While the fighting unfolded below, the upper decks had become something else entirely.
Not a battle. A harvest.
The bodies of pirates and Leviacore officers lay scattered across the cold, salt-crusted floor in the arrangement of people who had not seen the end coming and had not had time to rearrange themselves before it arrived. It had come for each of them with a terrifying speed a sudden gust of wind against the skin, a fleeting chill, and then the warm spreading stain before the understanding of it. They had seen death before they could scream for help.
At the ship's highest point, a singular presence stood perched above the carnage like something that had been waiting for the world to catch up to it. A few surviving officers clustered nearby, their breath visible in the night air, their eyes moving across the deck below with the nervous energy of people who are trying to locate what they cannot find.
"Captain what should we do?" The first officer's voice had the particular quality of someone asking a question they already don't want the answer to. "The song seems to have no effect on those people!"
The Captain turned toward him slowly.
He was the man who held every passenger on this ship in the balance of his decisions the man who stood in league with the very pirates he was supposed to be defending against. He stood in the shifting shadows of his cap with an expression that gave nothing.
"There is nothing we can do," he said.
The six remaining officers looked at him. The range of reactions moved across their faces burning anger, wide-eyed confusion, the specific fear that roots itself in the legs and refuses to leave.
"But Veryn has arrived," a second officer said, and the name landed in the group like a spark hitting dry wood. "I can sense his mana. There is no way they can defeat him."
Heads came up. Eyes brightened with a desperate, ugly hope.
"Yes! I almost forgot that beast is here victory is ours!" A third officer's voice rose to something close to hysteria.
"I think we shouldn't get carried away," a fourth said. "The battle isn't over yet."
"Oh, it will be soon enough, once Veryn raises his sword. That man can split mountains with a single strike!"
"You're right. Victory is certain." A sixth turned to the Captain. "But why did you say there is nothing we can do?"
Silence settled over the group. All of them turned toward the mustached man who commanded them.
The Captain wasn't looking at them. His gaze was fixed on the horizon the line where the black sea met the black sky, the boundary between one kind of nothing and another.
"The sea is calm," he muttered. "Too calm. The clouds have surrounded the moon."
The officers looked at each other. His behavior was unsettling them more than the fight below. They turned to each other and began whispering, the low hiss of it entirely unconcerned with the fact that the man they were mocking stood three feet away.
What does he mean?
I don't know. Maybe the old man needs to retire.
Trust me, he probably will.
They continued. And in continuing, they missed the quality of the silence that was building around them the particular silence of a space that has fewer people in it than it did thirty seconds ago.
"Don't you fear calmness?" the Captain said.
They stopped.
"Isn't calmness good?" the fourth officer said, genuinely uncertain what answer was expected. "I mean no chaos at all."
"Yeah, I don't understand why you ask" The fifth officer reached out to clap his hand on the nearest shoulder to emphasize his point.
His arm found cold air.
He turned his head toward the spot where his comrade had been standing. The spot was empty. He looked at the remaining group. Counted.
"Hey have you seen where those two went? They were here just moments ago."
"No idea. Probably somewhere."
"Something is wrong."
"They probably just went to relieve themselves."
"But how? I didn't see them leave." He ran a hand through his hair, his nerves finding the surface. A gust of wind caught his eyes and he wiped the grit from them and turned back.
Three officers.
His heart stopped.
No footsteps. No splashes. No sound of anything going over the railing. Just three where there had been six, and the dark, and the calm sea below, and the Captain's silhouette utterly motionless against the sky.
The fifth officer's legs brought him toward the only other person remaining.
"Captain." His voice had lost everything except the shape of the words. "What's going on? Where did they go?"
The Captain turned to face him. He stepped closer, his presence filling the available space with the particular weight of someone who is not afraid of what comes next.
"Death waits for nobody," he said. He placed both hands on the officer's shaking shoulders, and the contact made the shaking worse. "It takes everyone we cherish."
