It was one of the smallest islands on the continents. Oh, how looks were deceiving.

Even upon docking the Medusa alongside greater and smaller ships, the smell of gunpowder and booze led Susanoo like a bloodhound to the heart of a hellish town. Though she took no immediate notice of it, the pirate found herself with her hand hovering about the flintlock pistol at her belt. Wading between drunken sailors attempting to move storage onto their ships, children chasing their mutts for the food which they’d stolen, hungover husbands awoken by the smack of towels against their faces; it was all rather foreign.

She could not say that the ports back home were the same. The civility of her capital city often brought the impression that the western pirates were a bunch of drunks, irresponsible, picking fights that they were doomed to lose. Yet Susanoo recalled her previous crew and likened it more to a Nar battleship than anything. Discipline, control, balance; all good in theory but she was not the only one unable to perform them all. Her crew mates fell short, became rebellious once out in the open ocean, free from the shackles of the Shogunate. Curses from the western winds, her captain would mutter bitterly every time.

Looking at it now, she could comprehend his words, only with less hostility. Although the western pirates were much more bohemian in their way of business, they were still freedom seeker at their root, lovers of gold and fortunate and allergic to the shackles of labour ships and prisons. Her neck would feel tight at times, recalling how close she had gotten to being hanged for this adopted recklessness.

Susanoo squeezed through an alleyway as she noticed how quickly the day had gone. Even though she had set sail in the morning, it was only at sundown where she managed to drop the anchor at the port. She had slipped the single gold coin into the hand of a worker and left it at that; he would not bother her if he was too busy drinking himself to death with what she had paid him with. Even with the sky growing ebony, the last taints of red and orange lacing the corners of the earth, Susanoo kept her voice and head low. The lights emitting from the lamps and the bars and many homes just barely reached her face, and she preferred it that way.

Her feet were heavy, moving almost automatically. She was set on finding the best crew for the Medusa and in order to do that, she had to offer her hand to the crew nobody would accept. Charity work. Or perhaps not.

Pushing a door open, the lighthearted melody of a piano and accordion echoed alongside the orchestra of laughter and chatter happening all around her. A glass broke behind the bar and a woman chased a shorter man about ‘payment’.

These sights, although found commonly in the west, was what was emblematic of the pirates on this side of the world. Drunkards, storytellers, lovers and dreamers. Though she could probably count the ones who had blood on their hands, Susanoo was in no position to judge. Her career was a ship captain had just begun; her hands would be stained soon.

She looked amongst the crowd of giggling and hiccuping faces and dragged her feet towards the bar where a tall, tanned woman stood giving out pints to customers. Susanoo narrowly dodged past a short sailor carrying an entire tray of pints to an eager table, and then set her hands at the counter. She slid another gold coin towards the bartender, who stopped narrowly in her movements to receive Susanoo.

“Don’t suppose you know where I can find the old crew of The Crone?”.

Susanoo caught an initial surprise in the bartender’s cunning, green eyes. She understood why the question would raise concern, maybe slight panic; nonetheless, it was all things Susanoo could deal with.

The other woman pursed her lips as she took the golden coin into her calloused hands, and slipped the payment into her apron. Her entire right arm was tattooed with the tribal symbols found in Enpraso. When she spoke, the nasal accent was evident.

“They was banned from this very bar, ma’am. Week back or so, they challenged this fresh crew to a duel. Lost hard. You’ll have m’re luck somewhere else.”

Banned? Susanoo knew they were a disorganised bunch, quite like their old captain, but she did not picture them to be brawlers. Though, when the booze was in one’s system, the frustrations and cockiness that the sea gave you were recipe for disaster. She might have anticipated well-deserved peace too soon, but pirates were born complicated. She had enough energy to persist.

The captain bit the inside of her cheek and rubbed a mark on her neck that had been victim to the scorching sun. “I’ll only ask you to point me in the right direction. I believe that going out, guns blazing to get their attention, won’t paint a good picture o’ me”, she spoke. “Somewhat new to this… captain thing.”

“You must be a stupid or very ambitious captain to be taking The Crone’s old crew as your own.”

Susanoo’s smile dropped. Well, she wasn’t wrong.

