Fantasy 𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐒 — THE STORY

lyn. · Mar 13, 2025

THE CHEMIST.

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MILLY

BYRTHA

MOOD

SCARED, ARMED

OUTFIT

I WOKE UP LIKE THIS

LOCATION

THE LEVIATHAN DECK

MENTIONS

GRAHAM

INTERACTS

qunqun

SPACE GIRL — FRANCES FOREVER

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SAY WHAT YOU WANT

but say it like you mean it
with your fists for once, a long cold war
with your kids at the front

CHAPTER FOUR.

Cut the durian out? Why would she do that!?

“What’s wrong with durians? They’re very sweet! Do you not like them?”

Durians were one of Milly’s favorite fruits! Maybe this guy wasn’t a good choice for a test subject. If he didn’t like durains, it would make sense he wouldn’t like the smell! Maybe she should go for a second opinion. There’s got to be someone on this ship who loves durians like she does, right?

Oh, but this fruit-hating stranger was friendly enough to help her and give her some advice! Milly didn’t have enough fingers to count the amount of times she’s been ignored when asking for someone's opinion. Half of the time they would wave her off and say ‘no solicitors’. Given, she was trying to sell them things half the time. It was still very disheartening!

“I don’t want you to feel obliged, though. I brought some already.”

Milly waved her hands. “Oh no, I don’t like owing people! No worries, if you don’t like durians I can always use something else! Or is it fruits you don’t like in general? Do you have a preference? Flowers? Oils? Even certain alcohols have a nice smell to them! I don’t have any right now, but I can acquire some in the future to suit-”

She would have ignored his nudge if it weren't for his pointing, or more specifically what he was pointing at.

“Is the leviathan some kind of enemy of the Carmines?”

The Carmines? Who were the Carmines again? That sounded familiar.

Her thoughts went back to the women she spoke to before heading to Antares. Ah! He probably meant the Carmine Corsairs! Who were they again? An organization of some sort?

Graham turned towards her with a worried gaze. “You know any place safe from… whatever that boat's gonna do to us?”

It dawned on her.

“OH!” She let out a drawn out gasp as she gripped the stranger's sleeve.

“OHHHHHH PIRATES!” She exclaimed, very, very, loudly. “You’re right, Durian Guy! Pirates, what if they steal our stuff! Oh no! I won’t survive if I lose anything! I have no money, the perfumes are all I have! We have to go protect my stuff before they steal it!”

She released her hold and practically ran down to her cabin.

“I assure you if we get out of this alright I’ll do anything you want!” She announced, already blanking on making sure she was being followed in the first place.

Milly slammed open her cabin door and was relieved to see everything untouched. Which. Why would it be, Milly? They haven’t even gotten on the ship yet.

Stepping over the large messy piles she somehow managed to make in a single night, Milly reached one of her suitcases near the back of the room.

“We can stay in here and wait out any attacks. They are attacking, right?” Maybe they were just passing by! Wishful thinking. “Should we barricade the door? Or look for weapons? I don’t have any weapons, would a bottle work?” Or acid.

She lifted a metal ladle that was one stir away from breaking off at the neck. “Would this work?”

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Atamita · Mar 13, 2025

.
.
.
.

how she's feeling...

nauseous, anxious, "don't wanna die like this"
what she's wearing...

black dress shirt and brown skirt
where she's at...

the deck
in the conversation...

CrimsonInk - Dahlia (The Descendant)

agnes

the optimist

Reaper.

A gasp shudders into her as her hand held her chest.

Ship.

A languish sigh that sounded more like a cry of agony came from her.

Incoming.

The burdening knowledge suffocates her as thoughts of dying as who she is— a pathetic moron who shall be known by this so forth scared her. The thoughts were nauseating but... she didn't want to die alone with her thoughts. Her arm slams her belongings onto her bed before another thought could catch up to her. Her legs shakes as every ounce of energy in her body has been robbed to fuel the monster in her mind: anxiety.

Her body pushes out through the door, relying on her body weight as she begins to talk on the deck, uncaring if the door to her cabin was closed or not. Her head hurts, taking her attention away from what's in front of her as she trips. Her breath attempts to breathe in whatever oxygen it can but nothing can take away the suffocation inside of her. She sterns her steps as she walks resolutely in front of her-

Slam!

Her breathe hitches as the sudden collision knocks the wind out of her.

"Hey you, are you hurt?"

Agnes winces as she attempts to wave off the woman's concern while her other hand holds her face for a moment. The stillness in Agnes' stance brings the headache back as muffled voices shroud around her as she can barely make out

"pardon me"

and

"you can tell me anything."

After a what seems like an eternity of refreshing blinks and sighs, Agnes looks at the woman in front of her as if seeing someone she knows again.

I haven't seen you in such a long time. You'd usually send letters...

Those familiar dark brown eyes with hints of gold like the stars she stares at and soft wavy locks like the ones she'd used to braid as a kid. A thin layer of tear well up in her eyes, blurring her vision once more,

"Mama?"

.

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parhelion · Mar 13, 2025

THE MARIONETTE.

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NEMO

THE
MARIONETTE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

not vibing, not thriving, mayhaps a secret third thing

LOCATION

Quarterdeck

MENTIONS

Lexis, Monte

INTERACTS

Daddy Dream

COLOURBLIND— HLH.

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FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

Our vision of the future's getting blurred
Between the black and white
Naming every shade of grey
Has left us colorblind

CHAPTER FOUR.

Living with no sun is no good for you, they’d been told once. And yet, years on from leaving the Cascades, the sun’s warm presence remains somewhat of an object of abhorrence for Nemo. The heat of the morning light was far too bright, far too oppressive, had them squinting through the blinding glare in a way that moonlight—the far superior light—never requires. How can this be good for them?

The simplest thing to do would be to retreat underneath, back to the safety of the deep hull and the companion they’d wandered away from, but he can only stay low so long without feeling claustrophobic. Besides, they knew when to make themselves scarce. Melchior had things to do. Not everything was about them.

So instead, the boy endured. They ignored the way that the heat—in conjunction with the light tip-and-tilt of the vessel on the water and the hunger gnawing the pit of their belly—made them feel vaguely lightheaded, keeping as still and out of the way of anyone as they can as they wandered up the deck.

There was a buzzing in their head. Today, it had quieted to feel somewhat manageable. Or maybe it was simply a product of the time; the static of their own mind has always been louder in the dark. Here on the main deck, the cawing of seagulls, carried on the sea-brine wind, made a valiant effort to drown out the noise in their head.

Years ago, he’d learned how to pick out where shadows will rest, and how to stick to them for the sanctity that such shade provides. They found themself in a shaded area on the deck near the main mast, exercising an attempt to see the appeal of the harsh light, rather than simply endure it.

There are some things Melchior cannot teach him. Finding the good amongst the struggle is the most fundamental of them. It’s the artist in Nemo: that fundamental, internalized understanding of how shapes and forms contrast and work with each other.

The early morning sunlight kisses bright hues across the weathered planks of the deck, bringing out the deep browns of the grain to create a rich patchwork of highlights and knots and grooves. They traveled their gaze across the deck and up, pondering the thick rope and crisscross of the netting. Under bright light, the faded tan of the ropes weathered white from salt and wear, almost seemed to shimmer.

On arrival to the ship after the disastrous encounter of last night, that had been one of their first thought to contemplate: what would it feel like, to curl their hands around the rough, sturdy fibres of that shimmering rope and pull their weight up higher and higher. To see the ship from the angle of above, as close to the perspective of the stars as anything. They have seen cities and alleyways from top-down, but never a great ship from the same perspective.

The world bursts into noise and movement, and their attention is startled by the din. But still, they do not move, silently searching for and acknowledging the cause. Red unfurled sails, bold against the varying blues of sky and sea. The Levithan has left Antares behind, but Antares seems intent on following.

"You. Come with me… Please."

At first, they do not process the summoning as words meant for them, until the thought belatedly occurs that there’s a man staring them in the eyes. A few beats later, they placed him as the captain of the vessel. Startled as they are by these new developments, no amount of ‘why me’ has ever been useful to them in any situation, so they simply do not ask it. When they are called upon to follow, they follow—because to do anything else would be rude. And to offend authority with feckless defiance is to make life unnecessarily harder than it ought to be.

Nemo lingered on the deck, a silent observer taking stock of both men, quietly assessing the stance at the wheel that the Captain has guided their impromptu companion into. Here, in the bright spotlight of standing out of the shade, the dark patch veins against their pallid skin only seem more prominent. Melchior is going to be so mad when he hears about this. Alone for a short period of time, and once again finding themself in a situation.

They shifted on their feet, uncomfortable beneath the heat. But even so it is relatively easy in the interim, where they are not being spoken to, for Nemo to force themself to compartmentalize. If death is likely, it is not something that they can change (regardless of whether that is unfair or not, by virtue of random selection and will of the stars) so instead they push the possibility of impending doom into the same corner of their mind where they usually push pain when they’re trying to stay conscious under their surgeon’s scalpel, and leave it there. They’ve always functioned better at arms-length with the world anyway, when it feels like they stand behind a window looking through at their own life, present and not. Maybe it will help them do what has been asked of them. Maybe it won’t.

“I am not part of the Ship’s Crew,” they informed their companion softly as soon as Lexis leaves, as if that isn't obvious enough already. But nevertheless, they turned to focus their gaze on the approaching ship, in an attempt to be watchful for canon fire as they have been instructed. “If you die, I hope that the Stars will send someone else. Not because I will leave. I will not. But because I will likely fail.”

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tsurene · Mar 14, 2025

THE ABEL.

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Ephraim

PROKOPIOU

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

SCARED, SCHEMING

OUTFIT

NOT YIPPEE

LOCATION

THE REAPER'S BRIG

MENTIONS

TOSKA, KOHEN, WILLOW, EVERYONE IN THE BRIG...

INTERACTS

Shadow

TOM ANELLO — NO SERVICE.

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Because empires will rise and fall

Like tides and I'll live through it all
But it won't mean a thing without
YOU.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Ephraim should've kept his guard up when their shopping trip in Antares ended up being more peaceful than expected. He should've known better... but he couldn't help it. He was so thrilled about the matching butterflies they bought that he let his excitement cloud his judgement. The insects were two halves of a whole, one side gleaming bright like the ocean under sunlight, while the other seemed worn, like they had weathered many storms. No matter which side he looked at, they always fit together perfectly—just like how the younger brother wished things could be.

Kohen had walked beside him, neither too close nor too far, and for once, Ephraim had let himself believe that they were finally on the same page. The Bazaar had been full of life, with customers and vendors bustling through the vibrant, narrow lanes despite how late it was. Colorful fabrics fluttered in the breeze, and the sounds of laughter, bargaining, and distant music filled the air. Had he'd been any luckier, they would've had more time to explore and make it to the Leviathan unscathed.

Well, Ephraim's luck had run out.

One moment, he was admiring a set of delicate glass beads at a nearby stall, eagerly picking out a few to add to his trinket collection. The next, he turned to find Kohen had disappeared. Not just lagging behind, not just hidden by the shifting crowd, but gone. The kind of absence that rang hollow in his chest, that clawed up his throat with something sick and desperate.

Panic swelled, drowning out reason. He bumped against passersby, knocking over a crate of oranges, sending them rolling across the sandy ground, but he didn't care. He called Kohen’s name, his voice lost in the racket. No response. No familiar figure in the sea of strangers.

Ephraim had lost him.

Again.

His hands trembled, not from fear for himself, but for Kohen. He wasn’t thinking about the danger, about the way shadows moved unnaturally in the alleyways of the Bazaar. He was only thinking about how this was his fault that he left his older brother alone, that he made his older brother leave him alone. Ephraim should’ve paid more attention, should’ve kept him within arm’s reach, should’ve noticed the way the air had shifted, thick with unseen menace.

His pulse roared in his ears as he turned wildly, searching, reaching. And then, before he could call Kohen’s name again, a rough grip seized him from behind. A hand clamped over his mouth. The world tilted.

He was falling. No—he was being dragged. The Bazaar blurred into streaks of color, lantern light smearing across his vision. The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him whole was the crowd moving on, oblivious.

Well, he’d be damned.

He’d lost his brother.

And now he was the one who was missing.

The young antiquarian clutched his arms around himself, holding the only possessions he had left. One was the frame that contained the half-and-half butterfly the brothers had bought together, its delicate wings forever frozen in place. The other was hidden deeper within the opening of his dress shirt: a singular rock, heavy and solid, warmed slightly from where it had rested against his skin.

It wasn’t just any rock. It was a piece of serpentinite that he found in one of Valdioro's mines a while back, its surface a strange mix of smooth and jagged, like something both polished by time and fractured by force. Ephraim had always been drawn to the rock's peculiar texture, the way it fit snugly in his hand. It was known for its striking green hue, often streaked with veins of darker minerals that seemed to pulse with a life of their own. He would have been content to keep it in his possession, had it not been one of the only things left to his name.

His suitcase, the one that he spent hours packing meticulously, was gone. While Ephraim struggled to free himself from his captors, it burst open, scattering its contents across the damp wooden floor of the unknown ship. His tools, his spare clothes, and the pieces of jewelry he had tucked between the folds of fabric were quickly confiscated. Not even his rock collection (yes, he put rocks inside his luggage) were safe from the pirates' hands. He barely had time to register the mess before he was shoved roughly into a dark cell, only managing to grasp onto a mere stone and a framed bug that was considered too worthless for the pirates who had taken him.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he forced himself to look around the cramped cell. The air reeked of rust and saltwater, thick with the scent of mold and sweat. The metal bars of the cell groaned with every movement of the ship, and the floor beneath him was cold and slick, stained with things he didn’t want to think too hard about.

Ephraim wasn't the only one who got imprisoned. Other than that bloodcurdling scream that scared the daylights out of him, there were a couple of low murmurs coming from the other prisoners. Among those who were talking to each other were a man with a grey kerchief around his neck, a wealthy looking woman with short white hair, and... Willow Farchill? She and her mother were regular commissioners back in Zenith, how did she get here?

As if the world couldn't get any smaller, a tall foreboding man, wearing a skull mask fit for the carnevale, appeared in front of their cell to inquire about someone. Gallin Forestson. Ephraim wasn't personally close to the reporter, per say. He simply remembered him as a famed columnist who previously reported about his exhibitions, singing praises like he did to every other member of Zenith’s high society. Regardless of his relationship with Gallin, though, it was clear that Hollow wasn't a fan.

Could Hollow simply be an eccentric crewmate with a unique sense of fashion? Maybe. Even so, the fact that he wanted information about a specific person meant the prisoners’ abduction were not just a simple ransom, and that it’ll take a lot more than abiding to the skull-faced man’s wishes in order for him to reunite with his brother again. He needed to escape now. But how could he pull that off?

Ephraim’s heart pounded as he watched the skull-faced man grow increasingly frustrated with the prisoners' silence. His grip tightened around the knife as he jabbed it into the faulty gun's mechanism, trying to coax it back into working order. Ephraim couldn’t help but notice how strange it was to see someone so intent on threatening lives yet incapable of even maintaining their weapon. Though he had an urge to try to fix it for him, he wasn’t foolish enough to draw attention to himself. Not yet.

