Momo could have never imagined her morning routine to look like it did now – as in, waking up before the sun and meditating below deck on a pirate ship with a hairless feline – but then again, she could have never imagined any of this.
Here’s how it went down: she woke up at 6am sharp, brushed her teeth with a toothpick, some straw, and a sliver of Barium sea-salt soap Sumire had gifted her. She donned her Tricorn, fit it snugly over her brittle white hair (using the toothpaste-soap as a shampoo wasn’t doing her hair texture any favors) and then summoned Dusk to her captain’s chambers.
The oncilla took naturally to [Bone Meditation]. Dusk naturally spent most of her time sleeping and purring, so sleeping and purring with the added bonus of a stat boost was no issue. Every day, Momo would put 10 points into Charisma for herself, in order to better instruct the ever-fluctuating emotions of the child-based crew, and 10 points into Dexterity for Dusk, who was serving as lookout on the ship’s bow.
All of this meditation and training culminated in a level up for Dusk, who had been deprived of experience for quite a while. Previous to the voyage, Momo had been keeping the cat mostly on the sidelines, either carrying her in the bloody backpack, her skull bobbing about like a feline bobblehead, or having her scout the roads for any traps set by the Holy Resistance. The level up came with a new skill, [Hunt the Trail], which allowed the cat to sniff out prey like a bloodhound.
“Don’t use this on anything without my permission,” Momo immediately informed the cat after receiving the skill notification. “Having piles and piles of dead mice sitting around the deck is not good for the childrens’ morale.”
“Meow,” Dusk begrudgingly obliged.
As it turned out, [Hunt the Trail] was useful for more than hunting mice. As the Revenge was gliding along the waves mid-afternoon, Momo heard Dusk’s signature Alert Meow sound from the lookout point. The cat bounded off the nets and onto the deck, her tail whipping back and forth nervously.
“What is it, girl?” Momo said, squatting down to scratch the cat under the chin.
Dusk jutted her head towards the port side of the ship. Her tail went rigid.
It didn’t take long to know why. From out of the mist, appearing like the headlights of a car flashing on a dark highway, was a large vessel. A ship, about half the size of the Revenge, painted bright yellow and purple. About a dozen crew were rapidly adjusting the sail, cranking hard as the boat keeled at a nearly right angle. Another half a dozen were swinging grappling hooks above their heads.
Momo tensed. The ship’s colors were striking and unmistakable; they were the colors of Kyros. The pirates with the grappling hooks weren’t dressed in leather cuirasses, but suits of heavy armor. These were Jarva’s men. Knights masquerading as seafarers. The crew that was actually managing the ropes looked like a ragtag group of hired – or more likely politely coerced – civilians.
These weren’t pirates, these were political ambushers.
“Enemy sighted on the starboard side!” Ribeye roared, pounding on his chest as the grappling hooks soared across the water; the ropes twisted around the bow of the Revenge, and the enemy crew began to rapidly pull towards their ship, steering straight into their side. There was nothing Momo could do to evade them, their approach was too fast. They collided with the Revenge in a shuddering thump, sending Momo’s less dexterous crew – namely, all of the children – flying off their feet.
“Take the wheel, Gita!” Momo shouted. The orc maiden obliged, and Momo used [Death Monkey Leap] to fly to the deck, joining Ribeye and a hundred disorderly child sailors. Hearing the chaos, Kami, Kasula, and Grimli all burst out from the lower cabins. Vivienne and Nyk, who was still in her pixie jar that Momo was too afraid to open, remained below.
As the Revenge’s crew recovered from the impact, six knights clamored aboard the ship. Four of them looked like regular Holy Knights, outfitted in their usual sheenless, Sir Lancelot-style golden plate armor. Despite appearances, the men looked confused and nervous, out of place under all that heavy garb – it was too big around the shoulders, pinching at the waist. From what Momo could recall, Jarva had abandoned all of the actual Holy Knights back in Alois. These sorry lads had to be his replacement troupes: untrained, naive Kyros fanatics shoved into suits and set adrift.
