The inside of the crab was surprisingly spacious, but not enough to comfortably house a creature of my size or Turtle’s. So the two of us stayed by the open door while the others (except Paco, who stood guard outside) followed Pezock inside. Surprisingly, instead of smelling fishy, it was musty, with the walls covered in dust and sand. Pezock had clearly visited a few of the other shipwrecks. He’d taken wood from them to reinforce the crab’s inside, along with furniture, and various weapons that he’d hung on the wall, and a chest situated by his bed. He kept himself between it and everyone else as he pulled over a large cauldron.
“Leftovers,” he grunted, pulling down clay bowls from one of the makeshift shelves. “Them little crabs, them with the stingers, scuttle about when it’s hot. Pezock’s eaten so much of ‘em I don’t even taste it.”
He set his strange sword down and began passing around bowls of the cold, crab meat. Lilian made a face and didn’t even pretend to eat. Belkross and Alton took a few bites to appease the bird man. Nakoda was the only one to finish the bowl.
Pezock grabbed his sword and placed it across his lap as he sat in the sand. He kept his distance, his beady eyes darting back and forth, never staying on one face for longer than a few seconds. “You’re the freshest faces I’ve seen in ages,” he finally said.
That alone told us that he hadn’t seen Kovack or the woman the captain was traveling with. I noticed Alton’s shoulders sag slightly, but the first mate didn’t speak up, allowing the bird man to continue.
“Look sane,” he said. “The Shiv will change that, you can bet my feathers it will. It changes us all. Makes monsters.”
“What do you know of those monsters?” Lilian asked carefully, setting her bowl aside. “You mentioned ‘man-eaters’ and a ‘Shadow’ before. More of this island’s creatures-?”
“You know nothing, girl,” Pezock snapped. “But Pezock will teach you. Teach you and then you take the water and go away.”
The others glanced at each other. Nakoda finally shrugged and said, “Deal.”
Using his sword, Pezock drew a vaguely circular shape in the sand. I had to crane my neck to see it over Alton’s head. Using his sword again, Pezock traced the shape’s edge. “You’re not the first and definitely not the last ones to crash onto this island. Dozens of ships decorate Shiv’s beaches and cliffs. Some whole, some completely ravaged by the waves. And near all of ‘em is haunted, yes they are. Come night time, them ghostly crews rule the coasts.”
Ah, so that’s what I had seen when I’d first awoken on the beach. Somehow knowing that I’d been seconds away from being dragged away by ghosts made me feel worse, not better. But at least now I knew.
“Keep a fire and some shelter and have numbers on your side, and they’ll leave you alone,” Pezock continued. “It’s when you’re stupid enough to go treasure hunting that they’ll get ya. Get ya good and make you part of their crew.”
“Don’t go touring shipwrecks at night,” Lilian said dryly. “Got it.”
“What happened to your crew, Mr. Pezock?” Nakoda asked, his face resting in his hands.
“Eaten, the Crow’s Tooth’s crew, they was. Was a fine crew, we was. But a storm-came out of nowhere, like an ornery sea god-slammed us into the cliffs farther south. We were then near immediately attacked by them man-eaters. Cannibals. Whole tribe of them.”
Pezock ran a feathered finger across the flat of his sword fondly.
“Captain Zoventai gave me this and told me to run,” he whispered. “And I did. I ran and I ran and…”
He glanced around, as if finally noticing his surroundings.
“And now I’m here.”
“Cannibals,” Alton reminded him. “But they’re farther south.”
Pezock nodded. “Usually. They scavenge shipwrecks-during the day, of course-looking for fresh meat.” He turned to Lilian. “Or fresh mates.”
Belkross made a grunting sound in the back of his throat, almost a growl. Unfazed, Lilian said, “Ghosts we can understand. We likely don’t have the magic to fight head on, though. So we should avoid them at all cost. But cannibals we can understand, and we canfight them. But now what is this Shadow?”
“The Flying Shadow,” Pezock said reverently. “Pezock does not know much. Only seen it once or twice, when I dared venture south, looking for supplies. It is a giant beast, flies across the island. Searching. Always searching.”
“For what?” Nakoda asked.
“A challenge. If you are weak, it will let you be. Pezock is weak, so the Flying Shadow let me live.” Pezock raised the sword upright with trembling hands and stared at his reflection across the blade. He then began slamming it across his head, though angling it flat so that it didn’t cut into his skull. “WEAK, PEZOCK! YOU WEAK! YOU RAN! YOU LEFT ZOVENTAI TO GET EATEN! USELESS-!”
“Stop it!” Nakoda reached over and caught his hands, keeping him from hurting himself further.
