Chapter 361 - Scars (Patreon)

Athis shouted something in a language Tucker couldn’t understand, then bounded forward across the ship’s deck. He reached the rail, but he didn’t slow. In fact, he continued to accelerate as he leaped into the air. His trajectory took him across hundreds of feet until he crashed into the side of the other ship. Athis’s claws dug into the hardened wood, and he vaulted over the edge and into the group of startled sailors.

It was at that moment that Tucker truly understood why everyone seemed to fear the Kirr.

Athis’s claws whipped out as he became a dervish of ferocious attacks. He ripped into the now-panicked sailors as if they were made of paper.

Red, gooey paper that soon splattered all across the deck.

Even as Tucker watched Athis’s attack, the other Kirrans onboard the ship repeated his actions, leaping across a hundred feet of empty sky like it was nothing. Soon enough, they’d boarded the ship and were right alongside their leader, tearing through the shocked sailors.

However, their foes’ surprise only lasted a few seconds before they managed a response in the form of a deluge of skills that crashed into the attacking Kirrans. The huge dragon-people took the hits in stride. Some fell. Others were wounded. But their fury persisted as they continued their fierce assault. Still, the fight wasn’t to be won in mere seconds, and before long, it had become a battle of attrition.

But with their thick scales, naturally high endurance, and inwardly focused enhancement skills, the Kirran warriors were perfectly suited to an ongoing melee. If the sailors on the other ship had been prepared for such an assault, things might have turned out differently. But surprised as they were, the result was inevitable. Even so, it took longer than Tucker might have expected for Athis and his warriors to emerge victorious.

Which was a shame, because there was an entire second ship bristling with potential foes looming over everything.

The sudden attack had taken them all by surprise, and as a result, the other ship was out of position. However, the moment Athis had leaped into battle, the second ship had begun to remedy that situation. And now, just as the short – but still too long – battle had begun to wane, it was moving into position above the assaulting Kirrans.

So, even as they readied their skills, Tucker decided to even the odds a bit.

So, he summoned his blunderbuss, loaded it with a very special grenade, and took aim. He fired, the grenade discharging with an unassuming thump before sailing across the intervening distance and hitting the side of the other ship with an anticlimactic shower of glittering liquid. That spread across the wood planks for hundreds of feet in every direction.

Then, Tucker summoned another potion from his storage, removed the cap, and downed it before shouting, “If you’ve got alchemists onboard that ship, you’d better ask them what happens when you mix essence of a fire pixie with salamander bile!”

His voice, augmented by the potion he’d drunk, echoed across the sky, followed by the sound of his own heavy breathing. Apparently, he’d made the [Siren’s Voice] potion a bit too strong. He’d have to adjust it for next time.

“Fire pixie dust can’t be distilled!” came a high-pitched voice from the other ship. It had clearly been augmented just like Tucker’s. That wasn’t so surprising; the [Siren’s Voice] potion was common enough. In fact, since coming to Westport, he’d found hundreds of useful recipes he’d coopted as his own. “Everyone knows that!”

“Take a look at your starboard side, and tell me if you still believe that!” Tucker shouted.

“Starboard? There’s nothing…”

“Port, then,” he grumbled. He hated ships and all their weird terminology. “The side that looks like a little girl’s princess party.”

“What…”

“Jesus, just –”

“Who’s Jesus?”

Tucker shook his head. He also hated that the idioms he’d learned over the course of a long life on Earth were completely useless in the Eternal Realm. At least the Radiant Isles had been mostly populated by people who understood him.

“I’m going to count to three,” he said. “If you and yours keep going after that, I’m going to toss this other potion at your ship. The salamander bile will react with the essence of fire pixie, and your little ship will burn to ashes in seconds. There will be no survivors. So, surrender, give us what we want, and I’ll let you live.”

“Let us? Who do you think you are?” the feminine voice responded. That’s when Tucker caught sight of the speaker. She was tall and slender, with vivid red hair that reminded of him of his late wife’s. The hue was a little off – hers had been a more natural auburn – but it was similar enough that he was caught a bit off guard.

