Trigger Warning: Assisted Suicide and Suicide

Angered Waves crash, rogue winds smash and rain-wet sailors cry as the Burnt Saffron Galley struggled to keep its nose straight up to the air upon the hurricane winds of the Inner Sea.

“I told’cha boss! D-D-Di shortcut of yours is gonna get us all killed!” one of the Burnt Saffron’s sailors yelled at the top of his lungs as he cut open several ropes that bounded the Galley’s Sails.

“Gozreh bedevils us!” cursed the Captain Farzaam Khorsheed. His scorched palms to the twin Gods of Nature’s necks. A tall human male in his drenched leather jacket towered amongst his crew in stature and in status. “But Abrogail would rather see us sleepin’ down below Azlanti’s grave than have’er next shipment come late.”

“Watch out!” a Tiefling Sailor screamed as one titanic wave loomed above the Burnt Saffron.

Captain Khorsheed yelled to his sailors as he grabbed hold of the Galley’s steering wheel. “Brace!”

But Gozreh’s wrath was swift as it they were powerful. The wave collided amongst the crew of the Burnt Saffron, rending man and wood overboard. Bodies and piles of assorted wood and steel fell overboard yet the Galley stubbornly refused to go under.

“Damage, Da-Damage Report!” Captain Khorsheed shouted.

“She’s caught a wounded! We’re takin’ water!” alerted an orange-tinted pirate lass who spotted with her keen eyes the damage caused forth by the Rogue Wave. Her body had slid across the deck of the ship, barely able to latch on for dear life onto the rails of the Galley from the thalassic maws of the ocean.

To her and the rest of the crew’s horror, they saw what every mariner feared the most. A mortal wound had struck the Burnt Saffron upon their Starboard Side.

“By his Flames! You, you there! By the Nine-Hells get up whoever you are?” he ordered the coral-skinned crewmate who had pulled her own weight.

The sailor immediately, if standing rather clumsily upright in no thanks to the sea-borne turbulence the Galley face towards her superior. An Azarketi Female or apricot skin, humanoid half-fish yet uncannily humanlike of folks whose affinity of the seas and all sorts of rough terrains made them ideal for such bitter conditions. A natural recruit for the hardy crew of the Burnt-Saffron amongst the myriad masses that dotted for a purpose amongst the ruins of the Inner Sea’s many coastal civilizations. Quick on her feet, hands and head but doltish enough to never question her orders nor outshine her master. The perfect lackey.

“Merizi sir! Deckhand.” she saluted stating her name and station. It was quite a humbling experience to be at the presence of her master. The great Captain Farzaam Khorsheed, the Scourge of Inner Seas. Rarely she would get to meet him eye-to-eye. Being only a humble deckhand of unremarkable clout.

“Sod-it all! Get your useless arse downstairs, ges’some iron ‘an tell derse’ lazy-bones to grab as much of the Cargo as your hands can carry to the lifeboats!” he ordered. The captain let out a dissatisfied growl as he realized there was nothing left more, he could do.

“W-we are abandoning t-t-the ship?” Merizi lip decanted. Her mouth twitched yet words were barely able to come out of her tongue. The ship had been her home for so long it was practically her entire life eversince she was just a powder-monkey to a deckhand.

“I can’t afford to lose every-fing now. I rather take’er chances with that she-devil Abrogail ‘stead.” Captain Khorsheed replied. “Now make yersel’ useful and git’ down’ere!”

“Aye-Aye!” Merizi saluted.

“Tupur, get the life boats ready and iron out whatever you can scrounge up for us! I want every one of the crew armed when we leave! We are abandoning ship!”

“Aye-Aye!” Merizi saluted.

Her bare sea legs, wet with rain water, was used to such shifty loams easily gliding across the Burnt Saffron’s top deck where most grounded of feet would have fell upon the great ocean outside.

She entered the cabin with due haste, not even bothering to shake off the drops of water that lay about on her impermeable aquamarine wool sheaths. Merizi held her breath as those crewmates of hers looked onto her, the Azarketi’s rattled blue orbs kicking their alarms to assume the worse.

