Chapter Text
six months prior.
The sea is truly the worst place to be. The sway of the ship beneath you is incessant as it sways with an inconsistent-consistency that makes your knees buckle despite it having long since become familiar. The ship takes a particularly hard lunge and you feel bile rise in your throat. This seasickness is a curse sent by the gods for you being too harsh, too cruel, too reclusive, too manipulative, and it is all consuming to you; it should have stopped months ago, for you, for the other captives, but it never did. Your eyes water and your vision swims before you nearly black out from the sickness. You crawl over towards the nearest barrel to throw up if needed, and from the way your stomach turns, it will. You gag at the smell of the combination of fluids within the barrel, and you crave the end of a blade over this- this degradation. Before long, you’re adding to it. You find no relief even after you empty your stomach nor when you begin to throw up damn near pure stomach acid.
Your throat burns as you stand there a moment with your head hung right over the mouth of the barrel with hands white as they grip the cusp of the barrel. You continue to sway with the ship. If you weren’t so sick, it might feel like you’ve found yourself in a cradle rocking you to sleep. Even with your fatigue, you cannot find rest because your whole body feels rung dry, surely there’s nothing left to throw up? And then there it is another cluster followed by another, and another. You find yourself wondering if it will ever stop.
The boat sways.
You sway with it.
You catch another sniff of the combined suffering of the stolen cargo’s suffering from loop within the full barrel, and you throw up again.
The boat lurches. Your stomach goes with it.
The barrel wobbles.
Oh Gods.
It’s been months since the men stole you and a half dozen others from your homes, or rather in your case, someone else’s home. You remember laying down for a nap in your opulent four poster bed before being dragged off with a gag that smelled of iron stuffed in your mouth and overwhelmingly strong arms wrapped around your chest. For months, you’ve been on this gods-forsaken ship going gods-forsaken where, and the sea… You’ll never claim to enjoy it nor the idea of it again. Even the mere idea of it makes you feel like throwing up again, even if this barrel is already about to overfill.
That day you'd seen things you'd never thought were possible.
The others around you are all around your age, somewhere in their twenties or maybe thirties. There’s some men, but mostly it’s women that are scattered around the belly of the ship. Every person appears dead or damn near it. The sea has been particularly unforgiving and all of you are suffering as a result; there’s only so much seasickness you can survive. There must be something else too, some other disease running rampant through the belly of the ship, and nurtured by the weak residents of the place and birthed by the pails of piss, vomit, and gods’ know what else.
Lightning hits the water nearby. Thunder makes the ship shake, and your teeth chatter.
The ship tosses. You’ve run out of room in the barrel.
You cough and sputter weakly as you try to catch your breath. You collapse next to the wooden barrel after becoming all too aware of your growing weakness in your legs. Your glassy eyes search around the room as you violently cough into your hands and fight for breath. If I ever see the men who caught me; I’ll feed them their own dicks and feed their balls to the pigs.
Your eyes land on boots as they sprint up the stairs. Is that yelling? What language is that? Your mind is slow as it tries to catch up. The fatigue, the sickness, and the lack of mental stimulation these past few months have dulled your mind. Briefly, you contemplate the odds they drug your food; maybe this seasickness isn't the gods' wrath. At one time you had considered it more dangerous than a hidden dagger, but now? You can barely figure out what way is up.
More yelling rings out and the other living captors begin to stir if only slightly. Some of the yelling is your language, though you can't make out what they're saying. Most of the yelling is not your language, and all of it is from outside on the deck. The other lucid captives look around at each other in fear. The rapid increase of volume after months of the same minimum sounds make your head spin, and there is this aggravating squeaking—
Is that birds? That means land. If you had it in you, you would at least smile. At least you'll be getting off this disease infested ship soon. You struggle up to your knees.
You violently shake your head in an effort to clear it, and instantly you regret it as the bile rises up again. Your knees buckle beneath you and you collapse to the ground again. Your head swims and a groan escapes your lips as you clutch your temple and silently urge your skull to stop imploding. This can’t just be seasickness…
More yelling follows as you struggle back to your feet. As you lean on that disgusting barrel for support, the ship lurches, and the world seems to grow still, too still; your sea legs nearly give out from beneath you at the sudden shift. You stumble forward, finally getting away from that barrel of vomit you’ve been tethered to for the past few months, and replace it with the inside of the hull of the ship and cling to it, desperate for some stability.
I need to go up. I need to see what is going on.
You stumble forward to try and go up topside to see what is going on. You shove your way through the cluster of captives to access the stairs. It seems you aren’t the only one hearing those voices; you’ve not lost your mind yet. There’s more screaming, these are no longer war cries. They’re the vocalization of pure fear. Adrenaline flies through you, and you can hear it rush through the veins by your ears.
A heinous scream cuts through the air, no, you realize suddenly, it’s laughter. A twisted, cruel cackle in a moment of maniacal glee. The blood in your ears freezes as you peer through the doorway.
That laugh, that terrifying cacophony of brutality and sadism, pierces through the air above the sounds of the yelling and clashing of weapons on the deck.
