Captain Shores gently moored the hidden ship against the tower. As soon as they stopped moving, the crew dropped a ramp across to reach the windowsill and Cira took the first step. On her order, Marko cast a Lamplight inside the room.
Were Cira to fall off the plank, it would be nearly a couple hundred feet to the ground. Not quite enough to reach terminal velocity, but this task had her full attention. The voices of startled women could already be heard as she approached the bottom and jumped through the threshold.
In the white light, Cira locked eyes with a whole gaggle of frail and timid women covered in filth. Their clothes were tattered rags and some of them futilely hid children behind their backs as everyone cowered before the intruder.
The room was large enough to be half of the top floor, with no lighting whatsoever and the putrid stench of waste hung in the air. Cira must not have looked friendly as she tried not to visibly recoil from the smell, but she was also livid. The numbers Olive spoke of seemed to live in this room alone, packed in like unwanted animals. At a glance, they all showed signs of malnutrition and many bore bruises.
A little girl with knotted blonde hair looked up at her and started crying, and that was the breaking point. One woman screamed and the kids all started wailing. If anyone overheard, they would think Cira was on a murderous rampage up here.
This is bad… “Shut up!” Cira did the only thing she could think of slammed her staff into the ground to discharge half of her remaining stored mana. Within the blink of an eye, the room fell silent. Women dropped to their knees while the children were in shock. A couple of them actually passed out.
That is not what I wanted to do… Cira let out a sigh as all attention fell on her in terror, “I’m getting you all out of here. Unless you want your children embroiled in battle, I suggest you get on the ship quietly.”
“W-what…” The women were dumbfounded.
“Could it… really be?”
“Who… who are you?”
They were like frightened sheep the way they all looked up at her. It wasn’t a feeling Cira liked, but it wasn’t the time to get upset. She couldn’t blame them for seeing her like that, though, and it only served to fuel her disdain for the King of this land.
“They call me Captain Dreadheart.” For all intents and purposes, that’s who she was during this pirate escapade. That was what Wick knew her as. And that’s how she was dressed because she didn’t have any appropriate cat burgling attire. Why do they look more scared now? Cira just wanted them to get the hell up so she could evacuate them.
It was then that Jimbo popped in the window impatiently, “What’s taking so long? We don’t have all night—holy shit…”
His face went pale as he took in the squalor. The broken looks in their eyes and the bruises on their arms. Poorly washed blood stained the wood and his eye twitched from the odor.
“Is… is that Jimbo?” One woman called out.
“It is!” Another joyously cried.
A good number of the women seemed to recognize him and melted in relief. The effect spread fast.
“Jimbo Sticks has come to save us!”
“He’s really here!”
They all jumped to their feet and pulled their children along as Jimbo pointed them to the ramp where James waited to help them along. They clutched his hands and thanked the both of them for rescuing everyone and saving the kids from such a cruel fate. No one said a word to Cira and avoided meeting her eyes, while some of the kids ran past her and jumped for joy.
“Uncle Jimbo!”
Is it not clear what’s happening here? Ugh, whatever. I prefer it this way… but it kind of hurts my feelings.
Jimbo cast her a clueless glance and shrugged with his hands in the universal ‘whaddya gonna do’ gesture.
“Whatever then.” I have more important things to do. Cira held up her needle and started weaving a glyph aimed at the door to the stairwell. It was comprised of wind runes to aggressively vibrate the air in a column toward the entryway for a few seconds if somebody came in.
“What are you doing?” Jimbo asked as the hostages slowly trickled out the window.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“If anyone is in the floor below, they definitely felt my mana burst.” The entire heist could be foiled. We may already be moments away from battle. “You guys need to hurry up.”
Cira finished her glyph and walked across to the other side of the room scrunching up her face as she stepped over soiled linens and other things she didn’t want to identify. There was still half the upper level beyond this door, and not a single one of these women made a move to open it. It stood for reason there were more hostages in there.
The air in the room only got thicker as she approached the next room. Cira placed a hand on the cold iron latch and clicked it down. When she started to swing it open, a shrill cry came from behind her back, “No, don’t!”
The stench hit her like a tidal wave and immolated her nostrils before she could even register the woman’s warning. Dried blood, bodily fluids, rotting meat. The vile aroma pierced straight through to Cira’s core, and she felt her body was torn between compulsively vomiting or going catatonic.
By the time she could form a single thought, Cira had already slammed the door shut. She stood there coughing into her arm and trying not to gag when the same woman yelled at her with scorn.
