Hello my dear readers! I hope you enjoy this next instalment.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean and I am not making any money from this story.

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Rainne lay in a small bed in the north-eastern corner of her father's house, on the second floor. To anyone who observed her she would appear to be sleeping, but this was not the case. She lay, frozen in place and daring only to breathe, questioning more or less everything she had ever known. She had been raised by a father with few religious beliefs and as such, she set little store in the likes of ghosts and spirits. From a young age, her father had taught her that it was never a good idea to talk about one's personal beliefs. He had told her that people often disappeared in the middle of the night if it was discovered that they did not conform to the religious beliefs of their kings. She knew that she could not discuss this kind of thing with anyone but her father, for fear of being killed. However, the idea of asking her father about magic was a frightening one, for he would certainly think her crazy himself and lock her away somewhere.

So Rainne lay, wondering just how much of what she thought she had known was untrue. A day previously she had scoffed at the suggestion of the existence of ghosts and magic. Today she thought of her personal experiences with both and came to the conclusion that it was simply impossible that neither existed. The coincidence was simply too much. The pirate's letter had clearly stated that once the story was shared, the sharer was to die. And what had happened? The old sailor had died. Rainne would have staked her life that it was no mere coincidence. So if that part of the story was true, why couldn't the rest of it? If people could now die for telling a story, why could there by no such thing as cursed treasures and undead pirates?

What she hadn't been able to explain, however, was that the other man had died as well. She was now the only person who knew about this treasure and it terrified her. Should she go and claim it for herself, or forget all about it and move on with her life? She had lost no small amount of sleep tossing and turning wondering what one earth she was going to do.

Rainne had been tempted to burn the letter many times but had never succeeded. As she lay in bed, she could feel it against her skin, in the same place where she had hid it only the night before. It felt filthy, and yet it called to her at the same time. She had also been tempted to go and claim the treasure, and to use the money to help her father's business. But that would involve being part of a crew and the only opportunities she could find in a port like Tortuga were pirates. Pirates who would rape, beat and murder her simply because they were not forbidden to do so and they had the inclination. Living in Tortuga had taught her the harsh truth in that, and pirates were never to be trusted under any circumstances.

A rooster crowed insistently outside of Rainne's window, and she sighed in resignation before rising to face the day. During the night, one thing had become abundantly clear to her; she needed to learn how to defend herself against anyone who wished her harm. Come to think of it, she should have acquired similar skills a long time ago, but now the threat of death seemed so much more imminent after her encounters the pervious day that protection was something that she absolutely needed.

Rainne entered her father's workshop to the sounds of a hammer chipping off pieces of wood from a large beam that would be part of a new building in town. Rainne approached her father and considered how to interrupt him from his work. His hair was greyer than she remembered and he looked… haggard and old. Why had she never noticed these things before? As her father stopped working, she cleared her throat.

"Father, I have a request to make of you."

"Carry on, my child." She paused, and cursed herself for not thinking of how she was going to ask her father to help her. She inhaled and began tentatively.

"Well, last night while I was working at the Cursed Paradise there was… a fight and I could very well have died. In light of this, I've decided that I should learn how to protect myself. If I recall correctly, you once told me that you knew how to wield a sword. I need you to teach me how to fight for myself. Please, father."

"Well, it is not something I wished you would ever need to learn…"

"Please!"

"I wasn't finished. I will consent to teach you as long as you promise to never use your word unless you absolutely must. I'd not like to think I taught my daughter to be a murderer."

"I understand. I will use it to defend myself, and only that."

"Good. Now, get yourself to the blacksmith and find a suitable weapon."

"Yes, father."

Rainne was relieved beyond belief. She would never be useless again, never be defenceless against a drunken pirate in Tortuga or anyone else. She felt much safer and less afraid of the things she had seen the night before. Her training began the next day, as her father saw fit to begin as soon as possible, though he was not entirely happy about the arrangement.

Her lessons took place in the back yard of their small house, where her father had carved a rough circle in the ground as a duelling area.

