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year 5, quarter 3
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[attr=class,bulk] ”Ungrateful louts,” Faris muttered into his mug of ale as he sat alone at a table as he watched the flickering of crystalline lights reflecting off the last of his drink. ”To the depths with all of them! Going on and leaving me here. Their captain! Ungrateful, that’s what they are!”
He was, of course, talking to no one. The table had once been laden with mugs and laughter and a chorus of shanties as their stress from a month out at sea melted away with the buzz of liquor. Then, like they always did, someone in his crew mentioned a trip to the local whorehouse. Then another chimed in. Then they all paid for their drink and staggered away, leaving Faris to keep on drinking alone.
Faris had never seen the appeal of such a place. Paying for a woman’s touch? It all felt scummy to him, and besides, he couldn’t imagine the point when he didn’t even have a drunken night’s conversation to get to know the lass. Then there was the matter of what hid beneath his tunic and his bound chest. Now there was a surprise he wasn’t willing to give any young lady simply trying to work for a living.
There were a few crew on board their ship, of course, guarding the haul they’d made off a Sonoran cargo ship only a week before. Then there were the more respectable officers – his second mate supervising said guarding and his quartermaster who had chosen to take to bed early rather than drink himself into a stupor. But Faris wasn’t done drinking and he had no mind to join the rest of his crew in their debauchery so…
So he was left alone. In a tavern outside the gilded resort in a town he often frequented for shore leave to keep the men from going mad from the cramped quarters at sea. Faris downed the remainder of his ale in one long gulp and started towards the bar. His sea legs kept him from losing balance as he took a seat on one of the many stools and waited for service.
When the barmaid, a pretty lass with dark hair that hung to her shoulders in ringlets, came and asked his order, he thought for only a moment before answering, ”Whiskey if you have it. Make it a double. Of, er…” He thought harder, the alcohol swimming in his brain. Back where he came from, each bar had their own liquor, take it or leave it. They’d have top or bottom shelf if you were lucky, and that was that. Here, he’d learned there were all different kinds of each liquor with their own names and the like, made far away and sold in bottles around the country. He’d had a hell of a time learning them all and the differences between them. ”Of…the Fat Chocobo. I’ll take a double of that.”
The barmaid nodded and went to work, and while she poured the dark amber liquor into a whiskey glass, Faris couldn’t help but let his eyes wander. They landed on a lad some two stools away, looking gloomy as could be. His eyes were down, his hands folded. He wore traveler’s clothes in black and red and had a pretty, boyish face with messy blonde hair.
Faris wasn’t one to drink alone if he could help it, and it looked like the lad could use a bit of company. So, as the glass was set in front of him and added to his tab, Faris spoke up, head tilted curiously.
”Why, you look about as happy as a storm at sea,” he said. Maybe he could have thought of something better if he hadn’t already had enough ale to knock anyone else off his feet. ”What brought you here if you don’t mind my asking? Looks like you’ve come a long way to end up at a place like this.”
[attr=class,bulk] That settled it. Whatever twist of fate had landed Faris on these shores was just as absurd as every other twist and turn it had put him through since the unlucky day that Bartz had stowed away on his ship. If the bag of bones was telling the truth (and as much as Faris hated to admit it, it probably was for all it knew of the world) then it was a time traveler. And a skeleton. A skeletal time traveler. From the distant past. Faris didn’t know much about history, but the time of Ronka had faded into local legend with nothing but some ruins and an airship to show for it.
But was it really stranger than someone crash landing in a meteor that had sent them hurtling in from another world that was really the same world split in half? Was it any stranger than a talking turtle giving advice on avoiding the end of the world? Was it any stranger than Exdeath?
So Faris just sighed. Wearily. With every bit of his fatigue on proud display. ”Aye,” he affirmed. He refused to thank the vile thing for the use of their airship (it had been Cid and Mid who had repaired the thing after all), but he had no choice to accept whatever nonsense the fiend spouted as truth. ”Aye, that seems to be the case.”
An Ancient. He was talking to an Ancient. The inventor of the airship. Had he always been a skeleton, he wondered? Were the people of Ronka really into necromancy?
Their old argument forgotten, Faris trudged after the fiend as it made its way towards the cave mouth. With their shared connection unmasked, it seemed the devil didn’t really care much about keeping him away anymore seeing as it was still asking questions. It scraped its bony knuckles against the side of the cave with a truly horrendous shriek as they descended further into the cave system until they were illuminated only by flickering torchlight.