“How dare you?!”
Cira looked at her through teary eyes, “Nobody told me!” Excuse the hell out of me for not wanting to forget someone.
It took longer than Cira wanted for everyone to clear out, but it was apparent nobody was on the floor beneath them. Even a few down should have heard the screams, but they were still clear a full ten-minutes in. Either Wick had gathered as many of his men as possible to celebrate the Volcanic Witch’s accomplishments, or they really just left these people locked in the top of this tower, surely only given enough food to barely sustain despite the full pantry waiting in his part-time treasure suite.
Clearly many didn’t make it, and those that couldn’t survive the neglect were simply thrown into the side room. It made her skin crawl.
Cira’s blood was boiling, but she had to remember the goal. Only one more stop and they were on their way back to Breeze Haven. It didn’t feel like enough. She wanted to take more from this man than she already had—more than just his wealth, weapons, and wife.
“How many were there?” Cira asked as she hopped back onto the ramp after the last woman made it across.
“How should I know—” Jimbo thought she was talking to him, then James responded.
“Sixty-four women and twelve children.” His voice was low and a little unsteady. He was in no mood to berate Cira, and she was in no mood for jokes. The number of hostages was a great deal below their estimate.
Cold wind blew on her face as a stray cloud passed overhead, shading the already darkened deck of Shores’ hidden ship. There wasn’t enough room down below so many of the rescued women lingered around on deck. They huddled together and nervously hung onto the railings. With worried mutterings, they kept to themselves and tried to meet Cira’s eyes.
For this trip, they were headed straight down. It was risky, but there wasn’t time to come back in from the hills. They had to find the staves and make their escape before Wick went looking for Olive.
It was a slow descent and they had to keep an eye out for any lit windows, but the tower seemed mostly vacated. Her newest navigator explained that this one was mainly used for storage and administrative tasks which the current pirate king had all but abandoned. Evidently the last man to sit on the throne actually performed kingly duties like distribution of essentials stolen from the Boreal and public safety.
As they grew closer to the ground, the festivities from the palace courtyard got louder again and there was a window a few floors down flickering from the light of a torch. Shores slowed it down and they passed by cautiously until Cira thought she could hear muffled voices. She got concerned when she heard a strained woman’s cry from inside.
“Hold on,” Cira leaned over to listen in, “I think someone’s in trouble.”
Jimbo made an uncomfortable face and even Olive looked at her silently. Then it came again, louder this time. The distinct sound of a woman’s scream echoed out the window.
“That’s clearly a woman in distress.” Cira grew increasingly troubled, but nobody moved a muscle. The unseen woman’s cries were intermittent, but there was no way she was the only one who could hear it. They just didn’t care. “Do you not hear that? Someone’s hurting her as we speak!”
“I don’t think that’s what’s happening…” Jimbo didn’t sound like he was messing around, but Cira thought it was pretty clear cut. She was baffled at her crew’s like of sympathy here. Are they just trying to sweep this under the rug because we spent so much time grabbing the hostages?
“If you don’t want to help her then I will.” Cira put her good foot up on the railing like she was about to jump over when James suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. “Hey, what the hell?”
Normally he was angry or irritated about something, but he looked truly stumped in this moment and just shook his head slowly at Cira. She waited for him to say something, and no words arrived. James signaled to Shores, then they started descending faster again.
“W-what is wrong with you people?!” Why are they giving me the same look as earlier? The window was above them now as the woman’s cries grew distant. “You’re just going to abandon her?”
They were right outside the window—this was about as within Cira’s reach as it gets. She couldn’t understand why her crew picked now of all times to stop her.
“Uh, Captain Dreadheart…” Olive awkwardly said, “The girl’s fine. I promise.”
Even she’s not worried… am I misunderstanding something here? My mind’s not playing tricks on me, is it? Her soul was broken, and she hadn’t noticed too many adverse effects yet, so it was perfectly reasonable to think she was losing her grip on reality.
James must have seen the utter confusion on her face and put a caring hand on her shoulder. There was a look in his eyes of something like concern, “Just let it go.”
Am I going crazy? They’re all looking at me like that. What is this?
Cira ran out of time to ponder her questionable mental state as they were now just a floor away from their destination. The armory’s windows were all barred off, but no light came from within. Shores brought the ship down gently until it nearly kissed the wall before they stopped.
The plan was to enter the same way as they did for the treasury, but it would clean out her reserves of mana until they returned to the dark basin. Cira drew her door array again and watched it light up as the onyx fizzled out.