88 — THE TREASURY OF TREASURES
"Captain's log, supplement. Captain Meko Kaire of the Galleon of Athena speaking, and I hereby inform you that the regulations for music players are revoked on my ship, so that Ensign-Engineer Lunara can hear her songs before bed. Unless, of course, my first-mate objects."
The Galleon of Athena left the mouth of the Amazon River and headed towards the north of the Atlantic where it entered the wonderful Caribbean Sea. Captain Geist knew the currents of that ocean very well, so they quickly gained the time they had lost anchored in the Rio Negro. The Caribbean Sea was full of mysteries in turbulent waters and filled with stories and legends.
But the acting Captain of that Galleon of Athena knew them all; first for being an avid reader of ancient stories and legends, as well from being banished from the Sanctuary precisely for her suspected involvement with the forces of the Caribbean, being exiled shortly after her graduation as a Silver Saint.
"All hands on deck!" she shouted to her crew, appearing on the quarterdeck. "June, I need the infirmary to be ready."
"Problems, Captain?" she asked.
"Yes." she confirmed, stopping at the quarterdeck railing and looking out over the ocean. "Caribbean stories may be stories, but their treasures are no legend."
"What does that mean?" the new first officer asked, but the Captain moved on with June on her heels.
She came down on deck and signaled for Lunara to leave the crow's nest to join her in the forecastle; there they could see the immensity of the Caribbean Sea shaking Athena's Galleon back and forth.
"Lieutenant Lunara, I want you to stay on the quarterdeck and control the sails. We'll navigate together, you and I."
"Yes, Madam Captain!"
"Seiya, collect the Holy Cloths." said the Captain, handing her own silver pendant to the boy at the helm. "Hide them in the Orichalcum chamber."
June did not leave her side at all.
"We must prepare for battle." said Geist very gravely.
Lunara looked scared at June, but Captain Geist left them there with surprise written all over their faces; Seiya stared at the silver pendant, not understanding that order very well, but chose to comply without arguing. Geist then looked at her entire crew and her voice sounded high and powerful for all to hear. Even the night shift was now on deck, alerted by the first-officer June.
"Galleon of Athena! We will fly this ship to the Island of Tortuga and then we will dive into the ocean, where we will be attacked at the mouth of the cave to the heart of the Caribbean. A place dominated by bucaneers who will welcome us with their cannons aimed at our bow. We don't have the firepower to rival them, but we have the speed to reach the mouth of the cave and surrender to the Temple of Kalinago."
"Surrender?" Seiya asked, confused and with the silver pendant in hand.
"This is not a mission of conquest. Trust me. I know what to do."
She spoke mysteriously.
And that was exactly how it happened, because no one dared to disobey her, who, without a doubt, was a well-known navigator of those seas.
Athena's Galleon soared into the skies at that point with Geist deftly at the helm looking for the largest cloud formations to hide in as they conquered sea leagues through the air. When the dreaded Tortuga Island that Geist knew so well loomed over the horizon and the surface of the water, she ordered everyone into position and pointed her bow at the water, swooping down into an impossible dive.
When the Galleon reached the sea, it immediately sank into the ocean, raising an immense wave that, for an instant, hid the meteor that had hit the waters, splitting the ocean in half. And just as it had been in the Rio Negro, Athena's magical orichalcum protected them from drowning by creating an air bubble while they were submerged. But like an enormous predatory fish, Athena's Galleon emerged piece by piece on the surface: first the masts emerged tearing through the ocean as the vessel sped onward, and then revealed the sails which, as soon as they reached the surface, filled up like lungs and pushed the ship even faster. And at last the whole wonderful hull of Athena's Galleon emerged, racing towards a rock formation.
Behind them there was already a very fast longboat in hot pursuit flanked by two old and much larger and therefore slower caravels.
"Step away from the rails!" shouted Geist across the ship.