Pezock stared at him for a moment, his entire body trembling. Finally, he whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you. Please. Go. I-I deserve this…I deserve this…”
Alton rolled forward onto his feet and placed a hand on Nakoda’s shoulder. “Come on, Nakoda,” he said, his tone gentle but firm. “Let him go. He gave us plenty, even if the food was shit. We repay him now by respecting his wishes.”
Looking pained, Nakoda let Pezock go. He opened his mouth but couldn’t get the words out. Tears in his eyes, the little Rider hurried out of the crab. I followed after him.
As Riders of the Wing, we’re supposed to save those who can’t save themselves.
But you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to save themselves.
#
In hindsight, we should have bullied Pezock into letting us stay in his crab a little longer.
Because when the storm finally hit, it hit. And when it did, there we all were, walking up stream, now practically a river thanks to the overflow of rainwater. The stretch of beach past Pezock’s crab had eventually ended, leaving us no choice but to go back into the jungle, heading south-west-ish. As we pushed onward, the muddy terrain began to incline. The rain became so thick that we were struggling to see three feet in front of ourselves. Finally, after one too many slips, Belkross demanded all the rope that we had at our disposal. Using it, we tied ourselves together, with Nakoda and I at the front, Paco and Turtle at the rear, and everyone else in between. And then we reached the apex of the stream that turned out to be a dam of large boulders.
Brown-tinged water streamed over and through rocks. Glancing side to side, it looked like it would take us longer, and be possibly more dangerous to go around than up and over. So, gritting my teeth, I put one foot in front of the other and climbed upwards. Eventually Nakoda and I reached the top and the others, using me as an anchor, pulling on the ropes to get up the dam. That just left poor Turtle still at the bottom. Paco climbed off of him, hurried up to help everyone else, and together will all pulled to get the lizard up to our level.
And that’s when disaster struck. Literally.
A long, deep-green scaled shape burst from the water and lunged at Paco. It wrapped around the gunslinger’s body, knocking off his hat, pinning him in the water, and forcing him to let go of the rope. Paco’s gurgled scream was drowned out by a crack of thunder through the sky.
Lilian released one hand from the rope and aimed it at the snake. Fire burst from her palm, but the snake chose that moment to roll sideways so as to entangle Paco further, making her miss. But the blast still startled the snake, allowing Paco to yank himself out. He fell away into the water right behind Belkross, clutching at his ribs.
Alton slashed at the snake with his sword.
And missed, nearly dropping the weapon thanks to the pouring rain.
Nakoda jumped off me and landed in the water, lance at the ready. He shot Alton a sympathetic smile before striking at the snake with his lance.
“You’re not gonna try and be friends with it?” Paco called out sarcastically. Nakoda ignored him. His lance became a blur of steel as he stabbed it into the snake’s body.
The creature whirled around, murder in its eyes, and struck at Nakoda. Probably still subconsciously traumatized from his last dance with a snake, the little Rider flinched. That allowed the snake to bury its fangs into his shoulder. His pauldron blocked the worst of the damage, but this was a big serpent, and Nakoda is three-feet-nothing on a good day. It slammed him backwards across the water and into one of the dam’s larger boulders.
He’d also replaced Paco as the snake’s dance partner. The snake pinned the halfling’s hands together, making his lance useless. “M-MISTAKES WERE MADE!” he cried out, eyes bulging in his face as the snake squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed…
I hee-hawed in rage, but as Turtle’s main anchor, I couldn’t move. Lilian glanced over at me, saw the panicked anger in my eyes, and nodded once. And then, to save Nakoda’s life, she set both him and the snake on fire.
Black flames surged into the hole in the snake’s body that Nakoda had made, cooking the serpent from the inside out. As both it and Nakoda were wreathed in flames, Paco suddenly called out, “Turtle! Do the thing!”
The dam suddenly trembled. At first I thought lightning had shot down and hit it, but there was no light. It took me a second to realize that Turtle had hit the dam with his tail. Some of the smaller boulders were dislodged and spilled into the stream below, but the bigger ones held firm. Yet the height of the water decreased, making it easier to traverse through.
“Nakoda!” Alton screamed as he moved in to attack.
But then Turtle hit the dam again, making the rock formation tremble. This sent the first mate falling back onto his butt.
“Useless,” I heard both Lilian and Belkross mutter under their breaths.
“G-GUYS!” Nakoda screamed while ON FIRE and still being STRANGLED BY A SNAKE. “ARE YOU E-EVEN TRYING TO SAVE ME?!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Stil clutching at his side, Paco retrieved his hat, walked over and used his pistol to shoot the snake in the back of the head half a dozen times. He then kicked Nakoda out of the snake’s charred body and into the remaining water to put the flames out.
“S-snakes,” Nakoda gasped, his tear ducts too charred to allow him to cry properly. “I h-hate snakes.”
As Riders of the Wing, we’re supposed to save those who can’t save themselves.
Except snakes. Fuck snakes.
0 Comments