"Fucking bastards!" - screamed the man, lying on the floor of his house, his voice full of rage and misery. It was a cry that burst from the very depths of his soul, his rage turning into terrible agony. He had every right to have such a reaction - a scene of indescribable horror was unfolding before him. The pirates who had broken into his house with reckless cruelty, who had massacred his wife without a second thought, and now, in a mockery of justice, were robbing his home of his hard-earned money and valuables.
"Shut up, asshole," the pirate spat, barely glancing his way. His voice was thick with disdain, the sneer on his lips betraying his absolute contempt for the man's suffering. The dismissive words were punctuated with a brutal kick to the face, the heavy boot crashing into the bone with a sickening thud. Blood splattered across the floor as the man's tooth flew from his mouth, landing with a dull, tragic clatter.
From the next room, a triumphant shout rang out a voice dripping with glee. "Found it!"
"Great! Where was it hidden?"
"Under the floorboards."
Upon hearing those fateful words, the beaten man's eyes widened in abject horror. Despair twisted his face into a ghastly grimace, his mouth agape with the silent scream of a man who had just lost everything. This money had been inherited from his parents, carefully saved for a rainy day, a beacon of hope to recover from this nightmare. And now—now, in an instant, it was gone, torn away by the hands of these grinning demons.
"No!" His voice, raw with desperation, shattered the air. "That's all I have left! You monsters, you can't take it—please, please!" His cries, filled with the torment of a man staring into the abyss, were met only with sinister laughter and the relentless sound of plundering.
The pirate ignored his pleas and moved into the next room, where his comrade was already filling a sack with jewelry and money. At a glance, the contents could be worth more than a million bellies.
"Hah! Fortune smiles on us today," the pirate grinned, his voice thick with gloating satisfaction.
But suddenly, a distant shout cut through the air like the howl of a feral beast. It came from outside, from the neighboring house, and the pirates instantly recognized the voice as one of their own.
With an unnaturally wide grin, the pirate said, "Looks like someone's trying to play a hero. Haha, okay, I'll go check it out. Finish up and join me when you're done."
"Got it," the other pirate replied obediently.
As he left the room, the pirate sneered at the crying man before stepping outside. The houses were made of dark wood, their boards weathered and etched with the marks of time. Some homeowners, fortunate enough to afford it, had painted their houses a pale white. Tradition forbade other colors, not through laws or edicts, but by custom. Most, however, left the wood in its natural dark shades.
With few exceptions, most of the houses remained modest one-story buildings, but sometimes two and three-story structures of the richest citizens rose among them.
After walking a few meters, the pirate approached the next building. This house was the most ordinary. The door was open, so he crossed the threshold without any difficulty.
The soles of his shoes made a monotonous creaking sound as he walked across the floor, his eyes darting to every little thing that caught his eye. Although the corridor was sparsely furnished, he took a couple of minutes to examine each detail with extreme care and attention.
The furniture was minimal, and the frills came as much from them as from the disheveled pages of an old newspaper, hastily glued together in an attempt to pass as a valuable book. He decided not to waste time sifting through every shelf.
With a grunt of impatience, he passed through two more doors before finally peering into the kitchen. His gaze was drawn like a magnet to a familiar body lying against the right wall in a sitting position, its torso covered in bloody spots from which small trickles flowed down, pooling on the cold floor.
And then—zing—a sharp, ringing sound echoed through the room. The sudden clash of steel against steel.
Allen aimed to repeat his success, using the pirate's corpse to control the intruder's gaze. He had counted on surprise, hoping the dead body might buy him the crucial seconds he needed. But fate was not on his side. The sound of crossed blades reverberated like a cruel joke, the intruder's keen senses thwarting his desperate plan
The pirate, with a twisted sneer etched across his scarred face, deflected Allen's clumsy strike with a lazy flick of his wrist. The steel met steel in a shrill clash, but to the pirate, it was hardly a threat—merely the flailing of an inexperienced boy playing at survival.
"Pfft, cretin," the pirate growled, his voice a rising storm of mockery and menace. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice David's missing blade?" His lips curled into a cruel grin, eyes gleaming with the perverse joy of domination as he turned fully toward Allen, his posture confident and terrifyingly relaxed.
Allen took two steps back, holding his saber defensively in front of him. The pirate realized from the boy's gaze and movements that he was unskilled in the use of the saber.
His grin stretched grotesquely across his face, tongue lolling out like a mad beast savoring the scent of prey. With a sickening ease, the pirate drew his own blade, the sharp edge catching the dim light as he angled it downward, stabbing toward Allen with brutal force.
Allen managed to block the blow, though the weight of the pirate's strike sent vibrations rattling up his arms. His grip on the hilt wavered, and panic gripped him as he realized he had no idea what to do next. His mind raced, fumbling through half-formed thoughts of combat, but none of it translated into movement. He was lost in the moment, his inexperience rendering him vulnerable. The pirate, sensing this hesitation, exploited it without mercy.
With a swift, merciless kick, the pirate's boot connected with Allen's stomach, sending the boy crashing backward. His body collided with the wall, the force of the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. He gasped for air, his vision momentarily blurring from the pain.
