The fresh air did seem to help Makoto's nausea, but when the storm arrived in full, the cold rain drove them back into the ship. They returned to the narrow top of the stairwell, which featured little comfort but old, textured steel and a bit of electric light in the ceiling. But it was out of the wind and rain and they were alone. It was good enough.
Ren sat with his back to the steel plates of the stair railings and used his body as a pillow, providing what comfort he could for Makoto- but her misery was entirely internal and she could barely feel what she sat on, whether it was steel or Ren's lap- and between his thigh muscles and his armor, there wasn't a huge different in softness.
So Makoto sat, shivering, in the middle of Ren's warmth, much as she had in the cave not so long ago. But it was no use, the ship would wobble off to one side and her body would react with unreasonable fervor and she would scramble from Ren's lap, her head spinning, to wretch against the wall. It felt like her stomach was trying to rip itself out and away from her spine.
After one such episode, Makoto couldn't stop herself from moaning out pathetically; "How much longer, Ren?!"
"Maybe another couple of hours and-" Ren paused, his eyes narrowing, he cocked his head.
Even as the ship creaked and groaned around them, Makoto could soon hear it too: bootsteps slowly climbing the metal stairwell below them. Lots of boots. Ren stood up, towering above her, his attention focused on the other side of the stairwell landing, his face looking deathly serious. The boat lurched, sending Makoto's stomach around another trip of nausea. Ren grasped a railing and stepped out of her line of sight.
"See, I told you he was up here," said an unfamiliar voice
"So he is," said another voice.
"Where's the human?"
"She's here. Can't you smell her, you idiot?"
"I'm up here," said Ren, his voice suddenly loud. "So what?"
"Look, man," said another new voice. "Me and the guys here- well, we haven't had anything to eat in a while."
A short silence.
"Not my problem," said Ren, slowly. "Buy what you need in Edgetown."
The second voice laughed in a way that made Makoto shiver. This was trouble. She reached for her gun inside her tunic. She wasn't sure she could fire it straight with the ship constantly moving, but she could try. She furrowed her brow and took deep breaths, trying to at least stop her dizziness.
"It is kinda your problem," said the second voice again, "Because you got the only human on this ship. And we were thinking-"
"No," said Ren with a growl.
"We were thinkin'-" said the voice, persistently. "That we could borrow her for a while. We'll pay you. We won't kill her, I promise. We'll be real gentle. Won't do anything that will leave a mark, you know? A permanent one? We'll pay you a lot."
"No," said Ren, his voice rough. "She's mine and not for sale."
The other dhampir made a loud snorting noise. "Look. You know was well as I that whoever is buying that choice girl meat you found isn't going to really care if something that nice has four tiny bites and four quick fucks. I mean, they'd expect that from you, amiright? She's not a virgin, so you already got your first fuck in. Let's make a deal. We get a turn. You make some extra money. You'll come out ahead!"
Ren's voice became tight and heated: "Fuck. Off."
Makoto could hear the fury and menace in it. Ren's diplomatic patience was obviously at an end. She wanted to feel angry about being discussed like meat, but she could barely keep from vomiting as it was. Makoto took a deep breath and held her pistol to her chest. There was a thin gap between the steel plates that Makoto was leaning against. She turned herself onto her knees, fighting down a new round of retching from the movement, and peeked through the gap. She had to hold herself in place on the metal to keep her eye centered during the ship's listing movements, but she could see what was happening at least. If needed, she could try and pop out for a shot with her pistol.
Ren stood in the narrow hallway of the landing, his black cloak and scruffy black hair all Makoto could see of him, but she'd known him long enough to recognize that his hackles were up and his stance was wide. He was on the balls of his feet and ready for a fight to start. Ahead of him, facing towards Makoto, were four ship crewmen in worksuits and holding large wrenches. They looked mockingly confident and stood about in relaxed postures, slapping their tools against palms with idle menace. Makoto realized that these fools had zero idea what they were getting themselves into. They must see Ren as one lone, gangly traveler.