Close to his post, Seiya saw how beside him a cannonball lifted the water almost to his height. June climbed onto the quarterdeck to see the longboat chasing them in the distance; she heard the thunder of the volleys of shots that whizzed the cannonballs beside them. One of these bullets went through one of the sails and a fourth shot finally hit the right side of the gunwale, blasting the wood onto the deck.
Geist deftly zigzagged through the ocean to try to make life difficult for that pursuer, but at her side bounced on the waves formed by the Galleon speedboats that, if they could not face that portentous old hull, at least prevented the Captain's maneuver. And the bullets kept whizzing dangerously over their heads. One of the poles was finally hit, falling to the ground and hampering the Captain's maneuvers, causing the Galleon to veer dangerously to the right at high speed.
"We're almost there, Captain!" Lunara announced with the binoculars to her eye and seeing the mouth of a cave rapidly approaching in the rock formation ahead.
Geist seemed to contain the ship's strength in her own hands and swung the helm as far as she could to the left to balance the ship one mast short and enter the mouth of the huge cavern. A cave lit by day, as it had many, many indentations in the stone, certainly from ancient and immemorial battles at sea.
"They won't be able to hit us in here." said Geist to June, who was closest to her. "The cave could collapse and close off the only way to Tortuga."
What Geist didn't realize was the extent to which those pursuers were willing to protect this forgotten fort; Athena's Galleon was hit hard on the starboard side by a frigate much larger than it, hurling the crew across the deck and hurling Geist against the door of her own cabin. The only luck for that crew was that the cave was smaller than it appeared, so the churning threw them to the left of the sea, but instead of crashing into the cave's wrinkled wall, they scraped the hull at the end of it and emerged in a beautiful atoll dammed by that rock formation where so many ships were there waiting for them in a busy harbor.
"All to the lower galleries!" shouted Geist to her crew, who didn't wait for a second to obey that order. "Lunara, go down with them! Seiya, protect the ship!"
"Yes, captain!" he said.
And as he turned to the side where Athena's Galleon had been hit, he saw how ropes were thrown from the black frigate that loomed beside them, and men and women of all sorts leapt into the ship with their muskets, scimitars, swords and all kinds of clubs to take the crew by storm. And if at first they thought the task would be an easy one, given that there were only two young sailors on deck, those pirates were sorely mistaken, for never has anyone heard of such a massive beating as the one Seiya and June gave the invaders from the Galleon of Athena that afternoon in the Caribbean.
If the pirates of the Caribbean avoid telling this story, out of shame for their corsairs who were so badly beaten, for many years later in Rodório it was told how Seiya seemed to fly with his dark overcoat with red details, throwing powerful punches and well-aimed kicks while dodging feasts and swordsmen; or even how June's living whip snapped left and right, pulling, cracking, and strangling her opponents under her gorgeous navy blue overcoat. Both were not wearing their Holy Cloths and the beating only ended when a thunderous voice was heard from the top of the frigate.
"Enough!"
Seiya looked at the frigate glued to Athena's Galleon and saw a huge figure standing on the ship's rail. He jumped up and landed in front of him, fending off his own hobbled men and women trying to get back on their feet. That was a terrible man, Seiya thought. Tall, stocky in build, he had a black three-cornered hat, greasy black hair, as well as a bushy, deeply dark braided beard. What distinguished it from anything Seiya had ever seen, however, were two details that never left his mind: the hair that fell under his hat seemed to have the ends on fire, letting out a dark smoke that gave his appearance a ghostly aspect.
And on the body, June had no doubt what she saw: it was an Armor. A protection of a different material, but still blackened by the night. It was clearly of better quality than the Black Saint's makeshift cloths, as it had an absolutely wonderful ebony sheen.
That imposing figure immediately ended the battle on deck and his thunderous voice called to them all.
"What we have here are not simple troglodytes. No, not at all, my good souls." he walked towards Seiya, who was on guard. "Who are you who will lose your lives for this daring invasion of Tortuga?"
"We are Athena Saints!" shouted Seiya and the man laughed.
"Is this flea the captain of this little ship?"
