The Jewel of Atlantis (Ateez FF)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

The calm before a storm often causes the most uncomfortable feeling inside most people. It makes you think of all that is to come and all that could happen. Due to the profession of my father I had grown accustomed to the feeling. The feeling of helplessly waiting for the worst.

My father is a merchant of sorts, and his speciality is with maps. So in the golden age of pirates we were some of the most popular people to come visit. This gave us plenty of friends, and enemies. Which was pretty exciting. Yet, on the rare occasion that I was left behind by my father to watch over our humble abode in Port Royal I felt the feeling of helplessness I mentioned before.

You never know what will come your way. Everyday regardless of what you had been told was bound to change. So the sound of gunshots and cannon fires from outside did nothing to me but make me jump slightly at the suddenness.

In the middle of the night in Port Royal it was nothing new to have a pirate raid every once in a while. I just took in a deep breath and heaved myself from my chair. As I did so I turned to place the book I had been reading on the small table next to me, grabbing hold of a copper candlestick on the small table next to me to begin readying myself for this routine drill.

The room that I was in was small, barely big enough for the bookshelves my father had stuffed into the room. All of the books were coated in a thin layer of dust, aside from my side of the room, and I quickly used my one free hand to dust off a shelf I walked by. Then bringing the hand up to my face I noticed the gray coating the shelf left on my fingers.

Shaking my head I dusted it off on my skirt as I made my way to the door. It was already open, so I did the liberty of shutting it behind me as I walked out into the hallway. The only other open door on the upstairs floor was my own room. So as I walked by I peeked in, seeing my bed still made from this morning, and my night clothes folded up on top of the sheets. Still waiting for me to put them on, but after I had picked up my book I had become too engrossed in the pages that falling asleep was not on my mind at all.

I was about to continue on down the hallway when my eyes fell on a sketch of my father and I together. A small smile graced my lips and I sighed as I remembered that my father had left about a week ago on a mission of sorts and didn't give me a date for when he'd return. In fact I didn't even get a goodbye, explanation, nada.

The sheer thought of it made me angry, but I had to be able to understand why he did it. So heaving in a sigh I tore my eyes away from the small picture frame and down at the candle in my hands. The flame danced in its spot as it lit up the hallway around me and I sighed once more. I probably should go man down the fort. I thought as I slowly began walking back towards the staircase. The old stairs creaked under my feet as I slowly emerged into the entryway that was attached to my fathers study.

The noises outside had become progressively louder, and screams of those in the town could be heard as I walked deeper into the room. I tried my best to keep my calm in this situation. The noises still got to me after all these years but I still tried my best to shrug them off. Instead of focusing on them I turned my attention to the bookshelves that lined the walls of the room around my fathers desk. They were identical to the ones upstairs. The dark wook designs all but spiraling down each side.

The bookshelves themselves shook as the ground rocked beneath my feet, and the dust on top of them fell onto the floor gracefully after every cannon shot was fired into the night.

Biting my lip softly I set the candlestick down on my father's desk on the other side of the room. The flame danced crazily and almost blew out as a very loud disturbance came from outside that jiggled the entire house. I placed two hands down on the sides of the desk to steady it as I stole a glance out the small window on my front door.