“Just a humble alchemist!” he called, spreading his arms out wide. Pointedly, he dismissed his blunderbuss. Hopefully, that would keep them on their toes; after all, normal people didn’t have weapons they could simply summon and dismiss at will. And given that they had no way of knowing that his ability to do so was tied to a skill, they would likely think he was far more powerful than he appeared. “And aspirational pirate,” he added. “To that point, we are going to require you to hand over your alchemical stores. Do so, and we will allow you to sail away back into that godless storm. Fail to meet my requirements, and…well, I’ll burn your ship to a crisp. If you survive the fall, you’ll be stuck in the eye of the Vortex with no hope of escape.”

“Or we could blast you from the sky,” the woman suggested. Tucker wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a slight smirk play across her face. Or maybe it was just his imagination; after all, she was hundreds of feet away, so the likelihood that he could see any expression at all was slim. “That might be a kinder fate, all told. You do know who this hip belongs to, don’t you?”

“That, my dear, is why we’re here,” he replied.

“Then you are a fool,” she stated.

“I’ve been called worse. Now, release your skills,” he said. “And allow my people to board your ship. Otherwise…”

“Yes, yes,” she said dismissively. “You’ll burn us from the sky. Very well. If this must be done, then let us do it.”

Then, she said something Tucker couldn’t hear. Apparently, either her potion was better than his, or she was using a skill to augment her voice. Whatever the case, Tucker was a bit jealous.

After a few moments, he felt the mana in the air dissipate as the sailors let their skills go. With that done, it didn’t take long for the survivors of the first ship to surrender to the Kirrans, and within an hour after that, Tucker found himself boarding the ship belonging to the Alchemist’s Consortium. The other, it seemed, was simply hired protection belonging to one of the shipping guilds.

Hopefully, that wouldn’t cause any issues going forward.

In any case, Tucker soon found himself striding across the ship’s deck and approaching the red-haired woman. She was just as impressive up close as she had been from a distance, though she had a jagged scar cutting diagonally across her face.

“Get a good look?” she asked, jutting her chin out. She was also human – which wasn’t nearly as common as Tucker would have liked.

“I think I’m still enjoying the view,” he said with a slight smile. “What happened?” he asked, tapping his own face.

“Unimportant.”

“Oh, I think it is,” he said. “Our scars tell a story of where we’ve been, don’t they?”

“And what story do your scars tell?”

“A boring tale of a humble alchemist,” he stated. “Most of mine are chemical burns and the like.”

It was a lie. His adventures in the Radiant Isles had often taken him to dangerous locales populated by vicious monsters, some of which had violently objected to his presence. And then there was his trek through the demon realm. He’d gained quite a few more scars during those few months as well.

“I doubt that,” she said. “You do realize that you’re already marked for death, right? The moment you attacked this ship…”

“I could just kill everyone on board,” he said. “No one to tell tales and all that. Just another victim of the Vortex.”

“You would do that?”

He shrugged. “I considered it,” he said. “But before I make my decision, I do believe I’m entitled to an introduction.”

“Where I’m from, a man usually introduces himself before expecting the same courtesy,” she countered.

“Oh, right. Where are my manners?” Tucker said, removing his hat. He swept it across his body and bowed, adding, “Tucker, at your service.”

“Just Tucker? Normally, people have many names.”

“Tucker’s the only one that matters to me,” he said. “And you?”

“Mistress Iris Del Chanarel.”

“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman,” Tucker stated, replacing and then straightening his hat.

“First time anyone’s called me that in years,” she scoffed. “I think –”

“If you two are done flirting, can we get on with this? Or need I remind you both that we’re in the middle of the Vortex, and at any moment, the winds could shift and we could be buried under a tide of storm elementals?” interjected Athis.

Tucker glanced over to see that the big dragon-man looked extremely troubled. Or maybe annoyed. He still couldn’t reliably interpret Kirran expressions. In either case, he was right.

