Quinquagesimus Septimus Gradus

The tension broke away from the helm with a jolt. Mittens the Salty Dog, well accustomed to the consequences of lax reflexes in such a situation, released his grasp. He stamped to an upright position as he bellowed a hearty chuckle. No one heard his cutthroat croon over the blasts of cannons, blunderbusses, and the dying wails of wounded men, but the red-haired brute hadn’t laughed for the sake of a listener. Rather, he had been whetting his own appetite for the slaughter on the boards below. To this end he was successful. His curved blade carved its way out of its weathered sheath to catch a beam of radiant sunlight. Mittens flourished the blade as he laid a boot onto the deck, cutting down a redcoat marine before the troop could drive his English cutlass into the side of Edward Søren.

Edward, looking paler than usual (which is to say his condition was utterly grim), fumbled with the ropes which fastened a cannon to its station. His fellow cannoneers were now preoccupied with a melee against the redcoats, but oblivious Edward continued his charge at the cannon. One could hardly blame him, for he was scant a sea-faring man and much less a pirate. Captain Disado had chanced upon him, taken him as a kind of pet, and, after a quaint number of hours in a dark, wet cell below deck, the weak-willed savant had sworn fealty to Disado and his crew.
To Edward’s credit, he was dutiful. And indeed, the cannons would have been useful if the British ship were still at a distance. But as it was, the vessel was rubbing (colliding, rather, in rhythm with the sea’s whims) against The Accursed Gallows’ starboard side. Mittens had saved the life of a man absent of mind and effect. 

Screams of death sprang up from across the deck. They complimented a gravelly singing voice to together orchestrate a macabre melody of war. The singer was Sam Tattersquall, a man with the strength of four and the weaponry of eight. The machine of his warfare churned with nauseating efficiency as the ring of pirates around him would engage, injure, and inject marines into the center of the ring. Here they met Sam’s bloody, dull dagger or the harsh barrel of a flintlock. The latter of the execution methods was marked by a puff of pink blasting into the air on beat with his menacing shanty.

Such was the chaos of the fray aboard The Accursed Gallows on that day. Yet from a merchant’s schooner or a fishing vessel or any ship at peace, the day was nothing short of splendid. Calm seas watched over by a bright, cloudless sky. Welcome mists of ocean spray to cool the skin. Hopes and dreams spread boundless as the watery horizon herself.

Yet a merchant’s schooner or a fishing vessel or any ship at peace wouldn’t dare to have treaded upon these waters, for the day was as dreaded as they come. Great, hulking man-o-wars encircled each other like sharks ready to strike. The iron shots of enormous cannons shredded everything in their path, boring holes into the thick wooden hulls and decks of the vessels. Lead pellets rained, boards splintered, hulls collided, sails flapped, swords clashed, blood let, and accordions blared. The day was soaked with violence. A day of reckoning for the pirates; a day of vengeance for the British.

Thus engaged were the fleets. The Royal Navy, bolstered by Company ships and those of Europe’s finest privateers, fought to drown out the pirates once and for all. The pirates, by the time of this fateful day, had amassed to a sort of confederation of the sea, nationless castaways unified by cause against the strength and ruthlessness of the Royal Navy’s obsession with naval “law and order.” By this they meant nautical submission to the Crown, as if their monarch were Poseidon himself. 

Regrettably, the Navy possessed the arms necessary to enforce their royal claim over the seas. The intense gap in military might between Britain and her rivals had motivated the flailing empires of France, the Netherlands, and even Spain to cast their resources into an unthinkable gambit—Pirates. The outlaws were tempered by lone wolf warfare and clever survival against every organized navy on the seas. Reluctantly, Britain’s political enemies had come desperate to the feet of the pirates to plead for their cunning, skill, and tenacity in return for pardon, rum, and bottomless ammunition. Never before nor since had the hurricanes of international politics aligned to bear such a grand engagement as was seen on that day.

It was in the warm sunlight of that gorgeous, frightful day that Captain Wellsworth stormed The Accursed Gallows with a dozen of his finest fighters. Wellsworth was the burliest man his country had to then produced and meaner still. His rank had stagnated at captain not for lack of merit, but for the fear he inspired within the upper ranks of the Royal Navy. His unscrupulous barbarity motivated even the cruelest officers to steer away from him. Only the barest manners were afforded Wellsworth in matters of affair; niceties were neither possible nor desired by those unfortunate enough to encounter him.

