Delia bit the inside of her mouth to stifle her laughter at Khaleel’s shock.

For the first time since boarding the ship, the man looked speechless. Even Jeremy had a slight smirk, watching Khaleel’s face contort in a series of emotions: surprise, confusion, and perhaps even sorrow.

The man stood and looked at Jonah. He walked around him and began inspecting him anew, like one would inspect a slave, eyes scanning him from top to bottom; sailors taken from captured ships, if useful, were often enslaved. It was one reason why there were so few female sailors — they only had one use to vulgar, perverted bastards, and the thought of it made her sick.

Pirates’ second preference went to big burly men who could be used for labour or sold at a high price in the slave markets abroad. Slavery wasn’t exactly legal. There was legislation passed to curb it due to protests about the treatment of slaves, but indentured servitude was effectively the same thing. Sure, they could buy their freedom, but how many ever did?

Worse still was the black market it opened up, with back alley stalls and inhumane conditions. To sell a servitude contract required papers. There were limits on prices. Men had to pay taxes. Pirates didn’t bother with that. They wanted quick, easy money. And certain scum wanted infinite free labour. It was disgusting.

Jonah wasn’t a woman, nor was he big, but these men from the house El held him in high esteem, and most importantly, he was useful.

Karl must’ve had a similar thought, and his hand moved to his sword as the stranger paced around Jonah. Jeremy held Karl’s wrist and subtly shook his head. If they wanted to take Jonah as a slave, then there was little anyone in the room could do to stop them. They weren’t strong enough, though Delia doubted that was why he had stopped Karl.

Knowing Jeremy, he would’ve fought tooth and nail to protect the crew against pirates, not that these men were pirates. Pirates were the scum of the sea, and they had spilt enough blood on the Flightless Owl that at one point, the crew turned into bounty hunters. It was how Jonah had earned his first title — the pirate punisher.

A bitter taste filled Delia’s mouth. It was a shame that Jeremy’s desire to protect the crew from pirates didn’t translate to protecting them from the Kraken. Neither her Pa nor the second mate tried to help Jonah. Even if their attacks would have been futile, they could have been distractions. They could have tried.

She shook the thoughts away.

Jeremy had stopped Karl not because they would all get killed, but because of how Khaleel examined Jonah. The way the man’s eyes looked over him was unlike one inspecting merchandise; she didn’t know how to describe it, but there was a tinge of sadness in the way the man’s eyes softened, like looking at an injured cow, or a kicked puppy.

“Deaf, is he?” Khaleel said, his fingers prodding Jonah’s back, his biceps, and then his chest. Jonah, to his credit, didn’t react other than the oddly amusing frown on his face. “Well, I’m certainly not surprised he killed a Siren or two. Such potential.” Khaleel ruefully shook his head. “A shame he can’t hear, he… Ah, never mind.”

“He what?” Jeremy asked.

“He would have been a fine adventurer. But, well, there’s no point selling a dream. A shame to be born with such talent, and with such a flaw.”

“He wasn’t born deaf,” Jeremy said, as Delia tried to keep a straight face. “Nor was he born with talent. He learnt how to use that blade.”

Jeremy had often remarked how Jonah could have joined the Royal guard, but she didn’t understand why Khaleel had brought up that cult. Since when did the guards ever have to fight Krakens?

“You see goodman, effort is a talent in and of itself,” Khaleel said. “Not everyone is capable of dedicating themselves to training, nor is everyone willing to suffer to reap future rewards.” He sighed. “Truly is a shame he lost his hearing, though. Disease?”

“A kraken.”

“Be serious, man.”

Jeremy’s smirk broadened a little.

“You’re… not joking?” His eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be damned. How did he escape a damn Kraken?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Jeremy’s mouth opened, but his words got caught in his throat. Delia noticed that he always faltered when it came to recounting the battle with the Kraken as if something held him back. Maybe it was some lingering trauma from the encounter; she wouldn’t have been surprised if that were the case.

“He killed it,” she answered in Jeremy’s silence.

Khaleel looked at Delia incredulously, then stared at Jeremy, the rest of the crew, before returning his gaze back to Delia. “You’re serious?”

She smirked. “Jonah, the Kraken Killer.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“We have the Kraken meat to prove it,” Karl said.