“What in the gods’ name is going on out there?” one sailor asked her. “We felt the Saffron clacking earlier.”

“We’re abandoning ship! This ships gonna be going down!” Merizi wasted no time and told them all the grisly news. “We need to get all of the Cargo into the lifeboats now.”

“Bollocks!” the sailor cursed.

Everyone of them leaped upon their feet immediately, grabbing hold of their personal belongings and weapons and began to scramble to salvage what was left of doomed Galley with what little time is left.

“Merizi!” another sailor yelled. “Where’s Okton?” she asked.

“Gozreh took him.” Merizi shook her head.

“Damnation, the damn keys to one of our Cargo Bay downstairs.” The sailor threw to her hands a peculiar Jezail with an underslung curved blade, fondly called by their wielders as ‘the Piercing Wind’. A popular firearm of the Golden Road of the Inner Sea that was meant for their many once flourishing caravansary trades that became a popular choice of firearm for the buccaneers who set out upon the open seas even after the Cataclysm.

An exotic weapon, but a weapon Merizi was no stranger to, having fired and even swung the blade of this marriage of firearm and blade on several occasions with prodigious proficiency.

“Shoot dem’ locks and get’em all outta ‘ere! I’ll rally the rest of the crew.” The sailor darted off away deeper into the deck where the rest of the Saffron’s crew had stayed amidst the storm.

“On it!” Merizi held the Jezail in her hand proceeded downstairs.

Already, just as the storm raged above them, a torrent of warm bodies scrambled around the Burnt Saffron’s hearth as crewmen and passengers alike flew like snow upon a blizzard around each of the decks, the more frantic their desperate flights became the lower Merizi descended.

The wood upon the hull of the ship began to bleed water and splinters as the Azarketi corsair went to the Galley’s Cargo Bay. The door was locked with only Okton having the key too before he was unfortunately swept away by the crashing waves. Aiming her Jezail at the lock, she forcibly cracked the secure door open allowing her access to the Galley’s most precious treasures.

“W-whose there?” a chained halfling, her head was covered with a black sackcloth.

It wasn’t just that one Halfling, an acquirement from the ports from the Mwangi Expanse, however, but there were over several dozens like her. There were other halflings, humans, and Tieflings chained together and lay down next to her and other bunks too. Such a wide and assorted full of this cargo was enough to pay for the ship and her crew more than over, which is why the Burnt Saffron had undertaken such the task of their logistical facilitation. Clients from Cheliax and New Thassilon pay greatly for the labor power these living, breathing and sentient individuals of merchandise could provide to their devastated realms.

Water had already begun to leak forth in the Cargo Bay at knee-high levels. Restlessness spread upon the rest of the merchandise as the rest of the merchandise grew ever worried by the sound of its gushing flow ever creeping louder. The bleeding from the hull was already fissuring. She had little time to earn her weight in gold now.

“Be quiet.” Merizi ordered the slave. She dismissed the tears and distressed exhalation of their breaths, trying to detach herself from the ‘merchandise’.

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The Azarketi traced her palms around the chains of the bunks until she found the lock that bounded them to their beds.

“Stand back.” Merizi aimed her Jezail at the lock and fired a one-point blank shot onto it.

But the bullet merely ricocheted off its surface barely missing the Azarketi.

The halfling slave screamed as her ears were rocked back by the firearm’s loud detonation.

“Come on… come on…” Merizi reached into her pockets to reload her Piercing Wind.

But just as her fingers had grasped the bullet in her pocket, a burst of water from the weakened hull of the ship burst forth as more water flooded the chamber.

“Hurry!” one of the slaves cried out.

Merizi grabbed the bullet, dried it quickly and placed it in her firearm’s chamber, and pulled the trigger again onto the lock. For a rusted binding however, it was a surprisingly tough nut to crack, this time her bullet flattening upon the thick built of the lock. A minor if purely cosmetic damage of her helter-skelter attempt to break it open.

