Death Whispers 31: Salt and Shadow

Aug 8, 1722. At the Port Royal Arcane Gate, dancing on the edge of my grave…

Author’s Note: Death Whispers of the Etherwave is a serialized fiction story that is a part of Legends of the Privateers. Each chapter will appear weekly.

Missed a chapter? (or ‘Episode’ if you like!) Well, never you worry, as we’re only just getting started! The full list of chapters will appears here!

Transformed by the cataclysm of 1712, Doctor Pedro Sangre and his four courageous privateer companions confront mysterious and evil forces that plague innocent people. Together, they grapple with uncanny forces and myths come to life, risking everything to preserve peace and set right what has gone wrong.

Previously: Chasing down the pirates with the fake cure, the Silk Duchess appears just off the Arcane Gate at Port Royal, catching the pirates by surprise. Captain Elara Blackwater gives the order to fire, but the battle is still desperate as the Silk Duchess is outgunned. During the fight, Pedro spies the source of the problem past the pirates. Lucas Argall is on a barge near the Arcane Gate. In a desperate move, Pedro, along with Lysander, Skaldi and Ari, board the barge to try and stop this once and for all…

Aug 8, 1722. At the Port Royal Arcane Gate, dancing on the edge of my grave…

I was subtle as a kick to the head when I swung down on a rope to the death-stained barge. After all, I had slammed a boot heel across Lucas Argall’s jaw when I arrived, knocking him away from the Codex.

Bloody screams and the shouts of the battle chased after me, fading back into the smoke while I landed in a deep crouch. Lucas crumpled to the deck, eyes rolling in pain, while he clutched his battered mouth. Amber, resin-like blood oozed between his fingers. He’d recover, but it’d take time.

With a wet, garbled scream of anger, he scrambled out of reach for the ship’s bow. Lysander and the others dropped down next to me a second later.

The sea boiled around the barge, a cloudy, agitated soup of gray-green brine mixed with the dark blue water. Gray-black wisps of putrid mist clung to wood, hair, and more. It was raw, untapped death magic whispering from the Etherwave Arcana. The power slid over my bare skin with a lover’s touch, even as it tried to suck the air out of my chest.

I drank in the scent of salt air and decay while I stood. A sharp cough later, I caught Lysander’s eyes, then glanced at Ari and Skaldi.

“Watch that one and stay out of his reach,” I said quickly with a nod toward Lucas. “His touch is poison. Also? Wood wraith or no, he’s also an Archbinder.”

“Well, shit,” Skaldi rumbled, sounding almost like his brother Durner.

Ari paled, while Lysander looked stoic.

The battered wooden boxes with the fake cure were still aboard. I turned one over, then scooped up the last few vials before handing them out.

“Use this. It’s poisonous to him. While it won’t kill him, it will slow him down. Don’t be shy about using it.”

Lysander eyed the fluid, then quickly coated his short sword with it until the blade turned sickly green.

“What about you? The Codex?”

I nodded, hand itching to draw my sword to join my friends. But not this time. This required a more complicated solution.

“Yes, keep him busy while I try to stop what Lucas was trying to start.” I met their eyes. “Hurry. He heals, but not fast. Watch yourselves, my friends.”

Then the barge suddenly lurched up under our feet, as if a wave had punched the keel.

“Look out!” I yelled, shoving Lysander aside.

Dark wooden deck planks rippled like brackish, splintery sewage water along the barge. We scattered, but the violent torrent was fast, crashing into us like an angry tide. Lysander stumbled out of its path, while Ari took flight in a flutter of wings. Skaldi and I weren’t so lucky. The warped boards hit us full-on, metal nails lashing out like crude pistol shots.

Skaldi dropped into a crouch, using his natural, squat grimling bulk to hold ground. I also knelt, but yanked my long coat over my face. We avoided the nails, but the planks were another story. They hit us like a hammer. We fell hard, slammed backwards across the deck.

The wave of wood passed. I staggered to my feet, shaking my head to clear away blurry vision. A new bruise warmed my forearm.

“Wood. Of course,” I murmured. “Naturally, a wood wraith can control wood, and we’re standing on a wooden ship.”

Skaldi fared better than I did. The blue and rust-haired grimling gave me a quick nod that told me he was battered but not out. He stood, yanking his faded dark green waistcoat straight, then scooped up his axe with an ugly scowl.

A crack of wood and a rasping growl snapped our attention sharply to the bow. Lucas was back on his feet, eyes blazing.