There was a brief silence where the man just stared at the faces of the crew as if waiting for one of them to say it was a joke. Delia didn’t know much about these ranks, but she could guess Jonah had punched well above his weight. And survived.

“I-I don’t not believe you,” he finally managed to say, “but are you sure you mean Kraken? Not giant squid or octopus?”

“We mean Kraken. He single-handedly defeated a Kraken,” Delia said proudly.

Khaleel then turned towards her and gaped. Watching the man speechless for the third time in the span of three minutes, and knowing it was Jonah’s feat that made him so, caused a warm fuzzy feeling in her.

The man was so shocked even his crewmates had to ask if he was okay. He just slowly nodded.

The rest of the early morning was spent discussing the battle with the Kraken. Jeremy, for the most part, kept quiet whilst Delia steered the discussion, regaling the tale of the battle. Even the crew seemed immersed in her story as if they didn’t battle the same storm and hadn’t seen the same terror. Well, they did all coop below deck once the captain gave the command, so no one had seen Jonah’s battle.

In truth, neither did Delia. Most of it happened below the waters that were murky with blood, a crimson sheet that light could not penetrate. She didn’t want to ask Jonah about it for fear of causing him nightmares; she had woken up in a cold sweat thinking about the scenes more times than she could count. So instead of delving into the specifics of the battle, Delia wove a tale that blended both fact and fiction.

It surprised her by how good of a tale it was, that Jeremy didn’t interrupt or clarify things, and that none of the crew knew what had happened. The men hadn’t asked her what occurred in the ensuing weeks of the attack, though she supposed it was because they didn’t want to unearth memories that had reduced her to a sobbing mess. It was the same reason she refrained from asking Jonah about his own experiences. But she couldn’t deduce why the men hadn’t asked Jeremy. Perhaps he really did have PTSD.

The conversation eventually turned to that of their homelands, and what they were doing at sea. Jeremy answered most of these questions, and Delia watched as Khaleel repeated each answer into the little curve on the headphones whilst the men by his sides nodded along. It made both the storytelling and the exchange of information laborious, though the men clearly knew what they were doing in these siren-infested waters, so she didn’t question it.

Delia’s quill continued to move as they spoke, her wrist flowing in a cathartic motion until the man’s phrases inadvertently gave some information away. Neither she nor Jeremy asked any outright questions, but there were a few notable points she managed to discern.

First, Jonah was a “high red, on the cusp of orange”. It was a high rank for a simple sailor, and that orange was the standard for adventurers. Second, the royal guards and adventurers were distinct.

She had heard of adventurers, though she had always assumed it was synonymous with the royal guard: another title for them, a VIP club, exclusive to high society.

Only the guards and nobles entered those ridiculously adorned adventurer buildings in Lexnor. And she was sure Sia had its own adventurer building too that none could enter; the men outside the building always asked for a badge or told you to finish some stupid phrase.

The building in Sia was much smaller compared to the one in Lexnor, but considering how very few had ever entered the building, it was still an enormous waste of space. The only other places that were a colossal waste of space were the empty second and third homes of the noble families.

Part of the realisation that adventurers and the guard were distinct was the fact that anyone could be an adventurer. Khaleel even recommended that Jonah become an adventurer if his hearing healed.

Delia didn’t know what adventures did, or why it seemed only the upper echelons of society became one, but it was essentially a freelance job. How to become one made no sense if you needed a badge or secret password to get into the adventurer’s building, but that was something to investigate later.

The third thing she learned was that the general populace was unranked, known as greys. All the members of the crew were grey, according to Khaleel. She still didn’t know how Khaleel knew, but there was a visual cue given by the man’s choice of words.

Delia also assumed that the ranking system followed the visible light spectrum, with the exception of unranked members, though there was no way to confirm without asking.

The last thing she noted was that the men came from a land called “Inia Tele”, or the Kingdom of Inia Tele, as it was formally called. The ruling family was of the house of Tele, and unlike Askern, the ruling family had political significance. In Askern, the royal family were just figureheads, with the governors in charge of the populace.

There was enough of an information dump that her head was hurting. Delia had also written her notes in terrible cursive handwriting, intermingled with random sketches in the hopes that Khaleel and his men didn’t bother reading the script, or realise how ignorant the group was. As she glanced down at the mess, she also hoped she would be able to decipher what she wrote later on — she would need to rewrite it, after all. She rubbed her temple at the thought.