Chapter 2 – Part 11

Delegado entered his cabin. He had no desire to stay in the corridor where he might accidentally hear – well, he had no desire to stay in the corridor. And as he also had no desire to knock on Thomas’ door and strike up a chat, that left his cabin or the mess, and he wasn’t hungry.

His cabin was set up much as Ois’ was, and probably as Thomas’ was, too, although he had not seen the inside of the cabin taken by the half-daelkyr. The major differences were a bird stand, on which Feather was resting, and a mirror bolted to the wall. Ois’ room had a mirror, but it was in her drawers. He probably should have taken it out, but he hadn’t thought of it when he was in her room. It had been enough of a relief to see her awaken, and there had been so many details to tell…

Something bothered him, and he pushed the thought away. He had trouble focusing on the Captain. He remembered the glowing eyes, and how the thing had a way of making sense, but about the other details he recalled little – no, he could recall, but his mind would not focus.

Irritated without knowing why, Delegado unzipped the long bag and checked his father’s body. It had dried fairly well, and aside from its shriveling through loss of dust, it was whole with no decay.

The bag was similar to ones used by the armies of Khorvaire to pick their dead soldiers off of the field. Body bags.

Like the hawk stand, it just happened to be in his cabin.

Delegado wanted to wonder about that, but he didn’t. Instead he turned to Orphan’s body, which lay on the floor next to the half-orc’s bed. Other than brush Orphan off, Delegado could do nothing for the warforged. The half-orc had no tools, and he was no smith in any event. He had no idea where to begin with the cords and cracks and things.

He’d tied the headband that they’d taken from the demon city around Orphan’s head. At least he could wear that which the Balanced Palm venerated.

Delegado stopped and peered into Orphan’s eyes, nodding in satisfaction when he saw the dim glow. It had neither faded nor grown. Warforged did not heal by themselves.

“Well, not unless they’re monks like you that can fix themselves,” Delegado whispered aloud. “Of course you have to be awake to do it.”

As his mind drifted to how he could fix Orphan, he felt it suddenly surge back to taking care of Ois. That had happened several times since they’d come on board.

Delegado frowned, and sat on his bunk. Something was wrong.

He closed his eyes, breathed in and out, and let his mind go blank.

Stay below, popped into his head. Take care of the female changeling.

The half-orc opened his eyes. The impulses to stay below when an outdoorsman like himself should be wanting to go topside…he hadn’t questioned it when he was taking care of Ois, as he had not questioned the impulse to attend to the woman he loved. But why was he thinking of her as ‘the female changeling,’ and why had those thoughts jumped into his mind when he was thinking of nothing?

He pondered, and then saw glowing eyes.

Why should you fight me when you will lose, the Captain had said. It is enough that I am here, enough that I am the Captain. You need not ask questions.

Why should we trust you, you are one of them! demanded Thomas.

The eyes had burned brighter. Be calm, you have no reason to fight me. And they had calmed and lowered their weapons. Half-orc, stay below and take care of the female changeling. Delegado had nodded, put his bow on his shoulder, and then picked up Ois without thinking. Half-daelkyr, bring the bodies down below, you’ll take care of them.

One is dead and the other is a construct, Thomas had said, returning his greataxe next to the staff in the sheath on his back. They need not my attention.

Then bring them below and you stay below, the Captain had said, again his eyes burning more brightly. If you have naught to do then stay in your cabin and think about life. He seemed irritated. Hurry, both of you, I have to get away from the Wastes.

“And we went along like small children who don’t know how to ask questions,” Delegado said aloud, grabbing his bow as he stood. He still had a few arrows. He snapped his fingers and Feather woke up, the hawk’s eyes blinking and questioning. “He did a mind-f’test on me!”

Feather squawked a small query.

“Topside, old friend,” Delegado said. “And quiet. I have to steal some more arrows. I have no intention of letting this galig-eater see me coming.”

Range doesn’t just beat numbers, Delegado thought, stepping out of his cabin with a quiet woodsman’s walk while he gripped his bow. I bet that mind-magic of yours won’t have the range to get me from a hundred feet away.

