6

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Leo” said the Elf to his King. “This Gaston fellow may seem like a decent enough chap, but you’ve got to admit, he is still, technically speaking, a pirate.”
“Look at this ship, Dante,” said the think-skinned, fur-clad, behemoth of a man that was King Leo. “The Liberty is the fastest ship in the world. Aboard this vessel we can travel to places you haven’t even dared dream of. On this ship we are one with the sea and nothing can stop us. And no, technically speaking, Captain Gaston is not a pirate. Captain Gaston is a vigilante.” Captain Gaston was tall and muscular with the thickest arms and neck Dante had seen on a man. His forearms were like the thighs of a horse and his neck was thicker than his head. He was from the Eastern Isles. He had dark olive skin and wore light cotton trousers and a waistcoat with no buttons, which his beer belly would poke out of underneath. He was charming, funny and fiercely loyal to his crew. He had agreed to let the pair aboard his ship after Dante climbed to the crow’s-nest before he had even managed to tell him to start climbing. Gaston claims his ship, The Liberty, was built with a purpose: eradicating both slavery and human trafficking. The Liberty was specially designed to siege larger ships. The bow of the ship formed a large spike, that had cannons attached underneath. The slavers and pirates that roamed the Black Sea would get skewered in the side by the front of The Liberty, and then a hole would be blown into it. This would allow Gaston’s men to easily board the ship from the lower floors, where they could free the slaves in the lower decks and seize the ship from the bottom up. The Liberty was extremely long and thin, so it was difficult to hit with cannon fire when preforming this manoeuvre, and Captain Gaston’s crew were especially adept at doing so.
“Well, that’s fine then.” Dante scoffed. “Maybe I’m crazy, but a pirate that plunders pirates is still a pirate in my eyes.”
“Well maybe we are all crazy, and my eyes are not your eyes. If they were we wouldn’t be here today, lest you forget.” The King said. Dante bowed his head.
“I follow you through to the Hells, my King.” He said in penance. “I just fear for your safety at times, there are lots of pirates here and only two of us. Who knows if what the oracle said was true. What if there is no seraph in Blackwater and we’ve just travelled across the Black Sea and then some for nothing?” They were stood on the top deck of The Liberty, gazing out to sea. The sun was setting and the sea was calm, there was nothing else in sight except for the immaculate sheet of crystal sea. Most of the crew were resting as the day before the seas were rough and even Dante and King Leo had to help when it was all-hands-on-deck.

King Leo wore the head of a great, white lion on his head. It was decorated with ox horns and eagle feathers, organised in such a way that it resembled a crown. On his back was a tremendous great axe called Lionsroar. It was an obsidian greataxe as tall as King Leo himself, with a double blade. The centre-piece of the blade was the shape of a roaring lion with a great ruby in its mouth. His leather armour was adorned with ox horns, lion’s teeth and eagles’ skulls. His right-hand gauntlet was formed of a lion’s mane wrapped tightly around his wrist and hand with thin chains. His left-hand gauntlet was made of a crocodile’s head, with its teeth studding the knuckles. The King turned his head to Dante and smiled.
“Dante, old friend, have a little more faith,” he chuckled. “Between the two of us and this ship, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.”
“My King, I do not doubt your skills. I…”
“Nor I yours,” the King leaned in closer to the Elf, so close that their noses were almost touching. He stared deep into Dante’s eyes. Dante could feel him probing into the depths of his very soul. King Leo’s eyes looked like stars, like a thousand galaxies. They looked like the whole universe was contained inside his head, and only through his eyes could anyone see it. Dante felt like he was falling into his own self, like the universe was falling, pouring into his eyes through Leo’s. He felt invigorated and scared and excited and euphoric for a moment and then... It stopped. He blinked and he was back on the deck of The Liberty with his King still staring at him, grey eyes fixated on his. He studied Dante for a whole minute before saying another word.
“No man or woman I have met can do what you do. Not even close.” He pulled away and turned his head back out towards the horizon. He laughed for a moment as he started to reminisce. “The stunts I’ve seen you pull off, I couldn’t believe it was possible for any man.”
“Says you, the guy who can fly, the Beast King who can soar through his skies and survey his land as if he were a God,” Dante said.
“But not in this form I can’t,” said the King. “Let us not pretend I haven’t seen you fly. You are too modest, Elf. Would we have been chosen for this quest had we not have been deemed worthy? You and I are forces of great power and we are to behave as such. I am the Earth and you are the laws of nature. Do not forget why you accepted this mission in the first place.”
“Because I’m crazy, as are you,” he said.
“That’s the second time you’ve said that in the past five minutes. Is there something troubling you, Dante?”
“No, my King. I just hate the sea.”
“Sleep it off. We’ll be in Blackwater tomorrow morning. The oracle said the boy wouldn’t be around for long, so we must act fast when we dock. Get a good night’s sleep, who knows what tomorrow has in store for us.” King Leo patted his companion on the shoulder with his great, paw-like hands and turned to walk away. As he did so he removed Lionsroar from his back and threw it, blade first onto the deck of The Liberty. The axe let out a low, rumbling roar and the ruby in the lion’s mouth began to glow. The handle whipped around and became animate, like a tail. The lion-faced centrepiece grew and came to life as the blades of the axe formed the legs and torso of a jet black lioness, with glowing ruby eyes. The lion turned to face King Leo and growled. As she did so, the crown on King Leo’s head began merging with his body and he started snarling. His shoulders and legs jerked violently as if his bones were trying to escape his body. He dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, exhausted. He was panting with his head hung, unmoving for a few seconds. Then, very suddenly, as if tearing through his very skin, Leo pounced forward, except it no longer was Leo. The Beast King had transformed into a snow-white lion with a shimmering golden mane and piercing, bright blue eyes. Dante had seen the display before; Leo would do this often, on nights before long, hard days. The pair had seen many of those together. The lion patted the ground with his paws, and stared into the eyes of the lioness. The pair started circling for a while, drawing nearer and nearer to each other. When they reached one another, the lioness rubbed her face, lovingly against Leo’s mane. The two continued to circle and nuzzle until finally laying down and curling up to sleep, intertwined with one another. And there the pair stayed, in the centre of the top deck of The Liberty, purring deeply into one another, like lovers in the moonlight.

