When Time Collides ★ [2] ✔

The Observatory

I sat on deck as midnight struck the Caribbean. With my legs dangling over the side, I sat in silence on the rim. The ocean breeze was beautiful, refreshing on my face and tugging at my loose hair. The moon's reflection kissed the water, ripples keeping the pale mirror image unstill.

We were in mourning. Our friends were dying. They were being murdered. And a close one had been recently. I was always told not to establish close ties with the people in the time I stayed in. This was the reason why. It was to reduce pain. It was to keep us emotionally detached. But it was an easier said than done statement. When you spend three years with these people—fighting and drinking and just sailing the seas together—you can't help but create strong bonds with them.

I opened my watch. Golden time dust floated out, twisting and turning into beautiful shapes. The Queen Anne's Revenge floated past. I bit my lip as I saw the good captain at the helm, his long black beard drifting in the wind.

I heard footsteps behind me. I knew who it was, so I didn't bother hiding my watch.

I looked to the moon. "Do you even miss him?"

Eilian rested his forearms on the ship's rim. "Thatch's death is a fixed point in time. There's nothing we could have done."

I glared at him. "You didn't answer my question."

He sighed, his blue eyes glued to the quiet waters. "I do. He was a good man. Even though he was a crazy bastard."

I chuckled. Edward Thatch was a fine man. He was a crazy man, no doubt, wearing lit fuses under his hat. He plundered and killed and destroyed ships. But he didn't do it for his own gain like many he placed his allegiance with. He did it for the good of the Pirate Republic of Nassau. For the people who lived there.

Thatch's death was a reminder for Eilian and I; a warning. Though a fixed death in a timeline we were forbidden to toil with, there were others we could still save as long as we got the Shard. That was what the enemy was after; what Laureano Torres—Eon's pawn—was after. The deaths of our friends were ordered by Torres to get to Eilian and I. Therefore, our plundering was put on hold to put all our efforts into finding the Shard and disposing of Torres.