It had been three days since we’d started sailing at this point. And Grey had been right. Not long after our departure, and after Azarus had gotten done smacking me around, our group had been put to work on the ship.
I think I got off easy, though.
As the lowest level person in our party, I’d been assigned the dullest and simplest jobs that were free. In practice, that meant I’d been mostly swabbing the deck for the last three days. Bella was pretty strict on this. She wanted her deck to be clean and clear at all hours of the day. Not something I would’ve expected from a pirate, but what did I actually know? She wasn’t a very typical person, anyway. Not from what I’d learned about her.
Wet the deck, scrub the deck, rinse the deck. Hour after hour of it.
To be honest, I didn’t mind the work. The repetitiveness of it was almost meditative after a while. I think I needed the mindlessness of something like this, after discovering that I wasn’t quite as mentally sound as I’d thought I was.
But the day’s work was over, and I was done as well. I wasn’t part of the night shift, so I’d handed off my mop and bucket to the other guy. I think his name was Hans? We hadn’t talked much.
I hadn’t seen much of the others since we’d gotten underway, either. Azarus and Grey were on the night shift, while Venix was on the day shift with me working the rigging. Guy seemed good at it, what with how strong he was and the fact he had four arms. Aurum had been assigned to the infirmary when it was discovered he was a healer, and Sylvia was working the crow’s nest.
Right now, I’d been invited to a game of cards with three of the other crewmen. Apparently we were playing something called Karat, which I’d learned was pretty similar to poker from back home. It wasn’t one-to-one, but I could see the similarities.
Guess there were only so many ways you could design an easy to understand card game.
I’d picked it up quickly.
Laying my cards on the table with an exaggerated flourish, I smirked at the three other guys at the table. “Two moons, and three stars. What did you call that? A constellation?”
The guy across from me, Morlow, cursed and tossed his hand of cards down on the table. “Shoulda never taught ye this game, landlubber.”
The other two players, guys I’d met named Laryn and Curloch, revealed their cards as well with a disappointed air. None of them had a better hand than I did. I let out a short laugh, and took my winnings from the pot.
“Aw, man,” Laryn said with a crestfallen air, watching me take the gold coins. “That was me pay fer the last week.”
Yeah, yeah. Calm down. I’m not an asshole. I was going to bet it all again on the next hand anyway, no matter my cards. I didn’t need the crew to start resenting my presence on the ship if I started winning all their wages.
That sounded like a good way to get shanked in your sleep by a disgruntled pirate.
Curloch dragged all of the loose cards his way, and began shuffling them. “So, how ye enjoyin’ sea life, lad?” He asked me energetically, apparently already over his losing hand. The man had an easy smile on his chubby features.
“Not too bad, not too bad,” I said, accepting my cards from him. I wasn’t even lying. I could definitely see the appeal of living a life at sea. The widest open space possible, the salty smell of the brine, the wind in your hair…
Yeah, I liked it.
Morlow broke out of his glowering to snort at me, accepting his own cards at the same time. “Say that when ye’ve spent more than a few days out on the drink, boy. It ain’t all fair winds and smooth sailin’ like this.”
“Gods, the Captain ran into a damn Prime last time she went out!” Laryn broke in anxiously. “A Prime! How often do ye hear o’ one o’ those formin’, ‘specially out at sea?”
“And now we’re sailin’ right back into the beastie's murderous arms,” Curloch said, smile dimming. “And after all them people we lost to it.”
“Were you guys there? Last time the Captain ran into the Neptaurians?” I asked the group, betting the gold I’d just won. I had shit all for a hand, though.
“Nah, we were in port,” Laryn shook his head. “We’ve been with the Reef fer decades at this point, even before Captain Bella took over. It were pure luck on our part this ship weren’t part of the fleet when they were all sunk. Gods rest their souls.”
“Ain’t no gods anymore, ye doofus,” Morlow scowled at Laryn, running a hand over his bald head. “Pray to the Gyre, if yer gonna be doin’ any prayin’. At least the System has our backs these days.”
