the first one I purified."

Again, the Captain goes silent, measuring the weight of my words. But finally, her expression falls. "Unfortunately, little Hero, I can't grant your request. As the one charged to be the core's final line of defense, I can't open up the way willingly."

Her gaze grows more intense, however, as she meets mine. "But I know how you can earn it."