Having been unsuccessful in convincing Kelly to keep the more intimate details of her love life off the presses, Momo gave up and made for the Mekna shipyard. She followed the scent of rum and the troublesome noise of sailors until she was once again at the beach’s end, the reflection of the full moon glittering across the waves.

“Never thought I’d be in the market for a ship,” Momo mumbled to herself.

The biggest vehicle she ever thought she’d pilot was the Barbie-branded Kid’s Car she drove around the backyard when she was eleven. Now that was an elegant mode of transportation.

But circumstances had changed.

Momo looked out at her selection. Extending off the coast were a series of docks, each with at least ten attached sailboats bobbing up and down in the shallow water. Momo sighed. They were fine boats, but they were awfully tiny. She was envisioning a proper Pirates of the Caribbean experience. A mighty vessel capable of carrying mighty people, with a mighty captain at its helm.

Not that she even knew how to captain a Toyota.

Her eyes fell on the final, most distant dock. It was a ways away, long past Mekna’s city borders. It looked to be a privately owned port, with several chain fences protecting the dock’s interior.

Momo could see why: hiding behind the fenced perimeter was what could only be described as a medieval yacht; a ginormous, fully-featured hunk of wood equipped with several canons, ornate decorations, and the body of a ivy-covered mermaid hanging off the front, arms outstretched towards the sea.

Momo grinned. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

—

It took a few hours for Grimli to arrive at their meeting location. By then, Momo had done a complete evaluation of the kind of security she was up against. She had used [Polymorph - Nether Imp] to fly around the perimeter and, to her dismay, it was quite the operation inside.

“It seems to be owned by some kind of pirate organization – I saw a scary guy with an eyepatch shouting at the rest of the hundred-man crew,” Momo informed Grimli, gesturing wildly with her hands as she tried to paint him a vivid picture. “Apparently his name is Captain Alraune Mandrake, and the ship, which is a gal-yon, or something like that, is called Mandrake’s Revenge.”

“I think you mean a gallion, your highness. But oh dear, the Revenge…” Grimli mumbled worriedly. “What’s he revenging against?”

“No clue.”

“Do you think that’s a good boat for us to nab? I’m not sure I want to sail something with vengeance built into it,” Grimli mused. “What if we do something to offend it? Step on a nail or bust a piece of the deck? I don’t want to invoke any wrath from a vessel the size of a small lake. Seems unwise.”

“It’ll be fine, Grimli,” Momo sighed, waving him off. “It’s just a name.”

“Alright…” Grimli said, his teeth chattering with obvious disagreement. “So what’s the plan then, my queen? We knock ‘em all dead? Well – erm – you knock ‘em all dead? I don’t have much to rely on in the fighting department. Happy to play a ballad though, if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Momo said very quickly, possibly too quickly, judging by Grimli’s forlorn expression. She immediately felt bad. “Well, okay, actually, I do have one idea. Involving ballads.”

He immediately brightened.

“Do you have any songs that can… enchant people?” Momo asked.

She’d been wondering about this for a while now. In all the time she had spent with Grimli, she had never once heard him mention his class or his rank. He didn’t seem to be big on anything besides sitting, writing, and singing unprovoked songs in untimely circumstances. Furthermore, judging by his level of talent, or lack thereof, Momo doubted that he was a high level in whatever it is he was.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Still, it was worth a shot.

“Enchant?” Grimli blinked. “All my songs are enchanting, if I do say so myself. Enchanting for the senses.”

“Not enchanting like the adjective, Grimli. Enchanting like real magic,” Momo clarified. “Can any of your songs put a spell on people? Charm them into, I don’t know, a suggestable mood?”

Grimli ran his hand through his beard and closed his eyes, his face screwed up in thought. “Ah, magic, you say. Well. I don’t usually bother with all that, but if your royal highness insists, I could perhaps use something from the dreaded Class System…”

Grimli cleared his throat and summoned his own courier. He ran his eyes across the page, mumbled something under his breath, and then relinquished it again to the Nether.

He then pulled out his mandolin and began to strum.

“[Holy Ballad of the Dreamer],” he sang quietly.