It was enough to see the bodies, though. The devil skipped over one with the nonchalance of a kid jumping rope. Faris stepped around it carefully, checking for signs of life all the while. He found none.
”We journeyed into the Rift,” he said tonelessly. ”It had already swallowed half the world by then. Infested with monsters and the like, it was. By the time we reached the Void, we were too late. The madman merged with it and came out as something more like a demon.” Faris called him a madman though he supposed it was more accurate to call him a mad tree. Didn’t make much of a difference in the end.
”Went by the name of Exdeath. He set about shattering the crystals that were keeping him in check and then rallied up an army of monsters to get the power he needed to tear the world apart. We killed him, power of the Void be damned, and set everything right. A year later, I ended up stranded on these shores, a lone Warrior of Light and a pirate without a crew.”
And that was that, as far as he could tell. He wasn’t in a position to be asking questions, but he tacked on a few of his own anyway.
”And you. Were you made of bones in Ronka? If you really were the one making airships then what’re you doing scrapping with pirates? Seems less the job of an engineer and more for a rival band of ne’er-do-wells.”
Farther into the cave system, he heard something moving and scraping across the stone. He gave the fiend a warning look. ”Remember. If there’s men still breathing in here, we talk first. I’ll not see more blood today if I can help it.”
[attr=class,bulk] For some reason, Faris’ tale got the devil thinking. He didn’t like the look of it, the skull tilted slightly on exposed vertebrae, the hollowed eyes unexpressive and blank, the clacking jaw speaking slowly through its skeletal grin. Monsters like this weren’t supposed to think. They were supposed to attack blindly, driven on by some dark power which kept their bones from falling apart at the rotted sinews. Still, he couldn’t help his curiosity at the devil’s tone. There was something about it. Something almost familiar.
Then the fiend froze where it stood, something apparently dawning on it in a flash of dark magic where its brain was supposed to be. ”You are from the same world as me,” it said, and Faris gave it an incredulous look.
”Are you daft?” he asked though he could have answered that question for himself. Yes. The fiend was undoubtedly quite daffy.
That didn’t stop it from talking nonsense though. And then familiar nonsense. And then familiar nonsense using words Faris recognized. Faris couldn’t help a frown at the mention of the Void in particular. He hadn’t mentioned the Void himself.
”Ronka?” Faris echoed. ”You mean the flying city? Ruined beneath the sands? Aye, I’ve seen it. It started flying again when the earth crystal came to life, but after it shattered…that was a fall I’d rather not take again.”
It was also a memory he’d rather not linger on for long. His father, long lost, had died in those ruins, aware of himself only long enough to recognize his daughters as his life ended. The thought of it tore at Faris’ already stormy heart, and he sealed it away like one of the Library’s tomes.
”You’re saying you’re one of those Ancients the men at Jachol were going on about? Who learned how to make airships? That’s a lot to take in all at once.”
Faris leaned back on his heels, arms crossed, eyeing the skeleton incredulously. He’d known the world had been in peril before, long ago when it had split in two and set the wheels of fate in motion. But this thing in front of him couldn’t really be from that time, could it? Or any time that wasn’t his own? The thought made his head spin.
”I don’t know much about the Ancients, but the people at Jachol say they’re descended, and I didn’t see any talking bones traipsing about. I doubt they’d share space with a skeleton if they had a choice of it.”
[attr=class,bulk] Faris wasn’t exactly a stranger to the art of negotiating a truce. He’d done it, or been present when it was done, since before he’d found his sea legs, but that was a matter between pirates. There was a code between pirates, if not one enshrined in scrolls then one known just as well by the lot of them. There was a certain way of speaking to the defeated party, a certain respect one paid unless you wanted the dejected captain to decide to hell with it all before he pulled a dagger to cut out your tongue.
Unfortunately, the victorious party in question this time didn’t have a tongue. It didn’t have much at all except a magically stitched together skeleton, a morbidly grinning skull, and some wiry hair that, impossibly, seemed to sprout from the jawbone itself.
”Wow, you really are pathetic,” it chided, and Faris let loose the snarl he’d been holding back even as the damned thing lowered its arm, the dark magic dissipating from its bony fingers. It went on to goad him more as if just asking for a spear straight through its hollow rib cage and a cannonball to the back for good measure. It was a talkative devil, that was for sure. It seemed to be enjoying its triumph, or mayhap it just liked the sound of its own impossible voice.
