Every member of the party had their own feelings about the pirates that had developed over time since first setting sail, but there had been precious few opportunities to discuss them with each other during their time aboard. There weren’t many places in the ship safe from prying ears, and though the far reaches of the cargo hold offered some quiet solace to Iris, the party could have hardly held meetings there without drawing suspicion. So, each had held their feelings in to fester, and now found them forced to the surface with a demand to be acknowledged.
They had each watched, from one vantage or another, as the battle on the dock turned to a massacre. The elven soldiers were well armed and well trained, but lacked the spirit for battle and were quickly overrun by the besieging pirates who slaughtered them from every angle. The captain took many blows during his fight with the young elven titans, but they failed to put him down before he devoured them both. The battle ended with their blood gurgling in his mouth as he roared a deep, thunderous cackle.
In the aftermath, any doubts about the nature of the pirates were put to rest. First they took the few remaining soldiers who begged to surrender to the corners of the dock, where they were pushed over the edge to plummet towards the swamp below. Then, they stalked the battlefield, searching for any wounded survivors and casually executing them on the spot. All the while, morale was high and cruel laughter rung out through the now still air.
With most of the crew now working their way down the countless floors of the tower outside, the party gathered around their usual dinner spot near Eli’s bunk. There were no other pirates in the crew quarters — Victoria had checked twice — and the nearest ears were on the far end of the deck in the infirmary.
They waited in silence until Titus joined them. He had only bothered to remove a few pieces of his armor while tending the wounded who were brought to him after the initial battle, the rest still clanked as he walked. Blood soaked his white undershirt and crusted on the edges of his greaves and vambraces, and he wiped splatters from his face with a dirty rag as he leaned against a barrel near his companions.
“I should have gone out there,” his voice was haunted by his regret, “two men died in my arms who could have been saved if I’d gotten to them sooner.”
The prevailing opinion, even amongst pirates, was that healers should hang back from the action and heal the wounded brought to them, His absence from the battlefield hadn't been missed and didn't rouse any suspicions of his loyalty.
“Could you have left the elves to die in front of you?” Victoria asked as gently as she could, “or would you have healed them too, and given yourself away as a traitor?”
“Is that what we are now?” Autumn asked a little too loudly.
“Keep your voice down,” Eli interjected.
“Just like that, we’re calling ourselves traitors?” she continued in a whisper, “am I the only one who actually wants to be a part of this crew?”
“Being a part of this crew means being a pirate,” Victoria said, “and being a pirate means killing and looting the innocent. Is that what you want to be?”
Autumn leaned back against the wall behind the upturned bucket she used as a stool, the black marble armor she still wore thunking against the inner hull. Her face showed she was conflicted, but she didn’t answer.
After several tense, quiet moments, Victoria spoke up again, “we’ve all seen this coming, right? We’ve heard the stories the pirates tell over meals, we’ve seen their callous disregard for death, surely we all knew we couldn’t fit in here forever.”
“I’ve been letting myself believe we lucked ourselves into something good,” Eli admitted as he placed his face in his hand, “ignoring the warning signs, I guess.”
“I don’t see much locked away in the infirmary,” Titus said, “but I haven’t met a single person on this ship I actually get along with, and I’ve treated just about all them. Other than that, it’s been easy enough to ignore that they’re pirates.”
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“Why’d we even come here, then?” Autumn asked, “we knew they pirates from the start. We knew what we were getting into.”
“We saw an opportunity and we took it,” Eli said, “let’s not pretend we spent that much time thinking about it.”
“Maybe you didn’t,” Autumn accused, “Mr. ‘Always A Killjoy’ until you saw a chance to sail away with your boyfriend, and then nothing else mattered. Where is he now, by the way?”
“This was never about Cameron,” Eli shook his head, “I supported this plan because it was the best option for the party.”
Autumn scoffed and looked away.
“Guys, do we even know what we’re arguing about?” Iris pleaded, “I get it, we’re all on different pages right now, but— seriously, do any of us actually understand where the others are?”
It was quiet for a moment while a few of them shifted uncomfortably and glances were passed around the circle.
“Alright then,” Eli said, “lets go one-by-one and say how we feel.”
Everyone else groaned.
“You’re talking to us like toddlers again,” Victoria pointed out.
“Well, right now we’re arguing like toddlers, so—”
“Fine, I’ll go first,” Autumn interjected, “I like it here. I finally get to put my skills to good use and I’m finally respected for it. I have a whole kitchen, assistant chefs, a whole warehouse worth of ingredients — it feels good. It’s nice to be a part of something big, even if that something is a pirate crew.”
Eli nodded as she finished, then waited to be sure she was finished before motioning to Iris to go next. She set up straight in surprise, having expected the turns to go around the circle in the other direction.
“I like it here, I guess,” she hesitated, “I mean, it’s nice. It feels like an adventure — a real, grand adventure that I’ll remember forever. But I don’t like what I saw out there today, and if there’s more of that in the future then I don’t want any part of it.”
Titus went next, “it feels like a job. It’s been tolerable so far, but even if you asked me yesterday I wouldn’t have had any nice things to say about it besides maybe the experience I’ve gained. It’s my job to save people, but— after what they did to the survivors out there, I’m honestly not sure I’d mind if this whole ship sank into the ocean.” The last words out of his mouth were said bitterly and with an absent stare.
Eli sighed and rubbed his hand down his face as he prepared for his turn to speak, “I feel like we’ve all had a chance to grow in our own ways here, and I think it’s been good for us. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes worry that something like this would end up happening to ruin it all, but I tried not to think about it much. I really wanted this to be a good a thing. I want to stay and make it work, but it feels like the best thing now might be to leave.”
Eli looked to Victoria, who was silent for several moments before she spoke, “this was always about what we could get out of it,” she closely guarded her emotions as she spoke, “at least that’s how I saw it. I didn’t come here to be a part of anything or have any grand adventures, I just wanted to catch an easy ride to the next place. I knew that sooner or later, though, pirates would be pirates, and I thought when that happened we’d all agree to jump ship and find the next thing.”
After another round of silence, Eli sighed and clasped his hands, “okay, now what?”
Autumn furrowed her brow, “you’re the leader, you tell us.”
Eli sat up straight and took in a deep breath, “I have a plan, I think it's a descent one, but and I’m open to suggestions.”
“If we took a vote,” Iris gave an apologetic look to Autumn, “I think it’s safe to say it would be to leave, so lets figure out how we do that.”
Autumn stayed mostly silent over the next several minutes as the party discussed their potential exit plans. Victoria was adamant that the best course of action would be to leave now, while the ship was still in Fale Nalore, and try to get their way onto another airship, but there were many flaws in that plan that the others pointed out. The obstacles to getting aboard another ship were largely discarded as irrelevant, as they were all confident they could make it happen one way or another, but there was the problem of how they would be received by the citizens. Even Victoria’s confidence had waned in that regard following the brutal aftermath of the battle on the dock. In the end they all agreed that, in all likelihood, that they would be imprisoned or killed for even having been a part of the Gaping Maw’s crew — deserters or not. The only other option that left them in Fale Nalore was attempting to go unnoticed or somehow pretend they weren’t from the Gaping Maw, which they all had much less confidence in their ability to pull off for an extended period.
In the end, Eli’s plan was the one they decided to go with. They would stay aboard the ship until it neared the coast, at which it point they would escape into the night and make their way north to Farwater, where they would hope to catch a ship to a destination to be decided when they got there. The rest of their meeting was spent discussing the specifics of that escape, accounting for both the ship being in the air or in the water at the time, and what each of their roles would be in either case.