The mental image of Rhaya grabbing a dragon by the scruff of the neck and shaking it admonishingly made Michael laugh out loud for a good few seconds - the kind of laugh that comes out through your nose first because you don't even have time to open your mouth - and he had to put down the knife he'd been holding for a moment.
"I appreciate the enthusiasm, but no." He said once he'd managed to regain (most) of his composure. "If he really isn't interested in anything more, I don't want to pressure him into it." Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he could just imagine Haaruma indignantly flaring her hood at the self-depreciation. He hadn't intended it to sound that way, but now that he thought it back, he could hear it, and he didn't like it, either.
"N-not that I don't think he does!" Michael hurried to add, his hands moving to fiddle nervously before remembering that he was holding a sharp blade and putting it down on the cutting board next to the half-chopped vegetables he'd been preparing for later that night. "I just want it to be his own decision, is all."
Once there was a little girl who was held captive on a ship. Already sick and weak, she ran into the woods of a strange island and died looking up at the stars through the trees. She died thinking of home, and the comforts of her mother's cooking, and the love her father had for her even though one night he never came home. She died there in the woods, and something completely unexpected arose where she lay.
---------
It's a kind of house that really shouldn't be here on an uncharted island. It's huge, and made from such a variety of building materials that it couldn't possibly have been constructed from the local palms and stones and sand. There's a big yard with off-island animals in pens, too; pigs and goats and chickens. Whoever built it must have spent a fortune just to get all of these things to the island. A fortune and then some, to have all of this built.
For all that effort, it looks old, almost abandoned. But a woman rushes out the door to greet the small party of scouts as they approach.
"Stranded by the storm, aye?" she calls out through the beating rain. She speaks Common as one who has grown up speaking it. She isn't dressed for the weather, but she doesn't seem to mind standing on the porch in just a simple dress and apron.
"Just you three, or a whole ship, my dears?"
The woman is not put off by the size of the crew, nor does she seem worried about the prospect of theft. She insists that she wants to invite all of them inside for a hot meal, and she has one ready by the time the crew makes it to the house. She brushes off questions about the speediness with which she prepared the food. "Sometimes storms bring hungry crews, my dear."
The dinner conversation is pleasant, engaging, and even forgettable. Their host wants to know about places they've gone and sights they've seen. She offers herself as a perfect sounding board for their story, saying ooh and aah in all of the right places and offering little about herself. The few times she does talk about herself, her comments are evasive. She seems preoccupied. Her husband is coming home later on, she says. And then the conversation trails off, as if the subject cannot really be addressed without the husband present.
One time, just once, she accidentally calls her husband your father. She does not seem to notice that she has said something odd and carries right on talking.
Just as dinner is ending, the sudden storm begins to quiet. As the woman is collecting empty plates, an evening sun ray pokes through a rain-dotted window. Even though they never really talked about anything of substance, the woman notes sadly that her guests will be leaving soon. And nothing seems to prevent them from leaving the house and boarding their ship and setting sail, or at least having the perception of doing so, despite the odd vibe this entire place has had from the start.
No, the latent trap springs only when each dinner guest next falls asleep. They sleep deeply, too deeply, and when they wake up it's not in a familiar hammock. They're at the woman's house again, around the same dinner table and at the same places they were seated before. This time, though, the fire is cold and the lamps are dark and there are no plates set out for anyone. A hidden bookcase door opens slowly, revealing a passageway outside to the pig pen built against the side of the house.
More urgently, they all seem to be turning into pigs. Piter has a general-purpose antidote hidden in a ring, and he buys his own salvation with a quick twist of the gem with his teeth. He's visibly shaking as he looks around at the others to see if anyone else is having much luck escaping the curse. The navigator is a druid, he remembers. He's never seen her take a wildshape form, but he thinks that if anyone could wriggle out of this, it would be her. She was seated... there? He makes his way over to her, stumbling and sick with fear. He very deeply doesn't want to die, and whatever the magic of this house is, it clearly has him outclassed.
"Rhaya, Rhaya," he hisses miserably, looking around and around the room for threats. "You've got to fight it... you're a human, Rhaya, you've got to snap out of it! You can do this!"
He knows her name at least, but it's a large crew, and he hasn't had a chance to interact with everyone. He hardly knows her. He will put his best, friendliest foot forward, though. He's used to adapting quickly to appeasement for survival. He doesn't know yet, just how much she is a pretender too.
____
Once there was a little girl who was held captive on a ship. Already sick and weak, she ran into the woods of a strange island and died looking up at the stars through the trees. She died thinking of home, and the comforts of her mother's cooking, and the love her father had for her even though one night he never came home. She died there in the woods, and something completely unexpected arose where she lay.
She also thought of the people who had stood by and not interfered when she was captured. Knowing she was dying, and that she could have had a better fate, she had the thought that those people and their glassy and pitying eyes had been as useful to her when she needed them as the shuffling and indifferent pigs her mother kept at home.
Sleep or death will still reset time and bring those under her curse back to the cold, dark dining room that is not set for company, and they will have to struggle for their correct shape anew. To break the curse completely, the girl's soul must find peace. The copy of her childhood home holds many reminders of what felt unfinished in her short life.
The Vindicta was no ship you boarded led by curiosity; you had to be ready to be followed by some of the other sailors’ shocked looks and whispers. Though not all who had dropped anchor seemed suspicious of the ship’s crew, there was no lack of awkward stares. That did not seem to be ruffing the captain’s feathers, however, and as she leaned against the ship’s railing, she met each and every gaze. It could be noticed that even the strongest-looking men did not feel brave enough to engage in a staring contest with her - even though there was more peace than anger in her eyes.
