by Jez Cajiao
“I get to wear a dress?” he asked, shaking his head.
“Aye, well, Lydia told me about your sexual tastes. I thought you’d like it!” I shot back at him and got a laugh in return, as well as a nod of thanks.
I made my way across the ship to rejoin Oren, who was half naked on the upper deck, pulling clothes on he’d clearly looted from the captain’s cabin.
While they were meant for a human, he’d been both short and fat, so they weren’t as badly fitted as they could have been.
After a long minute of huffing, sweating, and far more dwarven ass crack on display than I ever wanted to see again, Oren was wearing a pair of rollup trousers, his own shirt and breast plate and a hat, with a large overcoat thrown on the floor, and a pair of gloves that came halfway to his elbow.
“I’ll have to get tha’ altered; they be too good to pass up!” he muttered, kicking the coat aside and adjusting himself. “Och, these pants do be a bit tight, ye know whut I mean?” He grunted and I closed my eyes, rubbing at the bridge of my nose as I tried to banish the sight I’d just been exposed to. I suspected I’d be waking years from now, screaming in the middle of the night with the memory.
“So, you’ve nicked his pants…anything useful?” I asked heavily.
“Oh, aye laddie, tons! The full set be givin’ bonuses to ma foresight, ma handlin’ ability, even to the ship over all! It be five percent faster, gunners be ten percent more accurate, and the entire crew gets a bonus o’ plus one to luck!” He grinned at me as he gestured each item, and then to the overcoat on the deck. “As long as it do be close by, I still get the set bonus; now all I need to find is the boots!”
“Ah, crap, yeah. Good point!” I said and pulled them out of my bag, chucking them over to him after examining them quickly.
Captain’s Boots
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These Boots grant +2 to Agility and improve traction on slippery surfaces. These boots are part of the ‘Himnel Airship Captain’ set, and grant bonuses when worn as a full set.
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Uncommon
Yes
86/100
34/100
I shrugged as I looked over the notification. They were all right, and yeah, the plus two to agility was good, but my boots were damn comfortable, and my armor fit over them, so I wouldn’t have swapped them out anyway. Giving Oren the full set, though… he pulled them on as quick as he could, thumping down on his ass to yank them on. Despite grumbling about how tight they were, he was grinning ear to ear as he stood.
“Ye know how long I wanted a set o’ these?” he queried, pulling the gloves on tighter and wiggling his fingers in the air. “Years, laddie! The bonuses alone do be worth it, ten times over! No to mention, the wife loves a man in uniform, iff’n ye know what I mean!” He gave me a wink while catching the ring I threw back to him.
“I really didn’t need that image in my mind, dude; thanks for that,” I grumbled, but I couldn’t help grinning at him. He looked slightly ludicrous in the gear, especially as it was tight in all the wrong places and clearly meant for someone else. The thing was, though, he also really suited it, like I was seeing him in his natural habitat. I checked the notification I’d received and blinked.
Congratulations!
You have received the following bonuses due to being part of the ship’s crew of the Agamemnon’s Wrath:
+2 to Luck
+2 to Agility
+1 to Stamina
“Hell, that’s a great bonus.” I said, then turned to Jory. “Why didn’t the old captain have this on when you arrived at the Tower?”
“Well, m’lord, he said it enough around us so we all knew it, ‘Why should I give you slackers anything?’ That’s what he used to say, said we should work harder, and then we’d earn the bonuses. Don’ get me wrong, he wore it when we went into battle, ‘cause ‘e was too cowardly not to, but the rest o’ the time, nay.” The old helmsman took a few steps to the right and spat over the side of the ship, returning to catch the wheel before it could move more than an inch or two.
“Fair enough; so, he was a prick and deserved to die. I’m fine with that.” I scowled down at the four men in the cages.
“I wouldn’t,” I heard Oren warn, and I frowned at him questioningly.
“All I’m sayin’, laddie, is that ye promised to set ‘em free. Givin’ ‘em the freedom o’ the cloud’s, while damn well deserved, will no make ye more popular wit’ the crew, an’ word will get around.”
