Nocturna League- Season One Box Set

by Kell Inkston

  “Well, yes, but it’s also nice just seeing you every now and again.”

  Kotherrhre sighs. “Alright. Well Colette found the shipping records, but you know that.”

  “Indeed; what do you think about that?”

  Kotherrhre scoffs, sounding like a splitting corpse. “Ahh, you want my opinion on things- how lucky I am. She didn’t figure it out, but she’s definitely curious, I bet she assumes it’s all the people that have worked on the Nocturna, or something.”

  The Captain nods. “I suppose most people would guess that if they were unaware as to the Nocturna’s true purpose.”

  “Mhmm, and Captain, I don’t think she’s the one.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, she’s nuts enough, you did that part perfectly, but she’s scared of eldritch… She wouldn’t dive.”

  “Well, such is the same with most humans,” The Captain answers.

  “Sure, but she took one look at part of me and she almost bolted off. That Grancis girl on the other hand…”

  The Captain strokes his chin. “What about her?”

  “She’s got the head for it. She looks down off the rim of the boat for hours and turns back with a smile. She voluntarily looks for the sort of stuff the others have nightmares of. She’s not crazy, but she’s loose, Captain, very loose. I actually think she might be missing a few screws- Did something happen to her? Like, before she got on the ship? She acts like she’s normal, but I know better. I’ve seen her type before.”

  The Captain nods. “She’s had a few interesting circumstances surround her that Colette was a prime cause in. I think their friendship has had a considerable development upon her capacity for stress.”

  “Ahh, well anyway, if I were you, I’d drop Colette. She just wants to figure out how to kill someone. That Grancis girl, though… she could become something real scary.”

  “To be frank, I’ve been keeping that in mind. They’re both showing considerable progress, but I’ll admit, she was… shockingly willing to put a needle in the eye of her friend.”

  Kotherrhre laughs with an eldritch, godless sound. “I noticed. You didn’t even tell her the easy way to do it—you sly fox.”

  “I wanted to see if she’d be willing to do something that would cause considerable pain to her friend. I’m confident that between the two of them, one will rise up as the right one.”

  “Agreed. I don’t say this often, Captain, but you’re one shrewd bastard.”

  “Language.” The Captain points his finger in reprimand.

  Kotherrhre scoffs. “Sure. Anyway, you’re doing a good job. I’m impressed a little more every day.”

  “You did a great job tonight yourself,” The Captain says, reaching into his pocket and placing a flask of some spirit down upon the stairs. “Please enjoy, you’ve earned it.”

  “Hey, thanks!” Kotherrhre squeals in sunken glee, reaching out a tentacle and swiping the flask in the blink of an eye.

  “Well, I’ll see you around, Engine,” The Captain says, turning about to leave.

  “Sure thing, Captain,” Kotherrhre says, also putting a facetious emphasis on the title.

  The Captain nearly shuts the door, but peeks in one last time.

  “Ahh, and how did Mister La’Coss do?”

  “He reported not a single soul was lost. Suppose we’re good to toss the bodies over whenever.”

  The Captain nods. “I think I’ll hold onto them until we get back to port. Make it seem like they quit the crew or something.”

  Kotherrhre sputters in humor. “Perceptive, but… don’t you think it’s a little cruel to the girls? They’ll think they’re off living their lives happily somewhere.”

  “They have no right to that information. Besides, they’re all still alive per se, just… in a different phase of life.”

  “Death is a mysterious thing after all,” the semi-eldritch responds.

  The Captain starts closing the door. “Well then, I should really be more forthcoming. Can’t have people misunderstanding me, now.”

  They both share a laugh, and The Captain shuts the door behind him.

  -End of Episode Three-

  “Every door leading to the present is painted differently. But only the darkest-painted doors are the kind that their owners will not open for you.” -Unknown

  A Step Back into the Fire

  This story upon The Nocturna… does not actually happen on The Nocturna, for the most part. Months in the past, rather, we loom our gazes over a younger Colette and a younger Grancis— before they met The Captain... before their many adventures.... before they met a man-eating lobster-thing named Boris... and even before Colette became the very embodiment of an indignant crusader for vengeance.