He thought of getting Ois or Thomas, but rejected the idea. If the fiendish Captain saw all three of them, it would know that they meant battle, whereas if it only saw Delegado the half-orc could pretend to just want to see the ocean.

Of course the plans were to not let the damned thing see anything until several arrows had perforated its internal workings.

The half-orc snarled quietly, jutting his lower teeth while he crept to the stairs that led up to the deck.

Chapter 2 – Part 10

The sky overhead was mostly clouds, but in a few places blue showed, and the sun’s light peeked through. All around was a cold sea, calm for now, but brooding with promise.

The Crimson Ship was heading due west, almost alone on the cold ocean. Its sails were full, and its wheel and rudder fixed, even if its master was not currently attending to the wheel – not physically anyway.

The Captain stood at the port railing, in discussion with a woman who hovered next to the ship. She maintained her speed with the ship, although she stayed next to it, not dare hovering over it (or worse, landing on it) without the Captain’s consent.

She was not beautiful by the standards of the common races across Eberron. In fact, she was hideous. Her skin was the deep blue and violet of a bruise. Pustules, blisters, and open sores decorated her skin. Her hair was scraggly black wire, barely covering upswept horns. Her clothes were the finest linen, but covered in bloodstains and interwoven with bones from various bodies. Her eyes radiated a reddish light, although she kept them downcast as she spoke to the Captain. Her mouth, full of needlelike teeth, was kept in a respectful shape as she addressed him.

“You know that they see themselves as your brethren,” she began. “These are not strangers trying to unjustly meddle in your affairs.”

“Putting aside that I am a wholly different genus that those who sent you, I took my own path apart from those who battled the dragons millennia ago,” the Captain noted wryly. “Your attempts at appealing to racial loyalty are clumsy and beneath a diplomat of your caliber.”

“I only meant to remind you of the respect that they have for you as brethren,” the night hag told him.

“They respect naught but power,” the Captain responded. “And if their respect was true and not desperate, they would have sent Kyrale.”

“Kyrale was not your lover once,” the hag said with a breath, daring to look up into his glowing eyes.

“Do not presume that the sensual experiences of my youth give you any advantage with me,” the Captain told her with a tone that fit the weather. “I listened to you out of recognition of who sent you, true, but I am not to be drawn into the plans and battles of the Lords of Dust. Nor any other group on this planet. I serve Eberron and Eberron alone, and this is known to rajahs.”

“The dragons pointed you towards our beach,” she said. The words were accusing, but the tone was deferential, and she had dropped her eyes again.

“Is it ‘our’ beach then?” he asked her. “You stand proud on your role as a negotiator, but you claim proprietary interest?”

“The mortal races ought not intrude!” she said, unable to keep the heat out of her voice.

“Tell that to the Carrion Tribes,” the Captain retorted. “Tell it to the orc paladins that defeat the agents of the rajahs time and time again. Tell it to the criminals, the prospectors, the riff-raff, and the deranged that come to the shores of that land.” He shook his head. “My passengers may have trespassed and angered –”

“And stolen,” she interjected.

“And stolen,” he agreed. “But I care naught. They are my passengers, and you may exert your claim on them after they disembark. That you interrupt my journey is an affront. You and your masters –”

“Clients,” she interjected again.

“Clients then,” he agreed, although this time with less patience. “You know my rules, the laws that I govern and that govern me. Track them down after they make landfall.”

She did not dare ask him his destination, but instead she played the card that she had been paid to play. “You let the Argonnessen Wyrms direct you,” she accused. “Your own rules have been violated. You were not headed to our beach, not initially.”

He smirked. “For so many years of planning and study you know so little. The Wyrms directed your forces so that when my passengers would choose to flee based on the opposition’s weakest lines, they would flee to my next area of travel. After that I was called by the nature of the beach.”

“No one's blood hit the water!” she objected. “The last battle fought with them –”

The ship shuddered, and the Captain had to catch himself on the railing to keep from falling. His elongated head swiveled towards the ship's wheel, which was now turning to port.

“You need to leave,” he told the hag with gritted teeth.

“I had nothing to do with this,” she sputtered. “I respect your sanctum and your –”

“LEAVE!” he barked, a black ray of negative energy flashing from an upraised hand to pass within inches of her head.