Well, he was that. But he also was very much not just that.
One of the aggressive crewmen was a very tall dhampir and he had a short sword of some kind, he seemed the obvious leader. He stepped forward towards Ren with a fake grin.
"Well, look. We're trying to be nice and respect you, but you're throwing that back in our faces. But I don't think you quite understand your reality, friend. We're gonna have a taste of that cunt and we'll be nice and pay you. And you'll be nice and get paid. Fuck, you can join us if you want. You can show us her good spots."
"Step back now or you are all going to die," said Ren, his voice now quiet and calm
The tall man's face took on an amused and arrogant expression. He stepped forward deliberately and leaned his face down towards Ren. He opened his mouth to say something more, but at that moment, the ship lurched in the opposite direction, throwing everyone off balance slightly.
Ren's right hand slammed into the side of the man's head and crushed it against the steel wall of the ship's interior- a loud gong noise echoing about the small space. Makoto watched as the tall man's skull deformed from the impact and his eyeballs popped out of their sockets. The corpse was falling, but Ren had already moved on.
In a continuation of the same motion of his right arm, Ren drew his sword off his left hip and slashed upwards from the draw, splitting the second crewman from under the chin to the top of the skull. The sword gleamed red in the weird electric light of the stairwell, blood splattered across the ceiling.
Ren took one step forward over the first fallen corpse and brought the sword back downward, cleaving the third man's head like firewood. The blade stopped somewhere just above where the neck met the back of the skull. Ren sidestepped lightly around the collapsing second man, the third man was limp but stuck to his sword. Ren rotated and shoved forward, the point of the blade pushing out from the third man's body and catching the final crewman in the right nostril, impaling the head like a marshmallow. The sword tip exited the rear of the fourth dhampir's head and collided with the rear steel wall, bouncing off with a metallic clang, two bodies quivering upon the sword's length.
Ren raised his right boot and heel kicked the two corpses off the sword with savage contempt. There was a sound of ripping flesh and sinew as the corpses were torn from the blade. Ren flicked the weapon to clean it, a new splash of blood decorating the floor where he stood.
Makoto blinked. In four motions and about three seconds, Ren had killed them all. None of them had even a moment to raise their weapons or even to scream in pain. God. Makoto had never seen Ren really cut loose. He might struggle against a noble vampire, but amongst persona-less dhampir, he was something of a monster.
Ren took a deep breath and looked in her direction. His black hair was down over his forehead, and she could only make out his nose and a frowning mouth, while one silver eye gleamed at her brightly. He sheathed his sword.
"I'm alright," Ren said, perhaps not realizing she had been peeking at him the whole time. He grabbed a leg of each of the two nearest corpses and dragged them back towards Makoto and the outside door.
"Are you alright?" said Ren, looking down at her as if nothing was really out of the ordinary in any of this. He had the ankle of a corpse in each hand.
The ship lurched. Makoto's gut lurched. But she nodded to him. "I- I'm okay."
"Yell if you hear anyone else coming up," said Ren as he opened the deck door, the stormwind and the driven rain whistled immediately into the opening, splattering the floor with water. He tossed the two corpses into the doorway to keep the door from closing, then grabbed the other two bodies and threw them atop the first two.
"I bet it would take a week for this trash to recover from this, but better safe..." Ren opened the door, stood half in the storm, and used his sword to hack at the four necks he'd lined up for himself. The heads, once loose from their bodies, tumbled off out of sight onto the pitching deck of the ship. Ren sheathed his sword again and dragged the bodies out the door, the steel thing first smashing shut on the foot of the last corpse, which was then abruptly yanked out of sight. The door slammed shut with the next leaning of the ship, leaving Makoto alone in the landing.
She leaned out behind the plate wall that had hid her. There was blood all over the walls over there. Makoto's body suddenly made her heave, but she was out of things to vomit up. After a lonely minute of her dry retching onto the floor, the door opened and Ren stumbled back into the stairwell, drenched. He sat down next to Makoto again, breathing heavily, his boots leaving streaks of blood on the slick metal. Meanwhile, Makoto's body convulsed and successfully expelled a small amount of bile from the bottom corner of her gut.