“So, how are we going to do this?” Tucker asked. “I don’t want to kill you all, but…”

“But we’re a danger to you if you let us live,” Iris said. “Quite the conundrum.”

“Any suggestions?”

“Oh, come off it,” said Athis. Oh, it was definitely annoyance. “You both know good and well how this is going to end. Just have her sign the contract, and we’ll unload the booty and be on our way.”

Tucker sighed. “You take all the fun out of piracy,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Just get it done, Tucker,” Athis said. His still-bloody scales highlighted the fact that they’d just fought a battle. More, it promised that there would be more to come if Tucker mishandled the situation.

“Fine. But I’ll remember this,” Tucker grumbled. Then, he retrieved a contract he’d had prepared back in Westport. He’d had to treat with some truly unsavory individuals to get it done without raising any alarms – after all, he couldn’t leave a trail for the Alchemist’s Consortium to follow – but in the end, he’d managed to get what he needed from a wizened, old gnome who looked as if he’d fallen on hard times. It was still a risk, but the gnome had also signed a Framework-endorsed contract prohibiting him from breaking confidentiality. So, the interaction was as fool-proof as it could get without having the skill himself.

He handed the contract to Iris, who took it without a word of response. Then, she looked it over before saying, “This is fairly straightforward. Are you sure you don’t want to add anything else? Like indentured servitude?”

She said the last with a pointed look. With a cough, Tucker said, “No. I think that’ll do. Just sign that, and we’ll commence with the piracy and pillaging.”

“The piracy part’s already started,” she reminded him.

“So it has,” Tucker acknowledged. Then, he shifted his eyes to the contract.

“Very well,” Iris said with a sigh. “But I have to say that you probably would have been better off if you’d just approached the Alchemist’s Consortium with a proposal rather than resorting to all of this. They’re reasonable people.”

“That probably wouldn’t have been a great idea.”

And indeed, when Tucker had suggested the very same thing, Athis had shut down that line of thinking.  The Kirrans were already powerful enough; if they were to somehow solve their problem with overt skills, it would threaten to upset the Eternal Realm’s balance of power. After all, they were descended from mighty dragons. That kind of power was intimidating even to the beings at the peak.

Without further hesitation, Iris – and the entire crews of both ships – signed the contract that would prevent them from revealing what had truly happened within the Vortex. Instead, they would claim to have been attacked by storm elementals and forced to retreat. Sadly, the ship carrying the alchemical supplies wouldn’t make it.

“You know I’m going to make you pay for this,” said Iris as she was escorted onto the other ship. “It took me years to earn captaincy of the Whirlwind.”

It took Tucker a moment to realize that Whirlwind was the name of the ship he was about to scuttle. “If you did it once, you can do it again,” he said. “I’m sure a capable woman such as yourself will be just fine.”

She shook her head. “Assuming those damned gnomes don’t kill me to make an example,” Iris muttered, raking a hand through her hair.

“Well, if you think that’s coming, there’s always piracy to fall back on,” Tucker suggested.

Iris laughed, taking the whole situation in stride. “And you think that’s a viable option?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Working out pretty well for me,” he said. Then, he glanced toward Athis and added, “Now, if I’m reading my friend’s surly expression right, he’s about to explode from annoyance. So, if you would…”

Tucker gestured toward the gangplank connecting the two ships. Iris shook her head one last time, then followed the rest of her crew onto the other deck. Once everyone had been transferred from the Whirlwind, they were set adrift. The contract would prevent them from going anywhere for a couple of days, and in that time, Tucker and the Kirrans would be well on their way back to Westport.

But in the meantime, they had a load of alchemical supplies to steal and a ship to scuttle.

Tucker clapped his hands together, then said, “Let’s get to work.”

“Oh, now that the pretty lady is gone, you want to work,” Athis said.

Tucker made a point of ignoring him. Though, in the back of his mind, he could think of nothing but Iris’s scarred face.