In an instant, another attack was upon him. The pirate's blade sliced through the air in a vicious downward arc. Still reeling from the kick, Allen barely managed to raise his saber in time, holding it horizontally to catch the strike. The force of the blow jarred him again, nearly knocking the weapon from his hands.
The pirate, undeterred, repositioned his blade for another attack. This time, he was cunning. As the saber descended in another apparent top-down slash, Allen prepared to block it once more. But at the last moment, the pirate twisted his wrist, changing the blade's trajectory into a cruel, crescent-like sweep. Allen, unable to follow the shift in motion, watched in horror as the blade bit into the flesh of his hand.
Pain pierced his arm, and with a grit in his teeth, he instinctively, with a sudden movement, pulled his arm to the side, trying to free himself from the blade. But without noticing, he loosened his hand, causing his saber to fall to the floor.
The pirate's twisted smile never faltered. It deepened. With another brutal kick to Allen's stomach, the boy doubled over, collapsing into himself, his free hand instinctively gripping his midsection in a vain attempt to protect himself from further harm.
The pirate seized the moment, looming over the crumpled form of the boy like a sadistic shadow. With a snarl of satisfaction, he grabbed a fistful of Allen's hair, yanking his head upward to force their gazes to meet. Allen's face was pale, twisted in pain, but his eyes—his eyes burned with fury.
"Heh, that's a good face you've got there," the pirate sneered, his voice low and dripping with malice. "For killing my comrade and daring to raise a blade against me, I could end your miserable life right here. Maybe I should gut you, watch you bleed out slowly…" He let the words linger, savoring Allen's helplessness. Then his expression darkened with perverse delight. "But no, I've got something better in mind."
The pirate leaned closer, his breath rank and heavy, his smile widening into something grotesque, a parody of joy. His eyes gleamed with twisted amusement as he spoke, each word dripping with cruel intent. "I'll sell you. You'll fetch a high price—pretty young boys like you always do. There's plenty of rich bastards out there who would pay handsomely for a face like yours. All your luck, it seems, went into that." He laughed—a harsh, grating sound that rang out like the cackling of a demon. "Too bad you were unlucky enough to be born in such a lousy place! Hahaha..."
Allen's body trembled with pain, but his mind—his mind was alight with rage. Each taunting word from the pirate's lips fed the fire burning inside him, a fire stoked by hatred and the desperate will to survive. His thoughts grew darker, sharper, coiling around a singular purpose: vengeance. He stared into the pirate's eyes, his own filled with an intensity that burned brighter than the pain in his body. The desire to kill—to destroy—flooded his senses.
'I'll kill him,' Allen thought, his mind a whirlpool of violent intentions. I'll kill him and every one of those bastards… His anger crystallized into something cold, something terrifyingly focused. I'll gut them. I'll destroy them all.
Pulling on his hair, the pirate lifted Allen to his feet, then cut him off with a powerful punch to the jaw.
He continued to hold the boy tightly by his white hair and dragged him down the hallway, where he threw him to the floor as if he were nothing more than a rag doll. Another pirate was already standing there.
"Take him to the ship," the first pirate ordered coldly, wiping a hand stained with another man's blood on his pants.
"But I..."
"Do as you're told."
The second pirate hesitated only for a moment before obeying. He bent down, hoisting Allen onto his shoulder with a grunt of effort. The boy, weak and battered, hung limply as the pirate carried him outside, the air filled with the distant, haunting echoes of screams.
The journey to the ship stretched on for nine minutes.
Not a single pirate remained aboard—the entire horde had descended upon the island like wild, ravenous hyenas, driven mad by bloodlust and greed. They were out there still, giving themselves over to their darkest desires, pillaging and raping, leaving ruin in their wake.
Their ship was large and imposing, made of wood as dark as the night sky, giving it a stark and menacing appearance. At the end of the bowsprit was a red apple made of wood. The same apple was depicted on the black sails, or rather their symbol was a laughing skull with an apple on its head instead of a hat.
The pirate stepped confidently along the narrow wooden planking that connected the dock to the deck of the ship. He descended quickly into the bowels of the ship, and the semi-darkness of the lower deck enveloped him in shadows as he descended the creaking stairs. Descending to the lowest floor, which cloaked everything in dark gloom, he walked to the end of a long corridor - no more than ten meters long - an iron grate covered the entrance to the makeshift prison where the ship's hostages were kept like caged animals.
With a careless movement, the pirate pulled a bunch of cold iron keys from his pocket. The metal jingled faintly in the silence as he unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The pirate threw Allen roughly against the wall and then cuffed him with heavy handcuffs, the cold steel pressing hard against Allen's wrists.
Satisfied with his work, the pirate looked around the room for a moment, his eyes on the other prisoner who was still alone. But there were two other cells on the ship with other prisoners in them. The pirate turned his gaze away from the one who was still alive. He left the hold at a brisk pace, his mind occupied with the chaos that awaited him on the island. He slammed the iron grate behind him, and the sound echoed through the empty corridors. Locking it shut, the pirate rushed back to the upper deck, eager to rejoin the frenzied debauchery below. His thoughts were clouded with impatience, and he no longer thought of the souls trapped in the darkness below the ship's deck.