The entire time, Oren had been staring forward, but I knew he’d been watching me out of the corner of his eye, and Jory was silent as they both waited.
“Dammit,” I muttered, shaking my head. I wanted to open the cages and have Bob throw them out. Hell, I wanted to do it myself, but I needed to master my emotions. I’d learned control hard over the years, fighting again and again when my smart mouth got me into trouble, or someone annoyed me too much. I could do it again. I had to. As to those fucktards, though…
“I don’t think anyone’s going to miss them, so how about we use them instead?” I suggested, getting a questioning raised eyebrow in response.
“We need to know what happened down there, so let’s use them. Send them down first to have a look.”
“Use them like they be rats? See iff’n somethin’ bites?” Oren clarified, and I nodded.
“Yeah, why not?” He shrugged, and I got the feeling that he wasn’t liking the idea, but he didn’t want them around either, so… “Okay, what can you see?” I asked him, and his eyes changed again.
“The ship looks to be in fairly good nick; engines appear intact, so she probably jus’ needs restartin’, an’ the engineers can do tha’. I can see where th’ crew made repairs an’ all. It be them I be worried aboot.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, nodding. “Get us over there, and we can take a look. Once we’ve checked out the ship, we’ll follow that trail as far as we can. Keep us back a bit on the first pass, so we’re out of range if there’s something hiding, but don’t look like you’re keeping your distance.”
“How do I do tha’?” Oren asked, looking at me like I was mad.
“I don’t know, fly casual!” I snapped at him, walking down onto the deck below. Something about the conversation had triggered a memory, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I shrugged and dismissed it; either it’d come back to me, or it wouldn’t.
I strode forward, Lydia quickly meeting me halfway down the deck. “We’re going to follow the trail, and we’re going to have help,” I told her, nodding towards the cages.
“Yer settin’ those animals free? Lord, we can’t trust ’em!” she said, alarmed.
“Oh, I promised to set them free,” I said, giving a shark-like grin. “I just didn’t say where, or if I’d give them anything to help them survive, Let’s go give them the good news!”
Oracle, who’d spent most of her time on the trip perched at the top of the highest mast, came flying down as soon as she saw us approaching the cage, and I could feel her interest.
“What are we doing, Jax?” she asked, alighting gently on my shoulder, and getting a warm smile from Lydia. Oracle had become something of a mix between a mistress of the Tower and a mascot to the people over the last few days. She was loved for the way she interacted with people, and especially for the free healing she gave. Occasionally she’d go so far as using a huge amount of mana in one go to cure a person of pretty much anything she could. On the other side, she was very clearly revered as one of the three wisps of the Tower and as my companion.
As we walked closer, I could feel Oracle dig her fingers into my shoulder slightly before forcing herself to relax, and the three of us joined Bob, who’d stood guard at the cages, staring at the criminals ceaselessly since he’d taken up the station earlier. The men glowered at me, all four of them clearly feeling hard done by.
Not
one of them seemed to believe this was deserved, and the dark looks they gave me, Lydia, and then Oracle made my anger build. They’d begun to ignore Bob, which I supposed was fair enough. If they thought he was an average ‘Bone Minion,’ like Lydia had, they were expecting him to disappear soon, and he was hardly the most interesting conversationalist. What inflamed my anger the most, though, was the casual way they shifted their eyes from me to Lydia, and then Oracle, staring at their bodies. Lydia was dressed normally, and Oracle was…well she was dressed normally for her, which meant an outfit most exotic dancers would have loved.
That didn’t give those asshats the right to ogle her, though. Bob clearly picked up on my irritation, learning in and gripping the bars of the cage in his enormous hands. He flexed, and the entire cage creaked, causing the men to flinch. I tamped down my own anger as much as possible, and I resolved to give them a chance. I was well aware that I had an issue with anger, even before all of this, and having Oracle’s emotions reinforce my own wasn’t helpful, but I’d deal with it.
