Erin took in a deep breath at the wheel to calm her racing heart. The last close call with one of the rocks had nearly given her a stroke, and her heartbeat still had yet to calm down. The spirit resting around her shoulders wasn't helping her heart, but she had at least grown to accept that Eliza was useful for avoiding rocks. Holding onto the wheel helped as well, but her heart couldn't seem to calm down again.

"Why is it called that?" Alex yelled from the deck. "Of all the things!"

Erin took a moment to pull back on a lever on the console before opening the door and sticking her head out from the cabin door. The fact that she had heard him yell through the steel door was impressive, but she didn't know what would call for it. The three men stood together on the deck, looking up above the ship. She followed their gaze and saw the green ship coming down straight towards them.

"What's that?" she asked.

"A Flying Dutchman," Alex said, shaking his head. "Where does the name come from, Jean?"

"An old story," Jean said. "A ship called the Dutchman went missing and was never found. It is now doomed to sail forever, never able to enter a port. The ship's spirit is said to appear often across the nightsea, and it assails ships with its crew of ghosts."

"'Dutch' is the problem." Alex sighed, rubbing at his eyes. "The Netherlands was a country on Earth. People from there are Dutch."

"The Netherlands is an island? Should they not be called 'Netherese?'" Jean tilted his head. "Netherian?"

"Brothers," Sayed said, but he was ignored.

"No, not on 'Erth.' The other Earth. Look, I don't make up the names," Alex said. "But why would it be called a Dutchman on a completely different world?"

"Brothers," Sayed attempted to interrupt again.

"Maybe the ship's name comes from your world," Erin said. "You've run into people from Earth before."

"No one talks about those anymore," Alex said. "Maybe if they were pulled from the past. Like how Sayed told me about giants being legends when I asked him about Goldfist."

"Brothers!" Sayed yelled this time. "The ship is here."

"Ahahahahaha!"

A wailing cry called out through the night as the green ship careened across their side from above. It rolled past them in a circle along a horizontal plane to match their side, turning a long loop around them before coming up to match their side.

The ship was large and long. Without the green glow, it would have been a modified frigate-type ship. It was wide as well, with a typical wooden hull that wouldn't have survived in a place like Death's Yard. Tattered and ripped light sails floated freely like waving flags off of its masts, and several figures stood on the deck, all glowing the same green as the ship.

Erin reached into her cloak and drew her dagger. She didn't know what would happen, but none of this looked good.

"Avast!" one of the men walked forward, dressed in a long, tattered overcoat and wearing a large black hat marked with a skull and crossbones.

He drew a saber from his side and pointed it down at them. The ship was taller, so Erin couldn't get a good view of all the crew, but a few of them stuck their heads over the railing to look down at the ship. They all had rotting skin, and if they hadn't been glowing green, Erin would have thought they were drim.

Drim were a servant class for nobles. They were reanimated corpses that served as manual labor for mining and other tasks nobles didn't want to bother with. Meeting any beyond the Empyrean was impossible.

"You entered our territory, scum," the pirate said. "Surrender, and you may survive!"

Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Yar!"

Several men jumped down to land on the deck below while the leader remained standing above. Each one was dressed in typical but tattered sailing garb, and each one held a sword or pistol as they advanced on the four of them. Erin moved so her back was to the other three, and they all faced down their attacks.

"They're serious?" Alex laughed.

"I believe so," Jean whispered, reaching out his arm and calling Eliza off of Erin's shoulders in a whirl of purple.

"A lesson will be learned this day," Sayed said as he drew his sword from his back and took a stance to Erin's right.

Erin drew a few seeds from her bag. Her heart was still racing, but she wasn't worried, so she didn't know what the cause could be. She just needed to focus on the fight, and then she could worry about that.

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Boom! Crack.

Above them, two of the massive rocks collided.

Bang! Ting! Thump.

Several of the pirates fired guns at the same time, only for the bullets to ricochet off and into the distance. At the same time, the remaining ones with weapons charged from both sides, only to meet Sayed and Jean.

"Demon's Twister!"

Shing!

Sayed cut his sword in a wide arc as he spun through three of the pirates, his sword not heated. The pirates were blasted away as a gale of wind rushed in a twister around Sayed, and they were thrown up into a semi-circle before crashing down on the deck below.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Spirit Battement!"

Several kicks exploded out from Eliza as Jean extended her out with her arms. Four of the pirates were knocked away and across the deck, falling in heaps on the ground. They groaned as they held various parts of their bodies.

Erin threw her seeds out onto the remaining pirates with guns and opened the gate in her chest. It roared to life, ready at her call as vines of power twined through her body and into her arms. It seemed more eager than usual this time, and a spike of pain cut through her mind, but she forced it anyway.

"Thorn's Grasp!"

