"Pirates! Pirates! " They screamed again.
I got up from the cot, looking around.
BOOM! Another crash. The father and son who accompanied me also got up with terror in their eyes.
"What's going on?" Asked the man.
I shrugged and shook my head. They were surely thinking the worst, as I was. If the ship was really being attacked by pirates, we were screwed, very screwed.
I thought that I didn't want to die. Not yet. I had to meet my sister, I had to see Delilah again, I had to become the Queen.
"Don't go out to the deck," the queen requested, materializing next to me.
I gulped and weighed the options.
BOOM! The ship shook and I almost fell to the ground. That didn't look good, NO GOOD.
"Attack!" I heard the captain of our ship shout.
Did that mean they were counterattacking?
The man and his son knelt, closed their eyes, held hands, and began to pray.
"Oh Saint of the seas," they chanted the prayer, "protect our ship, may the calm winds guide us, may the tide carry us to our destination, may the ocean be the expression of your will."
Should I pray too?
PAM! PAM! PAM! I heard metals colliding. Oh no, they were fighting with swords. I had to cover my ears, as the screams of pain were chilling.
"My lady," said the father, "pray with us."
I knelt and began to chant: "Protect our ship, may the calm winds guide us, may the tide carry us to our destination, may the ocean be the expression of your will."
BOOM! The ship shook again.
What was happening? Perhaps the attackers were armed with destructive cannons. The answer would not be long in coming.
CRASH! The wall next to us exploded into hundreds of pieces.
"A cannon bullet!" The man yelled and hugged his son.
I kept praying.
"Protect our ship, may the calm winds guide us, may the tide carry us to our destination, may the ocean be the expression of your will."
With my eyes closed, all I could see was Delilah's face. I was afraid, and when that happened, I could only find ground in the memory of the brown eyes of the love of my life.
"Please Saints ... let me see her again," I whispered.
And as if it were sent by the Saints themselves, I heard that melody.
Veny?
"AAAAAH!" The queen screamed in pain next to me. I opened my eyes and I saw that she had her hands on her head.
"Your Majesty?" I asked worriedly.
It sounds ridiculous, I know, worried about a ghost ...
The melody silenced the cries of battle and pain… it was as if we had all fallen silent to listen to the sweet lute. The song was only accompanied by the blowing of the wind and the creaking of the ship's hull.
And then… The screams of pain came back. Higher, more numerous, and more terrifying.
For a few seconds that was all we heard...
It was quick and then… Absolute silence.
The queen disappeared and in front of me, the father and son looked everywhere confused.
"What happened, father?" Asked the boy.
The man didn't know what to answer. You could tell from his eyes that he was just as confused as I was.
Silence.
The crackling of the ship.
I got up off the ground and walked slowly to the deck. What I found made me instantly nauseous: the smell of blood combined with the scent of the sea, dozens of dismembered bodies. All of them were inert, sprawled on the ground, covered in pools of blood.
Visors everywhere ... decapitated heads ...
No one seemed to be left alive. Both the crew and the attacking pirates had fallen.
I looked out to sea and found an unknown ship, floating parallel to ours: the pirate ship.
A thick fog surrounded us. It was spooky. That whole scene reminded me of the horror stories I read in the borrowed books that young Lucio gave me after I learned to read.
I fell to my knees and threw up a lot. And when I thought I had already emptied my stomach, I would throw up again, much more.
I heard footsteps behind me, they were the man and his son.
"What happened here?" Asked the father.
I responded with more vomit.
Silence.
The wind blew.
The crackling of the ship.
It seemed that only the three of us were the only survivors. But we quickly discovered that that was not the case.
"Hello, milady," a friendly voice greeted me.
I looked up and met Veny's good-natured smile.
How could he smile at such a horrible scenario? What was going through his head?
"Veny… what happened?" I asked trying to keep the contents of my stomach inside me.
"I know the same as you, milady."
"What was that melody?" Asked the man.
"What melody?" Veny replied.
"We all hear it!" exclaimed the boy.
"It's true, Veny," I agreed, "We all heard it ..."
Even the queen.
"I don't know what you are talking about," the bard insisted.
"This man is hiding something," the queen asserted. "There is something about him ... there is something ... strange."
I gulped and got up off the ground.
"The important thing now is to ask ourselves what we are going to do," Veny said. "There is no crew and we are in the middle of the high seas. By pure chance does anyone know how to navigate a ship with two men, one woman, and one child? "
We all look at each other's faces.
"I think we should be close to the coast of the continent," the man assured. "If we take a boat, we can row to shore."
We looked at each other's faces again. What other option did we have?
I cursed inside. That whole trip had been too complicated for me. I was supposed to catch up with my sister soon, but everything quickly went to hell. I had to deviate from the Royal Road, I had to escape from the duke's men, I saw a sacred beast that must be dead, I was cornered in Porto Razza and separated from the love of my life and now ... I was stuck on the high seas, surrounded by dozens of mutilated bodies.
I strode toward one of the boats, desperate to get out of that scene full of corpses.
"What are we waiting for? To row! "