He had missed on purpose and she knew it. She turned and flew westward, wanting to be our of is earshot before she sent her report via a sending spell.

Chapter 2 – Part 9

Thomas sat cross-legged, his eyes shut, finding his center.

The half-daelkyr was naked save for a loincloth. His clothes lay in a pile atop his armor and weapons and few remaining possessions. To his right was a bowl that held the residue of his last meal, eaten almost 24 hours before. It had been porridge, the same kind that Delegado was feeding Ois.

Thomas was not thinking of Ois. He had purged her from his conscious mind. She was a distraction.

Thomas’ body was lean, but well-muscled. His fingers and feet had calluses, and several of his fingernails and toenails were cracked. His body sported several scars, some old, some new. There were many new bruises as well, including a long, ugly one across his back where the harpy had struck his armor.

Thomas’ eyes were closed. His stormstalk, normally a weaving and bobbing thing, lay limply on one shoulder. Its eye was shut as well, and its small brain was quiet. Thomas had spent his first several hours in the cabin re-establishing his dominance over the symbiont.

Thomas had been nervous about how the stormstalk, after many years of being his mute servant, had suddenly grown from transmitting images and feelings to actually speaking to his mind in complete sentences. The stormstalk had not ‘spoken’ like that since Thomas had first exiled himself to the Icehorns.

Thomas would not let it speak again. He could not.

A trickle of sweat dripped from Thomas’ brow, stinging one of the fresh scratches on his body. Thomas had taken his dagger and shaved all of the hair on his body; head, eyebrows, armpits, nether regions, chest, everything. It was a way to let things go, remove them from himself.

Thomas’ early life had been about finding power in rage, then subtlety, and then finally in manipulating the miniscule ticks of magic that empowered so much of the world. The half-daelkyr was able to instinctively activate and manipulate powerfully contained magicks.

Like now.

At first Thomas had been simply trying to remove his mind from the chaos. He both loved the promise of the Silver Flame and he hated it. He both respected Ois for what she had done, and he hated her for lying to him. He venerated clergy and despised changelings.

And he loved her. As a bugbear even.

That was a true irony. It had been harder to love a goblinoid than a changeling. The goblins had been his father’s enemies, so long ago. The orc druids had been dismissed, ignored even, while the goblinoid armies had been the focus of the conquering daelkyr.

That had been a tactical error, needless to say.

But Ois did not know that, would not know it, would not understand. Neither she nor Delegado had realized how carefully he had held the greataxe away from her. The large weapon was enchanted with a bane magic against goblinoids, left over from an interplanar was millennia ago. Thomas had been so careful with it around Flamebearer.

And it turned out that Flamebearer was not a goblinoid at all, but a changeling. A race born to deviousness and lies.

If the Silver Flame was stability, then how could it be represented by a changeling?

These had been his thoughts. Emotional chaos, piling on top of his second daelkyr mind constantly trying to figure out how to refit flesh, piling on top of his stormstalk becoming more mentally aggressive, left him…needing a shave.

Needing a challenge.

Needing a purpose and a distraction.

Needing to let go of one thing and start another.

It had been easy doing that, out in the world. He accomplished that by simply moving. He’d never really owned more than he could carry, so he would just move on to some other place that caught his fancy.

Not possible to do here, he was on a ship. A ship whose master, a powerfully magical being in his own right, had specifically limited to Thomas and the others in terms of areas of access.

Thomas had then realized, somewhere in the depths of his first night, that the entire ship was one device. Like a wand, a ring, or the staff that Oalian had lent to him, the entire Crimson Ship was a singly-contained magical unit with multiple functions.

And now, after nearly an entire day, he finally had found its trigger.

Thomas’ eyes – all three, including the stormstalk’s – opened suddenly as he felt the control flow through him.

The Crimson Ship was his.

He was no longer dependent on the Captain, or Delegado, or the Silver Flame, or anyone.

A grim smile, with no humor whatsoever, spread across Thomas’ face as he stood.

Chapter 2 - Part 8

Ois felt her lips being opened, and warm porridge of some kind going down her throat, soothing her, warming her.

Awareness returned. Thick blankets were wrapped around her. She felt a rocking. A slow and gentle movement.