"Aah!"

Vines shot out from the seed and wrapped around the gunmen. Black thorns pierced into their skin all across their bodies as they fell to the ground. As Erin watched, the green light faded away from each of them as they struggled against the vines' restrictive grip.

"Now, about that demand," Alex said, looking up at the ship above.

In just a few seconds, they had taken out at least twelve of the crewmen. The captain, Erin assumed, looked down at them from his vantage point, his jaw open and his rotting eyes wide. Whatever or whoever he was, he clearly hadn't expected to meet this much resistance.

----------------------------------------

Dread Pirate Captain Bargen had not gained his title lightly. He was the strongest of all his men and had been hand-picked by Mister Deadman himself to serve as the chief guard for the operation in Death's Yard. However, the loyalty he owed to the Finger was contingent. It was contingent on keeping himself and his underlings alive for another day.

Looking down at the four people below, he was already doing the math.

"Captain." One of his men tapped his shoulder, and the man's rotten body shook. "What are we going to do?"

"Run," Bargen said, turning to his men and sheathing his sword as he hurried away from the rails. "Cut and run, boys! These people are too strong for us."

"Captain, one's coming up!"

Bargen turned, and his man was right. One of the people from below, the dark-skinned man in the overcoat, shot up past the deck, his hand pointing down like he was riding a wave of air. Bargen's cold, dead body went ice-cold as he saw the grin on the man's face.

The man caught the railing and easily swung himself onto the deck.

"Now, where were we?" the man asked, cracking his knuckles as he walked toward them.

Bargen reached for his saber instinctively, but it was thrown from his hand with a blast of force from the man's outstretched hand before he could even bring it up. It clattered to the deck with a finality that cut through Bargen's black heart.

"Wait!" he yelled as his men charged at the man before they were blasted back the same way.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His remaining five men fell to the ground as Blargen fell back on his butt. He scurried back and away as the man approached him, trying to hold his hands up in surrender while also scooting back as far as he could. His heart would be racing now if it still beat in his chest.

"Junk Arm."

Metal materialized in a flash of electricity along the man's arm, making it longer and jagged as he raised it high. That arm would be able to crush Bargen with one punch. He had no illusions about it. He was strong, but he wasn't that strong.

"Please, wait!" he said again as he bumped up against the railing on the other side of the ship.

No final punch came. Bargen's second death remained delayed. Slowly, he lowered his shaking hands and looked up at the man towering over him. The long metal arm was still there, ready to come down and end Bargen the second it could.

"I'm listening," the man said.

"Please! Show us mercy!" Bargen spat out as quickly as he could. "We're too weak to be of any threat to you!"

"But you're a threat to anyone else you come across," the man said. "I assume you've attacked people before."

"Only to drive them away." Bargen kept his hands up close to his face as he peeked out. "We just have to keep people away from the island. We're just doing our jobs!"

"What island?" the man took a step forward and brought his massive arm that much closer.

"Nowhere!" Bargen yelled.

There was a distinct pause as silence filled the air.

"I'm going to assume this is an Odysseus situation." The man sighed. "You mean the island is called Nowhere, right?"

Bargen took a moment to breathe and realized the problem. If there were an island called Nowhere, then, of course, people would assume that it wasn't anywhere. In all the excitement, he had never considered it a problem before. Granted, he had never run across a crew this strong before. He had no idea what an 'odisius' was, though.

"Yes." Bargen dropped his hands down from his face and clasped them together in front of himself. "We're just here as guards for the island. We have to keep people away from the island until the operation is over."

"What operation?"

"My boss would kill me if I told you." Dry, dead tear ducts wouldn't produce tears, but that didn't stop Bargen from trying. "If you're not going to kill us, can you just leave? There's nothing on that island anyone would want. No treasures, gold, or anything like that."

Click-clack.

The man brought down his fist to his side, gripping the fingers of the metal hand into a fist. The metal clacked as he raised his other hand to tap at his chin as he thought. Bargen gulped down the air through his dry throat.

"Unfortunately," the man said, shaking his head. "I can pretty much guarantee that we'll need to go there. I have coordinates for the center of Death's Yard, and I want to see what's there. So, we have two ways we can do this."

He reached out, and the metal hand wrapped around Bargen. The tight grip pushed against his chest like a heavy stone as he was raised into the air. If Bargen needed to breathe, he would soon be suffocated, but he was drim. Breathing was more of a nicety than a necessity.

"There's the easy way and the hard way," the man said. "Which way do you want to try first?"

Bargen would have cried if he had been able to. He tried his best, but loyalty could only be earned or bought in the end. Mister Deadman didn't pay Bargen enough to die to keep secrets. If he were going to die either way, Bargen would choose the option that at least let him live a little bit longer.

He told the man everything.