"It was the castaway, the bastard doomed us all and then disappeared...!!!" Taras yelled with hatred, getting up and kicking the corpse on the ground.
"Think boy, isn't it obvious!" Taras shouted, while he continued unloading his anger against Paulo's corpse.
"Didn't it seem unusual to you, that the first sailor to find out about the mermaids' corruption was a simple cabin boy?!" Scream Taras
"But he was an initiate of the Tusha church, it's normal that he knew more things than us about sea beasts!" Ricardo tried to defend his deceased friend from him.
"In the ritual that we dedicated to his goddess, where the hell was the 'initiate'?! ... Did it ever seem strange to you that an 'initiate' from Tusha does not spend time to be present at a ritual dedicated to the goddess of the sea? Taras asked with even less hesitation than before.
"I..." Ricardo tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth.
"Damn, boy, are you noble that you don't know what the attitude of the people inside the church is like? Did it ever seem strange to you that the castaway will never act like an initiate of the church?"
'No... but he's right, his attitude would never be so submissive with some merchants' Ricardo thought, but he still doubted. Lucas' submissive attitude could be due to some other reason, such as being very grateful to those who rescued him from the shipwreck.
"You've been working with him for months, did he ever talk about the Tusha church in depth or did it seem to you that he never wanted to talk about it? Because shortly after I met him, the boy seemed more like a sailor than a man of the church! " Taras shouted with even more confidence, the more he thought about it, the more it fit, the castaway lied about his identity.
"Maybe something happened in the church, and he doesn't want to talk about it..." Ricardo responded with some hope, he couldn't believe that the friend, who supported him in so many hard times these months, is related to the attack on the sirens and the corruption of the ship.
"You may be right..." Taras said a little less nervously, but without a doubt then affirmed, "It is because he is an initiate of the church... But of a church that must hide from the sailors who were taking him to port.. ."
"... he is an initiate of the church of the Galleon" Taras said looking into the young boy's eyes, although Ricardo's reaction was a bit exaggerated for his understanding after hearing that.
"Like..." When Ricardo heard 'that' church, he got upset, his breathing began to increase and sweat began to fall on his face.
"It's obvious, look at the mark on the corpse, Poseidon belongs to the group of sea beast gods, that is, he is part of the Galleon... He was a merman when he was alive... From the same race of creatures that attacked this ship ... "Said Taras with some sorrow and anger, seeing the sorry state in which the young cabin boy was, upon learning how they betrayed him from behind.
"No...no..." Ricardo murmured, holding his legs and starting to cry.
"Everything fits, Ricardo, Lucas was the one who condemned this ship, only an initiate of that church would know how to do a ritual to Poseidon... He lied to us all saying that he was an initiate of Tusha, seeing that we were human sailors, he took advantage of our innocence and that no sailor would harm someone from the church of the sea goddess"
"No!... Please, no!..." Ricardo shouted as he rolled on the floor, crying with fear and hate.
Seeing Ricardo so badly, Taras grabbed him by the shoulders and his eyes looked at each other while he said:
"Boy, you have to understand, in this sea of shit you can't trust anyone, just like Lucas, there are hundreds or thousands of people who stab you in the back just to see you suffer... The castaway couldn't say he belonged to the church of the Galleon because we would have killed him" Taras said.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
But Ricardo had his eyes more and more lost in his internal world, as if he was fighting with something inside him, noticing that, Taras continued trying to make this rookie understand the reality of the cruel world where they live.
"Do you remember when the incidents started? ... The night before the siren attack? Do you remember that Lucas was the last man to come out on deck and see Tomy alive? Do you remember how the captain took him to the cabin to ask him questions? The last day we cooked in the kitchen with him, do you remember how Lucas tried to turn us against the captain and Ron?... But the captain using his years of experience, he realized everything, he had prepared everything! To stop him because he didn't trust the castaway!... He is to blame for all the misery we live on this trip!..." Taras said, affected by her own speech, some tears began to flow from her face,
"He's to blame for us becoming the monsters we are now!... All the friends of a lifetime became rapists, murderers, lunatics because of him!... All the boys who died are because of him !... I'm a murderous bastard because of him!" Taras said, hugging the boy and crying on his shoulder, now he seemed to be more affected than Ricardo.