The lock was by design meant to keep its cargo at bay… too well.

Frustrated and knowing this will waste valuable time, the Corsair decided to improvise. She gripped her Piercing Wind into the sword stance and began to hammer the blade onto the Lock’s shackles in an effort to cut it open.

But no matter how much force she applied to the lock, she couldn’t so much as put another dent into it.

More time had been burned as the waters slowly began to swallow the ship, already claiming several of the slaves within the Cargo Bay.

Gravity slid corner ways as Merizi’s footing had to rest upon the slave bunk’s support beams to keep her balance.

“Damn this lock!” Merizi cursed as she tried in vain to cut rusty shackles with her underslung blade. “Okton why did you have to take the keys with you.”

Cries for help began to ring forth from the slaves as the waters began to rise above them. Still locked into their chains.

“No… No… No…” the Corsair cracked tears into her eyes. Why can’t she get these

Why do they have to scream? They shouldn’t do that. Merchandise shouldn’t scream… they should be doing as what they are told by their masters!

“I don’t want to die!”

“Dawnflower, take me gently unto your warm embrace!”

“Our ancestors, whoart’ above…”

Many of the slaves cried or prayed for salvation just as slowly the water swallowed them one by one.

Gasping bubbles frothed forth from where those slave bunks stood, but all too quickly it began to fade until finally, the lapping waters became still.

“I don’t want to drown!” the halfling pleaded.

Merizi roared as she continued to try and pry open the locks but it was no use. All of the merchandise… nay these… People were dying around her. And there was nothing she could do...

No number of crowns, honeyed lips, and drunken trysts could help the Corsair as she was forced to look with her own eyes the cold, hard and ugly truth.

That she is a Selfish Slaver who had only agreed to come down to the cargo bay in order to save her own purse of thirty pieces.

“Listen to me please!” the Halfling tearfully looked at Merizi. “I said ‘I don’t want to Drown.’.” she repeated her phrase with extra emphasis on the last words. The Halfling’s child-like eyes pierced through her captors in a plea to spare her the fate of her fellow slaves.

The Azarketi’s stood frozen as the water slowly arose amongst them.

She looked away, reflecting on her entire life until this very moment. The very sight of death approaching invites reflection. All her life she was only focused on her own pleasure, riches, and selfish impulses. She thought very little of Captain Khorsheed’s slave hauling business, only ever seeing the lucrative crowns that rained upon her lap every time they transported slaves throughout the Inner Sea. But now, none of the Crowns in the world could help her now.

She was always told that her own greed and need to please those above her would only swallow her soul as her crewmates would often tease her about.

This greed of hers began to for the first time in her life made her stomach churn.

“Close…your…eyes.” Merizi reloaded her Jezail as she took aim, aiming straight at the Halfling’s forehead. Her hands shook hesitantly as she raised the firearm towards the slave. “I… I… I am sorry…”

“It is okay. Run free whilst you still can… away from this wretched place.” The Halfling softly smiled passing on the grace of her forgiveness to her captor. The Mwangian Halfling knew those tears were those of a penitent sinner who had now seen the error of their ways.

One pull of the trigger was enough for the Piercing Wind’s bullet to instantly kill the Halfling, granting her a merciful death. Her body fell down upon the waters, her blood staining the oceanic water that now flooded above her bunk. Ultimately freed from her chains.

Merizi gasped for breath as she came to grips for what she has done. Her mind was racing upon all of the years she had been upon the crew of the Saffron.

But she had little time to swim upon her compunctions as more of the ship’s hull began to bleed ocean water around her. It was now or never.

She waded through the flooded decks, the waters entangling her foot and slowing her escape as if her sins demanded she drowns with them unto the bottom of the Inner Seas.

With grit and tenacity, she pushed through before the stairs that leads her out of the bottom deck. But collapsed debris had barricaded it off cutting off her escape.

The Azarketi Corsair pushed the debris with all of her might, but every time she removed one broken piece of the Saffron’s hull two more seemed to collapse in its place.