While his reputation often beget threats of expulsion from Her Majesty’s service, it also had a great benefit. His belligerence attracted the harshest of Britain’s mariners. Beastly men with a lust for blood and adventure. Men with a tendency away from civility. Men who shared in the pirate’s love for freedom and violence too raw for polite society, yet gripped so firmly by headstrong nationalism that they would never think to betray Her Majesty the Queen by joining rank with the bloody tramps. These unique men flocked to join the crew of Wellsworth’s Gadwall. They, like the captain, kept imposing, stocky figures. The biggest and baddest of these emerged as Wellsworth’s personal squadron. A baker’s dozen of warriors fit for service to Beowulf.

The arrival of said entourage upon The Accursed Gallows chilled the fighting spirits of the pirates, sobering them to the nearness of the doom they toiled against. A cool breeze heralded the arrival of the marines as a cloud obscured the sun, dampening its kind light. A whimper emanated from the deck boards as they bent beneath the weight of Wellsworth and his killers.

Edward, spotting the monsters in uniform, grew another shade whiter. He finally grew the nerve to abandon his cannon ropes. He scrambled on hands and buttocks back… back… back… smacking his head into the cabin wall. His eyes couldn’t tear away from Wellsworth and his guard as they cut or shot down two, then four, then eight of his captors. The circlet of marines marched in double time toward Sam Tattersquall and his ring of fighters.

Sam’s song didn’t hitch, though his advance slowed as he took a moment to reload a pistol, then a second. His pirates, however, wavered quite clearly in voice and demeanor. Some of them lost the rhythm or slipped key as they adjusted their grip on their cutlasses and swallowed hard.

Observing the shaken resolve of the bloodthirsty pirates inspired Edward in much the same way as the cry of a hawk inspires a bunny. A fresh wave of hot, salty sweat washed his skin. His lips beat against each other as a string of saliva drained from the corner of his mouth. Edward coiled up against the boards of the cabin, knees tight to his frail chest.

It was in this position that the oak door found him. It collided with Edward’s hip and shoulder hard enough to bruise. Edward leapt from his seat and sprawled over the floor, shrieking. The scent of mead assailed his nostrils.

“Oi! Good ‘ay Eddie,” a voice rasped. A weathered hand clapped Edward’s shoulder, shaking it with a fraternal warmth. “You don’t look too swell, lad. What seems the matter? Oh, there’s a bit more red on the ship than when I went under last night…” the man’s beady eyes rolled from Edward to Wellsworth’s marines, who were now upon Sam’s band. The men were locked in a vicious fray, with pirates slain in higher number than the marines.

At last, Edward’s craven mind produced a name to match the new arrival: Boomer. Boomer produced a ball from his pocket. It looked like an iron cannonball, but it was engraved deeply and had a string hanging from the side. Boomer snapped his fingers, producing a spark. The spark perched upon the string, which burst into flame. A moment later, the iron ball was across the deck.

With his men dying around him, Sam had grown convinced that his doom was come. Rather than sulk in the realization, he rose his voice in a crescendo as he cut down marines. The climactic moment of his song, he decided, would come at the time that his blade met Wellsworth’s flesh. Whether to wound or to kill it did not matter, so long as blood was drawn before the bardic Sam Tattersquall withered at last into the afterlife.

However, his rising note was cut off by the sharp blast of a grenade.

Sam and his few remaining compatriots were blown backwards. A shard of iron sliced his thigh; a second shard pierced through a pirate’s chest. The marines had taken the greater portion of the concussive blast, though. Three of them lost their legs in full or in part instantly. Their torsos fell into the hole that resulted from the explosion, swallowed up by the lower decks of The Accursed Gallows. The rest, including Wellsworth, were sent scattered across the deck, swords skittering over the planks. White smoke cloaked the deck.

Boomer plopped heavily onto the boards beside Edward. A hearty, stupid laugh fell from him as he wrapped Edward’s shoulders with his arm. He ignored Edward’s whimpering as he chuckled, saying “Boys and their blades in a world of bombs. Eh, Eddie?”