”I didn’t beg to go in with you, you air-headed lout!” he hissed between his teeth. ”That’s what the scale’s for! To prove I told them to leave!” But no matter how he protested, he knew the undead fiend had a point. He was panicking, and he’d let it get the best of him. Damn it all!
”I know enough about evil overlords,” he said, eyes as dark as a typhoon. They weren’t the words he would have chosen for Exdeath, but if he didn’t fit the type then he didn’t know what did.
Faris glared back at the cheerful devil, listening to his taunting, trying to at least keep defiant in the face of it. He crossed his arms, scowling and ready to leap back into action if the moment called for it. He might have been lightly armed and armored at the moment, free of the crystal’s power as he was, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t slip back into it in a breath if he had to. He trusted the fiend to keep his word about as much as he trusted the teeth of a hungry shark.
”You wouldn’t’ve taken to threatening my ship if you weren’t keen to stop a fight,” he growled back. ”I’ve got a little bargaining power yet.”
It wasn’t that the devil was wrong. Not entirely, anyway. Lenna would’ve been the type to keep a cool head, just as the fiend was lecturing him. She would have known how to handle a situation you couldn’t solve with cannons and a fierce look. But Faris knew what he was worth, and it was a fair lot more than whatever undead lout stood before him.
”I’m a pirate. Raised on the deck of a ship as long as I could remember. Then the princess of Tycoon thought to stowaway on my ship. Tried to ransom her, but she was on a mission to save the winds, something a sailor cares about if they plan on getting anywhere fast. Took her to the wind crystal, and the damned thing started talking. Gave me its power. Called me a Warrior of Light.”
It was still all as absurd as the day it happened, and while he usually found a fair bit of humor in it, he was in a foul state for it now. ”You spend enough time keeping the world from falling into the Rift, and you get to caring about people. That’s all.”
[attr=class,bulk] Faris stifled a growl at the fiend’s little “counter-proposal.” First it mocked his background at the sea with that little “parlay” joke, and now it was rejecting his attempt at a reluctant compromise almost entirely. The damnable thing!
Still, his ship was almost in range, and the second she was, she’d begin firing just as Faris had commanded. Some captain he was! The cannonfire would no doubt give him an edge, but it would also put the lot of them in danger. He couldn’t lose his crew. If he lost his crew, his ship, he’d lost everything.
Again.
And so, begrudgingly, he did his best to stifle his growl and expressed his fury only in his eyes blazing through his dragoon’s helm and in his death-tight grip on his spear.
”Five minutes? That’s hardly enough time! And it’s not like they’ll listen to you. This gang is as thick-headed as they are stubborn, but they know me. If I tell them to leave, they’d believe it, and if they don’t then I won’t waste time arguing with them. I’m coming along!” That would give him the opportunity to save lives and it would mean the fiend wouldn’t stay anywhere near his ship. Still, traveling the dark, dripping tunnels of the caves here with an undead fiend at his back seemed like an idea that screamed for a knife in his back. Or some kind of dark magic. That seemed to be more the devil’s style.
The ship was sailing closer. The fiend gave him ten seconds to take or refuse its useless counteroffer. Faris grit his teeth as those seconds ticked by.
Ten, nine, eight…
Leaving the skeletal beast to its own bidding more or less spelled death for any man unlucky enough to have taken shelter in the caves. Even if it upheld its promise (and he highly doubted it would), they wouldn’t scurry off in five minutes by the demands of a monster. That much he knew.
Seven, six, five…
Damn it all! Did he really have no other choice? This gang hadn’t exactly been his allies in the time they’d shared the caves together, but they didn’t deserve this. And on a selfish level, that meant Faris would have a new neighbor. An undead one with no regard for human life and a taste for spilling blood. How long until his own cove met the same fate?
Four, three, two…
”By the crystals! You’ve given me no choice!” Faris scowled, lowering his spear, but only just. He kept it in front him defensively in case this was all a ruse to lower his guard. ”But you’ll give them ten minutes, and you’ll show them this first!” Faris hesitated. He didn’t want to make himself vulnerable. It could well have been a death sentence, but he didn’t exactly keep his things tucked away inside his dragoon armor. He could only hope that if the fiend struck, he’d have the time to transform again before the blow knocked him out for good.
