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Glory of the Forsaken
Ahoy mates! I would like to welcome you all once again to my work! Having decided to abandon Blood of the Liberated, and work more towards developing Delmaria's present, I will once again be reintroducing the Delmaria we all know and love back in to the story forum. This story is meant to take place during the current time in the game - as such, you will often find that current events that go in the game may end up being a part of my story. Rest assured, however, this will not be a POTCO dependent story, as it will still continue to introduce places never explored in the world of Pirates of the Caribbean, much like my last story. Also, I will not be putting people in to my story regardless of how many times you ask. The only exception to this rule is if I ask you if I can allow your character to make a cameo in my story, which may happen once in a blue moon. Also, do not so much see this as a story for myself, as it is a salute to all the pirates of the Caribbean ;) This story is also supposed to take place after the events of my previous present-day story, Those Condemned to Freedom. While this story may not require much of prior knowledge to get involved, it is still suggested you look through the old story just a little bit (mainly the later chapters.) And I must remind you all once again that my story is perhaps one of the "darker" stories here on POF, so you may or may not want to read a few parts depending on the chapter. Now, shall we continue? I present to you all, the first chapter of "Glory of the Forsaken," The Rising Tide August 29th, 1725 Tortuga, Hispaniola 9:30 PM To John Christopher Balnette, loyalty was something that he owed to his father, to his mother, and to the men that had given him his life. Loyalty in his eyes was defined as staying faithful to his fellow countrymen, especially the soldiers who he used to admire as he ran about the docks in his home town. The red uniform to him meant a symbol of singularity, and to him, patriotism was undeniably one of the strongest and most noble characteristics a man could hold. His inferiority to the crown was but his gift to the men that he served and would serve in society, for giving him a place in this world, under proper nature. But to Delmaria Darkskull, loyalty was something he owed solely to himself - for when the world turns their back on you, you should find it not a damning experience, but an experience of freedom. The chains that held you down no longer existed, and for the first time you had been liberated. Loyalties, in his eyes, were not deserved - they were earned by those he were loyal to, for loyalty is the highest form of flattery. Delmaria often had plenty of time to think to himself. He wondered why for so long he had pitied himself, when now he knew very well that the only way to free your mind was to free yourself of doubt. Perhaps it was the third weight that gave him that sense of self-pity - for we, as the living, will always be bound to loyalties whether out of our control or not. Perhaps it was not that we so much pitied ourselves, as we pitied the living as a whole, for the dead are the only ones who will be able to know true happiness. When he died, Delmaria wanted his funeral to be a celebration, for his remaining friends and family would know that he had passed to a place where he could finally be free, heaven or hell did it not matter. An increasingly rough storm had hit the Caribbean like a pile driver just a few hours before nightfall, but by then the legions of ships that were out on the seas had already made it to port, flaunting about their riches as they recollected over a few pints their adventures in the past days and weeks. Now, the ships once packed to the brim with eager pirates were now being wiped clean as Neptune brushed his hand over the vacant decks of each ship, sending the warm salt water down in loads on to the vessels. He beat against them from below, where the waves mixed violently in the bay, and from above, as rain droplets the size of bullets pelted the decks in sheets against the rough, howling winds. It built a wall of mist that covered every inch in front of you, and they called it a wall in two respects; the other being even attempting to step outside would knock a man down and take him along for a ride, just like the chairs, benches, barrels, and crates that were now swept up in the turbulence and being thrown against the facades of the buildings. At some point the waves began to splash up on to the beaches of the island in the form of ten foot tall waves that forced themselves through the roads. A small flood gathered out in the streets, picking up smaller objects such as thrown down leaves, bottles, and pieces of torn flags and washing them up and down the muddy paths. The mires overflowed with rancid swamp water that carried with it a putrid smell of decaying life as it washed in to the soup that washed Tortuga clean. Inside the old dingy stone buildings men and women carried out their normal lives ignoring the gale force winds that blasted against the windows and doors of their homes and shops, though particularly straying away from the boarded-up windows that rattled off their nails each time a stronger gust of wind came barreling down the narrow straights. Even through a storm as mighty as this could a tavern on Tortuga be filled, and much so was the case with the Faithful Bride, which was as packed as usual with it's usual revelers and drunkards. Today, however, was a day for celebration unlike before. All while the inside life of the city was abruptly going about it's business, the outside world was dead quiet, left for Mother Nature alone to make her work. Only one soul joined her out in the open, and against the harsh winds and cold rain he stood in the center of the town square. He was surrounded by buildings covered in poorly constructed scaffolding meant to serve for repairs, though after the storm it would need repairs themselves. Even months after Jolly Roger's invasion of the city it was still left in devastation, many buildings still missing large pieces. The entire Caribbean was licking its wounds at this time, friend and foe alike, as each tried to outdo the other in a continuous war for the Caribbean. Each time the pirates would gain the upper hand, the other side would turn the tables, and vice versa. Between the waves that splashed in the fountain, whose center spiral was still not completely rebuilt, he looked down at a small bronze plaque that sat on the bottom of it, quietly beneath the waves. Engraved on it was a name and a date - Anne Bonny, 1702 - 1725, with a small quote etched in just below it - "I stand firm in stature and belief that even a woman such as myself would be able to run a group of men as rowdy as you, and if, by God, not, die trying." Delmaria's black cloak was pelted relentlessly by the rain, taking the bounce out of the feather in his hat and leaving a stream of water to pour down to his boots, but he still stood there against the gale force winds, locked on the small metal plate. Even though she had always tried to contradict him, Anne was always like Delmaria's little sister, as she filled the void that stood where his family should have been. All Delmaria ever wanted to be again was a child, for now he knew that childhood was something one should hold on to and cherish for as long as possible - once you lose your childhood, you lose what makes everything in the world to you special. Delmaria remembered looking down to his hands, still dusty and rusted from time as they always had been. Among the six rings that sat across his two hands, two had still stood out to him; though not the prettiest of the bunch, the terribly scratched gold band that on the ring finger of his left hand was the one Teague had given to him when he been crowned as pirate king, if only for a moment. He would have considered it his most prized possession, if not for the ring that sat directly across from it, on the index finger of the same hand, an equally simple silver band, with the initials ""JCB" and "MT" etched on the inside - it had served as his wedding band to his wife. They both seemed as though they balanced each other out, between what he considered important; one side, freedom, the other, love. And though they sat in harmony, he wanted them to be interconnected, as a man cannot be complete if the parts of himself are not together. So, he had the two rings bonded together in to an earring that sat from his left ear - and as he played with it in between the fingers of his left hand, he smiled to himself. Anne was a symbol of both of those parts of his life, and in them she lived on. Delmaria turned to his right and followed the blurred light that hid behind the wall of rain, kicking his boots in the dingy water. He nearly toppled over every few steps from the fierceness of the storm, but by now he had learned to weigh himself down enough that even the wind could not move him much more than an inch. As he could begin to make out the wooden surface of the double doors underneath the small balcony, drenched to a darker color, he could hear the buzz of the tavern speak to him from inside. He reached out two long arms and pushed the two doors open wide, stepping inside to the King's Arm. The open room of the King's Arm sent a warm breath that encased Delmaria as the two doors slammed shut behind him. Every single one of the tables in the room was packed, sitting in the aura of the bright yellow light given off by the candle's that sat on the wall. At the back of the room, through the open archway, the courtyard normally filled with the excess of pirates was desolant, left to the black roar of the storm. Johnny McVane stood behind the bar along the left wall of the room, wiping a dirty washcloth over the mugs left on the counter, doing a little jig to himself as Bran Winds played a light sea shanty over in his corner of the tavern, the corner just before the bar on the near side, sitting right before the staircase that led up to the balcony overhead. It took him a minute to notice him, but once he did Johnny's face lit up with a smile. He put the rag down on the counter and walked down and out of the bar, coming over to meet the pirate. "Delmaria Darkskull you son of a gun, how are ya!?" McVane shouted as he came up and reached out a hand. The two shook hands as Johnny looked up and down Delmaria, noticing his drenched outfit. "God, why the hell were you outside!? It's a damn hurricane out there! Gimme your coat!" Delmaria took off his black, heavy leather coat and his gold-feathered hat and placed it in to Johnny's arms, who ferried in to a small clothing rack that he kept at the side of the bar. Delmaria's clothes were still moist from the rain, but it was still relieving to get off the unbearable weight of his drenched trench coat. He followed Johnny to the bar and took a seat down at one of the empty stools in the middle, where the bartender had left his dirty rag on the counter. "Ah, nothing much. I just wanted to walk around a little, is all. Haven't been in port for a while." Johnny automatically went back to rubbing his rag on the counter, though he did it without any thought or attention, so it just went on in the same spot. "Yah, well, tonight isn't exactly the night to do it. Besides, you should'a been here, spending your time with us!" Johnny waved a little hand out over the bar. "As they say-" “‘If every port were like Tortuga, no man would ever feel unwanted.'" Delmaria repeated in a swaying voice. "I know, I know. Just odd to see the port at this time, so why not experience it while you can?" "HA!" Johnny laughed loudly - the man often forgot how to control his voice, accustomed to yelling over the roar of the bar. "Suppose you're right. You've been makin' quite a stir lately, ya know." "Ah, so I guess the word of our exploits is spreading?" Delmaria smiled under the black bandanna that hung down in front of his face. "Yah, but not to the best of places." McVane turned around and pulled a piece of parchment that was nailed to the backboard of his tavern. He flipped it over and handed it to Delmaria, who took it and read it as Darkskull stared down at him with a glaring look: "BY ORDER OF THE BRITISH ROYAL NAVY, WHOSE JURISDICTION LIES WITHIN THE TOWNSHIP OF THE ISLAND OF TORTUGA, I. STREETS, ROADS, AND OTHER MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION within the port of Tortuga are now subject to patrol, and those who access said mediums will be subject to inspection. II. THE PORT OF TORTUGA IS TO REMAIN FREE OF ANY NOTABLE signs of the presence of free captains who have committed acts against the crown, or "pirates." III. ANY MAN WHO IS IN POSSESSION OF A PIECE OF PIRATE propaganda, or a notice which suggests potential acts against the Crown, are subject to immediate jailing and/or execution. IV. ANY MAN WHO IS FOUND OF DISTRIBUTING OR AIDING IN THE distribution of pirate propaganda, or a notice which suggests potential acts against the Crown, shall be subject to immediate jailing and/or execution." Delmaria laughed at the end of the notice, before crumpling it up in his hand and throwing it off to the side of the bar. McVane gasped and jogged to get it, barking at the pirate over his shoulder. "What the 'ell is wrong with you!?" "Oh, relax, will you? If the Navy couldn't stop a rag-tag group of pirates from nearly throwing them off this God forsaken island, how do they expect the remainder of them to fight us off?" "Delmaria, they were able to capture you, weren't they?" Delmaria's face dropped from a smile to a sharp frown, and he gripped the paper fiercely as he stared down McVane in the eyes. "Easy, easy. Look, they've been out and about recently. 'Couple of days ago I saw some fresh flood making their way down the street as if they owned the place." McVane made a little walking man with his two fingers that strutted up and down the bar. "Fresh blood?" Delmaria repeated, a little shocked. "How could have a Navy ship made it in to port undetected." "That's the thing." Johnny shrugged as he rubbed his two hands together beneath the old washcloth. "Nobody's really been seein' any of their ships around lately. Eh, maybe I'm just seein' things." McVane brushed it off, walking down to the far end of the bar to deal with a few rowdy customers. Delmaria uncrumpled the piece of paper and scanned over it again, rubbing his fingers over the still slightly moist ink. Even holding the notice made the brand that sat on his forearm burn all-over again with the same intense pain that he felt the first time it was burnt in to his flesh. Darkskull always wore long clothing for a reason, as it helped keep his mind off of the bruises that he had acquired from his enemies over the years; if he didn't see them, then he supposed they were not there. Just as Delmaria neatly placed the notice back on the bar, Johnny returned, sliding a small, frothing mug across the counter with him. He slid the drink out of his hand and right in front of Delmaria, who stared down at it questionably. Johnny directed his attention up, and pointed out to the far right corner of the bar. "Courtesy of the gentlema- well, should I say, gentlewoman in the black cap." Delmaria turned slightly to look through the corner of his eye to the area where Johnny pointed, and in the corner of the bar he spotted the figure he was looking for. Two thick black boots were propped up on a small, vacant table, and behind them sat a very shady, dark-skinned woman. She wore a dark crimson long coat closed over a dull brown vest, one side tucked neatly in to her loose dingy green crew pants. A small, black gaucho hat tipped over her face, but it was obvious she could still see by the sincere wave of the hand that she sent towards Delmaria. "Don't get yourself in to a fuss now." Johnny mumbled as Delmaria stood up from his seat, holding the mug in his hand as he walked towards the woman. He passed in between the dozens of pirates that crammed the tables, with a few pirates attempting to signal Darkskull's attention. Their efforts were meager, however, as Darkskull had his sights locked solely on the mischievous soul at the far table, who tilted her head up slowly to reveal a small , swirling piece of ink directly under he left eye. She shot him a smile as he approached the table, nearly slamming the mug down on it. "Ahoy, Mr. Darkskull. Please, take a seat." She smiled deviously as she motioned to the chair directly across from her. Delmaria shimmied in to the chair, angling it so he could look at her behind her boots. Delmaria, too, had a smile on his face. "Did you honestly expect me to drink this?" he pointed to the mug, now overflowing with foam. "What do you mean?" she tipped her head sideways, as if she was trying to playfully put something off. "I haven't seen a drink foam as much as this one than when I saw this same exact drink on the desk of Sir Victor Mayhew, who nearly died from poisoning just days after. Tell me I don't look that gullible by now, do I?" he mimicked her, tipping his head and smiling in the same fashion. She chuckled, taking her feet off the table and sitting upward. "Very good. I must say, you aren't the prettiest pirate in the bunch, but you do know your way." Delmaria nodded, not necessarily agreeing with her as he was taking in what she said. "So, is Rott really so much of a coward that he couldn't come and try to kill me himself?" She laughed again, this time leaning over the table to lower her voice. As she leaned over, it revealed a small skull-and-cross-swords identical to Ezekiel's just behind the right side of her vest. "My Captain is a very busy man, Captain Darkskull. He doesn't have much time for stopping at every single island in the blasted Caribbean to kill off every pirate that has given him problems." Delmaria leaned forward as well, getting within a foot of her face. "Obviously if I wasn't a problem to him he wouldn't have sent you, Ramona." She licked her lips and leaned back a little more. She smiled again. "I suppose that is the case." "So tell me, what interests does Rott have in the Navy? I suppose the ghouls on the other side of the seas didn't provide enough for him?" "Well, Delmaria, when you unite your friends, you also unite your enemies. Unfortunately he isn't much of the submissive type." "If he was, he would have been long gone by now." Darkskull slumped back in to his hard, wooden chair. He sighed and looked up and down the woman. "Miss Guerra, I still fail to see why such a fine woman as yourself would join such a ruthless group of men as the Casa de Muertos. Have you no sense of shame?" Ramona took her gaucho off and placed it down on the table, revealing her short, black hair that came down just below her ears. "When my husband died, I lost respect for the world I knew, Delmaria. When it came down to the line, my benefactor promised me something that would allow me to reinvent myself, anew." Delmaria shook his head. "Your benefactor is dead, Ramona." She shook her head back, tilting it to the side and giving another sharp smile. "That's what you think." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A slow start, but with big things to come. Well, how do you like it so far, mates? Be sure to comment and review below! |
Del. Keep writing your philosophical mumbo jumbo that I can almost not follow. Savvy and I thrive on it. :)
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Ok if chalupa pops up randomly just one time. that would be amazing. :D lol good story, I would like to read on.
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I missed Those Condemmend to Freedom.... Good start mate!!
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Thank you, mates!
Not much I can say about this one. It's special to me, because it's the first time I ever cried while writing a story. Remembrance August 29th, 1725 Tortuga, Hispaniola 7:23 AM By morning the storm had drastically settled down, the tide slowly receding back to the bay with only a blanket of gray clouds still lingering overhead. The street was littered with assortments of objects swept up by the small flood and carried out in to the middle of the road, which varied from boxes and crates to the bodies of dead livestock whose owner was too negligent to shelter them properly. A rancid smell filled the streets; a dank, rancid smell that often stayed close to the swamps and the ghettos of the gypsy quarters, but had now split out in to the main part of the city with the overflow of the marshes that sat unkempt at the side of the city. Many of the towns local residents, who were far enough from the swamps of the port to not care about the poorer districts, now felt sorry for themselves that they had to put up with such a disgusting atmosphere. Delmaria couldn't sleep that night. Ramona's words echoed in the back of his mind long after the crowds had quieted down in the tavern and she had slithered in to the recesses of the rain. Darkskull had moved to the back door of the King's Arm to watch her sway in to the darkness, and even hours after she was gone he stood there, leaning on the banister as he stared out in the courtyard. It was only after Johnny had ferried him to an empty room for what remained of the night that he moved, but even then he stood near the window above the small desk in his room, staring out in to the void. By now he had set himself up so that he could look out the window in to the town square as he wrote down in his small, black, weathered journal. His quill ran furiously over the pages as he spilled out anything that he was thinking, or anything he could think of, his handwriting swerving and spinning over the blank pages. He wasn't so much as writing a well-constructed entry as we was rambling, throwing down poorly connected sentences and phrases that came to his mind. It eerily reminded him of the journal of Sir Francis Drake that his father had so fruitlessly hunted down and tried to protect, and at that point he wrote down "El Draque the --------" and began scribbling over it angrily, at one point tearing the page across from side to side. It was a part of his past that made him angry, to think he had wasted his life for his father's ambitions. Delmaria slunk back in his chair as the sun banked over the horizon above the buildings, throwing his dripping when quill pen on the floor and slapping the ink jar off the desk. It shattered on the crisp wall at his side, splattering ink all over the wall. Darkskull huffed, throwing his head back and looking up at the ceiling. He still wondered why he had kept that journal of his, it's binding falling apart at the seams and nearly every page torn and ripped at the edges. Perhaps it was because he knew that he could not escape his past no matter how far he tried to put it off - after all, the past can always be found in the present. He leaned forward and laid a big hand down on the small book, pulling it in to his lap and he propped his feet up on the desk. He began flipping backwards through the pages of the journal, smiling at his entries became older and older. Some of them told of celebrations, others of battles, skirmishes and wars, and some of them were just mental vomits that he had done only a few moments ago. Yet as he neared the inside cover of the book, he came to a page that was completely salvaged by time, with only two small words scribbled in the center. Hello John John. Nobody had called him his real name in such a long time, that even reading it on a piece of paper was a shock to him. Whenever he read something, we would usually put a voice to in inside his head, usually a voice that he had created himself and had little to no connection to the person who had written it. This time, however, he read it in a very real voice - Maria's. Delmaria closed the journal quietly, letting his hand drop to his side and taking the book down with him to smash in to the floor. The sound of his wife's voice sent a chill down his spine, though it wasn't as much a sound as it was remembering what it sounded like. It reminded him of the years that spent with her, where they lived and loved with whatever they had. Luxuries were a rarity, and they took life as it came. It was a hard life, but it was a beautiful one - and Delmaria distinctly remembered the day that it had ended. 1 January 15th, 1714 Padres Del Fuego 10:57 AM Delmaria poked his head behind the soft cloth that covered his home's window, looking out over the vacant courtyard. The stone buildings rested quietly around him as the sun ascended overhead, casting a shadow that seemed to reach out to him from the opposite side. Not a soul was seen or heard, which relieved Delmaria for just a little bit as he turned back to his modest home. The fireplace cackled quietly in the back as Delpadros and Marina played with a few small rag dolls that fell limp in their hands. Maria paced back and forth in between the table, which sat to the right end of the room, and the cubboard at the left end. She worriedly wiped her hands on her blouse, leaving the mess that had built up from cooking that morning on her accessory before taking it off and placing it across the table. Her black, elegant hair still feel straight from her beautiful soft face, and even though she was covered in dirt and grime, Delmaria saw past that to the true beauty that sat beneath it. But, now was not the time to think of such things. "It doesn't have to be like this, you know." Delmaria said, resting his back against the wooden door. A small ray of light that snuck in between the broken shingles of the roof fell directly on to Maria's face, lighting it as she turned briskly to face him. Her dark, tanned skin was illuminated, and her eyes sparkled like gems for a brief moment before she stepped out towards him. "Be like what? How it always has been? We've been living in this same, decrepit house for years now, and you expect it to get better now?" Her light Spanish accent still rolled off her tongue with every breath as she spoke. "If you're so eager to leave this house, then the only thing we can do is leave this god damn island!" Delmaria heated up, stepping off the door. "You say it like it's so simple." Maria shook her head, turning to the back of the room and hurrying over to a small metal pot that hung over the giggling fire, checking to see how it's contents were going along. Delmaria chased after her, stopping roughly five feet behind her. "Maria, think of them." Delmaria said, pointing a hand down to the two children that sat on the ground. Even though only a year older than her (he was 8 and she was 7) Delpadros still attempted to instruct and guide Marina on how to play with their small cache of straw dolls that Maria had woven for them as a Christmas present. "Think of them? You? You would rather take them out on the seas and risk their lives than have them stay safe on this island?" "RIGHT, because if the British find them they won't kill us all for having such close ties to one another. We either head out now, and try to save them, or we wait here for the soldiers to come and kill us!" Darkskull became enraged, throwing his hands around as he tried to drive his point to Maria. "AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? You're the one who wanted to trust that Victorio! Now look where that has gotten you!" She scoffed, shaking her fist at him. Delmaria violently gripped her arm, making her wince under the pain as he gripped her tighter and tighter. "I did it for the best interest of all of us." He gritted his teeth. "If it wasn't for me you'd have been dead by the time they found you!" He pushed her, sending her stumbling back and hitting her hard against the wall, causing her to slump down just at the side of the fireplace. Marina let out a little cry and started to sob like any child would when they saw the fighting such as this transpire before them, while Delpadros just covered his ears, trying to block out the world. While the children cried, a blanket of shouts could be heard far off in the distance, like a unity of men and women walking back and forth. Delmaria ran to the window and quickly peered back through the cloth, relieved that there was nothing going on in the courtyard in front of his home. Still, he turned back around to the chaos within it, and shouted "WILL YOU SHUT IT?" at Marina, which only made her whimper and cry even louder as she started to crawl back, away from the general direction of her father. Delmaria turned his attention to Maria, who was pulling herself up off the ground by the wall. She gave him a very cold, unworthy glare, and his heart sank as he saw what he had done to her - a large, red bruise covered her entire right forearm, so twisted and irritated it almost seemed like it had been burned. She swatted her hair out of her face as she gathered her balance, and began to stumble forward, towards him. "I see how much you care for them!" she growled in a low, disgusted tone. She walked right up to him, and past him, to the small wooden door that waited quietly behind them. She ran her hand through her hair again, before opening the door, and beginning to storm out. "Where the hell are you going!?" Delmaria called after her, his angry overtone still lingering in his voice. "Away from you!" she shouted over her shoulder. She knew that he didn't have it in him to run after her and subdue her, because she wouldn't be turning around for quite some time. "Goodbye, John!" Instead of chasing after her, Delmaria slammed the door shut with all of his force. He stared at the empty, black wooden door for a few good minutes, and in that time the world had become quiet to him. Marina's crying had halted, Delpadros had calmed down, and even the fire that sat in the back of the room had gone from laughing to whispering as he stood there, staring at the door. He tried to look through it, but he couldn't - he felt that looking at that door was the same as looking in to a mirror, because behind the great beard that covered his face and the black dye that covered his naturally blonde follicles, he could find himself - but on the outside, he wasn't there. He finally lost his control, taking his fists and repeatedly smashing them in to the wooden door as he pounded the boards over and over, making them splinter and crack with each blow he gave to them. She bellowed a deep, diabolical roar, that didn't so much came from him as it did the hellish demons that resided within him, louder than any noise that had ever come out of his mouth. He rocked the door with one final haymaker, so powerful that the board it made contact with snapped in to two halves, both of which flew out of the door and landed in the courtyard a few good yards away from his home. The door itself broke off it's top hinge, flinging out wildly and nearly smashing off the frame. Delmaria stepped back, panting heavily as he looked at the destruction he had created. He looked down at his hands, bloodied and splintered, and wondered why anything he had ever done with them was necessary - why all of the bloodshed, the crimes, the betrayals, and all that he had ever done with them, had been necessary. For a change his own blood was spilled on his palms, almost in a bittersweet kind of fashion. The only thing that stood unscathed on his hand was the small, glimmering wedding band that sat quietly on his finger, which he was glad for. He was only glad that his wife's blood had not been on them. Just as he turned back to the room, he heard it - a loud, awful gun being shot off in the distance, followed by an eruption of terror and screams that shrieked over the clashing of metal on skin, teeth and bone. He hurried to the doorframe, and watched as a few men ran by, many of which he had known and men, charging with pitchforks, muskets, and even small swords down the alleyway to the main area of Padres. Delmaria couldn't see it, but he knew just by the feeling that slithered through him that something had gone wrong. He turned to his children, who had huddled to the back of the room, and told them to calmly "Wait here." He dashed down the length of the walled-in courtyard, turning sharply to his left as he hit the Ratskellar and running underneath the archway to the larger port of Padres Del Fuego, the rolling, enormous wasteland of small crevices and geysers the rolled up plums of smoke in to the sky. But that was not the old smoke he saw - across them, at the farthest and largest of the mounds just before the branch off to the Fort, a large group of citizens were caught in a skirmish with the local red coats, perhaps showing disdain for the now-tyrannical rule of Don Victorio in the shadows of the city. Though their efforts proved to be fruitless, as each one of the men who tried to rebel were struck further and further back by the Navy, each man who tried to storm them being shot or stabbed through the chest. And admist the chaos, Delmaria could see very clearly a fair-skin maiden, black hair waving in the wind, being shot down by a passing soldier. In certain moments in life, time seems to slow down. It seems as though the world around you has taken a moment to stand at your side and gasp with you, like all other life forms for just that one moment had become insignificant for you. The blood runs to a chill as your skin shrivels in it's place, and as the face of death descends down from the heavens, you feel struck, as though you have just peered in to the face of God, or in some cases, Satan. All of the feeling in your body is gone, and the only feelings you have then are indescribable, as they are conserved for those moments only. Poets would describe it as a moment of truth, priests would call it a divine experience - but only men know that, in those times, the weight of the world both falls down upon you, and drags you forward in to the light. And no matter how much you try to deny that the light is there, it is there, growing stronger and stronger with each beat and pulse that has become but an afterthought, reduced to only a feeling that can only be perceived by looking for it. And as the light shines down upon you and you feel it's embrace, you push it back, for it is unwelcome. But, it never leaves. Delmaria couldn't make any sound other than a blunt, forced scream as he sprinted with all of his power towards Maria. He felt everything come back to him one by one - first the gusts of air that hit against his face, then the stone beneath his boots that rocked his hardened knees, and then the scent of fire that rocketed up his nose. He nearly fell as he stumbled up on of the smaller mounds, scraping his hand on a small rock that left a trail of blood whirling through the wind as he pumped his arms faster and faster, to the beat of his fiery heart. And then, he finally felt his body collapse as he fell in to the middle of the fight, landing just at Maria's side. Life is real. Pain is real. He struggled to grab her hand, his shaking so quickly under pain that he fought just to find them. Her eyes looked lost as they peered blankly in the sky above him, and gone was the unique shine that always warmed him when he awoke next to her every morning. He found her hand resting just above her heart, where he blood came out in a constantly steam, staining her shirt a dark crimson. He grabbed her hand tightly, his wedding ring touching against hers as he tried to look in to her eyes one last time. When he did, they didn't follow like they always had - they didn't look up and down his face, which followed by her hand brushing against his cheek, and her soft lips kissing his forehead. They didn't peer in to his mind and soul like they always had, igniting in his heart the connection that he had always looked for. But most of all, they didn't see him - they looked beyond him, to where she had gone. "M-m-maria, don't you leave me!" he said playfully, pretending like she could hear him. He shook his head rapidly back and forth. "No, please don't play! Please!" He tried shaking her hand, but the blood still poured out of her body, and her soul went with it. "Pleas..." He looked at her again. She didn't move - she didn't run up to hug him, or run her fingers through his hair, commenting how she missed it's blond flow. She didn't laugh whenever he looked at her funny, or perhaps made a small joke, or picked up Marina in one arm and Delpadros in the other and spin them around. She didn't turn to him in the middle of the night, and spend hours looking at him like she used to, telling him how much she loved him. She didn't rub his back as they stood down at the docks, watching the sun fall down behind the horizon as the world ignored them for once. She wasn't there to love him anymore, although he knew he would always be there for her. His lips murmured before he let out a bloodcurdling yell, far louder than the noise he had made minutes before. He tossed his head back - he wanted his voice to reach the heavens, so that he could talk to her one last time. "MARIA!!!" 2 Delmaria looked out the window in to Tortuga, watching the trees sway off in the distance in an early-morning gust, just catching the back end of storm. It seemed so quiet outside, just as it was inside - the floorboards in the room next to him creaked, the glasses in the tavern below clanked as they were cleaned, and Delmaria's breathing echoed through the room. His hands still sat quietly in his lap, and throughout that painful experience of remembering, he hadn't moved. He didn't want to. Delmaria picked up the quill and journal from the floor at his side. He placed it down on the desk, and flipped to the very last, clean page. With whatever ink that remained in his pen, he wrote down in the very center: Goodbye, Maria. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Be sure to comment. |
That was.... deep..... It is good to see the other side of people, when you have seen one side of a person for so long...