Dante stood and admired his King for a while. He thought about the corrupt government that he had left behind in Thyr Thwyllyn, his elven homeland. He thought about how much happier he was for being exiled; although at the time it felt like the worst tragedy to have befallen a man, thinking back on it, it was truly the greatest blessing. Thyr Thwyllyn has a very strict law on elemental mages �" and that is not to be one or face death or exile. Dante just so happened to be a sky mage, one of the highest echelon. He could create thunder and lightning at will and manipulate the air around him to make him run and jump faster and further, or even slow himself mid-fall. He trained with the Aerminen Monks high in the mountains, Aermine’s Fist, for four years after he was exiled from Thyr Thwyllyn. There he developed skills that by far outranked him above any other sky mages in the world. The Aerminen monks were the best of the best, there were only five of them up there in their secluded temple. It was Aermine the Stormbringer - the founder of the Aerminen tribe, the greatest sky mage of all time - who gave the mountains their namesake. As legends tell it, he was the mage who caused the eternal storm that ravages the mountains throughout the years, causing the rocks to have eroded over time giving them a bizarre shape. There were parts of the mountains that had been eroded in in such a way that the formed completely unclimbable, deadly spikes that sliced through the clouds and tore through the skies. The parts of mountain that had fallen from these gargantuan stalactites had fallen and smashed the lower peaks down to create flat surfaces. The whole collection of mountains looks like a giant fist from the western approach, henceforth the mountains were named Aermine’s Fist. It was on the highest of these flat peaks on Aermine’s Fist that the Aerminen tribe would hide themselves away �" traversing the Fist was no easy feat, the storms made it almost impossible for anyone unworthy to learn sky magic to climb to the Aerminen monastery.

Aerminen monks were also highly skilled fighters. They specialised in bizarre and unique weapons such as bladed nunchaku, barbed whips, double-ended scythes and collapsible staves. Dante was the best martial artist in the tribe and earned the nickname ‘Halofist’ when he defeated each and every other member of the tribe in combat, while only he himself was unarmed. He even developed his own unique style of sky magic that combined martial arts with his lightning spells, imbuing his punches and kicks with electric charge.

Living on the Fist was not easy, you would have to hunt the ice trolls and mountain lions for food; no plant life grew on the fist so there were no berries or fruits to eat. Chasing a mountain lion across the Fist was a tremendous task, and there was only so much the sky mages could do with their magic to make it easier. Four generations before, a dwarven elder, a master craftsman named Unbrik the Skyforged created a device that changed the course of history for the Aerminen tribe forever. Using his unequalled, if unorthodox, methods of sky magic and the dwarven knowledge of physics and machinery passed down over thousands of generations, he made the perfect climbing tool. On the Fist they called them Climbers, although they have found thousands more uses for them than just climbing. They were foot-long, sky-steel rods with a button on either end. (Sky-steel was an ancient method of forging steel created by dwarven sky mages so long ago that no one exactly knew who invented the method. Unbrik had trained as a Skyforge artisan since he was a child and he had allegedly left on his pilgrimage to the Fist when he was just twelve years old.)  Either button could be pressed in, which would cause the rod to stay exactly in place wherever it was and it wouldn’t move. The button on the other side of the rod will turn off the magic, allowing the rod to be moved again. All Aerminen monks carry at least two of these rods on them at all times and they can use them to travel anywhere, using any route they chose. They would keep one in each hand and swing through the skies as they please. It was, Dante thought, as close to flying as one could get.

