Emerald's pov
I had dozed off too… fallen asleep on Strider's chest… I would have liked to say it was accidental, but I meant… how could it have been? Well… the falling asleep part was a mistake. I had… I just wanted to listen to his heartbeat for a moment. I know it sounded weird, but I wanted to see if I could… If I could hear what was inside his heart. I knew it sounded silly. I was pretty sure that wasn't a thing that could happen. I was just feeling a bit poetic. I knew you couldn't actually hear anything about a person from listening to their heart beat… well, other than maybe their stress level or something?
Anyways, when I woke up, Strider was there, looking at me curiously. His eyes were clear again. He had slept off the anesthetic and he was just looking at me, and I was looking at him. We locked eyes for a moment… and then I jumped up.
"Uh, sorry, I just-" I started to explain. Strider cut me off with the shake of his head and a hand put up.
"No need to explain, little lady. Next time, ask me first, alright?" He said. I wasn't sure what to do with that… how did he feel about what just happened? Did he actually not mind? Did he like that I did that? He looked me right in the eyes, after all. And he didn't move to throw me off or anything. I was the one who got off him. I tried to read his expression, but I couldn't really tell what he was thinking. He had an incredible straight face. He was an incredible kind of guy. And he said… next time. Would there be a next time? Did he want there to be a next time? Did he want… me? I was about to ask him what he meant by that, when he pointed. I followed his finger to where he was pointing. He was pointing to the door, and there were Ray and the old coot, looking in on us. How long had they been there Oh my goodness… were they judging me?
"Uh, hi." I waved a little pathetically at them. The old man's face was just bursting with mirth. He was enjoying this very much, wasn't he? He enjoyed seeing people squirm. He was that kind of guy, wasn't he? Or was he Maybe he was just an old guy who found joy in simple things. Why let yourself get caught up in grief or worry when you could just be amused by everything. Ray was giving him a weird look. I didn't know what that meant, exactly.
"Did we… interrupt something?" Ray asked, finally turning his head from the old man and looking in at us.
"Nah, little lady just fell asleep on the watch." Strider said. I was glad he cleared that up. I wasn't sure what I would have done if he decided he wanted to dig into me for this and tease me. I had had enough teasing in the past to last me a lifetime, seriously, an entire lifetime… I was the dud, the screw up. Although, out here I was less of a screw up. There wasn't a whole lot I was doing that I could screw up, what with getting captured and stuff… Honestly, it felt like I was just along for the ride for most of this journey. Did I really have any choice here, or was this a railway of destiny, dragging me along like the tether that connected me and Ray.
Wait, what? I stared at Ray. Was the affliction thing affecting him again, and affecting me too? There was something, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Sometimes I felt like we were more connected than I knew we actually were, like I could feel what he was feeling, or maybe that was just empathy, or maybe it was all in my head. Probably that one, honestly.
"Right… well… we're all awake now. We should talk." Ray said. There was something on his mind, something heavy. Probably the fact that we had been captured by pirates. We were guests, though. If we weren't before, we were now… or did that curtesy only extend to myself? Well, if that was the case, I was part of the crew now. I could ask to pardon the other three. I didn't want them to be treated as prisoners.
"Excuse me. You all seem to be gathered here. This is probably a good time for you" Captain Jesse poked her head into the room. Oh, right! She was a person who was here, I almost forgot… for whatever reason. I glanced quickly towards Strider… he was why… stupid Strider, making me forget important things.
"Oh, captain Jesse." I was the first to break the silence. She still looked all cool and stuff. Although she looked a little bit more stressed than he was before. I wondered if something was wrong, or there was just the general stress that came with having command of a ship, a command of a people. I never wanted to be in charge of a bunch of people, it would be way too much. I knew I was a princess and should therefore strive to be a good leader, but honestly it just seemed like a pain, didn't it? "What can we do for you?" I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the rest of them give me a look. Was it because I was being friendly with someone who captured us? Captain Jesse looked at us for a second and looked… uncomfortable? Almost like her resolve was shaken for just a moment. She recovered, though, and then it was back to business, looking professional and put together.