Meanwhile, Mittens had fought and killed his way toward the forecastle deck to support Captain Disado. The Salty Dog dropped from a guardrail at the opportune moment to catch upon his blade the cutlass of a marine. Using the man’s surprise to his advantage, he shoved the attacker back and speared him through. Withdrawing his blade, Mittens spared a glance at Disado, the second man he had saved from death that day, and winked. Disado grunted and raised his weapon, rallying despite multiple lacerations. Together, the two of them faced the remaining force of marines as they closed in.

Disado bellowed and stamped his boot before pressing toward the enemy, his black hair whipping in a frigid breeze. Clouds thickened in front of the sun as he did so, exaggerating his dark features. The marines shivered, in part from fright, but also from the cold which had washed over the ship. The cloudy shadow persisted as they took tentative steps toward Disado and his right-hand man, Mittens.

The white smoke of Boomer’s grenade dissipated, swept away by the breeze. Sam struggled to his knees, clutching the handle of an English cutlass. He used the weapon to assist himself to his feet, jeering at the pain in his thigh. Steady, he turned to look at Wellsworth and his fighters. A few of them, like Sam’s own men, were still rising. Others were writhing on their backs, groaning with pain. Wellsworth stood in their midst. He was a gravestone in a cemetery; upright, stern, and brutal. He leered at Sam, hating the hole in the deck that separated them. Sam shared that hatred.

Wellsworth broke Sam’s gaze, turning toward the forecastle. In a matter of steps, he was clambering up the ladder to the elevated deck. Sam turned and marched toward the port side ladder.

On the forecastle deck, a wet sound accompanied a spray of blood as Mittens’ cutlass withdrew from a marine’s ribcage. The body slumped beside him, revealing the lay of the battleground. A handful of marines remained, but they were timid and fearful. Mittens and Disado would dispatch them without much struggle. Behind them, the seas had taken on an indigo hue as the sunlight had melted behind the growing cloud cover. Waves began to engorge, ousting the relative calm of the sea. However, of most concern to the Salty Dog was a hulking man hurdling the guardrail of the deck.

When the man’s boots clamped onto the deck boards the entire structure shook. The marines spared glances over their shoulders. All apprehension left them at the sight of their champion. They grinned, or stood straight, or put on a strong face. All turned back to Mittens and Disado with a haughty disposition. Still more burly men climbed up behind Wellsworth. Just as Sam had prepared for his departure from Creation a moment ago, so now Captain Disado and Mittens the Salty Dog readied themselves for that final journey.

“At least the little lads will die with hope. I hear that makes them cheerier as they meet Charon, who rewards the happy dead,” Disado murmured.

“Good for them. But I want the brutes to be killed in a sour mood, if you don’t mind my preference,” Mittens said.

“Nay, I don’t mind,” Disado grimaced. He raised a pistol and tightened his grip on his cutlass. The men advanced toward the marines.

Once more, the pirates fell into a fray with the interlopers. Sure enough, the Captain and pilot of the Gallows had no trouble felling the regular servicemen, though each received a cut or bruise to mark every kill. It was when one of Wellsworth’s guardsmen swung straight down with his cutlass that the pirates knew their moments were numbered. The brute struck Disado’s desperate parry with such force that the Captain’s black hat suffered a wide gash. A moment slower on Disado’s part and the gash would’ve been through his skull, instead.

Cleverly, Disado sidestepped and leveraged his blade around the marine’s, guiding, then pushing, it to the deck boards. With his guard dismantled so, Mittens was able to jab, withdraw, twice, three times, in quick succession, piercing the man’s kidney, lung, and heart. To Mittens’ liking, the man’s face contorted into an embittered expression. Mittens began to gloat. “Soured him up quite well, I’d—”

He was cut off, gasping as he leapt backwards. The tip of a naval blade grazed a rib, drawing a long strip of blood. A few moments passed, full of clashing metal, quick attacks, and desperate parries, before Disado fell to a knee with a grunt. He had taken a cutlass to the thigh. From his periphery, Mittens could see the blade protruding from the underside of Disado’s leg. The brute holding the weapon couldn’t seem to draw it out, but Mittens couldn’t safely disengage his own foe to assist. He roared and swung at his opponent’s head, a wave of anger bolstering his strike.