The cackling voice yells. You can’t understand his words specifically. They’re in a different language- the foreign tongue of some of crew members. You catch a few words during his outcry from what you’ve begun to pick up during these past few months. It’s a war cry, a well placed antagonism to the sailors and slavers who immediately take the bait. A flurry of motion and a ring of war cries is summoned from within them. The voice cackles as if that’s exactly what he wanted. Tension and a weird feeling falls over you. It’s almost suffocating, this alien feeling of malice coats and clings to you despite the rain as if it is oil.
What is that?
And then you see it, or rather you see him. Nothing but a blur of motion slicing down rows of your captors in seconds. The men who had you pinned and unable to pull away. People who kept you and dozens of others prisoners to be… Gods you don’t even know. They’re laying in a heap on the deck from what you can see through the heavy rain and by the light of the lightning crackling frequently across the sky. The scent of blood makes your head swim. After months of smelling only vomit, piss, and B.O., the smell of the salt-spray on the wind and heavy metallic scent is both a relief and unnerving. Why is this creature shredding up your captors? Only a bigger monster could kill them, right? Is this what, or whom, you were brought across the seas for? Bigger monsters?
You feel the absolute smallest that you've ever felt.
The ship lurches suddenly, and you fall to the ground of the deck as the cackling maniacal creature slices deep holes into the ship. You hear the sounds of the people below deck screaming as the water fills up, and they fly out of the hull around you, all stumbling about like new born deer. Your hands get stepped on as people run by you in search of escape.
It’s been several months since you were outside, and you instantly flinch in anticipation of being snatched up by a captor and thrown back under, back where you belong, but rough hands never wrap around your shoulders. You struggle up to your feet, wincing as you feel the scrapped skin of your knees stretch as you struggle back up to your feet. You clutch your bloody hands to your chest and stumble forward through the rain. Piles of crew mates and your captors line the ship’s deck in piles.
Did the four armed monster do this alone?
A hand snatches at your shoulder and filthy rotted breath washes over your face. “Oh no you don’t.” The gray haired man’s withered hand rips at your tattered shirt, dragging you off to the side of the ship. “I won’t lose all my cargo,” he hisses, “One pretty one is worth a dozen of those others. You’ll have to do.”
You claw at his hand and struggle to plant your feet. “Fuck you! Let go of me—”
He shoves you down into the row boat roughly without another word. Before you can jump back out of the boat and away from the man, he hits you hard against your temple, and your ears ring violently as you collapse down on your ass. You vaguely register that he’s tying you up with a rope to the wooden frame of the lifeboat. You blink rapidly in a vain effort to stop the swimming vision and struggle to find something to focus on. The shadowy lines of the man catch your attention as he begins to untie the boat from the ship. You hear a flurry of curses come from his mouth as his aged hands struggle to undo the sailor’s tight knots: it seems he’s a bit out of practice. Perhaps he isn't even a sailor. Do merchants sometimes go along with cargo? You'd never paid much attention to what they did back home.
“Please don’t,” you rasp weakly. “Get someone else.”
He snorts and finally unties the knot. A cold chill runs down your spine as the door to your fate seems to begin to close.
“A selfish little girl, aren’t you? You just want someone else to bear the burden?”
Shame fills you as dots continue to obscure your vision. A selfish coward is all you ever have been, and it seems it is all you will be. You just want to go home, even if it's nothing but ash now. Your ears ring painfully as he settles in beside you on the little boat. Whether it be from stress, fear, or pain, you feel tears rush down your cheeks, creating paths down your dirty cheeks. You will your unforgiving legs to kick or thrash around so you at least can say you tried, but that knock to the head, or maybe it's the spell cast on all of you (what a ridiculous notion— spells, as if they're witches) must have disconnected your body from your mind because no matter how hard you will it, your legs stubbornly remain still. You do the only thing left to do, and you scream.
You don’t really expect anyone to come to save you. For the past few months, your manipulation tactics have repeatedly failed you. None of the captives were useful enough to be associated with, and the lack of responses from the crew members put you into a completely foreign position of helplessness. Like a toddler, you fall back onto the old faithful. Since birth, humans know to yell when they’re left completely helpless.
"HELP ME." It feels like a worthless effort even as you do it, but your voice carries despite your lack of faith.
A moment there’s a leering old man in one piece before you while trying to pull you into a lifeboat. The next, the “better” lower high of him is all the remains and a hand attached to your arm. The hand falls off you instantly, and you stumble backwards on the ship and collapse on the ground.
You look up, and you see him. Tall, powerful, and effortlessly tossing the top half of the man into the sea. He turns to you and you startle at his features. Never have you seen a person with four eyes until now.
You don't think two eyes will ever be enough again.
He looks you up and down lazily for a moment and then tilts his head to the side, before purring in his language, “Let’s make a deal, little one, if you survive until I finish my work here… I’ll give you a place to live for a while.” He grins wolfishly and rolls his shoulders.
You don’t understand a damned word he says, but you nod anyway, “Anything.” He frowns as you speak and then chuckles darkly. Clearly, he doesn’t know what you said either: the implications of it remain obvious as he stretches out a hand for you to grab.
The deal had been struck the second your comparatively tiny hand is dwarfed within his.