The Legend of Los Piratas de Demonio

[HammyTheSquirrel]

I decided that I would start a new story to replace my old one (The Dark Idol). This one is much more original as it is not based directly off Pirates Online. I don't have a full idea of the story yet, but I'm starting to develop it in my head and it will probably build up as I write the first few chapters. Be forewarned, the story may have some graphic parts to it. Here's the prologue (sort of). Enjoy!

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The Legend of Los Piratas de Demonio

Prologue: The Attack

The waves were crashing violently against the ship as the crew stumbled and slid across the slippery deck. Their captain was desperately attempting to call out orders, but was unable to overcome the roaring wind as his words seemed to slip away from his lips the second they came out. It was impossible to see more than a foot in front of them under the heavy downpour of rain and none of the men could see what they were doing.

Young Alek was trying to tie down a pile of cargo that had broken loose below deck, but to no avail. He decided it wasn’t a good idea to sit down for rest after he had nearly been crushed by a rolling barrel of cannonballs, so he retreated to the deck below.

As he grabbed the driest towel he could find from a pile by the crew quarters, a tremendous lurch surged through the ship, causing parts of the wood floor to buckle and splinter. Panicked and confused about what was happening, Alek sprinted up the stairs two at a time (carefully avoiding the broken steps) and slid onto the deck. As soon as he processed what was happening, he decided it had been a bad idea to come up here. He looked around at the deck, quickly spotting a gaping hole in the stern of their ship.

Another tremendous explosion reverberated from the starboard side of the deck, sending Alek flying feet backwards. He heard screams of pain and a sickening thud beside him. He didn’t dare look at what had landed, but cowered on the deck with his face in his arms, as if he might wake up and find it was all a dream.

A series of even smaller explosions hit the ship with tremendous force, causing Alek to slide across the slick deck. Finally summoning up enough courage, he lifted his head to examine the scene: there were crew members lying on the deck, whether they were alive or dead, he did not know. There was flaming debris scattered everywhere and the ship had such large, gaping holes that it was a miracle they hadn’t sunk already. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, how could this happen? Surely mere pirates wouldn’t attack a war ship as powerful and infamous as the H.M.S. Royale, he thought.

“Abandon ship! Save yourselves!” There were crew members running about in terror, trying to lower boats into the violent sea, and Alek was jolted awake by a cold chill running down his spine. He suddenly realized that he hadn’t seen any enemy ships nearby during the attack, despite not being able to see through the rain. The temperature was dropping rapidly as he ran over to help a group of sailors save a dinghy from a mess of tangled rope and sails, but the water on the deck had already frozen solid and his teeth were chattering wildly.

Even as he slipped and slid in a feeble attempt to escape the wreckage, there was a final, deafening explosion that sent the entire ship flying apart into thousands of pieces. Alek flew through the air, feeling wood splinters and shards of metal hit him from all sides until he broke through the surface of the lashing ocean waters. His mind seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness as he hauled himself onto a nearby chunk of the deck, hoping that he would, by some miracle, make it through the storm and be found by another ship. His eyes were becoming blurry and his sight fogged. I’m going to die, he thought, I’m going to die and no one will find me. That was his last thought before his head hit the wood and he lost consciousness.

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Did you like it? Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated (and rum is, too. ). The chapters may come pretty sporadically, but I'll do my best to try and get them out more reliably than my last story. (hmm... this was a full page on MS Word... lol)

[Nate Swordwalker]

Great details. Saw one spelling mistake Looking forward to next chapters!

[HammyTheSquirrel]

Here's Chapter 1. It sort of gives a beginning to the story.

Chapter 1

30 Years Ago

A young man walked casually through the crowded street market of Barcelona. Most who saw him merely thought he might have been running the day’s errands or heading to work, but only he knew the “errand” given to him. Feeling that the market exposed him too much, he casually turned into an alleyway. There were several storeys of windows on the buildings either side of him and clotheslines had been tied to balconies, crossing overhead.

He kept on going over what the General had told him, “You must not fail to complete this mission. If you fail to retrieve the medallion, ensure that the Admiral is dead. You mustn’t get caught alive, Joseph.” He had to find the Spanish Privateer Admiral’s office in the government building in Barcelona, steal a medallion currently in the Admiral’s possession, assassinate the Admiral, and then escape without being caught.

As Joseph weaved his way through the alleys to the center of the city, he couldn’t help but think about his wife and son. What if he was captured, or even killed, by the Spaniards? He couldn’t bear the thought of his wife’s reaction to the news that he had been killed by Spanish soldiers, so he shut the thought from his mind and kept on walking. Then the thought of his son growing up without a father forced its way into his mind and a single tear streamed down his cheek, but he forced himself to keep walking; he had to complete his objective. He had taken an oath and promised unquestioned allegiance to Crown and Country.