Faris eyed the devil cautiously, skeptically, before he let the power of the crystal take him. In a flash of light, his armor melted away. His helm receded into his usual green bandanna. His gauntlets softened to leather bracers, and his breastplate and greaves were replaced with a blue tunic and a pair of sea-worthy boots. Faris kept his eyes on the fiend, searching for any funny business as he reached into the pouch strapped to his side and pulled from it a scale that shimmered blue as clear waters.
It was a dragon’s scale. More accurately, a sea dragon’s scale. Syldra used to shed them like a gull sheds feathers. He’d only thought to keep a few. Now they were a treasured last memento, and one that would identify him immediately among those who knew him well.
”Show them this, he said again, holding out the scale for the fiend to take in its skeletal fingers. ”And tell them that Captain Faris would see them flee for the beach. I’ll heal their wounded. Assuming you’ll let me, that is.” He scowled again. He hated that this unworthy devil would touch anything of Syldra’s, but this was the only way he could think to persuade the stubborn, thick-headed louts of the cavern to safety.
[attr=class,bulk] In the time since Faris had been granted the blazing power of his crystal, he’d taken best to the finesse of a dragoon. He’d put so much time into honing the skill, in fact, that he prided himself on his agility, strength, and precision in equal measure. He rarely ever missed these days, not with the fire crystal running hot through his veins and years of practice under his belt.
This was one of those rare times.
He didn’t hear what the undead fiend shouted at him. His ears were full of the wind whistling through them as he shot towards his quarry like an arrow from the heavens. He didn’t hear it, but he sure did feel it. A gust of air was launched straight back at him, and he winced with a rough ”Ugh!” as it thrust him just off course. Only by a few inches with the momentum he’d put into his attack, but it was enough for the devil to skip away unscathed while Faris landed heavily in the sand.
For the second time that day, Faris felt his metal boots sink as he crouched with the impact, spear thrust deep into a ton of rotten nothing instead of the monster ahead of him. Faris regained his standing as quickly as he could, raising his spear defensively for an attack that didn’t come. The devil didn’t take the opportunity for a counterattack. Instead, its hollowed eyes had landed on something offshore. Something out by the sea. Something…
Something that was coming towards them fast with their cannons at the ready. Faris felt his heart swell with pride at his crew finally coming through to put an end to all this, but that pride quickly soured into rage as the fiend raised two bony fingers in front of him, a dark magic pulsing between them.
Faris’ mouth fell open in shock. ”You wouldn’t!” he shouted before cold rationality told him that yes, yes the undead fiend that had electrocuted a whole beach’s worth of pirates would indeed shoot a hole straight through his ship if it wanted to. Rage flared through Faris’ eyes as he readied his spear and took a step forward. ”Why, you foul, hollow-brained-!” But he didn’t attack. He couldn’t with the devil holding his magic like that, aimed and ready to fire. Could it reach all the way to his ship? Doubtful, but this wasn’t something he was willing to put to risk. His crew’s lives were on the line. So for once, he had to think instead of act.
No matter what the fiend said, it couldn’t be a race. Maybe it would hold off on firing if Faris jumped back to his ship and sailed away like none of this had ever happened. Most likely he wouldn’t. There was no holding the devil to his word. Then Faris would be stuck with the same fate as the rest of his crew – a noble death to be sure but a foolish one.
Faris was no fool.
”Wait, wait!” Faris swallowed back his anger. Or he tried to. He felt his grip tight on his spear. ”Why don’t we…?” Faris hesitated. What would Lenna do? What would Bartz? He tried to think of something either even-headed as a lakeside stream or as unpredictable as the rising wind. All of his time with them had to come to something.
”...Why don’t we come to an agreement?” he said so quickly that his tongue couldn’t quite stop tripping over the words. ”A truce, I mean. You leave my ship be, and I’ll…” Every word was pain, like dragging them over hot coals. ”I’ll…leave you to it.” The beach was a scalded, blackened place of ashes and dead men. There was nothing left for it. Faris had given some of the men a chance to make for cover, but what would the devil do if left unattended?
And what if the caves weren’t entirely empty?
”If you let me grab any survivors!” he added on just as quickly as before. It was hard, thinking through the pounding of his heart in his ears. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted revenge for the dead men at the hands of an unholy fiend. But it was clear he couldn’t take the thing alone, and even if he could, it would come at a terrible price.