"First of all, you need to lean the guarding stance. You'll want to crouch down with your feet a shoulder's width apart, and turn your body sideways, thus providing the enemy with a smaller target…"

Rainne nodded and adjusted her feet on the ground.

"As far as blade work is concerned, you need to learn the attack, parry and riposte. After that we can delve into more challenging manoeuvres. Now, attack me." Rainne complied, and the training began.

* * *

It was easily several hours after midnight when Rainne finally drudged out the front door of the Cursed Paradise, and the girl was exhausted. Pirates and rumrunners were never an easy crowd to deal with, especially after they had downed several mugs of ale. Rainne, however, did not feel as disgruntled and disgusted as she usually did. She had become more at ease around these types of men, mostly because she now knew that she would be able to defend herself against them, or at least for awhile. The lessons had been going well. After several hours of practise daily, she had gained considerable amount of muscle in her legs and arms that had previously been lacking. She had mastered most of the simple attacks and defences, and her father had just begun to teach her the more complicated types of footwork usually employed by pirates when duelling.

After a long walk home, Rainne lay at last in her bed, sleeping. She dreamt about the cursed treasure of Gregory Trevelyn, as she had almost every single night since over-hearing the story, which had been more than two months ago. She dreamt, this time, that the story was a trap to lure innocents to an island where they were killed and eaten by cannibals. Rainne twitched in her sleep. She saw herself being roasted over a cooking pit, the flames jumping higher and higher towards her body. The heat was scorching, her skin was shrivelling and smoking as the flames engulfed her, a scream frozen on her lips.

Then, all of a sudden, Rainne was startled into awareness. Her room was exceedingly warm, and an odd glow emanated from the lower floor of the house. The heat of the place certainly explained her dream about the fire. She stood and moved to her doorway, but as she opened the door, a blazing inferno met her, and she froze in terror. The entire lower level of the house was on fire, and it was coming closer to where she stood. Rainne screamed and jumped back from the doorway, where smoke was now seeping through the crack under the door into her room, making it difficult to see and breathe. Escape, she needed to escape, now. The only place she could think of that wasn't, to her knowledge, on fire, was out her window.

Panic overwhelmed Rainne and she struggled not to cry. Everything she had ever known was burning around her, and she was going to die along with it. Then suddenly she heard a shout from outside, and sounds of breaking glass. The voice was instantly recognisable as her father's. The mere sound of his voice gave her hope though the haze of fear, and she picked up a chair from her room and rammed one of its' legs through the glass of her window. It shattered loudly and pieces of glass littered the floor of her room. She put on a pair of boots lying unused from her floor and stepped to the window, peeking out over the sill. And then she screamed. The fire now poured out of the window of the kitchen located directly below her own window, and wafted up in great gusts of heat that could singe skin and hair, warping the foundations of the house. There was a fall out of the window of at least fifteen feet onto the rocky ground below, where Rainne noticed dismally that pieces of her shattered widow lay on the ground.

A whooshing sound came from the direction of her door, and she spun to watch in horror as the door itself was consumed with flames, swiftly followed by the doorway and her bed nearby.

I'm going to die, she thought hopelessly.

There was no way of surviving the fall out of her window. But her father… he was still alive. What if he was injured? She had to jump then, if only for his sake. She turned away from the blazing inferno that had once been her room and faced the window once more, inhaling shakily and gulping. She crawled into the window frame, sustaining several cuts to her hands and legs from the sharp glass, and peered down, looking for the safest place to land. She found it, and jumped, uttering a cry of pure terror.

Her body dropped onto the ground just in time, as her room was now completely engulfed in flames which now billowed out of her open window. She could have sworn she was dead. Every bit of her body felt broken and she could hardly move. Than she heard yelling, one of the voices belonging to her father, which acted as a physical force, making her stand. She followed the sounds of yelling and the sight that met her eyes caused her to freeze. Her father was surrounded by what she could only guess at to the around eight men. They all held swords and encircled her father, while one of their men stood in the center of the circle, yelling at her father.

"You should have known better that we would find you, Pedro Sanchez!"

