by Kell Inkston
The Captain hums and stands up along with her. “Colette will get through this. Honestly, I’m more concerned with you.”
Conjointly weirded out with the realization that she’s really about to lie in a bed with The Captain and unsure how he could possibly be this comfortable with Colette meeting a real eldritch for the first time, Grancis pauses next to the dressing mirror. “With me? As in my part of the plan?”
At his side of the bed, he begins unbuttoning his long, weathered coat with that weird, circular emblem on the shoulder that she’s only seen on this article of clothing in particular. “Not quite, I understand you know very well what you’re doing and I trust you to do precisely what we talked about. Rather, I’m concerned with you emotionally. You seem to have gained a rather warm appreciation for the officer.”
She flinches, but keeps her cool. “Why’d you think that?”
“You two were delivering relational signals all throughout dinner. Your choice of words and the care you showed his treatment, especially when you discovered you wouldn’t be rooming together.” Carefully, quietly, The Captain listens as she pulls in a sharp, bothered breath.
“Well, maybe we’re just good friends,” she says, flushing an obvious red.
“Embarrassed?” He says, slipping off his belt and trousers next.
Grancis sighs, shakes her head, and finally follows suit. Timidly, she begins to undo the chef’s jacket given to her by Boris all those months ago — she never asked herself why there was only one spare chef’s coat, nor why it was perfectly in her size. “No, sir… I do like him like… more than a friend. Is that wrong?” She says, expecting The Captain to suddenly turn and become supportive.
“It absolutely is.”
“W-what?”
“Love on the sea, really, any time one is a great distance from another, is a relationship doomed to endure the very core of treachery and loneliness. I thought you’d be old enough to have some understanding of this, but I suppose where you’re from there weren’t many couples that traveled apart.”
“…No sir.” She takes off her jacket in a slow, unintentionally dramatic fashion that The Captain doesn’t much care for — but at least she’s a sensible young woman that wears something underneath.
“Bloomers?” The Captain asks, his form now nothing but a wrapped mass of bandages holding his human frame together. Her embarrassment is so bitterly palpable he can practically taste it.
“Eh… y-yes sir. It’s just what we wore at the village.”
“Ahh, I like it.”
She averts her eyes. Grancis is fairly certain The Captain just complimented her underwear— the sandy bastard.
He coughs. “As in, I appreciate your choice in that it’s proper and decent, nothing more. I was concerned your choices of undergarments would be more form-fitting as if you were attempting to attract a potential mate, so I’m glad to see you have chosen the path of least degeneracy when choosing your nether-wears. Truly bloomers must be the only correct evening attire for any aspiring woman of influence; perhaps for anyone- I shouldn’t discriminate. I understand I don’t have a literal naked form, per se, but perhaps a set of bloomers would look good on me. I wonder if I could find some in a more masculine color… Tell me, do they come in navy blu-”
“Captain.”
The Captain stares blankly for a moment. “Sorry, getting off topic.” The Captain raises the puffy comforter, slides in accommodated by the sound of bandages against silk and removes his glasses.
She sighs and works off her trousers. “It’s okay… it’s just he seems… good. I like him because of his character, sir. He’s a kind and considerate man. I spoke to him when he showed me my room for a good while.”
“Well what did Colette think?”
Grancis fixes the strap of her pink and white striped bloomer top. “Well… she wasn’t really there, Captain.”
The Captain sighs and turns to stare at the ceiling. “I expected as much. Youths these days have no concept of proper conduct. You didn’t engage in any sexual misconduct with the young man d-”
“Captain.”
“… I suppose it would be presumptuous to worry about you. You’re an honest enough lady, Grancis, but it would be equal folly to underestimate the passion of youth.”
“Right.” Sheepishly, she raises the sheet, and realizes that The Captain is above the cover sheet, rather than below like a person should. “Sir.”
“You can call me Lewis if you like.”
Grancis raises a brow. “Lewis, you’re not even under the sheets, you know.
