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A/N, Here chapter two... Does everyone hate my title, or is it because I didn't say R&R? Anyway, R&R!

Asirnil Silkhaft feel his bottom-right eyelid twitching.

"Where is he?"

Lomenas Surrodan gripped his hands together and stared at the floor.

"The mess hall... Sir...!"

Gripping the swabby by the shoulder Asirnil told him to inform the first mate, and the first mate only, about the ship's cookless state, and that Asirnil had given him an hour off. With that captain Silkhaft whistled for his brother to follow him and made his way towards the mess hall.

Carefully Asirnil pushed the door open. The moment the full picture reached his brain he gripped his brother by the chest to keep him back, while his eyes stretched open while he wanted to close them, causing na nasty twitch.

Logically someone comitting suicide would not make such a mess. He knew. Putting more weight behind the arm keeping a very curious Pollo behind the door he thought that maybe his new cook was murdered. Staring sternly into Pollo's eyes, and then pushing him he was able to close and lock the door.

Again the twitch in his right eyelid. Sighing he took in the image. The elf was hugging his waist, his left hand open with a knife in it. He lay in a puddle of blood, both his wrists cut. The entire right half of the mess hal was red with blood. He had sprayed his blood around the around the chamber like a madman.

Asirnil had seen enough. Gently he opened the door and stepped out of the room, planning his speech to calm the men. Most likely the rumours had already turned them into a mutinous mob, so he had to officially tell them the news before they started talking about him ignoring the loss of a beloved colleague. He had barely set a foot across the threshold when Pollo stormed past him, curious of what was hidden in the mess hall.

Asirnil sighed. At that moment he heard a mournfull scream behind him. Pollo could also reconise death. He closed the door and walked up to his office.

Half an hour later

Asirnil had almost fully planned his speech, structurally that is. He would suggest his cook didn't have the courage to face the Druchii's monsters, that he was a symbol of their struggle and a warning of how it happens if we don't use our fears and angers against the Dark kin. If he could place some pretty words around it it just might become something nice.

Pretty words were never his strongpoint however, he preferred the snappy barking of orders, and in more sensitive situations he'd do the same and call it "to the point". Occasionally he'd need to produce a really good speech, but once he was high up in the ranks enough to do speeching he had enough time to read books and steal sentences from them. And so that was what he'd do now. To... something, to get up he eyed his book case from behind his desk. He'd read most of them, but none were really handy in this macabre a situation.

He got up and checked his case form up close, his bookcase was expanded at every port. He just ordered a dozen of books from the preferred genre –usually one of the many knightly-ish genres- and turned in a list of those he already had. That way he would have more or less differently written books on his shelves. He picked out the grimmest looking one. Which wasn't very hard. Not that the book was very different from the others, but the author's name was accentuated with the silverlined silhouette of a scimitar, instead of something knightly-shiny. By Hadow Silverblade, "It was death." It was a very new book, he could tell by the smell, or rather the lack of it . Holding it against his leg, as if he were to carry it a long distance Asirnil walked to his desk. He sat down and opened it. On the first page there was the title and author again.

A sudden cloudbreak, or something, made the room much lighter all of a sudden. He looked up, and saw the Surrodan boy's face in the window. Lomenas was startled, Asirnil nodded his head in an unmistakeble "come in".

"I was just going to thank you for giving me this time off, sir, and I wanted to use my last few minutes of it to tell you that. Sir!"

"The half hour ended three quarters ago."

"Yes, that's true. Sir. I also had to tell you that Arinal is still... growing." There was a strange kind of accent on the word growing. The young elf seemed to prefer not calling unapealling things by their rightfull name. He wanted to tell Asirnil the sick sailor was still getting more bloated by the minute, but chose to disguise it as something less appetite-spoiling.

"Sigh. Get back to work son."

Without a word Lomenas left the room. Trying to focus on his speech Depthstrider's captain turned the page on his book. On it was a more or less skillfully done drawing of a barrel, full of flat slabs, or steaks, chunks of meat, maybe even really small watermelons. Next to it was a bucket of sand or salt, maybe even gunpowder. Probably the barrel was supposed to contain meat, and the bucket held salt. Asirnil had no clue why that picture was there. Over his cabin he heard some mutterings, on deck they would probably be quite loud. He looked up as if expecting to see something trough the thick wooden ceiling. The next moment thre sounded a penetrating siren, a scream piercing through wood and bone alike. It almost sounded like Pollo, except for the high pitch, Pollo would cough his lungs out it he screamed like that.

Garildion the first mate walked in to inform the captain the situation was already under controll. He had sent out a man to investigate, while everyone else was kept busy keeping the captain comfortable in these theacherous currents.

A second scream went from the hull to the crow's nest.

Asirnil decided to take investigate personally, despite Garildion's excellent situation assessment capabilities.