Chapter 4
A Harrowing Encounter with the Crimson Crypt

Gently, Madame Olwen closed the book and fixed Clay with her serious, dark eyes. "Do you see how this story connects to you?"

Clay nodded slowly. "That symbol… Flameheart is trying to summon the phoenix, but since he does not know the location of the enchanted dagger, he is instead trying to perform rituals to summon it."

Madame Olwen nodded. "I doubt he even knows about the dagger's existence. The story I just read is extremely old, and only myself and a few other elites in the Order of Souls even have access to it."

"This explains the ritual I stumbled upon," Clay conceded, "but what do I do about my curse? Is there any way to reverse it?"

"That is not a simple matter," Madame Olwen sighed. "For your curse to be lifted, Flameheart would have to be either destroyed entirely or completely isolated by some magical means."

"Is there any way I could do either? Who knows how long it will be until this curse completely corrupts me."

Madame Olwen looked Clay dead in the eyes. "Clay, don't let such doubts torment you. If you despair now, your chances of finding redemption will seem to fade. The journey ahead of you will be a long and dangerous one, I'm sure, but always remember this: Don't let your curse define you as it so often does. Instead of letting it infect you with evil, become its master. Turn it into power to do good." Clay nodded. "Now," Madame Olwen rose from her seat. "I can do some more research tonight. Come back first thing in the morning before sunrise, and I believe I will have more answers for you."

"Thank you, Madame Olwen," Clay whispered. "For everything."

The woman gave him a sad smile. "You've been like a son to everyone here. It is the least I can do."

Still wanting to make things up to his father, Clay scooped up his fishing equipment and rushed off to the main dock. If he had stopped to look back, he would have seen a dark figure lurking around the edge of the tent. When Clay was gone, the figure darted away toward the nearby shops, trying to look inconspicuous. Was it someone who was simply up to no good? Or, worse yet… an eavesdropper?

That night at the dinner table, Clay picked and prodded at the golden broiled islehopper. Normally, islehopper was his favorite fish, but tonight, he was too nervous to eat. He could almost feel the scar from the ashen curse burning against his shoulder blade. He had convinced his parents that he could handle changing his own bandages. That way, he could replace them without anyone seeing that grisly, glowing gash. As for tomorrow, what would Madame Olwen's research reveal: good news, or bad?

Tasha noticed her son's lack of appetite. "Are you all right, my dear?" she asked gently.

"Of course, Ma," Clay responded, absentmindedly. "I'm just not that hungry tonight for some reason."

"If you're worried about the fact that you didn't catch any fish," his Pa began, picking bits of food from his salt-and-pepper beard, "don't trouble yourself. I landed plenty for the next few days." He then turned to his wife to change the subject. "Spotted a whole horde of them blasted skeletons lurking off the coast of the Isle of Last Words. Makes me blood boil just to lay eyes on 'em. I was tempted just to stop the boat and blow them all away on the spot, but I had islehoppers to catch and didn't waste me time on those vermin."

"They are like a plague upon this sea," agreed Tasha with a somber frown. "Although they may be the remains of someone once living, they've just turned into bony cockroaches. As soon as you get rid of one, at least a dozen pull themselves out of the ground to take its place. Disgusting."

Clay was attempting to down another piece of his dinner, but now he started to cough violently. His father gave him a few resounding whacks on the back. "Choked on a bone, did ye?" he chuckled.

Clay nodded, cleared his throat, and mumbled, "I don't feel so well. I think I'll just go to bed early tonight."

"Are you coming down with a fever?" Tasha asked, worriedly. "If it is, you'd better take off your shirt tonight. You'll probably burn alive-"

"No!" cried Clay, a bit too loudly. "I mean," he repeated, in a much calmer tone, "I think I may have a little indigestion or something. I'll just go lay down." Before either of his parents could ask him any more questions, he scurried away to his room, shutting the door firmly behind him and collapsing onto the bed. His heart was pounding furiously, and he could tell that the scar along his back was definitely getting warmer. His parents' comments had him more convinced than ever that his secret was to remain so, indefinitely.

Before the first rays of dawn came spilling over the horizon, Clay silently pulled on his clothes and tiptoed out of the tavern, being careful not to step on any creaky floorboards as he left. As he trotted out into the brisk early morning air, a million questions were already bubbling in his mind. Had Madame Olwen found a cure for his curse? Was there even a cure? How long would it be until the curse took over his mind entirely? Would they have time to make the necessary antidote?

Clay was so preoccupied with these worrying thoughts that he wasn't paying good attention to the sides of the path. The next thing he knew, a pair of huge hands had reached out through the bushes and grabbed him. Clay violently tried to struggle away, but the hands were too strong. He was just about to cry out for help when another hand clamped a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. Clay's nostrils were instantly assaulted by a smell like a combination of rotting fruit and incense. His vision began to grow blurry, and he could feel his arms and legs going limp.

