————— Thane
Thane didn't focus his gaze on the long-tenanted room on the second floor. The hostel he crossed by brought him a memory. Not the room specifically, although it was a beauty, a sight to behold, but it gave him no joy.
The carriage they were on picked up the pace, as along these streets there was the absence of pedestrians.
Thane wore a goldenrod smock-frock with a leather coat, helping to keep the cold out of his sleeves. Waid, on the other hand, with no fear of the chill, wore a bush hat with a wide-brimmed that covered part of his eyebrows. He suited in a polished black shirt with dark green pants.
The carriage was unsophisticated, with a rude driver who demanded his customers to remain quiet while he was escorting them. Fortunately, Thane’s reputation made him an exception to the rule.
“Where did you get that hat?”
“Got it from the island you sent us to.”
“Suit you well.”
“I think so too.”
Thane licked his lips, tasting the last bits of the cigarette he smoked before getting on the carriage.
“How’s the crew?”
“They were good men. Good men, but unfortunately, few didn’t make it through.”
“You can’t deal with the nature of the sea. It’s the code.”
Thane is still bothered by the story Waid told to him, of a girl who shot arrows and exploded his fellow crewmates.
“My absence hasn’t done any damage yet?”
“Physically, we still running strong. Morally, we’re weak. Isaac has been a useless royal with conversational skills worse than a red-butted monkey.”
“He brought us wealth and funded our cannons and weapons.”
The carriage shook more than they were passing through a rocky path.
“Doesn’t mean he has the right to stay in the cabin doing nothing. What if we got attacked?”
“Have you been in an attack?”
“Yes. Multiple, and he was useless. He could be of use if he could just stand up and speak. Opens his mouth. His reputation is worth more than he could wish and that’s a dangerous power. One speech and Isaac could give power to our crew.”
“But you used your weapons. They used their weapons. His weapons. My point stands.”
The carriage put on the brake. They have arrived at their destination, and it was glorious. The building stood the tallest, stealing the spotlight. Everything Thane thought about the driver remained true, but he was decent enough to attach ladders for them to step down.
“I didn’t know it was this big.”
Thane smiled.
“It’s built to be big enough to fit in ten guilds.”
“You’re right.”
The doors were gigantic, enough to fit in an ordinary giant. Thane was a normal human, so he went for the small door occupied in the corner. Thane noticed a smaller door the size of his face as he was opening. Those Fyes.
Thane got there first and opened the door for Waid, and Waid slightly nodded at the gesture.
“Remember, they will try to intimidate you and want you to lose your calm. The best you can do is to pretend they don’t exist, just imagine you are just speaking to a blank white wall.”
Waid stepped into the building, foot onto the garnished floor.
“Alright then.”
A small Fye crashed Waid’s face as he was stepping in, knocked him over and the Fye bounced backwards.
“Watch where're you going!” The Fye got back up and launched himself with his glittering wings.
Thane got a small disdain toward the Fyes. They are small creatures consisting of fly wings and human body shapes, and their faces share similarities with the kinds of birds, especially their beaks.
Thane helped Waid stand up and brushed the specks of dust off him.
“Watch where are you going? You’re the one who talking!” Waid cursed as the Fye flew away to the upper floors.
“That was just bad luck, Waid. We save our good luck for the show.”
The lobby of the building overflowed with folks of different kinds. It was too much for Thane. He scheduled the meeting on this day because he believed the place wouldn’t be as busy, but he already regretted it.
“You can count that bad luck on me, too.”
They treaded along the way, avoiding contact with others, not wanting to repeat the same accident. Thane had been here several times, usually for meetings about trades and goods, but in truth, Thane only showed up out of respect. He knew though he represented his guild, The Sea Trade, in public, the most important aspect regarding the one who did the talking was Rodd. His partner at work. And he wasn’t here today.
That didn’t mean Thane was out of practice. No, he only let the better one do the job. The same was happening with Waid.
They walked up to the receptionist, with his workspace circled against the wall, and there was a pane of thick glass separating him from others. The receptionist was writing with his pencil, not noticing Thane.
Thane knocked on the glass.
“Celic! I didn’t know you started working here.”
Celic wore a baggy shirt with a green embroidered coat on the outside. He had a pair of glasses that were too big for his full-of-scale face. He looked up.
“Aye, got the job a few days ago.”
“What’s with this pane of glass?” Thane knocked on the glass again.
“They put it in case someone pissed me off and I unconditionally vomited acid on them.”
“Like that one time you did on my lovely monkey?”
Celic chuckled.