The changeling thief-turned-paladin opened her eyes. Trained from a youth spent on the streets of Aundair, she grasped many details in her first glimpse of her surroundings.

Delegado was above her, his intense eyes staring out from the greenish skin that marked his orc ancestry, the thick lips around his jutting lower teeth stuck out like they did when he was concerned.

Her eyes focused, picking out details. A shuttered porthole. A wooden ceiling, low. A curved wall and three straight ones. A set of drawers built into the wall. Her bed was actually a bunk. All the furniture was bolted down. The wood had an age to it, a smoothness associated with generations of use. A tint of crimson was in its paint.

“Eat more,” Delegado said. His voice was soft, far softer than any who knew him would have guessed it capable of becoming. He was holding a bowl full of something warm.

“Where are we?” she asked. Turning her head and looking around. “Your father’s – ”

“Body, which you nearly killed yourself for?” Delegado asked. “It's in the cabin next door. What the hell were you thinking? Bad enough that you attempted to swim in freezing water, in armor, after no sleep and wounds barely recovered from – ”

“Mithril armor,” she coughed. She leaned forward and took a bite of the warm gruel off of the spoon that Delegado was holding. “Much easier to swim in. This is good, where did you get it, where are we?”

“Short version,” the half-orc said, dishing up another mouthful and feeding her. “My father’s body and Iron Orphan’s body are in my cabin, which is next door to this one.” She must have whined because he hastily corrected that. “Orphan isn’t dead, he’s how you left him. Just inert. Neither Thomas or I know how to repair him, so he’s – well I put him on a spare blanket to warm and dry him.”

“Thomas?” she asked, after swallowing.

“Kept you alive with a scroll,” Delegado said, feeding her more. “He was holding out, but then he spent it on you. He goes back and forth between hating you and helping you so fast ... well, anyway we’re on a ship. Not like any other ship I've ever been on, but it’s, um, it’s – hard to explain.”

“Whose ship is it?” she asked. She pulled an arm out of the woolen cocoon that she was in and she took the spoon for herself.

“He calls himself Captain,” Delegado said. “That’s it.”

“So he’s from Lyrandar?” she asked. “Or House Orien?” She took some more of the porridge. “Mm, or Ghallanda?”

“No, none of those,” Delegado said, his voice a bit distracted. “He, um, he keeps a well-stocked vessel.”

“What’d you break?” she asked.

“He left some weapon lockers on deck,” Delegado said. “Unlocked. I was in kind of a hurry and I broke it by accident.”

“What was his crew doing here, anyway?” she asked. “You going to explain this dues ex machina?”

“The what?”

“Dues ex – never mind, I mean the ship.”

“The ship’s name is the Crimson Ship, not Doozzex whatever,” Delegado told her.

“The name isn’t important,” she told him. “What were he and his crew doing here?”

“No crew,” Delegado said. "Or at least not one visible to me."

She put the bowl and spoon on the floor and sat up. She still felt a bit fatigued, but other than that she felt fine. “If I’ve recovered from my hypothermia you must be able to explain things to me.”

He shrugged. “I don’t exactly understand it myself,” he said. This Captain, he um, well Thomas and I were ready to fight him, but – um, he told us if we wanted you to die we could waste his time, but that he didn’t usually fight his passengers, they fight for him.”

“What?” she asked.

“Look,” he told her. “It’s about mid-morning on the 4th of Aryth. You’ve only woken up three times in the past forty-eight hours, and then only barely. Thomas stays in his cabin, he won’t talk to me, just yells at me through the door, tells me to take care of you. Easy enough to do, the part of the ship that we’re allowed to walk around in was a well stocked mess.”

“Part of the ship?” she asked.

“Captain made it clear that most of the ship was off-limits, said we wouldn’t be able to open the doors to the other decks in any event, but we were to stay here.”

“How big is it?” she asked, looking around.

“No idea,” he said. “Feels like it shouldn’t be this big. Feels strange.” She looked at him. “I have a sense of the weather, of time,” he said. She nodded, she knew that about him. She’d thought it magic when she first met him long ago, but then learned it was just something one picked up from a life lived outdoors. “This ship is – something is otherworldly. It's space feels wrong.” He looked her in the eyes, and she felt the power of his heart, as she had so many years ago. “Anyway I didn’t exactly go sight-seeing. Every spare moment has been spent in here taking care of you.”

