A Love Like the Sea

Chapter 3

Hello my strays
Welcome to the greatness that is Chapter 3. Well no it's not that great but shh. Anyway I'm sorry for whatever happened to the first chapter. I seriously don't know what happened. Enjoy!

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Will could see the people aboard The Garden of Persephone by now. Their ship was monstrously huge, gargantuan in size and it seemed to be in very good shape. The fabled mermaid, chained to the bow of the ship, forever bound in shackles of stone. Her head was turned up and her mouth gaping open in a perpetual scream of fury, not fear as P. Jackson's journal had said.

His own ship was dotted with holes from where the other's cannons had hit correctly. The ship had appeared out of seemingly nowhere. All around him, his crew was frantically trying to get ready for battle.

'Filthy pirates!' Lou Ellen hissed, 'Don' even got the guts to come up ou'right.' She was hunched in a defensive condition, akin to one a dog makes in times of danger.

On Will's right, Harper stood, looking a vision with the evening light behind her, contrasting sharply with her fiery hair. She glanced over at Will.

'They're not our typical pirates, Lou Ellen. These are the minions of Scour--'

Another cannonball made impact with the ship, making the people on board stumble to the side. Will felt a deep rush of hatred and glared at the oncoming ship.

'Scourge, my ass!' Connor growled, 'We're attacking now. Harper, check the cannons and load the guns. Lou Ellen, rally the crew. They've walked straight to us.' The women rushed away to comply to his orders. Will looked at the ship and drew his sword. It was time for battle.

The Garden of Persephone stopped alongside The Sun Chariot and there was silence. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, the guns and cannons on the navy ship all fired at the larger ship.

The bullets glanced off of the large but sleek metal starboard side, and while the cannonballs left dents in it and possibly cracks in the wood that was presumably behind it, they all rolled into the sea, ultimately inflicting no damage.

This went on for a while, until the shooters in the Sun Chariot became confused at the lack of response. So again, there was silence.

And it was like clockwork, what happened next. Grappling hooks were launched onto Will's ship in a sequence akin to choreography. They dug themselves into the wood of the mast the deck, and even on the stern, where hooks were lodged into the side of the boat.

He quickly saw what they were planning to do.

'Everyone!' He yelled, 'Cut the ropes down, burn them, do anything to get them away from the ship!' Harper, being much more charismatic than Will, got the others to do so.

But it was too late. Already these pirates were sliding down these ropes from the mast, and scaling the sides of the ship like spiders.

Turning around, Will came face to face with a light blonde haired girl wearing a mischievous grin and brandishing a curved sword. She slashed at his coat, leaving a rip in it but failing to harm him. He jabbed at her sword hand in retaliation, only to be met with a parry of great skill.

'My, my! You really should save your strength and just let me defeat you, you know. A growing boy like you has to get lots of rest,' she said sweetly, all the while performing complicated sword techniques but never actually hurting him, just putting new slashes in his clothes.

'I'm an adult,' he growled in reply to her taunts. She gave him a look of mock surprise.

'Oh, really? Well, I'm so sorry! But really, I doubt you can do real harm,'she said, grinning and batting her eyelashes, giving him a look that would have felled a lesser man, 'after all, I am a Fleming.'

The Flemings were a family well-known for their beauty and prodigious swordfighting. Will rolled his eyes.

'Is that so,' he murmured, not really invested in the conversation. He parried a particularly tricky blow, and just missed falling off the ship altogether. This Fleming girl nodded.

'Oh, yes,' she replied enthusiastically, but then her eyes darkened and she smiled ruthlessly, 'And do you know what it means when a Fleming doesn't kill you?' She raised her sword.

'It-' Slash 'means-' Slash 'that-' Slash slash 'they're not-' Slash 'really tryi--'

Will had finally gotten a good hit in and Fleming had fallen over, imbalanced. He was going to strike when something hard hit him in the shinsand he himself fell over, scrambling back up and facing another girl with shoulder-length black hair and burning ochre eyes.

She rolled those eyes and they slid down to look at the other girl. 'Honestly, Dahlia, just get the job done,' she sighed. She seemed to be talking to the girl lying on the floor. The other girl, Dahlia, grinned and shook out her platinum hair.

'If you insist,' Dahlia replied, 'But I'd rather you did it. You're so much better at it than me.'

The black haired girl nodded, and walked towards Will. The next thing he knew, he was being lifted by his neck and pinned to the mast.

'Tell me who the captain of this ship is if you value your life,' she said in an infuriatingly bored manner. It was also terrifying how she could hold him at the mast so nonchalantly. Will had studied as a doctor before he came to this work, and he could tell that there were no signs of strain in her muscles.

'I'm..I'm the captain,' he choked out through her hand strangling him. Satisfied, the brunette released him, and he fell to the ground gasping.

Dahlia grinned again. 'SCOURGE! WE'VE GOT HIM!' Someone burst out of the melee and ran towards the three.

Oh...

Wow.

So this was Scourge.

He was a little shorter than Will, but seemed to be wearing heeled boots to make up for it. His face wore a deathly pallor that looked strangely compatible with the dark circles under his darker eyes. His hair curled around and framed his small face in a way that made Will's heart flutter strangely. Why was he thinking this way?

Suddenly he felt self-conscious in his tattered coat under Scourge's scrutinizing gaze. He shifted his feet and tried to look more like a captain.

And then he was held against the mast again.  Really, this was getting ridiculous. At least he wasn't lifted up like a rag doll again. Scourge had pressed the tip of his sword on his throat, limiting his chances of escape.

'Where's the cargo?' He asked. Will felt indignation at that.

'Where would you think? It's all down there,' Will glared, 'Seriously, where else would it be?' Scourge rolled his eyes.

'I don't mean that, fool. I mean the Cargo.' Will could clearly hear the capitalization of the word. But this time he had no idea what he was talking about.

'What are you talking abou--' He was cut off by Scourge staring intently at him. Then after a while, he cocked his head and sighed. He turned to Dahlia and the other girl.

'I see no lie in his eyes. Could we have gotten the wrong ship?' He had such an endearingly bewildered expression on his face that made Will want to hug him. The black haired girl shook her head.

'There's no way those three got this wrong.'

All of a sudden, Dahlia jumped up. 'I remember now! It wasn't down below!' She ran up to the mast and tapped on the sides with her fingernails.

Somehow, Scourge's crew had disarmed and  knocked out almost all the people on deck. They were now quietly loading the cargo onto their own boat, using planks of wood that connected the two ships. Will vaguely registered that he should be stopping them, but he was still slightly dazed due to three hits to the head.

'Ah ha!' This girl seemed to have hit upon something in the mast. She pointed to the corner.

'Cut it open here.' Someone cut a square in the wood revealing a hollow inside. Will gasped.

Inside was a sleeping girl.

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Ay
I wrote this while I was at the new Disneyland that opened in Shanghai.
I am dead inside because I hurt my foot and I think it's giving birth.
See you in Chapter 4!
Word count: 1352 words