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Finally caught up with this story.
That chapter was deep. Any writer who can make MY eyes almost water is a darn good writer. I'll be watching this thread. :] |
Wow.That was one of the most graphic and detailed chapters you have ever written.Del,you should really think about becoming an author.
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Ahoy mates!
Thanks for being patient about this one. I'm glad to see you all have already read my first two chapters, so hopefully you're eager for this one! Now, without further adieu, I present to thee.. The Prophets of Tortuga August 29th, 1725 Tortuga, Hispaniola 9:45 AM The people of Tortuga leaned outside of their windows, doors, and homes at the moment of eerie silence that feel over the port, normally hissing with activity underneath the grey sky above. What was once a capital of bustling public interest had slowed down to a halt, as men and women along the main street of Tortuga stepped outside of their half-repaired buildings, and turned their attention to the center of the port, where the source of the disturbance had come from. The citizens that played and chatted in the town center turned their vision away from their games, whiskey, and friends to the fountain where a group of roughly a dozen Navy soldiers had escorted themselves to around the front rim of the structure facing down the road towards the bay, their bright red uniforms stood out like blood on a haystack under the dreary sky. They pointed their bayonets upward, towards the clouds, but by no means did that mean they were not willing to use them if provoked. They formed a small blockade around the front of the spring, perfectly distanced between one another so they seemed remotely organized as they helped one of their fellow soldiers atop the ledge, who fixed himself as a larger and larger crowd gathered before the group of red coats. They all seemed very skeptical and suspicious of the British, and as the common folk flooded nearly the entire front half of the courtyard, the British soldiers became more and more tense. Still, the stubby little Officer bravely pulled from his pocket a folded piece of parchment paper, and began to clear his throat. "It is by decree of the British Royal Navy, under the jurisdiction of His Majesty, King George the First, that the province of Tortuga, which currently stands under the jurisdiction of-" At the word jurisdiction, a small group of pirates in the center of the crowd began yelling curses towards the soldiers. Their outburst spread like a wildfire, and soon their shouts drowned out the short man, who was trying to speak over their roars. All the British soldiers could do is watch in horror, holding their muskets tightly, as they were ordered not to shoot until the first shot was made. At one point a group of pirates that stood near the King's Arm began running out of the tavern and throwing empty glass bottles in the general direction of the fountain, but they hit the ground and fellow pirates than they did the soldiers. Finally, the Officer threw both of his hands up and yelled "SILENCE!," which somehow managed to subdue the pirates for just a moment. They lowered their bottles and their hats, watching the little British man as he straightened his posture, patted the notice, and looked down to continue reading. Before he could, however, a loud bang echoed through the still air, finding it's end at the little man, who froze at the sounding of the gun. His hand was shaking rapidly, the paper rocking back and forth in his hand, until it finally wavered out of his palms and downward, to the floor. What was revealed behind where the paper should have been was a deep red stain on the man's shirt, that began to seep through on to the white bands that went across his chest. A few of the women in the crowd who stood closer to the fountain shrieked and gasped in horror as they realized what had happened, but other than that, nobody spoke - even as the Officer's body toppled directly backward, smacking in to the water of the fountain, and splashing up red waves under his impact. The only sound that could be heard was the sound of clapping coming from across the left side of the square, across the distance from the King's Arm. A dark-skinned and white-bearded man clapped underneath the overhang of one of the gun shops that stood in the square, his tall, brown hat leaning over his brown. Next to him, his bald-assistant slipped a bite of an apple in to his mouth as he placed his musket to his side, while his captain patted the back of his dusty green coat. "Nice shot, Mr. Dedman." Ezekiel stepped out of the shadows of the overhang, his high-wig hat casting a shadow down over a dragon-like tattoo that clawed at the side of his left eye. He was wearing the same old green, dusted veteran's coat, thrown over a tight-fitted, double crossed shirt with one flap riding over the other. His belt sloppily jingled along his waist, attached to an assortment of guns and daggers that hid under the sides of his coat. His cutlass, which he waved slowly back and forth in his hand to clear his path to the fountain, was a Venetian-styled broadsword, black at its hilt and a darker brass color along the blade, which barely gave off any shine when drawn out in to the light. Upon reaching the fountain, he immediately walked up to the two soldiers the miniature Officer had stood behind while on the ledge of the fountain, looking back and forth between either of them. While anticipating built in the crowd that they two soldiers would make an attempt to subdue him, they instead stepped to the side, allowing for Rott to climb on top of the edge of the fountain. A large part of the crowd began to whisper back and forth in shock and awe that the Navy had so eagerly given him the speaking position atop the structure, most of them unaware of the secret alliance that had been forged. Only a few knowledgeable pirates began to sink further back in to the crowd, hoping that Rott would not point them out for public execution should he recognize them. Yet with a flick of his wrist, the crowd quieted. They all turned their heads eagerly to him, watching to see what he would do. He quietly put his sword back at his side, and panned over the crowd once more, studying each face before he began. "Gentlemen, ladies of Tortuga, perhaps I can better phrase what my dear friend here," he made a motion behind him, to the soaked body floating in the fountain "could not properly orate. My name, friends, is Captain Ezekiel Rott, though I'm sure all of you know this. I come here to all of you today with a proposition which, I believe, will lead to the proper cleansing of our dear Caribbean. I come but only in the name of the common good of all men." "WE DON'T NEED YER HELP!" a voice hollered from the middle of the crowd. One of the captains of a local band of pirates, who much too much favored the wears of the French navy, waved his small cavalry hat back and forth as he shook his fist at Ezekiel. "Yer the one that's been causing all of our trouble!" he shouted, and to his delight his crew mates who surrounded him began nodding their heads in agreement, though they didn't go much further than that in showing support. Without even directly responding to the captain, Rott's eyes drifted off to a nearby section of the crowd, and once he seemed to lock eyes with somebody, he patted his chest with his right hand, just below his heart. A few moments later, the blue-coated pirate was caught mid-sentence, at a loss of breath. Unbeknownst to him or his crew, Ramona had side-stepped her way through the crowd and had gripped the captain in a sleeper hold behind his head, now plunging a small piece of a glass bottle repeatedly in to his back. She let him slip out of her grip on the tenth cut in to his back, and he slithered on to the floor in a heap of torn leather and blood. The crowd around him scattered by a radius of six feet, all of them engulfed in shock and horror as they watched one of their fellow captains bleed out to death on the floor. Ramona looked around at all of them, chuckling lightly under her cap and taunting them with her shard of glass, before she turned her attention back to Rott, tipping her hat in his direction. Ezekiel did a little salute to her, before clapping his hands together loudly in a little smile. "As you all can suggest, you are faced with many unfavorable choices in this situation. But perhaps the worst road you could go down is the path that you are taking right now, which is following behind a group of pirates that really only have their best interest at heart. Come now, you must have not seriously believed that the "leaders" you follow in to battle are doing this for you, are they?" Rott left the crowd in silence as they all looked around at one another again, trying to find answers to the questions presented to them. As much as they felt compelled to defend their fellow pirates, they found a sliver of doubt in the back of their minds that was now growing in to a tumor, preventing them from speaking. "I thought not." he smiled. "All you are to them is but puppets in their scheme. They simply brainwash you in to fighting for them, so you can die as a proper sacrifice in their place. However, if you follow my lead, there will be no need for sacrifice. "The Navy has provided for you all a very grand opportunity. Should you choose to fly the flag of the Casa de Muertos, you will be rewarded with immunity from prosecution by all European states currently participating in the Caribbean." Rott reached in to the recess of his coat, and pulled out a crumpled piece of black parchment paper, with a quill pen that instead of a feather, bore the skeleton of a raven's wing. From its tip, a bright gold ink dripped. "All you need to do is sign this paper. So, what do you say?" "I wouldn't sign that paper if I was you." called a voice from the side of the court. Rott turned his head to the left, looking up to balcony of the King's Arm, where there Delmaria leaned nonchalantly against the right banister. The crowd turned their attention to him, and for a moment Rott felt a spark of anger inside of him because he was taking attention away from him. "Well, if it isn't the Patron Saint of Damnation himself. And how are you, Mr. Darkskull? Still wiping the smell of coal out of your nostrils?" "Not as much as you are getting the test of fish water out of your throat." Delmaria rebuttled, walking back and forth along the balcony as he kept his eyes locked on Rott. Rott chuckled, shaking his head back and forth. "You should have known better than to come out of hiding, Delmaria. It's not the safest thing to do." Without missing a beat or turning his head, Delmaria said "Tell Mr. Dedman that if he doesn't want the pistol pointed at his back to go off he should put down that musket." Rott turned in confusement, and there in the shadows, sitting quietly in the doorway of the building Nathan stood in front of, a figure cloaked from head to toe in a deep blue assortment of clothing waved a little oriental pistol back and forth in her right hand, almost like if she was deciding whether to shoot him or not. With her free hand, she waved to Captain Rott, the outline of a sly smile on her hidden face. Rott nodded slowly, then turned back to face the King's Arm. "Fair enough. Seems you can still manage to play your cards." "Oh I wouldn't be the one to worry about his cards, Captain Ezekiel. It seems you're the one that's been bluffing this entire time." Darkskull stopped, gripping the rail of the balcony and looming over it. "I'm simply here to provide for these men and women what you can't, Mr. Darkskull - stability, honor, and above all, protection. All you've been bent on is making them a slave to your extremist agenda in these waters." Rott pointed a hand out to the pirate, taking glances at the crowd to make sure they followed him. "You say this after you try to nearly kill us all? You pretend as though the events of the last few months have not occurred, Captain Rott. How do you expect us to trust the man who killed a man that we all respected and adored?" Delmaria shouted, pointing his hand out and looking in to the crowd. "You say that I'm the one whose brainwashed them, yet it seems you're only trying to brainwash yourself in to thinking you're still that innocent hermit who washed up on Port Royal a few years ago." "This is besides all of that, Delmaria. I will be the first to admit that I may have had a hand in the side of your opposition, and to this day I still may stir that pot, but now," Rott turned fully to the crowd, raising his hand up to the heavens like he was a disciple of God, "I have come with an opportunity to convert these men and women to the side that, one day, will rule these waters!" Rott was a pathetic little man. Ever since an early age when he lived in the shadow of his bigger brother, who would take the role of Head Adviser of Minertown, he was set on making the world as miserable for others as it had been in his own corner of the world. When Jolly Roger had given him to join what he believed was the "winning side," he didn't do so much as a fear that he would die, no - he did it so that he could take revenge on his brother (who he made sure was the first to suffer in the fires that consumed the town) and that he would never be considered the shorter stick ever again. But whenever faced with the possibility that he was not at the highest throne in the land, he felt young once more, and would do whatever it would take to return to the spotlight. He was not a charismatic leader, nor was he one that truly meant what he said - but he knew how to act, and to make others believe what he wanted them to, and from that he would corrupt people until he would be lead to greatness. Delmaria shook his head. He lingered on whether he was to say what he was going to, but when he saw a few pirates making their way to Rott to accept his offer, he knew he had to. He placed his foot at angle in front of him, and called out "You're scared, aren't you Rott?" Without even putting further thought in to it, Delmaria kicked his feet down and sprung himself backward, through the open doorway of the Kings Arm, and slamming his back on the railing that looked down on to the empty King's Arm. Though it may have seemed a little drastic, he was correct in the fact he should have moved, as an infuriated little boy known as Captain Ezekiel Rott had garnished his pistol and shot it in the general direction of Delmaria. When he saw the gold-feathered hat catch itself on the inside railing of the tavern, Rott turned to Ramona and Jeremiah. Before he could order them to chase after the pirate, Ramona had already darted towards the door of the King's Arm; Dedman, however, would not make it there in time. As Rott had fired his pistol at Delmaria, Jeremiah made an attempt to overpower his aggressor, turning on her with his musket readied to fire. Luckily, a puddle from last night's rain fall had collected itself at the foot of the store that he was standing in front of, so as he spun around his left foot kicked out from under him. In a panic, his assailant shot her pistol with the best aim she could muster, landing a bullet square in to Dedman's chest. She fled, and there Jeremiah's body sat, bleeding out on the floor just like Ramona had done to the pirate captain. Rott showed no compassion - he only shook his head, drew his sword, and chased after Ramona. Delmaria bounded off the inside railing of the tavern and sprinted down the short walkway to the left side of the room, where it wrapped around down to the staircase that led down to the main floor. Just as he hit the top step, he saw Ramona burst inside, catching him from the corner of her eye. Delmaria looked around and managed to find a small glass bottle sitting on top of a stack of crates that sat next to him at the top of the stairs, which he took and threw down at Ramona. She side-stepped the flurry of glass shards as it shattered in to the ground near her feet, and turned back to the pirate. Instead of seeing him, she saw the avalanche of a large group of crates barreling down the staircase in her direction. Before she could manage to flee, one of them bounced off the ground and pounced to hit her in the shin, taking her down to the floor. Delmaria unsheathed his cutlass and began running down the stairs, though he was more concerned with getting out of the tavern than he was killing somebody. His golden sword glinted in the dim tavern light that came down upon it as he bounded over Ramona, landing on the floor just behind her. He stood next to the open doorway, and turned to watch as Rott began walking angrily towards him, the rest of the crowd following in the background to watch. Delmaria backed up in desperation, before his back hit against one of the wooden tables in the beginning of the room. As Ezekiel stepped inside the building, Darkskull turned about and climbed on top of the bottle-ridden table. Rott stopped as he watched the pirate gain his balance on top of it, and once he did he kicked one of the bottles with his heavy black boot in to Rott's face, smacking the side of his face before rebounding and hitting the floor a few feet behind him. Rott gritted his teeth as he cut his broadsword across Delmaria's feet, making the pirate jump to avoid the swipe. Darkskull flipped his cutlass over his shoulder and brought his cutlass with a clash down on to Ezekiel's blade, which he had caught just as it veered off to his side. Delmaria pushed off and side-swiped his blade to knock Rott away again, before he jumped backwards off the table. By now, Ramona had managed to wobble to her feet, advancing on the pirate with a small steel rapier in her hand. They stood on the opposite side of the table, his two aggressors side by side as they looked over at him. Delmaria grabbed the wooden table with his left hand and pushed it, hitting it in to the torsos of his two opponents. He grabbed a bottle that sat on the table behind his right hand and chucked it in Rott's direction, who was able to duck in time to keep it from shattering on his forehead. Ramona quickly managed to crawl on top of the table and began making her way towards Delmaria, who stepped back a little more and grabbed at more bottles from the two tables that sat at his side, chucking them through the air and at the two of them. While Rott chose to stay behind as he took shelter behind the table, Guerra was able to use her quick swordsmanship as a shield against the containers, slicing and hitting them out of the air until she finally managed to land on the other side of the table unharmed. By then, Delmaria had run out of bottles - so, with his left hand, he pulled a light wooden chair from its position and dragged it in front of him, kicking it across the floor with a slide towards Ramona. As it came towards her, Guerra stepped up on the chair and rocketed off with ease before it spirited her away, sending her up and on to the table that sat to Delmaria's right, closer to the bar. She attempted to take a fly-by cut of Delmaria as she glided through the air, but he caught her attack with a match of his own sword, which contacted with hers and pushed it along as she reached the table. Once she landed, she was provided with the disadvantage of looking away from Darkskull, which gave him enough time to grab a firm grip on the table she stood on and flipped it over. Without a moment to spare, the dame was once again off her feet, now just barely making it off the surface of the table as it crashed behind her. With its face at her back, Delmaria placed his hands on the "bottom" of the flat and gave it a stern push, knocking it in to her back and toppling it over her as her legs finally gave in with a heave. She caught herself on her hands, but before she could rebound the heavy wooden spread pushed her downward. Delmaria spun to an enraged Rott, who had finally mustered enough courage to come from behind his place of hiding, and threw himself towards Delmaria. His broadsword coming down on his cutlass felt like a bag of coal being placed right in his hands, but he gripped to it tight as it was knocked off to his side with so much force he was taken with it. He spun wildly until he landed on other side of the table that he had flattened Ramona with, which was proceeded by a loud grunt that could be heard from underneath. The table slumped further down under his weight until he was nearly on his back, but Delmaria knew that if Rott tried to plunge the blade through him, he would be able to move and instead impale Ramona through her back. Instead, Rott gripped Delmaria by his long vest and lugged him off the table, before spinning him around and pistol-whipping him over the surface of the table that had gone unscathed to his left. Delmaria slid across the wet surface of the table and landed head-first in to a chair on the opposite side, falling down as he made contact and flipping him over to land him in a sitting position as he hit the hard stone ground. Though his coat had managed to absorb most of the shock, the pain still slithered up his spine unbearably, nearly paralyzing him under its grip. He knew, however, that he could not sit there for long if he wanted to live, so he rolled over to his left in the direction of the back of the tavern, and managed to gain enough momentum to roll himself on to his feet. He made a dash in between the tables, caught in between a sprint and a limp, and managed to break out in to the courtyard that sat behind the King's Arm. The courtyard was surrounded on all sides by crooked stone buildings just about the same height as the bar, with the exception of the farther-right side where underneath a small stone bridge that connected the roofs of two of the buildings a long alleyway lead down to another one of the roads of Tortuga. Lines of wet clothing hung overhead from small, paneled windows opposite to one another, and in the center a tree about 18 feet tall with a mushroom-cap-like canopy of leaves sat neatly trimmed within the confines of a miniature stone garden squarely raised 3 feet off the ground. Delmaria ran up to the tree and jumped on top, waiting impatiently as Rott and a bruised Ramona came through the back doorway of the King's Arm. They looked at each other, then back at him, puzzled. "Well?" he called, "What did you expect?" Rott rushed forward as Ramona tried to catch her breath. He slashed his broadsword diagonally across Delmaria, but the pirate wrapped his left arm around the small tree that he stood next to and used it to spin himself around it gleefully. By the time he made a full revolution, he caught Rott's rebounding blade again, pushing it back as he completed another half circle around the tree and then stopping there. From behind Ezekiel, Ramona began a charge forward, pushing her captain violently aside as she jumped up on to the garden on the opposite side of Delmaria. She stuck her blade out in a jab, yet missed Delmaria entirely on the wrong side of the tree, allowing Delmaria to grab her shirt and throwing her off behind him. Darkskull now found himself surrounded on both sides. In front of him, Rott stood menacingly in the dim light of the King's Arm emanating from inside, under the damp, dark sky. Behind him, Ramona gracefully gained her balance as she reorganized her battle plan, rubbing the blade of her blood-stained rapier against the side of her pants. Darkskull caught the eye of the crowds of pirates who had now become more and more interested in the fight, crowding inside the King's Arm and flooding in to the nearby alleyway. He knew that they were watching to decide which side they were to join, because like all pirates, they only stay interested in a side for so long until it starts losing. If he was secure himself, he would have to defend his honor. The silence was broken when Rott and Guerra simultaneously let out a vicious battle-cry, charging forward with their swords in hand towards the garden that Delmaria stood on top of. Darkskull threw his left arm as tight as possible around the trunk of the tree, pitting it in to his elbow and clenching his muscles around it, and made a quick turn towards Ramona, who he anticipated would reach him first. He cut her blade away as he swung by, then turned right around to Rott and repeated the same action, though his sword was harder to push back than Guerra's flimsy dueling sword. He then instantly kicked off again and returned his attention to Guerra, who attempted to thrust her blade out and stick Delmaria in his side. Delmaria was able to lift a solid foot off the ground and sidekick the blade away as he turned, then flailing his blade downward and landing a small cut on her right shoulder. She let out a little whimper and walked back, which gave Delmaria enough time to deal with Rott for a few moments. Delmaria came back around and saw that Rott was still trying to gain balance back with his incredibly heavy broadsword, tittering back and forth a little bit as he tried to plant his feet in the dirt. Delmaria bent his knees, and kicked off with both feet to send him high in to the air, bringing his cutlass over his head and coming down in a jumping slash upon the wicked man. Unfortunately his blade's tip only came within an inch of Rott's mangled white beard, but he was still able to make fierce contact with Rott's broadsword. He cut the blade straight out of the Casa de Muertos Guildmaster's hand, hitting it against the floor with a heavy thud. Rott attempted to back up as far as he could, but he was still within dangerous reach of Delmaria's golden cutlass by the time the pirate had raised his blade to the wicked man's neck. Rott froze in his tracks as the cutlass's trip brushed against his beard, and the entire crowd of Tortuga froze in silence as they waited for Darkskull's judgment. Delmaria saw it then and there - plunging his sword straight in to Rott's neck, watching as the streams of blood poured out on the ground as the remains of Jolly Roger's mockery of the islands died before him. He would have loved the rush it would have given him, but Delmaria knew that about any satisfaction was the Pirate Code, and Tortuga was not a safe place to break it. So, he stuck to chit-chat. "So you're the man who supposedly disabled one of the Caribbean's finest swordsmen? I find a least a few traces of deceit in that statement." Delmaria pushed out within a few pants of tired breath. "I may have not have won fairly, but I still won. It's not cheating if you don't get caught, mate." Rott smiled devilishly. "Seems you've been caught, though?" Delmaria smiled back. Rott's grin widened. "Not for long." From behind him, Delmaria could feel something rising against him. A chill crept up and down his back, and his shoulders tensed. He was receiving that feeling children felt when they stayed home alone for the first time, as darkness descends over their home and the ghosts come out to play. Across the courtyard, Ramona