Ois didn’t know what to say. She lowered her eyes…and saw a glint of mithril from a barely opened drawer. Of course. If she had been freezing he would have had to take off –

She suddenly realized that while she had on about four or five blankets, she was utterly without clothing underneath them.

She smiled at him. “Thank you,” she smiled. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. He saw that she realized her condition under the blankets. "Your clothing was soaking with freezing seawater."

"I know," she said simply. "Thank you."

“It was strictly medical,” he added, his greenish cheeks flushing under several days worth of stubble. "And besides, I've seen you naked before."

“True,” she said, secretly enjoying his blush. “However that doesn’t mean that I want you here when I void almost two day’s buildup of my bowels and bladder into the bedpan.”

Her small laughter chased him out of the cabin as he firmly shut the door behind him.

Chapter 2 – Part 7

“Help me get her armor off!” Delegado said, dropping his bow and unfastening buckles as quickly as he could. Ois’ lips were turning a dark gray. On a human they would be blue. The half-orc cursed without words as the frigid metal burned his fingers, knowing that he had to get Ois out of the mithril before she stopped breathing.

Thomas knelt by Ois and fumbled in his belt pouch. He came up with a scroll tube. “Last one,” the half-daelkyr chattered. “Emergency.”

Delegado got the breastplate loose and began to massage Ois’ chest through her soaking wet blouse padding. “She should have left him, my father’s body isn’t worth her death!” Delegado snarled, hating himself for her sacrifice. He could feel a heartbeat, but barely.

“Oalin’s blessing, the blessing of nature, the endurance of the bear,” Thomas was chanting. The scroll disintegrated slowly, and waves of vitality entered Ois. She coughed once, and her heartbeat became stronger, but she did not wake up.

“Thank you,” Delegado said.

“Whatever,” Thomas coughed. He was shivering himself.

Delegado searched for something to say, something to acknowledge. He was not blessed with a diplomat’s tongue. “Thought you were out of magical devices?” the half-orc asked.

For a moment it seemed as though Thomas would not answer. “I kept one I didn’t tell you about,” Thomas said finally. “I – haven’t considered us as a team for a few days now.” The half-daelkyr always sounded resigned and bitter, but now ever the more so.

“Glad you kept it,” Delegado said quickly. “I’m glad you were here.”

The half-daelkyr looked at Delegado with new eyes. Despite their shivering, their wounds, the hurtful things that had been said and done, things seemed better. The stormstalk’s eye, on the other hand, glared hatred. “Her inner strength will only last for a few minutes,” Thomas warned. “We need to find her some blankets. Your dragonmark, maybe?”

“Used it finding arrows, but I can find things even without it,” Delegado said. “Let’s get her belowdecks, see if we can find something. At least we’ll keep her out of the wind.”

“Pick your bow up first,” Thomas warned.

Delegado did, and quickly, fitting an arrow. Thomas slid his greataxe out.

“What did you hear, or see?” Delegado said, looking around. The ship was moving quickly, but no one appeared to be on deck.

“Nothing,” Thomas answered him. The half-daelkyr gritted his teeth. “Too much of nothing. Who’s trimming the sails? Who’s steering?”

Delegado stepped forward, hid behind the mast, then peered around it at the forecastle. The deck of a ship was like any other terrain, you had to use what was there to your own advantage. The half-orc forced his mind back, forced away the fear that he felt for Ois, the anger that he felt at himself, the guilt that he felt for Ois and Orphan’s condition, and the frigid wet that threatened to collapse his body.

A tall figure was at the forecastle, its hands on a great ship’s wheel. It turned its head to stare at Delegado. The instant that the half-orc saw the skin that looked to have been carved from rock with a torturer’s knife, and the eyes that emitted a baleful glow, a chill went through the son of Tharashk that had nothing to do with his swim in the ocean.

“By every manifestation of the Host, it’s another one of them,” the half-orc said aloud.

“What?” Thomas asked.

“Another fiend,” Delegado told him.