Makoto gasped in pain. Her body hurt from the muscle contractions from vomiting. Her throat was a wildfire of acid burns. She looked over at Ren, bleary eyed, with nothing really to say. Ren frowned at her with obvious concern.
"We should be quick to disembark," said Ren.
"F- fine with me," mumbled Makoto, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. After the adrenaline of the fight wore off, she started developing a rather massive headache. She was dreadfully thirsty, but all their water was on the horse down in the hold. Probably alarmingly close to the Reaper's massive chariot. It would have to wait.
The rest of the boat ride passed in relatively miserable calm. No one came looking for the crewmen, but it seemed likely that their absence would be noticed as the ship prepared to dock. Ren noted that the ship wasn't swaying as much, which likely meant they were approaching the island and they were now in waters sheltered somewhat from the main body of the ocean. Makoto still felt terrible, but she wasn't being impelled to vomit her guts up every few moments.
Makoto nodded off without realizing it. She awoke to Ren's touch upon her shoulder. She looked up into his gray silver eyes.
"We're almost there. The storm's lessened. I thought you might want to see it."
Makoto did want to see it. She struggled to her feet with Ren's help, and shakily walked towards the deck door. Ren opened it in front of her, and she found that she didn't need to go any further to see what he was talking about.
Against the storm-darkened sky, a darker mass of the island covered most of the horizon. In the middle distance, where the black of the land met the black of the water, a small city gleamed in the night. It was garishly bright, glowing in such strangely intense and vibrant versions of red, purple, green, and yellow that Makoto thought the hues probably deserved different names, but she didn't know what they might be. It was honestly a little hard to look at, and the light of the city cast a long line of chromatic illumination into the dark sea.
Makoto leaned against Ren as a wave of dizziness hit her. She squinted at the brightness, trying to absorb as much detail as she could of her first look at a city of the Remnant Empire. Perhaps city was not the right word, as Makoto eventually discerned that the bright part looked like it was just one long street, covered on top with a massive arched roof. The buildings to either side were covered in the light-generating panels which seemed to stretch from the ground to the arched roof, making the street almost seem like a big tunnel. Behind those wall-like strips of buildings were smaller structures illuminated softly with the dim light of perhaps smaller side alleys, and then farther out from the central street where the bright lights almost did not reach, large concrete block buildings loomed in the darkness.
"Are all places like this?" said Makoto. She'd envisioned something rather quite different when she imagined the island of vampires.
"No," said Ren. "Edgetown is… it's own thing. If one could call any city a dhampir city, that is it. The main clans don't actually have much stable influence here, so Edgetown is somewhat independent. It's mainly a slave market, but a lot of businesses there are all about having sport with humans, and that attracts customers from every clan on the island. "
Makoto shivered. "What kinds of sport?"
Ren sighed grimley. "Like that stockade bar we told you about. But that one is rather tame, from what I understand. I don't know exactly, honestly. I try to spend as little time in Edgetown as possible. It's made to cater to the fantasies of vampire and dhampir alike. But from a human's perspective, I'm sure you would find any nightmare you could imagine. And worse."
Makoto felt Ren gently turn her around so he could look down into her face. His brows were furrowed, their silvery gleam replaced by the reflection of those distant lights. He looked mildly angry. His jaw was tightly clenched.
"Do not wander off, Makoto," Ren said, earnestly. "Ever. Not in that place. Slave poaching can happen here, so your brand isn't a guarantee. Just go where I go. If I tell you to stand somewhere, you go and stand there. Don't. Wander. Off."
What could Makoto do but nod? She turned back towards the gleaming, sickly lights of the approaching port city. Ren described this place as something of fantasy pleasure den for vampires and a living hell for the humans that fueled it. She'd never spent much time contemplating if hell was real or what it might look like, but as she looked out at the bright, deceptively enthusiastic city of Edgetown, Makoto was sure she wouldn't have thought it would look like that.