It was the two knights in the center that made Momo sweat a little. They were bigger than the rest of the men by three feet at the very least, wearing bright purple regalia. They had six foot long halberds strapped to their backs, which to Momo seemed completely impractical for melee combat on an undulating sea vessel, but were nonetheless menacing as hell to look at.
The purple knight on the left stepped forward and banged twice on his steel chest, like an ape giving a greeting to a rival gang of chimpanzees.
“My name is Gorim von Haus Aloysius, the eigth and final member of the Circle of the Sun. You have been boarded by vessels of His Majesty King Jarva,” he bellowed, pointing his sharpened halberd straight forward. “Surrender now, or face the wrath of Jarva’s utmost protectors – the physical manifestation of his many outstretched, all-seeing tentacles.”
After a few uncomfortable seconds, Gorim then looked expectantly at his counterpart, who had seemingly forgotten to speak.
“Oh – and uh – I’m Cyllindrel von Haus Cylinder, fourth member of the Circle,” the other purple knight said quickly, his voice and spear both wobbly; they clearly hadn’t rehearsed this entrance well enough. “And yeah, what Gorim said. Please surrender.”
Gorim’s words pinged something in the back of Momo’s mind. The Circle of the Sun – those were Jarva’s Excaliburs. Are these more Holy Resistance dupes, or are they actually the real thing? Given that Momo had unmasked pretty much every member of that sham resistance, it seemed unlikely that they’d try this trick again. But it was hard to say for sure.
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“Oh, shove off,” Ribeye said, spitting at them before Momo could say anything. He moved his hand upward, and six shimmering, cylindrical portals appeared behind and in front of each Holy Knight in an alternating sequence. With a grunt, Ribeye kicked one of the scrawny ones directly in the torso, and the knight shot through the portal behind him, exiting out the portal in front of his comrade, and sending each knight throttling at the next like a series of metal-clad dominos caught in a wind tunnel.
This continuous barrage of screaming paladins ended at Gorim, who was undisturbed by the four other knights barreling into him like an accidental battering ram. They bounced off his armor like flies, their bodies flinging onto the ship’s deck in groaning heaps. So that’s Mist magic, Momo thought, blinking rapidly as the portals shuttered.
“You big metal lumps of lilac,” Ribeye muttered, pointing an accusatory finger at the pair of Excaliburs. “A little portal magic didn’t knock you off my ship? Fine. The next attack won’t be so gentle. I’ll give you ten seconds to belly flop back onto that puny vessel of yours, or I’ll send you praying to the mist wraiths.”
Gorim scoffed. Without another word, he lunged forward towards Ribeye, traveling at an astonishing speed despite the heaviness of his armor. It was like watching a ray of golden light dance along the deck boards. Still, somehow, he missed, his halberd slicing down into the space between the orc and Kami.
“So much for those Excalibur reflexes,” Ribeye chuckled. “Bunch of shiny idiots –”
“Ribeye, watch out!” Kami yelled.
The dual blades at the end of the halberd suddenly expanded, tripling in length and stretching out in both directions like a pair of katanas. While Kami’s elevated Dexterity allowed him to see the move coming, the blade shot out faster than Ribeye could dodge it, and it buried itself in his side. The orc moaned in pain, stumbling backwards. The blade retracted again, exiting the wound quickly and cleanly. Blood rushed out of the orc’s leather cuirass.
“You bastards, I, I –” he stuttered, his large hand clasping over his side. “Damn it all. [Phantom].”
The orc disappeared, fading into nonexistence before Momo’s very eyes. It was another act of Mist magic. The same variety of magic that Momo saw that mouse guy use on Eji back during the Death Row arena tournament. Taking from her experience back then, she knew that Ribeye hadn’t teleported anywhere – he had simply mirrored the air around himself like a water vapor chameleon.
“Orcs,” Gorim said, voice laden with disdain. “Always bowing out just when the fight’s begun.”
“Shut up.”
Momo didn’t know what came over her. The words fell out of her mouth like boiling water over the lid of a pot. Her Nether-painted hands curled into fists. This was her ship. Okay, not really. It was a stolen pirate ship owned by some guy named Mandrake. But she had made this vessel her own, this crew her own, one hour of child labor at a time.