As Ephraim’s gaze drifted back over the prisoners, something caught his attention. In the far corner of the cell sat a man with wavy dark hair, eerily still. His posture was unnaturally rigid, his body frozen in place as if he were an antique doll left carelessly forgotten. The man’s face was pale, his olive eyes furrowed and exhausted. His clothes were tattered, but his appearance was almost too neat, like there was a sense of dignity and grace left in him. His hands rested gently on his sides, and he gave no indication that he was aware of anything around him. He didn’t move a muscle.

Ephraim scooted closer, the cold floor scraping against his knees. Once he was within whispering distance, he leaned in, careful not to make a sound.

"Psst, hey,"

he murmured softly, making sure that Hollow wouldn't spare a glance at them.

"Are you doing alright? I know we're locked in this cell, but I want to know if you're okay. You haven’t moved an inch since they threw us in here."

He glanced at the bars before turning his attention back to his cellmate, lowering his voice even further.

"Look, there's a chance that we're about to escape. You might want to get ready.”

His hand slid into the fabric of his shirt to retrieve the stone he had been clutching for comfort. He held it up in front of the man, letting the dim light of the cell catch the serpentinite’s smooth surface.

“I’ve got a perfect weapon here. We could take him down if we act quickly.”

He exhaled softly, his gaze lingering on the man’s unmoving form.

“Listen,”

Ephraim continued, lowering his voice even more.

“It’s up to you what you do next. If you want to help, I’d be grateful. But if you’d rather stay out of it—just... prepare yourself to run, or even just sit tight. I’ll understand, as long as you're safe by the end of this.”

He smiled faintly, trying to offer the man some semblance of comfort, of understanding.

With one last look at the man, Ephraim started crouching, sneaking toward the cluster of prisoners near the front. He held the stone tightly in his hand, ready to strike. His breath was shallow, nerves taut, but he refused to let fear control him. His only focus was on his brother—and the chance to escape this nightmare.

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Gao · Mar 14, 2025

IN-CHARACTER

PURSUIT PART II

ROGUE WAVES

ANTARES.

CHAPTER FOUR

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑, 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈.

𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟔𝐭𝐡, 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬.

In the prattle of restless crew and pulsing boots tendering the Leviathan’s deck, is a fragile interim to be shattered by a keening whistle.

Harbingers arrive before the ruin. Cannonfire bears an awful hymn, and the noise of detonation is always followed by screaming iron as it tears through air. When it strikes, it materializes out of nowhere— a shadowed blur of malice over the stern that chews into wood with the ease of sloughing boiled meat from bone.

The blast erupts timber like a violent haemorrhage, caves areas of the deck inwards and outwards to dilute air with shards and smoke.

The Leviathan jolts like an animal struck, a shake impaled right through its skeleton. Ropes snap taut and sails ripple with convulsion, and salt-sharp panic is slathered into every crease as gravity pitches with the recoil.

If there are warnings or directions to be shouted through the ship, they are staccato, shorn off before they can reach the next breath. A hit near the mizzen, and the noise of its collision buries everything and everyone.

Air is cured with gunpowder, cloying acrid in the throat as smoke rises from licks of fire. There is shouting and movement, the scrape of boots, scrape of bodies, stepping over those who did not get up. Blood weeps in the cracks of wood, dark and wet, but it is easier to forfeit early than speculate which limb belongs to whom.

When smeared by the smolder of shrapnel and ash, something about the Reaper is no longer cogent. Blended into the gray like a phantom with gunports of aching teeth.

Another flash. Another ear-splitting impetus.

Two injuries.

One death.

{IN-CHARACTER}

night owl

EVENT

NINA MOLOTOV

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EVENT

NEMO

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EVENT

RAYNA MALLOR

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Aviator · Mar 14, 2025

THE HORN.

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Macklin

Lowe

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

"Excuse me?"

OUTFIT

Monte's Stolen Swag.

LOCATION

The Leviathan; main deck

MENTIONS

Yasmine, Violetta, & Monte

INTERACTS

Ren

Gao

MAKE UP YOUR MIND —
FLORENCE & THE MACHINE.

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And it's such a shame

That I can't tell you anything!
You won't hear me
Still you endear me now.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Brushing off her brown leather pants, the small duchess seated across from Macklin stood and smiled insincerely, as if standing over him in full five-foot-nothing menace lent her an upper hand in their verbal exchange. Irritation sparked in him that she thought to lecture him on the topic of responsibility, as if his duty to the kingdom comprised lounging on velour cushions all day, eating dainty triangular sandwiches, and beckoning forth the next wench in an unending line. Well, aside from the weekend just after his latest promotion to Chief of Intelligencers, of course, that was not the case.

He resisted the urge to snort at Violetta. He had fought in war on behalf of Solas, while she did, what? Groom her lap dogs all day and teach them new tricks? Macklin bet her most distressing decision on a regular day was deciding whether to wear the yellow dress or the brown dress to dinner. But then he remembered that Violetta was the asocial, eccentric type to eschew court functions and keep to herself, so maybe expecting her to appear at dinner at all was asking too much.

The duchess concluded her address with a foreboding tiding. His interest renewed, Macklin’s eyes snapped back to hers and were transfixed there. Violetta’s face was like fine porcelain, white and hard and yet somehow brittle. And then her expression transformed entirely, and she surprised him with a wink. She snatched a crispy potato off his plate, popped it in her mouth, and flounced away. Feeling an icy chill walk down his spine, Macklin tracked her progress across the dining hall, frowning slightly. She had threatened him. Alluded to having taken precautions that could end him if she saw fit. It was possible that it was an empty attempt to instill fear in him, but the fact of the matter was that Macklin had been unconscious in her chambers for a number of hours with open wounds. Had Violetta not just stitched him up but left something behind? A stone clenched in Macklin’s stomach as he imagined what kind of deleterious parasite might be running rampant inside him right now, and he pushed his plate of potatoes and risotto away, suddenly no longer hungry.

It had already been part of his plan to dispose of Violetta once he got ahold of her agricultural elixir and divulged its secrets from her. But now that he was forced to believe that she held some kind of fatal leverage over him, it was an added incentive to eliminate her quickly, as soon as her knowledge was no longer of use to the empire. Unless, of course, the damage had already been done and was irreversible, a possibility that made Macklin’s heart crawl into his throat. In which case, killing Violetta would just be pointless revenge from a condemned man.

Macklin’s gaze traveled back to Yasmine, who was looking lithe and deadly as ever, and quite alone at her table now that her friends had left her. Still, she did not so much as glance at him in acknowledgment. Approaching her in public would have been a foolish move when both of them worked in secret capacities for the King, yet Macklin wondered if he should start snatching up sweet things when he saw them. But it was a nihilistic, panic-driven way to think, and acting out of desperation did not make for sound decisions, especially when he possessed a flower that might be the cure to Queen Sharvi’s ailment. As always, there was too much at stake for Macklin to act selfishly.

He shut his eyes and rubbed his head, as if he could reshuffle his thoughts and deal himself a better hand. It was then that he heard the undercurrent of uneasy whispers cutting through the dining hall. Eyes flashing open, Macklin focused on a pair of gentlemen in suits and powdered wigs who were bent close together, one of them pointing at a porthole. Scowling a little, Macklin got up from his table in the corner of the room to see the source of the commotion. He discarded his half-eaten meal in a wastebasket, to the vitriolic look of a bedraggled middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed glasses.

When he crossed to the porthole and peered out, Macklin was suddenly glad that he hadn’t forced down the rest of his breakfast, for his stomach felt like it had been inverted inside out. Sticking out like a bloodstain on blue linen were garnet sails proudly catching the wind. The ship was smaller and sleeker than the Leviathan, and moving at a brisk, unmistakeable clip. As she closed, a glint of metal from her crow’s nest caught the morning light, and the waves parted for her as she came about.

As if the other passengers had all come to the dreadful conclusion that an altercation was on the horizon at the same time, there was a thundering of innumerable feet as panicked people raced down the stairs from the main deck, taking shelter in the hold. Voices whipped into a frenzy, urging loved ones to stay close, uttering profanities at the unacceptable delay the ship’s schedule would surely incur.

Well, well, Red Pretender, Macklin mused, his dread hardening into steel-tipped anticipation. Is today finally the day you show your bitch face? “Red Pretender” was one of the various—and least vulgar—nicknames that the sailors in the Royal Navy had bestowed upon their arch nemesis. When King Rowan was the rightful wearer of the crown, it was blasphemy to refer to the Baron by his fabricated title. They also called him the Crimson Carver, on account of the gruesome fates suffered by those in the King’s service who were taken alive by the Baron’s men. When they were in the field and a run-in with the Corsairs seemed likely, members of Macklin’s special operations unit had each carried a vial of potassium cyanide to be deployed as necessary.

In the six months that he’d held his current position as Chief of Intelligencers—or, informally, the King’s Inquisitor or the Devil’s Horns, as Macklin was not unaware of the names whispered behind his back in court—he had yet to encounter the Red Baron face to face. The few spies who did manage to penetrate the Baron’s inner circles all delivered conflicting reports of his appearance, and communications with them were severed shortly thereafter and they were never heard of again (but sometimes their ears or teeth or fingers or shin bones were dredged up, typically in bow-wrapped parcels delivered to a loved one’s residence). Macklin had a theory that there were multiple Red Barons so that they would more easily evade capture. Or perhaps the original Red Baron had died long ago, and he was just a ghost passed down from generation to generation, with a new pirate selected to wear the title when a transfer of power was needed.

To this extent, Macklin coveted what Yasmine knew, his former-enemy-turned-coworker. Given her history with the Corsairs, he was sure she knew something on the topic of the Baron’s identity. But every time he alluded to it, she played coy, feigning ignorance before inevitably changing the subject. So far, Macklin’s inability to produce any substantial information on the Corsairs’ leader was his biggest shortcoming as inquisitor. And King Rowan had let him know it in so many words. After an assault Macklin had devised on a pub known to be a hideout of the Corsairs had gone horribly wrong and a singular trauma-stricken messenger had returned alive, he’d known the summons he’d received to the throne room the next day was not to sing his praises. Rather, it’d been of the demeaning perhaps-this-was-my-mistake-for-not-delegating-such-responsibility-to-an-older-and-more-experienced-officer variety and a lot of it-won’t-happen-again-Your-Majesty assurances on the other side.

So far, it hadn’t. But Macklin was on a shorter leash now than when he’d initially been promoted. It was okay, though. He would curry favor with the King once again when he returned triumphant from his trips to Antares and Siroc, with both of the plants that the Queen needed for her cure. Perhaps he wouldn’t even have to wait that long. The appearance of the Corsairs ship presented a unique opportunity, and fighting alongside the crew that defeated it would surely restore some of King Rowan’s faith in him. It would be the third such ship that Macklin had taken, the captives of which had been sent to the rope in a public spectacle drawn out over the course of a weekend. But it was his understanding that the Leviathan was not staffed by warriors.

Taking a stand against his sworn enemy was not something he had to think about. It was an ingrained instinct, an integral part of the duty, and not rising to meet the challenge would be a betrayal of everything he valued. Before setting off toward the stairs, Macklin scanned the dining hall—which was now suddenly packed with fleeing passengers—for Yasmine. Would she be joining the fight above deck? He expected nothing less of a soldier, but Yasmine’s position within the King’s retinue was unique. Nor was he sure that she would prioritize her fealty to the Crown when threatened with imminent danger.

But his one ally in a sea of strangers was gone. She’d slipped away during the bedlam, and Macklin would not be able to instruct her to get the white widow dahlia back to Zenith in the event of his death. He was on his own.

Walking like a bullet ready to tear through anything in its path, Macklin went against the natural flow of the crowd, deafening himself to the insults that were hurled his way. His relentless pace did not accommodate those who could not get out of his way fast enough, and as he forced a path up the bottlenecked traffic on the stairs, his broad shoulders clipped jaws and hips. He took up space without even trying, and when he did try, the unwary were prone to bulldozing. Macklin grit his teeth as someone rubbed against the fresh stitches on his left bicep, and the simple act of flinching resulted in him elbowing a pedestrian in the ribs. Monte’s slightly snug jacket endured a rip as the staircase spat Macklin—panting slightly—out at the top, after what felt like an uncomfortably warm and very claustrophobic eternity.

And then the patch of light at the top of the stairs was blocked. Thrown into shadow by the figure that was suddenly standing at its mouth, long-haired and pale-skinned and androgynous. He—for Macklin decided that the clothes were more typical of a man—was dressed like a street thug, with a sleeveless leather vest and an oversized belt that drooped like a long-stemmed flower. The pants were baggy and coarse and meant for a man twice the wearer’s width. A fingerless glove with a hole in it enshrouded the right hand.

There were a number of infuriating things about this stranger. The first of them being that he stood dead center in Macklin’s path, with his arm lazily stretched out and propped against a wall as if daring Macklin to go through him. The second of them was the thin smile he wore, as if nothing pleased him more than being an inconvenience in the face of urgency. Third, he made direct eye contact with Macklin, whose knee-jerk response to a stranger calling out to him was to ignore them or fire off something quippy and keep going on his way. But he certainly did not entertain conversations from which there was nothing to gain.

This wannabe thug stood on the topmost step, intentionally blocking Macklin’s way like a final, unforeseen obstacle sent by the Stars to torment sinners. Macklin narrowly resisted the urge to shoulder-check him into the wall and swat him aside, for this stranger was unwisely standing between him and his Crown-mandated call to arms. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was probably a crewmember tasked with herding guests to safety, Macklin would have had no such compunctions about using force. But he had just boarded the Leviathan, and there was a long way to go until they arrived in Siroc. If they arrived in Siroc, at this point.

The man’s voice carried, bright and merry, like church bells. Macklin stopped two steps below him, tilting his head back minimally and instead rolling his eyes impudently up at this new adversary. Then, as if Macklin was an idiot and had somehow missed the direction of the crush of traffic, he pointed out that Macklin was going above deck. More than anything, it was the supercilious you know that set him off. Despite the approaching threat of the Corsairs ship—or perhaps because of—Macklin was feeling abrasive, and he could not resist the scathing words that jockeyed on his tongue.

“The guests will be buried below if we don’t assemble a defense,” he sniped, inwardly cringing a little bit when he realized that, by using the word we, he had lumped himself and this fashion-challenged delinquent into the same category. Macklin wondered if he was assuming too much for this long-haired thug to be more than a standard guest, but the self-proclaimed personal assistant cast aside his doubts. Or attempted to. Macklin could think of a hundred more productive things to do than converse with the intellectual equivalent of a monkey, but against his better judgment, he allowed himself to be drawn into discourse. “Personal assistant to whom?” he challenged. “And why is a personal assistant not at this liege’s side in a state of emergency?”