“How can I be of help, Thane?”
“I’ve got a meeting in a few hours, with the guilds.”
“And what is it about?”
“My departure from the guilds, and the damage payments for the ship crashing incident.”
Celic looked over at something by his desk, confirming whatever Thane was saying.
“You’re quitting?”
“For my good.”
“Who is that behind you?”
Thane turned behind him to see Waid not paying attention to him and Celic. Instead, he was looking up at the top of the building, awed by something Thane couldn’t understand.
“His name is Waid. He will be accompanying me for my meeting.”
“Everything sounds fair to me. You know where are you going?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m done with you. Good luck.”
Celic went back to writing and waiting for the next talker.
Thane tapped Waid on the shoulder.
“What were you looking at?”
“This place looks bigger and smaller at the same time. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Things you don’t familiar with may mess with your head. Come on, we got a job to do.”
————— Triss
When I had a bad day, a hand touched me, and it warmed me to heart. Now that hand remained in the ground, being devoured by worms, being forgotten. I reached for it, wanting to feel the warmth, but I felt the cold shiver inside me. I didn’t know what to do. I stayed there and stared at nothing, and then… the hand grabbed me—
Triss woke up and hit her head hard on the wooden ceiling, gaining the worst spontaneous headache she could remember.
Ouch. She rubbed her forehead in disdain, soothing the pain. Her eyes were closed during the process, she thought it would help with the healing. It partially did. But she didn’t keep them closed for long.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
As she was opening her eyes, she felt rumbling from her back. Triss thought it was because of the movement of animals or vehicles, but it was from her that shook the earth.
Not Triss herself, but what contained her. It took her a second to process the situation, but she realized it wasn’t anything good. They locked her in a moving cell. A small wooden cell with steel bars, the size prevented Triss from standing straight up. She could only sit up properly.
“Hello?” Triss called out to the outside as she crawled toward the bars.
No one answered her. The sole sound that arrived to her belonged to the wind, and it was cooling.
The gaps between the bars were small enough to put her arms out, but she couldn’t risk suffocating trying to fit through them. She contemplated the vast green field they were passing by, the land extended beyond the horizon.
Her bow and arrows were taken away, leaving her with nothing but vulnerability. She never got taught of close combat, no one was to blame because Terro Village didn’t have such expertise.
Triss waited, hugging her legs. She worried about the captors’ knowledge of her power, her “magic”, and she repeated to herself it was reckless of her to do that. It was a stupid act. Though she didn’t blame it all on her didn’t anticipate the amount of energy relocated into that tree.
Triss liked to pretend that she’d been escorting to a party, to somewhere that would welcome her like the blood of a royal, merely a thought. A thought to distract her.
Out of curiosity, she peeked outside, trying to make a visual of whatever was dragging her cell. She heard the hoofing sounds of horses, but she couldn’t make out what those horses were attached to.
It wasn’t long until her eyes diverted toward something that she would kill herself for not noticing it. It wasn’t the size of it that kept her attention. It was the meaning of the symbol embedded above the entrance. The symbol of a blue anchor with a white cap.
Marines.
The entrance held no openings as carriages and people entered and exited. It was a sight not satisfying for people of desolation, but it was for Triss. Though she was the prisoner, the place amused her with its diligence and respectfulness.
The carriage escorted Triss stopped suddenly, as Triss didn’t see the long waiting line extending far from the entrance. The line consisted of parents on foot holding their kids, and of marines on some types of vehicles unfamiliar to Triss. They had circles at the four corners of a big rectangle-shaped which was holding the marines, and the weirdest thing according to Triss was a trail of smoke lingering out below the vehicle.
The smoke worked its way up Triss’ nose, into her stomach and gave her horrendous nausea. She coughed out loud with her arms up to cover the spit.
“You’re sick?” A man knocked his baton on the steel bars, creating a clinging sound that irritated Triss.
“The smoke bothered me. Who are you?”
“I rode you here. We’re in line waiting so I let my partner take the lead.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“My mission is finished once you’re in there. After that, I don’t know.”
The guy suited himself with a white buttoned-up collar and a white cap with a blue anchor embedded in it. He carried a holster with a flintlock gun and a sword and was flipping a round-tip baton in his hand.
The carriage moved up a little. Triss wondered what took them so long to shorten the line.
“Why are you capturing me?”
“Higher up orders.”
“Why are they capturing me?”
“You caught a big scene. I saw it in my tower from down here.” He pointed at the tower in the corner of the building.
“I didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t say you did it. But you were the sole present there. And you have an unregistered weapon.”
