Mya drew her blade from the pirate guard’s ribs, smelling the weight of water on the wind and the heaviness that came with a storm that hadn’t been there before.

Her clean clothes had been changed out to match those of the pirates. Her hair was pulled up and into a rag. A bit of charcoal for her teeth, a red on her cheeks for drinking. A pungent mixture Desari had taken up that would make even some of the pirates step backwards.

Lightning rumbled and crackled in the distance, distorted by the weaving columns of Demon’s Rest. Must’ve used the storm orbs.

“Find the ones that are sleeping and kill them when none are looking,” She whispered to the undead, sending him for the stairwell.

She moved across the deck, moving without a noise on the ship, she saw all living things through her soul-sight.

She climbed up to the poop deck, moving behind the watcher, driving her blade through his back. He stiffened and slackened.

“Live once more.” A bundle placed upon one of the circles in her armband dissolved the man untensing as she withdrew her blade.

“Open up the weapons locker, get as much of it into the lower decks of the ship in dry areas without anyone noticing.”

He ambled away down the stairs and into the ship.

Mya took out a bundle of ingredients and put them on the two ritual circles she’d used, covering them with leather caps built into the bracer.

She left the ship, moving down the docks to her next target. She stopped to tie her boots next to a pirate passed out in crates, her blade taking his life as she kept moving. Her blade snuck out as she helped others sit down one last time. Shared a laugh as her blade darted through their lungs.

She’d stop periodically, checking the smooth glass-like tracking device when no one was looking or dip down to carve a rune into the dock’s wood, and add an offering.

She left death in her wake as she moved away from her next targeted ship, spotting a group just coming back up the docks for it.

One let out a whistle.

“Come on lass the morning’s up but I bet we can find a hammock,” One laughed, winking and making gestures with his crotch.

Mya drew and fired on him, dropping back dead as the others flinched back.

She grimaced at the body and kept walking. She’d seen several others get into fights that left one dead.

“Fuck!” One yelled.

“Dead,” Another said, crouching down to check their pockets.

A third threw up on the deck as.

“Oi, give us some too.” The first said to the second checking the pockets.

Mya weaved through the decks, getting away fast. The guard at the next ship was looking over his shoulder at where the noise had come from, turning as she got into reach.

“You hea-“ He groaned as her blade went through lung and heart. “Kill those sleeping.”

She took out her blade and moved past her new undead and onto the ship. Just one was near the captain’s quarters, wiping his eyes as she closed the distance.

He rose up holding up his hand. “Cap’n is sleeping.”

Mya stepped inwards, the man too half-asleep to react as she punched him in the throat then drove her blade under his armpit and into his heart.

He whimpered as she enacted her ritual again, his weight lifting up off of her.

“Open up all the weapon lockers, and take all the flammable materials you can find to the lowest dry deck.”

She moved past him, a flare of magic defeating the alarm enchantment on the door as she slipped her blade into the lock and slid it open.

The room was covered in paintings left to go to rot in the humid Demon’s Rest, marred cups and goblets, the floors stained with all manner of food and drink.

She moved through the space to the bed at the rear. The captain with his hands around two companions.

Mya took out a poison bottle, opening it carefully and pouring the syrupy concoction onto the blade.

She cut through the two companions in the bed. Both letting out hisses as the captain rose up getting the backward swing of the blade through his heart.

He shuddered and fell backwards. The companions blinking rapidly as they lost control of their bodies and stilled.

She cast her ritual on them all. A quick cast would get them up and running but the ritual would give them finer motor control.

“Dress. Kill everyone asleep on the ship. Drunkenly wander the docks in the direction of the tower.” Mya rose up as they started to follow her orders. “Where is your best loot located Captain? Give it to me.”

He ripped off an earring and passed it to her, then moved to a cabinet and took off the top. The rear and sides were fake, hollowed out and filled with items.

“Nice haul.” Mya stored the whole cabinet, put the earring in a pocket and walked out the door and the ship.

“That lightning, that ain’t normal.” One of the pirates on the dock said as she passed.

“There were them ships heading out this morning? Maybe something do with em?”

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She stopped to check her shoes, carving a rune into the deck deep and placing a package on top, she hid it in ropes and broken crates, standing back up.

“What you doing there?” Someone asked, moving over to her.

One man with a friend looking up at the sky with a grimace.

Mya held a dagger in her right, turning around her left as she rose.

“Oh you—” her blade went through the first man’s neck, a second appeared in her left hand as she flicked the blade, catching them in the throat as they started to lower their head.

Mya looped her hand around the arm of the man with his neck slashed open. The other she pulled close, pulling his arm down as he pulled at the blade in his neck.

Mya reached out and tore it out, blood staining his clothes and her sleeve.

She guided them down to the ground between boxes.

“The fuck was that?” Someone yelled.

Mya moved the bodies away from her rune and took out the man’s daggers putting them in one another’s hands and stabbing each other, she cut one’s purse.

She slipped over the side of the dock, grabbing onto it and working her hands back and forth rapidly, she threw herself, grabbing onto the dock, pulling her feet up to keep them out of the water and kept hand shuffling along.

Footsteps ran towards where the duo were.

The noise from the fighting was echoing through the pirate cove. Some were starting to run for the ships. Many were starting to wake up.

Mya peeked over the dock, next to ropes keeping her from being seen. She pulled herself upward and onto the deck, standing up and walking towards a group of dilapidated warehouses around the base of the main tower.

They were some of the only buildings that weren’t made up of driftwood. Guards were more alert here, their glares keeping people away.

