Elephant Pond 16:

The Last Savage Verse (3)

“Put down your weapon sea smith,” the female Harcovian commanded. “We still have orders to take you in alive.”

“You’ve done some good fighting. Quite impressive, given your…disposition, but it’s for the best that you stop there. I’m sure you’re aware how my kind detests slaying the weak,” said the other Harcovian before adding, “I’d be happy to slaughter the rest of you though. We’ve been on this damned ship for weeks. I could use a bit of blood on my blade.”

The crowd that had rallied behind Typhon’s charge gradually shrunk back. Only Typhon remained, standing his ground in the face of the Harcovians and the pirates behind them. “I’ve heard some of the rumors. Some of them put it up to honor, but I think most got the gist of what it really is.

“And what is it really?” asked the Harcovian.

“It’s just a never ending, indulgent and self-destructive pursuit for a bigger thrill.”

“You have never taken a life. Neither have you ever been injured or even cut, you’ve just pampered and cuddled for your entire life, hiding from the world in a bubble of water.”

“Barrier of water, actually,” Typhon amended.

“You know nothing of the world or what it takes to survive in it. You are sworn to peace even if it kills you in the same way we are sworn to war if we want to stay alive, so who are you to judge how we live with our tribes’ bane?”

“Is that your best justification? Maybe you’d like to restate what you’ve said in your own words because it sounded a lot like Harcovian propaganda to me.”

“Enough of this, you are wasting my time. Put down your sword now and you and your family will still leave here alive. However, the rest of you worms,” he said eyeing the cutthroats, “…well, you can’t reasonably expect to live after a revolt like this.”

Morgan could tell his father wasn’t taking the Harcovian lightly but he was determined to stall a little longer, to scrape out as much time as he could for the boat to arrive.

By now Morgan could actually see it approaching behind the backs of Harcovians and pirates, hurtling to them from the horizon. However instead of wooden planks its body was blue and translucent, speeding on the ocean’s surface without making so much as a ripple, like a ghost on the water.

“If I was satisfied with my family being sold into servitude,” continued Typhon, “then we wouldn’t have started this whole thing, would we? Put yourself in our position Harcovian, or better yet, join us. If you think about it you’d have much more to gain with us. We could easily take these ships together. Bora and his crew are already dead and gone. Ransom’s crew is already more than halfway there and even with Dagon’s men, there’s nothing they can throw at us that we can’t handle. We could finish them and Dagon off, and between the gold, weapons and the ships themselves; it easily dwarfs what they’re paying you.”

The hired blade didn’t offer any immediate rebuttals like he had before. Logically, siding with the sea smiths and captives did make the most sense. More than half of their numbers had been eliminated and he stood to gain much more by killing them than they could ever offer. He was obviously considering the possibility, weighing their odds and the vastness of the potential payoff, in a thoughtful silence that clearly bothered his fellow Harcovian and sat even worse with the pirates behind them.

So she spoke up: “We aren’t turncoats willing to break our word for some extra coin, sea smith. Right, Gellend?”

He turned and looked back at her.

Gellend offered no response as he stared at her. He was obviously sizing her up, and considering his chances of besting her and each side’s odds with new alliances in place. Ransom’s and Dagon’s crew collectively swallowed.

The woman beckoned again: “Besides, there’s a lot more on the table than just coins, right Gellend?” and she made a small motion with her head pointing his attention behind them, where Dagon’s Black Dagger sat vacant.

“Of course, there’s more to a deaI than just the coins. I will not bargain with any further sea smith. Drop your sword now or else,” he said and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the metallic smell rising off the blood slick deck, and his associate followed suit. Shortly after, both of their eyes shined red through their visors.

“What if I made each of you a weapon?”

“I said no more bargains.” Gellend said.

Typhon rolled his shoulders, loosening them up before he ran forward and slashed at the Harcovian, so he humored him. Gellend blocked the first few swings with ease. His long sword looked weightless in his hands while comparatively it looked like Typhon was swinging his underwater. It was like the Harcovian was playing with a child.

When Gellend actually swung at Typhon for the first time, Typhon tried using Hakkhan. He lifted his sword to block and use the momentum of Gellend’s sword slide off his own but it sliced Typhon’s sword and cut his face. Blood rolled down his cheek as half of his sword clattered to the ground, prompting a smug grin from the Harcovian. “See peace-sworn, you’re outmatched and frankly, not worth the time. Give up before I give you something to regret.”

“Tibbles?!” Typhon called as he backed away. When he got no answer he looked behind and around himself, and saw that Tibbles was long gone and Vella had slipped away and stood behind Maya now. She shook her head at him. He was on his own.

While his eyes were still on them, Morgan held up a finger at his father. In one minute the boat would arrive. He just had to find a minute. A meager sixty seconds.

When he turned around the Harcovian backhanded him and he fell to the ground. Blood dribbled out of Typhon’s mouth and he spat up pieces of a tooth. “We can sort this out, Harcovian. Don’t side with the dull men over us. Who do you think the madmen in Korenth will come for first with our weapons?”

“That’s none of my concern.” He said and kicked him in the stomach.

