Indebted (working title)

Trophies (part 2)

It took only seconds for her to notice the shift in the atmosphere. She'd only been in Melody's quarters for a few minutes but in that time something strange and unnatural had begun. William saw it too. He stepped through his doorway to see a ship teeming with frantic and chaotic motion. Heavy storm clouds blocked out the sun, spinning and churning in the sky as if being stirred by some great unseen spoon.

"She can't keep this up! We've got to turn her against the wind!", Shouted a young deckhand from a rope ladder leading up to the crow's nest. He had been atop the ship's highest platform for hours, scanning the horizon for threats, but this storm did appear on the horizon, rather... it seemed to have manifested directly above the Almsgiver without sound, without warning, and like all vicious things in the open ocean, without mercy.

He moved quickly, but descending the ropes even under normal circumstances, was no easy task. He was sixty-five feet in the air when he felt it.

"Brace! Brace!", he shouted as he gripped the ladder for dear life. "It's picking up! It's pick--", he cried before being cut off by a blast of wind and watery vapor that struck so suddenly and so violently that it flung him back off of the ropes. Melody looked away, but he heard the scream. It was a shrill, desperate, sound that got louder and louder as his fall brought him closer and closer to the deck before being punctuated with the sound of a sickening thud.

The wind battered the crew and the sails in a roaring, ceaseless, assault that howled like some great and terrible beast. Droplets of ocean mist blew onto the deck causing crewmen to slip and fall over each other as they scrambled to reach their stations. Strained voices rang out as they barked orders around the ship trying desperately to be heard over the chaos.

"We need to raise the storm sails!" someone cried. "These won't hold! We'll be dead in the   water!"

"There's no time!", another man shouted back. "We need to find land and wait this thing out!"

"Land?!", said another. "Have you gone mad?! We'll never make it, in this, and if we did the wind would slam her right into the shore".

The woman from the hold, wove through the crowd, dodging rain slicked bodies as they came barreling towards her in a stampeder. Her right shoulder collided with that of a crewman and the impact was enough to turn her body 180 degrees, but in the panicked frenzy, the crewman barely noticed. Before she could right herself, the full force of a larger man in a desperate sprint to the stern, knocked her to the floor. Pain shot through her legs as her knees slammed into the hard wooden planks, and her bones ached in protest as she attempted to stand. She nearly managed to obtain a stable base before the slippery, rain-covered, deck and harsh wind caused her to lose her balance and topple forward. She gasped and wheezed in futile attempts to retrieve the air that the impact had purged from her lungs.

As she writhed on the ground she heard sets of heavy footsteps rapidly increasing in volume and knew she would be trampled if she did not move. She dragged herself across the ground on her belly for a while, and then rose to her knees before finally forcing herself to stand so that she could limp to a place of refuge. She spotted a closed door across the way and slammed her shoulder into it. Lightning flashed behind her and refracted off of the metal door handle. Thunder cracked with a menacing boom so loud that she could feel it reverberate in her chest.

A man's voice rang out from the front of the ship, somehow penetrating the wall of noise and issuing a warning that could just barely be made out, "Here it comes!", he hollered. "Here comes the big one!".

She turned her head just in time to see something that looked less like a wave and more like a mountain made of water, its summit crested with a white foamy layer of mist and oceanic spray. She gasped but before she could scream, it slammed into the side of the Almsgiver, tilting it to one side and tossing a few of the deckhands into the drink. This sudden lean threw her into the door with so much force that it flew open allowing her momentum to carry her through the threshold before slamming her into the back wall of a dark room. She threw out her arms allowing her palms to absorb most of the impact. It wasn't until the Almsgiver steadied itself that the woman was able to do the same. When took a moment to survey her surroundings and very quickly realized where she was, and that she was not alone.

Green eyes peered at her from the side of an iron stove. She'd found herself in the kitchen and with the chef. "You shouldn't be here.", he said as he finished off the last of a series of knots that sealed the doors to a row of wooden cabinets. He turned to look at her. His eyes locked onto a cut on her cheek and they followed a single droplet of blood that escaped and cascaded down her face. "Looks like you had a hell of a time getting here." He said as he approached with a few slow, measured steps as though trying not to startle a skittish animal. He tapped his cheek twice with one of his stubby fingers and said "Melody won't like that. That pretty face of yours... it ain't yours. If we let you mess it up, we'll never hear the end of it. At least you made it here without getting thrown overboard, I imagine he'd be even angrier if ya drowned".

His approach reminded her of William's but this time she did not back away, instead, her hand slid into a pocket within the ragged skirt, and her fingers wrapped around the handle of a dagger she'd procured from the captain's quarters. The chef stopped and stared at her in confusion for a while before grinning in amusement.

"What do you have there", he said craning his neck in a futile attempt to see what she was concealing. He took another step and the blade emerged, a rusted, ugly, thing made of blotchy grey metal.

"No.", he said angrily. "No, no, no! That kid is never gonna let me live this down. Look, just put the knife down so I don't have to give Louis the satisfaction of knowing I kill ya and take it. No one has got to know about this. We'll wait the storm out and we'll get you back to where you belong, no harm done".

She knew what he meant by "Where she belonged", and the implication made her entire body tense.  It took a while before she was able to get out the words that had been getting caught in her dry throat, but when she did she spoke them clearly and calmly.

"Someone took an ear from you, I'll take more if you come any closer", she said.

"She speaks!", he said with a massive toothy grin. "I didn't know th--", before he could finish talking, another wave collided with the front of the ship and then rolled underneath it, slowly pushing the bow skyward a full forty-five degrees. The chef stumbled backward on his heels in a frantic attempt to regain his footing. After a few seconds, his feet left the floorboards entirely and he was thrown back into the stove, with a loud bang and a low groan. The woman did not fight to keep steady instead she charged forward and built speed before leaping from the shifting floor and flying toward the chef.

The ship righted itself, But the chef did not have time to react the knife sunk into him, forcing its way between two of his lower ribs and cracking one in the process. She felt the sensation of warm blood splashing onto her face and then the pain of a fist slamming into it. A jet of spit flew from her lips as his punch landed against her jaw. The force of the impact sent her body flying in the direction of the blow and before she knew it, she was on her knees. The chef touched the handle of the dagger, before letting out a loud groan, his fingers shaking and recoiling from the pain. He pushed off the corner of the stove leaving streaks off his crimson behind him and stumbled forward toward the woman. He grunted and panted as he moved and blood from where the dagger remained embedded had begun to trickle onto the floor and leave a dotted trail of red droplets.

Still dazed, the woman rose on unsteady legs and readied herself for a fight. The chef threw a wild hook but she leaned back to avoid it, temporarily losing her balance and nearly falling in the process.

He grabbed at her, locking his fingers around her upper arm and squeezing them in a grip so tight that it forced a pained yelp from her lips. She punched him with her free hand, sending blow after blow into the center of his face but he did not relent. His mouth contorted into a smile and a glob of blood and saliva dripped from his lips and onto her barefoot. She curled her fingers and drove her nails into the skin on his forehead before dragging them down and tearing four bloody rows into his face . He shouted and grabbed her wrist. She looked down and noticed the knife still lodged in his ribs and she brought her right knee up and into the handle in one quick motion. He cried out in agony releasing a barrage of blood and sputum. He released her, and while he was still stunned by the pain, she pulled the knife out of him and drove it into the middle of his throat. He fell backward onto the floor, writhing and gurgling as a puddle of blood expanded around him.