His bellow was joined by the burst of a blunderbuss. In an instant, a thousand little puffs of red blood jetted out of Disado’s adversary. The man groaned and stumbled back, confused and with a cheek hanging over his jaw. He thudded onto his back.

“Look alive, Captain!” The shooter was Sam Tattersquall. “Let’s finish off these good old chaps, say?” He mocked the posh accent of an English sailor as he spoke. He hurled the empty blunderbuss at the man grappling with Mittens—for the two were now grappling—and charged into battle.

Captain Disado remained on his knee, unable to stand and unable to free his leg from the torqued blade lodged in his thigh. One of Sam’s men, who had lost an ear and was covered in maroon blood, handed his captain a musket, powder, and lead balls before taking up a guard to protect him. The one eared man was quickly cut down by a brutal slash from a marine, who in turn was sent stumbling back by the burst from Disado’s new weapon. The Captain got to work reloading the gun as another of Sam’s men took up post before him.

The match now even, Wellsworth laughed and joined the fray. He pushed aside an injured marine and collided with Sam, catching him in a bind. Shocked by the immense force and power that Wellsworth could press into his blade, Sam sidestepped and kicked at the man’s knee. He may as well have kicked a mausoleum door. Again, Wellsworth laughed. A sinister grin formed on his mouth as he battered down with his sword, not bothering to disguise the telegraphed assault.

A frightened Edward shivered violently on the main deck. His eyes were wide, seeing nothing in particular and everything in a blur. Men screaming, crawling on the ground, killing each other, holding their hands over gushing wounds. Sails flapping, ropes quivering, cannons and barrels rolling over stained boards. Clouds darkening, churning, growing faintly green in hue. The ship pitching, the sea beginning to boil, angry whitecaps disintegrating off the waves. Bitter coils of wind bit his skin. His fingers turned pink, his eyes widened further….

“And this here one is called a ‘Dirty Sue.’ I’ve loaded it up with gold chains such as a woman, say, a woman named Sue, might wear. When the black powder goes off…” Boomer rolled his finger through the air as he continued rambling, unaware that his sole audience member was far from capable of comprehending his monologue. Were he aware, it’s quite likely that it would’ve made no difference. Edward had gotten Boomer started on his arsenal, and now no mortal power could interrupt his rambling. Boomer tapped Edward on the shoulder with the back of his hand and chuckled, sharing a joke with the petrified man. Then he reached for his thigh and unhooked another grenade. “And this one…”

A strike of lightning painted The Accursed Gallows. The streak bathed Sam, Disado, and the few remaining pirates with bleaching white light. The haughty face of Wellsworth and the grinning faces of his comrades were accentuated by sharp shadows, granting each a devilish appearance. The pirates, in that moment, believed that perhaps they truly faced demons from hell in hand to hand combat.

The thought made them slip in the rain which now pattered the ship. It made them stumble. It made them weak. But not Sam and Mittens.

The Salty Dog shook the rain from his beard even as he slew another British grunt. Beads of rainwater and his sweat mingled with beads of blood from his enemy as they splattered upon the deck.

An opening granted, Mittens lunged toward Wellsworth, with whom Sam was locked in combat. Though Sam was holding his own against such a villain of war as the British Captain, he was not favored for victory. Wellsworth welcomed Mittens to the melee with a vicious strike. Narrowly escaping Wellsworth’s cutlass, Mittens countered with a jab at the monstrous man. With catlike reflexes, the enemy captain withdrew his cutlass and caught Mittens’ blade, directing it into the open air to his right.

Wellsworth kicked Sam in the hip, driving him down and away. He turned his full attention to Mittens, eager to entertain, for the moment, a new opponent.

Mittens settled into a guard. The guard, he noticed in passing, was one he hadn’t used since his days as a young lad learning the way of the sword for the first time. But desperate times called for simple measures. 

Before the guard could be tested, another flash of lighting seized the attention of any soul misfortunate enough to witness it. 

From his position as guest to Boomer’s ramblings, Edward Søren saw the silhouettes of men cutting each other down, spewing each other’s blood, and otherwise disgracing the civilized society to which they tangentially belonged. Behind them loomed a darkened, sickly sky of a color akin to seaweed. Then there was the lightning.