"Help," he managed to moan, and that was the last thing he remembered.

"So, our guest is finally awake," jeered a voice. Clay's eyes finally came back into focus. He had a splitting headache that throbbed with every beat of his heart. He felt something metallic around his ankle: a manacle attached to a solid metal ball by a chain. He was lying on a cold slab of stone, surrounded by black metal bars. The room was a pitch-black natural cavern. The darkness was broken only by a candle or two set in small alcoves in the walls. The cave was ringed with a dozen more cells, some standing ajar, others still locked. Some of the cells even had a skull or two grinning inside. The air was stale as though there hadn't been a good breeze to stir it in centuries. Most unsettling of all, Clay could barely hear some distant, horrifying sounds: screeches and cackles, groans and moans, cries and howls. It was enough to send every hair on the boy's head standing upright.

The figure who had spoken was sitting on a stool, leaning forward to peer into Clay's cell. The dim candlelight caught something red on his face, making it sparkle: a ruby set in the eye of a plague doctor's mask.

"Are you…" began Clay, hoping desperately that his theory wasn't true.

"Captain Riley, at your service," sneered the huge pirate with a mocking bow. "And welcome to the hideout of the Crimson Crypt."

"What do you want from me?" Clay demanded. "Why have you kidnapped me? When my father finds out, he will track you down and cut off your ears… and everything in between!"

Riley threw back his head and laughed. "We made sure to leave no clues behind. Your precious father will have no idea where you've gone.

"I'll make your reason for being here short and to the point," Riley continued. He fixed the boy with his glittering eye. "I want your skull."

"My… skull?" repeated Clay, his skin turning clammy. "I don't understand."

"I think you do." Riley continued in a conspiratorial whisper. "You have the ashen curse, do you not?"

Clay instinctively flinched but responded with, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh yes, you do." Riley cackled. "I overheard your conversation with that stingy Madame Olwen yesterday. Most ashen bounty skulls are from people who were inflicted with the ashen curse and lain dead for centuries. But you… you offer me a chance to obtain something that no one has ever been able to possess before: a fresh ashen bounty skull. Every member of the Order of Souls would be drooling to buy it, and I could list my price for millions! We'll just keep you locked up here for a while to let the effects of the curse sink in a bit more, then I will have the honor of removing your priceless head myself."

The man slapped his knees and stood up. "I'll let you get settled now, but don't get too comfortable. This won't be your personal dwelling for long. Perhaps a couple of weeks at most." He gave Clay a final taunting wave of his fingers before stomping out of the cavern through a heavy door which he slammed shut behind him.

For several seconds, Clay just sat there, trying to digest this latest news. He had been kidnapped, and now he was doomed to lie in a cold, dark cell while the ashen curse corrupted his mind like a horrible disease. Worse yet, no one whom he loved or trusted had any idea where he was. It was this last realization that broke Clay. He pulled his legs up to his chest, rested his head on his knees, and cried. His shoulders shook with sobs, but no comfort came from the inky blackness that engulfed him. He wished he had the power to turn back time and avoid ever setting foot on Flintlock Peninsula.

"Don't let that brute get to you like that. He always loves to torture his prey before he kills it." Clay raised his head, and through watering eyes, he could see someone leaning against the bars of the adjacent cell to his right. The man was barrel-chested with a blonde beard and combed-over hair. His clear blue eyes were sad, and a long red scar ran through his right eye. He was dressed in a plain white shirt and leather breeches with a playing card for an eyepatch over his left eye. Like Clay, a heavy weight was chained to one ankle.

"Don't think it unmanly of you to cry," the prisoner consoled him. "To be honest," he admitted with a chuckle, "I cried for a solid day after being thrown in here." He extended his right hand through the bars. The tops of his knuckles were traced with crimson bone pattern tattoos. "Call me Wooly. Who might you be?"

Clay scrubbed away his tears and shook the man's hand. "My name is Clay. Why are you here?"

Wooly chuckled again. "For embarrassing the great 'Wiley Riley,' if you want to know. I was sailing with my good friend on my sloop, and we accidentally scraped hulls with Riley. He took that as an offense and opened fire on us. Since he was sailing a brigantine while we were sailing a sloop, we were able to outmaneuver him and return fire, leaving him very nearly sunk. What we didn't know was that he had some of his friends hiding behind a nearby rock. They swooped in to help, and both ships rammed us. Someone threw something on our deck, and it exploded with a blue cloud of smoke and a strange smell. Whatever it was, it must have rendered me unconscious, and the next thing I knew, I was chained up here."

Clay nodded. "They knocked me out with some strange smell as well."

Wooly's face clouded, and every trace of happiness seemed to vanish in an instant. "Just before I passed out, I could feel my friend lean down next to me and whisper, 'I will return for you. Don't give up hope. Just know that I have not abandoned you.'