Although embarrassed, the captain left the pub with a new direction, closing the door behind her before some drunkard mistakenly could lob a bottle of rum over her head. She exhaled and trod down the instructed path, which included plenty more alleyways much to her dismay. She became aware of the island’s height, the city and port building up along with it. It made it worth it to glance back and be able to see the docks and the night sky, before continuing.

She dipped her head in greeting at an elderly couple sat at their veranda, smoking their aromatic tobacco, before resuming into a dim and silent path. It took her a moment to choose between the two doors opposite each other in that alleyway, eager to get away from the smell of cat urine and booze. A light from a window allowed her to see through and spot what she’d been looking for; a map shop.

Susanoo pushed the heavy door forward and stepped inside. The air grew thin and she found her hand print on a counter she brushed against. Initially, she could get over the dinginess and aging environment. This was not what she was looking for, anyway. Her eyes lingered on the maps of the other continents outside of Champier, though her feet continued to lead her behind the counter and towards a door from which she heard thundering laughter emerge.

There were possibly five or six people behind the door. A shutter remained close, much to her disappointment. But Susanoo did as instructed by the bartender. She presented the triple knock, followed by a small rattle of the doorknob. The laughter ceased so quickly, she thought she had imagined it all. She became aware of her breathing and her heartbeat as she heard footsteps behind the door. The pirate gulped. The shutter eventually pulled back, and a pair of yellowed and deranged eyes stared back at her.

“Aye?”.

These useless pirates were incapable of hurting her, but her heart still trembled in worry. Those shifting, yellowing eyes followed her slightest movements.

Susanoo found her voice, finding it had improved since she fed herself after being tortured for two days. “I require a crew to sail with me.”

The figure let out a ghostly, almost fake laugh. It remained unblinking. Was it even human? She only confirmed it because of the very clear male voice. “Aye, a crew… And you reckon we will step aboard the boat of any estranged woman knocking at our door?”.

The shutter was halfway closed before Susanoo blurted, “I sail the Medusa.”

Stillness.

From the darkness once more, the figure peeked one eye out and gazed at her up and down, reading her face for lies which would not be spotted. Susanoo still made her features scarce of any apprehension, in case it was mistaken for something else.

Dead men tell no tales, but the ones who narrowly escaped their own deaths carried the stories of legendary ships and crews. The Medusa had been established as mythos not too long after the maiden voyage of King Malachi II’s own ship. He had been a monarch from Champier’s younger years of royalty.

It had been stated in the naval logs that not too long after reaching the waters near the Path of Tamlif, the king’s ship found itself unable to set sail. Although its anchor had not been dropped, it remained unmoving at sea. The crewmen were dead, frozen into stone. Naturally, as investigations drew no conclusions, fables and myths began to rise from the mouth of early pirates. The Ejiri pirates said that the Medusa was the spirit of a woman the king had wronged. That the ship had been possessed and awoken from the bottom of the ocean to rid the seas of the sins of guilty, cruel men.

That was the version Susanoo believed, also. Some stated the Medusa had once been used by an all-female crew, others stated she was only summoned at the hand of a woman. It came as a surprise to Susanoo, of course, that some of the fables were also true. She pondered if, that day at Tamlif, how else would she have been able to resurrect the Medusa and claim herself as its captain? Did the vessel respond to those seeking vengeance, and if so, how long would the ship serve her once all of her enemies were dead?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The door opened.

It had been common practice in Nar’s early civilisation for prisoners to be thrown into a pit of maroon serpents. Entertainment as well as punishment, entire crowds would swarm to watch doomed souls to fight with nothing but decaying swords and the scraps of their own clothes. Although the practice had been long abandoned, Susanoo felt like she had just been dumped into the middle of an arena.

The pirate with yellowed eyes led Susanoo further into the back room and only then did she smell the filth and rum, poison to her stomach. Her frame then stopped, and then spotted the other crewmen. She couldn’t remember the names, nor match faces to said names. Sat on a stool, a young man no older than thirty wore a scowl across a delicate face; long lashes, top heavy lips, piercing blue eyes and hair reminding Susanoo of Ejiri’s southern lights. Dark blue, tied back. The captain averted her gaze and glanced at ‘Yellow Eyes’.