Macklin was bristling with impatience so much that he almost missed the man’s offer to escort him to his room. He blinked, the novelty of the idea taking him by surprise and expelling his anger. Having spent the night in the duchess’ chambers, he hadn’t been shown to his room yet, so perhaps the personal assistant could be of some use. “Tell you what,” Macklin said in a much milder tone, thinking fast, “in an hour I’m scheduled to have tea with a friend. Should you and I both emerge from the impending battle feeling whole and righteous, you would do well to direct me to his room.” Not wanting to be associated with the minor, notorious celebrity of his own name, he figured it a better strategy to pretend that his own rooms were not really his. Perhaps in a development of almost equal importance, he could even learn the location of Yasmine’s room from this overeager assistant. If she hadn’t booked passage on the Leviathan under a completely different name, of course. Which she likely had.

The assistant made a noncommittal sound in response to Macklin’s request and peeled away from the top of the stairs without comment, allowing Macklin passage. He interpreted the gesture as, if you want to get yourself killed, buddy, be my guest. Sixty seconds ago, getting aboard the main deck had been the foremost concern in Macklin’s mind, but now he climbed the last two steps and paused beside the personal assistant, fixing him beneath a shrewd look. This personal assistant seemed so keen on proving his helpfulness. Maybe, under the guise of camaraderie and friendly gossip, he could indeed become a valuable source of information.

As if he could hear Macklin’s thoughts and sought to dispel any notion of usefulness, the personal assistant withdrew a handful of peanuts from a pocket. He cupped his hand to his mouth and tossed them back. He spoke with his mouth full, garbling the words. The fact that he stipulated he would do well in war made Macklin doubt that he had ever seen a war. Battle-hardened warriors were either good at war, lucky, or didn’t live long enough to tell otherwise. Macklin gave him a side-eye so laden with judgment that it pierced the air like too-strong cologne. “Yes, I’m sure of it,” he replied churlishly. “Peanuts are such a wonderful source of nutrients that I bet they replace having to train with weaponry, yes? They build muscle overnight.”

Ren—as he was called—looked up at Macklin with a clear-eyed look as if a sudden revaluation was being conducted. It was the look of someone who felt heard and understood, saw their inner genius reciprocated in another. Macklin resisted the urge to facepalm himself for wasting time befriending the village idiot. A strong wind kicked up, and he ran a hair through his mussed hair. It was an unwittingly provocative gesture, because there is a dark god and sadistic GM out there who for unknown reasons really, really wants him to be bald.

As if Ren’s previously witnessed lack of table manners was not off-putting enough, he fished another handful of peanuts from his pockets and held it out to Macklin. On the flat of his hand, fingers pressed together long and straight, as if he were offering a horse to take an apple from him. Ordinarily, Macklin would be revolted if someone touched his food at all, but this was the hand that had just been pressed to Ren’s own open lips a minute ago. He resisted the urge to swat away the hand that was invasively close to him, but the thought of exposure to a variety of unknown contaminants made Macklin keep his distance. “Hm, so tempting. Somehow, I'll pass,” he muttered, his best attempt at being cordial. It’s like talking to a child. An overlarge, leather-wearing child who wants to be a personal assistant when he grows up half-past never. “I have a feeling you’ll need the peanuts and their magical properties more than I will for what’s to come.”

His business concluded, Macklin turned away and began fastening his brass knuckles on. He was about to reach for the military-issue pistol tucked away inside his coat when a flash of light fractured the world into a million broken shards, and all hell broke loose.

♡coded by uxie♡

Pepsionne · Mar 14, 2025

THE HUNTSMAN.

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MAGNUS

MOOD

CURIOUS, REFLECTIVE

OUTFIT

classy

LOCATION

THE LEVIATHAN

MENTIONS

MENTIONS !!

INTERACTS

@escapist Maltke

THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD — NICHOLAS BRITELL.

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DEATH TWITCHES MY EAR

"Live," he says,
"I am coming."

CHAPTER FOUR.

The drifter’s voice was buoyant in the morning air, reverberating high pitches and low rumbles as he talked animatedly after accepting Magnus’ cigarette. The bounty hunter eyed the man soundlessly, eyes slow as they began dissecting his movements. On the older side, yet sturdy--he was a man that had seen his fair share of fights. Calloused hands and a sun worn face. Magnus couldn’t shake the itch that there was something underneath the facade Maltke was putting up. The more he picked at it, the more he peeled back. The more he peeled back, the more his instincts whispered to find more.

Did ye have a rough night? Based on that face of yers, I bet bwahhaaha"

He exhaled a breath of smoke, eyebrows raising in response to the man’s jest. He forced out a fake huff of laughter before responding “The usual I guess you could say,” Magnus murmured. The cigarette he pinched absently between his fingers had burnt itself down to the near end, its smoke now a weak film clinging to the crisp cut of air.

Scrubbing caked blood from underneath his fingernails, the thud of a lifeless body followed by the musical chime of tumbling coins. A typical night indeed.

Maltke was twitching beside him erratically. The man would lean against the railing of the ship in one fashion, quickly abandoning that posture in favor of another. Like a toddler fiddling with their fingers in the effort to hide a misdeed.

Magnus opened his mouth to ask the man a pointed question, his fangs beginning to sharpen in the anticipation of a potential target. And if things went his way--a potential kill.

But the screaming groan of splitting wood cut thoughts short. Screams permeated the calm morning air, intruding even the moment of zen that he and Maltke had somehow fashioned in their stalemate.

Far from the rumble of shouts and hurried footsteps rampant upon the main deck, the two had missed the silent panic of approaching danger. There was no missing the impact of steel meeting wood, however, the impact knocking Magnus from the assuredness of his stance.

He looked to Maltke, wide eyed. “If I hand you a weapon, will you know how to use it?”

♡coded by uxie♡

Naomiii_ · Mar 16, 2025

THE HANDMAIDEN.

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ARANYANI

MOOD

Afraid

OUTFIT

handmaiden slay

LOCATION

Two Hours from Antares

MENTIONS

Elera Korey

INTERACTS

Harrowhark

The Great Don Paolo—Tomohito Nishiura.

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"The trees told me about you."

Part II

The ship lurched beneath them once more, and the handmaiden barely kept her footing as Elera’s grip tightened around her hand, pulling her toward the stairs. She did not resist— she had no desire to linger on deck nor did she want to disrespect this noble woman. Aranyani opened her mouth to introduce herself but decided against it as Elera continued to speak of the stars and their inevitable doom.

As they descended, Aranyani cast a brief glance back, her eyes widened a bit as the following ship disappeared from view. The crew seemed to be all over the place. Part of her felt she should be helping in some way, but truthfully there was little for a servant girl to do. Hearing Elera begin to speak of her family, she turned to her, taking the moment to look clearly at her for the first time since they initially met. She was of noble birth- Yani could tell that much- but her style of dress and the things they spoke of were unfamiliar to the handmaiden. Different from the citizens of Empyra.

Aranyani frowned at the worried muses of Elera. “We will be okay, my lady, I’m sure of it.” She finally managed to say. “We are not doomed yet.” They got to Elera’s quarters and Aranyani gave a gentle and reassuring squeeze to the woman’s hand.

Despite her calm words, her own hands trembled. She had lived her life in service, tending to the needs of those of a higher status, never imagining her job search would lead to being pursued by pirates. At this moment, the cruel sea and the enemies behind seemed to hold all the power.

Still, Aranyani managed a small nervous smile. “I am Aranyani. Um, my lady, does your faith offer guidance in such moments? What do the stars say about pirates?” *She asked sincerely, hoping to find an answer for both of them.

Just then, a loud sound, followed by a tremendous shake of the ship caused Yani to stumble. She reacted quickly, pulling Elera into the room and shutting the door securely behind them. A wooden door wouldn't do much when faced against a cannon, but it was something. A sense of security if nothing more.

♡coded by uxie♡

CrimsonInk · Mar 17, 2025

THE DESCENDANT.

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DAHLIA

BLACKWATER

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

MOTHER MODE ACTIVATED

OUTFIT

Other rags

LOCATION

The Deck

MENTIONS

Matlke :3

INTERACTS

AGNES | PENDING BOOK MAN

TAGS

Atamita | PENDING

Wyll

ASSASSIN'S CREED III THEME
— LINDSEY STIRLING.

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Everyone is a monster to someone

Since you are so convinced that I am yours. I will be it.

CHAPTER FOUR.

“Mama.”

Dahlia’s head whips back to the lost woman. Before her should have been a woman around the same age as her, but it wasn’t. Her overly stressed mind and emotionally vulnerable state has left her to believe that the girl is someone familiar — Noelle. That young innocence has haunted her for the guilt and shame she carried all the years. Even reconnecting on the Leviathan there is still some shame that weighs her heart.

Golden eyes softened at the girl. Before she could utter a syllable, the sound of something awful and familiar screamed in the air. Knowing well what it was her body lunged to cover the girl, protecting her from the awful pieces of timber and people screaming. Toxic grey clouds formed with their disgusting hands reaching to taint the pure, salty air. There leads a call to action within the pirate woman to protect this delicate creature. A form of security she never received as a child. But here, she will be different. She won’t be like them — parental figures who are neglectful should be punished. Not her. Dahlia would take on the figure of that guardian to the girl and make sure she is protected. Especially from him.

The Reaper was closing in and there wasn’t time to hide. With Gallin out looking for someone and the other passengers heading to their rooms, it was up to her and the other crew to protect the vessel. By all the fucking stars, it had to be fucking pirates. Maltke where the hell is your old ass when she needed him.

“Hey,” she took a deep breath and looked at the girl, “we don’t have much time. Right now I need you to trust me. I’m not going to let them hurt you. Do you have anyone you can go to?”

♡coded by uxie♡

yokai. · Mar 17, 2025

the heretic.

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Melchior

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

calculating

OUTFIT

trench coat buttoned to the TOP

LOCATION

lab -> deck

MENTIONS

rhian, nemo, yani (briefly)

INTERACTS

blade, ari

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR — bjork.

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eternal return

yes, i gave you fire in your veins, but what will you do with it?

CHAPTER FOUR.

Dawn on the Leviathan had been relatively quiet, devoid of any other unexpected collisions into strange, curious women. Melchior thinks of a blue dress and clever eyes, messy and stylized observations written in water-logged ink. He’d only glanced at the pages of Rhian’s journal momentarily, yet it was like peering into the deepest corners of her head, seeing the insightful questions the cursive handwriting generated and the valuable answers they sought. Unsurprisingly, she had a conventionally Empyrean way of conducting her research, though underneath all the rule-following, there was a desperation in her writing, a sentiment he could see in his own work as of late. That same desperation had led him here, after all, to board the king’s vessel tugging along a chained monster of his own making, obsession digging its awful claws into his brain matter and granting him the will to cross any line necessary for the sake of his ambition. For science, he would do anything. And so what if his heart had given up the fight long ago—logic prevailed over all else. Like those who hailed from the Covenant, he, too, had made an oath and would honour it to the end. At least this vow was an educated one, or so he tells himself.

Here, for now, he is alone, arranging strange, haunting things in neat piles, so clinical and categorized it takes him hours to set up. A bone saw there, a scalpel here. Rhian’s notes were placed on his desk quite blatantly, with the intention to remind him to revisit them once he’d settled in. If Nemo were there, they’d likely tell him he had an eye for interior decoration, ever the idealist. When Melchior was done, the laboratory was more akin to a shrine than a sterile place of science. Some of his ideas for thousand-volt contraptions he deemed were best left for a more adept hand, and so he’d decided to leave those for another day. Perhaps he’d have to file a work order for a crew member to have a look, or, if he was feeling sociable, try to find a guest to convince to be his workhorse for the day.

The sea should save him, shouldn’t it? Save them both. It should bring him the glory he needed to finally feel worthy of grace again, and yet, why is it that when he’s finally here, he feels absolutely nothing but dread? Dread and doubt, mind still running, like a dysregulated cog. There was no sleep to be found for a man like him, since slumber was a reprieve that was reserved only for weaker intellectuals. He craved control, a conductor who desired power over the orchestral hum of reality; His intellect is all mouth, equipped with a starvation that led him to construct and revel in his own world in defiance of the one that chewed him up and spat him out. But there existed the question—had he ever given it a chance to do anything but hurt him?

It takes forever for him to leave his room, and he leaves it reluctantly, thoughts turning to his subject and their whereabouts. He’d grown used to the babbling, sheepish demeanor of his marionette, and perhaps there was a fondness within the familarity, and so Nemo’s absence was felt more than seen.

The deck is where he finds two men exchanging blows, the more sculpted one gaining the upper hand almost immediately. Melchior would have felt pity for the slighter one, if only fascination hadn’t taken over and made him latch onto the… rather odd way he held himself. From the haphazard fighting stance to the overconfident manner of speaking, it seemed like this particular gentleman had quite a few skeletons in his closet, so much so that Melchior spent a few good minutes observing the bloodless fight from a spot against the railing.

A brief change of wind, maybe, is what alerts him to the approaching red-tinged vessel, making him turn his head to witness the eventual cannonfire and the uproar it incited. There was no exact science to war, often dominated by pride and wrath instead of the mechanisms of logic, and so there was no use in pondering the reasons for such showboating. For all Melchior knew, this was some unresolved pissing contest between the Red Baron and the royal family, coming to fruition only hours after having left Antares’ shores. Bracing himself against the railing as he gritted his teeth, he looked to the other two with a clinical eye. No, he could not fight, but he could certainly talk, and that would have to be good enough to ensure his own survival.

”That’s one of the Baron’s fleet—We have approximately minutes, if not seconds, before the Corsairs begin to board,” he shouted with a mesmerizing certainty, only just about dodging a piece of shrapnel that had landed too close to where his shoulder had been. Acrid smoke filled the air, injecting it with urgency. Fortunately enough, the fighter between the two seemed like he could be swayed by appealing to ego. Not enough to enrage, but just enough to court a temper. "Forgive my staring, but I couldn't help but notice that that wasn't much of a fair fight you were having." Eyeing the slighter one, he raised a challenging brow, ”Care to demonstrate your new fighting prowess? Not that I doubt your superior’s tutelage, but there’s no better teacher than experience, yes? And not to worry if worse comes to worse. I’ve sworn an oath to medicine to do my absolute best not to let either of you die in the coming battle, just as long as you do the same, of course. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

Thoughts of his night creature and his unknown whereabouts made him uneasy, prone to catastrophizing. Though it was best to keep his reasons brief. ”I have… obligations to fulfill. Someone I need to locate, before this ship goes to the sharks.”

♡coded by uxie♡

qunqun · Mar 17, 2025

THE BUTCHER.

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Aurelian

Fiocchi

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

friendly (i swear)

OUTFIT

shirtless rip

LOCATION

The deck

MENTIONS

Blade, Melchior

INTERACTS

Harrowhark

yokai.

Hell Above — Pierce The Veil

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Fuschian Purgatory.

Not calm enough for purple, and too gentle for red. Do you even exist or are you just a concept as well?

Chapter Four.

A brief look into the mind of Aurelian:

Did he name himself after his most proficient weapon.

Did that mean that he was good with blades or with longswords? Or perhaps both.

“You clearly have an innate advantage. You cannot deny that.” A good point, despite the excuse and grumbling that came alongside it. Worthy of a rebuttal.

“It should not be this easy to win, though.” Blunt. Rude even. Good job with socializing Ari. “Do not use such a transparent justification of your own ineptitude again. It is beneath you.”