slowly ascended to her feet, in her hand a very basic flintlock pistol loaded with an equally basic bullet, though still potent enough to kill a man if you knew how to handle it right. The crowd unsettled itself in gasps of shock, and Delmaria's smile turned to a frown. "Seems you've caught yourself in a bind, Delmaria. I suggest lowering the sword." Rott quirked. Delmaria paused for a moment, before slowly lowering the sword down to his side. Darkskull just shook his head. "You've been lying to us all this time, haven't you?" "Not necessarily lying. I killed him, yes, just not in the manner you all had anticipated. The fact is that he lost, and now he is simply a ghost a few deranged pirates see on the beaches after a few too many drinks. All he remains as is a figment of all of our imaginations." "You know as much as I do that you saw him, Ezekiel." Delmaria tilted his chin up, looking down at Rott with a sense of disappointment. It reminded Ezekiel of how his father used to look at him every time he failed to complete the simplest tasks. He never was hit or beaten, but the stare itself was enough to scar him emotionally. Rott leaned in and whispered in to Delmaria's ear "Nobody's ever going to see you, Delmaria." Delmaria shook his head again. He slipped both of his hands on to Rott's shoulders, leaned in even closer, and responded with "You neither." By the time Ramona had jolted to pull the trigger on her pistol, Delmaria had already done what he needed to do. While Rott was still uncomfortably close to him, he wrapped both of his arms around the man akin to a bear hug, grabbing him as tightly as possible.. He pulled him with all of his might, trying to make up as much time as possible, and pointed his toe in to the ground, allowing him to make a quick turn. It look like he was ballroom dancing with the pirate, but it had a much more sinister meaning. The small lead bullet lodged itself in to the right arm of Ezekiel Rott, who almost immediately melted under the excruciating pain. Rott thought back to the first time his brother ever twisted his arm until he nearly cried, the first time he ever was pushed off a rock in to a bush of thorns, or the first time his brother ever managed to wrestle him to the ground. "You can do better than that, Zekie!" his brother always used to giggle at him before running away. And he would always try to run after his brother, but his brother was always faster than him. It was like every goal Rott ever tried to accomplish; the harder he ran towards it the farther away it would go. As Rott slinked to the ground, Delmaria just slowly stepped back to watch the mongrel slither on to his back, gripping at his arm in pain. Ramona hastily made her way to him as he tried desperately to roll on to his side to help himself up, dropping her pistol on the ground and making her way towards him. As she slid to the ground next to him, Delmaria called from the back doorway of the King's Arm "This is the man you rally behind? Good thing you shot him." All Ramona could do was respond with her wide variety of curses as she pulled Rott to his feet, which took a considerable amount of time considering his height over her. When he finally managed to push himself upward, he pushed her back violently with his free arm, and turned to Delmaria. "This is NOT over, you little" followed by an equally colorful vocabulary. Delmaria shrugged it off and was delighted to the cheers and claps of the pirates who surrounded the courtyard as Ramona and Rott limped down the alleyway together. Still, Delmaria noted that a few pirates mixed in to the crowd chose not to clap at all, instead staring with a dark glare at their colleagues. He could tell that some of the men and women of the port had already chosen a new flag. Regardless, he walked forward to pick up his cutlass from the ground, looking for his reflection as he always did when he looked in to it. It was still there, yet with a few cuts gracing the sides of his chin and cheeks; yet, a small price to pay. Delmaria turned in to the King's Arm, and before sitting down at a nearby table, noticed a sight from all the way across the courtyard. Dedman was slowly awakening from his daze, trying to find the bullet that had lodged itself in to his heart. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sorry this one took a little longer than the others, but I never really found any time to work on it. Well, mates, what do you think? It was a little longer than the others, but I hope you enjoyed it! Comment below, por favor! |
gives Del Stealthy's stamp of approval.
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Quote:
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* Claps * Del,why are you not an author??
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:bookishfj7:Wonderful story as always Captain Del! Waiting in anticipation for the next chapter!
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Finally!
Thank you for everybody who held on as I slowly worked on my next chapter. Times have been pretty busy lately, but hopefully I've caught a break where I can work on my story more frequently. So, without further delay, I continue with: Confessions of a "Ded Man" The initial reaction of a dead man coming alive in the streets of Tortuga was admittedly a more hectic scene than usual in the mecca that was the pirate stronghold. When Delmaria laid eyes on Jeremiah struggling to flee while still disabled on the ground, his immediate reaction was to subdue and capture him while he would still be useful. He darted across the King's Arm before anybody else realized what he was doing, pushing over debris of the skirmish and people who stood in his way. Yet by the time he had made it across the square and thrown himself on top of Jeremiah to keep him from moving, the crowd made eye contact with who was thought to have been shot down nearly instantly upon the impact of the bullet. Some gasped, some looked away, and some just stared; however, within moments, chaos erupted. As often described by any witty sailor, pirates in Tortuga are notoriously known as being some of the most superstitious in all of the Caribbean. Every wayward who shifts around between the tables of strangers is either looking for a drink to leech off of or a good tale to hear or share; often, some of the most notorious pirates in the entire Caribbean were the ones who were able to tell the best stories, even if some of them weren't true. Men were always looking for something to keep their minds rolling and alive, so one could imagine watching a man resurrect in the streets before their eyes is something not only to behold, but to study. Cheating death in Tortuga was often the norm, but coming back from it was a rare jewel that every pirate wanted to add to his trove, no matter what the cost. Within seconds a crowd of vicious piranhas had swarmed to the scene, some of the more interested and violent ones attempting to tear Delmaria right off of Dedman. They grabbed at his coat, his shirt, and even his hat (which Delmaria had managed to secure to his head by wrapping a thick black ribbon around the width of his cap tightly) to try and pry him off Dedman, but he held on tightly to the pirate who was desperately trying to breath around the large group of people. They were kicking up clouds of dirt all over the place, nearly blinding the inner circle of men who tried to get at Jeremiah. On the outside of the mass, pirates tried to push their way inward, and a few pirates even ended up with fists in their faces and knees in their stomachs. It took Delmaria a few minutes to realize that this fight over Jeremiah was not just about superstition, as it was about which side you fought for. While a group of the men who grabbed at Dedman were eager to take him prisoner, there were others with much darker intentions. They saw his ability to come back from life as though it fulfilled the scriptures, and they grabbed at him in hopes that they would lead him to a side stronger than what they were affiliated with. One woman crawled in between the legs of the pirates up to Jeremiah and spirited from him a drop of blood that was trickling down from a damaged nose, immediately rubbing it on her forehead and reciting a strange, voodoo chant of some sort before being brutally knocked over by a shift in the brawl. It was evident that just as many men would fight for freedom, some were willing to die for those who went against it. Finally, the pirates were able to whisk Jeremiah away in to the King's Arm, and there they laid guard, keeping an eye for anybody who tried to break in and liberate him. A good group of about three dozen men held themselves up inside the tavern, securing it by nailing planks back over the windows and barricading tables and chairs against both the back and front doors. A few of the more brave were instructed to stand guard at the top of the tavern on it's forward balcony, bringing with them muskets to shoot back anybody that looked like they were preparing to storm the tavern. They locked the doors behind them for good measure as well, for it's unpredictable in the Caribbean as to who may show up at your doorstep and how acrobatic they are. For two days the crew stayed held up inside the tavern, with none of them so much as even motioning near the doors. The large crowd that once had waited anxiously outside the bar, demanding that they release Dedman, had now settled down. Tortuga began to return to its usual pace, with still a small group of buccaneers keeping a heavy eye on the tavern. Yet while the surface still seemed calm, beneath it worry ran amok. Rumors began to shift through the backstreets and lower taverns, allegiances began to be made, and within the King's Arm, strain was beginning to be felt by those who remained loyal to the Brethren. 1 September 1st, 1725 The King's Arm, Tortuga, Hispaniola 12:03 PM The tavern still remained tense with speculation and drag in to the third day. Many of the soldiers who held the fort down simply sat by themselves across the room, only getting up to get a drink or perhaps spark a quick conversation with their fellow man. Some of them thought it funny to let their imaginations run rampant and conjure up a few stories or rumors surrounding Captain Rott and his companions, but they stopped when Delmaria happened to walk past them. Every time he caught them of speaking of Rott, he shot them a dark, hateful glare that would silence anybody who it met face to face. Darkskull did not take talk lightly, for he knew that words could carry over in belief, and belief could carry over in to treason. Delmaria always kept his eyes on the cellar door behind Johnny's bar, though he never actually went down there. Beneath the small trap door, Dedman had been imprisoned, and since the night he had been chained nobody even bothered going down there. Not only had he been too tired to cooperate, but he refused to speak of anything, and never even went close to the questions they asked him. The only thing he ever did was yell curses and make personal comments about whoever ventured down there, so they decided it would be best to let him sit in the dank darkness until they could figure out what they could talk to him about. If Delmaria would have had his way, Jeremiah would have been dead in the water by now; unfortunately, he knew that wouldn't serve him any good in the long run. It was that afternoon that a loud rapping at the door protruded through the tavern. Though many of the pirates became unsettled in their seats and slowly reached for their guns, Delmaria simply dismissed them, believing it was just another disgruntled drunkard looking for a few pints from his usual bar. Yet this one seemed much more persistent - instead of fading off after a few seconds, it continued for upwards of a few minutes. Delmaria stopped pacing back and forth and watching the door shake slightly under the constant beating it was receiving from the other end. From the other side, he could hear what seemed to be a very muffled yell of a single man, and so his assumptions led him back to believe it was nobody. It was only until one of his mates came through the balcony doors did he consider that it wasn't just anybody else. A scrawny young man with a dirty brown bandanna tied around his curved forehead came shambling through the doors (only opened by completing a specific knock on the door that resembled the rhythm of how McVane washed his bar glasses, which usually served as the entrance to the smugglers den that sat quietly around the corner from the tavern) and made eye contact with the captain, who was at little startled by a sign of active life. "Cap'n, the Fat'er is at tha' door." "Fat'er? What's that, some sort of pig?" Delmaria joked, to which a few of the men behind him giggled to themselves. The guardsmen rolled his eyes, saying "No s'r, no pig. I's Fat'er Molony, s'r." Delmaria grumbled. He had never been in very good standing with the priests of the Caribbean, despite being a man of faith - many turned their backs on him because of his lifestyle of piracy, and by their words "Spawns such as these are not welcome in His house!" Father Molony was no exception; the poor old man had lived in Tortuga for the large portion of his adult life, and watched as the port slowly became more and more chaotic as the years passed on. He managed to sustain one of the only churches that remained standing on Tortuga, while the rest had been burned, looted, or torn apart for the needs of ship repairs. Even at that, his church was usually empty, and the scorning old man had even taught himself to use a pistol in case he had to defend himself against somebody who tried to steal the few artifacts that remained in his home. Ironically, one of his only patrons who did his best to make a visit each time he came in to port was Delmaria, who would often sit in the back pews as he lectured his sermons to the small group of old Spanish women who sparsely populated the front rows. Molony would always turn Darkskull away as he figured he would only draw ruckus from the pirates who loitered nearby, and from their faiths the two had derived a fierce feud against one another. Though, as much as Delmaria wanted to turn him away as he always did to him, he knew doing such a thing would be disrespectful to the men of faith beside him - so, reluctantly, he ordered Molony inside. The old Irish man hobbled over the piles of boxes and chairs as the door was quickly opened and shut behind him. His long black robe swayed back and forth as he struggled to walk, his age and frail structure finally getting the best of him after his seventy-five years of his "God blessed" years on earth. His thinning, frizzled grey beard that hung slightly off his chin swayed back and forth a little as he came forward, directed by his old, lackluster eyes. His green eyes had the bewildered look every elderly person gains at a certain age, though they were still able to fix on Delmaria. He breathed in with a huff, and let out a raspy yet still emotionally stereotypical Irish accent. "Damn heathen, what in the name of our savior do you think you're doing!? Chaining a poor man in such rancid conditions!" "I'd ask you the same question, considering you've so politely intruded in to our business. You're lucky you weren't shot on the way here." Delmaria looked down on the short old man, who was small in comparison to the five-foot-eleven Delmaria. Molony breathed in a little raspily as he looked around the room at all the men who were staring at him. He then turned back to Delmaria, and pointed a bony finger in to his chest. "You think this way because you are not one with God! He protects me!" "I don't care how many essences you've been smelling lately Father, you shouldn't be here. This is not your place." Delmaria shook his head. As much as he had a feud with Molony, he was not ready to watch a priest be killed in the mean streets of the city he devoted his life to cleansing. "No, this is my place!" Molony scoffed, turning away from the pirate and beginning to walk towards McVane, who was nonchalantly drinking from one of his own bottles behind the counter. "My son, surely you can direct me to where they are keeping that poor man hostage. Your soul must not be corrupted by them!" the friar shouted, throwing his arm back to the rest of the room. The crowd of pirates said nothing, as the majority of them relied on faith to keep them through long voyages. Delmaria, however, stormed over to the bar in protest. "God dammit, this isn't your place you old hag!" The priest gasped, turning to Delmaria as he tried to dig in to the deep side pockets of his robe. He pulled out a small set of rosary beads, gripped it by the small cross that hung from the beads, and waved it in front of Delmaria. "Scum, speak not of your Father lest you wish to be damned yourself!" Delmaria huffed, swiping the rosary beads viciously out of the old man's hands and wrapping them in his own hands, to make sure they didn't fall out. "I've been damned for twenty years and the devil hasn't caught me yet. You're not going to stop me." Delmaria turned about and walked straight before the landslide of rift-raft that blockaded the doors to the tavern. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you leave." Molony hobbled over, trying desperately to keep up with the captain. "Youre wrong with that! The devil may not have killed you, but his demons reside within you!" Molony pointed another bony finger in to the pirate's chest. Perhaps the priest was correct, Delmaria thought to himself. He may not be dead, but he often caught himself thinking that he either should be, or wanted to be. All of the spoils and victories in his life were just dust covering the larger painting of his life, which played out a romantic depiction of the deaths and tragedies that he had witnessed before him. Whether the work of demons, or the work of his own doings, it was and would remain a mystery to him until he stood before the scales. As Molony turned around in rebellion and began heading back towards the bar, Delmaria tucked the rosaries in to his pocket, and chased after the old friar. If there was one thing that Molony was, it was persistent. When reached the bar, he slammed his hands down on top and turned back to the rest of the tavern. Please, children of God, do you not see this injustice!? Every man must be introduced to faith! he shouted at the top of his old, dusted lungs. Before Delmaria could turn away, however, he caught eye of a shift in the tavern. He was the men beginning to shift where they sat and rub their necks uncomfortably. They bit their lips to prevent themselves from saying anything, though they wanted to say much more than would be healthy for them if Delmaria could reach them with a few seconds of their lives. Darkskull knew that the last thing he wanted was the tavern to turn on him, because many of the men in the bar still turned to faith daily, whether on the seas for protection or just to make them through a rough night they would turn their backs on him before they turned their backs on God. Fine. Delmaria sighed loudly, breaking the composure of the tavern. Many of them sat up from their slouches and tilted their hats up in bewilderment as they watched the disgruntled pirate slide over the counter of the Kings Arm, on to the patch of floor that sat just before an old, rusty trap door that sat next to him. It was a large, heavy piece of oak looking as though it had been thrown down on the floor and left to wade under time but beneath it, something much more sinister laid. Delmaria reached down and grasped a firm hand around the iron rung that sat on top of the door, heaving it upward and letting a gust of stale, dusty wind come up from the basement. He pointed to five pirates closest to the bar consecutively, and then to Johnny, and finally Molony. He wanted them all to come. 2 The motley crew descended in to what looked like a black hole in the middle of the floor, in to a deep, perpetual darkness that seemed to keep them from seeing more than 3 feet in front of their face, like a black fog. Luckily Delmaria grabbed a hold of a small lantern that sat on the counter of the bar, and lit it as he descended down the narrow would stairs ahead the rest of the group. It illuminated the dank, creepy holding area; a room of complete cobblestone acting as a small winery, with two extremely large winery canisters for holding larger qualities of alcohol sitting side by side, which covered nearly the entire width of the room on their halve. Opposite, boxes, chairs, tables, brooms, and other not-so-necessary necessities were thrown lazily on top of one another, as though somebody felt like setting a bonfire but only got so close as to creative the mound of wooden junk. Cobwebs ran littered across the floor, and a few rats scampered across the floor to head in to hiding behind the barrels and crates. Molony clenched his hand over his noise as the putrid smell of spilt and mixed alcohol fumes ran up his nose, and Johnny behind him winched painfully in remorse as though he did not want the priest to feel uncomfortable. The five pirates in front of them clutched their muskets tightly as one by one of them made eye contact with the devil that sat in the room. Delmaria simply walked in to the middle of the room and stared a cold, hard stare down at the man before him. Jeremiah looked as though he had run through a battleground. His coat dusted and torn in patches, it was thrown dolorously off to sit at the bends of his elbows, tucked beneath the blood-stained clothes that ruffled on his body. His face was a mess, beaten and bruised in all sorts of places after hours of interrogation from the pirates, but the stonewall had refused to talk. He was now chained by the chest to the farthest of the two canisters, sitting with no manner in his face, and slowly drifting off to sleep. Get the hell up. Delmaria kicked Jeremiah in the leg, jolting the man to an abrupt awakening. His head hit back against the wood of the container, leaving a throbbing pain in his bald head. Oh God, leave him be! Molony shook as he pushed the pirate guards aside. He ran in the general direction of Dedman, but before he could reach him Delmaria quickly reached out an arm and whipped the man back. Oh Christ, I know youre a missionary, but you arent blind! Delmaria skimmed him back over to the rest of the men, who caught him and held him back. You said you wanted to see him, not perform miracles. Shut your mouth and let me talk before we throw you back upstairs. Tempered, arent we? Dedmans dry, twisted voice croaked from the floor. Damn right I am, now shut your mouth. Delmaria gruffed. Have you been having fun down here, staring in to the shadows? Jeremiah shrugged as much as his sore shoulders allowed. Its tiring when all you have to talk to is the rats. Nice job of cleaning, by the way, Johnny. Dedman smiled over to McVane. Oh dont baby yourself. I did this for ten days without a single mention of contact. Delmaria lectured proudly. Sounds more like you pity yourself than anybody else here, Darkskull. Delmaria shrugged the comment off. You know, this could all be over if you simply told us where Rott was. You would make all of us a lot happier, and we could all go our merry ways. Oh obviously not. I know your game, Delmaria you would have me rat out my captain and then shoot me on the spot. Dont think I havent seen or heard of what youve done in the past. The only reason Ive ever shot men like that in the past is because they either begged for it, or it was because they pestered me to the point I simply needed satisfaction of killing them. Ah, so thats why you killed your son? For satisfaction? Delmarias heart stopped. Normally when he spoke or argued he gathered a pace of motion, and he was only interrupted in that pace when he was offset. In the second in which his pattern broke, and he froze, he built up enough rage to kick his foot square in to Dedmans nose, sending a spout of blood straight down his nasal canal, and sandwiching the back of his head on to the front of the canister. Delmaria stepped back, and watched as Jeremiah moaned and groaned under his pain. He didnt say anything yet he wanted Jeremiah to seep up all the pain of the moment before he said anything. When Jeremiah finally calmed down, he continued. You truly do enjoy being a loser, dont you? Dedman sniffed his nose, sending a drop of blood that dangled from his nostril back in to hiding, and moaned behind a muffled, dying voice Only because you like seeing me as one. Im selling your freedom at this point. Either you accept my offer or we leave you here to be eaten by the rats. Jeremiah look around the room in a daze, as if he looked for somebody to back him up, and continued. I have nothing to lose by dying here. The rats wont eat their own, either. He cackled in between shallow gasps for air. Delmaria had had enough. He turned about and began walking by, but as he did Molony wrestled free of the pirate guards and broke away from their grip, shambling over to Jeremiah. He knelt down next to the cursed pirate, and Delmaria, in shock, turned about as he reached for his gun. Molony pleaded with Dedman. Oh my son, how you have been turned from your course! Can you not see the light and turn towards your savior, Jesus Christ!? Jeremiah nodded his head no, a disgusting, predatory smile coming over his face. Delmaria knew he had to step in, and nearly lunged forward as he reached for his gun as Molony continued. Why not, my son? Molony gasped, caught in awe as he gazed in to the mans eyes. Dedman stopped tilting his head and instead turned straight in the direction of Molony. His eyes were lit ablaze with a deep, sickening fire, and his smile was mired by that of a lost child. Your God is not here, Father. Before Dedman could slip his hand out of the chains and grip Molony by the neck, Delmaria grabbed the priest from behind and threw him backward in to the hands of the guards. His pistol went straight in to Dedmans face, and he stomped his foot down on the pirates hand to keep him from taking it anywhere. For a brief moment, the two made eye contact and in that time, Delmaria could see Dedmans smile light up even brighter. He knew that if he let him die, death was in what he could find happiness. He cut short the second-long decision to fire his pistol, and instead hit the barrel of the gun against the nozzle that controlled the release of the alcohol just above Dedmans head. A deep red wine came pouring out, drowning Dedman as he gasped and fought for air. Darkskull turned around, ushering the men quickly out of the basement as a pain-stricken Molony cried in grief. And as Delmaria descended up the stairs, he could hear Dedman shout something. It was all gurgled, except for one word; the word Spectacular. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well mates, what do you think? Please be sure to rate and comment below! Thanks mates! |
Del,you always keep us guessing.