I took note of that. So, the Church of the Gyre had to do with the System. I’d been wondering exactly what it worshipped. I’d wanted to speak to Preceptor Eduard about whatever it was, all those weeks ago. But I’d never gotten the chance. I decided not to ask these guys about it, though. Seemed like knowledge that would be too common. Instead, I asked them a question that would hopefully not seem too suspicious.
“So, Primes,” I said, laying my cards on the table. “I never learned much about those. What can they do? What should we expect?”
Thankfully, I didn’t get any odd looks from the table. They were too busy comparing hands. Curloch won this one, and dragged the winnings his way with a woop. Still laughing, he took the time to answer my question. “Primes are a pain in the ass, that’s what they are.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Think of ‘em like…” Laryn broke in, grasping for the right word. He snapped his fingers, finding it. “Like Captains o’ monsters! They get born among a group of ‘em, and it’s like they almost infect that group. They gather a crew o’ their own, and get to work pillagin’. They’re a right pain in the arse whenever one pops up. ‘Course, it’s not like they’re as bad as a Calamity or some-”
Laryn didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. Morlow turned to face him at speed and stood up abruptly. In a lunging motion across the table, his fist crashed straight onto Laryn’s face, cutting off his words. I jolted in surprise at the sudden assault. Laryn fell back, stunned, still sitting in his chair
“DON’T YE SAY THAT WORD ON THIS SHIP!” He bellowed, standing over Laryn’s dazed, prone form. He reached for a knife on his belt and drew it, waving the blade wildly over Laryn’s downed form. “DON’T YE SAY THAT, YE HEAR ME?! YE’LL DOOM US ALL!”
What? What did he say? Rewinding the conversation in my mind, I tried to remember what Laryn had said to set Morlow off. Was it…Calamity? I decided not to try my luck and risk setting off Morlow again. I glanced over at Curloch, to see what he thought of this. He was glowering down at Laryn as well from his seat at the table.
“Ye damn fool,” Curloch spat off to the side. “Ye know better than to tempt the sea like that. Ye’ve been sailing fer decades at this point. We’ve both known Captain’s that’d keelhaul ye for even saying that word on their ship.”
Still huffing in rage, Morlow turned to face me. “All ye need to know about Primes,” He told me shortly. “Is that they’re bigger, smarter, and stronger than normal monsters. And they make other monsters stronger and smarter too. Now get out. This game is over.” He finished, with a pointed look at the door.
I stood up from the table slowly, with raised hands. “All right,” I said as non-threateningly as I could. “I’m going.”
Curloch broke in, turning to face me with an apologetic look. He stood up from the table as well. “Ain’t nothin’ to do with ye, lad. We just got to have a little chat with our mate here. Now run along. Got another day o’ toil tomorrow.”
I nodded to show I understood and walked out of the door. As I turned around to close it behind me, my last sight of the three was Curloch bending down to crouch next to Laryn. He had a hard look on his usually jovial features.
The door shut.
Huh. Now what?
I was broken out of my thoughts by the sound of a shout behind me. Turning around, I saw Bella at the wheel of the ship, with Grey standing next to her. The both of them were illuminated by the rising moon behind them.
“Oi!” Bella called down to me, from my position on a lower deck. “What’s all that noise, then? I heard shoutin’!”
I made my way up to them, jogging up the stairs to the helm. Once I reached the of them, I open and shut my mouth once, searching for the words. “I…don’t know. We were just playing cards, and then Morlow went off on Laryn.”
Bella snorted, relaxing somewhat. “Eh, that’s just Morlow. Man has one of the shortest tempers I’ve ever seen.”
“Hmm,” Grey piped in, incidentally puffing on his pipe as well. “What did this Laryn say?”
“Uh, well, we were talking about Primes, and then Laryn said they weren’t as bad as a Ca-” I cut myself off, glancing at Bella. “As a word that starts with C, and rhymes with humanity.”
God, I hoped Language Adaptation translated that correctly, or else I’d probably just sounded like a crazy man.
