Personal System Calendar: Year 00015, Day 1-28, Month VI: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6859, 1st to 28th day of the 6th Month
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Pirate Crew on the Prowl
It wouldn't take long for the pirates to spring into action. They'd already spotted the GMV Skipper before temporarily losing sight of it in the fog. That was when they'd hidden behind the rock formation.
The first pirate ship was crewed by Captain McCavoy, he and his crew riding the pirate sloop called the Joanes. McCavoy and his ship stayed hidden on the concealed side of the rock formation, content to let his ship look like nothing more than fishermen sheltering from the misty morning, avoiding other formations and ships along the way.
They had their cutlasses, bows, crossbows, and spear hooks at the ready, their silhouettes hidden by the fog. For the most part, they played the role of fishermen riding a river fishing vessel, holding back until they'd confirmed their prey was weak enough to strike without taking many casualties of their own, a real concern given how their ranks worked. Only those who survived long enough became veteran pirates, and only veterans could go on to captain ships of their own. To earn that rank, a pirate had to survive fifty piracy conquests, with at least thirty of them successful, and carry a bounty of at least 5,000 Imperial Orichalcum coins on their head.
As the GMV Skipper finally approached where they hid, inching forward little by little, slowed as it was with barely any wind to work with, the pirates knew exactly what that meant. A vessel this size, moving this slowly, would be easy enough to catch for a smaller, more agile ship.
They laughed among themselves, practically giddy at the prospect of another good hunt. Rich or poor, it made no difference, their targets would suffer just the same under their blades. For them, the thrill of it came from how they justified taking what others had worked hard to earn. They wanted their victims to suffer, as if suffering alone could serve as payment, honestly earned or not. It never mattered to them either way. What mattered was watching the agony, or at least imagining it, of people who'd worked for what they had.
As the massive merchant ship, the GMV Skipper, belonging to Baron Kirka's merchant company, was about to pass them, the pirates began the first step of their hunt. The Joanes started tailing the GMV Skipper, waiting only for the morning mist to fade.
What they didn't know was that August had already warned the ship this wasn't a fishing vessel they'd passed, but an actual threat with clear intent to cause harm. And because the GMV Skipper towered over the smaller, more agile Joanes, the pirates below couldn't see any movement happening above on the Skipper's upper decks.
As morning came, so did a strong gust of wind, sweeping the mist away as time passed. Once it cleared enough, the security marines aboard the GMV Skipper could finally make out the pirate flag, hoisted on two ships trailing them at the stern, one to starboard and one to port. Not long after, two more ships appeared, matching the GMV's slow pace with ease compared to the two already in pursuit.
They were able to identify the pirates as the Badjaw Coyotes the moment they spotted the flag hoisted on the ship, the very group they'd most feared encountering. They'd heard from survivors how these pirates operated, and now they found themselves in the same waters as those who'd barely lived through it.
"They're Badjaw Coyotes! Prepare for battle, this is a risky one, lads! They're notorious for not letting people surrender. Arm yourselves and defend the ship! They'll band together to board us for sure."
Sure enough, the lead brigantine waited ahead of them.
August and the Talon escort, Chief Red included, prepared for battle. Red readied his bow, his weapon of choice as a former hunter. None of them were strangers to combat, but fighting on water, with its constant swaying motion, was a different experience entirely from the steady ground they were used to. Still, they braced themselves to defend the ship, knowing that if it went down, they went down with it. But before it came to that, they intended to do everything in their power to fight back.
August, for his part, wasn't especially concerned. He could have ended the whole thing outright if he wanted to, but chose not to, for two reasons. First, this was a valuable learning experience for him and the forces under his command. Second, he had no interest in causing serious destruction this close to the ship they were all currently sailing on.
The pirates, blinded by their own greed for whatever valuables the ship carried, had failed to realize something crucial. They weren't the only predators here. They'd sailed straight into another predator's den, one far more powerful and versatile in combat than they were, water battles being perhaps the lone exception.
August, the man known as the Blurred Devil, was about to strike fear into their hearts all over again. It was a name that had once echoed through every corner of criminal life on land, from the largest organizations down to the pettiest highway robbers and bandits. But it clearly hadn't echoed loudly enough into pirate circles. At sea, they worried little over a demon who delivered justice on land, the one some also called the Angel of Death. They considered themselves masters of these waters. They'd heard the name Blurred Devil in passing, secondhand from other criminals, but it had been some time since he'd last made an appearance in the world. His infamy, it seemed, had faded somewhat with the years.