“I’m perfectly aware. I simply wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Grancis smirks, almost as though a child said something cute to her, and she slips into the sheets. “I like him, Lewis— a lot. I appreciate your view on it, but I know he’s worthwhile and I don’t think you can persuade me otherwise.”
The Captain looses a disapproving, paternal hum. “You’ve known him for one day. Everything he told you could be a lie. Besides, I forbid you.”
She huffs indignantly. “…You forbid me? Do you have the right to, sir? I understand that I am your employee, but in less than a year I’ll be done with all this madness and be home— maybe I’d like to bring Martaine along when I do. With all due respect, sir, what right do you have to say either way?”
The Captain sighs. “You did read all of the terms and conditions of your contract, didn’t you?”
She suddenly feels monumentally stupid. “…Well, most of it, sir.”
“Then you’d recall part four paragraph seven gives me the right to forbid any form of unprofessional relationship that might possess any member of my crew.”
Grancis takes a deep breath. “I… do not recall that part.”
“Most don’t, I regret to say… Anyway, I’m saying you can’t not because I hate you and want you to be miserable, but because I’m afraid.”
She stares out into the wall, as if it were a great expanse. “Afraid of what, exactly?”
“Afraid for you both. Officer Vangair’s a good enough fellow. Sure, we’re enemies in this context, and if I have to be rid of him, certainly I shall do so, but I don’t hate him and I understand well he has an exceptional character. Knowing this, you two are very, very poor match.”
She sighs, and there’s pain in her tone. “Why?”
The Captain sets in completely, resting his two arms neatly over the sheets.“Trust me, my friend.” He stretches his hand equal to the bed, as if to offer it. “He’s in far more danger in that relationship than you are.”
Grancis looks at his offered hand with a weird contempt- the two aren’t nearly that close… and yet... “I don’t understand this at all,” she says.
“That’s alright. Not many people do.”
“No, I mean… if you know he’s good, and I’m good, then why not?”
“For your safety… well, his physical and your emotional safety, frankly. He couldn’t do a thing to you.”
“What?”
“Mmm?”
She takes a breath, she can’t hold back a tear. “Like, are you saying it’s dangerous for him to be around me? Would I… do you actually think I’d hurt him? Or would… would you, or someone else hurt him?”
“I’m not sure I catch your meaning.”
She takes another breath, this one is sharp, indignant. “Okay, sure. How about what the fuck do you mean, Captain? It’s all just a big fucking riddle, always! Son of a bitch! I just don’t know why I’m here in the middle of this awful place. Why am I here? Why can’t I just have a normal life?”
The rain beats against the glass, blanketing the room with soft, steady noise.
“You weren’t meant to be ordinary, Grancis. You don’t know it yet, but you’re incredibly special, just like Colette.”
“But how do you know?”
“Why would a figure of command explain every little reasoning to those under his wing? You need to simply trust me. You’ll get home if you t
ruly wish it, Grancis, I promise you that, but for the mean time you need to let go of your motivations and take mine as your own.”
Grancis finally turns around and meets The Captain’s mummy-like face. “So… I’ll have a normal life again, one day?”
“… If you choose to see it as such, yes. I’d argue, however, that your life was never normal to begin with, and that’s okay. There can be comfort in adversity and chance, my dear, you simply need to look deep enough. What most people call normal is what I call wasted potential, and I know precisely how to bring that potential out of you.”
Grancis looks perplexed as she looks over The Captain’s outstretched, still open hand. “You haven’t trained me, though. How do you know what I’m capable of?”
There’s a deep pause. “I suppose I may as well be upfront about it by this point. I forbid you to tell anyone, like any secret I’d invest in you… I can see a person’s soul, Grancis— all part of the… position, I suppose. Like flowers, they bloom and open in the spiritual moonlight of life… such… delicate things… and the potential that your petals betray aren’t just extraordinary, but absolutely groundbreaking. I’m not saying you’re simply unique, but in many ways quite better than the common person. You don’t need to be trained for me to see what you can do.”