“Those were mine!”
“Did you come from another island? Every island has different rules, kid.”
Triss lay down staring at the ceiling. It was her fault she stuck with the reality of her power being exposed, and she hated that she admitted it. Those two guys, Lloyd and Tic, she thought they would have abandoned her. She’d of no use to them. She was just a mere hitchhiker.
I miss home.
————— Lloyd
“Can we fake being part of the citizens?”
“The line waiting this long means they’re checking identities. We’ll get a screw.”
Lloyd nodded at Tic. They were hiding behind the valley horizontally and paralleled the long line waiting to enter. Lloyd felt excruciating anxiety just by looking at the crowd of people. The last time he got lost in a crowd, it caused him an uncomfortable, out-of-breath experience. He didn’t want to remember it.
Lloyd searched alongside the line, looking for opportunities to infiltrate into the highly-guarded town.
“We can ratify a way to get into that carriage. The one with the pig.”
Lloyd meant the carriage was dragged by a pig not of ordinary size, but of size that should belong in fairy tales Lloyd read when he was immature. A pig of this size would have provided sufficient proteins for a village to last as long as a week. Its skin color drained of the usually pink, but cloaked in itself the white color.
“Is it because of the pig?”
“I picked the one that stood out from the rest. A giant pig holds more credibility than mere horses.”
It was not just the pig. The carriage stood out like a golden sheep among the black sheep. It rose to the same height and stretched to the same size as the pig. The silver painting gave the carriage a spotlight that contributed to Lloyd’s decision.
“I feel like you make it harder for us.”
“The easier path doesn’t usually mean the best path. That carriage is showing it has the best chance to get past the entrance more than anything.”
“But it’ll be harder to get into it in public.”
“Exactly. It’s a trade-off. Not a perfect one, but it gives us enough leeway. If we succeed, we get in. If we fail, we get captured. Either way, we still get in.”
“I think getting caught is easier than getting in that carriage.”
“But it’ll be harder for us to do anything in jail.”
Lloyd sat there looking at Tic contemplating. He was surprised to see Tic in this state of thinking, he didn’t think much of Tic as a person who would be questioning strategies. Tic reminded him of a person who would never follow anybody blindly, not without a doubt. Lloyd appreciated that. It was a rarity for someone of Tic’s stature.
Tic waved his vertically at the carriage.
“I think you and I are overthinking this. We haven’t seen their process of passing people in. It might be stupidly simple.”
“I don’t trust in our judgment on that matter. It shouldn’t be taking this long.”
The minutes passed since the start of their planning, and the line only moved up a few inches.
“This is too long. This is the same feeling as torture.”
“You know who are you talking to?”
Lloyd realized. He bowed his head down.
“My apologies.”
“What are you two up to?”
Lloyd jumped and almost twisted his elbow as he fell, dirt splashed in his face and little came in his eyes. He groaned, wiped them away with his fingers, and opened his eyes with a gun pointing directly at him.
“What are you hiding?”
The young marine’s stance was rigorous, he wore leather gloves that tackled the gun with expertise. This was not the man you want to mess with. Not even Lloyd.
Lloyd slowly rose, feeling the burn of death that was lingering. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew this was not the first time the marine held the gun and not the first time the marine wanted to pull the trigger.
“We can talk this out.”
“ I can see with my eyes that you are up to no good.”
Lloyd glanced to the side to see Tic was still on the ground facing the marine.
“I have both of you under arrest on suspicion of trespassing.”
“Trespassing? You can’t put that on us.”
“By the orders of the Marines.”
Lloyd whistled. A hiss.
“What was that for?”
The marine was too blind to see what was behind him. So he turned around and held his gun up. Nobody. Therefore, he was too blind to see what was above him.
Roc dived like a bullet, its peak drilled deep into the marine’s face, and Tic speedily made his way and covered the poor guy’s mouth, preventing him from revealing them to the public.
It was a brutal sight. It was too much for Lloyd - he closed his eyes and let Tic do the job. He was praying on the inside that the marine would live on.
A couple of squirrels sprinted by, holding their peanuts, and the marine was silent in Tic’s embrace. Roc hovered up onto Lloyd’s shoulder, and he flicked her hat playfully, like something he would do with a bouncing leaf.
“Tell me you didn’t kill him.”
“That wouldn’t be easier on us, so I didn’t do it. But your bird gave him quite a scar.”
“Frankly, he got it better than what I have seen from her. At least he didn’t go blind.”