"I hope you have taken a liking to our ship. I bet you are still wondering why exactly you are here. I'll explain that now." She shifted her weight a little.
"Finally." Ray said. He had been waiting for an explanation, I knew it. Of course he was, who wouldn't be it this situation? We were knocked out and taken on to a ship, subjected to a strange sort of sleeping liquid… and then, instead of being treated like prisoners, we were being treated more like guests. I didn't quite understand our position myself, and I had spoken to the captain, alone.
The captain did not say anything. Instead, she rustled through her coat pockets, until she found what she was looking for. When she found it, she pulled it out. It was a crumpled up piece of paper… wait. Was this what I thought it was? She unfolded the paper… it was exactly what I thought it was… there was my face, again, and Ray, with the word "reward" in big bold letters. That stupid wanted poster… was it actually so far spread that sky pirates had one? I didn't understand! I hadn't been gone from home that long! How were these circulating so fast?!
"You have to be kidding me…" Ray said, and put a claw to his face. I wasn't sure if we were in danger or not. Strider had had one of those same posters, hadn't he? We were wanted for a cash reward If it wasn't for the promise of a better reward, Strider would have probably turned me over to the dark court by now. I was… I was grateful that he didn't, but now these pirates might? They would do something like that for money. What use was I to them, anyways, other than as the means to a reward? It wasn't like I had proven my usefulness. And… even though they were pirates, and probably against the government set in place… maybe they would auction us off to the best bidder… or send a proxy to send me back home and return with a reward.
"We found this the last place we docked yesterday. It takes funds to keep this operation going, and so we took it off the wall. When we ran into you that night it seemed a little too good to be true, so we had to take you onboard. We were ready to turn the two of you over to the authorities, but then Emerald here won me over. Something about her spirit. She was a pirate at heart, I could tell… and so I couldn't cage her away. I couldn't do something like that to a fellow pirate. We are meant to be free. That is why we are on a continuous adventure. That is why I asked her if she wanted to be a part of the crew. She said she did. As for the rest of you. Well…" She took a long pause and turned to Strider and the old man.
"Why did ya take us in the first place?" Strider asked, prompting her to keep going.
"I'm getting to it, I'm getting to it." Jesse said, she was looking into space a little, like she was trying to put her words together. "The crew is… very particular about things staying private… We are the best kept secret in the kingdom, and we are quite proud of it. There are… that is, when we do something, when we do something a pirates, there are to be no witnesses. That includes nearby travelers." She looked to Strider and the old coot. "That would be you two. We didn't want to kill right away without assessing the situation, though, so we made sure you couldn't harm the ship or the screw while we decided what was to be done with you. That is where I have been." The captain said, then fell silent. Seemed she was done with what she was saying. It took a second to get all of that.
"And your unworldly decision?" The old coot asked. Unworldly, what was that supposed to mean, or was he just saying words? Would he just say words, or did everything have a meaning, a rhythm and a rhyme.
"You are free to come and go as you please. You pose no threat to us. But do not tell others of our existence… or of our mercy. We need not seem visible or weak in the eyes of the public." Captain Jesse said. The rest of us nodded. This was obviously pretty important to her. Of course, pirates couldn't seem weak. If they did, people might keep trying to take advantage of them, people might try to take them down and make them be a legitimate members of society. That was the worst fate a pirate could face! Seriously, though, could you imagine a pirate being a shopkeeper or something? Wouldn't that be silly?
"Good." Ray said... I had a funny feeling I knew what was coming next. "Then let's go." How did I know that? He was such a stubborn guy, and even after I told him about my plan. Couldn't he see that I had to stay here to learn about this substitute for magic? And then he could go home, and we could both be happy. Was he really so desperate to leave that he would actually forsake his own happiness? That didn't seem right. There… was something I was missing, maybe? I wasn't sure.