”We search the caves. I take any men we find and any treasures you won’t be needing, and then I’ll leave you to it.” His heart pounded with a whole new kind of adrenaline. Nerves. Anxiety that the devil would look him straight through with its hollowed eyes and then blast his ship to smithereens and his men with it. ”Deal?”
[attr=class,bulk] The fiend had words to say. He had a lot of words which meant he was in for a hard fight, at least in Faris’ books. It was always the tough ones that talked the most. He wished his friends were at his side – Lenna to heal him, Krile to lay down supporting fire from behind, and Bartz to do whatever he damn well pleased because there was as much use trying to stop that man as there was trying to direct the wind. He wished he wasn’t alone on this beach of newly formed glass and dead men, but there wasn’t much room in his heart for wishing. It was too full of rage and the adrenaline that came from a life or death battle.
He barely heard the devil’s musing over pirate lingo. He was too busy charging across the hot sand, his armored boots sinking with every step. He planned to hit it again, as many times as it took to get through that thick metal armor until he unleashed the real power of his crystal and took to the skies. Without a healer or support or whatever it was Bartz did to cause a distraction, it would become far too easy to predict the exact timing of his jumps and greet him on landing with some foul magic or another. No, this was a game of deception and a game of patience and, more to the point, it was exactly what Faris felt like doing, smashing the murderous devil again and again with his spear.
Which didn’t seem to do a damned thing. Now that the undead mage wasn’t distracted with its own rampage, it had better grounded itself to keep on talking. Then it made a noise. It was something like…the last exhaust of an airship petering out. Or maybe like a sharp wind ripping through a sail. Either way, he didn’t like the sound of it, and he jumped back on instinct, spear raised defensively.
He’d seen a fair amount of madness in his day, but what he saw next might have just made the list.
The animated, heavily-armored skeleton opened its sagging jaw and out came…bubbles.
Now, Faris didn’t know what the bubbles were supposed to do exactly. They looked like regular old soap and water bubbles to him, but if it was coming out of that thing’s mouth then it must have been something deadly. Like maybe bubbles made out of acid. Or poison from a dragon’s fangs. Either way, they were coming and they were coming fast. Dodging each one would have been like trying to dodge thunder in a lightning storm and retreating wasn’t an option.
Damn it all.
Faris let the heat of the fire crystal fuel him as he launched himself skyward, jumping over the field of questionably deadly bubbles altogether. This close, it was a lot easier to angle himself for a direct strike. He searched out the fiend like with a hawk’s precision and then as his upward momentum slowed to a stop, he propelled himself downwards, spear first.
With this force, he’d give that devil something to laugh about. With his spear pierced through that troublesome armor right to the bony ribs beneath.
[attr=class,bulk] Faris growled a curse as the beast simply refused to dislodge itself from his spear. The damned thing! He tugged and pulled and picked up the spear, smashing the squid-like devil against the sand, but its own confusion seemed to be working against him. He then tried stomping on the thing with his armored boots. That worked a little better, and he sent the thing reeling long enough to pull his spear from its grasp and shove the sharp point of it directly into its brain case. It gave a strange, gurgling cry as its tentacles flailed about so he stabbed it again before hopping backwards in the sand to join the poor girl who’d almost become its lunch.
”Aye. Theirs is a foul company. I can tell you that much.” Faris glared at the waves. The girl was a sharp one. She’d seen the swarm of them in the swelling water before he had, and he was grateful for it even as he felt his heart drop. He’d been hunting this quarry for some hours along the coastline, but he’d really hoped to fight them aboard his ship where he’d have the help of some cannons and a well-armed crew. Instead, he was on his own with a woman’s life at stake on a beach where his ship couldn’t dock if it had wanted to. He hoped Kalim spread the message to ready those cannons – and quickly. He didn’t know how good it would do if the swarm had already reached the shore, but it’d be nice to have some artillery support if they could manage it.
For not the first time, Faris wished he’d been fighting alongside his friends on this lonesome beach. Bartz, Lenna, Krile. If they’d all worked together, there wouldn’t have been a force from here to the Rift that could have stopped them. But for now, it was only Faris. Faris, the pirate captain. Faris, the dragoon. He hoped it would be enough.
Before they could say another word to each other, the devils attacked.
