Asaral sat up and rubbed his eyes, expecting to see the deck of the purloined ship. But instead he only saw darkness.
He looked around, not sure of what to expect. His eyes scanned the dark space around him, slowly darting from place to place. But he could see nothing. Whatever he was in was completely silent, save for his ragged breathing.
A small squeak emanated from behind him. The prince swifty turned around, ready to strike. But he had no weapon in his hands, and he could not see anyone in front of him.
"Show yerself." He snarled. Slowly creeping towards the source of the noise, Asaral nervously watched as the area in front of him began to brighten. The prince relaxed into a fighting stance, ready to take down whatever was about to materialize.
Eventually, the dark silhouette of a mouse materialized within the bright region. The prince immediately rushed the shadow, but the bright region swiftly moved away from him, and as quickly as it appeared, the shadow dissipated.
Asaral could only stare at the bright light in front of him now. A couple of seconds passed, and then the shadow re-materialized. This time, the shadow extended out a paw in a beckoning motion, as if it wanted the prince to come closer. Asaral, unsure of its motives, decided to oblige the shadow's request.
The prince had been walking for some time when he felt something cold in his hand. The prince looked down to see a shining battle axe in his right paw! He moved his arm, shifting the handle in his paw, in an attempt to try to get a feel for the weapon. After another few seconds had passed, the shadow mouse stopped walking.
"Why did we stop?" the ferret asked. The mouse gave no verbal answer, but instead moved aside to reveal the prince's brother, standing several feet away in royal battle garb. Almost immediately, the king raised his head and started to speak.
"You are a coward and a traitor. Wonzce I capshur you, I vill torture you to deathh very slowly. No one eshcapess the rule of the King of Terramort." the king cackled.
Half of Asaral wanted to rip his brother's heart out of his chest with his bare hands. The other half simply wanted to give him a hug. As if it knew exactly what he was thinking, the shadow mouse leaned closer and whispered.
"What do you truly want?" it hummed softly into his ear. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the mouse and the brightness disappeared out of the corner of the prince's eye.
What do I truly want? Asaral thought. He thought of the times when Altan had wrestled with him when they were little. He thought of the times when they first visited the dungeons, looking at the dim, jaded eyes staring back at them in the corridor. He thought of the times when Altan drank too much. It always seemed like fun and games until he found his brother's knife stuck into the wall next to his head. He thought of the times when he and his brother watched their first sunrise after a bloody battle.
Now he knew what he wanted. Licking his parched lips, the ferret gripped his axe tightly and took a step forward.
And the world collapsed around him.
The ferret awakened to see the face of the squirrel and the otter staring down at him. He slowly sat up.
"Oh, he's awake!" The squirrel exclaimed. "What happened to you? Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm uh- um… I'm alright. How long was I out for?" the prince gingerly touched a small lump on the back of his head.
"No more than ten minutes, I think."
Suddenly, the otter interjected. "So scum, whaddya think yer trying to do, huh? I see you're talkin' without your accent."
"Arska! Don't talk to him like that! He's the creature that freed us from the hold! Can you at least treat him with a bit of respect?" The squirrel tried to scold her otter friend.
"Sarina, I want you to listen to me. He," the otter said, pointing to the prince, "and his kind has killed more creatures on Terramort than I can remember. You've never seen an execution, but I've seen many - seen enough to know that this type of creature can't be trusted."
Asaral opened his mouth to object, but seeing this, the otter clamped his paw down on the prince's mouth. Instinctively the ferret squirmed free of the otter's grip and rolled out of the way. Springing upright, he took a small knife out of his sack and stood in a ready position, prepared for anything the otter tried to do.
For several seconds, the otter and the ferret faced each other, standing still. An awkward silence only broken by the two beasts' labored breathing followed.
It was the squirrel Sarina who broke the silence. "C'mon guys, do we really want to start off like this?" After a long pause, Asaral replied with a soft "No.", and let go of his knife. It dropped to the wooden floor with a loud clang.
"My apologies." Asaral shakily held out his paw to the otter. "What's your name?" He asked.
"Arska Streambattle." The otter gruffly replied. He did not shake his paw, but a glare from Sarina convinced him otherwise, and he reluctantly gave the ferret a pawshake. "What's yours?"
"Asaral. Asaral Selendil Tarragon".
"You're the crown prince!" Sarina exclaimed, as a snarl slowly crawled onto Arska's facial expression.
"Was the crown prince." Asaral corrected the squirrel. "My brother is the king now." After a short pause, he added, "given that I've deserted him, I doubt I have any royal titles now."