"No!" said Geist from the quarterdeck. "I'm the Captain here."
The man turned from the deck to Geist, who had her black hair blowing in the wind and her handsome overcoat trimmed in red.
"And to whom do we owe the honor of this ill-fated invasion?" the man asked mockingly.
"It's been a long time, Onyx Blackbeard." Geist began, drawing a mixture of confusion on the man's face, which was dark-eyed and terribly expressive.
"And who the hell are you, maiden?"
Only then did it occur to Geist that Blackbeard's cynical old smile was because she had never been seen in that region without her mask. She let out her own smile on her face, which made June and Seiya very strange, and responded in a powerful voice.
"Skull-Geist."
Seiya watched beside him as Blackbeard's face melted from his apparent cynical glee to total astonishment; the smoking strands in his hair grew even more intensified as he clapped his hands together in disbelief.
He walked a few steps towards the Captain.
"For a thousand devils, is that really you, Geist? By the apes of hell!"
Geist walked down the deck stairs to that huge figure and faced him. Blackbeard, up close, didn't seem to believe that this was the girl's face that was hidden under the so feared mask.
"Do you miss the mask, Blackbeard?"
The huge man stopped before her and his face, now surprised, slowly colored with sarcasm again. He looked at her, at that pair of warriors, at that little Galleon without a mast and with a battered hull, and finally asked the question.
"So Captain Skull abandoned her Caribbean island to reappear here months later with a small galleon like this to plunder Tortuga?" and cackled his rough laugh for all to hear on that ship and his own. "Is it possible that losing your mask has driven you mad?"
"I didn't come to plunder Tortuga. I came to make a deposit."
Blackbeard's eyes locked with Geist's and he paced back and forth looking at the inches he had available to see in that Galleon, as if trying to guess what was so important there. Geist let another confident smile form on her mouth that unnerved the pirate greatly; he then spat at Geist's side, filled with sudden anger. His eyes were twitching, but not for a second did Geist flinch from her stance.
"You were never good at hiding your rage, Blackbeard. You can't do anything to me now that I'm in the waters of Tortuga." she said, guessing Blackbeard's loot ideas.
The huge man then threw a pointed finger at Geist and swore:
"Your invasion will be remembered. And if the Temple of Kalinago refuses this deposit of yours, then I will take this little ship, reduce it to firewood, and you will clean the deck of my frigate forever. Do we have a deal?"
She didn't respond and Blackbeard retreated with his men and women who had been beaten by Seiya and June; the Pegasus Saint still had time to face that giant menacing man without fearing him for a moment. No words were exchanged, and Blackbeard climbed into his frigate and headed for the harbor. They were safe thanks to that code of honor that existed among the fearsome privateers of the Caribbean.
"What about now?" June asked Captain Geist, breathless on the quarterdeck.
"Now we sail to the harbor and hope the Temple of Kalinago will accept my treasure."
Seiya and June looked at each other mysteriously as the crew slowly returned from the lower galleries. Each took their post, and with great difficulty the Athena's Galleon sailed the few leagues separating that point from the atoll where they battled the frigate Blackbeard to the busy port of Tortuga.
They moored close by and Geist descended alone in the auxiliary boat under protests from all her crew, who insisted that it was suicide for her to go alone, or even leave without her Silver Cloth.
"I can't let them think the Cloth is more precious than what I have for them. There are two ways this will end: in peace or in war. Prepare for war."
She then looked bravely at her crew and took her leave.
"June, you have the comm."
Geist walked among the terrible men and women of the port of Tortuga, a busy port almost lost in time, inhabited by marauders old and new, ravagers from the Caribbean region, where many routes still crossed the Atlantic and millionaires paraded their modern ships. The harbor itself was a great gateway to the time when patched-up old galleons bobbed at sea alongside stolen white yachts and modern frigates.
If the boats were different, the looters who displayed them were almost always very similar: dirty, drunk, hateful, histrionic and sometimes amusing. Argo Geist walked among them, escorted by the huge Blackbeard, who opened the city of corsairs before them, like a prophet; they simply gave space for that procession to cross in the direction of a huge mansion. The Tavern, read a half-destroyed sign.