"... We offended him... We offended him" Ricardo murmured on Taras shoulders, it seemed that his head was elsewhere in the whole conversation and his focus was not on Lucas's betrayal.
Ricardo got up and sat in a corner of the room, put his hands on his knees and started rocking, while his blank eyes looked at Taras he seemed to have completely lost his mind as he mumbled: "... We offended him.. We offended him"
"Boy? ... Is he okay, boy?" Taras asked, somewhat stunned by the boy's abnormal behavior as he got up from the ground.
"... We offended him… We offended him" But Ricardo seemed to be in a kind of trance, and he just repeated those words over and over again.
Noticing that, Taras approached the boy with fear, as he approached he noticed that Ricardo had peed in his pants, but the fisherman only cared about the mental health of the young cabin boy and with his shoulder in his hand he asked him again: "Boy ?... Is he okay, boy?"
"... We offended him... We offended him" was the only answer that the young cabin boy who was looking at nothing itself.
"Who did we offend, boy?" Taras asked, trying to understand what was happening to Ricardo.
Ricardo stopped moving. He raised his head and his dull eyes seemed to have snapped out of their trance.
"We offended the Galleon..." Ricardo said, beginning to cry as he looked into Tara's stunned eyes.
"No… Ricardo, remember, we never did that!" Taras said a little nervously, shaking the young boy's shoulders because of his nerves.
"The same day that the castaway arrived, Ron, the captain and I falsely swore on behalf of the galleon for a bet of 500 caps" Ricardo said, who only now could understand the nerves of Ron and the captain at that moment.
"No, no, no and no!!... They couldn't have been such idiots, Ron would never do that, unless... The castaway was to blame for your offending Galleon! It all started that day , the day we boarded the castaway!" Taras shouted, as if understanding all the problems he had faced.
"After uploading it, Adam died of cardiac arrest, and we had the first death of this trip! ... Then the storm came, which never ended, because it was the same tears from Tusha, seeing that we had picked up an initiate of the Galleon on our ship!
"And then we were sent to the territory of some sirens! ... As a sacrifice for offending Galeón ... The castaway, in order to save himself, sacrificed his arm and managed to get Galeón to free him from the sirens! . .."
"Probably, the captain saved our asses, that's why he put me to guard the castaway after the incident, because he wanted me to keep an eye on him, but I misunderstood his words!..."
"Then we all lost our minds!... The initiate had already condemned us all before he disappeared!..." Taras concluded, with hatred and contempt for the traitor.
Ricardo could have told him, that Adam most likely discovered an anomaly in Lucas and that's why Lucas killed him, but there was no point, there was no way to escape from a god and there was no point in continuing to insult a dead castaway.
"But all is not lost, Ricardo! ... There are only two more weeks to go, and we will survive. As long as we find the drugs, we could drug the entire crew to increase their morale for the few days that remain, if we find the jars with drugs we will leave Alive!!". Taras yelled, clinging to the last trace of light from him, he had already done too much to survive, now he couldn't lower his arms even if he knew the overwhelming truth that he had in front of him.
Tara started looking like crazy around the room, Ricardo only watched from a corner as Taras tried to find the jars, for him, it didn't make sense, against a god you couldn't do anything but accept death...
But as he saw Taras rummaging through the boxes, looking for his last hope, Ricardo's heart gained a strange power.
That's how humans are, right? Seeing someone fight for a goal so desperately filled Ricardo's heart with courage and prompted him to help Taras in the quest.
It didn't matter if he didn't have any more faith, because humans could catch other people's faith and that is the key for humanity to keep their fight, in the darkest moments of this world's history.