"Not that I would ever call you by them." The otter jutted in. "Do you remember the holt that you killed when you visited the mouth of the River Moss? Do you remember their faces? Do you remember the families that you tore apart? Do you remember?" The otter approached Asaral until their snouts were nearly touching.
The prince could only reply with "Yes."
Asaral remembered the day like it was yesterday. Looking back on it, it was certainly weird that his father was on this mission when he could've just sent a mercenary to do the job for him, but he wanted no chance of failure.
"Vhy are vee coming from zhe rocky side? Zhe uvver side is easier to climvb." The older prince whined.
"Vhis side has an outcropping, so that vey vill not be able to see us." said the king.
Slowly but surely, the three pure ferrets and their twenty guardsmen crept up along the leading side of the holt.
"Do you remember your task, Altan?" Jatlak asked.
"Yes, fathver. I musht fight around zhe backshide of zhe table." said the older prince.
"Do you remember your task, Selendil?" Jatlak asked.
"Yes, I do remember, fathver. I musht go into zhe cellars with Mangofur and shteal zhe ruby of zhe Shtreamvbattles." the younger ferret replied. Now they were very close to the exit. The party stopped before the outcropping. The king turned around and held his paw to his mouth, indicating that everyone was to be quiet.
Suddenly, the sound of an oaken door creaking open emanated from the other side of the outcropping, and the shrill, young voice of a female otter called out. "Ma, I'm taking the scraps out!" The king signaled to the troops, and the guardsmen rushed forward around the outcropping.
The young ottermaid was taken by surprise and was slain within seconds by a stoat. A second stoat accompanied him in guarding the holt entrance from returning members while the rest slipped inside.
What followed could only be described as pure chaos. Tables were overturned, plates and bowls were thrown on the walls, and screams and cries filled the air as the guardsmen rushed around the holt's dining table and attacked the otters, who were taken by surprise. As Altan's and five rats slowly struggled their way around the dining table, Asaral and the rat Mangofur breached the cellar door quietly and climbed down inside. To their dismay, there were two otters inside, tapping one of the barrels. Upon hearing the noise, the two otters turned around.
"Who's there!" said the taller otter. Unsure of what to do, Asaral and Mangofur decided to fight the two. Unfortunately for them, the two otters they encountered were both bigger and bulkier than them. But what the two otters had in strength they lacked in experience. Asaral ducked under the shorter otter's pawstrikes, whipping around and drawing his dagger. The two clashed further. Paw struck paw and dagger struck dagger. Gradually, the shorter otter and Asaral separated from the taller one and Mangofur.
After a few more seconds of fighting, the shorter otter made a crucial mistake. He briefly looked over his shoulder to check on the progress of his friend, leaving a blind spot by his hip. Asaral then snaked his arm, with dagger in hand, between the otter's midsection and arm and made a weak stab into the otter's side in a single motion that, to someone observing from the outside, appeared as if Asaral was thrusting his body into and slightly to the side of the otter's. It was enough to dispatch him. The shorter otter let out a scream and fell to the ground. With one last breathy-voiced whisper, he cried out. "A-Arska."
Mangofur was not so lucky. The size difference more than made up for whatever strategic advantage the rat had. Frequently having to parry strong blows from the otter, Mangofur found himself fighting mostly defensively. The sound of the shorter otter's scream seemed to send a wave of energy through the taller, and with one last motion of his arm the otter struck Mangofur in the head with the butt of his dagger. He sank the blade into the rat's heart to make sure.
He turned around and let out a scream when he saw his friend's body. "Therendor! No!". Instinctively he rushed towards Asaral, who in the meantime had busted down the storage cabinet door and was in the process of retrieving the ruby. As his hands freed the ruby from its case, the younger prince turned around to see the otter barrelling towards him. Instinctively, he held his paws up, with the ruby still clutched in them, to defend himself.
Boom! The wooden wall panels shuddered as the two crashed together. Caught in the middle, the ruby and the otter's dagger squirted out into the air while the two fell to the ground. Asaral, now caught pinned below the otter, watched as a paw rose up, clenched, ready to come down and knock him out.
Thunk! The ruby came down and hit the otter squarely on the head, knocking him out. The otter collapsed on top of the prince while his dagger fell to the floor a foot away with a clang. Slightly dazed and confused, the prince pushed the otter off of him. He picked up the ruby, looked it once over, and dashed out of the cellar just in time to see eleven otters pass the gates of Dark Forest.
Do you regret what happened? thought Asaral as he sat on the ship deck.
Arska Streambattle sat on the opposite side, shooting the prince an icy glare whenever he could. "Murderer." he whispered to the prince. The pure ferret did not respond.
"You will pay for the lives you and your family cut short." he whispered again.
The prince still did not respond.