  We find them over by the stream on a radiant summer’s day. The insects cry out, and the scent of pollen saturates the air while the babbling of the brook sings in the shade of the trees. In the hands of the blond girl with a tomboyish cut, the line pulls and she springs to action. Colette Ketiere leaps back and pulls high, tugging out a glistening, silvery fish; no tentacles, and no horrific maws of teeth— just a fish— a spring trout, as it happens.

  The brunette girl, her strands wrapped into a relaxed half bun, closes her book and claps in admiration. “That’s the third one today. You’re awesome at this!” Grancis Vereyrty remarks, her voice feminine, song-like, almost maternal to her friend.

  The blond snaps the fish into her hands tightly like the neck of an opponent and removes the hook. “Thanks,” she says, “I think I’ve been improving.” She plops the fish face-first into the wooden bucket, containing her other two victims. “This should be enough. Let’s go back.”

  Grancis nods and takes up the bucket as Colette bunts the rod to her shoulder like a rifle. The remainder of the worms are returned to the mud, and the two turn to leave. They exit the woods, and the beams of the blinding sun stretch over them— warming every inch of their pale bodies. As they find the dirt path that leads to Colette’s home and then the village, Grancis turns to address her best friend.

  “So, how’s your mom been?” Grancis asks.

  Colette shrugs. “Same as ever, I s’pose. No real way to get her outside with the way she is. She’s been reading all day, as usual.”

  “I wish I could read all day.” Grancis sighs.

  “What, you’d rather stay cooped up all day? It’s not because she wants to, you know.”

  “Well, yes, I understand she’d rather be outside; but I wouldn’t mind being inside. I’d love to have a kid just like you. You could feed me all the time,” Grancis says with a smirk.

  Colette grits her teeth. “Gran.”

  “Yes, Colette?”

  “That’s creepy. I don’t wanna be your kid.”

  Grancis sputters sheepishly. “Wh-well yeah! Of course! I didn’t mean to imply that! I just meant that,” she takes a breath, “when I become a mother, I’d like to have a child that could take care of me, is all.”

  Colette nods. “I’m sure.” A few steps farther and Colette nudges Grancis with a sly smirk.

  “Wh-what?”

  “You’re probably not too far from having your own kid, just saying. Johannes’ been checking you out.”

  Grancis straightens and her gaze becomes wide. “He…He has?”

  “Yeah. I’ve spotted him a few times while I was doing woodcutting. He sneaks around to your side of the room and looks in.”

  Grancis averts her eyes to the ground. “Wow… I didn’t know.”

  “Pretty sure he wants you to throw your underwear at him or something,” Colette says with a sharp grin before being mysteriously tripped by a root that looks strangely like Grancis’ foot.

  “O-oh! Are you okay?!” Grancis exclaims in measured shock.

  Colette catches herself quickly and springs right back to her feet. “Damn, I keep catching these stupid roots,” she grumbles, looking back to see what she tripped on, but finding nothing.

  “Oh, well maybe you should be more
focused on walking home than talking about the head farmer’s son’s interests in my personal items,” Grancis recommends with an amiable smile.

  Colette shrugs. “Yeah, okay. But he really does super like you. Like definitely in a creepy way too. I don’t know if you’d like that.”

  Grancis waves her head about uncertainly. “I don’t know. I’d have to talk to him first… How about you?”

  Colette squints an eye. “How about me what?”

  “Is there a boy in the village you like?” Grancis asks with a sugared smile.

  Colette crosses her arms and bites her tongue in thought. “Couldn’t say for sure. Vastere’s kind of cool.”

  Grancis nods. “He’s great at building. I’d imagine you’d have a nice home.” she replies as they round a corner and start up a hill.

  “Yeah, but damn, he is a great fighter!” Colette says with sparks of admiration in her eyes.

  Grancis smiles awkwardly. “O-oh. You’ve been visiting the pit again?”

  “Eh, yeah, sorry. It’s just… I don’t know, cool? Yesterday he smacked Beltra so hard he spun into the wall!”