"Go? I told you there are things to learn, here, Ray." I said, frowning at him. He seemed to open his mouth to respond, but the old man put a hand on him, stopping him. What was going on with that?
"I would like to stay here for a while. We were traveling anyways, no? This way we also have shelter, food, and protected. I demand we stay right here! I won't move, and neither will Strider, will you, boy?" The old man said, and sat on the ground.
"Uh…" Strider looked between us and the old man. "I do actually think we should stay here, for the time being. We can always jump ship when the time comes, ya know?" He said. That reminded me, he didn't have that dark thing over his eyes anymore. What did he call them? He told me once what they were… sunglasses, I think was what he called them. I didn't see them on his face anymore. So, where were they? They didn't seem to be anywhere in the room. Well, he seemed pretty fond of them. I was sure he would reclaim them eventually. I could see his eyes, now. They were dark and deep, and seemed to go on forever… In the non poetic sense, they were brown.
Ray was now the only one in disagreement. We all looked at him. It could have been that peer pressure got to him, or maybe he legitimately changed his mind. Honestly, it was probably the first one, but oh well. I didn't really mind, as long as we got to stay on this awesome ship. As long as I got to be a pirate. This was the kind of thinking that made him not like me, wasn't it? I didn't care right now.
"I guess it's been decided." Ray said.
"Captain! Captain! This is first mate James. We are approaching the darkness. Awaiting your command."
I whipped my head around… a sound, a voice, it was James voice, but it also wasn't? Something was strange, something was wrong with it. It sounded… distorted, like something else was doing a James impression, and a pretty good one. James was talking with us from a distance… somehow? They had obviously made a lot of advancements in this world that we did not have in the capital, and there were things in the capital that I had not yet seen out here… They probably had to get more crafty out in these parts because they didn't have magic or the resources of an entire kingdom to draw on. They had to do more with less, and that requires some creativity on their part… compound that over however many years this had been going on, and you got things like the anesthetic and hearing James' voice from… presumably… up on deck. I would have loved to figure out how that worked It sounded like a super fun time to just go at a machine and take it apart and figure out how it worked and put it back together. I was eager to start learning the way of their world.
Uh, but back to the message he gave us, and not how it got to us. 'We are approaching the darkness.' What in the world did that mean? I meant, I knew what darkness was, but what did he mean we were approaching the darkness, talking about it was some physical thing or location? It was just… darkness, it was an adjective. Was that some weird code for it almost being night time? Or, was there something else weird going on? I saw Captain Jesse take a box with a thing attached to it on the wall. She talked into it and I could hear her twice, once from her mouth, and once in the same way I could hear James. That was a surreal experience, it was like she had two voices, and the voice coming from the room was sort of half a second behind the voice coming from her mouth. It was almost like… an echo. It was really weird, but I was fascinated by it.
"Take us as close as we can get safely and ride along the coast. I'm coming on deck." She said, and the voice that was imitating her said the same. It must somehow pick up what you are saying and repeat it to who you want to talk to, or possibly for the whole ship. If we were staying here, I would absolutely be using that until I figured it out. I would be careful not to break it though. This was a big ship, and it seemed like that kind of instant communication was important. She put the box back on the wall and looked directly at me.
"Please, come with me. You have only seen the capital most of your life, right? There's something I want to show you." She looked rather… grave. Whatever she wanted to show us, it seemed it was rather serious. I couldn't really say no to that, now could I? I couldn't really deny a request made like that. It didn't even really sound like a request. It was a command from my captain, because she was my captain now, if I was going to be a part of the crew, she would be my captain, and I would gladly follow her.
We walked… or floated, in Ray's case, upstairs. We were all pretty quiet on the way up. In fact, it was really quiet… everywhere. The hum I heard from the bottom of the ship, from the machine keeping us going, was not going quite as loud, now. And none of the crew were talking, and, um… how do I put this? The air seemed… stagnant? Like… uh… like someone was holding their breath, like the world was collectively holding its breath. We were breathing, though. We were alive, I was sure of that. Why would I not be? That was a weird line of questioning.