Her father tried to take a step back, but was stopped by a sword's blade digging into his back.

"Listen, you don't understand. This had nothing to do with me, and it never did!"

"Nothing to do with you? The deaths of hundreds of men had nothing to do with you? You bloody coward! I suppose you'll lie and say it was all coincidental, as well?" He dealt a powerful blow to Pedro's stomach and he doubled over in pain, coughing up blood. Rainne almost cried out but she stopped herself by stuffing her hand in her mouth. She could not make a sound and reveal her presence to these men, a fact which she understood to the very core of her being.

"You will confess to it, Sanchez, on your own terms or ours."

"I will not lie."

"Confess, dammit! The code prevents you from lying to me!"

"Fuck the bloody code, it means nothing and you know it!" Pedro yelled. Again, the ringleader of the men punched Pedro, this time on the ear. Pedro crumpled, but fought to stay standing, dragging his eyes to the other man's. Rainne fought back a sob as she watched her father suffering so much pain at the hands of these men.

"It was not of my doing and you bloody pirates will never force me to say otherwise. You're naught but superstitious bastards looking for someone to blame for your short comings."

Silence! Your lies cannot cover for your actions Sanchez, and you of all people should know that." Again, Pedro was punched, and his nose shattered, blood tricking down his face. Rainne almost lurched towards where her father slumped, but stopped herself.

"I will not be your scapegoat Jonas." Pedro hissed. The man identified as Jonas screamed in fury, raining kicks and punches on Pedro, who was slowly forced to the ground. The other men soon joined in the barbaric savagery of inflicting pain on a man already on the ground, bleeding and barely alive. Tears coursed down Rainne's cheeks. She burned to run over to where her father lay and beat back the pirates, but she knew she was helpless to save her father against so many men.

"Enough!" Jonas yelled, and turned to the pirate on his right.

"Shoot him Barbary." The men stepped away as Barbary raised his pistol to Pedro's chest. Seconds went by as the two men stared at each other, one holding a pistol and the other bleeding in a hundred places on the ground. Time seemed to stand still, a terrifying quiet settled over the scene, interrupted infrequently by crashing beams of what used to be a house being consumed by fire. Rainne fought down a sob that was rising in her throat. Then Jonas' voice rang out again.

"Do it now Barbary, and think on our dead friends that this man murdered."

Barbary took a step back, aimed, and fired. The gunshot was loud, but to Rainne it was quiet as her mind entered a state of total shock and terror. Her father fell backwards and collpased on the ground. Jonas advanced and knelt down by the body to whisper something into Pedro's ear. As he stood, his victim twitched one final time before becoming still as death marked Pedro Sanchez as her own.

Jonas and his men then did the most unexpected thing; they laughed. It was a harsh sound which sounded nothing unlike pure evil to Rainne's ears. They pumped their fists in the air and laughed in celebration of the death of Rainne's father. Several of the men kicked the body over so that it lay face down in the dirt and stomped on it, cackling with glee. After several minutes of similar savagery, they walked off and left Rainne completely alone with the body of her father.

As soon as they were far enough away, she ran to her father, sobbing freely. She dropped to the ground where he lay, heedless of the blood pooled around him in the dirt that soaked her clothing and body. She pushed him over so that he once again faced upwards. His eyes were glossy and stared into the sky, his skin was pale and cold to the touch. Rainne wept, throwing herself on top of the body of her father. She felt alone, so unbelievably alone. She knew not how long she stayed like that, but when she turned to look at what had been her house, all that remained was the charred carcass of the foundation and a pool of fire still burning away at its center. The smoke was enough to make Rainne choke, but she took no notice of it. Instead she turned back to her father and wept.

She would have revenge, she swore to the cold body of her father, if it was the last thing she did in her life. She would find the bastards who did this and torture them, kill them, and most of all enjoy it. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with rage, and she screamed to gods above, venting her fury at the sky.

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I would like to thank the three people who have reviewed so far, as well as those who have added my story to their favourites and alerts. Thanks! It gives me a reason not to procrastinate if I know people are reading my story and enjoying it.

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