Her eyes widen. Is she scared, or excited? “What am I extraordinary at? What am I meant for?”
He scoffs gently. “If you mean about your purpose, you make it up or have someone make it up for you, like any other human. If you’re asking about your particular talents and natural abilities, though, I’d say it’s something so incredible that you won’t believe until you see it for yourself.”
A log in the fire splits from the prolonged blaze, producing a satisfying, crackling crash.
“That sounds… I don’t know. It sounds scary, I guess.”
“Oh, it will be, but I’ll be right next to you one hundred percent of the way, alright? Trust me when I say that I will do everything in my power to protect you until you can fight on your own.”
Grancis meets The Captain’s gaze again, and she reaches over to take his hand. It really does feel like grabbing a bunch of sand, if the sand could grab back. “Alright.”
They lie in the warmth and the dark for a long moment. The Captain’s grip is strangely reassuring, she feels. She’s certain that he doesn’t show his softer side for just anyone.
“Lewis,” she says.
“Pardon me?”
“Your name, Lewis.”
The Captain twitches. “My name isn’t Lewis, you know. Not sure where you got that idea.”
Grancis stares him in the face for a moment, half expecting to see him smirk and tell her he’s joking, but the reality is that, whatever The Captain is, he’s not exactly all together in his head— she’s known this for a long time, though. “I’ve been meaning to ask: What are you?”
“Not a human, but not eldritch either, so you can relax.”
“…Do you have any kind of soul at all, though? Or whatever the eldritch have?”
“I have… what people would call souls, yes. I suppose if one wanted to be perfectly literal, one could say I’m more human than any human you could meet, and yet am not a human in the slightest— quite strange.”
She grips his hand tightly. “I’m not sure what that means.”
“And that’s okay. I must say I’m getting tired.”
“You don’t sleep, do you?”
“Well, no, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like to re-”
“So… If you’re more human than normal humans, does that mean that a part of you is more human, or something? Or, better yet… sir, I remember what that man said… in the alleyway that night, that you don’t have a soul. You said that even eldritch have something resembling a soul because it does sort of the same thing for them, but wouldn’t anything need a soul to do anything at all? Like, isn’t that something any life-form would need to have any will, or drive, or any… being at all?… Captain, if you don’t have a soul… and yet, somehow do as you say, then what really are you?… They call you The Reaper… so I… I guess I’ve been meaning to ask, really, are you like, a divine ferryman or something? Someone that moves souls between realms? A grim reaper?”
“Zeeeeee…”
Grancis squints, searching The Captain’s face for some kind of expression under those bandages. “What?”
“Zeeeeeeeee...”
“Zee? Like the letter?”
“Zeeeee…”
“Oh… yeah, fine, smartass. Goodnight,” she snips.
The Captain makes a loud, obnoxious snoring sound, before muttering out the word: “language.”
She sighs.
Grancis looks back up to the ceiling alongside The Captain, who’s totally just now decided he needs sleep. Grancis decides to forgive The Captain’s occasional, incredible childishness, and let it go as she herself lowers herself into the deep foundation of unconsciousness. She feels influenced tonight to dream. In these bending, looming halls, she feels a warmth, and it’s not The Captain’s body providing the heat. Somehow she feels calm, and secure, like she’s supposed to be here for some reason— and while the feeling is good, the implications scare her. Just what if the life of the sea is what is meant for her? She’s afraid The Captain was a little too helpful in calming her down. For once in her life, Grancis wants to feel a little less comfortable than she does right now. She draws into The Captain, and holds his arm to her.
Colette’s Real Night and Delivering Salutations to those of the Less-Comprehensible Sort
Colette’s decided, through the night, that while killing Martaine in his sleep would be efficient, The Captain might think it cowardly of her, and somehow she knows he wouldn’t do it to her. So, graciously, she allows him the bed, and she takes to the floor. Of course Martaine, as a gentleman, does his finest to offer her the bed, Colette makes it fully clear after smacking him lightly across the face that there’s no need to patronize her, even though she is a guest, and in some capacities a patron. Sheepishly, he accepts in what Colette is certain must be the most Grancis-like manner anyone who calls himself a man has ever accepted anything.