Lloyd held the guy by his arms, and Tic carried him up by the legs. He was heavy, like those potato sacks Lloyd had to carry daily to his father’s lab. He didn’t know what to use of potatoes for a man in the military, and he didn’t care to ask because Lloyd wasn’t an inquisitive kid as he wished.
They proceeded down the hill, the steepness made it harder for them.
“Which one of us is going to wear his clothes?” They stopped at the end of the hill, it was a short hill, at least compared to the usual image when people think of a hill.
Lloyd slowly descended the marine down onto the ground, he saw the bugs getting out of the way.
“You will do it. I already know you got better experience than me.” Lloyd sighed.
“Experience doing what?”
“Survival instinct. Where do we put this guy when we strip him off?”
—————
Although they didn’t know if the efforts would pay off or not, they decided to walk a long distance and threw the naked guy over at the hays, where all the cows and pigs attended.
“Raise him higher, don’t let the pigs get near him.”
Tic followed Lloyd’s request, added more hays into the piles and threw the body on top of it. Said the body but he was not dead yet. Lloyd hoped so.
“Aren’t you concerned they going to find him fast?”
“It doesn’t matter how fast they are, we already are inside by that time.”
“The outfit is too big for me.”
Tic was right. The shirt and coat enhanced the appearance of its original wearer, but on Tic, it looked baggy, like a beggar.
“Don’t worry. People make mistakes. Not even the costume designers are the exception. Now, when you go in - only two goals gonna stick in your mind.”
“Only twos?”
“Repeat after me.”
Lloyd put both of his hands tight on Tic’s shoulders.
“Get Triss out, and steal a new ship.”
Get Triss out, and steal a new ship.
————— Waid
Waid didn’t think a few hours was literally. Thane usually plays his tricks of figuratively speaking to just exaggerate the situation, but he spoke the truth this time. And Waid didn’t like that.
The door led to the hall of meeting sat right beside Waid, who was waiting on a chair he feared would be broken anytime soon. Waid assumed Thane was thinking the same thing.
“How many hours have gone by?”
Thane counted in his head. Waid heard Thane whisper out numbers that didn’t make sense.
"An hour.”
“What was the counting for?”
“The minutes.”
Waid always forgot that he was the fortunate one on the ship, and got a chance to receive an education that exceeded his crew. A chance he pursued, and according to him, to Waid, it wasn't very worthy.
“Why don’t we go do something else? Be productive instead of sitting here like two grandmas.”
“I fear they won’t compromise because we didn’t arrive on time.”
“We are early. Too early!”
“ I fear even more they won’t compromise we didn’t show up late.”
“Who are these guys?”
"The kinds you wish to silence."
“Smart-mouth folks? I can handle those.”
“Not these, I guarantee you. Rodd and I developed our way of talking to them, but you’re here instead of Rodd.”
“My apologies?”
“No need. Our only way is to swim through it. We’re pirates and sailors. It’s in our blood.”
“You are more self-conscious after you left our crew.”
“Will I be less of when I rejoin?”
“I cannot guarantee. But it’ll feel great seeing your presence on board again. I miss it.”
“So do I. I will go either way, we persuade them or not. It’s not in my obligation I have to follow them. The guilds? Bunch of numskulls who deserve to have their heads on the wall of liberty.”
“Keep that spirit when you go in.”
“You should raise your spirit when you go in.”
Waid’s spirit wasn’t blue in any sort of way, but he wrote himself as not the type to emote, to show people his thoughts about anything through facials. He didn’t like it that way, but he never could grow out of it.
“My spirit is up.”
“I don’t see it. You’ve got a thick shell all around you. Your head. Your heart. Your soul.”
“I don’t need a therapy session-”
“People just can’t see through you.”
People just can’t see through you. Waid nodded. Isn’t that a good thing?
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It’s not good for our crew.”
“We have Pry and Vonn doing that. I’m not, and I don’t need to.”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
Thane went drowsy as he angled himself perpendicular against the wall, closing his eyes. Waid sat there staring, clueless on whether to interrupt his captain or not. Waid learned it was an unspoken rule not to wake a man who was deep in sleep. A very well-respected one, indeed.
Waid decided to follow the rule and left Thane to be lost in his glittering dreams. He then decided to follow Thane and adjust himself to fall asleep easily. Legs straightened out, back at an angle against the chair, head and neck parallel with the white ceiling, and Waid brought his hat up to his face, covering bright light beaming from the ceiling windows.
Waid set everything on a journey into dreams and nightmares. Waid preferred the latter. The sea gave him more chills at night when it spoke to him.
When it spoke to me.
—————