“What business you got with the crew of The Crone?”, he asked, his canines abnormally sharp.

“I think you mean old crew”, Susanoo countered. Though insulting their legacy would certainly not get the crew she so ardently desired, she was a soothsayer. “And my business has already been explained. I need a group of seasoned sailors— pirates, to sail aboard the Medusa.”

“I heard you the first time”, Yellow Eyes countered. “We just wanna know how you got your hands on that ship. Or how you got the courage to lie about something like that.”

Of course; a ship of legend. And although she could bring them aboard the ship, their suspicions would be higher. She could lead them into a trap. If the Nar armada was hunting her down already, then attracting a pirate crew would prove significantly difficult.

Susanoo took another glance at the crew. An Enpraso man tattooed all the way to his naval sat in the corner, his sharpened machete hard to miss by the glint. She could count on her fingers the number of Enpraso sailors in that room, all tall and viciously intimidating. These were the men in The Crone who viscerally beheaded enemy pirates and Nar soldiers, throwing them into a course bound to reach land as a warning of their brutality. The fear it struck into her heart was almost exhilarating.

Her eyes yet again landed on the young man from before. He was polished in every sense of the word. His clothes were untouched by the filth at sea, his face without any blemishes other than a small scarf on his right cheekbone. Was he really a pirate?

“You interrupt our council and then do not speak. Do you dance with death often, woman?”.

Woman. “Only when it benefits me”, she retorted with a slight tilt of the head, jaw clenched. “You must find yourself a bit of a daredevil also, with that wagging thing you call a tongue.”

A click of a barrel. Susanoo’s hand reached for her own pistol. She couldn’t begin to defend herself against such a large group but she couldn’t be intimidated. No matter what, she had to stand her ground. A group of men were quite literally nothing compared to the tempests at sea. She had to harden her skin.

“Watch your own mouth, sailor, before you say something you regret.”

She felt the end of the barrel against her temple. A sliver of sweat rolled down her neck, heart thumping wildly in her throat. This wasn’t how her story ended, not when she had so much to offer to future mythos, to sea shanties. Escapee of a military regime, victim to mutiny, appointed Pirate King by chance.

The figure holding the pistol curled around her; the navy haired young man. His eyes were sharper up close. “Should we trust your every word, that still leaves us rather unsatisfied, don’t you think? You hardly seem matured by the sea. How can we put our trust in a captain without a sense of direction?”.

Susanoo gulped, ”You will find that I make enemies quicker than a cut can bleed. Not by choice, by chance and through no fault of my own.” They had the right to know that an entire armada was chasing after her. Though they hanged and burned pirates like herself, they would go the extra mile for her. And if they got their hands on the Medusa… She had been its captain for no less than a week and she knew what a loss for freedom it would truly be if the vessel fell into the hands of those barbarians.

“Enemies? I’ll say”, Yellow Eyes roared with laughter and the others, except for the youngest boy, followed. It would’ve been humiliating if they were actually right. “Go on, then. Scorned lovers? Did you run away from the alter, missus?”.

Ugh, enough.

Digging into her pocket, the pirate lifted her lifeline up. Though guns and gazes shifted as quickly as she moved, she found it all froze once the glint of the Pearl Crown blinded their mortal eyes. The barrel of the gun to her head dropped gently, and the scent of starvation hit her nose. Greed, rage, bloodlust; oh, these sailors would do just a little more if it meant holding the crown for a mere second. She might have just earned herself a quick death by revealing she had it.

“If it would bring you any pleasure to sail with the Pirate King, I can promise that my ship has plenty of space”, she offered, glancing around her. “I won’t ask again. You must also understand that the Medusa is a sentient vessel deeply connected to its reining captain. Kill me and take the crown, and prepare for an eternity of hell in the open sea.”

“Oh, bull, that garbage is a myth. It’s a ship like any other sunk in warfare”, Yellow Eyes spat, looking about at his fellow comrades. “She’s trying to scare you. Take the crown.”

Susanoo took a step back, knowing the door was directly behind her. The young man stood before her and took slow steps in her direction, raising his gun. Is this how she died? Her story had barely started, they didn’t even know her name, the Medusa would be without a captain and would haunt the seas forever in search of a new one.