The place probably had a more eloquent name, but it is said in the port that a colossal fight broke out in the bars and took the port to the point that Tortuga was practically destroyed by inebriated madmen. When the effect of the rum wore off and the unconscious bodies were scattered across the city, the owner of the bar at the time looked for the other half of the destroyed sign among the battered people and gave up on finding it, renaming it forever just the Tavern. And so it has been.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked Blackbeard as he saw Geist diverting her steps.
"There are friends I want to see again.
The Tavern was really a tavern. The entrance no longer had any door to close it, for the truth was that it was always open and working; there were some patched tables, stolen sofas, and all sorts of tapestries on the floor and walls. A countless number of bohemians, so many gambling games spread out, arm disputes, bottles breaking in the background, prominent men and women accepting money for pleasure. Geist made her way through the melee and approached the counter where two men were leaning: one thin and the other stronger.
"I thought I made it clear that you were supposed to stay on the island."
The two immediately jumped to their feet when they saw the girl next to them, her face serious, her overcoat unfamiliar, but her gaze unforgettable.
"Miss Geist!" they were both surprised, throwing a glass full of rum across the counter and straightening in front of her.
They were the warriors of Skull Island, without their makeshift protections, of course. Seiya would recognize them, if he were there, as the Horsefist and the Jellyfish Head who had hijacked the Graad Foundation's nuclear ship now so many months ago. Because, as it was Tortuga, no one there was known by their real name, so that was exactly how they were known there too.
"At ease." she said. "What are you doing here?"
The two looked at each other, surprised to see her in that place and dropped down on the bench they were sitting on.
"The seas are too rough all over this region. The ships abandoned the route."
"No wonder Tortuga is so tense." she guessed when she saw that the Tavern was indeed far above its normal occupation.
"There is too little for far too many." said Medusa from the other side.
She looked at them closely and spoke to them calmly.
"The seas will get better." she said, but Horse Fist meant it with his sharp face, hooked nose.
"They say the north is impossible to navigate and that the storm will soon arrive here."
"North is always unnavigable."
"But it's worse." said Medusa, on the other side of her.
"But it will get better." she said again, staring at them both. "Go back to the Island, the giant must miss you both."
"Roca stayed with him." said Horse Fist. "But we'll be back, miss."
"We should go." ordered Blackbeard, interrupting the three of them when he noticed that the movement in the tavern was starting to become a little weirder than usual.
"Get out of here." she said, confiding a certain concern.
And then she left her old cronies who spilled a last dose and actually left the Tavern. Geist and Blackbeard left the place at the back of the bar and climbed some side stairs to a balcony on the second floor, guarded by two sentries disfigured by life: the first one was missing an eye and his scalp was burned by some misfortune, while the second was missing a hand and, instead, had plucked a huge blade to threaten those who dared to get there. Behind a double door was the Temple of Kalinago.
Too pompous a name for their crude facility, and beyond that ominous guard, before they entered the precinct, they were accosted by a burly woman who seemed to be waiting for them there. She had terribly red hair and freckles all over her face.
"I was going to get them, Beard." she spoke to the huge man, a terrible accent.
"Try to hit your shots next time, Capelli." he muttered. "Don't you recognize our prisoner?"
The woman looked at Geist and didn't recognize her; it was Blackbeard's dark voice that was pleased to reveal the secret.
"This is Skull-Geist."
The woman looked at Blackbeard in confusion and then at Geist.
"I don't need the mask anymore, Ruby Capellirossi."
The woman then disarmed her entire complexion and took Geist by the strong arms, crushing her bones in a tender, strong embrace.
"I almost killed you, damned woman!" she said.
"Not even close, Capelli." replied Geist.
"Enough of this drama. The Temple of Kalinago awaits you."