Bright yellow light emanated from his fingertips, zigzagging across the chords and then shooting into the air above him; the light painted a halo around the musician. Momo stared at him in awe, her eyes glued to the angelic circle sitting above his head. The song sent an indescribable shiver throughout her nervous system, a ricocheting pulse of calm.

After an unknown amount of time, Grimli’s fingers stilled. It broke Momo’s trance in an instant.

“Wow,” she said. It was like coming to after a bout of surgical anesthesia – everything just felt a little bit… off. “That was so… so… incredible. Why have you not shown me that before? What else can you do?”

Grimli shrugged. He didn’t look impressed with himself in the least, which was very offbrand for the dwarf. If there was an opportunity to be praised, he would seize it in an instant.

“The Class System is not well regarded amongst my people,” he explained as he tucked the mandolin back into its case. “Long ago, us dwarves were sworn to Salazar, God of Fire and Forge, but he ultimately betrayed and disavowed us. Since then, it has been considered bad luck to engage with the system. It’s ad’va-glad’ma salzasazma. In common tongue: only a fool plays cards with the dragon.”

“Huh,” Momo said, eyebrows raised. “Interesting.”

Her unfortunately infinite thirst for knowledge pushed her to ask more about this disavowment, as she was not a big fan of Salazar herself, but she refrained. She knew she’d only get Grimli going, and they had places to be. A galleon to steal. Plus, if she were to loiter too long in Mekna, people might start wondering why she hadn’t left for the capital yet.

Still… she did have to ask one question.

“So you don’t have a class at all?” she probed as they began to walk towards the heavily guarded marina. “How does that work?”

“Of course I have a class, your highness. It is not a matter of wanting one. If you so much as lift a finger, the gods will slap one on you, willing or unwilling.” Grimli snorted. “But I’m a lucky dwarf. My Goddess Yawnica is one of the less intrusive deities in that troublesome pantheon. Let’s me go about my business without any blessings or quests or save-the-universe, destroy-the-universe summer holidays like the others tend to do.”

Momo grimaced.

“Sounds nice.”

—

When they arrived at the marina, the gate was open. Wide open.

“It wasn’t like this before,” Momo whispered. “It was shut tight. With multiple guards.”

Momo had concocted a plan in the short time it took them to walk there. Grimli would sing the guards into a suggestible mood, and Momo would use Demagogue’s [Crowd Control] to have them do the difficult work of untying the lines and undocking the ship. Then they’d be off.

But it seemed circumstances had changed.

As they stepped inside the wharf, an eerie silence plagued them. When she had been surveying the pier hours before, it was alive with murmurs and occasional shouts of laughter. The calls and chirps of drunk sailors. Now, it was dead silent, only interrupted by the wash of waves hitting the dock and the chirping of sea ravens.

Momo was about to speak when she noticed a flicker of motion in the distance. It was something small and round, coming towards them from further down the port. She couldn’t make out its features for a good few seconds – the fog clinging to the pier was too thick and dense – but it finally emerged from the mist.

Dread sunk into every limb in Momo’s body.

A head – a severed head – was rolling down the dark jetty. It landed right in front of Momo’s feet, stilling at the round tip of her clog. The head’s mouth was agape, stuck in permanent shock; the eyes – no – the eye was wide open. The other one was covered in a familiar patch of black fabric.

“Your highness, is that…” Grimli stuttered, the pitch of his voice high and trembling.

“Captain Mandrake,” Momo finished, all the air leaving her lungs.

Another sound – a slow creaking – began to echo from further down the pier. Momo whipped her head towards it, and saw that the ship’s mooring ropes had already been untied, laying in wet piles on the pier. Through the dark mist, she could see a single sail being floated onto a mast, a bunch of huddled figures straining to yank it as fast as they could manage.

“Someone’s stealing the ship we were going to steal,” Momo realized, her eyes still wide in shock. “What the hell.”

“Oh well then, I guess it wasn’t meant to be –” Grimli sing-songed, stepping backwards and away from the severed body part.

To Grimli’s great dismay, Momo started running straight towards it.