  Grancis sighs. “That’s dangerous, you know. A girl’s more delicate than a boy.”

  “Nonsense! I’m just watching, after all!”

  Grancis’ smile dies down to a cool, calculating suspicion, and Colette instantly feels a chill. “Just watching?”

  “Of course! I’d never actually fight the guys… that’s just… you know, crazy!” Colette says, subconsciously stroking the large bruise under her left breast she received yesterday at the hands of none other than Vastere Tereiay.

  Grancis stares Colette down a moment more and suddenly her smile reappears along with the sort of mildness Colette knows her for. “I suppose it would be. So long as you’re not actually doing the fighting though, I’m happy. Take care of yourself, okay? My dad keeps me busy, so I can’t be with you all the time.”

  Colette looks away stubbornly. “I know.”

  “And if you got hurt. What would your mom do?”

  “I know, Gran,” Colette repeats as they reach the top of the hill.

  “I just thought it was worth restating. You’re more important to the health of the village, and especially your mom, than I think you realize. The boys can take a few hits, but my dad told me that when girls are hurt, it’s more painful, and it takes longer for them to recover. I’m fine going fishing and catching stuff with you, but if you get yo-” Grancis halts her monologue, spotting smoke in the distance. A billowing cathedral of black smog towers ahead of them from the hill.

  “The hell?” Colette asks.

  “A forest fire?” Grancis questions in turn.

  They bolt up the hill and see, blazing in an inferno, Colette’s home. In the distance, armed, jovial men are carrying along out loot like food and jewelry, anything they can carry that may be of value.

  Colette’s eyes are widen in disbelief, reflecting back the great light of her home. “…Mom,” is all she utters before throwing her rod aside and sprinting for the house. Grancis drops her fish and starts just short of Colette, but Colette is much faster. In only seconds time, Colette leaps equal to the porch and bursts in through the fiery open doorway.

  “Mom!” Colette shouts. She starts to her mother’s bedroom, located on the first floor to circumvent the need for going up stairs since her mother is often too weak to climb them. As she passes the stairs, Colette hears a sharp splitting sound from just above her. It’s not an unfamiliar sound, but it’s usually much farther away; the lumberjacks generally do their work a kilometer off, rather than a meter overhead. Spryly, she dodges a beam that brushes her left leg, cutting it with the splintered surface and speed of its decent. Colette inhales sharply and pushes on just as Grancis gets to the door.

  “Is she there?” she cries.

  “I don’t know!” Colette yells into the flames, just before another beam falls. Colette opens the door, and finds the room undisturbed, but now marked with fire. “Mom! Where are you!”

  There’s no answer.

  Colette runs to the kitchen, then the living room, but she’s nowhere to be found.

  “Colette! Get out of there! If she’s not answering then there’s nothing you can do!”

  Colette ignores Grancis, and starts upstairs. “She’s here. I know it!”

  “No! Get down here!” Grancis exclaims, her patience already expired. Colette ignores her again and starts bursting into room after room on the second floor, picking up singes and small injuries along the way. Before she gets to the last room, before she can be absolutely sure, a beam falls from above— and this time, she’s not fast enough. Colette screams in pain as she’s caught into the burning floor, and Grancis bursts in.

  “What is it?” She calls over the fire.

  Colette takes a breath. “My foot’s stuck!” She says this while pulling against the small catch point of the beam and the opening floor.

  Without pause, Grancis thrusts her hands into the ashen opening, applies pressure to Colette’s ankle with her left hand, and pulls down as hard as she possibly can. There’s a loud snapping sound, and this time it isn’t the wood.

  Colette inhales with every capacity available to her lungs. “Fuck! Gran! Fucking shit!” Colette exclaims as Grancis frees her disjointed foot and pulls it through the catch point. With every fiber she has, Grancis drags Colette downstairs and out of the building, Colette screaming for them to turn around the entire time. Grancis knows better, however. It’s too hot; far, far too hot. She can almost feel her skin burning off from the heat. In only ten seconds of movement, Grancis pulls Colette to the safety of the dirt road, where she stops to rest.

  “Let me go!” Colette screams, black with soot and flailing with her three good limbs to free herself from Grancis, but Grancis doesn’t let go.

