December 1st
The Hangpole navigated tranquil ocean through the night. For dinner that night, they grilled seafood caught in the fishing net.
Davy stared at Klein eating fish 'til he came aware.
"You're not a vegetarian?" Asked Davy.
"Why do you assume I'm a vegetarian?" Said Klein with his mouth full.
"I don't know – because you talk to animals?"
"I really don't talk to animals." Klein sighed.
"Klein just understands them." Came Adonna. "It's weird but you get used to it."
"Talk to them, understand them – same thing. The point is, shouldn't you be a vegetarian because you understand them? I mean… the whole reason we eat meat is because we naturally don't understand animal. And we don't eat humans because we understand humans. You understand that fish you're devouring, and you also understand me. So…"
Klein glanced a suspicious eye away, then glanced back at Davy, then glanced away again, chewing another bite. He said nothing.
"Klein, that's not funny. Say something!"
Adonna and Rwby laughed.
The ship stopped abruptly, throwing everyone off balance. Winds in her sails yet she won't budge an inch as if stuck in mud under silent night. The waves had halted like the ocean itself had frozen all of a sudden – except it hadn't.
Bear started barking out at the darkness, so intently enough to convince them of ominous danger and Adonna tickled the dog's nose with a feather to provoke a sneeze.
Big Bear vaulted out the ship. All their jaws dropped as he walked on water, searching around just like a hound.
Next thing, the waves resumed. Big Bear plunged down into the water and their ship resumed movement onwards.
Adonna dived in after him on impulse. She couldn't swim, therefore thrashed in the water as hopeless as her dog did.
Klein rushed to the helm to stop the ship from sailing away, yet steered it so sharp, it threw Rwby hard across the deck.
Davy dived in after Adonna. For all his proficiency in swimming, he flapped hard to stay afloat. It was as if his weight in water had doubled.
Saving her from drowning was one gruelling task, yet still he had to paddle the both of them away so as to not get crushed by the ship' keel as Klein steered carelessly in trying to keep it around them. In so doing, they'd both sink underwater for some seconds before he'd manage to save them both from drowning again and again and again.
Rwby finally picked herself up, unsteady on her feet from mild concussion. Quick to read the situation, she wobbled to the pulley system to release anchor, then to the rigging to close the sails.
With the ship stagnant, she and Klein threw ropes to Bear while Adonna and Davy climbed up the anchor's heavy chain.
Klein's words eased big Bear to calm down and bite on the lifeline.
Adonna and Davy – right after their climb were faced with another task now.
Their drenched clothes had almost dried on their backs and all the water they had guzzled digested by the time they all managed to pull the heavy dog back on board.
All sprawled over the floor with sore muscles. "Okay let's turn back," said Rwby. Last words any of them heard before sleep overtook them then and there.
Come the morning squalls,
Their ship had drifted with ocean current to a litter of islands.
Their anchor seemed to have been chewed off its chain when they retracted the pulley.
Referring to their map, they found themselves just barely inside the Godless Sea.
Still a chance to turn around, Rwby pointed out.
Then,
Adonna collapsed.
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Bedridden, Adonna's body was burning up with a terrible fever. Her temperature's reading on the thermometer gave Rwby pause, who noted it must've been high as Kiyan's when he was ill.
When her eyes did open, she passed the fever as consequence of nearly drowning. But after Klein remarked about how easily she'd been falling ill of recent, Davy sat behind 'til the others left and he was all alone with her.
She wore a warm, radiant smile to mask her pain. But it failed to deceive him that all was okay.
"You fall ill often? You shouldn't have come."
"I'll be hale and hearty in no time…" Adonna mumbled once again before drifting back to sleep.
With the right herbs, Rwby could make her some medicine. So Davy and her elected to scavenge the vegetation on one of the nearby islands for medicinal ingredients.
Davy armed himself with flintlock pistols left by Hangpole pirates. They set out.
Noon passed to night,
They didn't return.
That same night,
There was a hatted man in a rowboat heaped with gold and a torch in his hand. He watched a large, burning ship falling apart as the fire ate its black pirate flag. Then he rowed to the nearest island.
Same island Davy and Rwby went.
Back on the Hangpole,
Klein lit more and more lanterns around the ship the darker it got. Darkness always made him tense with unease. With the hours growing ever late, Klein conjured the courage to enter the dark forest after the others. What's more, he left little Bear by Adonna's bedside, so he went alone.
He wouldn't have been yelling their names so loud in the forest if he knew it would get him whacked from behind.
Soon after,
He woke up tied next to Davy and Rwby in a fire-lit cave. The hatted, bearded pirate, their captor, doddering from paranoia.
"Who are you?" Fear choked Klein's voice.
"Louis IV. Don'tcha pretend ignorance! Where's the rest o' your lot, eh? The rest o' you Marblemen?"
His questions left them baffled but the pistol he kept shoving in front of their faces had them in panic.
"Why you after me now? Done me part o' the deal?" He shouted.
When they couldn't answer, he stuck a pistol to Klein's belly, making it clear he needed only one of them alive to answer.
Fear had dulled Klein's hearing as Rwby and Davy bickered with the man, over and over trying to explain that they weren't nor knew what "Marblemen" were.
Yet he claimed their guns were Marblemen guns and still glanced over his shoulders every minute. He raised the butt of his pistol and one Davy brought along. Same engraving of a fist on both. "Think using 'em ol' models disguise you, eh?"
Back on the ship,
No one was around when Adonna woke up crying through the night.