And then we got up on deck, and we all stopped… We all stopped in our tracks… because… out in the distance… there was the darkness.
I wasn't sure how else I could describe it, or I mean, what else I could call it. Out in the distance, I guessed the closest we could be to it and still be at a safe distance. So, um… this was what the captain wanted to show us. The land was outstretched below us, dry and graying, as it had been… the only difference was… there was a space where the land stopped abruptly and there was just… darkness… complete nothingness past a certain point. The darkness seemed to reach out in tendrils… seemed to be beckoning. What in the world? This… this couldn't be a part of the world, a healthy part of the world. This looked like, an encroaching attacker, something enveloping, consuming the land. Was this why everything looked as it did? Was this why everything was a mess, a land full of darkness and corruption?
"What is it…?" Ray asked. I looked over at him, although it was hard to tear my eyes away from the darkness… away from the complete void of nothingness. I was not sure why, but it enchanted me. Something about it, drawing me in, maybe the same property that was drawing the word in… everlasting darkness.
Anyways. I looked over to Ray. He was leaning forward, almost over the rail. I pulled him back a bit, gently. Something told me it wasn't the healthiest thing in the world to try to get any closer to that thing.
"That there's the darkness. Pay yer respects." James said. He had snuck up behind us, or something like that, joined us when we weren't paying attention. How could we… with this thing here… This… impenetrable mystery. If you looked hard enough, it was almost like you could see something inside… and that was scary. I didn't quite know why that was scary, but I was scared. I was scared of the things I would find on the other side of it all. Or, even worse, there might be absolutely nothing on the other side, not even myself, nothing.
"Why pay our respects? Isn't that something you typically say when people die?" I asked. James nodded.
"Many a good man has lost their life to the darkness. Some lose their minds to despair and throw themselves in, never to be heard from again. Some a killed by the destruction the darkness brings, they don't have enough food or water. All do not deserve what they get." James took off his hat and closed his eyes. Something told him he knew quite a few people that had lost their lives to this… thing.
"This…" Captain Jesse said, gesturing to the darkness. "This is the border of the kingdom. And it's like this all the way around."
"But wait, what about other kingdoms, we get trade from…" But then it dawned on me. Captain Jesse saw the look of realization on my face and nodded.
"It all comes from here. There's nothing outside the kingdom. There's nothing left. And… if you look closer… it's growing. Soon… soon, if nothing is done, there won't be anything left. An entire planet, wiped out."
"What?!" I was in shock, the whole world… this kingdom was all that was left, and that was fading fast. What would have happened to me if I just stayed at home? Would death have closed in without me even knowing it?
"Yeah, unfortunately, it's the truth… little lady… it's a truth we all try to run away from, forget about, and such, but it's always there, in the corner of our minds, of our collective conscious. We are all on a timer, here." Strider said. He sounded oddly serious and humble, and who wouldn't be humble in the face of this… awe inspiring force of… nature? Was this something natural? I suddenly realized, I truly had no solid grasp on what was natural in this world and what was not. I wanted to think I knew things so I could grab onto something, anything, but really, that was only wishful thinking. The void in front of me… that was the god of this world, that was the meaning of it all… nothing.
No, no, no, no, no! I couldn't think like that! That wasn't me! That was nothing like me! I was nothing like that! As long as there was still a chance, you just had to hold on to it. And, as long as this darkness didn't consume the entire world, there was still a chance.
"How did this happen?" I asked. I had never heard anything about this at home. Nobody in the capital… except maybe the members of the dark court, would ever even imagine something like this. So I had no idea if someone did this, o if it was nature or… what was going on. Could this have been prevented? Could it still be prevented? Was there something I could have done, or something I could do? I… I needed to do something, the world would not die here, not when I was only just starting to explore.