Now understandably, Colette wouldn’t use the word “Grancis-like” and if she spoke her mind about it next to the Captain, he would be the one who would be motivated to be doing the slapping. That said she’s had a bit of a rude streak all day, but you can’t blame her too much. I’m sure if I were surrounded by people that wanted, or at least were motivated to kill me and I were sleeping in close proximity with these people in private atmospheres, I too would be a little on my edge. Fortunately for the sake of personal development Colette will soon have her attitude permanently sobered.
Perhaps it would be improper to say this is a “good” thing, as in the next hour she will encounter something so troubling, so impossibly dark, that it will open her eyes to the horrors of the Omniverse forever—a sort of full destruction of innocence and childhood that not only rivals the ability of the television, but vastly surpasses it.
The grandfather clock outside of the hall strikes on the witching hour, as this part of the Eversea has a twenty four hour day, Colette has the privilege of being able to tell time easily here. She decides that now is the moment of her mission. Martaine is snoring fully and in deep, almost naive trust of Colette’s character, and so she assumes that most others will be asleep as well. She’s right, in that this is the time that mortals are meant to rest, for there are things outside of her understanding that choose this time to be lively.
She turns the doorknob, releasing a slow, crying creak. It’s very, very dark in the hall outside of her room. Her hairs begin standing, and she feels the adrenaline hit her, both empowering and weakening under its focusing euphoria. She holds down the tremors and checks for her accoutrements. Her trusty pistol and occult salt are where they need to be, sticking out slightly to allow rapid equipping. Colette makes a quick, lithe stretch and then enters the scant darkness
.
With a breath, she remembers The Captain’s precise, on-point directions that she had to memorize and repeat to him perfectly once every hour on The Nocturna in preparation for this one, vital task. She creeps forward through the dark, using only the scarcest glints of subdued lantern light to spot her way slowly through the hall. Soon, the halls diverge, from the scarcely-lit but manageable common quarters, to the hallway she’s not supposed to find her way through. There are no lanterns, and there are no windows. It’s complete, consuming darkness right in front of her, like the maw of a gigantic beast. She hums at the sight, and reaches into her trouser pocket.
With a single, cool movement, her cig lighter strikes up a resolute flame. She’s sure by this point that Grancis knows she’s taken up smoking as well from the scent, but she’s taken the courtesy to not do it around her. Colette moves wearily through the hall a few dozen meters before bending a corner and spotting the portrait. It’s an elaborate, glorified… rather distasteful portrait of Miss Irefall in little else but her nether belongings. Colette skews a scoff as she reaches right under the high-hung painting. Just as The Captain said, her hand goes right through the wall— just like a fairytale.
She merges her whole body through with a small bit of difficulty. It feels as though she’s passing through the surface of water and is getting out of a pool, as if there’s a bit of the water clinging on to hold her down in that immediate movement when she raises out her limbs. What’s more, she hears, or better yet feels an instant, body-wide tremor, as if she were just shaken by something. If that’s all the illusory wall has to stop Colette, then it needs to do a better job. She finishes passing and is now within the most secret confines of the Irefall Manor.
This secret hall is lit with what looks to be phantasmal, blue flames; makes sense if you don’t visit the place often. At the end of The Captain’s directions, she knows it’s up to her to search this place and get the Black Eye which should be in Irefall’s most private bed chamber- her one room. She opens one door down the hall, revealing any number of magical elements. Seer stones, shaman bones, witchcraft wickers and relics of all sorts, but she doesn’t feel it. The Captain said the one way Colette will know that The Eye is near is that it will start “pulling” on her, and none of these items seem to do that. She covers her tracks and closes the door back to the hall. She moves down to the next door, spotting another strange painting.