He was not going to respond to the following comment as it was too stupid to acknowledge. However, the acquiescence led Aurelian to slide back into his boxer’s stance to showcase-

Hm.

A ship chasing them. That wasn’t good.

“Is it normal for two crafts to be in such close proximity to each other?”

“No.” Very helpful Aurelian.

Another outburst of the obvious from Blade led the butcher to briefly consider how this person ever touched the ground with such amounts of helium rattling through his mind.

“Why would they follow us?”

“We are a king’s vessel and we just stopped off at the pirates’ personal docks… We should-”

The cannonfire smashed its way into the hull and Aurelian stumbled a little bit, drawing one of his knives, the yellow of his eyes flashing as he glared at the boat for the goddamn AUDACITY to make him stumble.

There was a man approaching, dark and with an air of self-importance, chattering about fighting as a bit of shrapnel just barely missed the chef, the clamor of people running for cover or getting ready for the fight-

There was a man negging them a little. “I couldn't help but notice that that wasn't much of a fair fight you were having.”

“Shut the fuck up. You couldn’t take me either-” Because this was the thing to focus on as smoke filled the air, the scent of blood and death mixed with gunpowder.

…

Those were a lot of words, and the cloying praise was annoying - promises made to keep them alive. Fuck off. He's going to win. Aurelian’s eyes scanned the area for another creepy slithering thing amongst the smoke and debris, unable to find some poor fool that would put up with this annoying shit. “Fine. We find your colleague. Then we fight.”

Because they did not run from battle, they stood their goddamn ground.

♡coded by uxie♡

lyn. · Tuesday at 1:34 AM

THE AMENDED.

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RAYNA

MALLOR

MOOD

Not doing good!

OUTFIT

mighty fine

LOCATION

DINING HALL>DECK

MENTIONS

MADELINA, DAHLIA, AGNES.... ANTARIN

INTERACTS

@AnimeGenork

CrimsonInk

Atamita

MR. RAGER — KID CUDI

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PAST THE WANDERING EYES

of the ones that were left behind.
though far away, we're still the same,
we're still the same, we're still the same.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Rayna ate what she could off her plate, but not even Laura’s cooking could distract her from the feeling in her stomach. It was pure paranoia, a seed planted in her the moment she stepped into the real world alone. Revisiting Antares had returned it full force, and all she could do was try to ignore that feeling, just as she ignored the nightmares that haunted her fitful sleep.

“Before the ship, I’d never left Zenith, so I’ve never seen Siroc. Perhaps it’ll be better this time around?”

Rayna hummed and leaned back in her chair. Truthfully, she just didn’t mesh well with Siroc. She could meet and charm as many rich people as she wanted, but all the flexes of gold and wealth did was remind her of where she grew up. A younger her, spending nights in the rain begging for a donation of a few books so she could teach some of the younger kids how to read. All while a child from Siroc was complaining that her new statue wasn’t shiny enough.

It was obnoxious, and Rayna had to exit conversations way too many times to not cause a dispute.

“Maybe,” she offered a close-mouthed smile. “I’m not traveling alone anymore, so I’m sure that will brighten up the trip plenty. If you enjoy dressing up and the like, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy it…” Her words trailed off as she followed Maddie’s gaze to the porthole.

For a moment, she stopped breathing. Hairs stood on end as she spotted the familiar flag raised in the sea. For once her paranoia was proven correct. Oh, how stupid she was, to think that she had managed to leave Antares behind for a second time. How foolish she was to consider it in the first place.

Names ran through Rayna’s head as her panic rose. Who could she get to first? Who did she need to make sure was safe? There were many people on the ship, injuries were bound to happen. Right now, she just needed to make sure Madelina wasn’t one of them, and then figure out what to do next.

“We have to make sure everyone on the main deck gets to safety!”

“Oh- fuck, Mad-”

The girl was already out of her seat and dashing through the panicked crowd. Rayna stumbled after her, jaw set as she stepped out into the sunlight. Somehow, in the seconds it took for her to run to the deck, the ship had gotten impossibly closer.

Figures stood on its sides, bloodthirsty and waiting. Rayna turned away before she could spot any familiar faces. Her brain was one step closer to turning into melted wax, she needed to stay focused.

She caught Madelina’s wrist and spun her around till she was blocked from the ships view. She released a shaky exhale as she grabbed the girl’s other hand.

“Madelina, you need to get to safety. Leave everything else to the crew, okay? That’s our job.” A shoulder from a panicked passenger bumped into hers and she released her grasp.

“It’s important you’re not alone right now. Is there anyone below deck you can hide with until this is over?” She pulled a dagger she dubbed Tucker off her belt and placed the handle into Maddie’s hand.

“Use this to protect yourself, okay? Let’s find…” Her words trailed off and she looked around, turning in search for someone to accompany Madelina to safety.

Her eyes do not land on a fellow crew member or able-bodied passenger. Instead, she spots Dahilia, and ah. Out of everyone, she should be the last person on deck.

Rayna’s memory of that time was sporadic. Between flashes of broken memories and violence, Amelia Porter was a face she remembered well. The two had managed just fine the past few months. Tip-toeing around each other like their eyes didn’t lock with fear every time the other entered the room. Rayna has long gotten over her initial unease at the sight of her.

She wondered if the girl felt as scared as she did.

Rayna swallowed the lump in her throat. Dahlia could fight, and the girl needed to be hidden much more than an ex-lackey did. “Dahlia!” She started, prepared to wave her over. But fate had other plans.

The noise was her only warning, a familiar feeling that made her dig her heels in an attempt to find purchase on the planks of the ship. No balance was found, so she did the next best thing- throwing herself towards Madelina. A blur chased her vision as her head turned, arms encasing Maddie’s head as rough hands pushed Rayna aside, and the two barrelled onto the floor.

Scraped but otherwise fine, Rayna rose on her elbows just enough to look Madelina in the face. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes swept across the deck for Dahlia, but smoke and powder clouded her vision. She stifled a cough with her hand just as her gaze landed at her feet.

She’s filled with a sense of understanding at the sight of Antarin Estor taking his last breath.

She could feel her breakfast rising up her throat, and every scar on her body burned. How many? Sien once wondered. How many bodies could one see in a single life? How long until the stench of blood became unfamiliar? Sien had burned the flag long ago, and still, Rayna Mallor had killed another.

A hand reached blindly for Maddie, desperate for something to ground her. The touch did nothing to fix her brain's jumbled remains but reminded her of her goal. Blame for his death was now a scar on her back, but she could not let the same happen to Madelina.

After what felt like forever, Rayna finally tore her eyes away from Antarin. She rose on shaky legs, a bruise on her hip making itself known as she righted herself.

She leaned down to grab Madelina’s hand and pull her up. “Come on, we can’t stay here. Let’s go.” Her voice felt weak, betraying the confidence she tried so hard to muster. She turned her gaze and was grateful to see what she thought was Dahlia through the smoke, an unknown woman at her side.

Rayna cleared her throat, “Dahlia-” her voice cracked, “Dahlia!”

♡coded by uxie♡

CrimsonInk · Tuesday at 1:54 AM

THE RAVEN.

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LUCREZIA

CAMBRIDGE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

TERRIFIED

OUTFIT

ABRACADABRA

LOCATION

DINING HALL ---> DECK

MENTIONS

ILYA, DOLORES, DEVANA

INTERACTIONS

VIOLETTA ---> MACKLIN

TAGS

Daddy Dream

Aviator

DA VINCI'S DEMONS THEME — BEAR MCCREARY.

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I BELIEVE MR. GRAVES,

There are tremors around us, like the vibrations of a note of music - hidden music. Some may be more attuned to them than others, what do those people do?

CHAPTER FOUR PT II.

Standing up from her seat to get more of an idea of what was going on, her heart almost fell from her chest the moment the ship began to shake. Screams of horror erupted from the passengers, and her eyes wandered toward the black smoke. In that moment her body resisted the urge to freeze in place. The young duchess before her needed protection, and the people required guidance. An unsettling whisper from darkened corners of the other realm warned her of the danger coming. Goosebumps rose on her fair skin, the hairs on her body prickling with urgency. Her hand rested protectively on the duchess before her, eyes wide with fear.

“You listen to me well,” she spoke with an unnerving seriousness, “go find a place to hide and do not come out until it is safe. Do not fight me on this, my dear raven. I understand you know how to handle yourself, but I fear that something else is coming. I can feel it. Take anyone you can. Do not allow yourself to be seen. Go, now.”

She hugged the duchess tightly, her presence motherly and caring. Ravens were her dearest creatures, and she bore the weight of a mother’s duty to protect them. Those with a level-headed mind must help those unable to ground themselves against fear. Lucrezia knew well that Violetta would protect herself, but even with warning, the duchess would do as she pleased. All Lucrezia could do was trust that the duchess would be alive by the end of this unfortunate encounter.

Lucrezia began to make her way toward the guests who had yet to leave the dining hall, rushing them away from the blast's origin and helping the crew guide the passengers to their rooms. What she didn’t realize was that she was about to encounter the bloodshed the cannon had caused. The mix of blood and timber struck her to the core, her hand rising to her mouth as shock settled into her body like a parasite. What she didn’t realize was how her feet began to carry her faster than her mind could comprehend. It is frustrating to feel so helpless and useful in the midst of crises. She was unable to wield a sword like her sister of the dark, Dolores. Unable to aid those in the act of medicine like her dear morbid skeleton, Ilya. Even to be a great warrior like the woman who has captured her heart, Devana. How could she be of help when they carry the burden of fight in them?

Oh, poor Ilya, you sweet grim man. Your medical room will be filled with bodies of those distress from injury to possibly half dead. I fear I may have to bury you so you can rest right after. But I promise to wrap a bell around your toe until you’re ready to come back well-rested.

This rested on her shattered mind familiar to the night she awoke in the coffin. Her hands reached clawing at the wood struggling to get out of this box she was placed in. Her grimly spirit wanted to flourish and fight like the rest. She was just as much as a lost soul of those who have faced battles before her, and here she stood privileged and ignorant of the true costs these dear creatures put their lives on. Soon her Cascadian blues found the image of someone familiar. It was an unnerving familiarity, but one that she needed some kind of grasp on. Approaching the dark-haired gentleman from before, she silently came by his side looking out to the ship that attacked them.

“I trust you and many others will fight greatly. But I fear that it will cost too many lives. Is there another way?” the noble woman asked out of desperation, “you are with the Kingsguard, yes? Please do not deceive me with ‘what ifs’ and heroic facades, sir. How do you see this truly ending?”

♡coded by uxie♡

Aviator · Tuesday at 5:05 AM

THE HORN.

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Macklin

Lowe

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

"Are you serious?"

OUTFIT

Monte's Stolen Swag.

LOCATION

The Leviathan; main deck

MENTIONS

Violetta

INTERACTS

Lucrezia

CrimsonInk

HEAD SHRINK —
MOTHER MOTHER.

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Have you been half asleep

And have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls
The young sailors?

CHAPTER FOUR.

In spine-tingling unison, a row of panels peeled back along the Corsairs ship’s flank, exposing a line of cannons that pointed at the Leviathan like a jury’s worth of accusatory fingers. Macklin’s blood ran cold. He threw himself flat on the deck, almost slicing his cheek on one of the spikes that jutted from his brass knuckles, as the world splintered into insanity. He felt more than heard the deafening rumble that ensued, for it was so loud that it defied metrics of sound as it thrummed in his bones. He buried his face in the crook of his arm as a storm of ash, smoke, plaster, and splinters of wood rained down on the deck. The air stank of something metallic, like spilled blood and bad intentions.

Finally, when the roar shrilled into a high-pitched ringing, he dared to poke his head up. His eyes burned when he opened them, but he squinted through the haze to see the Reaper’s gunners working furiously, preparing another volley. But there was a strategic disadvantage of firing in volleys, because it gave the sailors aboard the targeted ship approximately a minute-long interval to muster a defense and perhaps retaliate. Staggered shots were better, because they filled the enemy with fear of when the other shoe might drop, grinding any productive activity to a halt.

The question remained how Macklin would use his one precious, invaluable minute. And the answer leapt into his hand. It was an instinctive, fluid motion: drawing his military-issue pistol and cocking back the hammer. Resolved to pick off as many red vests as he could, he scrambled to the rail for cover and aimed. When out of the corner of his eye, a shadow swooped down on him like an angel of death. Macklin startled just as he squeezed the trigger, and his shot went wide, puncturing a tiny hole through a crimson sail.

Wild thoughts that this was an assassin sneaking up on him whirled in his mind, and he almost turned his gun on the silhouette of a woman in a dress. But this fear was staved off by the knowledge that the Corsairs had yet to cast nets to board, so it must be one of the Leviathan’s own. Given her ridiculously impractical attire for manual labor, she had to have been a passenger. She wore a sleek black dress with a pencil skirt and sheer, puffy sleeves, and her skin was so pale that she could have just crawled from the crypt. Dark hair was piled atop her head in an elegant updo. The cloud of debris did little to abate the burning intensity of her bright gaze.

Dimly, as if the pernicious smoke had swirled into his mind and muddled it, he recognized this ghostly woman as the companion with whom Violetta had departed the dining hall. Their heads had been bent together and they’d exchanged a sly smile, like two schoolgirls at Empyra Academy catching up on the latest gossip. His fury that she’d made him waste a shot rapidly shifted into interest, and then frustration. An opportunity to gather information on his newest reluctant ally had presented itself to him on a silver platter, but there was no time. Dammit, woman, he growled internally. At any other time, I would love to pick your brain. But if I do it now, those red-feathered crows will pick my bones. Macklin didn’t believe in the Stars or in anything besides the virtue of King Rowan’s reign, but if he were to entertain the possibility of their existence, they had a twisted fucking sense of humor.

He was keenly aware of the dwindling seconds until the Leviathan suffered another barrage, but he doubted this walking phantom shared his misgivings. For she was prattling on with existential questions, as if Macklin was a prophet who could give her a glimpse of the future. Despite himself and the urgency of the situation, he found himself nodding sagely in response to her nonsense musings. “Yes, as a matter of fact, you may be onto something,” he replied flatly. “Instead of fighting, we could settle this conflict of philosophies over tea and scones. There will be ambient music present to soothe the soul, and we will exchange intellectual ideas diplomatically in a proper salon. Perhaps we’ll even crochet together to foster a sense of friendship and exchange the resulting garments. I’ve been told I make the comfiest scarves.”

The shifting smoke hid the woman’s expression at his scathing sarcasm, and perhaps that was for the best. She was quiet for a moment, and Macklin wondered if it was a pensive pause, contemplating the likelihood of his suggestion.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he burst out, fed up with the frivolity of this conversation and this woman’s disregard for danger. “Get down before a cannonball rips your fool head off!” He lunged and snatched the woman’s wrist and yanked her down beside him, her skirts puddling on the deck like a dark stain. Macklin tore his gaze away from her and peered through the smog at the enemy ship, poking his pistol above the rail. “Do you really want to know how soldiers at sea settle our differences, milady?” he mocked. Surely only a noblewoman could believe flowery language would shield her from death. “With blood. And do you know how this ends? With the pig head of the bastard captaining that ship on a pike. Allow me to demonstrate.” With that, Macklin grit his teeth and opened a spray of bullets on the Reaper’s infantry soldiers.

