Lim’s was the most beautiful island in the entire world. The wooden hut, well built and cosy, was the perfect home to spend the rest of their life together. Nothing was wrong, nothing was flawed. Nothing but the fact it was all a dream. Em checked his arms, bone and flesh, and snapped his teeth. That was not a real place, and not even the imaginary one Lim spent hours creating. Her island and perfect home were a creation of her own, private and inaccessible to everyone else except her. This one was just a cheap version of an old man’s imagination.
“Of course it is, you stupid idiot,” he mumbled, letting his sight awe with the wonderful colours of the surrounding sea side. His eyes stop at a slim figure facing the welcoming sea, her wavy, ashy mane flying with the breeze. She was someone he could never forget. Dragging his feet on the warm sand, his first impulse was to scream her name. Though he only let out a sigh, wondering why his mind was so intent on punishing him. Resigned, he turned the other way. Further, also standing at the shore appeared Lim, facing the ocean exactly as Claudia was doing at the other side of the beach. She was on her feet, and her black straight hair was not in a bun but free, and like Claudia's, it was as well dancing freely to the winds.
He fastened his pace. He'd lost one, but he was not going to lose both. His legs pushed to a run, but his efforts were futile. No matter how hard, he didn't move. The beach turned into a quicksand and he began to sink. Others would have screamed, but Em rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, waiting impatiently to see what the weird dream had prepared for him.
"Brother! Brother!" Skin melting to burning metal. Hands pulling a suffocating helmet. That’s what his wicked mind had prepared: the old nightmare of his most suffered time. A cage surrounded by fire. Men screaming in agony. Hells unfolding over the sea. "Brother!" The call of his old friend faded. As did the Elena.
Em awoke trapped in another cage, no more surrounded by fire but water. Barely recovering his sense, he sought for freedom. It was impossible. His arms were under the big metal frame crossing over his chest. No way to grab, no way to push. Without clarity to think properly, and neither the will to fight further, he remained immobile, witnessing the water rising from below until it reached his shoulders.
Em was once an excellent diver. He’d hold his breath for minutes if necessary. But what can an excellent diver do when there is no escape? He was doomed to perish in an ocean's grave, as did the Elena. As the Rigg was going to. Yet, he was a fighter, and he'd not drowned easily. As much as he could, he thought, he’d resist.
When the water reached his nose, he took a last breath. Deep and long. Then he sank. The water was warm and murky, only nimble flashes from sunlight giving him a hint of what direction the surface was. He didn't struggle any longer: More meant less, and the little time his lungs would allow was to be spent in memories of his family. So he relaxed, giving up on worries of the mind and attempts to free the body. He thought of his old friends as well, the meals and laughs. The journeys under the sails and the dives inside the metal suit. After family and friends, he visited a very dear thought, one of fishing with his old man.
It was a pitiful way to die, but at least he'd do it at the sea, like many of his mates. That was it. If he, with that powerful prosthesis, couldn't move that pile of metal, no other could. Only Ivy. She was a wonder. With burning lungs, he fought to recover hope, but not any for him. With a fleeting picture of that little girl crying in the stinging undergrowth, he returned to pray for the first time in years. Begging for her daughter’s wellbeing to a god who never listened.
As an answer from the heavens, a hand caressed his face while his lungs convulsed from lack of air. It was a touch he didn’t need sight to recognize from who it was coming. With a terrifying but welcomed crack, his saviour put the imprisonment to an end. Em’s prosthesis, filled with oils and air, lifted him up to the surface, exactly as if the invisible hand of a merciful god was giving him a second chance.
Anyone else would have burst into desperate gasps as soon as his mouth found freedom. But not him. When he felt free, he took a long, slow breath, enjoying every second of that gift from nature. Ivy’s arm soon slid from under his arm, reaching the face and grabbing gently but firmly under the chin. Her leg strokes, powerful and constant, moved them far from the Rigg, swimming to a drifting ship Em had freed from the moorings right before the bombardment began. His sight was blurred, the same as his thoughts. The only functioning sense telling him the surrounding battle was being fierce and intense. Ivy, as no one else could have done, lifted him freehand onto the Ballerina’s deck.
His hazy mind did not return to its tribulations and worries much after she had the ship ready and sailing. The first evaluation was physical. The hand that since the confrontation with the Bullface hadn’t worked quite right, was now much more damaged. The little finger barely moved and only the index and thumb responded perfectly to his orders. Small-time arrangements little could do anymore: He needed Donna. The chest, scratched and dented under a ragged shirt, seemed to hold, although a certain discomfort began to be felt with each breath. The flesh part was still full, and only his knee, which was already a recurring pain, reminded him it wasn’t always all about gears and cables.
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A sudden sense of displeasure filled him to realise a hazard assessment was what he’d have done first. Upon checking his surroundings, he noticed Ivy was sailing away from dangers. Crumbling to stand, his disappointment in himself turned into pride over her daughter’s doings.