“Oh, and who are you?” Gorim laughed. “The captain’s malnourished daughter?”
Kami and Kasula looked poised to retaliate, but Momo threw up a hand at them to pause. If this knight didn’t know who she was, that meant that Jarva still had no idea she had abandoned her post in Morganium. That was good. As much as she wanted to send this overinflated piece of metal off the gangplank, it was more important that they got information out of him first.
“No,” she said, putting her hands on her hips as she stood across from him. “I’m no one’s malnourished daughter. I am the captain. Captain Coco of Mandrake’s Revenge. And I have a zero tolerance policy for anyone trespassing on my ship and stabbing my crew.”
A weird, gauzy look fell over his eyes. The extra Charisma points from [Bone Meditation] must be working. Usually it was impossible for anyone to take her seriously, but the moment she opened her mouth, his puffy overconfident stance deflated like a balloon. He still didn’t look as unsure of himself as Cyllindrel, who was busy playing with his thumbs in the corner, but she had certainly taken him down a notch.
“Captain Coco,” he muttered to himself. “Never heard that name before. Are you registered with the Kingdom’s Registry of Legalized Piracy?”
“Of course I am,” Momo lied. That’s a thing? “And I’m currently in the middle of transporting a very critical shipment. Something King Jarva would be very, very sad to go without. What business do you have stumbling onto my ship and shoving your halberd into our perfectly legal enterprise?”
The knight’s shoulders drooped even further, his eyes clouding with self-doubt. It was about time I put [Doubletimer] to use. The skill gave her a 50% boost to all persuasion attempts against enemies she was trying to deceive. She didn’t love the circumstances in which she was awarded the ability – compulsively lying to all of her friends until the System registered it as a behavior pattern – but it turned out to be a very useful skill in the right situations.
“I don’t know about upstanding,” he grumbled. From behind Momo, Ribeye materialized again. He had bandaged up his side, but his hands were still painted red with blood.
“If you don’t get out of the way right now, I’m going to tear through the both of you,” Ribeye said to Momo, churning his teeth. “This Kyroshead thinks he can pinch my side and survive it…”
“Down boy,” Kasula said, placing a hand on the orc’s shoulder. A faint light radiated from it, and Ribeye’s rabid fury dulled. Momo deduced that it had to be some sort of pacifying spell. She gave Kasula a grateful half-smile. “Let’s let the captain figure this one out before we get all murderous. This is probably just some big understanding.”
“Fine,” Ribeye grunted, but his eyes never left Gorim’s face.
Sufficiently sure that Ribeye wouldn’t try to skewer the pair of them like kebab, Momo turned back to the knight.
“Enough questions for me. I have a question for you,” she said bravely. The extra Charisma was kind of going to her head. Is this how naturally extroverted people feel all the time? “Is it common for Jarva’s most prestigious force of protectors to randomly plunder registered pirate ships? Because it feels like a huge waste of resources. Not to mention stupid.”
Gorim scowled, his jaw clenching. “Of course not,” he spat. “We only came aboard your ship because we thought you were unregistered sea scavengers. Sailing without a pirating license is a high crime, as I’m sure you’re familiar. But it turns out you scum are just the regular kind. Not worth our time. We have more pressing matters at play. Cyllindrel and I have been tasked on a special, confidential mission. A mission that requires only Jarva’s best.”
Momo’s [White Lie Detector] pinged. But why would he be lying? She silently cast [Silent Mindreader] on him. The knight’s thoughts streamed into her head easily. He obviously didn’t have any mental fortifications against Con Artist skills.
His Greatness obviously seeks to punish me. There is no other reason for why he would send me on a mission with that buffoon, Gorim thought, his eyes drifting towards Cyllindrel, who was breathing heavily after being scared by his own reflection in the water. Such reconnaissance missions like this could have been performed by any lesser knight. We already know that little necromancer girl will soon be out of the picture, and the recapturing of the capital will go flawlessly – it has been foretold by Kyros himself. The prophecy is irrevocable.
Momo froze, her eyes widening. Necromancer girl? Does he mean me? His voice replayed in her head several times over, the thought looping like a broken vinyl. The recapturing of the capital.
Her capital.