Blackbeard, very brusquely, pushed Geist through the Tavern's second-floor double doors into a dusty office crammed with trinkets and paperwork; calling that storeroom the Temple of Kalinago was a good idea of the sense of grandeur these pirates had of themselves.
Behind a single mahogany table, very pretty by the way, seated in a far armchair, with his feet on the table and a fat cigar in his mouth, was a very, very old man. His skin was all furrowed with age, but his movements were still as agile as a boy's.
"Skull-Geist." he said, not taking the cigar out of his mouth and showing one of the golden teeth in his mouth.
"Kai."
"Diamond Kai." he corrected, with a raised finger.
The old man smiled. And then he pointed the same finger through a greasy window where the island's light streamed in.
"That's a special ship you brought for us."
"Be smart, Kai." Geist recalled.
"Don't steal from other pirates." completed the old saying of Tortuga. "You're smart, Skull-Geist, but your noisy entrance could get you into trouble."
"I hope this rewards the damage." she said, holding up a gold cylinder.
Kai straightened up in his chair and took his feet off the table, drawn like a wasp to the light with that cylinder that actually glowed with the touch of the sun coming through the window.
"You know I like gold."
"For gold is the least precious of this treasure."
"You have my attention." said Kai.
"Take me to the Treasures of Tortuga."
Diamond's old pirate then stared at Geist for a few seconds before bursting into laughter, drawing out Blackbeard's and Capellirossi's unleashed laughter behind the young Captain's back. Shaking gracefully in his chair, the Argo Saint clearly saw under the old man's robes the beautiful diamond protection he wore; but she did not budge at the histrionic laughter of the corsairs and tucked the cylinder into her robes.
"Tortuga is fuller than usual." she said, interrupting their moment. "You have a ticking time bomb in your hands, Diamond Kai. It is sacred and sacrilegious for anyone to plunder the Treasures of Tortuga, which is what holds us together for centuries. But if the fountain dries up outside, you won't be able to keep all those crazy people in the Tavern out of your vaults."
The laughter slowly died in them, buried by the silence of the truth. Kai tasted the bitterness of that speech and clicked his tongue, in a certain displeasure at having his innermost thoughts uncovered.
"This is the solution to your problems." continued Geist confidently. "The seas will calm down, Tortuga will return to normal, the routes will pass through here again, and the Treasure of Tortuga will be even more valuable."
Kai squinted his eyes trying to guess what was inside that cylinder.
"What's in the vial?"
Geist remained serious.
"Take me to the Treasure." and Kai laughed mockingly.
"You won't get anywhere near the Treasure if you don't tell me what's in that vial."
Geist took a deep breath and confessed.
"The blood of a God."
A shiver ran up Kai's spine, and even Blackbeard and Capellirossi at her back looked at each other, confused and amazed at the possibility. Slowly the leader of that Temple rose from his armchair and walked as if walking through a minefield, each step slow and thoughtful towards Geist.
"The blood of a God?" Kai asked, as if to be sure.
Geist nodded and Kai took a deep breath with his eyes locked on hers.
"A Seal of Athena?" he tried, as if guessing in the dark.
Geist fell silent and tension built in that storeroom in such a way that you could cut it with the knife each of them carried in their holster. Her silence was confirmation that she did indeed carry a Seal of Athena, whereupon Kai immediately guessed the entire plan.
"You want to seal Poseidon." he said.
And at that instant, behind Geist, both Blackbeard and Capellirossi immediately drew their weapons and pointed at the young Captain, who briefly raised her arms in a sign of peace. Kai, in front of her, however, asked the notorious pirates not to do anything stupid.
"I don't want any shooting in my office." he asked. "One gunshot is enough for this island to blow up."
The weapons remained at the ready.
"We shouldn't mess with Poseidon." warned Blackbeard.
"And now you're a Mariner of Poseidon, Onyx Blackbeard?"
"But Kai, the seas are our ways, it is not wise to offend the God of the Seas!"
"And since when are we prudent, Ruby Capellirossi?" he roared, and then turned his attention to Geist. "Poseidon, Tangaroa, Zeus, Davy, the Eastern Company."