“I’m going to give you one last chance.” I said aloud, getting a concerned look from Oracle and Lydia. “I said I’ll set you free, and I’ll do that, but I’m going to give you a chance to help us, and maybe earn a …”
“Get fucked.” A voice cut me off and I looked at a man at the back of the group. He was larger than the rest, heavily muscled and scarred, and he spat at me.
It hit the cage, breaking up and falling down to the ground, but I swear I felt some of it, and the world went white hot with my rage.
I spun my naginata around, hammering it down into the cage, and it cut through the bars like a hot knife through butter. The runes blazed like the heart of the sun as my fury hammered through it. I made a second cut, then a third, and the remains of the cage fell apart around me as I shouldered my way inside, Bob hissing like a kettle, and Oracle… well, she was past me in a blur.
Before I could get to him, she was there, a lightning bolt slamming into him and flowing out into the other three, making them all scream in agony. I reached past her, grabbing ahold of him by the throat and drawing my naginata back, fully intending on skewering him, and the bastards that shared his cage. They deserved it, after all. They were rapists, thieves, and likely murderers. There was no place for the likes of them in my new world; not the one I would build.
I rocked to one side as something hit me, and I turned, eyes blazing, only to find Oren there. He pushed himself the rest of the way inside the cage, moving in front of Oracle, Bob and I, and he shoved me back, forcing me to release the target of my ire.
“You…dare!” I growled, and Bob and Oracle fixated on the little dwarf as well.
“Aye, laddie, fer the sake o’ who ye be, I dare!” he said, shaking his head. “Dinna lose yersel’, no like this, no fer the likes o’ them!”
I stared at him for a long moment, my breathing ragged in my throat, but as I calmed slightly, I saw things.
I saw the way that the men in the cage were huddled back, terrified beyond their wits, I saw the way the crew had frozen, fearful of the animal in their midst. Most of all, I saw Oren. He was trembling; he was absolutely sodding terrified of what I was going to do to him for interrupting, but he’d done this because it was right. Just like risking everything to feed the slaves was right. Just like risking everything to throw in with me and save the people back at the Tower was right. I took a deep breath and acknowledged to myself that he was doing what was right now as well.
They’d spat at me. I couldn’t chop them limb from limb because they spat at me. I wanted to; oh fuck, I wanted to so bad, but it wasn’t right.
A memory popped up then, when I was much younger, sitting in the back of a police van. Thomas sat across from me, and Jonno stood in the door, wiping some vomit off his uniform. He’d stepped in to break up a fight. We’d been force-feeding a dealer his own shit, making sure he knew not to peddle that crap to kids. Jonno and some other police had arrived, breaking up the fight between us and the dealer’s friends.
He’d stopped Thomas from curb stomping some poor fucker for standing up for his mate, and then he’d saved the dealer, even though he ended up covered in vomit.
We knew we couldn’t be sent to prison; we were only fifteen, and we were wards of the court anyway, so we didn’t give a shit about consequences.
We were cleaning up the streets in our ‘territory’, and we were both furious about being stopped. We were doing what the police couldn’t. We deserved respect for that.
I remembered it like it was yesterday, the stink of the stomach acids, the fury of the fight, the warmth of the blood we were both covered in, and there was Jonno. He’d picked us up enough to know who we were by that point, and he knew we were aggressive little shits, but that we did what we thought was…right. No matter what it cost us, we did what we thought was right, and he was there telling us why we were wrong. We disagreed; scum like that guy couldn’t be helped. They needed to be removed from the gene pool. Instead, he’d piled in there, getting fluids that could hold any number of diseases all over himself, all to help a goddamn drug dealer.
I’d asked him why, why he’d risked himself for that piece of shit, and he’d looked at me, world weary and sad as he shook his head. It wasn’t his place to decide who was worth saving, he’d said. For all he knew, he was a saint, or a murderer. The police don’t get to make that call, he’d said. Those entrusted with protecting don’t get to decide who lives and who dies. It was his place to save who he could, and in saving a piece of shit drug dealer, he saved us from being split up and sent to separate homes.
I remembered it all, come and gone in a second, and I compared that moment with now. In this new world, someone had to make the call. It couldn’t be a jury of peers, not yet. For now, democracy was going to take a back seat, and I would be the final arbiter of justice.