A slow turn. The young man then lifted the gun towards Yellow Eyes, whose smile dropped in a heartbeat. Grumbles and mumbles between the pirates ensued, and Susanoo found her back to the cold metal door, unable to find the knob or hatchet.

“Lost your mind, Emil?”.

‘Emil’ remained stern. “Hardly as much as you have lost yours. Should you recall, the Pirate King is spiritually bound to that crown and a ship. Even if we killed her and took it, we are without a vessel. With her dead, there’s no Medusa, either. In other words, we need her”, his voice was eloquent, not a stutter or pause. Susanoo felt almost flattered by his defence. “Unfortunately, the Pearl Crown is no other piece of junk likened to those in your storage.”

Yellow Eyes scowled, looking between Emil and a cowering Susanoo looking for an escape. She clenched the crown harder, slipping it into her pocket in case she had to run, again. She could only pray that the Medusa was as fast as setting sail as the myths said she was.

“Have you thought to consider what will happen, Emil?”, a heavyset Stois Blana man croaked. “Immediately, an armada and five Pirate Lords will be on our asses and you think we have the means of outrunning them? Have you forgotten what Pavoni did to us not long ago?”.

“Have you thought to consider what will happen to every breathing pirate in this continent if the armada get their hands on this crown?”.

Susanoo drew a quick breath, Emil was right. Though she could turn and run, she would still have a navy trailing after her and people like her, looking forward to the day where their terror would fully reign, where they could wipe pirates off the face of the earth.

The abilities as Pirate King were unknown to her but she knew that she was the single most important person in the sea at the moment, and it terrified her. How someone could sway her into a trapping alliance, how keenly the Nar could be in finding and torturing her once again. Even returning home would not protect her, she would just be bringing war into her home turf.

The whispers of awakening dead sailors, resurrecting entire ships. How many ships had the Nar sunk that they could bring back and enslave for their own bidding? Pirates hunting each other to ensure their own survival. And at least half the Pirate Lords would side with whoever had the crown. So the only option that remained was for Susanoo to garner their trust before the Nar or other keen pirates found her. Fast.

“And lest you forget, there is a code even lawless sailors like us follow. And though frustrating as it may be, we carry a duty to obey orders.”

“That woman is no boss of me.”

Susanoo could only watch.

Emil rose his pistol to the air and fired a shot, sending the rest tumbling to the floor or scrambling for cover. In the same breath, he charged and yanked the blonde streaks of Yellow Eyes’s hair and pushed his figure forward towards Susanoo. She stepped back, Yellow Eyes on his hands and knees, and Emil circling him slowly.

He then crouched beside the cowering man and lifted his pistol again, tapping the barrel against his head. “Three years without a ship or captain. You want a shot at showing your face to the sea again? You better bow and beg. Beg before your king, pirate.”

Though Yellow Eyes might’ve sobbed out something, Emil stood up and glanced at his comrades. Susanoo did so, too, watching their apprehension. Though it didn’t feel good to be feared, it was better than being respected. So long as she held the crown and ownership over the Medusa, her power as king would not shift the alliance between herself and the old crew of The Crone.

Emil addressed her once more. “As former quartermaster, and perhaps the only one holding real authority between this group of misfits, I formally invite you to reign as our captain”, his words flowed and Susanoo nodded back slowly. In return, Emil gave what could’ve been taken as a smile. Relief, acceptance, one of the two. “In that case, where will we be charting our first course, Your Majesty?”.

She would never get used to this. She was mortal, unseasoned, an amateur at sea and possibly resembling shark food more than anything. But she had to draw herself as what her title painted her as, the most fearful person to sail the seas. Turbulent, cruel. In the same breath, Susanoo could not help but offer a hand to Yellow Eyes, who shakily took it and wiped his hand against his shirt.

Susanoo looked at her new crew. “I would only like to know one thing”, she voiced. “The crew that beat you in a duel. Where do they gather?”.

Emil began to frown.

“What warrants the need to summon Pavoni, the Fourth Pirate Lord?”.

“He… has something that I want.”