“I gave you a chance, Doctor,” Lucas wheezed, voice like rough sand.

The wraith wiped amber blood from his lips then rubbed at his once-broken, mummified jaw.

“You could have joined me, joined us, in changing the world. One last chance, Doctor. Send your minions away. Join us, or die.”

Lucas stood, hunched like a feral predator, at the ship’s bow, eyes bright with burning hate and deranged hope. Overall, he looked about as he had in Westmere. Just an impossibly bone-thin man, wearing a ragged green and brown hooded long coat over tattered stylish clothes.

But this time his hood was tossed back, showing his full, terrifying face. The man’s skin resembled paper-thin, poorly sanded wood, like a skeleton wearing a mummified skin-suit. Past the undead trappings, he still resembled his brother, Joshua, right down to the sandy hair and deep, watery blue eyes.

I shot a glare at him, taking a deep breath to steady my fraying patience.

“No.”

The word snapped out like a whip crack. I packed the conversation from Westmere in that word, tying it up with a bow of final determination. Lucas’ blue eyes turned ice cold.

“Then die,” the wraith growled, a chilly smirk on his lips.

“You first, Señor,” I replied, tipping my tricorn hat.

Lucas flung out a withered hand at us, and the air bristled with corrupted Etherwave power running wild. Deck planks rippled again like a sickly sludge before they rose upright. The wind howled as sharp cracking sounds flooded the air.

In the time to breathe twice, wooden planks twisted, split, then reformed into spindly tree-skeletons complete with ragged claws. They rushed at us in a manic clatter of dry, dead branches, eager for blood, desperate to slice through clothes, skin, anything in reach.

I could almost taste the corrupted enchantment, rancid as old cheese. Lucas caught us by surprise once, but not twice.

“You get the book, Pedro. We’ll hold him off,” Lysander called over the wind.

He darted around an animated murder-tree then rushed for the bow. Nearby, Ari and Skaldi exchanged a nod as they fanned out, corralling the skeletons between them. Skaldi put his axe to good use, turning skeleton-trees to kindling. Ari darted to one side, then the other. But being thayan, above was always an option.

She shot into the air, dragonfly wings a blur, before she dove at the nearest skeleton. Several quick chops later, tree-skeleton parts clattered to the deck. Black smoke coiled off the severed, warped wood, as if she’d beaten a foul spirit out of them.

At the bow, Lucas Argall rubbed his hands with a feral grin. Dark burns, like hell’s own tattoos, crawled over his face, with a death-lust in his bright eyes. The wraith slapped his hands together before yanking them apart. A knotted, soot-streaked staff of petrified wood grew into twisted life between his hands.

The bastard was actually enjoying himself.

Lucas lunged and blocked Lysander’s cut, then swung for my friend’s head. Inhuman undead speed or not, Lysander gracefully danced aside, avoiding a crushed skull.

The rest of what happened with that fight was a mystery, since I was busy trying not to die.

I darted around one of the tree-skeletons, racing for the middle of the barge and the Codex. It was right where I remembered, perched on a maniac’s pedestal of ruined crates, surrounded by those slithering, sooty alchemist symbols. That same dark haze still covered it like a mound.

Only now, it had stopped moving.

By the time I reached the symbols, the haze had condensed into a dark, shadowy silhouette of a man with the ragged memory of thayan wings. Its eyes burned like red coals in a starless night of choking soot. I reached for my sword, but thought better of it. That wasn’t my strong suit, and I was tired of getting stabbed.

“Tristam Greenholm, I presume?” I asked casually, reaching for my potions.

“Yes!” he snarled, voice like a hollow grave. “I know you, thief. You stole a page from my Codex.”

Morowen’s former lover turned attempted killer, blew out an icy breath, probably from habit of once being alive.

“I can smell the kelp stench of the sea hag on you,” he hissed, making my spine shiver. “You’re one of Morowen’s tools, here to ruin my great work.”

“Your insane plan, you mean?”

I kept my tone casual, even though my heart hammered at my ribs. Tristam had to be centuries old, and I had no idea how I understood him. I blamed it on the necromantic magic wrapped around the barge like a diseased shawl. Before he ranted at me about his ‘great work’, I cut him off. Especially since I felt I’d get only one chance at my own insane plan.

“You’re right, Señor, I do know Morowen,” I snapped back with a dark smirk. “She sends her regards and hopes you rot in hell!”