♡coded by uxie♡

LowkeyLovingLoki · Tuesday at 7:20 AM

THE AGNATE.

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VYLAN RAGNAR

RAGNAR

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

mm so soundly asleepWHAT THE FUCKKKKK

OUTFIT

here

LOCATION

Leviathan - Main Deck

INTERACTIONS

none... yet!

TAGS

none... yet!

who we are - hozier

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THIS PHANTOM LIFE

sharpens like an image
but it sharpens like a knife

SEASON TWO.

Everything they said about waves and the ocean lulling a person to sleep turned out to be very true. Vylan couldn't remember the last time he'd been on a boat, if ever, and he was a little anxious he might turn out to be seasick. This turned out not to be the case - in fact, moments after stepping on the Leviathan and laying down in his cabin, Vylan was snoring, luggage still packed. He was a deep sleeper, anyway. It was one of his main issues. Being asleep was far, far more preferable than being awake. He didn't have to think, or stress, or smile, or laugh, or be conscious. Really, sleep was his favourite way of existing.

He dreamt, often. Weird dreams. Like being born, but... not. Dreams with auras of existence and death and birth and the end of it all. In most of his dreams, he'd be in a lake. Swimming, and swimming, and swimming. He'd be underwater, fighting to get to the surface, but it would always be just out of reach. He'd try for what felt like hours, waiting to drown, to become so exhausted he couldn't try any longer, but it would never happen. He'd be constantly, constantly reaching lightest part where the sun met the water, and then he'd suddenly be in the dark again, making the trip once more.

This time, when he slept, though he dreamt of the lake again, this was different.

He sat at the bottom, almost pitch-black around him, in complete silence. He could breathe, but he knew, he still knew he was in the lake. If he looked above him he could see all the people swimming along the surface. His family. People he'd served in the tavern. Children he'd passed by in the street. They all swam above him, floating, whilst he had sunk. Looking around him, Vylan felt his eyes drawn to a dull light in the distance, still on the bottom of the lake. Standing slowly, Vylan shuffled toward the light, the water barely even fighting him.

He came upon a gate, like one that would protect castle walls. The light emitted from a small gap at the bottom. Vylan ran his hands along the metal of the gate - it was cold. Merciless. Colder, somehow, than the water. He turned away, and looked back up at the surface. The people were so far now. He wondered how they swam so easily, how they reached the surface and remained there. He wondered how they dealt with the sun, the noise. Down here, it was so... quiet. Peaceful.

Vylan turned back to the gate. A lever stuck out on the right side, covered in moss and seaweed. Vylan rested his hand upon it. He felt compelled to pull it down. It was metal, too, but much warmer than the door. It was inviting. Vylan didn't know what was stopping him. He looked once more at the gate, heart pounding. Finally, he looked back to the lever. He wrapped his hand around it, he had it in his grip, he-

Vylan was thrown out of his bed by an impact on the ship; even if he hadn't been, the sound alone would have woken him. Barely awake, but certainly no longer asleep, Vylan sat up on the ground, sweat beading on his forehead. He stood, getting his bearings, and rushed out of his cabin. Only then did he realise that there were people everywhere, and they were absolutely freaking out. He heard 'ship', 'pirates', 'cannonfire'. Vylan froze outside his cabin door.

Pirates? Now? Here? What, attacking them? Vylan suddenly felt stupid. Of course, attacking them. He turned back toward his cabin door, and froze again. God, what to do, what to do? He couldn't sit inside and just pray - he wasn't a religious man, anyway, and that would be awfully cowardly.

"Fuck, fuck fuck,"

he muttered, hands shaking. He turned away from his cabin, then towards it, then away again, then towards it once more, and then, finally, he turned away and ran up to the main deck, his legs threatening to collapse beneath him.

Once he reached the main deck, he immediately regretted being there. The smoke of the cannons filled his lungs, and the people strewn about either injured or simply crawling for a place to hide was overwhelming.

"Fuck, Christ, okay, fuck,"

he crouched down, suddenly feeling very exposed, before standing back up the moment he realised the body he crouched next to was a dead one. Vylan could feel the sick threatening to come up his throat, but he knew he had no time, no chances, so he swallowed it back down.

Stepping away, Vylan spotted a small knife on the ground and, in a moment of spontaneity, grabbed it. As soon as he did, he wondered how the hell that was going to protect him from a cannonball, but at least felt like he had something.

♡coded by uxie♡

parhelion · Tuesday at 9:04 AM

THE MARIONETTE.

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NEMO

THE
MARIONETTE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

disassociated, injured kicked puppy

LOCATION

Quarterdeck

MENTIONS

Melchior

INTERACTS

Monte [vicinity, but not mentioned]

EUCLID— Sleep Token.

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MY HEAVY HEAD--

--won't stop turning!
If my fate is a bad collision
And my mind is an open highway
Give me the twilight two-way vision

CHAPTER FOUR.

There was no time to move. No time to brace. There was no time for warnings -- but in truth, even if there had been, maybe Nemo would still have missed his cue. That he was out of his depth from the get-go was undeniable, that he was in the immediate firing line was predictable--had been predicted--but even so, eating his words always came with a bitter taste. There is no luck in matters of Fate—because luck would imply that there is some amount of give to indomitable things. So at what point did it toe over the line between manifestation into simple premonition to vocally allege their own inevitable failing and immediately prove it true?

Too often, they could not tell the future and the present. Life so constantly felt like it happened a beat too late. Like Nemo was a rhythm out of metronome with the rest of the world. Red string marionette, doused in crimson and propelled along by the unloving hands of fate. Life didn’t slow down—they just couldn’t keep up. Even the cry from the shock of collision into the deck’s banister came delayed, and the strangled sound, though loud in their own ears, doesn’t reach much higher than the pitch of a pitiful whimper.

Faint sensation trickled down the side of their dirtied face, drifted in the edge of their peripheral vision as the colours of the world blurred and shifted in smoky, sulphurous hues. Nemo blinked long and hard to clear the black haze of spots from their eyes as they tried to sit up. Elbows pressed against the debris littered floor below, and trembling, forgot to support his weight as he dropped limply back on to his back again. His hand drifted to his midriff and came away coated in the red that was steadily seeping through his clothes.

Nemo stared expressionlessly at his fingers for a couple of seconds.

"He’s injured." Nemo didn't realise he said those words aloud. He made the bewildering observation with all the detached curiosity of a bystander analyzing the situation, observing it distantly as if from afar. A couple of racing heartbeats later, the ‘he’ became more personal in his mind, became "I’m injured" as it slowly processed.

Such was the will of the Stars.

He had never been much comfortable taking up space. It was his own life, dripping in red haze from his fingertips. One of the issues with constant exposure to high-stakes stressors meant that his body didn’t know how to react differently to what could be critical danger in comparison to the apathetic dissection of science. Overused glands meant that his adrenaline response was simply… muted. Even after puzzling out that the blood belonged to him, it still took him longer than it should have to realise that the pain swimming absently around the edge of his awareness was his own.

Years worth of institutional teachings stuttered tiredly across his mind. A religion that does not believe in medicine or intervention must in some way compensate with other schoolings. A somewhat-active denial of the presence of pain’s existence had gotten them stubbornly through lonely youth in the Spire, and still somewhat sustained them under their puppetmaster’s hand to this day. A crying babe, never reassured, learns eventually that in order to find some modicum of peace it must learn to self soothe. And just how many times had Nemo found himself spiraling on cold marble floors in his room in the Spire, caught by nothing and nobody except the fact his own limbs could not clip through the floor?

Such was the will of the Stars.

He tilted his head back, eyes stinging. From smoke or from the involuntary tears of his body’s reaction, he couldn’t tell. He rasped in a breath, briefly shuttering topaz eyes.

Melchior was going to be so angry at him. And he was tired. And it was cold. Where did the sun go? It wasn't good to live without sun. Survival instinct kicked in, a stutter-staccato surge of sudden willpower; a tired but defiant urge to not drown quietly in the undertow of the numbness threatening to overtake. Nemo gritted his teeth and remembered what he constantly had to relearn every single time he split from his own awareness: how to fight his way back to lucidity. Beyond good, beyond evil, beyond indomitable – Nemo was a marionette still connected to the performance-conviction act of wanting to live. Pulled along by fate’s red strings, but attached nonetheless to his own fate. He reminded himself to focus. To concern himself with survival and worry about the sin of the act later.

One-two-three-four. The gasped remnants of one of their usual grounding exercises are more breaths than words, eyes surging wide open as they forced themself to sit up, remembering to press their hand to their blood-soaked side. Nemo wasn’t anywhere close enough to be aware enough to be able to piece through and localize all the sources of his own pain. Pain danced in and out of awareness, there and gone, as intangible as the cannon smoke surrounding them. His head swam. His vision blurred. He struggled against the discomfort.

There could be a hundred different ways that he was hurting, which wasn't exactly a reassuring thought, all things considered. There seemed to be some sort of head wound, bleeding down near his eye. The big wound on his side, where his hand pressed fruitlessly. Could be shrapnel—seemed likely. Or alternatively he could be lucky, could be nothing more than stitches being torn, a wound that seemed worse than it was. He reached beneath his torn shirt with his other hand, muddily trying to assess whether or not the many stitches hidden beneath were torn. The verdict was a definite and worrying yes-- a lot of those stitches had in fact meet ill-fate.

Oh, what tired flesh held his soul in. Such was the will of the Stars.

♡coded by uxie♡

celestialbody · Tuesday at 6:16 PM

THE MERCANTRESS.

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Sonya

NIMBARA

MOOD

Tense

OUTFIT

This with a plain black cloak on top

LOCATION

Brig

MENTIONS

Knox/Willow/Toska/Ephraim/Calanthe/Hollow/Devana

INTERACTS

picklemouse

floralmoon

tsurene

lyn.

Son of Nyx - Hozier

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Oh, yes, I'm the great pretender

Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game but to my real shame
You've left me to dream all alone

CHAPTER FOUR

Sonya’s eyes flicked between the man and Willows, her gaze curious as he addressed her as ‘Mrs. Fairchild,’ speaking to her as though they had some past history. Instinctively, she took a step back, giving him enough space to rise to his feet, as he was starting to process the situation more fully.

"M’name’s Knox Hood. I’m on the crew of The Leviathan, and I’m obviously not having my finest day."

Sonya listened intently as he rattled off answers to her rapid-fire questions, weighing each one carefully. His words painted a picture of someone with valuable experience—he might not be able to reach the lock himself, but the fact that he knew how to pick one was a step in the right direction, and even if his weapon of choice was a bow—a tool they didn’t have at their disposal—any combat experience was better than none.

Sonya eyed the bars enclosing them, wondering if she might be able to reach instead as he guided her and as she did Knox moved to the prison's little porthole looking out. "I think if we’re gonna take the chance, it should be soon. We’re about to be neighbors,"

Curiosity piqued, Sonya followed him over, taking his place and looking out as he moved to help up another woman who had gotten violently knocked over by a guard. Rising onto the tips of her toes, her eyes falling on the distant horizon she could see the ship they were on fast approaching the Leviathan. The ship she’d been kidnapped by was now on a direct course toward the very vessel she’d been meant to board in the first place. The realization sent a wave of conflicting emotions through her—relief, at least they had somewhere to run to after breaking out of here—but also dread. They weren’t simply sailing toward safety. They were surely sailing toward a battle, and if they were to escape, they’d have to move through a fight in order to make their way onto the other ship.

Sonya’s mind raced as she turned to address Knox, hoping he could help guide her through picking the lock now that the guard had wandered off. But before she could speak, a heavy, rhythmic sound of footsteps approached, followed by a shadow that stretched across the dimly lit cell.

A figure emerged, dressed in dark attire with a skeleton mask obscuring his features. He moved with unnerving calmness, his gait slow and deliberate, exuding an air of both authority and menace. The moment he appeared, Sonya felt a knot tighten in her stomach. They were already imprisoned, surrounded by pirates, but this newcomer was different—his presence was colder, more calculated. The way he sauntered in with an almost casual confidence sent a chill down her spine.

"Friends, what a sorry state you are in. Oh...I suppose you all know that already, don’t you. Bah, that is besides the point. However, that is why you should thank me! For I come bearing glad tidings. You know the kind: food, lodging, drinks. Men, women...goats if you prefer. Never you mind, I shan’t judge. All you need to know is that I can provide any and all you want, including...say...your freedom. All you need to do is answer me one question. Honestly and usefully, of course. What can you tell me...about a certain Gallin Forestson?"

The man’s rambling spiel only fueled Sonya’s irritation. Her patience, already thin, wanned even further at his flippant attitude. She didn’t know who this Gallin Forestson was, and frankly, even if she did she wasn’t sure if she’d care to tell him. And it seemed she wasn’t the only one with that thought so, as the others in the cell around her started to speak up, refusing to give the man any information. Mainly the woman with the ominous mask, who Sonya had been trying not to stare at earlier, chimed in, her voice cold and threatening as she warned no one to say anything.

Sonya exhaled sharply, rubbing a hand over her face in frustration. It was clear this 'Bone Man' as she had begun to think of him, had no intention of letting them out of the cell—not unless they gave him what he wanted. And even then, she doubted his promises of freedom were anything more than empty words. So then once again, they were at an impasse.

But an impasse clearly wasn’t satisfactory for the Bone Man because a moment later he was withdrawing a pistol from his belt and aiming it directly at the masked woman’s chest. Sonya flinched, her breath catching in her throat as he pulled the trigger. But to her surprise, the weapon misfired, the click of the hammer echoing through the tense silence. For a moment, Sonya allowed herself a sliver of hope, but she quickly banished it. She knew better than to think they were out of danger yet.

So, this maniac was going to shoot them one by one until he got what he wanted? The thought churned Sonya’s stomach as she tried to think of a way out. But before she could settle on a plan, something else caught her attention—a flash of movement in the corner of her eye. She turned just in time to see a younger man, with wide, doe-like eyes, whispering urgently to another prisoner. They were close enough for Sonya to catch the faintest whispers of their conversation.

"I’ve got a perfect weapon here. We could take him down if we act quickly."

The young man was holding up something—a stone? He was planning to try and knock out the Bone Man? It was reckless, but she couldn’t help but admire his determination. If he missed—or failed to land a solid blow—there was no doubt that the sadistic Bone Man would target him next. But at least he was doing something. Sonya couldn’t just sit there, passively waiting for someone to give up the information as the Bone Man shot at them as he pleased. Perhaps she could help tip the scales in their favor.

As she glanced back toward the Bone Man, her gaze was drawn once again to the other prisoners. A flash of golden hair caught her eye, and Sonya blinked, her heart skipping a beat. She recognized the face—Lady Calanthe de Braose. Sonya had known her from her past—an old customer, someone she had served and interacted with before. Despite the controversies that surrounded the woman, Sonya could hardly let those rumors take hold of her judgment in a situation like this, what was important was that she was someone she had a rapport with, someone more likely to help her than a stranger.