"After I regained consciousness in my cell, I demanded of Riley what he had done to my comrade. He just laughed and said that he had run him through on the spot and thrown his body overboard. I firmly did not believe him at the time and was confident that my companion would keep his word and return to rescue me. I've been rotting away here for five months now, and with every passing week, my hope that he will return has grown more and more dim. I have even begun to wonder if Riley was telling the truth."

"Have you ever tried to break out?" Clay ventured.

Wooly shook his head. "These bars are a good two inches thick, and I don't have proper tools. Even if I did, the noise would surely bring the guards running. What's worse, even if I could get out of the cell, I was dragged down here unconscious. I wouldn't have the slightest idea which passage to take back to the exit."

At that moment, what sounded like the gong of an enormous bell echoed through the cavern, sending Clay's skin prickling with goosebumps. The note, which was played three times, was so low that it seemed to penetrate flesh and bone and make your insides vibrate like jelly. It was the deep, somber note of death itself.

"That's the bell to summon all these members of the Crimson Crypt to their 'Ritual of the Great Light,'" Wooly explained. "They all leave the cave system and go outside to perform a ceremony beneath the rising and setting sun. There they ask the spirits to guide and speak to them in all their practices. As you probably guessed, they do it twice a day: once at sunrise, which is now, and another at sunset. About ten minutes before each ritual, the jailers change shifts and give us our rations of the sorry excuse of what they deem food."

The wheels in Clay's mind began to spin wildly, and he asked Wooly, "I assume the guard has keys to all the cells."

"Of course," Wooly replied. His eyes widened. "Don't tell me you have an idea to escape already."

"Possibly," Clay admitted, "but it's very risky."

Wooly snorted. "At this point, I'm desperate enough to try anything, even if it means possibly dying in the attempt."

"Good. I need to give you the details before the new guard comes." Clay leaned forward and whispered his desperate plan in Wooly's ear.

That evening, ten minutes before the big bell would toll for the sunset ritual, the relief guard came sauntering into the cavern, a lantern held aloft in his left hand and two bowls of some unsightly gruel balanced in his right.

"Your meals, good sirs," the masked man taunted. He set the bowls on the ground and slid them beneath Wooly and Clay's cell doors. Both snatched up their bowls as though starving and began to gulp the questionable contents down. The guard settled on a stool by a candle and was just making himself comfortable when Clay, holding the bowl sideways, hurled it through the bars of the cage. It hit the jailer's mask with a resounding whack, dislodging the ruby eye and sending it tumbling into the shadows.

The guard bellowed in outrage and charged up to Clay's cell. He reached his long arm through the bars, grabbed the youth by the front of his shirt before he could retreat, and slammed him up against the cold metal. The beak of his mask was only half an inch away from Clay's nose.

"You impudent retch!" the man screeched. "How dare you strike your jailer!" Clay pretended to become frightened and even began to whimper a bit.

"Leave the boy alone!" bellowed Wooly. With lightning-fast movement, his right fist shot out through the bars of his cell and punched the jailer in the stomach. The man lost his grip on Clay and doubled over, gasping. After catching his breath, he whipped out his pistol and pointed it at Wooly's head.

"You will both die, you fools! Let this be a lesson to you!"

"You know you can't kill us," Wooly snapped. "You know Riley wants the honor of killing us himself. I suspect he would be extremely displeased if he found us both dead under your watch."

The guard stood there for a few more moments, quivering with temper, his pistol still pointing at Wooly. Finally, he tucked the weapon under his belt and fixed them both with what was probably a venomous glare beneath his mask.

"Both of you are quite lucky to be Riley's most wanted," he said through gritted teeth. "Otherwise, you would both be greeting the ferryman now. For this, no food for the next three days!" He then got down on his hands and knees and began probing in the darkness for his missing ruby eye.

Once he turned his back to them, Wooly cast Clay a hopeful smile and uncurled his fist to reveal the jailer's key. It had been hanging from his belt by a string, but when Wooly punched him, Clay had seen him simultaneously yank the key off the string. Since the keeper had been stunned by the impact, he hadn't noticed this sleight of hand.

Wooly slowly bent down and undid the lock to the cuff that bound his ankle. When he was sure that the guard was well distracted, Wooly whipped out his bowl and hurled it out of his cage over the guard's head. The bowl hit the floor with a clatter, and the jailer's head shot up in response to the sound. "What the-"

Under the cover of the sound from the bowl, Wooly deftly unlocked his cage, and in three strides was standing over the warden. Before the man could make any move to defend himself, Wooly's fist shot out again, this time with a hard jab to the man's skull which sent the victim sprawling.

After making sure his victim was completely unconscious, Wooly unlocked Clay's cell and freed him from his weight. "I can't believe it! You're a genius, my boy! It actually worked!"

Clay blushed a bit. "It was nothing. Just a simple case of distraction."

Wooly's mood sobered again. "Well, now that we've escaped our cells, how do we go about finding the way out?"

"Ah," Clay conceded. "That's where the really dangerous part comes in."