Chapter 28: Boxed In

Standing behind her large desk, Prima hurriedly rifled through the record-book that was opened before her, one hand planted squarely on the desk as she loomed over it.

Underhill. Sydney Underhill.

She had gathered and scanned as many record-books as she could find within the enormous manor, but so far there was no data on the privateer in question – only a list of information about her ship and the date she had acquired it, which was years ago.

Something, anything –

Anything to give her some sort of idea as to what was currently transpiring.

"Supreme Commander!"

There was a pounding on her door, and without even a second's worth of hesitation, it was practically kicked open, an entire patrol ship's worth of troops bursting in. Prima's head snapped up.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Apologies, Commander – the Grand Fife has been sighted."

The Grand Fife?!

Tossing the book aside almost haphazardly, Prima rounded on the soldier that had spoken, coming so close that their faces were only inches away.

"Did you see her?"

"Affirmative – Underhill was sighted, Commander."

Prima stepped away, her massive high collar shifting slightly as her posture relaxed. Her intensity did not, however – she remained ever as intent as before.

"Report."

And the marine, the one who had spoken first, did just so with a level of ease that would have been alarming for any other creature than a clockwork.

"Our ship was keeping watch upon the Leviathan, another patrol ship in the outer ring, Commander – the Grand Fife came into view, and the scout on position alerted all on board."

"And the Leviathan– did it engage?"

"Not exactly, Commander – the Grand Fife engaged it, and boarded within seconds."

Within seconds – such seemed almost improbable. Armada ships, as Prima would know, were the most heavily armed – surely an old wooden galleon would have had a more difficult time. But it did not seem so – not this time, and it did not make any sense.

"And the soldiers, were they successful in combat?"

"Negative."

"What?!" Prima snapped, the word as harsh as a cobra's strike. It was impossible – it was in their programming for clockworks to defend themselves, to take any measures necessary to prevent their frames, vital information from falling into the hands of the enemy! "Were they overcome by the crew of the Fife?"

"Negative."

"Then – "

"Supreme Commander, the Fife did not have a crew. Its Captain emerged and destroyed the crew of the Leviathan."

"And she was alone?"

"Affirmative, Commander. The crew fired upon her, and neither their shots nor their halberds slowed her."

So they did fight, Prima concluded – but their attacks had not had any effect on Sydney Underhill, not in the slightest. It made no sense, no sense, no sense at all – how could it be, for a human to be immune to weapons of gunpowder and fire and steel?

"Was she at least wounded?"

Perhaps if it had been the adrenaline that had kept her running, that had forced her to ignore the pain – such was probable, for a madwoman –

"Negative, Commander."

She was not.

And it was only then that Prima realized something was deeply wrong.

"We've got to pull all patrol ships out of the skies."

"Commander, are you – "

"We must! Or she will DESTROY US ALL!" Her voice rising to a loud, belting yell, Prima began to stalk about the office, her pace quick and hurried. It couldn't be, this couldn't happen,she could not let her soldiers be demolished, she could not let her invasion, her takeover be for nothing!

"Commander," one of the dragoon guards that had been positioned outside the doorway stepped into the doorway, "There is a ship approaching the island. It is coming alarmingly close to shore."

Prima froze.

"Describe it, soldier."

"It is black, Commander, bearing a crossed hatchet and sword upon its sails."

For several seconds, the silence seemed almost deafening, with their Supreme Commander rooted in place, the quiet click-click-click of gears turning just barely audible.

Then Prima ran.

She did not give any warnings or notifications whatsoever – she simply bolted, a flurry of black-gold fabric as she dashed down the stairs of the manor and across the court, past the ever-growing, festering pile of corpses as her troops pursued her with a great readying of weapons and multiple shouts of Commander, you are endangering yourself!

Of course, she paid them no heed.

Instead, she only quickened her pace, finally slowing once she reached the beach, the wind catching in her coat, her hair, whistling all around her as the massive black ship, the Grand Fife, drifted past, no more than fifty feet away from the shore.

"Commander!" The troops had finally caught up – but they too fell silent upon the sight of the great looming ship, the deafening sound combination of creaking boards and howling wind drowning out everything else.

In one sharp movement, the musketeers of the group surrounded Prima entirely, guns cocked and pointed at the ship, slender fingers poised on polished, narrow triggers, preparing to fire –

"No! Lower your weapons!"

They obeyed, although there was no doubt that they were questioning the logical reasoning behind this decision.

"Don't fire upon it – you said yourself that you had seen its Captain destroy an entire crew – we are within range of its cannons!"

She was entirely correct – the Fife's enormous, rusted canons were practically just above their heads, and they remained silent, not daring to threaten the thin veil of stealth that they had still somehow kept.

Then again, Sydney Underhill was only one woman, and the ship she sailed was almost absurdly large – there was a chance that she had simply not seen them yet, that she was elsewhere on the Fife.

The ship was dangerously close now, and Prima could swear that she could see the individual barnacles clinging to the hull – a part of her was tempted to call back her order, to have them fire upon the ship, to retrieve the heavy artillery before it sailed away and blast it to smithereens. But she did none of that – instead, she continued to hold still, as if just waiting for something to happen.

Perhaps this was the "sixth sense" that humans seemed to mention occasionally in their literature.

Faintly, the sound of a door swinging open could be heard, followed by slow, uneven footsteps across the deck until a shape came into view at the railing, the fog clearing a little and allowing them to see exactly what had just acknowledged their presence.

