"How did you even know they would be here?" Gared asked in a vexed tone as he saw Jon placing his second arrow through his bow and like clockwork, this one too was right on the dot and pierced straight through the back of the second guard who was trying to save the Pirate King, Ravager.
After they discovered the hidden exit inside the treasury, all four of them debated on whether to immediately climb down the ladder to follow after the pirate captain to catch him.
But both, Oberyn and Gared, had shaken their head and said that it was too dangerous...
Not only could there be traps and ambushes in there, but there was also a very high possibility that by the time they reached the end, the pirates would have had plenty of time to completely block the exit, turning their journey into a complete waste of time and giving their target plenty of chance to run.
But then Jon once again came through for them and said that he had some idea about where the secret tunnel could be leading.
And then without telling them anything further, he had taken them out of the castle, and then through the forest filled with tall trees, until they finally reached the end and caught sight of their targets... just like he had said that they would.
"It's just simple logic," Jon replied with a shrug, as he lowered his bow and put it back around his shoulder, "They would either head towards the Northern or the Southern part of the island because both the East and West sides have ports and are too risky for escaping. So I just took a gamble that had half the chance of victory... and it seems to have paid off."
While both Gared and Oberyn wore sceptical and suspicious looks on their faces at this explanation, considering how easy it had all been... they couldn't exactly find any fault in Jon's argument so they could only let go.
But the newest member of their group was different as he had a little more information than the others.
He knew of the powers that his new captain commanded, and he knew that it was a simple thing for a man like him to find a single person on their small island, no matter where he was hiding.
"Shouldn't we catch him? He is getting away..." Oberyen asked with a raised eyebrow, pointing his finger towards their target who was at the moment frantically running up the hill, "Why not shoot him too?" he asked when he saw the carefree look on Jon's face as he put away his bow as if he was in no apparent rush to chase their target.
"That would be too comfortable of a death for a man like him," Jon replied while leading the way towards the small hill where the last remnant of this massive pirate fleet was bound to die.
It took them almost five minutes of leisurely hike before they reached the place where the second guard had died.
A few seconds after that they were finally able to see the face of the man known as the pirate king, and to be honest, both Oberyn and Gared were a bit disappointed...
The man had a scowl on his face, his shifty eyes kept looking all over the place as if looking for a way to escape.
In his right hand, the man tightly held a small chest of metal, while his other hand, holding the sword, was shaking fiercely as if he hadn't had a fight in years...
It was just pathetic.
His tall and burly build told them that he could have been a formidable warrior in his prime... but now he was just a fat coward who couldn't let go of his life. It just goes to show what can happen to a man once you get too comfortable and let go...
Ravager had gone through a lot of options in the few minutes leading up to his enemies walking up the hill.
He had contemplated fighting to death making his last stand right here...
He had considered darting straight towards them while looking for a chance to break through and make an escape but with the bow in that young man's hands... the chances of survival were too slim.
For a few seconds, he had even deliberated jumping into the icy waters of the narrow sea behind him, but when he turned around and actually looked at the deadly drop with enormous waves dangerously crashing into the cliff with the force of a thousand hammers... he just couldn't do it.
Whether it was the ocean behind him or the attackers in front of him, he knew in his heart that both of them would surely lead to his death, and he just wasn't ready to die yet.
With just a single chest in his hand, he was one of the richest men in this world and could easily live the life of a king...and it was too much for him to lose it all like that.
So in the end, he was too much of a hesitating coward and ended up doing nothing but agonize over his choices until...
The four bastards came over the hill and reached his position, leaving him with just one choice...
"Who are you?" Ravager asked the young man who seemed to be the leader of the group, a question that he was dying to know, his voice barely able to hide his hate and loathing, "Why the fuck did you attack my pirate group? What did I ever do to you?"
"I am Jon Snow," Jon answered simply, and almost immediately a hint of recognition lit up in the eyes of Ravager as he realised where the enmity between them had spawned from, "You sent your men to hunt for me, and when they couldn't find me, they went after my man and tortured him... something they should never have done,"
"T-That's it?!!" Ravagers in a disbelieving tone, "Just for that?!! Just for you one man, you killed my men!! You destroyed my whole fleet! Just for a single boy who didn't even die!" he screamed as if he was on the verge of going crazy, "Are you fucking insane?"
'Considering who his ancestors were... I wouldn't be too surprised if he was some kind of insane,' Oberyn thought snarkily.
"Maybe I am, maybe I am not... Who knows?" Jon said as a dark look appeared on his face as he remembered the look of pain in that young boy's face as well as the condition and sufferings of the girls he had encountered inside the castle, "But that doesn't change anything about your situation, does it? So tell me, Pirate King, Ravager... how would you like to die? Because I promised my man that you would die at his hands... so it would really help me if just quietly surrender."
Ravager gritted his teeth at the casual way the young brat was speaking to him...
If it had been him from a few days ago, he would have already had his arms and legs cut off for this transgression and made him suffer for at least a year before giving him the mercy of death... but alas, he was not in the position to able to do that anymore, so he took a deep breath, buried his anger, and said, "I have a proposition for you..."
"Hmm?"
"The chest in my hand contains more wealth than any of you have ever seen before," Ravager calmly said while slowly raising the tightly held metal chest in his hands, "I am willing to share half of this with you if you are able to get me on a boat and let me leave this island safely," he said looking into the eyes of Jon, Oberyn and Gared while ignoring the Advisor, "Otherwise, I'll just throw this down and it will sink to the bottom of the ocean... useful to no one. So what do you say, will you—"
He was hoping that the allure of money could somewhat affect their cohesion and if he could get one of them to hesitate and betray the others and try to kill them to keep silent about it, then he could take advantage of it. But the result...