“Help! Someone!” Merizi yelled. But there was nobody to answer her.

“Please… please…” she despaired as the waters had already arisen beyond her waist. “Help!” Merizi cried one more time.

But it was no use. Anyone who could help her had left or was killed by her hand. Already the ship by that point was now experiencing multiple breaches of the water bleeding spread across the rest of the hull of its hull. The geysers of ocean water gushed forth, tearing whatever remains of the ship to dust and scattering bodies, items, and debris with wild abandon. The Saffron had now become her tomb.

There was only… one way out for her… For a monster like her…

She grabbed the Piercing Wind Jezail in her hand, its matchlock still dry and holding one last bullet.

She swallowed whatever courage she had left as she rested the end of the barrel

“Gods… I just wished… things had been different…” a penitent tear fell on her cheek.

If she could just admit to her wrongdoings at this very moment perhaps small mercy of clemency could be received when she stands trial in Pharasma’s court. But deep down she knew, she was just another foul scum of many in Golarion.

She pulled the trigger just as the Burnt Saffron’s hull fully collapsed in on itself with Gozreh’s oceanic grip.

[-]

“Ah, Katheer… Glorious, Golden Katheer!” Tomos happily smiled as his onyx and azure eyes spotted a great white zenith over the horizon. “That is the Tower of the Dawnflower right sister? You said you always wanted to visit it?”

“Even in this desolate place, Sarenrae still brings hope.” Tutoria smiled along.

“Looks like a nice place to set up shop. Can’t wait to make some money” their recently rescued and temporary escort, the merchant Leon de Leon radioed over David’s Walkie Talkie.

Katheer still stood tall, blemished and wracked by the Cataclysm yet it still stood. Like a crown that lay in the rust of ruins, it stubbornly clings to the old majesties of its halcyonid days. Above the sunset, skies danced an aurora of boreal lights that hinted at an intoxicating yet poisonous allure in the air. Most of the lower parts of the city had been flooded by canal waters saved for their labyrinthian rooftops connected via makeshift rope bridges for those houses tall enough to surface. The higher one climbs the cities golden crown the more noticeable the rubble of damaged mud-slickened bricks or white-washed carved stone, a scarring of the Cataclysm’s wake. The buildings amongst the outer rim of the grand and golden Katheer had shown signs of weathering amongst their structure as if their bodies were slowly melted away whilst those deeper showed lesser signs of attrition.

“Feet’s goin get wet. But I like dem’ circly housies.” Isaiah eyes danced upon each of the many Qadiran’s gilded houses that dotted the ruined city’s skyline. For a boy born under smogs of Steeltown back in Colarado, it was as if Desna had torn down the gates to heaven itself.

“Looks pretty great and all… but what in the hell is that smell?” David’s scratched his nose irritably. It wasn’t the Butterfly again that was for sure… knowing at least it smelled like a garden of flowers… a garden of very allergy-inducing flowers.

His elderly senses smelled an unusual astringent scent that came about from the moisture amongst the water-cooled winds that swam past the air. He looked up to see dark clouds beginning to

“It looks like rain is about to come down now…” Tomos mellowly scoffed off the coming downpour as he flipped down his hood.

Droplets of rain began to fall upon the Qadiran soul as David was about to doze off for a short rest before he gets his feet pumped again when he goes looking for the Desnan Spherewalker. He already knew from the Aasimar Twins that he needs to look for a woman with long scarves and plays a string instrument of sorts. Maybe the first question he’ll ask her is how to get rid off the damn butterfly off his neck. A relief from all of this sneezing would help his chances of saving this world and his own by just about… maybe singular percent.

But as he leaned over to rest on his back, his eyes caught the roof of the Driver’s stand was beginning to show burn marks that began to spontaneously crackle into small spots above him. The burns formed like the rain drops dripping upon a glass rooftop with a slight hint of that same astringent scent in his nose.

And then the cloth began to seethe with smoke…

“Get to the city… NOW!” David yelled as he took the reins of the Wagon from Tomos.