Regardless, the sloops closed in, nearly scraping their hulls against the Skipper, while the brigantine moved to intercept from ahead and the two schooners flanked from either side.
Before either schooner could get close, August made use of one of the ship's anti-ship defenses, a set of mounted magical ballistae positioned across the top deck, ten in total, spread evenly around the ship. Since the GMV Skipper wasn't classified as a warship, it wasn't permitted to carry military-grade arsenal outright, but there were still legal ways for a merchant vessel to arm itself for defense.
A true military-grade ballista could fire multiple rounds before needing to reload. What was permitted for merchant use was the single-shot variety, requiring a manual reload after every bolt. It was smaller, easier for one person to operate, with a second crew member typically assisting as loader for efficiency. Other kingdoms' navies used magazine-style ballistae capable of several shots before reloading, usually three, with the Empire's own vessels managing five to ten depending on ship size, though those required considerably more manpower, a minimum crew of five to seven per weapon.
August reloaded one of the ship's port-facing ballistae and turned it toward the schooner approaching from the Skipper's portside. He imbued the bolt first with his fire element, then lightning, lending it both speed and destructive force. The moment he released the firing mechanism, he added a touch of wind as well, increasing the bolt's spin, which sharpened its piercing power and let it cut clean through wind drag, keeping its path true.
The bolt left the ballista with a sharp whizzing crackle of electricity, the wind's spin adding a low, whistling edge to it, something closer to the sound of death than any ordinary weapon. It struck the schooner dead center, punching through the hull with a burst of explosive force, the fire element channeled through a magical skill called Explosion, one August had only recently learned. This was, in its own way, a solid live test of it.
The bolt's spin pierced clean through, tearing a hole in the hull too large to patch quickly. The Explosion spell detonated on impact, killing everyone caught within its immediate blast, while the lightning discharged through the water and the ship's wood, stunning everyone else still aboard. Without the wind reinforcing the bolt's spin and piercing power, the whole thing likely would have simply detonated against the top deck on impact, rather than punching all the way through to open a hole in the hull, one that, fortunately for the pirates trying to survive it, at least held the ship together long enough to start taking on water instead of blowing apart outright.
The explosion alerted every other ship nearby, pirate and merchant alike, and left even the GMV Skipper's own defenders more than a little stunned, realizing they had someone aboard capable of channeling multiple elements into a single strike. That kind of feat was more than impressive. It was nearly unheard of.
The defenders of the Skipper cheered before quickly refocusing, since the remaining pirate ships seemed to be growing angrier rather than more cautious. Whatever trick the enemy had up their sleeve, it clearly wasn't sitting well with them.
"McCavoy! The Aries is down! This merchant vessel's stronger than we're used to! What do we do?" Asked his Quartermaster.
Pirates, as a rule, were cowardly by nature. If they weren't, they wouldn't have built their entire way of life around preying on people weaker than themselves. It was only because they'd never truly been punished by someone stronger that they'd been able to keep operating this way for so long.
Less than a minute later, the second schooner, positioned at the Skipper's starboard side, met the same fate. Caught off guard, the remaining Badjaw Coyotes slowed their approach, hoping to disengage, as two of their schooners had already begun sinking beneath them.
Unfortunately for them, August and the rest of his forces saw no real sign of surrender in any of it. Nor did they intend to pass up the opportunity to finish the job, especially with the very real possibility that this same crew would go on to cause trouble for other ships down the line.
"Captain, is it alright if we finish off the rest of them? I doubt it'll discourage piracy outright, or even reduce it much overall, but I'm hoping we can at least cut down on future attacks from this particular group," August said.
Skippy, despite his years on the water, had never met a man willing to actively pursue pirates who looked ready to retreat. Still, he couldn't deny the logic in it. Letting them go now only meant some other ship, somewhere down the river, would end up paying the price instead.
"Go on then, lad. I'll slow the ship down for you. Lads, hoist the sails!"
"Aye, Captain!"
The crew moved in unison, sharp and purposeful. August and the rest of Talon prepared themselves for what came next. The fight was no longer coming to the GMV. It was about to go the other way entirely.
August leapt from the ship toward the brigantine, just a hundred meters ahead of them.