"Breakfast is ready!" said Sarina, as she hopped out of the lower deck. Her bubbly personality almost seemed to cut through the tension. She strode down the deck and placed a plate of skilly 'n duff next to Arska. She then walked over with the remaining two plates, gave one to Asaral, and sat down next to him with her own plate.
Sarin tucked into her plate, but as she looked over to the prince, she found that he had taken a single spoonful, and no more.
"Is everything alright?"
"Aye. I'm just… thinking about somethin' I did seasons ago."
"Did you do something bad?" Asaral sighed at the squirrel's naive response.
"I'm a ferret. What do you think I did?".
After a minute or two, the prince stood up and walked off, seemingly away from Sarina specifically, until he spun around to face her. "The king has sent a party to capture me, I'm sure of it. Our best bet is sailing east until we reach Mossflower country. There we can decide what to do, assuming no trouble befalls us on the way." He then shot a quick glance at the otter to make sure he heard.
"Aye, there we can set up camp - 'tis much easier to evade trackers in the forest than in the ocean." the squirrel replied.
Neither the otter nor the ferret responded. For what seemed like an eternity all three stayed where they were, wondering who would be the first to break the tension again.
Gradually, Sarin began to notice the prince's gaze shift from his feet to above the prow. Following his gaze, she could see a black sail loom in the distance, bearing down upon them. Had the king's patrol finally caught up? But it wasn't coming from the right direction.
Peering closely at the ensign of the ship, Sarin made a passing comment that jolted the prince's memory. "Asaral, I don't recognize that flag. Do you?"
"Aye, that's the flag of the ships of Captain Karranva, legendary corsair of the seas. If you can see the nameplate, the ship's name is the Ragevel, 'tis one of his ships."
"Look over there." A voice behind them jolted the two. The otter pointed a bit away from the first ship, towards another ship. Asaral felt his heart sink a little when he saw it.
"There's the Deathwind. That's the ship they sent to capture me. How they got so close I have no idea."
"With the weather we've been having for the past day and a half we wouldn't have been able to see 'em." The otter said. "At this rate, they'll get to us before the hour's up. They've already passed the big volcano over there." His finger wandered towards the large volcanic island to the right. Of course, Asaral knew its name, but he did not say anything.
"There's a golden fox on the prow. He just hailed us."
Asaral nodded. "From what I've heard, that may be Marfur, the second-in-command."
The two ships gradually drifted closer and closer together until they were nearly side by side, with the third one not far behind. The fox eventually spoke, and shouted over the side of the deck.
"Aye, this is Captain Marfur of the High Seas! Cooperate with our requests and ye shall be spared!". He then gestured towards the ferret, as if he wanted him to speak.
"What do you want?" Asaral retorted.
"Pure ferret, your kin have taxed our slaves for too long! Give us those two slaves, and we shall let you go!"
"These are not my slaves. These are my crewmates." the prince responded.
Marfur chuckled. What a terrible bluff. "Sure they are. Now, come on down or we all gonna turn ya into tomorra's supper!"
"What are you tryna do, smart fox?" a voice from behind them shouted. Masorkund and the Deathwind had caught up with them.
"Get away, Masorkund! I can't even look at ya knowing that yore werkin' for that scumnose over there!" Marfur said while pointing to the prince.
"Who, him? Nah, I ain't workin' fer him. He's desertin' the kingdom, and I'm here to bring him back!" Masorkund replied. "Now, I'mma ask ya to politely stay outta my royal business!"
"Fat chance, shippie! I'm sure yore scummy boss would be willin' to pay some real nice ransom for a pure ferret hostage!" the fox jeered
"Don't you dare touch him! The king's orders state that he is to be taken back alive!"
"Well if you haven't realized already, the king's orders don't apply to me, my crew, or my ship." With that response, Marfur turned around before his corsair rival had anything else to say. "Get the boardin' crew ready.", he said to Runko Bladeclaw, loud enough for the prince to hear. Masorkund's crew also drew in closer, beginning to prepare for a battle over the prince.
After staring back and forth between the two ships for a few more seconds, he turned around to face Arska and Sarina. For the first time in his life, his face plainly spelled out the words "We are screwed."
In the stress of the moment, faced with almost certain defeat in one way or another, could Asaral have seen a third ship, bearing upon them, camouflaged against the shadow of Ruddaring?
Asaral: What the hell? You somehow managed to make my situation even worse. Gosh, sometimes I wish I had a different author writing about me.
A/N: It was for the plot. Please cope as hard as you'd like.
Asaral: I hate you, I really do. Are you a sadist or something?
A/N: I'm actually quite the opposite. See you next chapter!