Sonya moved swiftly, gliding toward the woman with a sense of purpose in her steps. She leaned in close, her voice soft but urgent. "Lady Calanthe, what an unfortunate turn of events for us to be meeting again in such a place."

She subtly nodded toward the Bone Man, who was still looming just outside their cell, pistol in hand. "Listen, sitting here, waiting to get shot at like fish in a barrel, doesn’t sit well with me. That man over there," she gestured toward the young prisoner she'd seen with the stone a moment before, "he’s planning on attacking our little visitor. I’m keen to help him. It's a bit reckless but better than waiting to get shot at one by one, don't you agree? If we can get up close and grab Bone Man there through the bars and hold him down, our friend with the stone might just have the chance he needs to knock him out. Then we'd be the ones calling the shots." Sonya wasn't too confident that Calanthe would help her in this endeavor, most people in this situation would be too fearful to act, but it hardly hurt to try and recruit someone to help.

♡coded by uxie♡

floralmoon · Wednesday at 11:13 PM

THE PERFUMIST.

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CALANTHE

MOOD

yay new friends (:

OUTFIT

pretty in pink

LOCATION

THE HOMOPHOBIAN

MENTIONS

LIZBETH, SONYA, EPHRAIM, DAVE

INTERACTS

celestialbody

tsurene

Wyll

Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 5.

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"what are you?"

"to define is to limit."

CHAPTER FOUR PT II.

"Hmmph..." Calanthe lets out a displeased noise, curling into a tighter ball, unaware of the situation around her, and ignoring the kick she had just received. Right as she began to doze back off, she felt a second one, this time slightly harder than the first. "Ugh, what the FUCK do you want?" Reaching her hands up and rubbing her eyes, she felt the familiar tilting of the ship, but as her vision became more clear, she realized that it was not the Leviathan.

The woman from the tavern held her prosthetic leg in her hands, creating distance between the two in order to safely wake Cal up. Darting eyes take in her surroundings, strangers all around, but they were all once passengers on the same ship. How did they ever get here? Memories of the previous night slowly start to come back, at some point "Zella" had run out of the tavern. Calanthe drunkenly followed, curious about the quick escape, and then she woke up here.

A strange masked man stood at the bars of the passenger's enclosure, speaking out about someone who was on the ship. He mentioned a name, Gallin, a very familiar name, the name of a man who ruined Calanthe's life. Quickly, she stood up, adjusting her dress, and trying to tame her hair in an attempt to look somewhat presentable. That was when yet another familiar face appeared.

Sonya.

Many times did she interact with the woman back in Sirocco, many times the woman would visit the estate selling various wares. Calanthe never got the chance to publicly interact with Sonya, but there were plenty of times where the two met up in private. The two had grown close in the sense of business relations, but never anything more than that, so Calanthe found it quite odd she would approach her about something other than showing off new items.

"If we can get up close and grab Bone Man there through the bars and hold him down, our friend with the stone might just have the chance he needs to knock him out. Then we'd be the ones calling the shots." The idea wasn't actually all that bad, but the question was if they could actually execute the whole thing. She nods her head in agreement, Calanthe quickly tied her hair back as best she could, with the reminder of Gallin, a fire built up inside her, perhaps she could use the skill of yapping to get him close enough for grabbing.

As the two approach the bars, Calanthe speaks up, "I actually know this Gallin quite well. Come, come." With a slight wave of her hand she ushers the man closer to her and Sonya. "This man you are inquiring about, well..." She begins to build up some anticipation, "he wrote the paper in SIrocco. That's where I'm from, by the way." Maybe now she was just stalling.

Quiet footsteps approach the trio from the inside of the brig, "Anywayyssss, there was this INCIDENT that happened. And I don't know, maybe you heard about it, I'm kind of a big deal there now because of this horrible, horrible man. He wrote AWFUL things about me, LIES about me!" Her voice escalates trying to keep the man's attention from the approaching threat.

"These lies, let me tell you, they were so despicable, I actually had to leave. People HATE me there because of this man. So, I will do absolutely anything to help you out, including this.." Calanthe throws her arms out, grabbing the man by the collar, leaving room for Sonya to grab him as well, power in numbers and all of that. With the man secured in position, the stranger that plotted to bonk Bone Man approaches with haste.

♡coded by uxie♡

Aviator · Wednesday at 5:15 PM

THE VAGABOND.

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Lizbeth

Jessup

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Done with This Shite.

OUTFIT

Dress. Boots.

LOCATION

The Reaper's Brig.

MENTIONS

Ephraim, Toska, & Calanthe

INTERACTS

Knox

picklemouse & Hollow

Wyll

BLACK SUN —
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE.

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She kicks off her shoes

She's got nothing else to lose
And the band plays on
She sings along
To her favorite song.

CHAPTER FOUR.

As the back of her head smacked against concrete, colors and nebulous shapes whirled behind the backs of Bizzy’s closed eyes, burning holes as if she had stared into the sun for too long. They reminded her of bruises, and every ache from the past few days—the bruises on her arms where Jonas had grabbed her, the slap from Madame Yan, the ever-present tingle where the stump of her leg conjoined with metal—all clamored at once, vying for her attention. Breath burst into her deprived lungs in gasps, scraping down her airways and making her chest burn.

Suddenly, there were hands hooking beneath her armpits, hauling her upwards. Bizzy’s heart clenched. Her first instinct was to swing an elbow back and be met with the rewarding crunch of bone, and she was surprised by the savagery with which it welled up in her. If the past year at the Corsairs Kiss was anything to go by, people laying hands on her meant suffering. The severance of a small piece of her soul every time. This touch was not rough, and Bizzy had no doubt that the doer’s intention was to lend a helping hand, but still, it felt like being injected with poison. It took everything in her not to shiver away from it. Very impractically—or was it, given the circumstances of imprisonment at the hands of pirates?—she felt ambushed by a jagged feeling in her chest, a tightening in her throat, and it was all she could do to not burst into tears.

Once upon her feet, a pale face inserted itself into her vision. Squarish jaw, hooded gunmetal eyes from which she immediately averted her own. His voice was soothing, as if placating a spooked horse. Not trusting herself to speak, she merely bobbed her head in response to his inquiries of her welfare, brushing away a strand of hair stuck to her mouth with spittle. After this vague assurance, the young man seemed to take the hint that Bizzy was in no mood for conversation, and he addressed the group of prisoners at large, taking charge of the escape effort.

A squeal of unoiled hinges drew Bizzy’s head up. The tall, bespectacled pirate who had choked her was sauntering off, but he’d brought a replacement. Unlike the other Corsairs, this figure was dressed head to toe in soulless black, a long coat fluttering out behind him as he walked, like the wings of some nocturnal predator. Where a face should have been was an unsettlingly lifelike skull, the eyes of the mask dark shadows that revealed nothing of what lay behind. The other prisoners’ chatter broke off into an uneasy hush. As the skeletal man swept toward the cell, the air around Bizzy seemed to tense, electrifying like right before a summer thunderstorm.

Bizzy didn’t stare too long at the mask. It filled her with a peculiar mixture of dread and déja vu. The walking skeleton reminded her of the cautionary tales her pa had told her so long ago about the horrible creatures that stalked the Canyon after night had settled. Go into the desert after dark and the skin-walkers will get you, he’d warned with a flinty look in his eyes. They’re spirits who can’t pass over to the other side, so they prowl the earth in human form, hunting people who run off alone. They ain’t got no face, so they steal those of their victims. But the only way they can take a face is if the original owner is dead. You can tell a skin-walker from a real person because they cast no shadow.

She checked the floor around the skeletal man’s feet, and was mildly relieved to see that he did indeed have a shadow.

He had more than just a shadow, too. In a rough voice like a calloused palm, he flung offers of accommodations at the prisoners, speaking to no one in particular. He was clearly enjoying himself, gloating with about twice as many words as necessary. Bizzy’s attention was quickly squandered when people spoke at length, and she was only half-listening by the time he concluded, glaring at him with crossed arms and an unimpressed moue.

Bizzy had never heard of the person that Skeleton Man wanted the scoop on, but she was half-tempted to pretend like she had. Draw up to the bars with an air of utmost secrecy, one hand cupped around her mouth. Get him to lean in close. And then tell him to go fuck himself, or one of his goats, if he preferred.

A chorus of rebuttals met his offer. Bizzy couldn’t remember the name that Skeleton Man had rattled off, but apparently this person was hot shit among at least some of her fellows. The reaction the name provoked made Bizzy wonder if they were someone famous. A treelike woman in a mask—what was it with all these masks? It wasn’t anytime close to Carnevale season—imprudently alluded to knowing the person in question. In a development of astounding predictability, the Skeleton Man trained a gun on her. But when he went to pull the trigger, he was met with an impotent click!

Bizzy stared at the masked fool with cold, dispassionate eyes as he fumbled with the gun, smashing it against the wall because that would surely get it back in working order. Not only is he a diva, but he’s an incompetent diva, she thought with a roll of her eyes. Bizzy almost wished for her bespectacled pirate back. He’d almost strangled her to death, yes, but at least he spared them the theatrics and got to the point.

When the banging proved insufficient, the skeleton started jabbing away at the gun with a knife. Oh, how Bizzy hoped this fool would blow his own foot off—or better yet, head. She was starting to feel terribly silly for her initial fear at the sight of his mask. As Skeleton Man muttered to himself, Bizzy’s bored gaze wandered to a scuffing sound in the back corner of the cell. A boy who couldn’t have been much beyond his teen years was whispering frantically at another young man, this one dark-haired and tattered. At least, Bizzy thought the speaker was a boy, but there was a strange, lopsided bulge at the opening of his shirt. But why would anyone of any gender have only one tit? During her year at the Corsairs Kiss, she’d seen a lot, but she hadn’t seen that.

His eyes doing a shifty dance that would have done him no favors at a card table, the one-tittied boy started tiptoeing to the front of the cell. He must have been trying to move stealthily, but his approach was as conspicuous as a herd of elephants. It occurred to Bizzy that perhaps the lump in his chest was not biological in nature, but a concealed weapon. Was it possible he had a trick down that shirt?

An ear-splitting blast erupted from the front of the cell. Bizzy gave a little squeal of fright and crouched down, her arms wrapped protectively around her head and eyes squeezed shut. Her heart skipped a beat at what was unmistakably the sound of gunfire, and when she calmed it, she cracked an eye open hopefully. Would it be too much to ask the Stars for the buffoon in the mask to have actually shot himself?

Alas, a cloud of dust drifted down from the ceiling. The fact that he’d managed to get any shot off at all with the blasted weapon meant that it was back in working order—at least on an inconsistent basis. That meant Masked Man was a lot more dangerous than he’d been a minute ago. A maniac with a gun was more prone to catastrophy than a rational one, and Bizzy had no idea how far he’d go to get the answers he sought.

Her eyes flashed over to the boy with the bulging shirt, who’d momentarily halted at the sound of the gunshot. He looked like a statue in Medusa’s garden, frozen midstep with an expression of shocked horror on his face. He was taking too long, and now that Skeleton Man had battered his gun into submission, those eyeless dark holes were fixed on the prisoners raptly. There’d be no catching him unawares with a stealthy ambush.

Quietly, carefully, Bizzy let her hands slip under her long skirt, which was still pooled on the floor in a splash of color. Her fingers flitted blindly over sprockets and latches, undoing, unstrapping. If she were a regular person, whole and unmutilated, the pirates would have done a thorough job of stripping her clean of anything that might be used as a weapon. They’d even had the foresight to take her small makeup bag and the drugged lipstick it contained. But cripples inspired pity in the able-bodied, who associated them with an inherent weakness. Perhaps the pirates had thought it too cruel to divest Bizzy of her prosthetic leg. Or they just hadn’t thought of doing so in the first place, because no one expected a one-legged girl to pose a threat.

The bullet that punctured the ceiling seemed to make the other prisoners reconsider their positions. The uneasily shifting mass of bodies regurgitated a swath of pink fabric. Bizzy’s eyes widened in recognition of the girl from the Roost. One of those she’d tried to trick into sipping her tampered ale. She flounced up to the bars, the picture of a girl with big ideas and convinced of their brilliance. In a voice as sweet as lemonade, she seduced the Skeleton Man with information. Bizzy watched her carefully from the ground. She prayed that the madman was too focused on the tempting blond before him to hear the sn-sn-snick! of her prosthetic leg sliding free, still hidden beneath her skirt along with her hands.

Her saccharine voice reaching a crescendo, Pinkie Pie unexpectedly pounced forward with a battle cry. Her slender arms slipped through the bars and seized the skeleton by the front of his coat. She yanked forward with surprising strength, until he was stumbling into the bars. She held him flush against them, too close for him to aim the gun.

It was the only opening Lizbeth needed. The muscles in her one, singular leg bunched together as she shot up from the floor, propelling herself to her one, singular foot. With practiced bounds, she hopped to the front of the cell, covering the distance in three leaps. She gave a ferocious screech and brandished the improvised weapon above her head. For a moment, she was no longer Bizzy, Antares whore and retired circus performer and fallen idol of the Covenant, but Lizbeth. The little girl who had known hard labor from the day she’d been able to walk. When her ma had passed from the Queen’s Plague, her pa had put all seven of his children to work on the farm, saying that dinner was not a right but a privilege for those who earned it.

For that same moment, the prosthetic leg in her hands was not that, but a hatchet. Descending in a swift, powerful arc to split a log. A log that was topped with a ridiculous black porkpie hat. "Good fuck, someone needs to shut you up!" Bizzy shouted in the throes of adrenaline, hoping Pinkie Pie's immobilizing grip would hold out a few milliseconds longer.

♡coded by uxie♡

CrimsonInk · Friday at 5:26 PM

THE RAVEN.

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LUCREZIA

CAMBRIDGE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

LOST | SCARED

OUTFIT

ABRACADABRA

LOCATION

DECK --> SOMEWHERE

MENTIONS

ILYA, DOLORES, DEVANA
ANON

INTERACTIONS

MACKLIN

TAGS

Aviator

DA VINCI'S DEMONS THEME — BEAR MCCREARY.

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I BELIEVE MR. GRAVES,

There are tremors around us, like the vibrations of a note of music - hidden music. Some may be more attuned to them than others, what do those people do?

CHAPTER FOUR PT II.

The answer Lucrezia was given was not one she expected, especially from a Kingsguard. Nobility has always held them to a higher standard with respect as they were the ones who were to lay down their lives for them. Maybe it was the stress of the situation or the urgency for them to fire arms, not one that mocked her ignorance in the heat of the unfortunate events unfolding.

“Instead of fighting, we could settle this conflict of philosophies over tea and scones. There will be ambient music present to soothe the soul, and we will exchange intellectual ideas diplomatically in a proper salon. Perhaps we’ll even crochet together to foster a sense of friendship and exchange the resulting garments. I’ve been told I make the comfiest scarves.”

How dare you speak to me about such a wonderful tea party idea in the midst of battle?

Lucrezia could hear the spite from his voice. Her pupils dilated with her thoughts scrambling, trying to skin out the words spoken to her in hopes to understand his perspective. A gasp fell from her lips when the man pulled her down. Fear was not here with her, but something else. Something maddening. Red, Crimson, it hungered for approval. Even with the cannons blowing and guns blazing through the sky, she found herself still trying to make sense of it.