And laughed.
"I don't care about any of them." pondered the old man, sucking in a strong breath with his overgrown nose. "You reek of saint, Skull-Geist."
"She left the Seas to return to Greece." Capellirossi gossiped behind her.
"Wasn't you banished for joining these terrible bucaneers?" Kai asked, opening his arms. "And haven't we accepted you on our humble island after you've been expelled?"
"And now I bring the solution to your problems." said Geist.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch." said Kai.
"I will have safe pass to the north."
Everyone around her laughed.
"Very well." Kai agreed, however.
"Kai!" cried Blackbeard.
"Now, Blackbeard, to let them go safely to the north is to sentence them to their deaths."
"Dozens of more experienced captains than you were shipwrecked in that region. It's suicide."
"That's my price." and Geist took the cylinder out of his robes again.
"Calm your fingers.
Finally the weapons lowered and returned to their holsters as Kai stomped between them to leave Kalinago Temple.
"Follow me, Captains. Let's deposit this Seal of Athena in our Treasures."
They left that storeroom they called the Temple and went down stairs to the back of that Tavern, where mysteriously there was no one. But all the bar fights and arguments just stopped when they saw that foursome walk down the forbidden stairs to that hallway. Kai took a torch that was burning on one of the walls and at the front of the group crossed a deserted corridor where, at its end, there was a single huge door. Carved wood with beautiful and oceanic details; a bronze doorknob in the shape of an oblong sea-shell. The curious and disconcerting thing is that the door was nailed to the floor, like a huge trapdoor, as if the architect of that Tavern had gone mad and, instead of installing the door in the wall, put it on the floor.
Kai fumbled inside his overcoat and pulled out a set of keys from at least a dozen of them; deftly he combined them so that they all formed a single huge key, like a bronze jigsaw puzzle. The key fit perfectly in the latch of that floor door and everyone heard the clang of the latch undoing.
"Beard."
Kai called out to the huge man who bent down and pulled the door with all his strength, as it was solid old wood, so it weighed terribly. A descent of stairs in the stone opened up and Kai took the lead until they emerged into a very dark cave.
They followed a damp path until the dark corridor opened into a huge cavern in which their footsteps echoed terribly; Kai leaned his torch against a torch to their right and the pirates watched in amazement as, running along the wall, a beam of fire lit up several other torches that magically lit up in the cave to reveal a golden mound made up of all sorts of coins, trinkets and treasures, precious stones, chalices and cups, tapestries and everything that was precious.
Someone more superstitious would think a dragon lived there, but it was Tortuga's way of hiding its most precious treasures.
They followed Kai further into the cave, crossed a very shallow valley of flowing water, and then followed a path to a golden door at the base of that treasure mountain. Geist could feel a subtle but unmistakable cosmos in that place: it was the presence of Poseidon.
The door was not locked, and when they entered, the light that came in from outside reflected off the precious metals and absolutely lit up the entire closed chamber. In the center of it, under a pedestal marked with a trident, was a golden chalice.
"It's time to make your deposit, Skull-Geist." Kai told her. "We sea captains will be your witnesses and seek your soul if your mission fails."
She walked alone, removed the Seal of Athena and placed it inside the chalice, which resonated briefly, and then Poseidon's presence in that place died down, extinguishing all the torches in the cave, leaving only the one Kai carried.
"It's done." Geist commented to them and then down to just her. "Only one Relic missing."
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: Ahh, the Pirates of the Caribbean. =) Well, Saint Seiya gave us a pirate from the Caribbean in the figure of Geist. She's a character who takes inspiration from the Arabian Nights, so I assumed she was very knowledgeable. And it was too seductive to ignore making pirates as one of the civilizations Poseidon protected and using Geist to get Saint Seiya into this fun world of piracy.
NEXT CHAPTER: SHADES OF MYSTERIES
In both Sanctuary and the Galleon, strange shadows cause pandemonium in Athena's defenses. Mysteries ahead.