The fight, unfolding at three points of starboard quarter, was as its sound hinted, fierce. But also terribly unfair. The Kingdom ships were receiving heavy damage from Tampra frigates and the only good thing that could fill Em’s heart were the wings of the Rangers throwing grenades over the Squids’ ships. The attacks of the wings didn’t last long, though. Before the little time Em needed to drag his feet inside, the few remaining of the flying rangers retired east, seeking a landing spot on Ced’s newly made ships and leaving behind intact ironclads’ hulls and masts and sails damaged but not sufficiently crippled.
Em reached the wheel, which Ivy was holding with a raging grasp. She huffed and dashed her hands. “Ced’s ship was hit. Did you see any of ours doing a close up?”
Em tried to hold onto the same hope that rescued him from certain death, wishing his friend was as fine as Ivy was. “I saw the Golden Peacock reaching the wreckage. If he has survived, they’ll pick him up.”
Ivy’s jaw tightened. “Of course he did!” Her white knuckles turn a few degrees to the right, moving the catamaran towards the entrance of the Maze.
“We are not going to the Lighthouse,” Em pointed up, stopping the wheel gently. “We will sail with the remaining warships to the east, follow the Thousand Kings and cross the Drifting East until Hakinan.”
“Indri rules the Pirate Run now, do you know that?” Ivy signed, her hands beginning to shake from exhaustion or restlessness. Em reached to the bottom drawer, blindly searching for the semaphoring light. It was in the same place, next to the spark stone and the oil bottle. Before returning outside, he sought the strength to answer with a nod. Halfway to shouldering the board open, he stopped at the sound of Ivy’s finger snapping, a way to call attention over her talking hands. “Is that the Crybaby? On the big ship?”
Em shook side to side as laconically as he affirmed a moment prior. One of the few gossips that had reached his ears about Javier Vega was that he never sailed on anything but his ship, and the Adamant Sovereign, a monstrosity rumoured to be something the world had never seen before, was definitely nothing they had in front of their eyes.
Pushing himself to avoid any thoughts of Javier or Indri, he faltered to the cat’s deck. The sorrow of a past involving the Squids’ Grand Admiral and the uncertainty surrounding a future dealing with the Harpy’s fifth daughter were too much for his weary mind. Instead, he concentrated forcibly to prepare a plan of escape.
With the box on its way, Otoke Dan’s forces would sail south and take the Male Atoll. That was one of the old written deals. That would happen as soon as she received confirmation The Blue ships were sailing the Thousand Kings. Tampra’s navy, located at the floating citadel of Mawee, fearful of losing a key point of the Ring, would sail North to engage, freeing the passages to the east and leaving a way of escape though Hakinan. Then, Em would reach the Great South current towards the End of the World and sail the Ring of Commerce by the outer waters of the Big Blue. A long, arduous and dangerous journey to the Nor’Wes. Deadly even, but free from Javier. In the great nothingness of a world made of oceans, without the two large island clusters as reference, the Squids could never have a way to pursue them, nor had the chance for an ambush. Only knowing for certain that Em would go to the Red Island, a last redoubt where the power of his mercenaries was not much, Javier would seek for a last chase around the Siren shoals, waters that were under Samalia’s control and not his. A last, desperate shot that was doomed to fail. Free of his pursuit and reaching Bandanii, they’d hide in the deserts of Al-Madahani as they did a long time ago: Disappear until the waters calm. Then, after fixing the Ballerina and himself, they’d reprise the search for Lim, find Macha and, this time for good, disappear again in one of the islands of the Blue Kingdom. A place where they would spend the rest of their days peacefully enjoying the beauty of the world.
All his future unfolded nicely as he semaphored a retreat to the remaining Blue ships. Their answer was the answer of the brave. The brave, and stupid that always die in battle: ‘We fight for the Kingdom! We won’t surrender!’
Em insisted. This time with the authority the Kingdom’s government would have given him in that situation; if it existed. The flashes of light repeated each command, hoping the ships of the foolish heroes would follow the wisdom of an old coward. Upon finishing, he blew the candle out, and without checking if they were convinced, he returned. Beaten up and Defeated. With the only joy of knowing his daughter was safe.
She reprised the hand talk as he squeaked the plank door. “You want to cross the outsides of the Big Blue, Am I wrong? That’s insane! Even for a nutcracker like you.”
It was indeed a crazy plan. But as her hands questioned openly the idea, a subtle smirk and dainty nod turned into the ratification he needed. “Do we have any birds inside this mess?” She asked.
“Let’s hope at least one of the ships follows us. I’ll light them to send a pigeon to Ahlong, so the Otoke remembers what to do.”
It was a great plan; he thought. Stupid, crazy and damn dangerous. But sometimes, when the knot is too tight, there’s no other option but to cut the rope.