“Do you really want to know how soldiers at sea settle our differences, milady?”

Please, wait-

“With blood. And do you know how this ends? With the pig head of the bastard captaining that ship on a pike. Allow me to demonstrate.”

Ear-piercing sprays of ammunition echoed into the woman’s ear. Her hands flew to cover them as she watched him take action. It was obvious that the language he spoke involved the very thing he catered to. Violence. So, she must speak back in the same way.

“Have you no shame?” her voice rose higher than her normal tone, “Fine! Mock me, since it really tells me what kind of man you are. We are nothing but products of our upbringing, and so if you are to box me in with such arrogant stereotypes — I feel sorry for you. Forgive me for worrying about the people who lay their lives down in such horrific events as this. May the stars bless you, because I won’t.”

With that she calculated carefully when to leave her position and did so with haste. She passed another privateer with her legs carrying her off somewhere. Anywhere, possibly to her room. Her mind fogged between shame and embarrassment. Was she truly out of touch with society? Is this what the world really has gone to? Spill blood? Was Lucrezia Amore Cambridge really the ignorant and selfish lady she tried so long not to be?

Tears spilled from her cheeks with her mind wandering over her self-loathing to the thoughts of those she had come across on the ship. Ilya, Dolores, Anon, and Devana — by the stars bless them with the protection of your divinity. Her hands clashed together in a prayer with her back against the wall.

“Non rogo ut tollas eos de mundo sed ut serves eos ex malo,” she whispered, “per ardua ad astra.”

♡coded by uxie♡

CrimsonInk · Friday at 5:26 PM

THE OPHIDIAN.

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YASMINE

LAVIGNE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

ROMANTIC | FLIRTY

OUTFIT

DRESS TO KILL

LOCATION

THE DINING HALL
TO THE DECK

MENTIONS

ROSALINE, CASSANDRA
LUCREZIA

INTERACTIONS

HOT GURLS TO MACKLIN

TAGS

picklemouse @AnimeGenork

Aviator

LETHAL WOMAN — DOVE CAMERON.

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POWER IS POWER

The gods have no mercy, that’s why they’re gods.

CHAPTER FOUR PT II.

What Yasmine could only describe in this moment was heaven. Pure heaven. Across from her was a jewel more rare than any diamond known to man — and she was here dining with her. Hungry emerald eyes watched the woman play coy. It was rather cute and adoring with every syllable coming from such kissable lips.

“I’m Rosaline Touchard, but having saved my life, you can call me whatever you please.”

Oh darling, you can call me whatever you please.

Such lustful thoughts were shameless so early in the morning, but who was here to pry in her mind? No one. Not even you Gao. Kisses.

“I do hope you’ll give me the immense pleasure of learning your name."

Taking a sip from her tea, she licked her lips as they curled upward into a charming smile. Her body resting back on the seat exposed so vulnerably with her heart ready to devour such a lovely woman. For a moment she debated on which name to give, or rather which name should she accept? Would it be Jade Roman from Antares or Yasmine Lavigne from the Canals? Two different souls entirely that wrestled in her beautiful body. Moments felt like minutes between them, but what happened next was based on instinct: a need to impress the goddess of Solas for her heart.

“Yasmine Lavigne,” she said, her voice light and sultry as silk, “it is finally nice to place a name on such an unforgettable face. I am so mesmerized by your presence I forget that there are others around us, but do not worry. I promise I’ll behave.”

It truly was a pleasure to be in the presence of such a rose. It took every ounce of her undying will to not take her by the lips now, no. She won’t treat her with such disrespect. She’ll treat her like the royal gem she is. In moments relishing on her presence she noticed a familiar face making their way, though their features are what started to worry her. Cass- er, Flora had taken a seat just next to Yasmine. The familiar groans and moans she heard from the woman made the serpent woman realize that it was the sound of regret.

“Babes, are you hungover?” Yasmine asked, a slight chuckle faintly heard through teeth that made her move hairs away from her face, “tsk, tsk, tsk. I won’t berate you this time, but I’d rather you get drunk with me so I know you’re safe.”

One of the few times Yasmine became overbearing was when it came to someone she cared about. A rarity that comes with the serpent woman. Close relations are a delicate feature she can rest to have as others will easily use them against her. She won’t have that burden set on her heart. Not like last time. Not how it was with him.

Yasmine’s fingers tapped lightly on the table, the delicate sound of her fingertips against the wood was barely audible over the loud tavern. She met Macklin's gaze, a faint smirk tugging at the corners of her lips, her blue eyes calculating, as though she were weighing a decision more dangerous than any card she could play.

"Play to win, or not at all," Macklin murmured, his voice low and smug as he laid down his hand. His eyes gleamed with the thrill of victory.

Yasmine leaned back in her chair, folding her arms beneath her chest, her posture languid but poised. "Oh, Macky….,” she said in her usual sultry tone, “You know how I like to play. But sometimes… the prize isn't always what it seems, is it?"

Macklin chuckled darkly, confident. "The only prize that matters here is really you. Unless you think there's something else at stake? Like gold?"

Her eyes flickered to the side, a playful flicker of interest that quickly masked itself behind a veil of indifference. "Gold?" she asked, her voice laced with mock innocence. "Perhaps. But I wonder… What about the King's navy? Surely you know a thing or two about the fleet's movements, Macklin. Men like you always do."

His jaw tightened for a fraction of a second, but the flicker of tension was gone almost before she could see it. He was careful, always so careful. Yasmine, however, knew how to keep the game in play.

"You’re clever," he said, his tone shifting from smugness to something more dangerous. "You always have been. But information like that… comes at a price."

Yasmine leaned in, her eyes narrowing, the hint of something far more personal creeping into her expression. "I’m sure you’re willing to name that price… but I wonder, Macklin, will it cost you more than you’re willing to give?" She paused, letting the words hang in the air, her voice a whisper of temptation. "Or will it cost you nothing at all?"

He didn’t react immediately, but she saw the slight twitch at the corner of his lips. He was thinking, calculating, and she was playing with him like a prodigal musician. Her hands expertly tugged those passionate heartstrings, circling him ready for another venomous strike.

"I propose a wager," Macklin said finally, a spark of amusement lighting his eyes. "If I win, you tell me exactly what you want to know about the navy. No games. No tricks. But if you win, I’ll give you something far more… intriguing." He leaned forward, his gaze burning into hers, a dangerous gleam in his eye. "Your move, Yasmine."

Taking in a deep breath she decided to let the past leave her mind and enjoy this hot girl brunch. Good food, good company, what more could she ask for?

“It seems our fun must come to an end.”

You’re kidding me.

The serpent woman looked around with the stir of passengers panicking. Her eyes locked back with the other two women, her heart racing from the next set of words Miss Touchard that made her fall head over heels for the woman more. She stood from her seat meeting the eyes of the goddess Aphrodite herself.

“I can escort her safely to her room. It’s best if we’re not alone during a crisis, yes?”

Oh Rosaline Touchard if we weren’t in a crisis right now-

“You’ve read my mind, miss Touchard. Stay safe, my lady. Protect my otter baby.”

The butterflies were fluttering at the pit of her stomach and she was smiling from ear to ear. Among the chaos the vipress was blinded by rose colored lenses that Rosaline Touchard bewitched her. Not even changing out of her outfit was enough to spoil the spirits she was in. Thankfully enough a wardrobe change took the least amount of time, but when she had made her way towards the deck the sight before her was unexpected. Even more unexpected than the Reaper itself.

Yasmine watched the noble woman yell at him in the face. The anger seething from the gothic woman was vocal, outwardly, and satisfying to watch. She walked away as Yasmine was approaching them with a playful smirk.

“Why am I not surprised? Is this a new way of flirting that you’ve developed over the years?”

♡coded by uxie♡

Wyll · Saturday at 11:57 PM

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HOLLOW

REAPER

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Bloodthirsty

OUTFIT

Fancy scary death man

LOCATION

THE REAPER

INTERACTIONS

SONYA, EPHRAIM, KNOX, DEVANA, CALANTHE, LIZBETH, WILLOW, ADRIAN, CADENCE, TOSKA

TAGS

tsurene ,

picklemouse ,

erzulie ,

floralmoon ,

Aviator ,

lyn. ,

CrimsonInk ,

Nifty ,

Shadow ,

celestialbody ,

q r o w

Trøllabundin— Eivør

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PATIENCE IS STRENGTH

it is the strength to hate something so much that you help build it up just so it makes the loudest sound when it crashes.

CHAPTER FOUR

For as long as his focus was on fixing the gun, he didn’t pay much - or any - attention to what was going on in the cell behind him. Many would argue that turning your back on people you had just threatened for any amount of time was ill advised. And Hollow would agree with the sentiment: truly, only a fool would choose not to pay attention to people that may be plotting to harm you. Such an unwise thing to do.

All that to say that all prisoners somehow had a fantastic view of Hollow’s cloaked back as he focused on the gun, as though the logic of not turning your back on potential enemies didn’t apply when fixing a gun.

And, unfortunately for the prisoners, he wasn’t simply fumbling around either. Hollow had spent a good amount of time learning how to kill and everybody knows that the first thing you must know how to do is take care of your weapon. With his experience, it only took a minute before he had the gun working again. As though all he needed to do the first time around was clean it out a little bit rather than smashing it against a wall.

True to his word, when the gun was finished, he was ready to shoot. He stood up with a graceful spin, turning so he could face the prisoners, gun immediately moving again to Devana. She absolutely had to be the first. Judging by her size and the size of her confidence, he’d probably be doing the pirates a massive favor. She seemed like the one they might struggle with the most. And, this time, he was certain that he wouldn’t miss.

However, as he turned around, his eyes quickly took in the fact that people have moved around. They were whispering amongst themselves while throwing about sneaky looks. Surely they were colluding against him; they were plotting his demise. How long did they think they could get away with the folly of wishing for freedom.

”Hey. Hey! Shut up! All of you! I didn’t say you could talk.” He did. However, asking him to remember the words of a moment ago was expecting far too much from the lovable fool. He waved the gun wildly at them, gripping it with two shaky hands as he panned the barrel of the gun from one prisoner to the other. “You all have to listen to me, because I’m in charge.” The words, at face value, were definitely threatening. However, there was something about the way he whined at them that took all menace away from the sentence and made him seem more akin to a child throwing a tantrum than anything else.

And, just as his patience boiled over, someone with a brain - and a hatred for Gallin - surface amongst the prisoners. He turned his head sharply towards Devana and, though his face could not be seen, he stilled donned such a smug look that it was hinted at even through the mask. “I know you can’t see what I’m doing with my face, but it I could, I’d be sticking my tongue out at you right now.”

With that, he all but skipped over to where Calanthe was calling him over, glad to finally have someone willing to use their brain. He nodded and hummed in agreement, entirely engrossed with the story and giddy that he had found somebody to walk this path of Gallin hatred with him. At first, he had simply been bluffing, but seeing how badly Gallin had wronged her, she just might be worth freeing. And, for her, he’d even have gone as far as striking a deal with The Baron himself.

He had already began phrasing his speech to the Baron about her release, but before he could get anywhere compelling, he feels something grab his collar and is suddenly being pressed against the bars. He had seen the hands reach for him, but had figured she was going for a kiss, or a hug.

He had wanted so badly for the person holding him to not be her that he was almost scared to look down. However, and heartbreakingly, when he did look down, it was in fact her hands that held him. Behind his mask were hurt, angry, mourning eyes.

He was so deeply distraught by her deception that, for the entire time he was looking at her, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. It was only when he noticed someone else approaching with a prosthetic leg that might as well have been ol’ Grimmy’s scythe, that he realised he truly precarious situation he was in.

“Wait. Stop. Don’t come closer. I’m warning you.”

She continued her advance.

“I’ll sweeten the deal. Tell me what you want. I’ll have it done in no time. Please, let’s be civilised!”

She hopped ever forward, as though his words fell on deaf ears.

“Please. I’m sorry. I’ll behave. I’ll leave even! You’ll never have to see me a-”

The word didn’t even get the chance to fully leave his mouth before her leg came down like the hammer of justice on his head. Although, the sound it gave off was different, perhaps, than what was expected. There was no crunch or thud or clunk. Rather, it was a resonating clang, as though one had just struck metal.

Hollow stumbled backward, gripping his head as his legs searched for purchase to hold themselves up. Then came the sound of a metal disk falling, as his mask slipped off his face, clattered on the floor, and then rolled behind him. However, he was still too dazed to realize what had happened. And so, for that moment, all the prisoners were staring at his face as it was.

The face was deformed and misaligned in many ways. There were parts of it were you could see bumps against his skin as though his skull was incomplete; scars ran the length of his face where his skin had been stitched back together; his eyes were red as though blood was forever flowing through them. He looked very much like the only person he could ask to the dance was Frankenstein’s monster. However, if one managed to look past all that…his face was eerily similar to Gallin’s.

Hollow blinked - although one eye was bigger than the other, so it looked more like he winked twice - as he gathered his bearings. And that was when he noticed it. The stinging of his eyes as they were exposed to the brightness that the mask hid him from otherwise.

“No!” he creamed, practically screeched. A long, blood-curdling, bone-chilling scream as he threw the things in his hands away and dove for his mask, scrambling to put it back on. He was hyperventilating and it seemed to get worse with each second the mask stayed removed from his face. After many clumsy, fumbling, bumbling moments, he finally returned the mask to his face, snapping it back into place with the clips.

For a moment, he simply sat there, legs tucked underneath him as he regained control of his breathing. Then he began to mutter to himself. “I am not Gallin. I am not Gallin. I am not Gallin. No. I am more dashing. I am funnier, duh. I am richer. Well…no, that one’s not true…” He almost sounded dejected, but suddenly perked up. “But I will be richer when he’s dead! That counts!”

Suddenly, he leapt to his feet and whirled on the group within the cage “I’m not Gallin, okay?! When he dies, I’ll be richer than him too! Mark my words! But as for you…you…you heathens!” There was no hiding his rage and fury. “You are all tarnished, the lot of you! You were born in darkness and raised in sin, the stars have never shone upon you and you have not seen their light. How dare you stain me with your filthy hands?!”

He raised his hand, aiming his gun directly at the traitorous blonde who had lured him into her trap. At least, he would be aiming his gun at her if he still had it on him. Currently, his biggest threat was the finger guns he had raised.

…

…

“Eh?”

Panic ensued.

He patted his body frantically, getting on the ground and crawling around, hoping he had dropped it somewhere easy to reach. However, it didn’t take long for a glint of light to catch him in the eye. He looked up slowly, fearfully, as his gaze landed on the weapons that were once in his possession. In his rush to put his mask back on, he had accidentally thrown both the gun and the knife into the cell. The same cell that held the prisoners he had just insulted by the stars themselves. Hopefully, none of them were devout believers.

“Haha. Um. Hey friends. It would seem that I dropped some things of mine in there with you. I don’t suppose you could just toss them right back out here, could you? They get really lonely without me, you see.”

His gaze bounced around the room like hare through the woods: from his weapons, to their faces and back to his weapons, hoping against all logic that they would find it somewhere in their hearts to give him his things back.