Mya moved down a dock that rose and fell with the water and those stepping upon it. Music was coming out of a few places, some men and women with glassy eyes of those on something hung out of windows and doors, calling out to passerbys to purchase their time.

A fight broke out of a building, one shoving another back as he stabbed him viciously in the gut before he shoved him over a railing into the water below.

The black water filled with detritus barely registered the blood in it as the man with the dagger laughed the one in the water bleeding out, trying to climb up and hold his stomach as the dagger user stabbed his hand and kicked him back.

The smell drifting on the water made Mya miss not being able to smell anything.

She weaved around the warehouse district. It was watched on all sides by guards. Carts were checked going in and out, passes were required.

“Get the crew together, gonna go see what that noise is at the mouth to Demon’s Rest,” One pirate stalked past her. Mya ducked her head and stayed out the way of the captain and her crew. The man she talked to grimaced and slapped two others and gestured into the buildings.

They grit their teeth and ran back to gather up their fellows.

Mya took out a cask of powder, adding in an enhancing potion down its top followed by a sympathetic lighter. She stored it away and staggered up one of the main thoroughfares, holding onto the wall and dry heaving, to put it at the base of the building and intersection, another thing among the crap against the wall.

Mya finished her lap around the warehouse, clearing the flush from her cheek and spitting out some of the charcoal. She changed her hat for another in better condition.

More pirates were heading for their ships now, the few drabs coming in streams.

A bell started ringing somewhere. Mya jumped and grabbed onto the three story wall around the warehouse, she palmed a dagger, tossing it at one of the corner guards who turned in her direction. Another began raising his rifle as Mya threw her dagger at him too.

She threaded mana through her sympathetic ritual and drew her pistol.

The blast of the enhanced cask ripped through the docks as the guard’s shot hit Mya in the chest. It flipped her, she stuttered on her feet and raised her pistol, wood from the building rained down as she fired, blasting the man’s neck apart.

She stored the pistol away as he slumped against the platform he stood on. Mya snapped her fingers.

“Take up your old positions, make sure people don’t see your wounds.”

The two dead rose up and looked over the wall, the one without the neck sitting on a convenient crate.

Mya drew two daggers, people were yelling.

Three were running in the direction of the guy she’d blown the neck out of.

The warehouses were mostly straight, laid out in a grid pattern two deep and eight long.

Mya dug a dagger into a plank of the warehouse nearest the guard without the neck and leavered it out of place. She did it to the second one. The guards were running up on the opposite side, along the wall to the guard. She got the second board free and grabbed the boards, pulling them inside as they reached the corner.

She drew her pistol, checking the area, it was filled with crates and shelves. Using her soul sight through the walls the trio checked around the area. One calling out to the guard up in the tower that shifted away.

Mya moved with quick light steps along the warehouse wall to the corner they were outside of.

One was running up the steps to the top of the tower.

Mya slipped her pistol back into her bandolier and drew her cutlass, dagger still in her hand.

She moved to the wall opposite, behind the last of the three looking up at the tower and the guard moving up there.

The second guard was looking down the wall.

“Ska, answer me yah fuckin’ idiot!” The guard reached the top of the tower, swinging his hand at the undead.

“Kill him.” Mya ordered the undead and slammed her shoulder into the wall, the planks broke free as she came up behind the third guard.

She cut him across the shoulders, a wheeze of his lungs opened as he collapsed forward Mya stepped forward around the corner, the guard was turning. Mya threw her dagger, she missed his neck as he ducked, the dagger going through his eye into his brain as he dropped like a puppet without strings.

There as a brief yell as the one that had gone up to interrogate the undead guard hit the decking with the undead ontop of him.

Mya rushed over. “Head to the right.” Her blade punched through the man’s mouth and neck she stabbed him in the heart to make it quieter.

Mana threaded through her channels and nodes as the newly dead except the ‘expert’ dodger shuddered and rose once more, the simple undead spell bringing them once more.

“You go there, and you there, anyone passes you that isn’t me, kill them.” Mya pointed to each and locations. They shambled onwards, without the intellect or reaction that an undead from a ritual would have.

They watched the roads between the warehouses.

“Back up in the tower, reload your gun, anyone passes inside the wall who isn’t me. Shoot them,” She cleaned her sword on the dead-dead guard slipping it back into its sheath.

Guard no-neck went back up into his tower, pouring water down the barrel of his gun.

Mya scanned the area, thankfully no one else was moving in her direction. She took out the tracking stone, and started moving through the warehouse district.

She darted across a road between them, feet on the docks ahead of her, driving her dagger between planks she leavered it out with her strnength then tore it out of place. She took out another and passed through.

She got her dagger into the wood at an angle and pulling it back into place with its nails still affixed, she did the same with the second piece of wood. It wouldn’t do on close inspection but it should do for now.

She took in the room again. Crates with Nether Forge markings filled the place. A couple of crates had been opened, marks showed where someone had hit them with something hard, leaving minor markings.

Mya shrugged with the sound of explosions; the docks shifted as wood rained down.

There’s a lot in here, though I should be able to store it, though I’m going to cut into my own mana reserves.

More explosions wracked the dock. People were yelling about the tower, feet were running everywhere on the wood.

Mya took out her cutlass, cutting away the crates cannons and staves falling out, she took out Limos’ card and put it against a cannon, the runes on it glowed an ember hue.

She shoved it into her storage device and grabbed more, tapping her card to the cannons as she rushed along.

Something large crashed nearby. The deck under her feet, some of the strongest she’d seen buckled and cracked.

“Time we were getting the fuck out of here.” She sniffed, fire.

She pressed a finger to a ritual circle on her armband.

“Rise, kill all the pirates you can.”