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Although my original intention was to have this and the next chapter be one GIANT cluster of story, I decided against it due to the overwhelming size of the second half. So, I present to you all:
Influence with Death The crickets of Tortuga played a quirky sonnet from unseen bandstands of the streets as the sky grew darker and darker over Tortuga. Above, it was a thick, heavy night - but below, the town had returned to its normal pace. The lights of the squares, shops and taverns lit up the night in a yellowish bar light from all corners, warm and engulfing. The fire flies flew about like wry sparks of fire blown off course, swishing in circles in to the air above in light groups. It had become a fiery, passionate place once more, home to the liveliness and chaos that had made it so infamous across corners of the world. They danced and sang in spur-of-the-moment quartets dazed in alcohol and pipery, tipping in and out of the fountain of the main square. The local mistresses in their dirtied and oversized dresses flirted under the balconies with men who seemed far enough from sober to spend their money on a few services, or at least so much so to call them pretty behind their layers of ratty make-up and perfume. The celebratory mood had spread to all corners of Tortuga once more, except at its very heart. Father Molony stayed in the tavern the night after his minor stroke and then was brought back to Doctor Grogan, the local surgeon who couldn't even manage to hold a needle correctly, where he would be nursed back to health. The mood in the tavern, however, still remained awkwardly uncomfortable, many of them still offset by how Dedman had acted the night he had attacked the clergyman. They had created a small pile of rift raft over the door to the basement just for good measure, in the event he would have been able to slip out of his chains any further; this, in turn, kept anybody from turning the faucet over his head off. After the basement had gone eerily quiet, one of the guards was reluctantly sent downstairs two days after the incident to find Jeremiah a cool, pale blue color, his body reeking of dirtied wine and his clothing drenched to a deep red. The tap to the massive canister ran dry, causing it to create a small flood of wine two inches high off the ground of the entire basement. Normally to any pirate this would be a dream, but to Dedman it was a nightmare - cobwebs, dirt, splinters, and rat drops floated across the surface of the water and created a lethally-nauseous mixture, and coupled with the stillness of the wine and lack of a source of heat it provided Dedman with the unfortunate condition of catching a bad case of pneumonia. Because of this, Dedman was drawn up in to the surface of the tavern, every gun and sword pointed right at his chest as they dragged him up the steps by the chains that they had wrapped tightly around his chest. By the time he had reached ground-level and had been paraded to the middle of the room, a few drops of dark-red ran over his moldy skin. Many of the men were quick to suggest killing or dismembering the man right before them, but this was before they saw a major development in their case; Jeremiah Dedman began to plead for his life. It was a truly sad sight, really. His tears were almost painful against his skin, but he cried nonetheless, begging to the pirates for some sort of treatment. The pain and hunger had finally overcome the rabid beast, and now he had crawled his way to the feet of the pirate crew, asking for help under the condition that he would tell them anything they wanted. Seeing a gate to freedom, the crew quickly confronted Delmaria, and after much hesitation and persuasion, he agreed, calling forth Doctor Grogan to make a special house call. Doctor Grogan's initial survey not promising, however, despite how many the pirates had paid him out of their own pockets to come. It was likely according to him, that Dedman "Would live up to his name over night.", though this was unfortunately for the good doctor an answer the crew refused to accept. Doctor Grogan spent the next few days in the tavern as well, working and monitoring Jeremiah constantly to ensure his survival as groups of pirates ferried back and forth between his Offices to retrieve any supplies he needed. And over the course of these next few days, Delmaria worked in the background to ensure that he could keep as much information in his den of knowledge as possible. A simple message was written down over dozens of sheets of parchment and passed hung in every tavern, inn, shipyard, and other places of major sociality: "Captains and Privateers Loyal to the Brethren NEEDED." And over the next few days, groups of inquiring pirates were sent all over Tortuga in an elaborate game of espionage, meeting in a different location every day to come together for the common purpose of hunting the head of any members of the Casa de Muertos guild. Every building was searched, every stone unturned, but little to no information was found. Still, that information which was found, or what information had already existed, was written down and sent directly to the temporary desk of Delmaria Darkskull, stationed and commissioned in solace in the King's Arm Tavern. 1 September 6th, 1725 The King's Arm, Tortuga, Hispaniola 8:40 PM Delmaria's room was encased in a blue darkness, not even a single candle lit to aid his eyesight - the lights from outside pouring out of his window were enough - as he continued to meticulously scan through paper after paper. Dozens of pieces of parchment littered his desk, many of them either unread or triple checked, sitting right before the small window that still peered out in to the festivities of the main square. It was his own somber corner of the world, the only noise being the murmured shouts and cat calls below in the square. He both enjoyed his own isolation, and loathed it. The papers that crinkled in his hands were nearly useless to his cause. The majority of the papers that had been brought to him seemed to have little to no connection with the topic at hand, whether just random scribbling down on a piece of paper by a pirate desperate for money, to records of taxes and bills, and some were even the notices he had handed out returned to him. The lack of leads became more and more frustrating as time dragged on, and Jeremiah's poor condition still refrained him from speaking well. Looking out in the square, Delmaria realized that his frustration was coming from his inability to find anything intertwined between the random fractions of paper down on his desk. Every moment was like Rott was slipping outside of his grasp, and every moment from there would thusly further and further distance himself from ridding the nuisance of his life. He didn't need Rott in his life, nor had he come in by himself; at this point stopping him had both become an activity, an obsession, and a dread. As he looked down back in the square again as he shifted the paper underneath his hand aside, he caught a glimpse of something out of place. He couldn't even see it before he noticed it, it was simply one of those changes that offset the atmosphere. He scanned his eyes over every little spot he could see, eventually standing up and leaning in to the window to see what he was trying to find, until he finally saw it - a small, black gaucho cutting through the crowd, towards the King's Arm. With a quick motion Delmaria was away from the table and threw the door to his room open, strutting down the small hallway and on to the walkway that led to the doors of the balcony. The guards had little time to react as they had been caught in a lazy daze, but seeing Delmaria they almost instantly clambered to their feet and did their best to open the door before he could reach it. By the time he stood before the door, they had loosened the boards enough to allow Delmaria to give it a stern push and swing it open. Walking out on to the balcony was perhaps one of the first real breaths of fresh air Delmaria had received in roughly a week. The crispness of the night was a cool hand that caressed his unshaven, hardened skin, making him relax for just a moment under its embracing touch. It seemed that even the loud bang of the door and the guards on the balcony pointing their muskets down intimidating wasn't enough to break the mood outside in the square, but Delmaria was happy of that; it was good to be a part of the outside world again. He walked up to the edge of the balcony, in between his two guards, and down below there stood the little body of Ramona, looking up to the pirate with a certain silliness. "If you're here for Dedman, you're not getting him." Delmaria barked downward. "I'm not here to bargain, Delmaria, I'm here to make a proposition." she shouted back over the roar of Tortuga. Delmaria leaned arrogantly over the railing. "And what would that be?" "You give me Dedman -- and I'll give you Ezekiel." Delmaria straightened himself slowly as he took in to account what she had just said. The single break in his case was sitting before him, but he knew he would have to take it slowly if he didn't want to compromise everything. He turned to the guard at his left and nodded, signaling to have them open the doors below. Delmaria watched Ramona for a few more moments, staring down at the top of her black hat as he waited for her to quickly enter the opening in the tavern. The way she walked had a certain step to it that made you want to observe, to watch and learn about every little quirk and kink in her system to understand what made her tick. She tilted slightly back and forth whenever she tried to stand still, and her eye even twitched a little if you stared at her for long enough. She was crazy, psychotic even, but at the same time he could not help but fester a growing interest is what made her who she was - just as his case with Rott. As she stepped in to the tavern, disappearing underneath the balcony, Delmaria turned about and made his way back in to the tavern, an almost solemn reminder that he was not entirely free of his bonds just yet. He turned around the rail looking down in to the tavern, and just as he reached the steps he watched with a certain degree of amusement as Ramona ran forward to where the Doctor worked furiously on Jeremiah, only to have herself pushed back by a few of the men who stood behind him. "Let me see him! LET ME SEE HIM DAMMIT!" she shouted, trying to look over their shoulders to Jeremiah. "Dedman, Dedman can you hear me?!" "He's trying to rest you bumbling idiot." Delmaria called as he hit the final step, continuing to walk towards her. "If you stopped shouting at him he may just say something in return." He had that smile on his face that made him look as though he was mocking her - because he was. "Listen to me, you better not have done anything to him!" she shook a finger at him, before pointing another finger in his direction. "Ah, so you're just going to ignore everything you all have done in the past? I'm simply returning the favor." Delmaria rocked back and forth on his toes. "If you touch him again, then I'll have no business here, Darkskull." she growled, twitching an eye in Jeremiah's direction to make a quick check on him. Delmaria stepped in Doctor Grogan's direction, walking around to the back of the table. "Do not worry, I'm sure the good doctor here will do everything in his power to ensure your friend's quick recovery. However...." Delmaria stopped, tapping his foot on the ground and turning dramatically to Ramona. "I can make no promises." Guerra gritted her teeth as she fought back the urge to say something vicious and life-threatening. "Rott wants to make a deal with you, Delmaria." "Ooh, I've been waiting to hear that." Delmaria walked over to the table next to him and leaned on top of it. "I'm listening." "He believes it would be beneficial to both of us if we settled our differences for a few moments and met in a civilized meeting between both sides. Such a standstill in his eyes is obstructive to any sort of development." "Sure. If you're going to burn the Caribbean to the ground why wait?" Ramona rolled her eyes and continued. "If you agree to bring Jeremiah with you so we can make a trade, he'll be glad to discuss anything you want." "Oh, so you're telling me I won't be receiving Rott as a sacrifice? In this case I find this trade disagreeable and hereby refute it." Delmaria waved his hand, checking his nails as they flew by. "Your end of the trade comes in the form of information, Delmaria. Rott could sit in a cave all day and you'd never get an opportunity like the one you have now." "I'd get much more pleasure out of Ezekiel sitting in the middle of a cave than having to see him face to face." Ramona grumbled to herself. "I have better things to do than to sit around here and waste my time with you. If you would just be reasonable!" she shook her fist in his direction, agitated by his refusal to cooperate. Delmaria simply pointed to the door with a smile on his face. "I couldn't care less if you left. Hell, go, run, fly! I assure you I wouldn't lose an ounce of sleep over the thought you couldn't give me a better reason to keep Jeremiah here alive." "FINE, dammit." Ramona stomped her feet on the ground towards Delmaria, but he rounded the table just in time to keep her from reaching Jeremiah. She stopped right before him and stared him down right in to the eyes, and he saw in them less a look of rage, and more concern, as though she was trying to tell him something that she couldn't tell him directly. She whispered lightly so only he could hear what she said; "If you don't do as Rott says he's going to become unreasonable as well. He's ready to set this whole god damn town on fire, and he has all that he needs to do it. This time he means it, you idiot." Perhaps she was right. As much as Delmaria wanted to deny Rott's position as a threat, he knew that ignoring it would only dellusionize his perspective, which was an impossible proposition for somebody in his place. He turned his head around and rubbed his hand against his forehead, wiping a few drops of sweat that had accumulated because of the head of all the candles on his forehead. "Where shall we meet?" "Neutral ground. We won't bring you to the caves but you won't bring us to the docks." she slipped a small piece of paper in to Delmaria's front left pocket on his dirtied, unwashed longcoat. "Bring Jeremiah." Delmaria peered back in to her cold, unruly eyes. "Bring Ezekiel." |
Cliffhangers.
-cue dramatic music- |
Through the Vines Deviating from a norm is even more of an extreme circumstance when we try to return to it. Though not necessarily every regular life is at a normal, sometimes living in a norm other's may consider itself is deviation. In such a time of reflection and thought it is hard to image that the pace would change, but once it does, no matter how large of a buildup, the impact is sudden and sharp; a fierce return to reality. It leaves you almost in a daze, caught in a midway between fantasy and reality where the world is no longer physical, like an outer body experience in respect to the rest of the universe. And the world will rotate around you menacingly, not saying a word but still intimidating you as it spins on it's off-kilter track, deviously waiting to pounce and consume you the moment you attempt to step back on to it's train. It is a moment of limbo in the light; a spark of nirvana in the darkness. And you never want to leave, but you loathe being in it, as well. It was odd watching the King's Arm being as lively as it was. The moment after Ramona ran off preparations had begun - tables and chairs were being returned to their normal place, soldiers running about to scavenge up supplies, boxes, barrels, and other rift-raft being pulled away from the barricade behind the main door, and even the good Doctor was packing his things with the help of a few men in to a box. At the same time a few of the crew had pulled up from the basement of the tavern a wooden wheel-barrow, which they intended to use to carry Jeremiah around in on their journey, him still being too weak to support himself. He could speak faintly, though, and this is why he cursed in pain every time somebody would pick him up, fix him around, or all of that, almost as if he was begging to be dropped on the floor. Johnny was busy tiding the bottles on his shelves and wiping down the bar, and even Father Molony, barely a week after his stroke, was fixing himself and preparing to come along for the journey, as much as Johnny and some of the other men tried to talk him out of it. And Delmaria just stood there, watching in awe. It was a hard thought to escape the barricades in Delmaria's mind that they were actually preparing to make a move, and even more so that his entire minute-man militia was doing this without having to be directed or told. Such enthusiasm had not been seen from them in weeks, their loyalty overcoming the best of them. It was a true pleasure to Delmaria to see this going on, because he knew that he had done his job well; a good captain is one whose crew does not rely on for direction. Still, he felt as though he was caught in the middle of things, and found it best to just back up the stairs and in to his office to clear up his things, leaving behind the rest of the tavern. It was eerie how such a small wooden door had the ability to muffle the entire sound of the bustling room behind him. The light from the clear, bright day outside illuminate his small corner of the world, much brighter than he had been seeing it; in the day he had preferred to walk around the bar, and at night he hardly ever lit any candles. It was a warm, fulfilling feeling to see the clutter of papers on the floor, the discarded bottles and foodstuffs, and marks of rage against the wall in full detail. He sighed and walked over to his bed, where there sat some of his essentials which required to be found. Delmaria was both an extravagant and simple traveler. Most of the things he ever needed were kept on his person at all times, whether tied to his body with his assortment of belts and clothes, or tucked in to the recesses of his many pockets and hidden compartments. For the first time in perhaps a few months, he had been walking around the tavern with a lack of either his heavy, black long coat, nor his gold-topped feathered hat upon his head. He picked up his ostrich hat with an odd notice of mystery, spinning it around in his hand and observing it. It was a custom for warriors to add a feather to his or her hat every time they slayed an enemy, yet Delmaria still only kept one in his cap - he could only imagine what it was supposed to look like. As he turned his wide-brow back on to his head and lugged his magnificent coat on to his shoulders, he patted himself down for anything he seemed to be missing. He felt two pistols, three daggers, two belts, a package of gunpowder, the small, crinkled coordinates tucked in to the pocket over his heart, and all that he lacked was his most valuable piece of weaponry. He turned about the room, looking and hunting for his cutlass, yet it escaped his gaze. He assumed that a sword with a gold-colored blade would be easy to pick out, but obviously not this time. Even in such a small room it would refuse to be found, as Delmaria walked around his room looking for it. A misfortunate placement of his foot on top of a puddle of ink caused Delmaria's large black boot to curve right out from under him, kicking up and sending him down to the floor in an anti-climatic tumble. His backside hit the floor with a mellow, painful thud, before he laid back down with the force of the fall and just rested there for a moment. He almost wanted to laugh a little bit, taking humor in his own failure, nut as he tried to sit himself up he caught eye of a glisten right beneath his bed. Right beneath his bed sat a long, metal blade, to which he smiled when he made contact with. He grabbed the sword by the hilt without any hesitation and examined it in his lap, checking for any scratches of bruises to its surface. He had finally learned how to control the powers of the blade, though it was more of a weakening of its supernatural powers than it was him becoming its master. He could touch the blade without a need for a rag or linen, because he rarely found it transforming him at any moment when he wielded it. Once night, when he had attempted to practice with it, he found that it refused to do anything out of the ordinary until he finally built up enough energy in to it, and only then did it last for only about twenty seconds before fading back off in to its usual state. Becoming an aura had even lost its spark of pain, coming as just a natural wash of unevenness. It was peculiar, but Delmaria appreciated it's submissiveness by now; he would rather have a predictable blade than one mad with power. He tucked the sword back within the recesses of his belt, double-checked his body one final time, and stepped back out in to the hallway, closing the door to his room for the final time in what he hoped would be a long time. Walking back down the stairs to the tavern he noticed that everything had become hushed - the rush of the crowd had stopped, the roar had muffled down to a stiff silence. The men and women of the pirate army had finished packing up their belongings and necessities, and now that this routine was complete they finally looked for security and direction in their captain, who was equally hummed and mystified. No matter how great the crew, without one who will be there to guide them, they would only be as unified as the bitterest rivalry among them - yet at the same time, no matter how great the captain, without an equally matched crew he is equally as useless. Two sides of the same coin now waiting to be joined, and neither of them knew who would go forward first. Though, it was evident that this ultimately came down under the jurisdiction of Delmaria. He reached in to his coat and pulled out the crinkled piece of paper that Ramona had slipped to him, the scent of her dark, purple perfume still lingering on its edges. Descending down the staircase his foremost crew members took their hats off and rested them against their chest, a formality that he despised. When he found himself in service of the French, Porc demanded that his 'inferiors' (in retrospect, everybody) remove their hats, a practice which Delmaria himself found extremely degrading. He glared at them until they put their hats back on their heads, and he rolled his eyes at the giggle of one of his veteran pirates, who knew that he despised such a motion. He unraveled the paper and began walking around in a waverly way to show his focus on the paper, before turning up and explaining their destination to the crew. Rott and his allies had commandeered an area out in the far reaches of Tortuga known as Raphael's Vineyard, a place known only to the long-time citizens of Tortuga, and avid wine collectors. Hidden far enough in to the island to not be known by anybody who did not intend to do any serious journeying, where one would expect to find a large jungle in a large expanse of flat land in between an expanse of foothills instead found to their surprise an extremely wide and far vineyard, rows of grapes extending farther than one could ever expect. To those who have ever been to the place, they describe it as though they are not on Tortuga at all, as a mixture between fantasy, mystery, and horror. The journey would take roughly two to three days, and Delmaria made it clear they were "in no rush" as he smile deviously in concern to Dedman's deteriorating condition. What concerned Delmaria most for the time being was not Rott, nor keeping Jeremiah alive, but instead their journey towards the vineyard. Knowing Rott, it could only be a scheme against their lives, the second them stepping out of the tavern their caravan being ambushed in the streets of Tortuga. That, or the people of Tortuga would turn against them out of sacrifice in honor of Dedman or Rott, leading to a massacre right in the middle of the town. It unfolded in Delmaria's mind; first one man would run at them only before being shot down right where he stood, resulting in a wave of angered civilians that would overrun them like a mad pack of deranged wolves. Delmaria made it clear to all of the soldiers that they were to keep their muskets as tight to their chests as possible, and not be afraid to shoot any person that step too close in to their path, to which they all reluctantly accepted. Though Delmaria had overcompensated in thought. As they stepped out of the tavern, the entire crew assembled in to one giant cluster around Jeremiah, not many in the square seemed to even turn their head. To the Tortugans, what pertained to them was only what was current; currently, the hot topic of discussion was of a captain who had somehow managed to crash his ship in to the far side of Devil's Anvil in broad daylight, killing his entire crew in one foul swoop. Delmaria had done a good job at making the Caribbean lose interest in Jeremiah, because that was precisely what had happened - it had passed, and they had stopped caring. The militia made their way out through the back gates of Tortuga without so much a flicker of concern. They pushed themselves along the main dirt road that cut out from the town, growing narrower and more hidden as they progressed, and the sounds and sights of Tortuga drifted off in the back distance. They were once again alone in their own journey. And loneliness is what their journey was. For hours on end they trekked through the jungles of Tortuga, their minds set on their single destination of the vineyard. From Tortuga the jungles progressively became more and more narrow, the tree tops becoming denser overhead and the tree trunks and roots cutting over their paths. They would have to cut through the foothills if they wanted to reach the vineyard, which was something Delmaria would not look forward to considering they would have to haul their men, their equipment, Jeremiah, and the half-handicapped Father Molony, who seemed surprisingly youthful as he tried to keep at the head of the pack. The men of the group would continuously give Molony their shares of water and food, to which Delmaria gave them a stern eye in return; he felt that it was unfair that just because a friar had joined them, on his own accord, that he should get special treatment over the rest of his crew. He wasn't going to say anything, though - not yet. A major concern of Delmaria's was if his crew would be safe along the road, especially at night. Raphael's Vineyard was abandoned due to large groups of looters and gangsters that would sit along the outskirts of the road, waiting for a caravan of fresh wine to pass along at night so they could swoop in to kill off it's passengers. Of course Delmaria would have numbers on his side, but he knew that his entire bargain with Rott relied on Jeremiah's survival until they at least reached the vineyard. And then, of course, there was the possibility that Rott himself would try to compromise their mission. For all he knew, the Casa de Muertos would simply wait for them along the trail, picking off their crew in the wilderness and leaving them to die and decompose. The crew received minimal sleep, only just enough to keep them on their feet. Delmaria himself did not sleep at all, continuously scanning the jungle, waiting. He knew Rott was out there, waiting, too. It was by the dusk of the second day that Delmaria's convoy finally reached their destination. A warm, scarlet blanket was slowly being pulled back over the horizon to reveal a bright, shining blue sky hidden behind the tree tops of the forest. The air was clear and fresh, not a single drop of humidity as the crew of early birds skidding gingerly down the side of the hill they had camped on that night. They had reached the end of the foothills, now making a swift descent down the side of the cap, densely covered in greenery. It was a surprise to not only Delmaria, but his crew when they stepped out in to the bright sunlight - and there, before them, was their destination. Across a very short opening of land, a small curved patch of sand and dirt before it's landscape, the wide vineyard unfolded right in front of them, it's row's perpendicular before them and neat enough to allow them to see straight down the long, long aisles of the farm. The earth curved slightly downward as the tall grape vines progressed, and then steadily curved up in the far distance until it met the forest again, which surrounded it on all sides. The vineyard had to have been at least half a mile long down it's aisles, and three fourths of a mile across, confined only by the trees that loomed directly at it's borders. While the crew admired the tall grape plants, Delmaria was far more interested in the image off in the background; or, moreover, the lack of a background. Though the vineyard was tall, wide and plentiful, and the forest's border was great and surrounding, there was no noticeable sign of humanity hidden anywhere over the background. But he knew that something was out there. As he stepped down towards the vineyard he heard the yell and scream of a few shouts come out before him, and he tilted his head up to see some of his pirates surrounded over a single point in the ground as more of them ran forward to aid in their struggle. He could see in the patches of space between them that they were fighting to subdue something, and as he drew closer he saw them leaning over a man, trying to pick him up and cut his throat. Delmaria stepped forward and pushed the pirates aside, dropping the man down to the ground. He was a tall, scrawny man with a ratty looking face, draped in brown, red and purple linens washed out of their original color. He coughed roughly as he gripped his unshaven neck, which had a small cut where one of his pirates had attempted to slit his throat. Delmaria took his boot and planted it square on the man's chest, pushing down with his weight as he demanded "Do you work for Rott?" He tried to cough out "I work for no man," but he was cut off half sentence as Delmaria gave a jolt of his pressure. "Do you work for Rott, or not?" Delmaria demanded again. The man patted his hand on his chest in a swerving motion, like he was trying to rub out the pain. "YES, I work for him!" he cried out as he tried to make his chest more comfortable. Delmaria let his foot off the man's chest as he patted a patch of dirt off of his boot. "So what did he send you for? To try and stop us?" The man shook his head, closing his eyes and rubbing his neck again in pain. "He wants me to take you too 'em!" 1 September 8th, 1725 Raphael's Vineyard, Tortuga 6:45 PM It seemed as though they were walking through an illusion as they continued down the long aisles of the vineyard, the tall bushes lined at their sides and the the wide, expansive skies panning over their heads. The stars started to poke through the orange-pink hue of the twilight as the dark blue began to seep in to the sky like an ink. The sky reminded Delmaria of when he would sit out on the hills overlooking his hometown every spring evening with the old, wrinkled books his father would bring home to him and sit there, under the lights, wishing he too could bottle up the beauty that lingered over him. The twilight was perhaps his favorite moment of the day because he found