Grey eyes, black hair, thin frame – Sydney Underhill clasped the railing at the dock as she stared down at the squadron of clockworks currently surrounding their Commander, not displaying any other reaction.

Behind her, Prima could make out the shapes of several prone humans – corpses, most likely, judging from the dried blood that coated the sides of the ship from where it had dripped and spilled and poured over. The same blood stained Underhill's hands, brown and crusted, and in some areas, deep and fresh.

That explained the ruby color of her lips, oh yes, which had no particular outline because the remnantsof her last meal, Prima now realized, were still quite evident.

Remaining completely unmoving, Prima tensed, expecting Sydney to do something, to attack – but she did not know what to expect, not with this, not with the circumstances being as they were, with thirty dead clockworks on the deck of her ship and blood still staining her nails and hands and throat and lips and chin.

Her grey eyes unblinking, Sydney licked her lips, her tongue pointed and oddly long, almost serpentine.

Slowly, she looked from left to right, taking in the sight of the empty beach, of the burnt ruins of the houses behind, and of the squadron of clockworks, the rifles of the musketeers pointed directly at her. Yet, this did not seem to bother her in the slightest – after all, if the report that the Supreme Commander had been given earlier was true, their charges would leave her unaffected anyways.

"Commodore!"

Sydney's voice was a hiss, a distorted whisper that seemed to come from everywhere all at once –

"How nice it is, to see you here…"

Prima's hand flew to the ceremonial sword sheathed at her hip, but she did not give the order to fire – not yet. From the deck of her ship, Sydney smiled widely at her, bloodstained lips parting to reveal reddened teeth, her eyes wide and sunken and unfocused as if she was trying to see everything all at once as her enormous ship continued to slowly drift by at a slow dirge.

And then, directly in the presence of the Supreme Commander, the skin around her mouth split, and her jaw stretched downwards and open to an impossible degree, her teeth sharpening to points and multiplying in rows as she screeched deafeningly, the whites of her eyes fading to black as her hands morphed into ghastly, claw-like appendages which dug into and splintered the wood of the railing she was clinging to.

"Fire!"

But even with ten charges slamming directly into her head and chest, Sydney Underhill only stumbled back – she was not harmed in the slightest, with every distorted, demented feature of her mutilated form still intact.

And then, as quickly as she had become this demonic creature, she transformed right back again, now a shaken, stumbling grey-eyed woman, a madwoman, lost in the depths of her own mind. She staggered back into her cabin, her knees threatening to give out from underneath her with each step she took, leaving Prima powerless to do anything other than to stare numbly as the Grand Fife slowly drifted away.

She left a heavy silence behind her – something that carried more weight, more dread than silence should.

"Soldier, I repeat my orders. Withdraw all patrol ships from the skyway."

"At once, Commander."

There was no hesitation this time.


The great wooden structure of the Grand Fife gave a mighty creak as the powerful gusts of wind steered it away from the edge of the island, almost seeming to act of its own accord. However, to anyone who looked upon the ship from a distance, the Captain was nowhere to be found, and there were no signs of a crew.

The crew had died long ago, Sydney would have screech-laughed, they're gone. They're never coming back. The deck of the ship was occupied instead by dozens of corpses, human corpses, clockwork frames, entire chunks torn out of them whole.

Within the Captain's cabin, Sydney Underhill wept.

"I…I saw her, Caerulus…your Commodore…!"

She was on her knees, as she so often was, the long-deactivated frame of the clockwork Captain draped over her lap as she cupped her hand along his sharp-angled face, fingers shaking and trembling.

"She's taken the island…"

Sydney shifted her weight, the tears dripping down her face mingling with the partially-coagulated blood that coated her mouth and chin as she licked her lips again, both reveling in and disgusted at the taste.

Rather, she was disgusted that she was reveling in the taste –

"Caerulus, what…what have I become…?"

I don't know, Commander, she wished he would say, she knew he would have said if he hadn't let himself bleed out, choosing to terminate himself rather than serve an imperfect leader.

"Why did they chain me to my biggest failure?"

Because you deserved it, Commander.

Because you weren't strong enough, Commander.

"Will I see him again?"

Her fingers slipped into the pocket of her tattered black coat – a shame, she had not even been imprisoned with her uniform – and traced along the edges of the small box, the wood soaked through and through with blood, as was the rest of her.

The eyes, the beautiful blue eyes that once waited in here were with her only success, her only victory and triumph – Quintus, whose fate she desperately wished she knew.

"It would be worth it all…this…this would be worth it, Caerulus, if I just..if I just knew he was safe!"

Why, Commander?

Of course, clockworks just didn't understand why she had no sense of self-preservation, why she would give up her blood and flesh and bone for a soldier, a follower, a servant, a sheep.

Because he is perfect and I am not, she said, but it was too painful to say out loud and so the words stayed in her head instead. Because he is worthy of it and a thousand times more than I am.

When Sydney had taken up that scalpel and dug it into the flesh of her own hideous face, she had not expected to close her eyes forever, and then open them again on the ship full of failure that she had purposefully abandoned.

"I wanted to be perfect."

She had fallen with that mask still clutched in her hand, so close, so close, never quite there.

But Commander, that is something you can never be.

The Grand Fife swayed as the pull of the windlane drew her in, the wind whistling across the deck. Sydney Underhill clutched Caerulus' frame to her cold, bloodless chest and sobbed.


I hope you enjoyed, and please do leave a review - I'd love to know what you think!

- Severina