The lightning, to Edward’s eyes, held a character of special curiosity. Rather than a random arrangement of cuts and zags, the strike was perfectly straight. It shot through a thunderhead into the Gadwall in a brutally direct shot. 

And it glowed. Not white, nor even purple. It was green. The silhouettes of the men, the masts of The Accursed Gallows, her sails, her surviving deck rails, her dying crew, everything was washed in a luminous green. 

Edward’s pupils constricted. His mind sharpened. Awakened.

The Gadwall erupted into flames; some green, some red. The ship purged its darkness as it burned like a candle wick upon the dark waters. It dropped, in an instant, a meter lower. Edward was enthralled by the event, his mouth agape as Boomer’s, miraculously, closed into a swallow.

Wellsworth and his men were blown into the pirates’ line. This would’ve resulted in multiple British marines being speared through by eager swords if not for the fact that the pirates were likewise thrown to the port side of The Accursed Gallows by the verdant lightning strike. Together, the men toppled onto the forecastle deck. Most dropped their weapons. None remained standing.

Wellsworth, Sam, and Mittens were the first to gain their bearings. Each, in unison, rose to a knee and faced the starboard, where the Gadwall rested alongside The Accursed Gallows. They turned in time to see the green flames lapping at every surface of the Gadwall, enveloping the vessel in an insurmountable inferno. As they watched, the deck of the ship sunk five meters below the deck of The Accursed Gallows. She was sinking fast. Splinters of wood, nails, and cloth rained upon the forecastle combatants as they took in the unnatural sight. The destruction… nay, the desecration of the proud and distinguished Gadwall.

Before the linguistics of an order could form on Wellworth’s mind, a groan assailed his ears. The groan, as it can only be called, thrust itself likewise upon every mortal body present on that fateful day. It was a groan from the heavens themselves, a great aching of the sky beyond the clouds. It fell upon the British and the pirates and the privateers and everyone else in equal measure to the effect of equal horror.

Turning his head to the origin of the groan—to the black clouds rimmed with green sickness—Edward watched serpents emerge. Sky-snakes. Long, scaled, writhing, twisting, searching tendrils. Serpents, glimmering in the storm, snaking their way from the clouds down, down, touching finally against The Accursed Gallows.

When the tendrils met the wood of The Accursed Gallows’ bow, they snapped straight, same as would a tethering rope stretched to its full length. Edward’s tiny pupils observed the tendrils, absorbing the visual information with detached duty to scientific inquiry. Boomer, on the other hand, had arms and hands clambering over the dozen grenades strapped to the belts that clung to his body. He couldn’t decide which to remove and prime first.

Emerging from the clouds was the underside of a…

Well, that which emerged was what Edward imagined the underside of a sailing vessel might look like. That is, if a sailing vessel were wider and made… rather, forged, from steel.

As it descended, and as others like it emerged from thunderheads in the distance, Edward could tell that this was no breastplate. This was no heavenly body. This was no thing crafted by man. Yet, and this baffled him the most of all the other realizations, it was no thing crafted by God’s own hand, either.

Disado kept to his knee. His off thigh was damaged by the British sword, after all, and he was unable to rise. Sam and Wellsworth, however, managed to stand as the great metallic hull fell toward them. Sam took up his weapon, but Wellsworth, confident in his ability to kill his enemies whilst unarmed and of no particular bond to his blade, had risen empty-handed.

They too had seen the serpents descend from the clouds, latch onto the wooden boards of The Accursed Gallows, and suddenly snap erect. The serpents had hissed a high-pitched whinny. Their eyes had followed the glimmering lines up to the clouds, from which emerged a wide, bowled shape. This glimmered likewise. The surface of the object seemed to ebb. Disado was the first to realize that the ebbing was merely the reflection of the broiling ocean waves against the smooth surface of the sky-bowl. 

It descended lower and lower, sinking closer to The Accursed Gallows but never seeming to leave the clouds in full.

In the time it took the men to retreat a few steps, the mass stopped descending and rested a few dozen meters above their heads. A thin rectangle carved itself from the middle of the dark hull. The rectangle dropped the remaining meters onto the forecastle deck of The Accursed Gallows. Splinters of destroyed wood sprayed away from the impact as the ramp burrowed into the deck. The verdant flames of the Gadwall shimmered against the metal of the sky-hull and tainted the pure white smoke that billowed from the gap.