I darted between the sigils, avoiding them all. With a free hand, I popped the cork from a vial and tossed a purified mix of garlic and St. John’s Wart at Tristam. He shrieked, stepping back as the repellent hit him. It would only last a moment, but I hoped that would be enough.

Then I breached the charcoal-black circle of grime and realized too late what I’d walked into. A wall of shimmering power slammed into me. I suddenly realized I’d been wrong. Lucas wasn’t about to start the ritual — he’d already started it.

A strange, twisted energy filled the air, like living lightning looking for a victim. As for Tristam? He was regenerating into a withered walking corpse, still connected to the damn Codex. The necromancer was feeding off the Arcane Gate like a vampire.

“Dios mío!” I gasped, my eyes drawn to the Gate.

Cracks ran along the massive structure. Dark, jagged veins of destruction stretched from base to top. Pallid mist oozed from every fissure. Where there wasn’t mist, there were ghastly white skeletal and ghostly fingers, working to snap the Gate piece by piece. Through the widest gaps, I saw a bleak, ruined gray landscape. Easily a twisted and blasted mirror of our own.

“My work must continue!” Tristam screamed, rushing forward.

“No!” I yelled as I dove for the Codex.

We reached it at the same time, each of us with a hand on the book. Tristam screamed like a banshee and clawed at my face. I ducked before I lost an eye.

In a fear-induced rush, I desperately snatched a potion from a belt loop, popping the cork. With a smooth motion, I soaked Tristam’s face and arms in a thick, lime green fluid. He spat out a scream from the depths of his rotten soul as the graveyard syrup did its work.

Tristam recoiled, clawing at his undead skin, while the syrup boiled him like hot acid. The sharp stench from the gray steam assaulted my nose, making my eyes water. He let go of the Codex, and I snatched it off the pedestal. But I stepped back too quickly and tripped. Off balance, I stumbled to one knee right onto the slithering dark symbols outside the circle.

I screamed as dark power drove burning spikes right through me.

In that moment, the primal power of the Arcane Gate pulsed through me and the ritual, all to feed the burning reanimated corpse of Tristam Greenholm. It was magic that no one could or should tamper with. It was as if I were trying to swallow raw lightning hurled from a thunderstorm.

Somewhere, Tristam laughed with a ragged cough while I collapsed to the deck. The symbols swarmed over me like a nest of stinging ants. The world slipped sideways, falling away, a loose mix of memories and fatigue as smoke curled out of my mouth, draining away my life.

“I… I’m sorry,” I breathed low, apologizing to my friends, my crew, and Elara for dragging them into this horror.

“Oh, this,” the Tristam rasped with a dark laugh. “This is what I needed. You taste delightful. Lucas has served me well. Just perfect. Goodbye, thief. It’s over.”

A sharp pain stabbed my heart. I felt myself spasm, as if my body wasn’t even mine to control.

Suddenly, a bright, hot warmth burned in my hand while anger smudged my thoughts.

With deliberate effort, I slapped a hand to the deck. The sharp crack sounded loud enough to break stone. I pushed to my feet while ghostfire burned over my hand, dripping like molten, green-white liquid, eager to chase the corrupt symbols like a feral cat. In my left hand, a charcoal steam rose from the Codex.

I sucked in a ragged breath.

“No, Señor.”

The sound of my voice shocked me. I sounded ragged, raw, and just done. It was deeper with an echo, as if someone else, far away, spoke with me.

“I may not have stopped your ritual, Señor, but oh no. We are just getting started.”

A smirk tugged at the corner of my lips.

“After all, I gave my word to my captain.”

We faced each other, silent as the calm eye of a hurricane. He tensed. I flexed the fingers of my right hand. The Codex Luminari pulsed angrily in my grip.

“You don’t have a chance,” Tristam sneered. “You’re alone.”

The wind shifted, sharp with the wet promise of rain. Overhead, I heard the whisper of leathery wings beat against the breeze, then a low hiss like an omen.

I let a sly smirk drift over my face, slow as the morning sunrise.

“Not quite, Señor.”

Blue-white corpse fire exploded from the necromancer’s hands.

I moved, hand flashing for the vials along my belt.

Tristam never noticed the bobcat-sized tumble of purple freckled leathery wings, claws, and anger until it was too late.

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Hoist the Colors is a work of pure, unabashed fiction. Actually, when it's not swinging off the rigging, or shivering some timbers, it's rather shy and retiring. Did I mention it enjoys baking? Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. So he really is all to blame here.

Any resemblance to persons living, dead, shoved overboard, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author's, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.