♡coded by uxie♡

Aviator · Saturday at 5:03 AM

THE HORN.

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Macklin

Lowe

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Cheeky & Smitten.

OUTFIT

Monte's Stolen Swag.

LOCATION

The Leviathan; main deck

MENTIONS

Violetta

INTERACTS

Lucrezia & Yasmine

CrimsonInk

NOTHING LEFT TO SAY —
IMAGINE DRAGONS.

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Anxious, self-absorbed headcase

Thought that everybody knew
Some would call me moody
I would call it looney
President of life, how do you do?

CHAPTER FOUR.

Macklin was a strategist, a brawler, and a stealth operative. He was not a gunman, and from the lackluster results of his onslaught of bullets, this fact was evident. Of the eight rounds he’d shot, only two found their marks, lodging in the chests of two Corsairs. The one who was leaning over the rail and waving his cutlass provocatively tumbled forward into the water. The second man, who was wielding nothing but a brown glass bottle, merely looked down at the bullet hole with annoyance, as if it were a mosquito that had drawn blood. He looked up, his eyes finding Macklin’s. And then, with some shouted expletives, the infantryman wound up and launched the bottle, flipping it in an iridescent arc straight for his head. Macklin ducked behind the rail a half-second before he would have received a faceful of glass, and the bottle exploded open against a mast.

Baring his teeth in frustration at his inept gunmanship the same way he did when he made an off-the-mark billiards shot, he stayed crouched behind the rail as he reloaded. Meanwhile, the ghostly woman seemed to have recovered her voice. But she no longer looked like an apparition, too ethereal and macabre for this mortal plain. Her disbelief at his insolence had burned away, and now her eyes were flat and angry like a cat’s. Macklin side-eyed her and blinked slowly, unmoved and unimpressed by this display of feminine rage. “Of course I do,” he interjected in a mild voice. “If I had no shame, I’d be making obscene hand gestures at the Corsairs and showing them what they can kiss.”

Despite the calmness with which this valid point was articulated, his response seemed to incense her further. Macklin resisted the urge to smile like a fox in a henhouse as he watched her lose it. Smiling at this woman’s fury would have been shameless indeed. There was a demon that surfaced within him when people asked stupid questions or their actions didn’t match up with their preachings, and when they did, he didn’t care about their station or the rules of decorum. Such a demon had sent him to the whipping post at Empyra Academy plenty of times for talking back to teachers, and one time it’d earned him a demerit in the navy for questioning orders.

Worrying about the people who laid down their lives? Is that how this pampered noblewoman with no comprehension of the real world justified her time-wasting questions? In Macklin’s book, worrying without doing something about the problem was no good. And then, mostly out of curiosity to see what she would do when pushed to the limit, he casually replied, “You’re forgiven. Not everyone can be brave or useful in battle. Then there would be no pawns.”

The woman’s pale face flushed an alarming shade of red. Angry tears glittered in her eyes. Then, in a storm of wind-tossed hair and black skirts, she stood and stamped away, clacking across the deck in her heels. Macklin consulted his watch. 9:19. Huh. It’s early in the day for me to be making someone cry already.

His pistol reloaded, Macklin was about to sneak a peek over the rail for his next flurry of bullets, when a familiar sapphire set of eyes latched onto his. The thoughts melted from his mind, waxy and nonsensical, like he’d taken one hit too many from his pipe. There stood Yasmine Lavigne, dark hair catching the breeze, wearing the sort of smile that Lucifer must have worn when he fell from Heaven. She was clad in a long-sleeved leather dress with slits up the legs, and when Macklin regained his powers of cognition, his first thought was, Damn, that was a quick dress change. And an effective one. As always, she looked lovely and deadly.

As if she hadn’t noticed the ongoing firefight, she prowled up to him unhurriedly. Macklin felt an uncharacteristic rush of self-consciousness as she closed in. Were there grains of rice in his teeth from breakfast? Was his cravat straight? Did he smell like smoke and carnage? His heart was racing like it did in battle, but not. This was a fluttering sensation that made his ears feel warm.

Yasmine’s words were almost lost in the roar of combat. Or maybe just in his scrambled brain trying to keep up as he drank in the sight of her. There was a pause before he responded, momentarily tongue-tied by her sudden appearance and his utter lack of preparation for it. Get it together, Lowe. Mute idiots with schoolboy crushes do not get the girl, he reprimanded himself. “Uh, yeah,” he stammered at last. “I call it playing impossible to get. It’s a step up from playing hard to get.” He still felt off-balanced and the joke was delivered a little flat, but his apprehension at seeing her was beginning to thaw into delight. “Do you think I’ll get a callback for a second date?”

Macklin smiled, but unlike with Violetta, it wasn’t the cold and superior variety, and unlike with the noblewoman, it wasn’t taunting and vicious. Rather, this expression felt big and foolish and unfamiliar on his face, like a toothy question mark. To break the silence, he said demurely, “You didn’t have to change outfits just for me. You know I like you in anything you wear, angel.” Pause. “Or anything you don’t.” Angel was his ironic endearment for Yasmine, a temptress who had been trying to seduce military secrets from him when they’d first met. But that had been back when she was associated with the Corsairs, and now that they were on the same side—at least for now—their trysts were a lot more convenient and in good conscience. So long as the King didn’t find out. Macklin wasn’t sure how Rowan would take to two of his agents seeing each other in an unprofessional context, whether it would be read as conspiracy against the monarchy. And he didn’t plan on finding out.

Looking around to make sure no one was minding them, Macklin reached for Yasmine’s hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. He’d been wanting to do that since their last meeting several months ago, and he wanted more, but the main deck in broad daylight was not the time or place. Plus, they had pirates to kill. He glanced up at her and dropped her hand, smirking like a thief who’d gotten away with a crime. “Did you come here to help with the battle or just to bother me?”

♡coded by uxie♡

Daddy Dream · Saturday at 10:12 AM

THE KNIGHT

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Knight

MONTE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Focused

LOCATION

LEVIATHAN WHEEL

MENTIONS

Lexis

INTERACTS

parhelion

Make Me Your Villain— Bookish Songs

scroll

DO BETTER

I find your lack of logic disturbing.

CHAPTER 4 - Battle of the Levi

Not part of the crew? Well, that was most certainly a concerning bit of information. Though not too alarming if the captain picked him out from the crowd of crewmates. Monte drifted his eyes away and back out to the sea, keeping a firm grip on the wheel and trying hard not to notice the roar of breaking waves behind him. The enemy was gaining on them, and the closer they got, the tighter his grip became on the pegs. He looked back at the boy when he spoke of death and shook his head.

"I do not plan to die here, nor do I plan to let you die here either." His tone was serious, but in honesty, he had no idea how to actually keep his word true. Lexis said they were in line of a deadly path, and judging by how the enemy ship was, it was seeming truer by the second. ”Are there any preventive --” But his question was cut short by the thunderous sound of firing cannons.

The enemy had started its assault and the Leviathan ate up the attack with a boom and a rippling shake. Monte was barely able to register what had happened when a cannon ball ripped through the air near him and exploded not far behind Nemo. Monte shielded his face the best he could, having the wooden shrapnel rip apart his clothes and graze his open skin. However, when he looked back at Nemo, it was clear that Monte’s words of hope were spoken too soon. The man lay in a pile of rubble, blood seeping from a wound on his head and his body in too much shock to fully be able to support himself afterward.

”Blast! Mate, are you okay? Still have your limbs attached? Nothing broken, right?” Monte shouted, his concern drowned out by the screams of other passengers. Some were filled with fear, others with orders and even a small handful were sobs.

Monte turned away from Nemo and spotted the aftermath of the attack rising from the lower parts of the ship in thick, black clouds. The smoke was blended with the smell of blood and death, a scent Monte had not hoped to smell again since he had joined the Frankfort service. Most of his job required incapacitating targets and on rare occasions outright taking them out. But the smell of war was a distant memory from when he had just started becoming a knight. He felt uneasy, but bit his lip to move away from the memory to focus on reality.

Surently, the enemy ship was getting ready for another attack, having fired off all of their cannons on the first round. Monte heard gunfire ringing out from somewhere below deck and assumed people were taking advantage of this delay to pick off some of the other ships' inhabitants. As much as Monte wanted to jump in and help, he was tasked with steering the ship and keeping it steady.

It was then that he witnessed Violetta emerge onto the deck and a sinking feeling crawled into his stomach. She was suppose to be below deck, where it was safe, why did she come up here? He spotted the weapons she packed were now on her person and dreaded the realization that came to mind. She was there to fight, and while he knew she could hold her own, she was still no match for cannon fire. He wanted to rush to her side, and almost did. But the order from Lexis held him firmly in place to where he could only longingly keep watch over her occasionally.

♡coded by uxie♡

THE DUCHESS

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공작부인

VIOLETTA

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Focused and Fighting

LOCATION

DINING HALL > DECK

MENTIONS

Macklin, Yasmine, Lucrezia

INTERACTS

NONE

Abbey— Mitsky

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Be Yourself,

you don't make history by being liked.

CHAPTER 4 - Trouble Arises

She barely had time to process what was going on. One moment she had brought up the suspicion of the ship's crew then the next an explosion happened and Luci was hugging her, telling her to find shelter. Violetta stood in the back of the diner, her eyes watching the terrible scene in front of her unfold.

A cannonball had torn through the ship on the far end, its trail of destruction ripping bodies apart and injuring a few others. Blood and wood mingled together like a royal ball for matchmaking, giving the smoldering chunks of wood a metallic scent as they burned. People were either rushing to leave and find safety, returning fire to the enemy through the newly made window, or being utter assholes and blocking the escape route.

Violetta had to really grit her teeth and dig her nails into her hand to stop herself from falling into a dark memory of her past. Instead, she turned her attention to what she could do and strategized there. She was utterly useless in the dining hall, not having access to any over her usual weaponry. She needed to make her way to her quarters, grab one of her long distance weapons, and find a place to start firing.

With a calm presence and an air of cautious confidence, Violetta made her way across the dining hall and to her quarters. She had spotted Macklin and Yasmine talking, a goofy grin a=on his face confirmed her previous suspicions about who he was actually ogling at beforehand. She chuckled to herself as she looked away, disappearing from sight.

The next moment, armed with a bow and sword, she was atop the deck and crouched behind some barrels. From a side pouch, she popped open a vial of sludgy liquid and dipped the very tip of her arrow head in it. A concentrated poison set to debilitate the target before killing them quickly afterwards. The effects of it were gruesome as it basically ate away at the flesh when the poison started kicking in. This is what she was going to use to pick off the other ships people.

Notching an arrow, she gave a quick peek over the barrels before popping up and firing off an arrow. It landed squarely into the stomach of a Corsair’s man, causing him to stumble back. Violetta quickly ducked back down and readies another arrow, keeping herself hugged against the barrels as she kept firing off the poisoned arrows, picking off enemies in various different areas.

♡coded by uxie♡

Harrowhark · Saturday at 4:41 PM

The Scribe.

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Blade

Longsword

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

~~Thrilled~~ Totally chill

OUTFIT

something very cool and badass

LOCATION

deck

MENTIONS

Ari & Melchior

INTERACTS

qunqun

yokai.

Girl So Confusing - Charli XCX

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My Father and I

Are more alike than I'd care to admit.
For whenever I feel pure rage,
I know I am my father's daughter

Arrrrg or whatever

”Do not use such a transparent justification of your own ineptitude again. It is beneath you.”

Okay, actually fuck this guy!

If there was no imminent danger in this moment, Aurelia would’ve made an attempt at an argument, most likely only resulting in sputtering and maybe a few schoolyard taunts. ‘I know you are but what am I?’ Thankfully, her pride did not need to be reconstructed at this time, avoiding further embarrassment at the hands of some beefed up asshole for the time being.

The cannon fire was much more pertinent, almost causing Blade to fall as it shook the ship. An action that made the rival vessel’s motives easily come to light. These pirates were hunting them down. For what, he didn’t know.

Aurelia took in a rushed breath, about to ask some more, likely stupid questions when they were approached. By a man who needed to use far too many words to get his point across, unfortunately. Her brow furrowed in confusion. Why would she scratch his back? Why would he scratch hers? No, she did NOT want that. Who knew where his hands or back had been?

Luckily, Ari was quick to summarize, which was the only beneficial thing he had done all morning (yes, still bitter).

“A fight? A real pirate fight?” Externally, Blade folded his arms, trying to keep his face neutral and cool. Internally, Aurelia was bouncing up and down with glee, squealing like she had when she went to her first ball. Her mind was racing, quickly conjuring fantasies about what may happen in the following moments. None of which were realistic.

Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! This was happening. She was getting to fight pirates! Real pirates! Not her brother’s in fake beards with wooden swords! Real life pirates that had their teeth falling out from scurvy.

This was so fucking cool! It was going to be just like one of those adventure novels she’d read as a preteen. She and some peg legged guy in an eye patch would clash swords- Schwing! Slash! Swoosh! And then she’d knock the sword out of his hook hand, backing him into the railing. All coming to an epic finale where she would hold the blade to his throat and he would beg for his life!

Then the crowd goes wild, cheering her name. Aurelia! Aurelia! Aur-

Except, she was Blade Longsword, and he was a seasoned sailor with the king’s guard. Fuck.

“I mean, yes, I have done that before. Several times. So many that I am completely at ease right now. No adrenaline present in my body. None at all.” Smooth save as always.

There was a slight break in his calm exterior, a small smirk as he reached for his gun. Shit, back in his room. There was no time to go back for it now. Ari had already pulled out a knife, leaving Blade to look so much less cool in comparison.

Aurelian also seemed to not be the least bit concerned, complying with their new companion’s requests immediately. If no one else was worried, Blade wouldn’t be either. If he could, he would even take his shirt off too in solidarity. Aurelia however, acknowledged this was a terrible idea, false identity or not.

Blade was chill, so chill. He had his mental to do list up and ready:

1. Find some guy
2. Find a really cool and awesome weapon, preferably one he knew how to use well
3. Kick pirate booty

Totally chill!

It was settled. Through the smoke and chips of wood flying through the air, they’d fight on! Hopefully with the plot armor to see them through another day. Or at least this guy’s supposed medical license. Huzzah!

“Let’s make these motherfuckers walk the plank!” Oh, that sounded stupid out loud. Blade laughed nervously, hoping he didn’t look like a total idiot right now. “I mean, find your friend. Let’s find your friend!”

Haha hahaha ha…

Go team!

♡coded by uxie♡

Fantasy 𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐒 — THE STORY

can i get a bacon egg and cheese

What the Skibidi-

blackbirds flocking to and fro, sevens

☽ ☁︎ ☾

[sad jester jingle noises]

the ghost of pimping past

oi oi

One Time Luck

Atlas

𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐄!

Give me your herbs, worm.

can i get a bacon egg and cheese

Atlas

the ghost of pimping past

heartbeat on the high line

blackbirds flocking to and fro, sevens

Member

pushing the gay agenda

the ghost of pimping past

Atlas

Atlas

Senior Member

the ghost of pimping past

Creation becomes Destruction

Yeah, I'm a gamer *plays solitaire for 5 hours*

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