Group One and Group Two followed suit, jumping toward the two sloops that had slowed near the Skipper's stern.
The sloops put up more of a fight than the brigantine's crew would, if only because their captains knew better than to stand and trade blows with people clearly above their weight class. One sloop crew scattered the moment Cassa Venn landed among them, lightning crackling off her spear as she carved a path toward the helm, while Rael Sundfang took the rear, cutting off anyone trying to slip past her toward the water. On the second sloop, Piri Longwhisker planted her feet the instant she landed and the deck beneath her buckled upward, jagged spikes of hardened earth erupting through the planks and pinning three pirates in place before they'd even drawn their weapons. Oryn Thalwell moved through the confusion methodically, wind curling tight around his blade, disarming rather than killing where he could, though not every pirate gave him the choice. Chief Red stayed aboard the Skipper itself, bow in hand, picking off anyone who tried to break for open water rather than fight, his arrows finding gaps in the fog with the same precision he'd once used tracking game through the Lonelywood Forest.
August's orders to his team were simple: destroy the enemy ships, and above all else, prioritize their own safety.
Using the full strength of his body, along with a burst of wind beneath him, August landed cleanly on the brigantine, a ship called the Mariane. The deck groaned under the force of his landing, boots cracking the wood just enough to leave an impression, though not enough to break through. A few pirates nearby flinched at the sound alone before they'd even gotten a proper look at who'd just arrived.
The pirates aboard had assumed the destruction of their other two ships had come from the Skipper's onboard weaponry. Sending just one man over to their ship, to them, looked like nothing short of foolishness.
"Oy oy oy, what do we have here? A poor lost sailor?"
One of the pirates grinned ear to ear, brandishing his cutlass in August's direction as he spoke, clearly underestimating him. That single gesture, that flicker of open hostility aimed directly at him, was enough to trigger the full weight of August's passive skill, Fear the Beast. It hadn't hit this hard before, not against the crew as a whole, since their earlier hostility had been aimed at the ship in general rather than at him personally, leaving him only vaguely aware of their intentions.
The enemy could feel something before, a vague unease, but it had been too broad, too diffuse, to trigger the skill's full effect. Now that they could actually see him, standing right there in front of them, the skill hit with its full weight. Beneath his mask, his eyes glowed a natural emerald green, a sign well known among the criminals he'd let live on land, the ones who'd carried the warning back with them.
The pirate nearest him, the one who'd spoken, began convulsing where he stood, without August so much as lifting a hand. August simply stood there, quietly counting the enemies on board, more to confirm the numbers his earlier hostile-intent detection and aura sense had already given him than out of any real need. A rough headcount from aura alone was useful, but visual confirmation was always worth having. So far, this ship carried a fair number of Advanced-ranked fighters and a handful of Expert-ranked ones, with the captain sitting at the higher end of Expert Rank.
None of it amounted to anything worth his real concern, exactly as he'd already suspected before boarding.
"Are you all just going to stand there? Or are you going to keep shaking like that?"
His voice, altered by the helmet and mask, combined with the sheer presence of his full suit of armor, added an extra layer of dread to the moment. He sounded, to them, eerily like something out of old stories, a reaper of some kind, though none of them had ever actually seen one. If they had to put a name to what stood before them, that was the closest thing that came to mind.
The lower-ranked among them shook regardless of how strong their will or mental fortitude was meant to be, that much was expected. The higher a person's rank, the more resistance they carried against this kind of mental assault, and given a few seconds, most could usually shake it off, so long as they weren't still actively trying to kill him. But that condition held true here. Several were already on the ground, convulsing, mouths foaming, eyes rolled back to white.
Only the Expert-ranked fighters aboard, thirty-one in total, managed to resist it in any meaningful way.
August didn't bother with the weaker among them. He moved straight toward those still barely managing to stand. To the pirates watching, it looked like he'd conjured a bow out of thin air, along with a quiver that seemed to simply appear at his side, drawing arrow after arrow in rapid succession, each one imbued with lightning. The shots didn't just stun. They killed instantly. Perhaps it was his way of warning the rest not to test his resolve, not unless they were prepared to lay down their arms and surrender.
The pirates left standing had no choice but to throw themselves at August all at once.
"Everyone, attack him together! Kill that son of a bitch!"
Even as they charged, they knew, on some level, that the man standing before them wasn't someone they could actually defeat.