The boat was seconds away now, but Morgan wasn’t sure how it would land or dock exactly, nor did he have time for the logistics so he threw the beacon totem straight up over his head. The ghastly blue boat leaped from the water and flew into the side of the ship, rose up through the deck and flew into the air. There, with the beacon totem, it rematerialized into the rune enhanced wood and fell.

The small crowd of captives dispersed, scampering out of the way as the back half of the sea smith’s boat crashed onto the deck, Tide Reaver wedged in the floor boards.

Morgan wasted no time; he ran forward and hopped in and began pulling the spear out by its golden shaft.

Stepping over where is father lay, the Harcovian came closer, eyes locked on the supreme spear. Typhon grabbed him by the ankle, as carefully could while still holding him back just as Morgan yanked it free of the boat.

The soldier kicked the sea smith in the face and ran forward, his sword drawn. With his blood frenzy, he was too fast for Typhon or anyone else to catch nor did anyone seem willing to intercept the crimson-eyed soldier, except for one.

With seconds to spare Maya stepped forward, placing herself between her son and the Harcovian, and pulled a pistol from behind her back.

Harcovians were fierce, more lethal than many things twice their size, and an existential threat to ordinary men and tribesmen alike, but Blades weren’t bullet proof. She furrowed her brow and squinted, as she aimed, just as she had seen every other gun man do that day and placed her finger over the trigger. He skid to a halt, a few paces shy of the barrel of her gun. Maya’s trigger finger twitched and he flinched. Morgan threw the spear, like a javelin, over their heads to his father.

“Help D!” he yelled.

Typhon scrambled to his feet, leaped into the air and caught it by its shaft. The very instant he landed, Typhon pointed its dark blue stone head at Daiah’s Locker behind them and fired off a wave from the water around their ship.

It wasn’t much, in fact it was notably weaker than the waves the sea smith had used during their first attempt at escape, but it was enough that what used to be Bora’s ship rocked and the next blow intended for D missed.

With the rhythm of their assault gone, the second fell short and the third hardly grazed his shoulder. D seized those meager seconds to mutter twice before he yelled: “Purge!”

All of his wrappings expelled from his body and leaped onto his assailants. Like living snakes they wrapped around their necks, eyes and mouths. With his armor gone, Morgan was surprised that he had been able to stand at all. D’s body was thoroughly bruised, he was bleeding from his forehead and had minor burns littered around his body. As D collapsed on to his hands and knees, Morgan wasn’t sure he’d ever get back up.

Ransom must have been waiting for the druid to overpower them, or at least expected. The instant the small crowd relented, he loosed another white, burning bullet the second they were off of him. Dagon followed suit, firing off his spreading shot. Most of them only managed to pierce the backs of his own crew surrounding D while Ransom’s soared over head on course to puncture his heart. But the deck around D had already fractured, splintered and thinned so with barely a heartbeat to spare, fresh ribbon-like peels wrapped around him and absorbed the captains’ bullets.

The druid got to his feet, with the help of the armor supporting his body once again, and through the thin slits of his wooden armor, Morgan saw his eyes lock onto Dagon’s.

“I’d like to offer you a deal now. Surrender your life, and your crew will walk away alive.”

“I’d nev-,” the pirate captain began to say until D cut him off.

“Splintered Blossom!”

Needle-like spines punctured his attacker’s eyes, mouths and throats and the pirates encircling him simultaneously collapsed. Blood began to pool below each of their heads as they convulsed, clutching at their faces.

Dagon laughed heartily. His shoulders and thick locks of hair shook as he clutched his stomach, while Ransom remained speechless. That was the first time Morgan had ever seen the pirate captain be anything but menacing and imposing.

“So much for you being better than pirate scum,” he said. “Your time in the locker must have changed you, Plain-walker.”

“Changed me? Don’t flatter the dead just because they’ve passed, Dagon. I’ve killed dozens of men before, to protect my home. But putting people mad enough to follow man like you, in their graves may just be doing the world a favor. For you…well, I won’t let you slip away from this world with your sanity intact.”

“Fine then, come give me a good send off, Plain-walker.”

The Harcovian was lost for words then stupefied by rage. He turned to Maya and slapped the pistol from her hand and then reached for her neck. In that moment a gust of wind, hit him in the back, not enough to harm him but certainly get his attention. Gellend turned around to see the supreme spear expelling wild gusts of wind, tussling Typhon’s clothes, long black hair and stirring the Burning Lady’s sails.

The day his father had shown him Tide Reaver, hardly a week after he had returned to the village, Morgan had been surprised by the number of runes on the spear’s shaft that he couldn’t recognize. For a weapon meant only to make wind and waves as his father had claimed, it radiated more power than he had seen in weapons that claimed to do more. But seeing the same runes come to life and the howling winds gradually condense around his father, Morgan understood why he had lied and why he had chosen that spear as their last resort. Morgan’s father had used one of the five runes taboo to the Elementalist class: the ‘armament’ rune.

“Wind Armament: Gale Fang.”

The winds increased even further, whipping blood, severed limbs and various objects off the deck and a pale grey light appeared around Typhon and began contracting, pulling the winds in, as if it was bottling a storm. It only stopped when the condensed winds were rippling like heat waves and cloaked the spear from the dark blue spear head, all the way up to Typhon’s shoulder.

“Step away from her before I murder you.”