“He’s dead,” Friedroth, the commander of the Golden Dragon Knights, said with a shake of his head, staring out of the rose windows of his castle’s lounge. He had his glittering gold ring covered hands clasped behind the back of his shimmering white and gold cloak that was embroidered with stitchings of dragons. He turned and smirked at Snakard. “Which is to be expected of fully grown adults who can’t kill little norian children.”

As Snakard sank into a cushioned mahogany chair, he relaxed his fingers as they wrapped around the armrest. He was worried he would snap it in half whilst he listened to this bastard dribble shit out of his mouth. No hope? For him.

“But of course, you’re alive,” Friedroth continued and winked at Snakard. “You’re stronger than him yet younger; feel proud of that fact. You have a promising future here in the Golden Dragon Knights.”

Snakard’s feet rattled on the violet carpet. What would Friedroth’s blood look like against such a colour? The colour of Noria; how humiliating it would be. His eye. That’s what he'd stab first; the eye that dared to wink at him. He’d gouge it out and shove it down his throat.

Staring up at the stone tiles of the ceiling and the glimmering golden chandelier that swung above him, he breathed deeply, trying to calm himself down and think. What could he do?

“The Abbevil flower, huh?” Snakard muttered, glaring at the pipe Friedroth held, and the red tobaccin smoke that rose from his shit spewing mouth. Snakard paused and breathed deeply again, calming himself down. Murder and wealth would come later. Obichard always told him the importance of patience. He refused to let vengeance supersede his greed. “It’s native to Noria, right? There has to be an antidote if they’re gonna use it on weapons.”

“There is,” Friedroth said.

Why didn’t the pathetic bastard say that earlier? I’ll cut off a finger and an eye. I won’t kill him; death would be too kind of a reprieve.

“But it’s too expensive.” Friedroth turned and swiped his hand across the lounge.

Rose windows loomed across the walls. Paintings that looked more like actual windows than the one’s present, and possessed more picturesque views, towered higher than even Friedroth’s colossal figure. Sizzling roast beef, steaming loaves of bread, and sparkling bottles of wine sat on gleaming golden platters and spread across a shimmering mahogany table.

Snakard refused to eat any of that food and vowed to make it, and all that surrounded, and more, his.

“Even for me,” Friedroth said." I’d have to sell this entire castle to buy it, and sacrifice the lives of many soldiers to attain it, because the flower you need to create the antidote lies in the Megella Empire."

“I see,” Snakard muttered as he stood.

He wandered out of the lounge, limped up a staircase, and stumbled into a bedroom to where Obichard laid. Friedroth’s servants bandaged the wounds, but the poison still oozed inside of him.

Snakard smiled at the rising and falling of his chest and abdomen, but he frowned and his eyes stung when he laid his hands on Obichard’s face and pried his eyes open, staring into the glazed and spiritually hollow depths.

He was alive but also wasn’t. He couldn’t move or respond to anything except soft food and drink, which he’d automatically swallow when Snakard would pour it down his mouth.

Punching the stone wall, Snakard berated himself; he should’ve killed the girl when he first had the chance. Pain surged through his knuckles and blood dripped down the wall. In fact, he should’ve kidnapped her and tortured her in order to find out where they hid all the loot they stole in their life of banditry. Because of kindn-

No, it wasn’t kindness; It was weakness. Because of his weakness, his brother fell into a permanent sleep, unable to live the life of luxury, wealth, and power he always wanted. The life he sacrificed so much to attain; ripped away from him by his little brother’s wretchedness.

Never again.

Snakard marched out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him. His brother got him this far, so he vowed to take Obichard the rest of the way. Once he awoke, he’d be laying on silk sheets in the King’s quarters of a royal palace. He refused to accept the world any other way. The world didn’t revolve around him, but if he tortured and destroyed enough of it, he could force it to.

The world was his servant; he was its master.

Handing his half-empty tankard over to Pilla, he strolled away from the gambling, drinking, and brawling to enter the darkness of the lower deck. Shouting met his ears as he stepped off the staircase and onto the hallway floor. Footsteps boomed and floorboards squealed from behind a door; the door of the room where his crew stored the twenty civilians they kidnapped.

“How did she cut the ropes!?” a crewmate shouted from behind the door.

Snakard gripped the hilt of his cutlass with one hand and pushed the door open with the other.

A young girl with brown eyes and black bangs shoved a tiny razor into the back of a crewmate that Snakard told to watch the prisoners. The ropes his crew tied her up with laid on the floorboards behind her, torn apart.

The crewmate spun and yanked the razor out of his back. Punching her in the face, she stumbled to the side and fell to the floor. The crewmate winced, shoved the sleeves of his dirty tunic up to his elbows, tightened his brown bandana, and whipped his cutlass out of its scabbard, marching towards her.

“Stop,” Snakard said, holding up his hand.