Leo was right after all, of course, the two of them were unstoppable. The King was truly The King. He had a certain way of seizing the attention and awe of every person, animal or beast that met him. There was no one who didn’t love him. There was nothing he couldn’t do. The Elf had travelled with his King for well over a year and the two of them had led armies into battle, they had fallen giant creatures that scourged cities and terrorized the forests. They had earned the respect of every man woman and child they had met so far on their journey. The problem was that Dante just couldn’t shake the feeling that it had all been a bit too easy. He didn’t understand why he felt like that, but whenever his King spoke to him about glorious victory and fate, he always started feeling uncomfortable, uneasy.

Dante shook off the thought. He pulled out two of his climbers from their holsters on either sides of his belt and climbed to The Liberty’s crows-nest above. The lookout was still awake, peering through a telescope into the darkness.
“Seen anything tonight?” Dante said to the man’s back. The man jumped out of his skin and let out a yelp. He turned around in a flash, telescope raised in his hand, ready to attack. Dante chuckled, softly. The lookout was a short, young man with dark, curly hair and a wispy, half-formed beard. His eyes were red from staying awake so long and straining in the pitch-black night.
“Sorry kid,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you quite so much. Mind if I sit with you up here?”
“Oh. Uh. You’re that sky-mage, right?” said the lookout. “Sure, there’s not all that much room though.”
“That’s okay, I can make a seat. I just wanted a nice place to smoke. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Only if you’re greedy.” The kid beamed a cheeky smile at Dante. Dante set up a sort-of-chair using all four of the Climbers he was carrying to support his bottom and his back, and the edge of the wooden barrel that was the crows-nest for his legs to hang over. He reached into one of his concealed pockets in his tunic and pulled out a hand-made leather case that contained his mammoth-tusk ivory pipe, a set of matches and the last of his stash of pipeweed from Thyr Thwyllyn. He pulled out his pipe, packed it and lit up before offering it to the boy in silence. He took it graciously, and then coughed for over thirty seconds after trying to smoke far too much in one breath. Dante laughed all the way through the coughing fit and when it stopped he wiped away his tears with the sleeve of his tunic and exhaled heavily.
“Look who’s greedy now,” he said. “What’s your name, Puff Daddy?”
“I’m Krill,” said the lookout, his voice was raspy and he was teary eyed from all the coughing. Dante found it very funny. “That stuff is pretty lethal, man, I never had stuff like that before.”
“Well, Krill, sorry to say this, but you’ll probably never have it again. That’s the last of my stash and you can only get it from the elves in Thyr Thwyllyn.”
“I live on The Liberty, mister,” the kid’s brow furrowed. “I can go anywhere I want. This is the fastest ship that has ever been made, or that ever will be made.”
“Glad to see such determination from today’s youth,” Dante said as he took the pipe back from the boy and re-lit it. “Why don’t you use some of it and get back to your duties? I want to gaze at the stars for a while.”
“Can you tell me a story? Y’know, about some of the monsters you’ve killed or something? I know you guys have done some pretty cool stuff before, and I’m pretty bored up here.”
“Another time, perhaps,” said Dante, yawning. “Maybe later tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. I’m not sure, but I’m done with talking for now. I just want to relax.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy. He sounded disappointed but Dante didn’t care. This child was starting to annoy him, but he did have the best seat in the house.
“Okay, but I’ll make it a short one,” he said. “Do you know what a basilisk is?”
“Wait a minute,” said the lookout, he was peering through his telescope, looking far out to sea in the direction they were headed. “Either I’m really high, or that’s a really, really big ship headed straight for us.” Dante was an elf so his eyes could see better in the dark than human eyes could, he sat up straight and squinted through the darkness. Sure enough, there it was. The largest slaver galleon he had ever seen. The wind suddenly started to pick up and Dante saw the distant black sails billowing. It was heading straight towards The Liberty.

Author's Note

This is my favourite chapter so far and is where the main story arc really kicks off, i hope you enjoy reading as much as i enjoyed writing.