  “No,” is all she says.

  Colette glance up to her friend with a gaze that possesses a heat on par with the house fire. “What?!”

  “We can’t save her.”

  “Shut up!”

  Grancis’ gaze sharpens. “She’s… already dead, I’m sure of it,” she says, quite unsure as a matter of fact.

  “You idiot! I can still do it! Just let me go! Let… me… g-”

  In a climactic moment, the far side of the building’s old support beams give way, and with it, the side of the roof it was holding up slants and eventually falls into itself; and when it falls, it falls hard.

  It lands in a fiery heap, presumably crushing everything inside.

  An emotionally-drained Grancis collapses in a heap as well, listening to the senseless curses that Colette’s flinging at her, at the men leaving off in the hills away, at the overlord who was supposed to protect them, and at whatever cruel god would allow such a fate.

  “I’m going to kill everyone responsible! She’s dead! and it’s your fault, too! Grancis, you bitch!! I could’ve sa-”

  With a burst of energy, Grancis slaps Colette across the face. “Either you both died or one of you died. I had to choose! We don’t even know if she’s dead!” she snaps, changing her story now that it’s clear Colette’s sure nothing could be alive inside the pile of burning wood and black smoke.

  “Of course she’s dead! If those bastards didn’t do it, the house sure as hell did!”

  Grancis slaps her again. “W-we don’t know that! Let’s go back to the village. Get some help. We could get some of the men to track down the guys who did this and make them ta-”

  “No! Grancis! She’s dead! She never leaves the house! There’s no way… there’s no way. Why didn’t you let me get her?!”

  Grancis shakes Colette. “Hey! Why would she go up in that last room?! That doesn’t make sense!”

  “Yes it does! She hid from the raiders and couldn’t get back down! She lost consciousness from the smoke!”

  “She’s okay, Colette! You nee-”

  “You’re lying!” Colette snaps back, gripping Grancis by her shirt.

  Granci
s slaps the girl again. “Colette! Seriously! Get a hold of yours-” She’s cut short the moment Colette punches her square in the face. Blood runs over in a spurt from her nose and Grancis curls onto the ground.

  Without a twinge of sympathy on her face, Colette works pathetically to her feet.

  “C-Colette…” She mutters this as she presses a hand into her bloodied face.

  Colette’s curled fist, covered with a smear of Grancis’ blood, ridges again for another shot; slowly, her breaths become deeper, her expression less excited— and finally, she lowers her hands. “I’m sorry. You were just… you were just… I know you were trying to help me.” Colette takes a long set of deep, calming breaths, her eyes trailing off to the hills. “Let’s get to the village.”

  Grancis takes the hand from her bloody face and she supports the limping Colette by the shoulder. They start down the road towards the village. Colette, for one, has a focused, furious gaze the entire way; Grancis just looks sad, like everything she knew and loved was being torn from her.

  She’s not wrong.

  The Town and The Sell-Out

  Colette and Grancis reach the village center to find the square filled. The townspeople are crowded thinly around a group of armed men. Colette’s eyes spark.

  “Those are the fuckers who burnt down my house,” she says, slightly pushing with her hand to move Grancis to the side and behind the nearest house. They hide and listen in.

  “-and for that reason, I see no reason why we shouldn’t make a buck off this as well. If you want to go ahead and pay your taxes, do so; otherwise, bring up your things for auction. Remember, that’s twenty-four thousand sins worth of value for the town— and I’m the one that decides what’s worth what. Here....” The bulky man speaking in the clearing steps over to an ornate chair, one Colette has sat in nearly every single day of her life. “As an example, we have this chair which we got from the house we just lit up.” The crowd whispers and looks over to the rising smoke in the distance about two kilometers out. “Don’t you all get rustled up about that. Whoever was there didn’t pay for the overlord’s protection, and as such, anything could happen to them,” the man says with a wide grin as he strokes his long, ragged, brown beard. “This would fetch maybe… I don’t know, maybe fifty sins? Let me remind you all: if you don’t have enough, we’ll take everything. Now get t’ payin’!”