in it the past, the present, and the future; the closing of an old day, but just before the brink of the new. It was bleak, but it was hopeful. Rott's henchman would only allow Delmaria to come with him, but under the generality of force he was persuaded to allow Delmaria to bring two body guards with him. The man also stated how Ezekiel wanted Jeremiah to be brought along, but Delmaria saw that as unnecessary; bringing the ransom in to enemy territory would only lead to his own demise. Instead the stonewall was being lead down the lanes of grapevines, which expanded down a distance much farther than he had anticipated. To keep himself entertained he would pick out a few of the grapes along the way, plump and still unwashed, and toss them in to his mouth. They weren't as strong tasting as Delmaria would have liked, but he figured that was the price of eating fruit from a patch years unkempt and left to the mercy of the seasons. The only thing Delmaria was concerned about, however, was Rott. He almost shook in anger at the thought of having to speak with him, but it would have to be done unless things were to be taken out of hand. It was either torture himself with a conversation or torture thousands of others through a war in the Caribbean; he could easily go without either, but it was evident which one he felt he should choose. He only hoped that Rott would be open-minded, because Delmaria was not prepared to be walked over - and when two walls collide, the result is often disastrous. "How much farther until we reach him?" Delmaria persisted, trying to look over the guide's shoulder to find a hint of humanity. He could see some lights at the end of the aisle off in the distance, but he wasn't to be too sure. "Them." The guide corrected, continuing without a followup. "Them? Who is 'Them?'" Delmaria harked, but the guide didn't say anything further, instead focusing on moving forward to the end of the grapevines. Delmaria could feel his muscles tense, and he found security in letting his hand slip to the hilt of his cutlass. The change in atmosphere was almost palpable as Delmaria's boots stepped from the crinkled, dried grass on to a hard patch of dirt, the grapevines cutting off just at his side. Before him sat a small clearing of blank dirt, surrounded by the ends of a few other sections of grapes that cut in to the forest later than his. It was littered by tables, chairs, bowls, and crates, and directly twenty feet from where he stood, the flaps to a small, enclosed tent sat, akin to a general's camp right before they plunged in to battle. Delmaria was horrified, however, by who surrounded him. Laying and walking about the camp had to have been at least seventy pirates, both male and female, dressed just as ratty and dirty as the guide who had brought him here, which was a far larger number than the some-odd seven men who consisted of the Casa de Muertos Guild. They all had devilishness looks on their face, as if they were eager to jump and kill at one another if it meant they would be able to rise through the ranks. They seemed to be underfed, and there were scares across the entirety of their bodies. The worst part, however, was that they all seemed like chillingly memorable faces to Delmaria, like he had seen them every day of his life, but never known their names; waywards from bars, revelers in the streets, and just average layabouts now turned against him, ever though they had never met. Delmaria slowly trudged forward, towards the tent, as he felt the legions of eyes turn on him. The murmurs became silent whispers changed in between the groups of pirates, staring down ominously at Darkskull. He kept his posture upright and firm, not giving them any sort of idea of weakness. As far as they were concerned, he could care less of their presence, though in his mind they did. He proceeded through the small flap of leather that acted as the door to the tent by himself, closing off the world behind him. A lingering smell of dank, dirty musk lifted to Delmaria's nose as he stepped inside, his feet transferring from a hard dirt floor to a soft, felt carpet. For the most part, the interior of the tent was bare, consumed by the darkness save for a single candle that sat in the middle of a rectangular wooden table, lined with all sorts of plates filled with fish, crabs, pork, vegetables, and overall a banquet fit for a king - or moreover, a glutton. Rott sat deviantly behind it, picking the meat off of a leg of chicken and shoving it in to his grey-bearded mouth as he looked up to see Delmaria standing there, watching him in disgust. He smiled a dirty, greasy smile, and threw the bone on to his plate. "No, go ahead, continue eating. I find it to be a good hobby of mine." Delmaria sighed sarcastically. "There's the humor I've missed hearing." Rott smiled, propping his feet up on the table. He motioned to the chair adjacent from him. As Delmaria graciously took his seat he continued speaking. "Can you explain to me how you sleep at night as you sit in here like a king, while your crew swims in their own filth and sorrow?" "Ah, so you took in to account my crew?" Rott played with an apple in between his hands. "I'm sure y-" "Don't change the subject." Delmaria cut him off harshly. Ezekiel rolled his eyes at Darkskull. "I assure you, they are more than happy with their situation. If they weren't they wouldn't be here, would they?" "Maybe they're just too afraid to leave." "Nonsense. My pirates have come here on their own free will, and are free to leave on their own free will as such. If they are unhappy with their situation and refuse to leave then they own it to their own ignorance." Rott slipped his teeth in to a side of the apple and bit extremely loud, chewing away like a donkey. "There's a difference between choosing not to act out of stupidity, not acting out of fear, and not acting out of brainwashing. While I would not rule out the first of these possibilities for listening to you in the first place this doesn't mean your crew hasn't succumbed to the latter two." "Why should they live in fear? I give them protection and a place to be. As for brainwashing, I've said it once and I'll say it again, they come on their own accord. If they freeze themselves here it is their own fault." "You justify your means by definitions and books, not by a perception of humanity." Delmaria sat upright in his chair, and smirked. "Though I suppose you could use the same reasoning as to the time when my crew cornered you on Padres and beat you out of your senses a few years ago." Rott let the apple roll out of his hand and on to the table. "I'm glad to see you won't stop meddling in the past." "I wouldn't be the same person if I didn't." Delmaria gave him a little smile. "Damn right you wouldn't." Rott leaned in over the table and grabbed a piece of pork from the table, plopping it in his lap. "So tell me, Delmaria, how have things been going for you these past few months?" "Better than expected. And I already know how you've been having it." "Oh but you don't." Rott slipped piece after piece off of the slab of meat and in to his mouth with his dark, jewel encrusted fingers. "Even though the surface may be ridden in my own defeat, which I will except, I have been growing stronger below it." "I very much doubt seventy men will allow you to control the Caribbean." "But if I already had it on the edge with just ten, what am I capable of sevenfold?" Delmaria fell silent. As much as he did not want to admit it, Rott was still a strong person, and with his unhealthy growth in numbers he only became more of a threat. He sighed, and changed the subject slightly. "What do you want, Rott?" Rott slide back in his chair. "You can imagine I haven't had much organization over the past few years. The Brethren think because of this they own the Caribbean, but they are much farther from that goal than they could possibly imagine. All I want is to make it evident that our side of the battle is not dead." "And to do so you are willing to terrorize as many innocent lives as possible?" "That's the name of the game. Haven't you played it before?" "I have." Delmaria began to stand up. "But I pride myself in knowing I don't anymore." As Delmaria turned around and began to walk out of the tent, Rott called from behind him. "You know you'll never be able to kill me, Delmaria." "I may not be able to kill you, but I can cut off your head. Sleep with one eye open, Rott." "You too, my friend." Rott smiled, watching as Delmaria slipped through the flap in the tent. "Let the fun begin!" |
Lovin' it so far, Del! I suppose this is when the good stuff starts happening, so make it happen. Hahaha. But really, keep up the good work!
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A new chapter for you all to read up on, this time minus a very long delay! (Though for a certain somebody it must of felt like forever!) Here you are, mates, as I present to thee:
Ladies in Tortuga Where the pirates had first made landing at Raphael's Vineyard, the patch of land nestled in between the borders of the forest and the aisles of grapevines had been turned in to a makeshift war camp. Out of the ground grew numerous dirty-white leather tents that dusted up patches of rough ground as the wind whipped and sent up plumes of gas that drifted off in to the confines of the hilly jungle. Every box the pirates had brought from Tortuga was unpacked, every weapon distributed, and every man who was able bodied was put under a regiment of preparation for the worst. The tents were formed in a circle, one facing towards the jungle, two facing the sides, and the foremost, which served as the captain's tent, faced directly out in to the vineyard to keep from any foreign invaders sneaking up on the pirates when they did not expect it. Though, this was unlikely considering Rott's flaccidity when it came to making a first move. The smell of fresh gunpowder and burning steel was the only scent one could pick up for the first few days, as Delmaria's need for over-preparation and captain-like instincts took a hold of his subconscious. Out of the thirty-two pirates that made up his militia, which was scarily half of Rott's forces, Delmaria made sure at least two dozens of them were awake and prepared to defend the camp at all times, while the others were either resting or training; lollygagging was something Delmaria played no parley to. He knew from experience, however, that no matter how large the force it did not matter the number of men as it was how well-trained they were. There were times when he had witnessed a single ship overthrow a British fleet because half of the crew was drunkards and the other half was inexperienced; with Rott's forces being doubled, and yet drug-induced, Delmaria was confident enough work could give him a substantial upper hand. And while Rott was devouring linens of pork and smoked turkey, Delmaria ran about the tent provided for his needy organizational skills, though it quickly became as messy as his quarter's aboard his ship within the first few hours of his mumbling. All that he had requested to keep in his tent was the essentials he needed - a single wooden table 2 feet long and 2 feet wide, a chair (though he barely even touched it) and an old, crumpled map of the vineyard that they had bought from the cartographer before they had left town. It was old and weathered, probably drawn at the time of the vineyard's conception itself, but otherwise it was still accurate in portrayal, having changed little over the years. He quickly took a quill to mark down where he was, and where Rott was, and from there he mapped out every possible scenario in his mind as to either playing offense or defense. What Delmaria prided himself with was how experimental and scientific he was when it came to understanding the physics of war. Whenever he came out of the tent his appearance was like that of a madman, his clothes messed and crossing over and his hat tipping ever-so-slightly over the brow of his forehead. He would look around and grab the first pirate he could find, and then subject him to numerous tests to which the other crew mates watched with a silent, hidden giggle out of the corner of their eye. When he needed to test how the narrowness of the grapevine aisles would affect his soldier's accuracy, he made a pirate run down one for his life while Delmaria fired pellets out of his pistol (the unfortunate "volunteer" walked away with a few grazes on his leg, but nothing more.) Another time, he wanted to figure how long it would take his men to storm down the lanes; so, after taking measurements of the camp in retrospect to the length of the farm on the map, he forced three of his men to run back and forth until they met the distance requirements, and then had six more groups repeat the same test. The enthusiastic look that came over his face looked like a scientist hatching the egg of an ancient monster thousands of years old, like all of his work was unraveling before him, even though it was only the beginning. Though Delmaria knew even with science on his side, Rott was still full of potential surprises. Delmaria wanted security in both experience and numbers, so in the dead of the night just after he met with Rott he sent out the youngest and quickest on his convoy with a single piece of paper, that he demanded was to not be opened or lost until it was placed in to the hands of the bartender Johnny McVane. The boy seemed scared, being told to run out in to the jungles in the dead of the night by himself, which was a thing not even Delmaria did frequently. This is why before anything, he sat the boy down in his tent, and did the only thing he knew that would ail the situation: talk. He sat the boy, not much older than thirteen, down in the wooden chair next to the chart table and knelt to the ground before him. He gripped the boy's knees. "Listen, mate," he said, but he watched as the boy's fair blue eyes drifted away from his. "Don't turn your head, now." Delmaria beckoned in a comedic, yet father-like tone. It was a voice he used very rarely, because he didn't like thinking of himself as a father - not anymore. Slowly the boy turned to him. "Why me?" he hushed in a squeaky, timid voice. Delmaria sighed and turned his head, before looking back. "If you want the truth of it, I'm a tad too scared to do it." The boy lowered his head and whispered "You're not scared..." "Now boy, just because I've done this before doesn't mean I'm not scared. There have been plenty times in my life I have been too scared to follow through with something, and I'm sure there will never be a day where I won't be afraid. But look at you, here in the thick of this mess at your age; that's true bravery, mate." Delmaria could make out under the boy's shadow a small smile come across his face, one like you would give when somebody was doing their best to cheer you up; because, that's exactly what Delmaria was doing. "Now listen here," Delmaria said, as he reached on top of the table and grabbed the small, burnt envelope. "I need you to run as fast as you can through those trees, and get this to the King's Arm. Just follow the path directly over the hills and back in to town - you think you can do that for me?" It took a moment, but the boy nodded quietly. Without a word, he took the envelope and began to make his way out of the tent, and Delmaria followed avidly behind him. As he turned the corner of the tent he stood and watched as the boy began to walk off in to the forest; and listened as, without any sort of initiative or direction, the rest of the crew cheered and clapped for the boy in support, as he began to dart up the hill, and in to the distance. Luckily the boy had reached Tortuga by the next morning, and Johnny heeded the words of the letter dearly. He almost immediately passed the position at the bar to his apprentice and ran up to his room, where he furiously took his quill to paper and began spreading the word of Delmaria's needs in the form of fliers that were pinned to every wooden post all over Tortuga. They were a personal plea from Delmaria to ask any and all capable pirate captain's to come aid in the approaching battle, and Johnny made sure he slipped a piece of paper to every man and woman who entered the bar - and of course, he made sure to pin them right over Rott's recruitment papers. Though as they neared the end of the second week, it seemed that Tortugans stayed away from the papers and pieces of propaganda that lined the streets. Johnny was mesmerized, but he found out from a few tipsy frequents at his tavern that the only reason they strayed not was because they did not support Delmaria's effort, just they were too afraid to do anything about it. This angered Johnny, who was a very strongly opinioned person when you truly got to know him, and went on a rant about how "Not doing anything is just as bad as agreeing with the evils that are unfolding before us!" in the name of tacit agreement right in the middle of his tavern, which got him quite a few stares. Though, Johnny's efforts did not go unnoticed. His rantings caught the ear of a quite jovial woman who happened to be passing the doors of the King's Arm while his rant went on, and she took joy in watching amusingly as he ran about with his ever-persistent rage. Even though she seemed to take it as a joke, she still kept in mind the seriousness of the moment and sucked it in like a vacuum, and when Johnny cried out at the end of his speech "Won't anybody listen to me!?" she raised her cap off her head with a chuckle, waving it around in the air. And it was two days later, when Delmaria was sitting in his tent and scanning over his maps once more did he turn up to see her at his surprise, walking in with a few of her men in tow. She was a tall, strong-bodied woman, probably a few inches taller than Delmaria with her boots and all. She wore over a metallic-like dark black corset that came over the majority of her breasts a thick, black knee-length overcoat with a royal purple scrawling that curved upward like a dragon's claw up the sides, and then curving inward over the front of the coat to a stunning, almost royal design. Her legs were hugged by a deep, dark purple pair of pants with a silken shine, and her boots furred at the tops to give the illusion of a forest of prickled, yet soft spikes that bristled the skin at the touch. Her skin was tanned generously, but her shade did not match the deepness of her laughing, glittering brown eyes. And beneath a purple and blue feathered hat, elegantly turning upward at the left of her face, was her signature grin, showing just a sliver of her oddly white teeth. "Well I'll be damned, look who it is!" Delmaria cheered, standing up out of his chair with a large smile on his face. "Safe to say I haven't seen you in God know's how long!" "The pleasure is all mine." she smiled back with the tip of her hat as she stepped forward. Her voice was smooth like silk, yet seductively classy like the shine off of a porcelain statue, with the fine-tuning of a very light Portuguese accent at the tip of her tongue. She extended a hand with two purple rings sitting on her fingers opposite the middle, and Delmaria reached out, lifted it, and gave it a very soft kiss on the top of it. "It's good to see you again, Lady Nayana." Delmaria said with a soft chuckle, to which they both giggled at their own inside joke. As Delmaria patted the top of her hand and let her slip out, Delmaria gazed in to the glimmer of her eyes bouncing off of the candle light; and it took him back, just three years ago, when they had first met... 1 August 10th, 1722 The Ratskellar, Padres Del Fuego 10:11 PM While many consider Tortuga the capital of piracy in the Caribbean, Padres Del Fuego is by far one of the most uncommunicative and social; meaning, its social circles are many, and the number of secrets it holds is vast. One such example is the Ratskellar; though the Ratskellar may seem as just a simple bar on its surface, many of the citizens and frequents in the bar have always failed to uncover the secrets that lay beneath its surface. Should you find yourself as part of an "inner circle" of a certain group of pirates, so to speak, they would allow you access to a hidden passage located behind a set of double-doors that sit in the back of the bar, which though may seem useless actually lead to a small tunnel that burrows underneath the tavern and in to a small basement-like area carved in to the dirt and rock that sits beneath the bar, leaving for a very ancient, rustic, and yet oddly homely feel. Delmaria was one of these such people. He clapped with the joyfulness of a child as he slammed his cards down on to the table under the single lantern that hung overhead, and swept his arm across the table like a hawk's wing to sweep in the gold and personal affects that sat on top of the table, adding to the pile that sat directly to his left. The five other men who sat at the table, including Lawrence, who was doing his best to bluff against his own captain, moaned and groaned at the fact it was the third hand in a row Delmaria had swept through, and they were now becoming tired as their pockets became hollow. "Easy now gentlemen. Just because you don't know how to hold your drinks and cards at the same time doesn't mean I'm guilty of anything." He taunted as he beckoned for the dealer to lay out the next hand, who rolled his eyes as he flipped the cards towards each of the pirates. The lantern above them swung lightly as the noise and chatter from the tavern above pounded below, rocking the dull yellow light around the dirt enclave. The little hideout was like a hole in the ground, the size of a usual living room with a roof that curved like a dome, and the poker table sat directly underneath the highest point to provide the most amount of room possible. The outside of the room was lined with dirt-covered boxes and barrels that each contained bottles of stored alcohol, either aged or plundered to supply on the most high tier of pirates. Delmaria stood and walked his way over to a dark corner of the room where a grayish-green, open box sat, and he plucked out from inside a dark bottle of thick rum that swished around half-full as he examined it. Just as he prepared to take a deep swig from the bottle, he heard a loud clacking of chains and wood from across the room. He turned his head, as did the rest of the room, to the small mouse hole where the tunnel led in to the room. A light filled the tunnel, most likely the one from upstairs, before it began to wither away and the loud bang of wood and chains closed again. Instead of the roar of cheers or hellos that usually came after the door opened, there was silence. The room became tense as all eyes fell on the opening that waited there before the table. It was like a moment after you hear a noise in a house that has nobody in it but yourself; your body turns to stone as your lungs collapse in on themselves, under the pressure of overwhelming fear and anxiety. Though, they were not so much scared, as they were waiting for something to happen; after all, when you know something is going to happen, sometimes you would rather have it happen and deal with the consequences than let your imagination run at a fury. And this was exactly what happened to Delmaria; as more scenarios played out in his head, he snapped his fingers and motioned for the rest of his men to reach slowly for their guns. As Delmaria reached the handle of his old, silver-plated pistol, he heard the rough sound of footsteps echoing against the dirt steps of the tunnel. His grip fastened quicker than he had wanted, and slowly he pulled out of his holster and extended his arm in aim towards the opening of the tunnel. He could make out a silhouette against the back wall of the staircase, and just as he saw the first tip of a shoe he wrapped his fingers around the trigger of his gun, and waited patiently as he rested his back against the wall. Yet instead of a Navy brute forcing his way through the tavern, or a disgruntled enemy captain looking to settle a score, it was instead a fair-skinned girl, perhaps ten years younger than he. Despite her feminine beauty she wore very little makeup, far less than the women who lingered outside of the bar, and carried herself in clothing very much like a man's - a buckled riding coat, numerous vests and belts to push down her breasts, baggy sailor's pants, and a tricorne to which you could see the wisps of her hair falling down at the sides. She was trying to carry herself in the position of a male, tilting her head down to hide the female features of her face out of the candlelight and airing her coat out to hide her figure. It wasn’t fooling Delmaria; but it was fooling his crew. “Eyo boy, who are you?” Minty McGingis called out from under the curly hide of blonde hair that was his beard. He scratched his dirty, red face with his black fingernails as he stared down the unfamiliar stranger in an unfriendly manner, like an old southern man sitting on a porch with a gun pointed right in your face. “I am-“ the girl caught herself speaking in her normal tone, but coughed and continued in a deeper, testosterone-induced guise. “My name is Gaston.” “Gaston?” Delmaria smirked, making a “I know you’re lying” sheen glisten over his eyes solely in the girl’s direction. She tipped her head, but Delmaria let it pass. “Have a seat, Gaston.” Delmaria slipped back in to his seat, and slowly the girl awkwardly tip-toed over to the table and slipped on to the stool directly across from Delmaria, her body posture tight and closed with her cap still tilted over her head. Darkskull patted the dealer on the back, and as the cards were shuffled, Delmaria made conversation. “We don’t play any fancy games around these parts, Mr. Gaston. We save the Pirates Dice and Up the Rivers for the formalities – down here, it’s just a group of us playing some good old poker.” Delmaria picked up his cards and chopped them on the table. “You know how to play?” Another cough. “I’m not the best, but I know the basics.” “Interesting.” Delmaria said. For his own amusement he was going to toy with her. “What’s your first name, Mr. Gaston?” “Gaston.” “Gaston Gaston is your name?” Delmaria tilted his head, chuckling. “No, my first name is Gaston.” “Then what’s your last name?” “Gallivante.” “Gallivante? Is that Italian?” “No, it’-“ “I know lots of pirates that are Italian.” “Congratulations.” “Thank you!” Delmaria clapped, paying attention briefly to his hand to make out a King of Spades and a Jack of Hearts; adequate, though he wasn’t concerned with the cards as he was with the girl. “So what brings you to Tortuga, my Italian connoisseur?” “I told you I’m not Italian!” “My apologies, you’re obviously Sicilian.” He chortled. “So? What’s your business?” “And more importantly, how did you manage to get in here?” Lawrence asked, leaning over the table with an eyebrow raised. Delmaria couldn’t tell if he was in on it or not too. It looked like the girl started to open up more when Lawrence began speaking, as she quickly shot a small smile and then affixed herself. “I’ve come here looking for a few new crew mates of mine, as I have been doing every few months or so for the past few years. The gent at the bar is a friend of mine, get’s me my drinks for free; he figured if I was this frequent here that he would let me down here.” Delmaria nodded slowly, moving a few coins on to the table as the pattern of the game began. “Tell you what, mate, I’ll make you a deal.” Delmaria motioned all around the table. “See these mates here? If you can beat me in this hand, they’re yours.” The entire crew shot him glances of madness, and Lawrence, who was sipping his drink, backwashed in to his mug when he heard that and slammed it back on to the table, looking at Delmaria with a blank expression of anger and confusement. Before he could protest, however, Delmaria continued. “BUT,” he interjected, “If I win, I want to see that fancy hat of yours.” he smiled devilishly. Without a bit of hesitation, the girl smirked and beckoned forward, “You’re on.” The other crew mates backed away from the table and watched in awe as the captain and the stranger went back and forth in meager conversation as they both tried to delay the game to convince their opponent to drop out. They chatted about things from crab shells, to the winds during the summer on Cuban beaches, to how hard it was for Delmaria to clean his ever-growing beard. “Though, how do you shave such a monstrosity?” “It does not so much grow as it does manifest. As long as there are no bird nests, I’m just fine.” Their conversation had dragged on for about a half hour when the first card had slipped on to the table – a Jack of Spades. Delmaria kept his composure, however, and didn’t let her have the satisfaction of knowing what he was doing, regardless of bad or good – as much as he wanted her to fold, he wanted more of seeing her make it through the hand and then have her see defeat before her eyes. As two more cards fell on the table, a Ten of Diamonds and a King of Spades, Delmaria almost got the sense the hand was made for him, and slowly he rubbed his fingers against the cards. Delmaria could see on the other end of the table, however, his friend was not doing so well. He could see a few drops of sweat pouring down her forehead, and like a hungry wolf he smiled with his teeth as he watched his prey become more and more uncomfortable under his gaze. She rubbed the back of her head, still balancing the hat gently on her head, and Delmaria’s urge to end the match and gain the satisfaction of revealing her true self pour over him. He gripped his fingers around the cards just a few more pushes tighter, tipped his hat up, took a swig of his rum, and then; Just then a loud bang could be heard from the top of the staircase; but instead of the roar of the tavern filling in and then fading away; it was dead quiet, as though the tavern had been hushed. The heavy pound of footsteps led around the corner of the dirt staircase, and there in loose, blue, linen night-clothing, much like you would expect a lavished woman to sleep in, a tall Portuguese woman stormed down the steps and smacked the “girl” on the back of the head with an extreme force, letting the hat fall square off the top of her head – except, it wasn’t a woman, but moreover a man decked out in very shaded makeup. “Dammit, Vincent! I told you to stop going through my stuff!” she yelled at him, grabbing him by the collar of the jacket and tossing him roughly back towards the staircase. He began to run with a giggle in his step, and as he rounded up the staircase she yelled to him “You’re lucky I don’t have you killed!” She turned back to see Delmaria with a very big smile on his face, his eyes open, and her hat sitting neatly in his lap. “Nice crew mate you got there.” “You could say that.” She huffed, with a smile on her face. “Name’s Nayana.” She extended a long arm and shook his, which also outreached. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ “Delmaria?” the voice called back to him. Delmaria snapped out of his daydream to see Nayana waving a hand right in front of his face, her casual smile with a dash of intrigue on her face. “You daydreaming?” Delmaria smiled, and rubbed his hand back over the map. “You could say that.” |
Love love love love love love LOVVEEE it. Hahahaha. You portrayed me quite well if I must say so myself. UPDATE SOON! Mesa wants to see what happens in this battle.