Faris tried his best to keep the bulk of them away from her. He tried his best, but it wasn’t enough. He was armed for a fight as a dragoon, which given the circumstances wasn’t exactly the best choice. If he took full advantage of his power and jumped like he was supposed to, he’d leave the poor woman alone to deal with the things until he landed. Instead, he had to simply stab and swipe at the devils from the ground, hoping that his armor would be enough to take the brunt of their hits while she kept well enough away from the bulk of them. He couldn’t look back at her. Just a second’s loss of concentration, and he’d take a sucker to the face for his effort. So he fought. And fought. Hoping that she’d taken his advice and put some distance between herself and the swarm until, finally, he heard a familiar sound on the horizon.
It felt like he’d been fighting for ages, but it must have actually been minutes. From the direction of his ship, he heard a distant boom followed by the whistling of a cannonball through the air. It landed with a heavy splash in the surf, smashing one of the devils to pieces and whipping up a mist of guts, saltwater, and brain goo. That was enough to give the monsters pause, and Faris took that opportunity to hop back away from their grasp and make a split second decision.
He liked his power as a dragoon. It fit him perfectly, but it wasn’t the only one he’d put some time and work into as a Warrior of Light, and it wasn’t the one he wanted now. He called on the crystal and felt its fire run through his veins. With a flash of light, his armor retracted into a long-sleeved, violet leotard with a belt attached. His draconic helm morphed into a purple helmet to match, and his spiked pauldrons softened into a lavender scarf that hung loosely about about his shoulders, chest, and up to the bridge of his nose.
The whole costume was all a little more bare than he would have liked, what with his exposed thighs and the tight cut of the fabric around his waist, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d traded in the strength of a dragoon for the dexterity of a ninja. And his first order of business was to save the girl.
Faris took one of the smoke bombs from his belt and threw it into the swarm. On impact, it started spewing its dull gray haze, and Faris ran to the girl, taking her by the wrist and tugging her along. ”We need to get moving! My crew will deal with the rest of them!” He hoped. It didn’t matter. Perhaps he’d come with the intention of hunting them all down, but now it was far more important to get this woman to safety.
He ran up the sand dunes, hand still clamped on the woman’s wrist to force her to follow along. He hadn’t checked her for injuries. He hoped they weren’t serious because he was far from the best at white magic, but if he could only save her life then it would be enough.
Once they were safe among the dunes, far enough from the water that Faris was sure they wouldn’t be followed, he stopped and let out a long breath, looking back at all the smoke and confusion they’d left in their wake. ”I think we’ve lost them,” he said before finally turning to truly look at the woman beside him. She was blonde and clad in a simple white dress adorned with all sorts of golden jewelry. In one hand, she carried a trident which seemed a strange fit, but he wasn’t about to question it. Not now, anyway.
”Are you hurt, lass? I hope those devils didn’t take a bite out of you.”
[attr=class,ooc-notes]
[attr=class,tagline]@aerafleuret
Let me know if I need to back up to give Aera more agency!
[attr=class,bulk] ”For the record, I still think that this is a bad idea.”
Kalim, the ship’s quartermaster, frowned his disapproval from Faris’ side. The first time he’d said it, Faris had nodded sympathetically. The second had lost a tad bit of that sympathy. This was the third time now, and Faris scowled his frustration. As the navigator, he couldn’t blame Kalim for his reservations in sailing so close to the coastline, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear it again. And again. And again until their business was finished.
”I told you the first time. I saw something lurking in these waters. I’d not worry myself about it, but it’s a tad too close to the beaches for comfort, and I know for a fact that these beaches are populated. I wouldn’t want some poor lad’s life on my conscience. Not if I’m in a place to stop it.”
Kalim frowned even harder. ”We can’t fight effectively in these depths,” he argued again. ”And if the ship ends up in shallower water than we’d expected…”
Faris shook his head. ”I’ll not have their lives on my hands,” he said even harder this time. ”If we don’t catch up to them before we make port then that’s that. But if we get the chance…”
Faris frowned as he gazed out at the sandy shoreline. He was standing on the end of the bow, arms crossed, eyes sharp for trouble. He saw a human shape stooping down into the lapping waves. A woman? She wore what looked like a white dress, and something in her hand glinted red in the sunlight. It wasn’t the woman that concerned him, however, but a shadow he caught in the water, lurking on the waves right before they broke onto shore. He saw tentacles and lots of them with a cone-shaped head.
Faris cursed. Finally, they’d found their quarry. Right as it was about to throw itself ashore and kill a woman.
”Haul anchor,” he said, ”And ready the cannons. Only shoot if you see more of them coming in. I don’t want to take a shot to the back!”