"Nobody is exactly sure how it started. Many think it is the natural manifestation of the world's ruin… however… it is accelerated by the acts of the dark court. If they were to stop their acts of destruction, the world would perhaps have time to heal, and we could help it along, and we could prevent the absolute ruin of the world. But… otherwise, there will be no way to stop it. If things continue like this… there will be nothing left." Captain Jesse said. She had the attention of the entire ship. Many of the pirates already had their hats off as well, perhaps commemorating lost comrades… family members… who knew who they all lost? They would soon be lost himself if there was nothing done to stop the darkness, nothing done to soothe this burning world. She stood up tall, and pulled her sword out, reaching it out to the heavens, as if she were challenging nature itself. "That is why we stop the acts of the dark court. They strike cities, strike the world to take from it, to gain ultimate power for their dark master. We counter strike. We will never give up, we will never give up on this world! These skies are ours. We have been a thorn in their sides as long as we have been a crew. And you know what pisses them off the most, gang?"
"They will never catch us!" A choric roar came from the pirate crew. The words were almost indistinguishable, but I managed to make it out. Many of them pumped their fists in some sort of… I didn't know, a brother or sisterhood. This was their rallying cry, I guessed. It was kind of amazing, getting all these people to be excited together over this one thing. If a team of pirates could get so excited, and they were so resourceful… I had no doubt, if there was any possibility to stop this, they would be the ones to do it. The guys in the den of thieves certainly wasn't going to do it.
"That's right. Because we leave no evidence, we aren't even on the map." She smiled dangerously, and her sword seemed to glint in the sunlight…. Sunlight… sunlight on the backdrop of the endless darkness, the overwhelming darkness… Why did it seem to draw everything in? Why was it… calling me? Calling my name? The call of the void… End my adventure before it even had the chance to begin, nipping myself in the bud, snuffing it out.
Something yanked me backwards. I never realized that I had been at the rails again. Some pirate I didn't know had pulled me back.
"Lassy, ya can't look at it too long, bad fer the mind, bad fer the soul." She said, she had a really neat looking bandana, and her leg was just a metal pole. Seemed she had lost the leg at some point. I nodded at her and faced away from the darkness. A few other pirates were doing the same thing for Ray. This was the first time either of us had seen this phenomenon in our lives, but that wasn't true for any of these guys, was it? Anyone who lived out here saw it. We probably would have seen it too, if the walls of the capital weren't so high. Maybe that was the reason the walls were so high in the first place. I mean, I was raised to believe that the place I lived was created when a meteor fell from the sky and hit a giant rock in the ocean, and it carved out the crater we lived in, but maybe that wasn't actually true. Maybe, just maybe, the walls were built artificially high, specifically so that the citizens inside could never see this big obvious thing in the sky, couldn't see their doom coming for them. Keep the masses ignorant, keep the masses hidden. Things were drifting through my head, and I did not know where it was coming from. I didn't quite feel like myself. Maybe this was what Ray experienced, it was kind of what I experienced in that other world. Was that other world… on the other side of the darkness? That veil of darkness… Was that darkness the source of the affliction that was affecting Ray? There was a shadow version of him. Maybe there was a shadow version of all of us… just on the other side of the veil.
"Right… sorry… can we… can we go now?" I asked. I felt exhausted. I wanted to sleep and sleep for days on end. This was what we were up against? This horrible thing? How were we supposed to fight that? Well, we weren't. We were supposed to take down the court… stop them from doing things to make the problem worse. Then, maybe the world would fix itself, maybe. It was the only chance we had. I just… I couldn't think about that right now. It felt like all of my energy had been siphoned in a single moment. I needed rest, I needed to recover. Without waiting for an escort, I went downstairs, went to the medical bay, and fell asleep. My dreams were full of darkness, my pores were full of it. I was full of it… but I could repel it, or could I? Only… only… only time would tell. This was too much…
Have an awesome day!