As he turned a corner, the center square of the city came into view. His pace quickened as he found a medium sized building with the words “Oficinas de Gobierno”. He easily translated the words to Government Offices, being multilingual so he could navigate Europe when needed.

He decided that trying to sneak in would be too tricky with all of the people walking around the square, so he walked right through the front doors and into a room consisting of a check in desk, some chairs, and a few doors that lead to the rest of the building.

“Excuse me, I have an appointment with Admiral Cabrera.” He said, in perfect Spanish, to a very formal looking clerk, who flipped through a few sheets of paper before replying.

“There aren’t any appointments today, would you like to request one?”

“The Admiral must not have gotten my letter, is he available right now?”

“Yes, but I must check your pockets before you enter his office, you know, for security reasons.” The clerk said as he started to reach into Joseph’s pockets, but within seconds he was unconscious, having received an elbow to the jaw and punch to the side of the head.

Satisfied that the clerk wouldn’t wake up too soon, Joseph made his way through one of the doors. He travelled through a hallway, up two flights of stairs, and passed a room full of guards before arriving at the Admiral’s office door. He barged through the doors, leapt over the desk and pinned the man to the ground before knocking the Admiral unconscious. He then closed the door silently, and set out to search the office for what he needed: the medallion.

After only two minutes of searching he turned around to see, to his horror, that the Admiral was gone. In those few seconds he had stopped, he failed to see a figure leap out from behind the shelf he was searching; he was pinned against the wall with a pistol pointed at his head within seconds.

“Looks like your little mission is over, amigo.” The Admiral said in a low growl. “Give me one reason not to shoot you right now!”

“Because I still have a medallion to find.” But before the Admiral could react, Joseph had elbowed him in the head, knocked him off his feet, turned the gun on him and shot. Knowing that someone would be in the office within seconds, he quickly searched the Admiral’s pockets for the medallion.

As five guards burst through the doors, Joseph found the medallion and jumped through the window. He had noticed a silk merchant’s stall under the window when he was walking into the building and had known he could land on it if he needed to make a quick getaway. He hadn’t expected this to happen when he had planned his mission before, and was not sure what to do other than run.

As he looked over his shoulder, he saw soldiers sprinting after him with muskets and pistols in hand. He had two pistols, a grenade and some knives under his coat, but they wouldn’t help him in this chase; all he could do was sprint through the market, weaving his way past startled and confused citizens and merchants. He heard the crack of guns behind him and felt bullets whiz past as he turned into an alleyway. He decided that he might be able to hide in the shipyards if he could evade the Spanish soldiers for long enough.

As he turned into another alley with the docks coming into sight, he heard more shots being fired. In an attempt to confuse the soldiers, Joseph ran through an open doorway and into the middle of a kitchen. He sprinted past three stunned children and out of a door, finding himself in a narrow hallway. Figuring out that he must have entered an apartment, he sprinted across the hall, leapt up a flight of stairs and ran through another apartment, hoping that there would be a window that he could escape through.

There was screaming and yelling behind him as he vaulted off the railing of the apartment’s balcony and crashed through the window of an apartment in the neighbouring building. Cracks of gunfire resounded from the previous apartment, but he was already crashing out of the door and jumping down a flight of stairs. As he forced his way back out into the streets, he saw a large warehouse on the edge of the docks. He casually weaved his way through the crowd, trying to remain unnoticed, and slipped through the worn doors of the large building. Hoping that he hadn’t been seen, he dove behind a pile of crates beside a flight of stairs.

As he sat there, he remembered the medallion. He had succeeded, hadn’t he? But as he groped around his coat for it, he realized that he had dropped it in the chase. Before he could start thinking about what would happen because of his mistake, the sound of doors crashing open and the yelling and panting of soldiers filled the large room. He held his breath in anticipation as he heard them searching around the room, and was relieved when he heard them start to leave, until one soldier said they had forgotten to check a stack of boxes. That was his stack. Not knowing what else he could possibly do, he leapt up and shot the man before sprinting up the stairs nearby.

This is it, I’m dead, he thought, there’s no way I can escape. He found himself on the roof when he reached the top step. Knowing what he had to do, he sprinted as fast as he could towards the edge of the building and leapt off, aiming to land in the bay below and swim away.

But as Joseph vaulted into the air, one soldier fired his musket, hitting him in the back before he plummeted down into the water. The soldiers ran over to see where he was, but no one could find him. Joseph Lawrence, a British assassin, had fallen into the bay after being shot and was never seen again, not in Spain nor Britain, nor even the country he lived in, Austria. His one year old son, Aleksander, grew up with his widowed mother before she was murdered at a market when Alek was seventeen.

After his mother’s death, Alek joined the English Navy and travelled the world, from India to South Africa to the New World, until his ship was attacked by an unknown force off the coast of Bermuda and he was reported lost at sea.