The Fallen Crown

ONE

~ RAENA ~

A lantern flickered lazily in the corner of the almost-empty room.

At one point, the room had been the home to mountains of supplies all stacked on top of each other up to the ceiling. Now, after months of them slowly disappearing to reveal the entirety of the spacious storage area, all that remained were a few crates and a single barrel in the corner beneath the singular and quite pathetic source of light.

Above us, the thumps of quick feet and hisses of chatter from the ship's restless crew members acted as sources of liveliness of a sort for me. But even those began sounding disheartening after a while, their steps dragging and their voices as dull as the lantern ahead of me.

Every dip and rise of the ship over the unpredictable waves caused the lantern's rusted cage to spring back and forth between the two walls that made up the corner where it resided. Each collision of metal against wood was like a heightened version of a large clock's hourly bell, the throbbing sensation in my head increasing in intensity with each movement from the inanimate object.

I stared at the flame coldly, watching it bounce in the corner so lazily and yet so noisily—so uncaringly—and my heart settled in the center of my chest as a mere heavy void.

The lantern's thin, white candle's golden flame barely did anything to give any sort of illumination, the dim atmosphere enhancing the lingering reek of mold and urine. I wondered why the pirates ever bothered to nail it up at all.

I twisted my eyes shut when the sound of retching commenced again and I turned my head to the side, resting my temple on the wall and trying to imagine that I was somewhere else—anywhere else.

Apprehensively, once the gagging stopped and there was a few moments of silence, I spared a peek out of the corner of my eye to look at Oriana, my childhood best friend and who perhaps had the most sensitive stomach I'd ever encountered for a newly turned eighteen year old.

Oriana was chained to the wall across from mine with only her ankles bound to the floor by short iron chains that were as thick and heavy as bricks. Her bony, scarred, ebony arms encircled a wooden bucket as if she was embracing it. Her hair, which had grown quite a few inches, hung in tight, short ringlets that hid most of her face from my view.

My eyes flickered downward and I breathed in deeply.

The sight of her naked wrists had me instinctively—almost like a twitch—pulling down on my own, only to be met with a familiar resistance from the chains the pirates put me in just a few weeks prior. They said I had fought back too much, which had been stupid of me. The pirates ensured that chains attached to my forearms and ankles kept my limbs stretched out so I was in the position of a sitting 'x', leaving the majority of my body stiff, immobile, and utterly useless.

The agony of being trapped in the same position for so long was such an unbearable feeling, one that only grew as each second passed. I could almost feel every drop of blood slowly be possessed by gravity, leave my fingertips, and trail down my arms. My toes had long since become cold and numb.

It was a nightmare.

The sound of the storage room's door suddenly opening had me stiffening, my head raising in the direction of the familiar, hair-raising noise. When it shut, the creaking of someone descending the small staircase paired with the dull clanks of boots made my skin crawl.

I hissed when I made the mistake of accidentally tugging down on my chained arms, the metal biting into the skin there and no doubt bruising it again.

A shadow emerged from around the corner, two wooden cups in his tattooed hands. He was tall and broad, the top of his tattered wide hat less than a foot away from the ceiling. His clothes were basically scraps of different cloths sewn together to make an oversized shirt and pants, which were stuffed into uglier looking leather boots.