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Lol, where is the like button?!?!! Very good story, can't wait to read more.
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And a whooping 7,275 words later, I bring you all...
A Blow of Crisp Wind September 9th, 1725 Raphael's Vineyard, Tortuga, 7:05 PM The quiet sanctuary that was the night was ever-still this evening. The darkness was not a blanket over the sky as it was the mighty hand of God pressing down upon the atmosphere of the Earth, and by his force the air was so thick and opaque one could almost cut a knife through its buttery edges and watch as the wisps of pale white fog cut around it's blade like a piece of meat just gingerly peeling off a ham. Though, the fog itself was not which made the moment so heavy, but it was what enveloped the surroundings - the breaths and heaves of war. There is a fine space between the forces of good and evil, just small enough to keep the two within an uncomfortably close distance of one another, yet far apart enough to lay the significant boundaries that set them apart - for every mountaintop village undisturbed in its natural beauty, there is a volcano punched up from the earth to which is known to its inhabitants; for every metropolis of culture and finery, there is a cave lined by the efforts of thieves and cutthroats. It is as if they are positioned just out of reach, in the farthest reaches of border, and deepest corner of the eye; only a very silent reminder of the eternal borders than divides the two worlds of one. Though there are exceptions in this defined law of chemistry, where the spaces of these two forces draw closer, building a powerful energy between the two opposing forces like evenly charged magnets, until they reach a disastrous climax when they collide. This was such the case of Raphael's Vineyard, Tortuga, on this evening. The two forces of good and evil grew closer and closer together as the time of night disclosed by the two priests of their words came near; on either side of the field of vines, the crews prepared all necessities for their upcoming battle. A silent and sly, yet ominously present hand wavered over them, taunting them with the mounting pressure that overcame them as the time of midnight grew near, when Delmaria and Rott were to meet in the center of their battlefield. It gestured over their shoulder, to the open aisles of emptiness, blended by a thickening fog, that would act as their graveyard - and in the shadows of that fog, Death. "I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." ~Revelation 6:7-8 And such was the passage that Delmaria read from the book the hours before, trying to find his place in the old, weathered text that glided beneath his hands. He knew Death had reserved his seat, but that seat had been vacant for over twenty years. Often he wondered not about what it would be like to die, or when, but what it was like to be Death. Was he alone as Delmaria imagined him to be? Drifting the earth under a black clock, aboard a green horse, it must have been incredibly lonely. Out of all the angels, he could not imagine the feelings Death would go through for being the one, forsaken by his own father to walk the earth and reap it's souls for all of eternity. It was a decision that he had no part in, most likely - and in this, Delmaria felt that he and Death had a very strong relationship with one another; that they would chase each other to the ends of the earth, and that when Delmaria's time comes, it would not be a bitter end, as it would be embracing an old friend. Delmaria and Death had much in common - maybe when they finally met, they could keep one another company. But that would be saved for his future. Delmaria tightened a dark blue bandanna around his forehead, concentrating on preparing himself in the most convenient and reasonable manner possible. Underneath a layering of shirts he wore a chest made of mail links; though medieval, he felt any sort of extra protection would aid his cause. Over his coat the crew had smeared a heavy, oily liquor that coated over it's black leather surface, creating a layer of rubber that would repel any sort of light ammunition by bouncing it right off the surface. He tightened the small braids that hung from his deep black beard, making sure they would stay secure, and he tapped at a metal wingtip fastened on his boots with a small hammer to ensure that they would stay on the boots while he moved about. When he secured the last of his belts underneath his long coat and tipped his black, gold feathered hat just over his brow, he took a deep breath and turned himself towards Nayana, who stood halfway through the flap of the tent "Is everything ready?" Delmaria asked, stepping forward as the sounds of the camp came to his ear. She flicked her hat up over her view and leaned her head out in to the open. "Just about." she called over her shoulder. She turned around and stepped back in, gracefully moving the left side of her coat from in front of her back to her side. He caught a quick glimpse of what appeared to be dark brown, leather belt positioned just at the side of her thick black vest, to which hung an assortment of silvery, curved throwing knives. "The fog is getting denser, which isn't going to help the fact it’s growing late." "No need to fret over that." Delmaria shook his head. "If we trained them well they can take care of that easily." he said as he passed her by, sticking his head out of the tent. Truth be told, it was worse than he had assumed; the fog prevented you from seeing more than forty feet in front of you, and the darkness that came over it from the night gave you the sense of standing in a cavern, minus the congestion. Luckily torches that were scattered throughout the tent allowed him to see the pirates working diligently to prepare themselves, shining their swords, cleaning their muskets, and any other last-minute necessities. He nodded and turned back in to the tent, where Nayana finished tightening the tie in her hair, and then tucked it back under her hat. "I suppose I'll sacrifice some beauty for practicality." she chuckled, stuffing it back in and tightening her hat back on her head. "That's one of the things I needn't worry about." he smiled, to which she giggled a little. Delmaria loved it when Nayana smiled, because her smile reminded him of his daughter's - to him, she was a second daughter of his own, and as such he was just as protective of her, though she wasn't aware of this. "Are you ready, my Lady?" "I suppose so." she smirked, motioning him to step out of the tent. As the crisp night air hit his face, Delmaria hit the ground running. He barked orders to his crew in a demanding tone, which sent them all rocketing out of their seats and off to gather everything that they had been assigned, like a flock of birds scattered by a single stray cat. As he waved his hand at a group of slower pirates sitting around a campfire before him, one of his men ran up to him as he furiously tied his bandanna over his dreadlocks. "Cap'n, we wait for your orders." "Silent the torches and send the men up their respective aisles a minute after Captain Nayana and I make our way to the designated meet up point. I want them all crawling, and they should be in earshot of one another - the farthest up line within earshot of me, but just out of vision. I don't want Rott to take notice and kill us all." "And for Dedman?" Delmaria froze from his place at the mere mention of Jeremiah's name, and gave thought to the fact for the first time in a few days that he had existed. He had heard just last night that his condition was worsening by the hour, but Delmaria hastily shrugged it off and went to prepare for the battle. He realized now that this entire battle had started because of Jeremiah, and that he was essentially what they would be fighting for; not for Jeremiah himself, but that he stood as the symbol of dominance at this stage. Morbid that he was reduced to an item, indeed, but better than nothing. Still, he would not take chances; if he couldn't have him, nobody could. "Keep Father Molony and a few of the men here with him. If Rott's men try to save him, they can give him a proper burial on the spot." Delmaria nodded, and with that the man hurried away, off to relay the message. Moments later, Nayana reunited herself with Delmaria at the edge of the vineyard, the shallowness of their vision mired by the fog that weaved in and out of the holes in the grapevines. The ends of the aisles was all that could be seen, and then from there in faded off in to quiet, opaque wall of grey, like the passageway to another dimension of existence. They looked off in to the lanes, staring off in to space for a few moments in silence, before they slowly stepped forward, down the grass, and in to the abyss. Not minutes after they stepped in to the fog and the sights of the camp faded behind them did the sounds of it go as well, like a heavy door shutting them out from the outside world. It was one of those rare moments when the atmosphere was not just quietly, but completely isolated - not even the whispering of the wind or the crinkling of wet grass beneath their feet could be heard. It was so still even moving a muscle felt like shattering the sanctity of a sacred place, but even as they moved forward nothing had changed. Their surroundings did not move, their breaths would not carry; it was as if they were frozen in time. But then, just after a few minutes of walking, Delmaria caught eye of some movement off in the distance. It was faint at first, fading in and out between the clouds of mist, but Delmaria extended his arm out and stopped Nayana, who had not taken notice. She looked at him in oddity, but then followed his line of sight to where he was looking, making eye contact with it as well - a ball of dim yellow light, swaying back and forth by just a few feet behind the mist. It was not so much a center of light as it was the aura of something being swung side to side, and as it poked through the air it was revealed to be a lantern, covered in a brown, rusted metal. Attached to the lantern's old, rustic handle, was a dark hand, and running back from that hand was a dirty-green long coat that lead right up to the face of Captain Ezekiel Rott, pushing his way through the air. He was accompanied by two of his lackeys - on one side of him, Ramona, and the other, a sharp-headed nitwit by the name of William "Bill" Barrett. As many who have met him would describe the experience, he was one of the most dim-witted people you could ever meet in your entire life; even the mere mention of his name brought the idea of stupidity to a man's head. He was known for being a nightmare to any captain who had the displeasure of having him aboard his ship; tipping over barrels, overloading cannons, and tearing the sails were one of the most common skills in his arsenal, though none of them were ever done on purpose. And to say the least, how he presented himself was an accurate reflection of his level of intelligence - his clothes, discolored with shades of purple, gold, and swamp green, were far too tight for his six-foot-eight, two-hundred-seventy pound physique, and his dirty blonde hair was shaven in most parts of his round, gargantuan head except for a broad strip running from the back of his head right to the top of his forehead. His face was pierced at the lips, nose, and chin with poorly-smelted pieces of bronze jewelry (though it was most likely they were simply pieces of shrapnel lodged in his face) and underneath his eyes sat two patches of scribbled tattoos in a blackish-red ink that ran down his cheeks. The only thing that kept you from laughing at him like the circus bimbo he is was the fact he was stronger than any man should naturally be, acting as Rott's own muscle at the lack of his own. It wasn't a surprise to Delmaria he had brought two arms to replace his own. Rott stopped just as he and his convoy had come in to vision, and smiled as he placed the lantern down on the grass at his feet. "Good evening Mister Darkskull... Good evening Miss Nayana." "Captain Ezekiel Rott," Delmaria sighed, tilting his head to the side a little. "It is under the jurisdiction of the Pirate Lords of the Brethren Court that I ask you to surrender you and your forces over to me. Should you accept a complete surrender....." Delmaria paused, rolling his eyes before he continued, "you and your forces will not receive any harm." "Oh I'm afraid that this cannot be done, Captain Delmaria. However, should you and your forces surrender to Jolly Roger's Army, you will be met with the same equal treatment." Rott responded with a snip at the tip of his tongue. Delmaria chuckled. "You and I both know that Jolly Roger is long and dead, Ezekiel. It isn't much of his army anymore, if anything." "Ah, but just because he is dead does not mean that he truly is! Sure, the man himself is six feet under, but that does not out rule the fact that his spirit and beliefs still live on in us, his humble followers." "I don't exactly find thoughts of mass genocide and restriction of civil liberties to be something worth dying for, Rott. I thought the only reason you had allied with Roger in the first place was for eternal life, though it's obvious by now that he's made promises he couldn't keep." "Oh? And why has Mr. Dedman not lived up to his name, yet?" "How do you know he's still alive?" an eyebrow raised as he spoke. "Some of your men are not as loyal as you would like to believe, Delmaria. Money has far greater value nowadays than your words." The thought of Delmaria's own men turning against him boiled his blood, but he kept his composure - breaking down in front of Rott would only make matters worse. "I will not let my men be defined by a few wicked seeds among us." "No, but shall we allow it to define you?" Rott snickered. He stepped forward; his hands crossed behind his back, and made his way towards Delmaria and Nayana. Darkskull could feel her weight being offset by him coming near, but he placed his hand on her back and steadied her. He came up to them, and began walking around in a circle, like a fish watching his prey. "Miss Nayana... quite the reputation you have in these waters for being a strong-handed woman... but what about your father? You could say he was quite strong-handed, as well, yes?" Rott sneered, whispering in to her ear as he came around her. "Shut your mouth, Rott..." Nayana growled at him. "And Mr. Delmaria, you didn't even have much of a father, now did you? I guess you could say he's in the same boat as your mother, now, though.." "At least I didn't have my own brother killed before my eyes in cold blood." "Yes, but you killed somebody much more important... your own son, Delmaria! And by your own, black hand!" Rott gripped Delmaria's right hand, but Darkskull took his left hand and slapped Ezekiel right across the face, sending him back at least ten feet swirling on his leg. Barrett jumped forward a little, but Ramona stopped him before he could run after Delmaria - not like he had flinched. He took pleasure in watching the blood writhe from Rott's mouth. Rott shook his head to bring his senses back, before turning back to Delmaria. He chuckled deeply, and began to backpedal to his group. "It seems that we have both learned to disagree to the point where we can get nothing done other than insult one another." He stepped back with his two groupies, but continued walking backward, having them follow him. "If that is the case, then let the fun begin." he beckoned, and in an instant he was shrouded back behind the mist. At last Delmaria knew that it was time. He wouldn't let Ezekiel escape this time, and that was his only thought as he drew his cutlass and yelled out in to the openness "ROTT! Don't hide from me!" with a rough overtone in his force. "ROTT! ROTTTT!" He screamed over and over again, waiting for Ezekiel to come back to him so he could for once fight his own battle. His blood pumped through his veins like a firehouse, but as the silence fell back over the field, he thought as though he had lost him once more. But he was proven wrong. From the mist two small, iron balls chained together at the sides came spinning out of the air in a whirlwind and wrapped right around Delmaria's legs, pushing him back and off his feet. He flipped forward with an immediate, rocketing thrust, and caught himself on his hands just as his torso came within inches of the ground. It was like he was hit by a truck, his body far from where his mind was, and as he waved his arms around and tried to find where he was his mind focused back on where he was and what was around him - and the group of men running towards him. Nayana whipped the side of her coat over and grabbed three small, three-inch knives from the belt that hung at her waist and flicked her wrist, sending them off one at a time towards each of the men that made their way towards Delmaria. The first made contact to the foremost's neck the second to his thigh, and the third to his stomach, stopping each of them in their tracks and sending them to the ground. She moved herself forward and grabbed another just as the second man began to stumble back to his feet, waving his pitchfork over his head, and sent it at just ten feet away straight in to his left eye, where a river of blood gushed out as it collapsed on itself as he did. She slid to her knees and began untangling the chains around Delmaria's ankle, but as she did more of them began to file out of the abyss, towards her. "GO, GO! I've got it!" Delmaria shouted, gripping his cutlass and waving her towards the fight. She nodded, brandishing her thick, shining broadsword from under her coat and jumping over his crumpled body to repel the invaders. Delmaria gripped his hands around the iron chain between his ankles and slowly unraveled the clumped mess of heavy links until he freed his leather boots from their clutches, tossing it off to the side and then rolling over to grab his cutlass, which had moved just a few inches from his side. On his knees, he turned back up to the battle, where Nayana fought valiantly against five men who had managed to swarm around her in a circle, picking at her with their sabers, knives, and farmer's tools. He stormed up to his feet and cut down the first man who stood with his back to him in ignorance, sending his blade across his back from shoulder to pelvis and leaving a rain of blood slowly trickling down his back before he gripped him by the shoulder and tossed him back behind him. He then flipped his cutlass over his side and nearly jutted it right in to the jaw of the next soldier, but he had luckily moved downward and jumped back before the golden blade could make contact with his bone. He took note of how skinny each of the men they had encountered thus far were so skinny, and thusly lean enough to be quick and agile - Rott had been starving them for a reason. Delmaria lined his back up against Nayana, and he could feel the satisfaction perpetuate from her as her chest gave out a light breath of relaxation. They pushed on to one another and spun around in a circle, allowing Delmaria to catch one of the soldiers stepping out of line and quickly kicking his leg out from under him, sending him to the floor and then making two quick cuts across both of his knees to keep him there. When Delmaria left her backside Nayana pushed off and ran at the two before her, planting her heel in the ground and spinning her blade with her over her head before chopping it down before the two men in front of her. Their weapons - one held a shovel chiseled to the point, and another a thin, bent rapier - were knocked back with a superior force, which allowed Nayana to dig her sword underneath and cut them both across the fronts of their bodies with a single diagonal cut from bottom left to top right that left them both whimpering in pain as their grabbed for their afflicted wounds. The last of the five was taken care of by Delmaria, who had managed to grab a hold of his arm and cut right across his elbow with a decisive, miserable slash that cut through a thick tendon in the soldier's arm. But as Delmaria turned back towards where his foes had spawned, he could tell more were on their way as their silhouettes began to poke through the fog. They came all at once, and in numbers much too overwhelming for two combatants no matter how powerful they were. Delmaria turned back towards the emptiness, and just by chance he caught a pair of two blue eyes hiding underneath one of the grapevines, sparkling like gems in the immersive sea of water droplets. One of his men had been watching in silence, waiting for his orders; but now, as Delmaria's eyes foretold, a verbal command was not needed. Within seconds a ring of battle cries flowed through the air, with the ominous scent of gunpowder flooding back in to Darkskull's nose once more. Long lines of bullets cut through the air like hot knives through butter in the aisles opposite of Delmaria's side, sending down groups of Rott's men to the floor with a vicious thud. The grapevines were lit alive with a fierce, smoldering fire that ran along the lines of the plants, and a thick black smoke rose in the sky to replace the darkening grey above them. Their surroundings became as light as day, and before him Delmaria saw the faces of about thirty-five men and women in his lane alone; all lanky, dirty, and poorly armed, yet still they prided themselves with a face of ferocity and blood lust. And to his back, Delmaria could feel an equally driven presence, running forward with the stampeding of leather on dirt and the swishing of weaponry being raised in the air. Delmaria gripped Nayana by the forearm and tossed her under the flames of one of the grapevines, rolling her under in to a less crowded aisle and then following behind her as the waves of pirates clashed in a heap of battle behind them. By the time he had squeezed himself through the vine Nayana had gotten her hand in to chopping down the soldiers who had unluckily passed by as she made her way through, by laying on her back and stabbing them upward one by one. As she cleared the third and final soldier in her immediate path, Delmaria had jostled up to his feet and wrapped a sturdy hand around her armpit, tugging her up to the ground and moving her in a walk opposite the direction they had come from. “Rott?” she panted. “Aye.” They trucked their way down the aisle, avoiding the walls of vines as the fire crept through the fog along them like a massive serpent intertwined in the branches. They pushed aside any of Rott’s men who ran past them, but as they proceeded downward farther and farther and the emphatic roars of the weaponry and screams from the main part of the battle, the more unopposed they became. Their senses fell from the constant battery that they had succumbed to – the fog rolled gingerly back to their vision in it’s easy, peaceful fashion, the crisp smell of the wet leaves with a tint of the smoke from the expanses of land behind them just whispering under the tips of their noses. Their ran came back down from a run, to a steady walk. Just a few moments after they slowed their pace, Delmaria stepped his foot in to what he realized to be Rott’s old war camp, now completely silent in the wake of his soldier’s march forward. The vapor of the moisture in the air was accompanied by a wicked companion – it was the exposure of the wicked. It wasn’t the atrocious scent of pig blood or sweat that lingered in the air so much as it was the very presence of an overturned evil, moved forward to offset the world from its balance. It left the place spinning and unstill, though the desolate closure of space was really not moving at all – tables and crates were left in a standstill in awkwardly thrown positions, the grass was pleated and meshed with the pounding of a horde of boots, and the lanky, thinned bodies of a few of the soldiers who had failed to survive through Rott’s test was piled up in the corner – appropriately next to the corner where wastes were displaced. As Nayana and Delmaria stepped in to the confines of the camp, the flap of Rott’s tented moved itself over to the side with a large, tan hand. Underneath it stepped Ramona, and then following behind was Barrett, both of them making a quite rude facial expression as they met eye contact with the pair – though it seemed like they were expecting them. “Where’s Rott?” Delmaria demanded, stepping forward with his hand clenched around the hilt of his sword. “Captain ain’t heyur no more.” Bill muttered out in his monotone, lurching voice. “He gone off outta here.” “Shows how much your captain really loves you if he leaves you here to die.” Nayana jabbed with the flick of her eyelash. “I’m sure that he loves us more than any man has ever loved you, Miss. But it would be stupid for him to stay behind and risk his life out on the battlefield when he has more importantly places to be at the moment.” Ramona turned her head to Delmaria. “I’ll be the first to admit to you; he is known for his brains, not his grit.” “I would think a pretty face like yours wouldn’t be left behind either without a purpose, though? It seems we’re fated on the same plane once more, Ramona.” Delmaria edged his cutlass “If I have to lay my neck on the line to allow him to survive, so it be.” Ramona smiled. She rested her hand up on Bill’s shoulder, and patted him so that he could draw his dopey eyes to a wink bouncing off hers. It was obvious that Delmaria wasn’t going to be getting his wish of fighting Rott alone – not tonight. Bill let out a brutish scream and slammed his feet in to the ground, running at a charge with his hands in fists towards Nayana and Delmaria. Delmaria pushed Nayana over to the side and drew out his sword, but as Barrett came forward he knew that it would be unable to do much of anything. He raised it off to the side and tried to chop down before him, but Barrett stopped a few inches too early for the blade to reach him, and instead lunged out as the blade passed him and gripped Delmaria’s hand with an anaconda-like grip. His tight, meaty fingers wrapped around Delmaria’s forearm with intent to crack the bone, but Barrett was already preparing to knock Delmaria with a clear shot across the head with his other hand. He clenched his opposite hand and took a swoop at Delmaria’s head, but the pirate dropped to his knees and Barrett’s swing just skidded the top of his hat, knocking it clean off his head. Nayana reached back in to her coat and fished out a sharp, curved dagger with a golden brown hilt, but as she darted back towards Barrett, Ramona came down on top of her from the side and knocked her to the ground with a hard kick from her boot, sending the dagger out of her hand and in to obscurity. Delmaria finished for his cutlass in his left hand while he rested down on his knee, but Barrett shot his hand back down like a raven on to his back – Delmaria was sure that he heard at least one bone crack. His body trembled under the shock of his power, and at last Bill let go of his grip and let Delmaria hit the floor with a thud. Ramona jumped on top of Nayana, hunching over her body and delivering a stern punch to Nayana’s face. Guerra brought her other hand around to move back in for another hit, but Nayana caught her fist and tossed it back with a thrash, then violently tossing her body over so Ramona would fall over on to the side. Guerra rolled across the grass a few yards from Nayana, who jumped herself back on her feet and threw her coat down to give her easy access to the weaponry latched across her torso. What she revealed was an arsenal of knives, small pistols, and shortblades, but she ignored them and went for her broadsword, pulling it out and waiting for