Men, whether garbed in tattered pirate cloth or pristine marine uniforms, retreated multiple paces from the shining, smoke-laden ramp. Sam, Disado, Mittens, and Wellsworth, entranced by the heavenly presence, glanced briefly at each other in a subtle understanding of perishable truce.

Edward turned his gaze from the foreign, green flames to the descending mass from the clouds. When its bright, white rectangle of light shone, he shivered. The blinding light casted the British and pirate combatants in a wash that left only their silhouettes and long, gray shadows to be received by his eyes. Multiple figures emerged from the light; tall, graceful, and inhuman.

The figures presented themselves to Disado and his scalawags as well as Wellsworth and his gentlemen. They observed the men, while the men observed them in return. The flickering green light of the burning Gadwall, along with the white light from within the sky-vessel, illuminated the figures. They were very tall, black, and fuzzy in the way a horsefly is fuzzy. Their arms were accented with wide, sharp spikes at the elbows and wrists. Black robes covered much of their bodies. Of greater interest were their faces. They, like their bodies, were black and fuzzy. However, in the mass of fur-like fibers, a man could make out scores of tiny, gleaming dots. Eyes, presumably.

Each of the four black figures was holding a long, musket-shaped tool. Nay, weapon.

A fifth figure emerged. The fifth descended the ramp with a peculiar grace. It appeared to be floating. It was even taller than its peers, making it three heads taller than even the brute Wellsworth, yet about as wide. This made the thing lankier and stronger in appearance than its four peers. Rather than an exposed face of scores of little eyes, the fifth figure had a veil of clinking, interlinked chains hanging from where its nose would be down to where its hips would be. A clear slit existed down the middle of the chain veil, as each part rippled independently in response to its movements.

The pirates and marines stared in awe at the figures. Were they angels? Demons? They’ve come from the sky, so surely they are…

The fifth figure levitated higher above the ramp. It lurched forward with shocking speed. A stick-like, coal-black arm shot forth from its side, a claw clamping Wellsworth’s muscular shoulder. The beast of a man was yanked off his feet, suspended beside the creature. He yelped and battered his captor’s arm, which had no effect. His flailing arms couldn’t reach the body or face of the figure.

Something about the way the thin, bony arm kept straight despite the wriggling weight of a huge man like Wellsworth caused Mittens’ stomach to clench.

A tubular object, shaped like a pike, shot out from the slit in the chainmail veil. It too was fuzzy. It originated from where a man’s neck might be beneath the bizarre garment. The men on board the forecastle twitched in surprise as the pike penetrated Wellsworth’s forehead. His wriggling ceased.

Then the appendage pulsed. A slight, but certain, bulge in the tube flowed from Wellsworth’s forehead into the fifth figure. The traveling bulge repeated…again…again.

Mittens, entranced, noticed that Wellsworth’s skin paled, then dried a bit. After a moment longer, Mittens saw that Wellsworth was much smaller than he had been. No longer was Wellsworth a monstrous man fit for legends of old, but merely an average foot soldier. By the time Mittens realized this, he had shrunk another size, leaving him as a tall, thin, sickly man rather than a soldier at all. Mittens felt a pang of pity well in his throat.

Wellsworth had withered away.

Mittens and the other men on the forecastle gathered their wits, the reality of Wellsworth’s gruesome death registering in their minds as a warning of their own fates. To escape their doom, the creature needed to die. Thus, the trained marines and the savage pirates alike drew up their arms against their new foe.

Before any of them could pull the trigger, Wellsworth’s remains blew in the wind. A breeze pushed his loose skin, which waved the same as would a flag. His boots slipped off his empty feet. His face drooped with nauseating effect. When the creature’s pike receded from his forehead, his entire head collapsed like an empty sack toward his abdomen. The men, distracted, only watched as their trigger fingers froze. They struggled to comprehend what had become of the feared captain.