Echoes of Davy's voice left ringing in her memory, talking about mooring the ship at one of the islands back when her mind was too boggled for it to mean anything except noise.
Her legs could hardly carry her weight, yet how could she stay put as dawn of 3rd December approached with everyone missing?
She rode out on big Bear's back into the forest and before the sun hit full brightness he sniffed out their trail leading towards a hill.
Louis IV rushed out the cave from the sound of danger, only to encounter the large brown beast.
About five flintlock pistols at his waist – all loaded. He hailed gunshots, which only stalled big Bear for him to make a weaselly escape.
Adonna saw Klein, Rwby and Davy tied up inside the cave, yelling for her. Instead she prodded Bear after Louis IV.
He hid, reloading all his guns.
She sought, and big Bear's keen nose quickly found him.
Shot after shot, his bullets couldn't hurt big Bear any more than paper balls would. This time, big Bear swung around and sent him flying with his thick, furry tail.
Louis IV was carried by Bear's teeth back to the cave to – in turn – become the one tied up for questioning.
He didn't fear big Bear's snarling nor the flintlock in shaky hands pointed at him enough to answer their interrogation. However when Rwby called attention to his box of treasure she discovered concealed under large leaves inside that cave, he never paused once in narrating how he betrayed his crew by leaking their location to Marblemen so he could make away with all the treasures alone when the enemy came bombing their ship. "I see now you ain't with 'em Marblemen… so seems we got off on the wrong foot, eh? How about shake hands and go our separate ways, wadya say?"
"Wrong foot? You were about to shoot me!" Shouted Klein.
"Who are Marblemen?" Asked Adonna. She couldn't even stand on her own without Davy propping her upright.
"You two look mighty snug in each other's arms." Louis IV smirked at Davy's arm around Adonna. "Noticed he was the first one you cut loose. Smitten, eh? Girlfriend, boyfriend? Oh, right you can't be the girlie. Must be the raven-head since they were bathing together and all smitten in a cosy spring when I found 'em. Ain't lying, You can ask. 'Tis how I captured 'em. Thems right here – go on ask 'em."
The way Adonna looked Davy, then over to Rwby. Then back to Davy. The cave couldn't contain her voice. She ranted, questioned, answered her own questions and ranted all over. Davy in stutters, interrupted whenever he tried to speak in his defence, while Rwby confusedly speechless.
In their distraction, Louis IV weaselled out of his binds.
He raced for his treasures but big Bear sprang there before him.
Klein let out a shot of his pistol, which only missed due to him being a lousy shot. The bullet ricocheted off stone and grazed Louis IV's cheek.
He finally knew fear and ran out the cave.
None of them bothered to chase after him.
"It's not what happened. He was obviously lying." Finally some silence for Davy to explain.
On their way back to their ship, he let Rwby and Klein carry Louis IV's treasure on Bear's back, while he carried Adonna on his just so the two of them could be alone as they lagged close behind the others.
"He ambushed us while we were picking some plants near a spring, that's all there is to it."
"Hey…" She called in a low voice. "Ever heard of Swing Blight?" She asked.
"Yes… back in the Ironsides estate."
"It's the illness Kiyan has. Starts gradually, you get sick with a fever then recover. But then the fever comes back over and over at lesser intervals 'til eventually you're sick every day of the month and every month of the year. Don't worry it's not contagious, you're just born with it, I guess. That's what the doctor said when mine started. Am I going to be stuck to a bed unable to do anything for myself?"
"Is it curable?"
Her long silence hinted the answer to Davy's question. "I don't want to talk about it." She responded. "And please don't tell Klein and Rwby… I'll tell them… eventually – but for now let things just stay the way they are."
"Okay." He answered softly.
She began sobbing on his shoulder all of a sudden. "Adonna?" He called. "We'll find something for it, okay? That type of Astrid the Ironsides had. We'll–"
"It's not that." She cut him short with a sniffle. "I thought you left. I know you didn't want us tagging along, and then I fell sick to slow us down so – and then you said I shouldn't have come along. So I thought…"
Davy smiled. "This is the second time I'm disappointing you about that, isn't it?"
"Yeah…" Her sobs turned to light chuckles. "Don't stop disappointing, please."
On their ship,
As Klein skimmed Louis IV's map, something appeared off about it. He passed it to Davy to confirm, who compared it with theirs from the captain's cabin.
Louis IV's map of the Godless Sea differed much from their own which was the standard map sold everywhere. According to the former, they were far deeper inside the Archipelago than the other had them believe.
But which to trust?
Rwby brought back the fact that Louis IV believed them to be so called "Marblemen" because of the pirates' guns they carried. Meaning Captain Deron's pirates must've known their way around the Godless Sea; meaning they might find something else if they give the captain's cabin a thorough ransack.
And right she was!
They found a hidden coffer under the flooring under Deron's desk. A worn-out newsprint leaf. Aside Davy, none of them has ever even laid eyes on or knew what a newsprint was. An article about dragons with faded text and image.
"Dragons?" Came Klein. "They are another specie of Astrids?"
"An extinct species. Dragons are nothing but fables." Replied Davy. "My mentor, Knob, liked to ramble on about them."
"Look at this." Rwby called their attention to something more inside the coffer. A map. And it resembled Louis IV's detail to detail.
On the similar maps, the nearest island would be one of the big cities called Ana. There, they could find more formal medication for Adonna, restock their food supplies too and give their ship a spruce. Easy enough with Louis IV's treasure now claimed as theirs.