RED SKY
Dead, dead, dead.
He was dead.
Jack had known it the moment that horrid beast lunged upon him. He knew it the moment that blast of heat and steam from off the creature's breath hit him that this was the end.
Still, as he drew his cutlass, Jack knew he would go down fighting...
... if only to kill her.
And, so, he not only was eaten by the kraken, but Jack leapt into the gaping maw of the miserable creature. The pirate swung his cutlass with fierce anger and rage, screaming her name until his throat felt hoarse and raw.
But the kraken was too strong.
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"No..."
Even still, William Turner knew it had happened. He knew those terrible tentacles, reaching up the hull of the Black Pearl sought the one and only Captain Jack Sparrow. The kraken would not rest until it had brought that man low.
And, yet, it hurt less to think of Jack dying that it did to think of him kissing Elizabeth.
"Jack..."
But, in a moment of absolute destruction, the Black Pearl had been pulled down, dragged by the vicious monster, down into the dark depths.
It was over in a heartbeat.
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Gone, gone, gone.
All hope was gone. At least, to Elizabeth Swann, all hope was gone. Jack Sparrow had been sucked up by the kraken, and it was all her fault. The fair damsel in distress led him to his death, shackling her supposed friend to the mast of the Black Pearl for that hideous sea beast. She left him to be bait for it and to die a most horrible death. And, to make it worse, she had kissed him.
Elizabeth watched with a sort of tired weariness as Tia Dalma just waved at the skeleton crew as they pulled away. The fortune teller stood waist deep in water, her skirts billowing up about her. The woman had an eerie way about her as she settled those dark, haunting eyes right upon Elizabeth. As close as they still were to the swamps, Tia Dalma had come far out with her little candle, her eyes locking upon Elizabeth from even there. The budding-pirate furrowed her eyebrows as she thought, just maybe, she saw a grin forming on Tia Dalma's face. Elizabeth felt almost grateful to see Hispaniola slipping away from them, but that look left her with dread fear.
They had an accord with Barbossa, one that frightened Elizabeth dearly. The pirate captain would help them get Jack back, but they would have to serve as his crew.
El Cazador slipped through the cypress trees and into open water, like a ghost ship, heading out to sea. Her crew was barely visible, even for such a small ship. Just a little sloop, but a fast vessel at that. Not nearly as fast as the Pearl, but that ship lay at the bottom of the sea, brought low by the kraken. And the sails of this ship, as opposed to the Pearl's ebony clothes, were stained a deep, bloody crimson color. A warning, to all who would dare draw near.
Elizabeth shuddered at the thought.
The colors they ran were but of two colors. Scarlet and ebony. Blood and darkness. The colors fluttered in the wind, held aloft by a warm, Caribbean breeze. A black skull and crossbones, the colors of a pirate, with the strangest of hearts for one of the eyes with claws coming from out of it, set upon that red cloth. Tia Dalma herself had presented Barbossa with those colors, telling him to run them at all costs, to announce that she had sent the skeleton crew.
"It be a warning that ye's be in me good graces," the strange oracle had cautioned them sternly.
Will, much to Elizabeth's horror, took the colors with honor, raising them himself. More and more, he was becoming a pirate, a dangerous felon and criminal of the law. Turner took after his father by the day. But it wasn't his change in persona that frightened Elizabeth so. It was the thoughts of what awaited her if they ever did find Jack Sparrow again.
Even then, staring out as the island of Hispaniola as it slipped away, Elizabeth could only picture the look on Jack's eyes as she stepped away from him, leaving him shackled to the doomed ship. To his ship. Somehow, the pirate looked as though he understood, despite the overwhelming shock of the situation, the anger at her betrayal. Somehow...
"Miss Swann, you look near warmed over to death."
The woman jumped at her name spoken by that voice. Barbossa. That villain, the pirate scoundrel. Elizabeth wheeled around, only to find him standing right behind her, too close for any comfort. She jumped back, against the railing.
"Barbo-"
"Captain Barbossa," he corrected her with a sneer, taking his hat from off his head and draping it across his chest. "Now, as I was saying, Miss Swann, y'look near warmed over to death. Why do ye not rest a spell in the captain's quarters, regain yer composure."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "I shall do no such thing."
Barbossa grinned a strange sneer. "It was merely a gentlemanly offer." He glanced to the crew, all men, below. "The men might be inclined to take certain liberties with ye livin' in the common quarters."
"I should rather stay with them than with the likes of you," she snarled.
Barbossa just laughed. "Ye still don't trust me, do you, Miss Swann?" She sniffed in indignation. "I can understand where ye're coming from, Miss. Truly, I can." He leaned against the rail with her, staring back at Tia Dalma and her coterie. "However, my quarrel isn't with ye and yer kin. It's with Jack and that Lord Cutler Beckett, not ye."
"Oh, really?"
Barbossa drew in a heavy breath, stroking the smoothly worn grain of the wooden deck railing. "Y'know why she is called El Cazador?" Elizabeth shook her head. "It's Spanish, for the Hunter. She is the Hunter. Because she'll hunt down my quarry until they are as dead as dead can be."
"How reassuring," she quipped.
"No one else. Just Beckett and Jack. We've a score to settle, Jack and I." Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "I cannot explain it. Just call it an accord."
The woman shook her head. "So, where do we head first, oh illustrious captain?"
"Tortuga."
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