The creature released its grasp of Wellsworth’s shoulder. There was a fluttering sound as his skin drifted like parchment to the forecastle deck. It piled up atop itself. A fabric of flesh wrapped in cloth. An abomination to nature, unrecognizable as a human corpse. The men who bore witness to the display fought the urge to vomit. Many failed to quell the reaction.

An eruption of lead pellets burst forth from dozens of iron barrels. The volley was directed one way—from men toward the atrocities before them.

The veil and robes of the fifth figure danced in response to the many lead balls striking them. The other four figures likewise jittered in response to the gunfire. One even collapsed and, by the grace of God, expired, never to move again.

In the pause of war that accompanies empty firearm chambers, the pirates and the marines spared glances at one another. The illusion of human division flickered, murderous intent fading from their eyes. A mortal and unifying understanding gripped them each in turn. Then the black-garbed intruders returned fire.

From his distant seat, Edward watched the skirmish unfold. Thick beams of green light flashed from the figures’ long, black guns. The beams left black and blue streaks in the air for a few moments. No, not the air, but against the eye—very much like a glance at the sun will produce a phantom, shadow sun for a moment. So the beams left temporary scars upon ones’ vision. The scars included a spray of burnt flakes and chunks of human flesh. The beams eviscerated the men they struck, and more than once a beam impaled one man to tear through another. Following a beam toward its final resting place, Edward gasped when he realized it continued deep into the sea. The place where it struck the waves let out a spray of steam. The dark sea glowed green against the black waves for the moment that the beam scorched the water. Edward wished he had a canvas and paints to capture the image while it was fresh.

Regardless of the danger, Edward was drawn by the mystical weapons of the intruders. He rose to his feet without thinking. He shuffled a step forward, then another, growing nearer the ladder to the forecastle deck.

“Where in the hell are you going,” Boomer scorned, “without me?” The grenadier fussed with metallic orbs hanging from his straps, itching to see what they could do to the lanky creatures.

With firearms expended and understanding that the enemy could turn a man into a smoldering pile of ash with a single shot, the men realized slicing the intruders to death was their best chance. Thus, the dozen men who survived the initial spray of beams converged, swords drawn, against the enemy line.

Through force of desperate necessity, Disado was able to ignore the cutlass still sticking through his thigh. Empowered so, he was among the first of the men to cross blades with the black figures.

Disado had been trained in multiple disciplines, and those skills kept him alive for longer than the British marine who fought beside him. A sweep at the lower part of the creature, feint high, acrobatic wrists and a powerful downward slash at a presumed shoulder nearly caught the abomination. However, it ducked and threw its rifle into the sword’s path. Instead of a clink or clang, the connection produced a dull thud, like the sound created when an axe bites into a damp log. Marking the unnatural sound as another sin of the creatures, Disado scowled and drew back his weapon, slicing it across the gun. Its dozens of marble-sized eyes glimmered green and blue, capturing Disado’s attention for too long.

Beneath its ashen robes, the creature produced a knife-like blade. Quick as lightning, it lashed out and delivered the tip just below Disado’s ribcage. The pirate captain’s breath left him. Hot blood gushed, plastering his clothing to his paling skin.

Sam Tattersquall bellowed and brought his own sword down onto the creature’s thin arm, slicing through. The creature shrieked, its face full of eyes unchanging, but turning to face its new attacker. Disado smiled as the arm, still clutching the knife, fell at his feet. He collapsed to his knees. Looking up, he watched Sam take advantage of the enemy’s surprise. The man had withdrawn his weapon, pointed, and jabbed once, then twice, and again and again and again. The monster chittered and convulsed. No blood or gore sputtered out of the wounds. At last, the creature collapsed to the deck before Sam could skewer it again. Its gangly limbs curled toward its motionless body. Disado fell to his side, striking the deck at the same time as a British marine collapsed, blood and organs pouring out of a gaping chest wound, a few meters away. Disado tried for a nod to the man, but he was already dead, and Disado likewise perished before his muscles could obey his desire.

“For the Captain!” Sam bellowed. Pirates cried ho! and marines cried hurrah! in response.

Mittens, a pirate, and a marine assailed a third figure. The pirate had his throat cut, and the marine was battered in the temple, but in the fray Mittens managed to slip his cutlass into the abdomen of the creature. With a burst of ferocity, the Salty Dog leapt upon the atrocity and clung to its side. He slashed at the creature’s neck and face with a dagger, slicing the head to ribbons. It fell with Mittens to the boards, sending the man tumbling across the deck. The British soldier struggled to rise, his hand slipping on the blood from the gurgling pirate.