"No. I would rather not," Jon said simply with a shrug while Oberyn and Gared remained silent, not even entertaining his question with a response...
"What?!" Ravager exclaimed in a flustered manner, "I-I don't think you understand how much money I am talking about here... the price of items in this chest exceeds more than half a million gold dragons," he said enunciating each of his words clearly while forcefully patting the chest in his hands, "It is enough money for a city in your Westeros to survive for years, the wealth in the treasury you saw before in the castle is nothing compared to what is in it. So you need to think carefully—"
"As I said tempting, but still no."
"Y-You!!" Ravager gritted his teeth with an incensed look on his face, but he knew that his efforts were fruitless as he wasn't able to see a single hint of greed in the faces of any man in front of him.
"You all will regret this!! You Filth!!" he let out an enraged scream as he finally lost his patience, "This won't be the end of me!! I will come back and I will definitely kill each one of you!!! I am going to destroy everyone you hold dear!! I swear this!!"
After sending out his last words as if they were a curse, Ravager decisively jumped backwards without taking his hateful gaze off of the four people who had cornered him so much.
He knew that his chances of surviving were slim, that even if he somehow survived he had little chance of escaping... but even in death, he at least wanted to take away his enemy's chances to seize his life's treasure.
"Well... that was a letdown," Oberyn murmured with a disappointed look on his face. He had hoped for a good fight from the so-called King of Pirates, but it seemed that man's crew and his reputation was the only thing going for him.
"Ah! I so wanted to see what was in that treasure box," Gared let out in a regretful tone, lamenting the lost chance to get his hands on a Pirate King's treasure, "Do you think he was telling the truth about that small treasure box having so much wealth..."
"Most Probably..." The Advisor replied with a hint of a smile on his face. He was quite happy with the outcome. While it was a loss about the treasure, he was relieved as long as his hated enemy and kidnapper Ravager was dead.
"Don't worry so much. I am sure the treasure will turn up sooner or later," Jon said with a smile as they turned around to go back towards the castle.
"How? Do you have some kind of plan?" Gared asked with a lit-up expression on his face.
"Just an intuition," Jon said with his typical mysterious smile that frustrated Oberyn and Gared to no end.
...
As Ravager fell into the stormy sea with rapid waves crashing thunderously onto the cliff, the only thing in his mind was hatred and a fierce determination to live.
He struggled with all his might against the current, continually throwing his hands and legs along the waves to slowly move away from the cliff.
Ravager still held onto the chest tightly in one of his hands, and while it was making it hard for him to swim, he wasn't ready to let it go.
Thankfully, the chest was quite light, so he was able to make do as he was quite a good swimmer... which was an essential skill in the profession of piracy.
Just as the waves began slowing, and a faint hope began to rise in his chest that he may just survive this...
It all came crashing down when something suddenly grabbed his legs and abruptly yanked him down into the deep ocean.
At first, Ravager assumed that it was a reed or something, and so he fiercely struggled against it.
His breaths began to come in ragged gasps, each one filling his mouth with seawater and his muscles burned as he struggled but no matter how he thrashed his hands and legs, the rope holding his legs just wouldn't let go... it felt like fighting against the pull of a mountain.
But just as he was flailing left and right, the water in his surroundings abruptly cleared for some reason, and his eyes were finally able to see what the thing holding his leg was...
A shadow rose from the depths, an enormity that completely blotted out the light filtering through the water's surface.
His body, his mind and his heart all simultaneously halted as a deep-seated terror filled every inch of being...
It was an instinct buried deep inside of his body and it knew that the moment he moved even an inch, the predator in front of him would kill him ruthlessly.
'No, no, no!! This can't be right, I must be fucking hallucinating!! Because they can't be real! They just can't!!' he screamed internally but the being in front of him never faded away, no matter how much he tried to deny it.
It was... The Kraken.
Its body was vast... a writhing nightmare of coiling tentacles that seemed to stretch endlessly, each limb undulating with a malevolent life of its own.
The Kraken's eyes loomed like twin abysses, massive and unblinking, reflecting no emotion. They glowed faintly, a sickly yellow-green that seemed to pierce through the water, locking onto him as if it could see straight into his soul.
In the next moment, a second tentacle emerged in front of him and latched onto his other leg, and then they went for his hands.
In just a matter of seconds, Ravager trudged up by all of his limbs in four different directions like a helpless starfish, unable to even exert a small bit of force.
He felt utterly powerless, a mere insect caught in the grip of a god.
In the next moment, those tentacles applied just a small bit of their crushing force... and as if he was just a small toy in the child, he was completely crushed. The flesh and bone in his hand and legs were twisted and mashed into a paste.
A scream tore from his throat, muted by the water, its vibrations swallowed by the vast silence of the abyss.
All his thoughts left him, leaving him with only the sheer agony of having his limbs ripped completely and that was not the end of his suffering as the Kraken began to pull its tentacles and his limbs were torn from his body... excruciatingly slowly.
The pain was just too much, Ravager wanted to die, die so bad... but, unfortunately for him, his death didn't arrive immediately.
It was only when his body had been broken and his mind completely shattered from the pain, that he finally breathed his last.
In the last few seconds of life, Ravager experienced more pain than most people had suffered in their entire life, it was a cruel end that most from Earth would not even wish upon their hated enemies.
But Jon was no longer a man from Earth, he was now of Planetos, and he had realised that some men deserve to suffer the most brutal form of torture before they were given the mercy of death...
So he had given his friend, Inky full freedom to dishing out the punishment as she wished... and she had come through for him.
And so died the mighty Pirate King who had terrorised these seas for more than a decade... at the hands of an actual Sea King.
///