“What!?” the crewmate shouted, shooting Snakard a scowl. “Why wouldn’t I kill her?”

“The King of Tennivoor wants them alive,” Snakard said as he swiped his hand across the room at the nineteen other prisoners who sat against the wooden walls, and slumped under portholes that gleamed the night’s moonlight. Rough ropes wrapped around them and squeezed them as they laid in puddles of their own piss and shit. “She’s also a child.”

“I don’t care if she’s just a child!” The crewmate ignored him and marched towards the young girl as she shivered and shuddered on the floor, pointing the razor at the approaching man with trembling arms.

“You don’t understand me,” Snakard slammed his palm on the pirate’s shoulder and yanked him backwards. He strolled up to the girl, smiled, and extended a kind hand to her. “Need a hand?”

She smiled with glistening eyes and grasped his hand. The other prisoners sighed in relief. Just what he wanted. So he turned to the pirate.

“There are some things out there worse than death,” Snakard shot his boot at the girls’ face. She flew over to the other prisoners and tumbled on top of them. Snatching her hair, he ripped her away from them and flung her into the middle of the room. She rolled across the floorboards, her face scraped across it, and splinters and broken shards of wood raked across her skin. “That’s what you need to use in order to send a message.”

“I-I’m sorry,” a woman who looked like her mother stammered with quivering lips. “I made her do it,” Snakard shuddered as an ember of rage flickered into being. The pathetic woman paused, swallowed, and continued. “I told her to hide that small razor in her mouth. If you want to send a message, use me.”

Filling the room with the hiss of metal scraping metal, Snakard whacked his cutlass at the young girl’s hand. A few fingers fled her palm, and blood pooled around it. The girl shook and curled and rumbled the ship with her screech. Tears stampeded across her cheeks and splattered in the air as she writhed on the wood and formed a puddle of blood and tears on the floor.

All the prisoners erupted with rage, shook in their constraints, and hurled obscenities at Snakard.

“How could you do that to a child!” The mother shouted, tears raging down her scowl.

“So that was your strategy?” Snakard narrowed his eyes at the revolting woman. He then looked up at the rest of the prisoners. “Use this as an opportunity to learn. You can’t manipulate me with such cheap tricks. In fact, the next time any of you attempt an escape, this girl’s entire hand will come off next. And then her arm. Then her other one. And so on and so forth, until I've butchered her like a pig.” Snakard smirked. “Think about others for once.”

Snakard snorted and turned, walking past the pirate, who continued to wince and grip his back. “I’ll get you, someone, to patch up your wounds and another to replace your watching of the prisoners after I’ve dealt with some of my own business,” Snakard said to his crewmate as he exited.

He strolled down the hallway and entered a room. Inside, Obichard laid in a bed. Dirt and mould smothered the ship, but Snakard made sure his brother’s bed and bedroom were as pristine as possible. The swirling grain of the mahogany that formed his bed was smooth to the touch. Lavender filled the air with a sharp but refreshing aroma as it wobbled in a shining ceramic vase; wobbling on a bedside table as the ship sailed through the sea.

The bed’s gleaming white duvet rose and fell over Obichard’s breathing in and out; the sight of which always brought a smile to Snakard’s face. Pale blue moonlight gleamed on the silk sheets from a porthole, but an orange lustre replaced it when he lit a candle with fire strikers. Next to the bed, the candle smouldered on a table, and pottage boiled on a stove that rattled, bubbled, and spat. The food finished cooking.

Snakard poured the pottage into a squeaky clean tankard that he made sure not a single ruffian in his crew could get their hands on, let alone drink from. He pulled his big brother up to a seating position and squeezed his fluffy wool pillow against the wall to cushion his back. Pushing open his mouth, Snakard drizzled the pottage down his throat, watching his neck to make sure he swallowed. After the tankard emptied, he re-filled it and poured the pottage down again.

Obichard would occasionally rock to the side, or fall to the bed, causing food to spill out of his mouth and onto the silk. This would force Snakard to pause, scrape the food off, and rub the stain from the sheets, but despite those annoyances, he kept feeding him. This lasted for half an hour.

After Obichard swallowed all the pottage, Snakard poured water down his mouth in order to wash the food down, and just so Obichard could get a bit of enjoyment during his several-year sleep, Snakard smiled as he poured Obichard’s favourite wine, rossenna, down his mouth.

Eventually, Snakard put the food and drink away and laid Obichard down on the bed. Snakard peeked out of the room’s porthole and saw tower karsts scattered around an array of islands, silhouetted by the moonlight.

We’re one step closer. Snakard grinned at his brother. You’ll be waking up soon.

Snakard saw the Tigican Archipelago on the horizon, and Tennivoor wasn’t far beyond that. So Snakard’s smile widened, and a surge of excitement struck him like a streak of lightning.