“Why are we moving away from the Wastes, then?” Thomas asked. The stormstalk swerved to look behind them, then looked back.

Delegado shrugged. “Who knows, we’ve seen that they fight each other sometimes, maybe he wants us for himself.”

“So what, we just attack?” Thomas asked. “If he can run this entire ship, he must be some kind of wizard, or something, some kind of –” The half-daelkyr broke off as the two of them heard steps.

The vessel’s captain had left his post, and he was walking towards them.

Chapter 2 – Part 6

Ois felt air, a different kind of cold than the wet that had her nearly succumbing. By reflex she kept her grip on the burden that she carried.

“What does she have?” came down a voice. Her lover’s voice. A deep voice used to the outdoors.

“Your father’s body,” came the subdued reply of Thomas, whose strong hands held her. His voice was off, she could tell that the half-daelkyr was brooding.

But it all seemed so far away, and she was so tired…

She felt herself land on a hard deck of wood. Delegado was yelling at her from far away. She wanted to tell him everything would be fine, that the Silver Flame had obviously sent this ship. Although why was it crimson instead of silver?

“She’s going into shock!” Delegado was yelling.

But the voices were so far away…

Chapter 2 – Part 5

Thomas’ mind cleared as soon as the fiendish harpy’s song became a screech of pain. Arrows pierced its flesh in wet thunks, some of them throwing up bursts of fire or electricity as they hit.

Thomas turned and pulled, kicking his feet as hard as he could while maintaining his grip on the changeling. He could make it, if he kept moving. Delegado was giving them cover.

The harpies wheeled and screeched, and flew toward the ship where the half-orc was firing upon them from. Two never made it, falling from mortal arrow wounds into the cold sea.

The third bore down on Delegado and began to sing. Thomas saw the half-orc hesitate for second, then put an arrow through the demon-bird-woman’s forehead.

When the last fiendish harpy had fallen, Delegado dropped his longbow and grabbed the rope holding Thomas and Ois. The half-daelkyr felt the rope surge forward.

If you would but follow your father, you could have an army of orcs, pulling whatever you desired, came the thoughts of the stormstalk. It became loudest when his own body became weakest.

Delegado helps me without me having to grovel for his approval, Thomas thought fiercely.

Delegado helps his changeling woman, the stormstalk noted slyly. The woman you followed, thinking that if a monstrous bugbear can gain forgiveness then so can you.

To that, Thomas had no answer. When he finally cleared the railing of the ship, Delegado would take the half-daelkyr’s gritted teeth to be due to the cold.

Chapter 2 - Part 4

Delegado shivered as the cold wind sliced at his wet clothing and chain shirt. He spun around, trying to see something of the vessel that he was on, but he saw no more than rigging and sails when movement caught his eye.

Flying creatures, coming from the storm that still raged above the beach.

The half-orc clicked the stand down command to Feather, and took his bow from his shoulder without thinking. They looked like harpies, but bigger, and with a fiendish aspect.

Nothing in this place is not twisted, the half-orc growled to himself, reaching for his quiver.

His hand touched an empty tube of leather. Startled, he looked down. Either he had used his arrows up, or lost the remaining ones in his desperate swim.

Delegado moved around the deck of the ship, noting several latched storage containers. He saw no crew, no single being on deck, anywhere, but there were weapons lockers stationed where they would be on a Lyrandar vessel.

The half-orc concentrated, drawing on the power of his dragonmark to find arrows. Any arrows, somewhere.

There. Each one of the lockers had arrows, but one of them had the strongest feeling to his mark. He was ready to slice it open with his adamantine sword, but he saw that it was not locked.

A keening cry, muffled by the wind, reached his ears. He wanted to turn to it, to follow it, but he was at the edge of its range and was able to resist. Nonetheless he turned his head and noticed that Thomas was in the harpy-thing’s thrall.

And that Thomas was the only reason that Ois had not drowned.

The half-orc jerked the weapons locker open so quickly that the wooden top splintered. Inside there were over two dozen arrows, finely crafted and made, and sporting magical sigils besides.

Delegado grabbed the first one, spun, sighted, and drew, all within a breath. As fast as his arm could move he fired, snarling behind clenched teeth.