But spitting at me couldn’t mean death, or where would it end?
Would disagreeing with me be death next, or refusing to go to my bed? How short was the step from Justicar to Murderer? I swallowed hard, closing my eyes, and forcing the rage down.
When I opened them, Oren was still there, but he was watching me with a lot less fear.
I nodded to him, and he stepped aside. Bob backed away and Oracle returned to hover by my side. I waited, ignoring the acrid smell of urine and fear, until the men each looked up, making eye contact at the last.
“This is the last chance I’ll give you,” I whispered, my voice rough with suppressed emotion. “We need to know what happened down there. I will set you free, and you’ll follow the trail. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’ll get a weapon each, and you can keep it, as well as some food. Once we’ve found the missing crew, you get to go in whatever direction you want, provided it’s away from my Tower. Or… I’ll do as I promised, and I’ll set you free right now. We’re over the lake, so you’ll survive the drop, probably. Provided you can swim, you’ll get to shore. You’ll have nothing from me, and you’ll be killed on sight by any of my people. Choose quickly.”
I stood there, my naginata pulsing with mana, and waited. It wasn’t long before the first spoke, and then the others quickly followed his lead.
“We…we’ll help…” I nodded once and stepped out of the ruins of the cage, moving past Lydia, who stared at me for a second before nodding and falling in behind me.
Oren returned to the raised deck, and I drew in a deep breath as I reached the railing, looking out over the water that sped along below us. It took me a long while to speak, but when I did, it was in a voice that shook slightly.
“Do you think I did wrong there?” I asked Lydia and included Oracle as she landed gently on the railing, flicking her legs over the side. It was a few seconds before Lydia responded, but eventually, her unusually subdued voice rose.
“It’s not my place to…”
“Bullshit. I asked you a question, Lydia. You’ve never been shy about your opinion before; tell me the truth,”
I snapped, and instantly regretted it.
“You were angry,” she said eventually. “They spat at yeh, and yeh lost yer temper. I’ve seen yeh struggling with yer emotions for days; we all have, and people are startin’ to get worried. One minute, yer like a big brother to everyone, the strongest there is, honest and carin’ for us all. The next, yer like a wild animal. Yer need to watch yer temper.”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” I agreed. “They didn’t deserve to die for…”
“Yes, they did.” Lydia cut in suddenly, making me stop in surprise. “Yer the lord; if yeh didn’t like their hair, yer could kill ’em. That’s not what this is all about. Yer want ‘em dead, yer tell one of us, an’ we’ll do it, or do it yerself. When yer killed Toka, sent it flying off the Tower like that, we all knew why. We knew it deserved to die. Yer said to Makin that it had to be you what did it, that it had to be justice, not revenge.” I nodded, thinking back to that day, as she went on.
“Since then, yeh been throwin’ yerself into things, an’ working like a madman. We needed that, we know we did, but now yer on the ragged edge. Yer need to rest, and yer need to decide and stick to it. If they deserve to die, it be because yer the lord and yer sayin’ it be so.”
“Yeh don’t need no more. People be afraid, because yer seem to do one thing, then another.” She coughed, embarrassed, but pressed on. “Yer our lord. We’ll do anythin’ yer want, just command us. Don’t go mental wit’ rage, ‘cos that’s scary as hell. Most of the people back there think iff’n yer wanted the day to last longer, yeh’d just grab the sun and make it stay still.”
“I’m not a God, Lydia; I’m just a man.” I muttered shamefacedly.
“Yer a man who talks to the Gods. Yeh don’t call ‘er ‘the Great and Powerful Goddess Jenae’; yeh just call ‘er ‘Jenae’. Yeh found a real Goddess, yeh conquered a Great Tower and kilt a SporeMother. They believe in yeh…an’ so do I.” Her voice was quiet, but it held an unshakable confidence. “Yeh’ll do the right thing, yer just need a little help from those of us that follow yer now and then; that’s all.” I studied her face for a moment, seeing the pride and conviction in her eyes, and I smiled gratefully.