Ramona as she too stammered to her feet and pull out her blade. Barrett circled around Delmaria a few times, watching as the pirate lay there in a broken pain on the soft mud ground. Droplets of rain began to shoot through the mist like bullets at an increasing rate, bouncing around in puddles that formed in rivets in the ground that almost made it seem like the camp was becoming a set of sandbars in the middle of an inch-deep ocean. “C’mon boy, get’up!” Bill called to Delmaria. The pirate still laid there motionless, a crumpled piece of paper just laying face down on the floor. Barrett became anxious, hoping that his prey would put up more of a fight. Though, it seemed he had knocked Delmaria cold with only a single blow, to which he patted himself on the back. He walked forward to claim his prize with a smile on his face, and grabbed Delmaria by the back of his coat, lifting him off the ground. Delmaria then flung a handful of thick, brown mud straight in to Barrett’s face, enough to rocket up his nostrils and dig underneath his eyelids to blind him in a goopy mess. Delmaria wriggled free of his assailants grip and ran for his cutlass, sliding gingerly across the wet ground until he picked it up by it’s cold blue grip. He turned back as Barrett bumbled around the campground before he finally washed the mud off his face, and then moved back towards Delmaria once more. Ramona jumped forward with her light black sword and cut down on top of Nayana, though she easily pushed Ramona away by the stature of her blade. When Guerra rebounded to swipe quickly at the side, her blade misjudged it’s landing and hit one of the daggers latched to Nayana’s side, acting like a piece of armor that clanging as metal met metal. Nayana stepped away and flung her sword in a turn that nearly topped at Ramona’s head, but she ducked underneath it in to the puddle and swiped at Nayana’s ankle, making a very light cut on the front of her pants. She disregarded it, however, and marched forward as she took through a few light chops (as light as possible with a broadsword) to keep Ramona scooting back across the wet ground before she finally spun around and ran back a few feet to gain her balance. A nearby barrel that sat by the side of Rott’s tent became subject to Barrett’s arsenal. He grabbed the sturdy oak container, raised it above his head with little effort, and chucked it as hard as he could over him. It bounced the ground just once before it landed near Delmaria, but he shuffled to the side and ran as fast as he could up to Barrett, running right at his side and jutting out his sword to an attempt to make an impact. The cut ran about an inch in to Barrett’s side, but because of his thick, blubbery skin it wasn’t nearly as painful as it would be to a normal-sized man. Still, blood began to run down to his hip, and he limped everso slightly when he turned around to catch eye of Delmaria already making another cut in to his leg. Barrett shrieked in not pain, but anger as he saw another drop of crimson run down from the cut that ran across the side of his left thigh. Delmaria’s way of fighting was not meant to overpower his opponent – moreover, to tire them to the point they can no longer go on. He remembered the nights in Tortuga when he was much younger where he had lost almost everything he owned in a fight because he tried to overpower somebody the same weight as he; in the end, it came down to who was able to work the other one down enough to deliver a final blow, and suffice to say, that was not Delmaria. He had learned his lesson from there. But as Barrett became frustrated with his body becoming less and less efficient at squashing the “pest,” he swiped his hand in front of Delmaria and then made a dramatic turn in a dash towards the entrance to Rott’s tent. He quickly darted inside with a light whimper mixed underneath heavy grunts of hot breath, and Delmaria made his way after him. Nayana clapped a set of small knives from her belt and tossed the first one just as Ramona struggled to gain her balance in the patch of slimy mud positioned beneath her boots. She managed to duck her head underneath the first, and then flicked the rest of them away like flies with incredible accuracy by blocking them with her thin yet stern blade. Even Nayana was impressed with how Ramona handled her blades, but that was due to a lack of prior knowledge of her foe to begin with. While Rott worked the crowds, and Barrett and Dedman served as his “campaign managers,” per say, Ramona was tasked with the jobs away from the spotlight. The reason many people had never heard of her name was because of her incredibly elusive behavior – and, because she did her job correctly. Need it be scoping out an area of interest, infiltrating other bands of pirates, or simply taking down a threat to Rott’s “image,” she used her extreme flexibility with both body and words to carry out each of her objectives efficiently, and without much attachment. Her blades were as swift and sharp as her words, based on experience since an early age. But in this case both women of experienced backgrounds met in a gridlock of battle. Ramona whirled her sabre in a spiral filled with twists in turns so random and elaborate she was convinced Nayana would become lost in its dance. But as she broke her blade away and feinted it towards Nayana’s side, she quickly punched the sword away with hers and spun back around to try and behead Guerra. The broadsword again nearly cleared her of her head, but this time she was close enough to slip a dagger down from the strap on her bicep and jabbed it right in to Nayana’s calf. The Lady of Tortuga hobbled back a few inches, trying to work out the pain, but it became too much for her body to bare and from instinct it collapsed on itself. She fell on her back on to the mud, smearing her entire body with splatters and wipes of goop. Ramona flicked a dagger just as Nayana’s body pounded off the ground and it landed inches from where she had targeted, in to her shoulder – she had aimed for the neck. Nayana shrieked in pain, pounding her hand on to the ground as the rain fell harder and harder down on to her body. Ramona walked up to her prey with the pleasure of watching it squander in its own filth and revilement. “Poor baby girl.” She shook her head, toying with her sabre in her hand. She taunted Nayana with a smile as the pirate looked up her with utter disgust through her suffering. “If only your father had loved you just a little bit more.” As Delmaria approached the flap of Rott’s tent, he was knocked back by the sudden appearance of a flat, wooden surface that mowed him underneath Barrett’s feet like a truck. Bill had taken the table from inside the tent and used it as a ram, plowing it straight in to Delmaria and then fumbling over him like a baboon. The sheer shock and force of the blunt surface left Darkskull with a numbing, pounding pain in his chest and his head that made it grievous for him to even attempt at sitting up, but he knew that he had to. The battle had finally worked its way back to Rott’s encampment. His forces proved to be quite the match for Delmaria’s well-trained militia, but their agility couldn’t keep them from running back for long from the bullets that grazed through the vines. Both forces came running back in depleted numbers, drastically torn apart by the fierceness of the short battle that had been taking place – 15 men from Delmaria’s crew, and 27 from Rott’s still remained standing, but just barely as the hot rain burned holes where the cuts in their clothes and skin wallowed in between streaks of dirt and linen. They had been fighting straight through even as Rott’s forces fell back to the camp, and now as the lines of men poured back in to the openness it returned to its full swing; matches between man on man and group on group reformed, blood trickled back down from wailing foreheads at the same graphic pace, and the stillness that once lingered just outside of the battle around the four pirates had now been pushed completely outside. And the fires came, too. It seemed that now every grapevine that surrounded the tent was consumed by a nipping, fierce fire that bit at every little fragment of human being that came near. The battle became illuminated in a bright, crimson-orange light that cornered them on all sides, like the lights of a massive arena breathing down with all its fierceness on a single point. The fog lifted to reveal a scene of gruesome horror in its most fulfilled form; a painting not yet finished now landscaped out before you in all of its greatness and demony. “In this time that we have here left on Earth, it is that we hope to make the best of our lives. Know that in taking your life, I do it not out of personal hatred – you simply crossed my path on the road to happiness, with intent to stop me in my tracks.” Ramona weaved her blade like a snake as she pointed it’s elongated tip right at the base of Nayana’s neck. Barrett screamed with pleasure as he beckoned to soldier’s from his side with his table, showing it off almost like a trophy as the weapon that he intended to use to smite Delmaria. Darkskull planted a foot in to the ground, and struck his sword at his side to use as a cane to help himself up. Barrett bounced up and down with glee, seeing Darkskull’s pain, and waited eagerly at a distance to perform his strike one more time to send Delmaria to a chilling, dark sleep. “Whenever you see your father again, please tell him thank you for exploiting your weaknesses for you. It made it so much easier on me.” Ramona grinned as she pulled back her sword. “See you in hell.” Barrett charged at Delmaria with all the power his massive body could push, and with all his two-hundred seventy pound weight he leaned against the table as it came down upon the old captain’s beaten body. And as he came within inches of Delmaria, he saw a flash of gold metal cut up from its stick in the ground and hide itself behind his mount; by the time he had realized, it was too late. And again Barrett let out a bloodcurdling yell as he tried to get his arms to push the sword-shacked table off of his body. The blood that spurted on to the bottom of the table bounced off and washed down with the rain in to the puddles below, brown mixing with red to form a blackish-crimson pile of muck. The sword’s hilt just barely made contact with the table that was now impaled directly to Barrett’s chest, and with a final heave he fell backward, allowing the legs of the table to hit the ground first, snap, and then close over him like a burial blanket. Ramona turned in shock as her pack mule fell to the ground, and she let out a horrid scream. Though some would say that it was two consecutive screams instead of one prolonged one; one to signify her distraught in Bill’s sudden and unpredictable death at what may has well have been David’s slingshot, and another to express her own pain in the dagger that Nayana freed from her collar bone and stuck in to the back of Guerra’s neck. And with the blow of a crisp wind, Ramona’s body splashed in to a puddle of crimson red before her; the last of Rott’s men, bested by the eight pirates that still stood tall from the battle, chopped to bits by their overpowering presence; and the hush of the sizzling fire as the downpour of rain quieted the charred remains of the grapevines. And with the blow of a crisp wind, the vineyard fell silent once more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some important news, mates! From now on my story is going to be posted somewhere else, where I will be able to type this more freely. If you would like the link to where the story is, just message me, but as of now this is the last story update that you will see on this thread! The new location will pick up from this point. Thanks, mates! |
Once again, EXCELLENT update!! I love reading this story.
Tis quite interesting if I must say so myself! You are quite the writer, Mr. Darkskull. I am curious to see what happens next and if Delmaria ends up killing off Rott or not. Also, I am veeerrry interested in hearing more about Delmaria's background. Now I shall go back to nagging you to update again. So... UPADTE ASAP. K? k. |
Could you send me the site link by PM?And quite the story Del.Rott's forces were savaged.
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.....and on....
Spoiler for City of Thieves [Continued]:
And there you have it! Hopefully after all of that you've finally caught up with me story, and now we're reading to continue on with the adventures of Delmaria Darkskull! |
It took nearly two months, but I finally finished it! Here you are mates, as I present to thee:
The Battle of Tortuga Beneath the commonality of Tortuga laid a new blanket of distrust and deceit, having been woven just after Delmaria's conversation with Reverent had ended. They parted their separate ways for the time being, agreeing to follow through with their plans and contact one another on the evening before their advance was to be made. Both of them realized the urgency of the matter before them, and neither of them wasted any time in preparing for what would unfold before them. That evening Delmaria made a stop around every tavern in Tortuga, approaching every bartender and demanding the name and location of every pirate captain who was patronizing the tavern on that particular evening. He made his way across every floor of every bar and made quick conversation with every pirate who wasn't too drunk or too disgruntled to speak with him. Each conversation started with the same statement that no pirate ever wanted to hear; "The Crow's Nest calls." In technical pirate language, "The Crow's Nest calls" was a dreaded term used only during times of dire need, often enacted by a pirate of higher standing within a particular port. In the most basic of senses it "translated" to "The Brethren is in need of your assistance," a question that many pirates did not like hearing simply because it implied that they were being called forth by an organization many pirates did not take heed to. Even with war being declared against pirates through declaration of war against the Brethren Court, many pirates thought that the idea of a government leading freebooters was detrimental to the very cause of being a "free"-booter. Delmaria was one of those pirates for many years, in fact. Only when Leanne had awarded her Piece of Eight to him did he feel a connection with the Court, and even then did he feel more obligation than honor. On numerous occasions he had even gotten in to bar fights, duels, and ship battles with Brethren recruiters and captains for passing along the phrase to him that he was now passing along to others, but now he actually understood the purpose of this call. Unfortunately many others had still not grasped the concept. The reactions to his call often came within the first few seconds of the conversation, and ranged from spits of alcohol and repeated jeering towards Delmaria to full-on rants against the authority of the Brethren, many of which often garnered applause and cheers from the pirates that were in the vicinity of them. Even as Delmaria tried to call out his side of the argument, trying to spread awareness of what was to come, none would listen to him. Only a small portion of the pirates who Delmaria approached listened to him, and luckily those who did often in majority agreed to come and aid the Brethren. In total, from the twelve taverns he visited and the four-dozen pirate captains he spoke to, only ten of them were prepared to fight for the Court; a sad number in perspective, but it would have to be made due. Within that night a campaign was run across Tortuga just as before. Doctor Grogan worked tirelessly throughout the night (Delmaria had paid him a substantial amount of gold to close his shop early for the night) creating a myriad of fliers calling forth pirates to attend a meeting within the King's Arm tavern the next afternoon, and directly after he finished Delmaria himself went around Tortuga and nailed the posters to every corner of Tortuga; the faces of taverns, shops, streetlights, market stands, dockyards, and even resting a few against the torsos of pirates left drunk out in the middle of the streets to wallow in the mud with the pigs. Meanwhile, the King's Arm was flooded with pirate volunteers who worked furiously throughout the night to clean the destruction in the tavern as quickly as possible, so that it would look mildly presentable even for rag-tag scallywags. That morning as the Navy patrols began to walk the streets, pirate patrols followed. Every time a poster was taken down, another almost immediately took its place. Every time a Navy soldier shot a glance, three were shot back at him. And every time a Navy soldier so much as came within twenty yards of the King's Arm, whose doors were guarded top and bottom by the burliest pirates Darkskull could get his hands on, every able gunman motioned towards his pistol. Even without any violence, the tension that grew throughout the day as each side became more and more aware of his enemies' movements grew. In the Town Hall of Tortuga, which had been renovated in to the Navy's base of operations, (and still lacked an official Governor months after Anne's death) British soldiers ran each and every way across the floor scrambling to keep up with reports of "increased pirate activity" that had been flooding in to the hall since earlier than morning from peeved citizens, worrisome spies and traitorous pirates looking for a form of immunity. Navy investigators lined up every "eyewitness" and questioned them one by one, trying to see what they could gather to secretly stack up information against the Brethren forces conjugating throughout Tortuga. Little did the Navy know, however, that Delmaria had taken the initiative of sending fake informants to flood the information lines and pass along false information, from telling the Navy that the Brethren's hideout was in the middle of the jungle to saying the pirates were stacking up supplies of pastries in the cargo holds of British cargo ships. Ezekiel Rott hung over the banister of the Town Hall's second floor, draped in none other than Anne Bonny's old Governor's coat. Originally the heavy, fiery gold coat was designed for a man; she would throw it over herself like a blanket and wrap it around her using a long piece of cloth that she would use as a belt. She always kept it in the finest condition as one of her proudest possessions - now it sat on the shoulders of the least deserving man in Tortuga, smeared in dirt and food stains and reeking like pigs blood. He twirled in his right hand a single gold coin that he had been rubbing in between his fingers for hours on end. His eyes were cold, and moreover angry at what he saw before him. He had anticipated that by now the floor below him would be covered in legions of men bowing and tipping their hats before him, not running around in their own chaos because of a few men that he had spent the past year trying so desperately to swipe under the rug. Not only had Delmaria managed to destroy the highest form of order within Rott's army, but he had made a mockery of him over the course of that entire summer, constantly wiping away effort after effort of attempting to gain a footing. Rott knew he wasn't the only man in the Caribbean; and he didn't like it. "Sir," the reporting Officer (the one who Delmaria had so kindly punched in the face, and now had a bandage wrapped around his nose to prove it) shuffled his way to Rott's side after running up the stairs, sweat breaking on his forehead, "we've gotten fifteen more reports of pirates putting up fliers up and down Main Street. Shall we send a battalion to the King's Arm?" Rott turned as quickly as his blood rate shot up from sitting on a stack on unbridled anger. "I'd rather not given the fact I don't want another one of my group soldiers single-handedly having their asses handed to them." he stepped back and looked back down at the masses in the parlor of the hall, throwing his coin down to the first floor with a careless flick of the wrist. He turned around and began to walk down the hallway leading to the Governor's office, calling over his shoulder "Keep the reports flowing and keep those soldiers away from that tavern. If Delmaria's smart, we'll hear from him first." And sure enough, they did; later that afternoon as dusk began to break over the horizon, a single messenger was sent to the Town Hall with a message from Delmaria in hand - the very boy who Delmaria had spoken to just before the battle at Raphael's Vineyard. The boy walked quickly through the main street, cautiously ignoring the turning of every heard in Tortuga as he went forward. Rott, much as he had anticipated, stood at the doors of the Town Hall and snatched the note out of the boys hand as he approached: Mister Rott, It appears that both of our paths have unfortunately converged not side-by-side, but head on, resulting in a collision course that perhaps both you and I have anticipated for quiet a while. We have both attempted to prolong this in as many ways possible - or perhaps just simply you have - but never the less it seems the time has come. Perhaps you're anticipating that your forces will smother me as you had so desperately hoped only a week ago. And in good reason; your troops are well-trained, your munitions are plentiful, your swords are sharper, and essentially you control the ground we walk on. But unfortunately, I hate to note to you, 'Governor,' that you're sitting atop an empty thrown. As you have before, you clearly underestimate the ability of such a 'unruly' port. What we have is something you will never be able to attain, nor understand; we hold the courage of thousands of legions, and the spirit of a million men. Your guns and your munitions are dangerous, yes; but there is nothing more dangerous than an idea whose time has come. ~ Delmaria Darkskull At the very second he closed the letter Rott's fingers enveloped angrily around the parchment, squeezing it so hard in his palm it looked as though he was trying to wring the ink right out of it. He threw the letter to the ground and abruptly turned around to retreat back in to Town Hall, where he brought life back to the scene through loud, rampant yelling. The King's Arm, on the contrary, needed no push to be energetic. It had been transformed in to a military headquarters overnight, with pirates flowing freely in and out of it's doors as they were sent out on different, individualized orders across Tortuga as Delmaria furiously threw his plans together. He sat at a table in the center of the tavern covered in a gigantic map of Tortuga with letterings and markings lining every inch of the street plan, and from there he would bark quick orders at every pirate who came to the table looking for work. The tables that circled around him were lined with all different sorts of weaponry, ranging from blunderbusses, to cutlasses, to bows and arrows. Once again, anything that could be used as a weapon was put to use, and the Brethren hurried to evade Navy patrols across town as they tried to gather weapons. It seemed as though as the day progressed the shift towards battle became more and more apparent. The townspeople who were the most exposed to gossip (mainly store clerks and socialites) were the first to flood the general supply stores and strip them of all the wood they could get their hands on. Warehouses were broken in to and stripped, dockyards were left bare, and even pieces of driftwood washed away by the wrecks of old ships lining the outskirts of the swamp (unfortunate vessels that had drifted too far from the port) were salvaged for anything that could be used to board up windows, doors, and any easy gates to the havoc that would be unleashed. Some also chose to take it up a notch. Tortuga's bay in the late afternoon was crowded with ships of all sizes fleeing towards the small channel that opened up to the sea. They were mainly merchant vessels, not too connected with any place in particular so that it was easy to flee and island if need, and smart enough to know what came from battle, no matter the outcome, was looting. Other vessels were simply family-owned ships as small as rowboats that hoped to seek refuge from the destruction, even if that meant spending the afternoon maneuvering around waking waters filled with war ships. Some would flee as far as the surrounding islands; some would simply sail to the other end of the bay and hope fires did not rip across the island; only the smart ones, often the pirates who had turned down the opportunity to fight, kept their ships in the middle of the bay and waited for after the battle when the spoils would be ripe for the picking. Ironically that day was the first time in years the Tortuga jail was actually used. Even though Delmaria and Rott had both threatened the Navy to not enforce any violence against the Brethren who ran around the port, many back alley arrests occurred in hopes of enforcing the Navy's previous calls against Brethren propaganda. The jail was flooded with pirates, many who found themselves being in jail for the first time - and many whose anger only erupted as they were shoved behind bars. The screaming, violence, and riots the jail guards had to put up with allowed for Retavick to have enough time to toss all of his finery in to the sewers bellow his cell, and caking the trap door over with a layer of cement to tragically hide the evidence. And in the City of Thieves itself, the mobilization of a war effort was just as notable, if not more. Reverent stood in his same post at the center of the city as he watched barrels of gunpowder, munitions, rum, and anything that could cause an explosion worthy of wiping out an entire island being rolled around as quickly as possible like giant boulders thundering down the side of a hill. He smoked a box of cigars that he held against his side, a giant grin on his face. "You seem to be proud of the little operation you're running here." were the words that caused Delmaria to nearly topple out of his chair amidst his frustration and anxiety. He turned around to see Nayana making her way from the back door of the King's Arm, weaving her way through the pirates sprinting back and forth across the tavern. Delmaria rose to his feet and greeted Nayana with a hug; she was one of the few people he ever greeted with such a manner. "And tell me that you enjoyed your few days travelling through the forests while I was here dealing with all of this?" Nayana rolled her eyes and strolled past him back to the map. "Hardly. You would imagine that those out in the 'countryside' would take us in, but word travels quicker than we had anticipated. We headed back to Tortuga practically right after you did." Delmaria joined her, looking back over the map. "And where's Maudie?" "Enjoying her time getting herself settled on a ship far away from port." she turned to Delmaria. "Right now my Shark is making it's way out of port so it doesn't fall victim to the looting spree that will ensue shortly after all of this passes over, and suppose your ship should do the same." Delmaria shook his head. "An open dockyard is all it would take for Rott to make a nice, clean exit. I'm not letting him leave Tortuga a free man, let alone an alive one." Nayana sighed, taking a seat in the chair Delmaria had been sitting in. "Del, perhaps if you were not so bent on killing Ezekiel you could focus yourself without as much cloudiness in your mind." Delmaria sighed. "There isn't a night that goes by where I don't regret killing Rott when I had the chance. All I had to do was just... push..." "You didn't do it because it was the right thing to do, Delmaria. It's not your fault you have honor and he doesn't. He surrendered himself to the Brethren, and took advantage of it when you stepped down; at least you had the dignity to not kill him then and there, even if his parley was false." "This time won't be so easy for him, I assure you." Delmaria ran his fingers over the map of Tortuga, and muttered under his breath "unfortunately this won't be as easy for us either..." Delmaria turned his head and watched as the late afternoon began to envelope the town square just outside the large open doors to the Kings Arm. The dirt slowly became washed in a dull orange light that crept in from the bright blue sky slowly turning purple. It was like a satin curtain being closed over a stage before the theater opened before the show; and within a few hours, the stage would be set. Nayana stood up from her chair and leaned up against the table right next to Delmaria. "I have the strangest feeling history is prepared to repeat itself, Nayana." Darkskull said as he stared out in to the fountain in the center of the town square. The sky grew a darker shade of red, and reflecting against the babbling waters of the fountain it almost seemed as though the basin was filled with blood. 