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Blinking the spots away from my eyes I stood up shakily, getting a feel for the gentle swaying of the floor beneath me. Hearing footsteps I hid in the shadows of the dark keep. What I was doing was crazy I knew, I mean I was infiltrating the most notorious sky ship! But I had to learn exactly who crewed the ever mysterious Chain Breaker.
The footsteps grew closer as a little girl with olive skin and bronze hair, wearing a simple white tunic, skipped toward the stairs that led to the deck. She was giggling, I frowned, what was a child doing on a pirate vessel?
The girl was running now and against my better judgement I followed her. She could have been abducted for all I knew and I wasn't about to leave a child of five or six to a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates!
Activating my invisibility aspect I slipped onto the deck. The sacred tree that kept the boat in the air waved in the wind that whipped around the sails. The girl I was following latched onto the leg of a tall, shapely woman in a scandalously revealing chiton and bronze armour. The woman bent to pick up the girl and I was struck by the similarities between the two, they had the same bronze hair and olive skin and the same wide white smile.
The girl reached for the woman's face saying “Mama mama,”
The woman grinned wider, “What is it, Artemis?”
“Love you.”
“Love you too baby.”
She kissed her daughter and set her down, shooing her away and returning to sharpening her bronze spear.
‘The girl, Artemis, is the daughter of one of the pirates on this ship? At least she isn't kidnapped, but still it can't be a happy life…’
Thinking this I followed her as she ran on bare feet up the short flight of stairs that led to the steering deck where a beautiful blonde girl wearing a black blindfold and a sea coloured tunic was holding the oars. We were being steered by a blind woman!?
I was so stunned that I almost tripped on the small dark-haired pale man sitting there with his eyes closed, seemingly meditating. With how still he was, he reminded me of a porcelain doll. His dark cloak spread about him on the floor covering part of his lustreless black leather armour. When Artemis wrapped herself in the folds he patted her head without opening his eyes or even turning his head.
A regal woman in shining white armour approached and reached down, plucking the child from the cape, smiling. Artemis smiled with her stroking the long silver hair that fell over her shoulder. The woman's cold grey eyes were drawn by a shout that came from the crows nest and she started toward the source, handing Artemis to a handsome man with auburn hair and bright green eyes.
The man headed over to where the man in the cloak was, cradling the child on his hip. The dark haired man nodded to him, still without opening his eyes. “It’s here!” An urgent shout came and the crew responded by pulling out various weapons and rushing to the port side, leaving the ship unmanned.
Or so I thought! As the crew rushed to combat the unknown force, the eyes of the cloaked man snapped open. The pupils of his lightless eyes suddenly slit vertically and from every shadow on the ship, countless black clawed hands blasted to man the ship.
The girl steering the ship pulled a rapier from her belt and let go. The rapier, instead of dropping, hovered over her shoulder. The man holding Artemis handed her to the dark eyed man, who suddenly had four arms and a large sword. He took her and used two hands to hold her. A black snake with glowing red eyes wrapped its way around the two of them.
Suddenly the deck erupted in a massive slimey writhing tentacles grabbing at anything they could. The crew fought them, defending the massive tree that kept the ship in the air.
The green eyed man grabbed a bow and quiver, slinging it onto his back and launching into the air. He started to shoot at the tentacles. The silver haired girl leaped onto a tentacle and ran along it towards the main body of the monster. The olive skinned woman followed, grinning madly and clutching her spear.
The pale man and the huge snake were defending the small girl who watched eagerly with a grin as big as her mother's. The dark haired man was still focused on controlling the hands that worked the ship. Occasionally when one of the crew members began to be overwhelmed the black hands would claw the tentacles apart.
The fight went on for what seemed like hours until the tentacles went slack and the auburn haired man slung the bow over his shoulder and dived towards where the two women had gone. He pulled them up as the crew returned to their tasks and the clawed hands receded back to the shadows.
Artemis hugged her protector, who returned it wearily, his two extra arms having dissipated with the rest. He grinned tiredly up at the two women and the green eyed man who had landed on deck and the blind girl left the oars to join them. The dark haired man suddenly frowned and looked straight at me. I froze terrified as he said in a quiet smooth voice; “looks like we have a rat.”
The others turned to me as well, suddenly seeming very intimidating. I tried to back away but was stopped by shadow hands that dug their claws into my arms. The silver haired woman drew her sword and started toward me and my captor used his cloak to shield the eyes of the young child in his lap, grinning widely his lightless eyes gleaming with the light of madness.