Even back when Fíann’s great-grandmother had first become a part of the ship’s crew, it had been called this way; the captain had chosen it as a reminder of the life he and the crew had turned their backs on. Naturally, piracy was a frowned upon choice to make in life - but Fíann had had little choice. A time travel machine in the shape of both a watch and a compass had taken her back in time. And not just that. Whoever she would run into would mistake her for her great-grandmother... and said great-grandmother turned out to be exactly that. A fierce pirate. And here Fí was.
Was this Spain? Or Portugal? Aside from having become a time-traveller and then a pirate, Fíann was a sea engineer, and the time she spent away from home (sometimes entire months) had had her see some of the world. And the rest? Fate had made it possible for her to keep travelling by meeting her with her great-grandmother’s crew. Now that she had returned from surveilling oil rigs out at sea, she was back again, this time on a slightly different kind of ship... and in a different place. Somewhere where the crew had told her they had not been many times.
As she gazed down at the dock, hat in hand, the wind playing with her hair - which caused her to see red, literally, for a few seconds - Fíann could not help but notice what seemed like a traveller circling the Vindicta. Was she looking for her ship? Or was she yet another intrigued stanger? Fíann tried to see if she could catch her gaze.
✧˚ · . ❝ THAT WAS SOME IMPRESSIVE SPELLWORK, ❞ kirin said, not bothering to keep the awe out of her voice. she had never been great at magic, herself – the most she could conjure was a measly ward or minor hex. nothing like what she was just accidentally witness to. ❝ WE DON’T GET MANY SPELLCASTERS AROUND HERE. ARE YOU ON AN ADVENTURE? ❞ she asked, already itching. she’d been so unbearably bored lately – she needed to meet some new people, maybe go on another dangerous excursion. ❝ MAYBE A QUEST? ❞
“One hundred prisoners. Stars above.” Diamond presses a palm into his eye, trying to think.
“Can you do it?”
Diamond shakes his head, frustration curling in his gut. The man sounds so hopeful, and Diamond hates that he can’t live up to that. “I can’t–I can’t drag these people through the Spire, you know that. Without its power…”
He does the math, tries to assess how he feels: how many teleportation spells he could manage, if he made a circle and an anchor and prayed the boatmasters didn’t notice, or how stable of a portal he might be able to maintain. How quickly they could free everyone from their bonds, and how badly it might go if a fight breaks out.
The timing for this couldn’t be worse; it’s been a long, long week, and he’s tired.
“...you’ve always been weird about that. Way I see it, the Spire sounds a good bit nicer than a slave ship. Been half tempted to retire there myself, even before this.”
Diamond groans and rests his head on his friend’s shoulder, headless of the filth there. “Ah, Kovitz. You might think that, and I might think that, but we’re cynical nontheistic bastards. Plenty of other folk aren’t quite so happy to risk consigning their soul to something other than their gods, mm?”
Maybe teleportation is the wrong way to tackle this. Can he take out the crew, without getting anyone killed in the process…?
Diamond’s thoughts are interrupted as a bone-rattling crash rocks through the ship, nearly knocking him off balance even in his seated position. He steadies himself and then scrambles to his feet. “Shit. How do I get above deck?”
“How do–Diamond you are blind, where in the nine hells do you think you’re going–?!”
Just the question is enough for Kovitz’s mental focus to shift towards the exit, though, and Diamond catches the impulse and follows it, picking his way among the bound prisoners. There’s a bolted door at one end of the hold; telekinesis makes it easy enough to slide the deadbolt, and while he leaves it unlocked he closes the door behind himself once he’s through. No need to draw attention to the prisoners.
With his cane in one hand and his other hand against the hull, Diamond makes his way towards the sound of fighting that filters down from, presumably, a stairwell or ladder somewhere ahead.
“You know, surprisingly, none of that is reassuring to hear.” Vashael twisted his wrists in their bonds, and curled his lips when the ropes held firm. His humanoid form was strong, but not strong enough to snap a well-braided rope without aid. If he was able to shift just his fingertips, then perhaps he could cut through the fibers, but he never had practiced much at partial shape changing.
“They’re Sunfell cult.” He spat. “A group that worships an ancient tyrant from a thousand years ago. I recognize their robes - they’re a problem in my home country.” He ran his tongue across his lip experimentally, tasting the drying blood from a cut that had finally stopped bleeding. It left an acrid taste in his mouth. Had that arrow been poisoned?
“They’re not known for torture, per say, but there’s probably nothing good planned for us, given that we’re still alive.” Vashael shifted, and tried to readjust his legs as best he could, given his position. His foot was beginning to go numb, jammed as it was between his body and the wall of the makeshift cell they’d been thrown into. “My head was still ringing when they threw us in here. Did you hear them say anything useful?”
At the suggestion of necromatic disintegration, a small, very sad part of him thought ‘Good. Maybe that will stick’. The larger part of him, however, realized that this would be a terrible thing to say out loud, and pulled his hands back from the ancient, overgrown pillar he’d been reaching for.
“Okay, okay, you make a fair point.” Michael conceded. Traveling with Rhaya felt easy - like traveling with his friends - and he’d forgotten, for a moment, that she hadn’t seen that teasing side of him yet. “But the effect would probably just be something more than mildly inconvenient and not necessarily lethal, I’d think.” He added.
“None of the stories we’ve heard so far have mentioned anyone dying. One guy even got a good night (and day)’s sleep out of it. Besides, I doubt any effect would even stick to me.” His confident smile - one that had been steadily growing in size since they’d set out from Springvale - turned a bit sheepish. “Cursed or not, magical items just don’t seem to agree with me.”