The tallest creature, the fifth figure, the Veiled One, had cut down four men on the British side of the fray. The other creature, the final one without a chain veil, had slain two men before Sam wedged his sword into its neck from behind, killing it, but trapping his blade in its rough, gripping flesh.

The Veiled One, arms tucked into its robes and levitating above the boards, faced Sam, Mittens, and the battered British marine, who had yet to rise from the puddle of gore. Sam unbuckled a short sword from a belt on his thigh and lunged at the monster, Mittens taking a stance beside him.

A beam of light, broad as a man is tall, enveloped Sam Tattersquall. Mittens fell backwards, his head whipping away from the light, his forearm covering his eyes. There was a popping sound and a rush of wind.

When Mittens opened his eyes, the world seemed too dark. Still, he could see bones bouncing all around the Veiled One, who stood straight as he had been before the beam. The bones, Mittens realized, were Sam. Mittens blinked, the world returning to its proper color. Except the bones of his friend, which were no longer white. They were black as pitch.

The Veiled One floated toward the marine, who had given up trying to press himself upright and had instead taken to rolling across the boards. The bony arm of the monster unsheathed itself from his robes. A claw-like hand gestured at the marine. The man began to rise. He whimpered. He squealed when the claw captured his shoulder. Mittens sighed, glancing at his dead comrades, even the marines. He forced himself to look back at the doomed marine.

“Make your peace with God!” It was all he could manage to say.

The pike sprang forth. The marine’s body fell limp. Mittens shuttered his eyes, clenching them tight. He tried to focus on his breath, scrapping together a few moments of peace before his own demise would arrive. Instead, all he could hear was the wrath of the ocean, the wooden groan of The Accursed Gallows, the burning of the drowning Gadwall, the blasts of distant cannons, and the passage of the man’s viscera into the Veiled One.

Eyes shut tight, Mittens opened his mouth to scream a cry of protest at his present station. He never heard the sound.

A deafening explosion rocked the forecastle deck. Splinters cut into Mittens’ skin and clothing, knocking him flat on his back. Pain sprouted all around, but it took second place among his discomforts. The screech that echoed in his ears was the primary concern. He shook his head, his eyes still plastered shut, and he was sure he screamed, but nothing could be heard over the screech.

A moment later, his eyes peeled open to search for a reprieve from the noise. The reprieve came in the form of bewilderment.

The Veiled One was no longer one entity, but two. It had been blown into two large, distinguishable parts among many tinier fragments. Scale-like skin and black flesh was strewn everywhere, including, to Mitten’s horror, upon his own chest. A dark gray mist floated in the air. The marine’s corpse, more akin to a human cadaver than his late captain’s, was tangled and broken upon the boards. Mittens stared at the mess of chainmail, black cloth, and inhuman gore scattered before him.

A hand dipped into his vision. Mittens followed the arm to a face. It belonged to Boomer. The madman was mouthing something…saying something that Mittens couldn’t hear. Mittens blinked and shook his head again, the screeching noise finally diminishing. He could hear the scratchy vocal tone of Boomer, who had an expression of childlike glee on his face.

Mittens took the hand and rose, his body screaming in pain. He glanced around the deck. Only Boomer and…who is…? Ah, Disado’s pet? 

It was The Salty Dog, Boomer, and the savant Edward Søren who remained alive, and before them lay open the gateway to the inner depths of the glimmering vessel from the heavens.

“Come, men,” it was Søren. Mittens’ eyes widened in surprise at the level tone in the man’s voice. Mittens had only known it to be skittish. The surprise was compounded by the fact that he could hear at all. “Let us explore the innards of this craft and in so doing advance human science to a realm hitherto beyond the reach of our conception.”

“Aye, and blow some bloody bugs up to bits along the way, eh?” Boomer punched Søren’s shoulder. Mittens patted his own torso, counting the flintlocks that remained. He plucked a blade from the viscera on the deck, shook it off, and found a suitable grip.

In unison, the triad took a step toward the shrouded ramp.