1 Captain Ezekiel Rott seemed so proud walking down a runway with nobody to watch him. He walked with a strut as the shimmering gold inscriptions on the coat danced like wisps of a wildfire, and he brushed his grimy finger nails against the sleeve of the coat to wash away any remainders of the pigs blood that he had tried so carelessly to rid of. His high wigged hat had been patched up with poorly matched tanned leather, and looked so aged as if it had been hidden in an old sea captain's footlocker at the bottom of the sea. His chest was bare, revealing a large tattoo that crossed his body; a skull snickering a wicked smile with a black tricorne tipped over it's head, and two scimitars crossed downward behind its head. His hands were covered in jewels that glimmered against the torchlight from the balconies. He felt as though he was dressed like a king; though nobody came to recognize his regality, for good reason. Behind Ezekiel Rott marched the largest British parade of soldiers Tortuga had ever recognized. They spanned across the entire width of the street, moving like a brick sliding down a shoot with just barely enough space to slide down. Twelve men marched across divided in to two halves, one walking in a line to the left of Rott and the other to the right so an aisle stood behind him. The rows ran down eighteen fold, all of the uniformly-issued strapped boots clicking on the ground at a single rate. Two-hundred-sixteen well-trained British arms men, led by a glorified drunkard, and seen by none. Every window and door in Tortuga, no matter the size of the structure or distance from the town square, was boarded and holed up with every piece of wood that was scavenged. It was one of the rare times Tortuga fell silent; smaller skirmishes and brawls were shrugged off, but true battles were a spectacle that made the world freeze. The only exception this evening was that this time, the Brethren was not expected to win by a favorable standard. Delmaria sat at the edge of the fountain facing the approaching forces. The brim of his hat was tipped over his brow; his left leg was bent and planted on the fountain's rim, and the right hung just off the side. Her left arm kept him supported as he leaned back like an artist's doll, and in his right he toyed with the two interlinked rings he took out of his ear. He always kept his jewelry and ornaments off of his person during battle, but his most prized possession was never left behind for sentimental value. The two bands though rusted still glimmered in the faintest of light, as they always had. "It's a sign," Delmaria would always reiterate to Mister McVane whenever Delmaria kept up conversation on sleepless nights in port, "as if she's trying to pass on that same message of 'hope' like she always did when she was alive." he scoffed. "She never did give up hope, even in the worst of times, you know." "Or perhaps it's just of admirable make." Johnny would roll back, too tired or distracted to keep up mystic conversation. "Nay!" he shook his head back in enthusiasm, not realizing he was running monologue. "Before I got these two bound this here one" he tapped his finger on his "coronation ring," "it wouldnt shine in the light of the most brilliant of days. But ever since, the two have shined like the sun of the southern sea." And even as much as he was assaulted by those who wished to back him out of the belief the fact his jewelry shined was divine intervention, it gave Delmaria a sense of hope. He wasn't a religious man, but to Delmaria religion was anything that gave him the feeling that everything would be alright at the end of the day; so to him, his wife was his religion. "Captain Darkskull!" Rott called out across the square as his troops came to a halt. Rott looked around the square, examining the desolance of the space, and throwing his hands down at his sides. "I assume you've been anticipating defeat?" "I never anticipate anything Captain Rott." Delmaria swung his leg around, turning himself to face him. "I either know or I don't. It would be foolish to throw my faith around." Rott raised an eyebrow. "So then how does fate swing this evening, Mister Darkskull?" Delmaria flipped up his hat to reveal his eyes. "If I told you it wouldn't be much of a surprise." "Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of things that you don't know, you're just too scared to admit it." "You have no idea." he smiled. Rott rolled his neck, letting his hat roll back slightly on his scalp. "Captain Delmaria Darkskull, under the jurisdiction of His Maj-" "Oh, I see how quickly one is willing to throw about his loyalties for power." "-Majesty King George the First, I hereby place you, and all affiliated captains, privateers, and pirates under the name of the Brethren Court of Pirates, under arrest." Delmaria clapped his hands together as loudly as possible, like a stubbornly smug audience member watching a theater performance. "Well done! How many times did you practice that in the mirror?" Rott's frustration had remained quelled up until then. Realizing Delmaria would continue this game for as long as possible, he moved directly to drawing his sword, hoping to add the intimidation factor. His deep black broadsword almost reflected like ebony against the strip of torchlight that beamed down the cut in the black that ran from the tip down to the hilt, which basketed around the hand in heavy morphs of metal that almost resembled twisted pieces of bone wrapped around the hand. The sword was in pale darkness against even the bright streets of Tortuga - it was as if the sword consumed itself in the night, taking darkness from the sky and enveloping it around it. It gave off a sense of dread even if it were simply in your presence; an uneasy feeling that led men to step off their balance, no matter how strong. Unbeknownst to Rott, however, he had just triggered "the signal." Delmaria slipped the two conjoined rings in to his boot as he stood himself off, prompting the pirate who watched with a close eye from the corridors of the King's Arm to abruptly turn around and begin sprinting out of Delmaria's room and down the stairs, pushing his way through the masses of pirates that flooded the floor as they waited for the battle to transpire. Delmaria had seemed to be alone in his fight, but it was quite the contrary - across the town's square dozens of pirates holed themselves up in the buildings, watching from the windows and balconies in secret with their guns and swords propped up against their chests. Each of them watched the courtyard with intensity, praying to themselves that Rott's men did not shoot down Delmaria; they only hoped that Darkskull knew what he was doing, for in their minds if not, Tortuga had already been damned. The messenger, a scrawny, young-hearted pirate with legs faster and more agile than many of the rusted pirates on the island, sprinted out the back entrance of the King's Arm and through the courtyard where Delmaria and Rott had fought, cutting up through the entrance with the building overhang that led further in to the city. Unlike the main streets of Tortuga, which were illuminated by dozens of lanterns and torches placed in every dark corner, the further one progressed in to Tortuga the less lighting there was. Only if you progressed in to the southwestern part of town far behind the Governor's Mansion - where many of the port's most profitable businesses took hold and the streets were lined with cobblestone instead of dirt - was there substantial lighting to give the eerie feeling of a walk through London in a much more tropical climate. He cut a right at the break in the road and waved down to the next pirate who stood at the end of the short road, who was equally fast as he, which prompted him to turn on his heel up further south. Gathered just near him by the small wooden walkway that hung over the main street was a small brigade of roughly seven pirates, led by Lady Nayana. As she watched the messenger run by her, she commanded the pirates to begin slowly and carefully positioning large crates of gunpowder just before the bridge, while she waved her hat at the passing pirate. She stared off with both anxiety and eagerness as the palm of her hand slowly rubbed against her gun. She could feel the tension in the air building. "Have you any idea what you have done to me, Delmaria? Do you know the torment you have caused me? I have been made a mockery of by you and the Brethren, and I'll be damned if I'm forced to walk this earth with your noses hanging over me!" Rott screamed, pointing the edge of his sword with a hand shaken by fury. "You've brought this all upon yourself, Ezekiel. You turned your back on the Court the day you signed with Rott's side, and you alone are responsible for that treachery. You've only escalated that by bringing the Navy in to this - and you dare call yourself a pirate.." Delmaria tried his best to remain collected, even though the nature of Rott's argument boiled his blood. His fingers slowly unfurled from his fist, edging against the pommel of his sword. The second pirate ran up through the courtyard that housed the Faithful Bride, run quiet by the war-like activity to come outside. He passed through the archway to it's left and ran in to the enclosure lined with a few small stone buildings, waving through the grounds to the third messenger, who then darted up the cobblestone streets that the heel of his heel clicked against. "Roger would have made a damn fine Pirate Lord, and you know that better than you'll ever be willing to admit!" "Is that what this is all about? All Renveil ever cared about was himself Ezekiel, but you were so driven by your need to be in a seat that you let him corrupt you." Delmaria drew back, belittling. "His lies have become your reality." "I AM my own reality! Perhaps then I was weak, perhaps then I did not understand my potential, but now" Rott turned around with a misstep, waving his hands out to the crowd of soldiers behind him as his stomach buckled like an unstrapped boot, "I'M the one who controls my fate! And if I can control myself, I can control anybody!" "No." Delmaria shook his head. "Men themselves are weak, Rott. They see overcoming themselves as a sign of strength, but it is only them striding over a fence of their own inability. We must first rule ourselves before we may rule others; but I'm afraid many men find by the time they reign over the hearts of others that they do not reign over their own." The messenger bolted his way From West to East across the Southern part of town, the back of the Governors Mansion looming in silence in the distance behind a canopy of palm trees that stuck out from the sides of buildings. Wary eyes of children peeped out of the boarded windows of their homes only to be pulled back forcefully in defense by the hands of their fathers and mothers. The music that once lined the streets had fallen silent, leaving only the prickle of a torch's flame against wood and a hollow whisper of wind to echo through the streets. The pirate darted in to the entrance of the Faithful Bride, for once thrown open in to the dank night air instead of being closed shut. "Carver" ushered the boy across the floor of the tavern, past the bar, and in to the back storage room, from where underneath a crate of old, dusty boxes an aged latch appeared, descending in to the sewers below. "You act as though the path you have chosen in life has been more righteous than mine, Delmaria. How many lives have you ended? How many shortfalls have you caused? Would Maria still be alive if you had-" Delmaria drew his cutlass, aiming it straight at Rott's gullet. "Do not bring Maria in to this, Ezekiel." "The 'fairest maiden in all the Caribbean,' shot down in cold blood because a hardened sea veteran couldn't maintain his composure." Rott edged his way closer to Delmaria, tilting his head with slight premonition to slowly destroy his adversary from inside. "Oh but how men allow their tempers to light such destructive flames." "Speak for yourself." "Oh, but I do! I take full accord for every crime and wrong I have committed, but at least I have the self-satisfaction of doing so! Who do you think you are, Delmaria? A general? A king? A crusader? None fit the suit you hold - you're a filthy, mongrelling pirate, and no matter how much you glorify yourself, no matter how much you try to right the wrongs of your past, your time will remain clear to all; you are a harbinger of death, just as I." "I never chose to go down this path. But if I am stuck on it for eternity I may as well do what I can to alleviate the pain of walking it for myself." "Then how can you stand there and choose to never understand the pain I seath in? Are you that selfish?" "I'm not the one who betrayed his brethren for power." The pirate nearly slid in to the hole in the ground as he clambered down the small set of wooden stairs in to one of the more immediate tunnels of the rat's city. For a change the underground channels of Tortuga were lit by a single path of torches that illuminated the way to where Reverent waited, smoking a cigar in between his front teeth. Delmaria's eyes drifted discretely to the foot of a Navy soldier in the very middle of the crowd that blocked the main street. He stood uneven on top of a copper metal plate partially unexposed from the dirt that always hid it from the knowledge of the outside world. It led down a steep tunnel that poked in to a chamber that sat in the heart of the City of Thieves; the very chamber where Delmaria's hidden weapon waited. The last crate of gunpowder was thrown on top of the giant cascade of containers, leaving what Reverent described as a "majestic weapon of destruction;" dozens upon dozens of barrels and crates of gunpowder, rum (unfortunately) and any other highly volatile substance that was smuggled out of the warehouses across Tortuga in a manner of mere hours. It was enough gunpowder to make a general of an army drool, and it sat in discord in a dank cistern beneath the streets of Tortuga. "It's a good thing we never put this room to good use," Reverent said as he examined his surroundings, "or else somebody would be quite upset." The last of his servants (the last one to run madly out of the room) tapped Reverent on the shoulder out of curiosity. "How much gunpowder do you think we,ve got here?" Just then they turned to the splatter of water against the weathered stone floor, where the messenger turned himself through the cracked archway. He was breathing heavily, unable to spit out a word, but he nodded to relay a single message; "Now!" "Enough to blow a hole in the map." Reverent clasped his hand on the shoulder of his portly servant, who nodded as he took out his pistol. Rott chuckled. He kicked the wingtip of his shoes on the dirt, turning the point of his sword around and around as it followed his foot. Rott now had moved himself to a distance of ten feet from Delmaria, but instead of raising his guard, Darkskull lowered his cutlass. His eyes drifted as Rott drew closer to the right end of the overhang that sat above the street, where he caught eye of the tiniest sliver of a wooden barrel transposed just before the curve of the building. "Easy..." Nayana whispered over the shoulder of the quickly sweating pirate that sat just before the edge of the bridge. He rolled his palm over the head of a barrel of East India Trading Company industrial hand-grenades, though all of his senses were fixed on the heads of the Navy soldiers that stood just beneath the curved walkway. Nayana's ears almost twitched as she waited in the silence for the sharp, piercing signal that would cause all of Tortuga to turn inside out. "You know Delmaria, you seem to be under the misconception that you and I are two opposite evils. In truth, there is no such thing as a 'shade of gray' in the spectrum; there is only black and white - good, and evil." Rott walked side to side, shifting his weight between his legs as he drew closer to Delmaria. Darkskull didn't move. Reverent's assistant positioned himself just underneath a hole that came down from the ceiling of the room in which one of the few beams of light that illuminated the room came down from. It led up a short stone shaft to a weathered copper sewer top that sat right in the middle of the road where the group of soldiers stood, unbeknownst to what was going on directly beneath their noises - literally. "As much as you will try to justify yourself, Delmaria, there will always be that beating in the back of your head that reminds you you will always lie on the opposite side of the spectrum from the light - my side." Rott has transgressed the space between himself and Delmaria, reducing to only a matter of a few feet. They now stood face to face for the first time in months, if not years; they may had seen each other's presence or even crossed swords, but for such a long time they had never been as close to each other as they were now. Delmaria could feel the musk of Rott's skin still emanating under his coat - the smell of blood, rotted flesh, and uncooked meat. Their blades now were inches from touching one another - the tips of their swords, hanging at their sides, scrapped pieces of dirt and dust in one another's direction. The surmount of Delmaria's misery lied before him, and all it would take to end it all was to raise his blade and strike him down. Doing so would be a dishonor to the Code - but in this moment, Delmaria felt disregarding the Code would be the honorable thing to do. Reverent took a final puff of his cigar and nodded to his assistant, backing slowly towards the archway that led out of the room. The red tip of his cigar vibrated a low hum as he stuck it out of his mouth and waved it through the air, and as his shoulder hit the doorway he extended his arm. "And no matter what reconciliations you try to admit, Delmaria, it will always remain clear;" Nayana leaned her hand on the back of her crewmate and took a heavy breath. Reverent flicked his wrist, sending the cigar like a fiery arrow on to the trail of gunpowder that ignited itself across the floor. The pistol clicked with a soft, preemptive warning, before charging the gunpowder in it's barrel to explode with all the force it's soul could muster. Delmaria clenched his fist with all the muscle in his arm concentrated on the knuckles of his right hand. And Rott leaned in, whispering slightly in to Delmaria's ear, "You're just like me." The gunshot that blasted through Tortuga that day was the loudest noise that had ever rippled through the Caribbean. It did not only echo within the ears of every pirate in the city, whether of the utmost attention or relaxed in the deepest slumber, but within the heart and soul of every living being in the Southern Sea; on that day, at that very moment, the final weight was tipped on to a table prepared to collapse, and the second that it was shot was as if Lucifer himself had plunged a fist upon the Earth. The bullet shot up through the sewer plate in to the boot of the Navy soldier who stood on top of it, sending a shockwave through his body that would only last for a few moments. "NOW!" the Lady of Tortuga roared, as with all of her crew's might their barrels of East India Industrially Smuggled gunpowder trampled across the walkway that sat over the main street of Tortuga. Rott only had a few seconds to turn around and look at the sliver of hysteria that was to come, as Delmaria grabbed him by the shoulder, whipped him around, and rocketed his fist straight for Rott's nose. The only proper description that you could acquire from somebody who was anywhere within a four-hundred foot radius of the blast was a complete whitewash of deafening, overwhelming energy, before an immediate plunge in to indescribable mayhem. An explosion of black smoke ripped up from the opposite sides of the main street from where the Navy soldiers stood, shaking the ground as though the Titan Atlas dropped the Earth from his palms. In a matter of seconds a gigantic fire ravaged the enormous hole that had formed in the middle of Tortuga, plunging dozens of British soldiers in to its fiery, gluttonous mouth, while dividing the remaining battalion on to two sides of the city. For those who stood near but had not been engulfed by the ravine, the explosion was enough to send all the men nearby back off their feet ten, twenty, even thirty feet from where they once had stood. The force from the explosion propelled Delmaria and Rott back in to the waters of the fountain, where the blood dripping from Ezekiel's nose pooled around him as his face slammed in to the cool waters. The barrels that had floated across the walkway ignited a second yet immediate explosion that nearly disintegrated the bridge upon contact with the flames from below, sending up ashes, stone, brick, and even barrels that had failed to ignited stories of feet above Tortuga before they crashed back to the Earth upon nearby stores, unsuspecting soldiers, and even in to the center of the square. Nayana and her crew scampered to their feet and made a run from their spot to desperately escape the debris that feel down upon them as the buildings near the impact site shook and crumbled, quaking from a lack of support beneath the ground and toppling in to the pit. The cool, turning waters of the fountain provided an eerily cool sanctuary for Delmaria in the seconds he submerged himself to avoid the flames that blistered the night sky. It was in these waters that Roger had stood, where Anne was slayed in the very coat Ezekiel wore now. He considered, perhaps, that it was fate that had brought those who had killed the coat's rightful owner back to the land where the crime was committed - he figured now it was telling him to right the wrong. Every window and door around the square of Tortuga bursted open, with each building revealing a concealed group of soldiers from both of the opposing sides. Brethren pirates, British soldiers, and a fresh batch of Rott's newest recruits, draped in the signature torn and meshed rags, flooded out in to the grounds and balconies, firing off crossfire from every point on the circle of buildings that created a frenzy of bloodshed. The smoke from the explosion now only acted as a dark, sickening backdrop to the white plumes of smoke and sparks of sword strikes that coated the battleground at the center of Tortuga. Delmaria submersed himself out of the water and in to the powerful chaos of Tortuga just as Rott did, his coat now dripping wet and his face smeared with the undertone of blood. Both of them had managed to keep a hold on their swords, and while Rott heaved over to pick his up, Delmaria overshadowed the formality of swordplay for a stern punch with his left hand right in to Ezekiel's forehead, tumbling him back in to the waters. Delmaria took a few steps forward to follow up, but he felt a hand latch around his arm. He was slinked back in to a crouch and turned to face Nayana, who had quickly dove in to the fountain to retrieve Delmaria from being caught immediately in the center of the battle. "Come with me!" "NO!" Delmaria wrestled his arm in her grasp, but Nayana's hands had become so strong over the years that she could have been equally as strong as him. She restrained him even as he turned his head to watch Rott slither out of the edge on the other side and run to a group of his crew mates waiting for him at a doorway across the courtyard. Nayana took another tug at the reluctant Delmaria as he fought the urge to break away across the field of fire after him, instead grunting as Nayana pulled him out of the fountain. The two hit the ground running as they dashed towards the open doors of the King's Arm, guarded by two pirates with blunderbusses who fired them off in the general direction of the enemy as they guided the two pirates inward. Around them Tortuga had been transformed in to a plain of iron and fire, the normally jovial town square now consumed by clusters of soldiers and pirates falling left and right to one another's swords. Even though it was early on in the battle, there seemed to be no decisive notion as to who would be gaining an advantage - though many of the Navy were savaged by the explosion and the Brethren held the higher ground aboard the balconies, Rott's men worked with a rabid efficiency despite their gloomy appearance. They seemed almost awakened by the sight of blood on their skin, as though with each drop that fell upon the ground they waked they gained a larger stride. A last pitch of fire nipped at the bottom of Delmaria's coat as he tripped his way in to the King's Arm, just behind Nayana. Three more pirates, refreshed and washed with a determined glare that reflected in the light of their blades, pushed Delmaria further in to the tavern as they passed. They paused at the foot of the balcony, surveying the field, before the one at the head of the group - the shortest and smallest of the three - let out a roaring battle cry, bursting in to the field with the other two closing the door to the tavern behind them. In the split between the doors as they watched them closed, Delmaria could see a bullet clip right through the valiant boy's collarbone. Even with the door closed the feel of the battle did not escape them. The windows at the front of the tavern had been busted through, and the heat from the fighting outside radiated in through them. Johnny McVane was helping Doctor Grogan ferry medicine in to the basement to set up a small hospital that would be run beneath the tavern, while the guards positioned themselves near the backdoor and on the upper level near the balcony. Ever so often they would fire down at the enemies who came close to the building, but they were instructed not to waste their ammunition on picking off men in the courtyard with such a risk of taking out their allies. "God damn Delmaria," Nayana panted as she leaned herself again a table. "Now is not the time to try and settle a rivalry!" Delmaria got to his feet and walked forcefully towards Nayana, bringing a heavy air with him. "It's more than a rivalry, I could have killed the whole damn war in its first battle if it wasn't for your need to play the heroin and save me!" Nayana was going to protest, but she was too overcome by her shortness of breath, and wavered under the idea of sparking Delmaria's shortening temper. "You could have been killed out there before you landed your third punch. You'll get your chance before the night is dead, trust me." |
Holy cow, my eyes got dizzy reading this. Great job, Del!
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