Apparently it did, because Grey started coughing on his pipe smoke, shooting me an incredulous look.
Meanwhile, Bella’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Oh hells, I better go make sure they don’t kill the dumbass. Whitegull, take the wheel.” Grey nodded at Bella, still coughing slightly. She didn’t see though, as she was hurrying down the stairs that I had just come up. Grey and I watched her cross the deck in a hurry and enter the door to the room with the three crewmen.
When she vanished from sight, I shot Grey a glance out of the corner of my eye. “So…” I trailed off, once I got his attention. “Can I ask what that was about?”
Grey snuffed his pipe and then tapped it on the wheel in front of him, causing ash to rain from it and blow away in the wind. Stowing the pipe in his robes, he gave me a contemplative look. “I assume you’re referring to Calamities, then?” At my startled look, he smiled at me and shook his head. “I assure you, it’s fine to speak out loud about them.” He paused for a moment, before amending himself. “In general terms.”
That wasn’t ominous at all. “Alright, what are ‘Calamities’?”
“Super-monsters,” Grey said bluntly. “Beyond even Prime’s, Calamities are enormous monsters of unfathomable power. Beyond harassing a shipping lane like the Prime we hunt, a Calamity hunts nations. We are quite lucky indeed that there are currently no living Calamities known to exist.”
I felt a chill run up and down my spine. Nations?
Grey continued. “And I assure you, that isn’t an exaggeration. Many years ago, Vereden was home to another race of people,” He paused for a moment with a conflicted look on his aged features. “I…cannot speak to you their name. If I had a scrap of paper on me, I would tell you in that manner. Alas, I do not at the moment. In modern times, they’re referred to as The Lost. They were a brilliant people, really. Quite academic, quite inventive. Physically, they were smaller than even our dwarven friends, but similar enough in appearance to humanity. They were the sole masters of a small subcontinent off of the northeast coast of mainland Vereden. They are also, unfortunately, all dead.”
My eyes widened in shock. An entire race of people? Just…gone?
“In their endless curiosity and, frankly speaking, arrogance, they sought to understand the process by which Primes and Calamities were formed. They experimented on quite a few species of monster to find this process. Unfortunately, they were successful in creating a Calamity. And it hated them,” Grey said ominously. “I also cannot tell you the actual name that this quite intelligent monster took for itself, for one simple reason. This beast cursed both the name of the people that created it, and its own name, with a form of taboo. It somehow knew whenever someone, anyone in the world would speak either of those names. It passed this ability onto its spawn, and unfortunately, we can’t be certain that all of them were destroyed. And it and its children hunted, endlessly, for decades. Even after it had genocided the entirety of The Lost, it hunted. You see, it hated The Lost with such a passion that it not only wanted them dead, but for them to be erased from history altogether.”
Grey’s words hung heavy in the night air.
“Finally, a coalition comprised of Kingdom and Principality joined together in order to hunt the creature in return. I was part of the army assembled for this purpose, incidentally. I wasn’t quite as strong then as I am now, but I was still quite a powerful up-and-coming Classer. It slaughtered many of us when we finally cornered the beast. Including my own mentor.” Grey went silent for a moment, before continuing in a quieter tone. “He saw potential in me, after I had my fill of the sea. And then he died, at the talons of what we now refer to simply as the Sea Beast. Quite…ironic.”
I…didn’t know what to say to that. I don’t think Grey was in much of a mood to speak after that as well. He fell into a moody silence after this impromptu horror lesson, staring off into the night sky at Elys on the horizon. Thankfully, Bella returned shortly after that. I noticed that she had gotten some blood on her blue coat, visible under the moonlight. She shooed Grey away from the wheel, and me off to bed.
As I left the helm, my last sight of Grey was him standing at the back railing of the Reef, staring off at the full moon in the distance. I left him to his contemplation.
I had never forgotten the way the moonlight had embraced him, when he was freed from his slave brand.
I went to bed in my hammock that night, with visions of some unspeakable Sea Beast slaughtering people by the thousands running through my mind.