”You’re going to handle this alone again, aren’t you?” Kalim sighed only to be answered immediately by Faris’ transformation. In a flash of light, his usual blue tunic was gone, replaced instead by his crimson red dragoon’s armor. The familiar weight of a spear fell into his hand, and he glanced at Kalim through the opening of his dragon’s helm.
”Not if there’s a colony of them like I expect. Keep the cannons on the water and be ready for a fight.”
With that said, he launched himself into the air in a way that only a dragoon could. He loved the feeling of it – the force of the launch, the adrenaline coursing through him as he reached the apex of his height, and then the sheer thrill of the fall as he angled himself in just the right direction, hoping he hadn’t undershot his target as he prepared himself for landing.
From this distance, he had no hope of lancing the monster straight through the heart, but instead shot for a general target. The sandy beach would do, and he ended up landing behind the woman with a loud, half-muffled thump that stirred up the sand like a whirlwind around him. He didn’t have time for introductions or even a warning before the monster had launched itself from the waves, hoping to catch its prey unawares.
It was a terrible thing up close. Half its mass was made up of probing, pink tentacles, eager for their mark. A longer pair of two primary tentacles reached eagerly for the woman, its suckers like the teeth of a lamprey. The other half of the monster was made up a conical, gelatinous braincase, and Faris could see straight through the foul thing’s head as clear as glass.
He didn’t have time to try anything fancy. Instead, he readied his spear and swung it like a bat at the thing as it was midair. His spear hit, and the thing got tangled up on the shaft, its tentacles wrapping around it almost instinctively. Faris grimaced in disgust as he smashed his spear against the sand, trying to dislodge the beast so he could stab it where it hurt most.
”Stay back, lass!” he shouted at the woman without really looking at her. ”These things aren’t to be trifled with and they rarely hunt alone!”
[attr=class,ooc-notes]
[attr=class,tagline]@aerafleuret
I took some liberties and made it a devourer from FF5
[attr=class,bulk] Ah, so that’s how it was, was it? Faris nodded sympathetically as the stranger, Squall, told his tale. He didn’t know what he meant by a “seed” or how one could be a soldier from a garden, but he knew well enough by now that everyone had different tales, and he would do best not to question them. The words brought to mind a kind of farmer-warrior class, plowing in the right seasons and getting to work with a sword when the harvest was done. He doubted he’d got that right, but there was always time for story-telling later.
Particularly if the man was offering him a drink. That would give them plenty of time.
He laughed. ”I wouldn’t mind sharing a thing or two though if that offer of yours stands, I’ll be wanting something a little stronger than this.” He shook his head and sat back down again, a little closer to Squall but still at the right angle to watch the street. A few people had started filing into the shop, but they weren’t the kind he was watching out for. They didn’t have the tattoos for one. For another, they were all wearing mages robes. Definitely not the scoundrel type.
”If I’m telling the truth, I’ve never seen a place like this in my life. I ducked inside here to save myself the trouble of dealing with some unsavory types that looked like they wanted to take me into a back alley and put their knives to use. I like this city. I wouldn’t want to explain that to any guards that might come snooping about.”
So long as he blended in fine among the people here as a whole, it didn’t matter if he told one man, let alone one who did a fair bit of sticking out himself, the truth. He held onto the secrets of why the scoundrels might want a stab at him. Mostly because he didn’t fully know himself, and partly because the word “pirate” might send most men the wrong idea of his profession.
Or the right one depending on his mood, but Faris was feeling charitable most days. A life as a Warrior of Light had a way of doing that to a man.
”I know how you feel, lad. I dropped in myself some four years ago now. Thought myself ship-wrecked for the longest time, wondering why I couldn’t find any of these lands on my map. It takes some getting used to, that’s for sure. Though one day, I’ll find a ship that can take me out of these waters and just maybe I’ll be able to sail right home. You mark my words.”
Faris sipped his “latte” again, wincing the same as the first time. The bitter taste still hadn’t grown on him though he supposed he’d sipped worse. There was some booze that made its way onto the deck of a pirate ship that you made sure to swallow without letting it touch your tongue. He’d learned that the hard way.
”You said you’re a mercenary, eh? I might be able to point you in the right direction to get you started. This place is always looking for more hired swords, and they’ve got plenty to deal with between all the monsters and the fiends and the devils roaming about looking for a fight. I’ll give you that without the drink. If you’re one to take up the offer, of course.”