"D-death? There is no blood here I don't understand anything!" The words came out fractured, the horror of it finding all the cracks in his composure simultaneously. The men who had been his subordinates for years his companions, the people whose faces he knew across every meal and every watch had simply ceased to be present between one breath and the next. "My head hurts"
"Don't worry," the Captain said, looking down at him with an expression that was not unkind. "You will be free from fear and pain soon."
The officer could not parse the words. How does anyone parse a nightmare while they are still inside it?
The silence broke.
A wet, heavy thud from somewhere in the dark above the sound of something solid connecting with the ship's roof and then rolling. The object came out of the shadow at the edge of the lantern light and tumbled across the deck, turning over the rivets before coming to rest against the officer's boot.
He looked down.
A human head. Severed cleanly. The face of a man he had known for three years.
Then more. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Four more, emerging from the darkness in sequence, coming to stop in a loose arrangement at his feet.
"Stop it--stop it --who is doing this-- stop--"
He folded. His knees found the deck, his arms coming up around his own head, pulling his knees in, making himself as small as the situation would allow. He kept his eyes shut.
"It's a dream. It's a dream. It will be over soon. It's just a dream."
The lie didn't work but he kept saying it, because the alternative to saying it was acknowledging the five heads on the deck and the night air and the Captain's footsteps somewhere nearby.
His hands reached blindly for the Captain's jacket. Found fabric. Held on.
"I don't want to die." The words came out between breaths that had stopped being reliable. "I don't know what's happening. I don't want to die." His throat was closing. "I want to see my lover. I promised her I promised her I'd come back and marry her. Please, Captain. Please save me. I don't want to die."
The Captain was still. His eyes closed. His hands held the officer's shaking hands around his jacket, and his expression had the quality of a man who has thought about the cruelty of the world enough times that encountering it again produces something closer to sorrow than surprise.
The officer's voice slowed. His breathing found a brief, terrible steadiness. The shaking ceased.
"I thank you for your service," the Captain said. "Life is unfair, isn't it?"
The officer's head joined the others on the deck.
"What are you mumbling about?"
Ryuuken stood at the far end of the roof. Sword in hand, the blade still running with fresh blood from the clearing of the decks below. His face carried the hard, specific anger of a man who has been wronged by someone he wants to look in the eye while he corrects the situation.
The Captain glanced at the officer's body at his feet. He raised his foot and kicked it over the railing into the sea below a single, casual motion, the way you clear something from a table you need to use.
He reached for the heads.
"No."
Ryuuken's blade came up, the steel catching the last of the available light. "The collection is not complete. You still have your head."
The Captain looked at him for a long moment. Then chuckled soft, unhurried.
He turned his back.
"So bloodthirsty, young man." He looked toward the horizon. "I didn't do anything to you. Why are you so angry?"
"You betrayed our Lord and you have the nerve to ask that!" Ryuuken's eyes had gone bloodshot, the specific red of a man whose anger has metabolized into something more primal.
"Your Lord. Ah." The Captain's voice carried a thoughtful quality, turning the words over. "You must be a knight."
"What if I am? It's an honor. Something completely foreign to you, I'm sure."
"Honor," the Captain repeated. The word came back slower the second time, heavier. "The elites create many labels to hide the term 'slavery' from common eyes. They add many fancy words to it and call it something noble."
"Slavery?" The veins in Ryuuken's neck found the surface. "We serve our Lord because he protects and watches over his people! Not because we are forced to!"
"Is that so?" The Captain almost sounded interested. "Then you are a slave by will. No matter what position you hold knight, advisor, strategist, lord, or king you are a slave to something or someone. The only question is whether you chose the chain."
"I don't understand you and I'm not here for philosophy! I'm here to finish you off!"
Ryuuken dropped into his sprinting stance, every muscle coiling.
Something touched his trouser leg.
"We need him alive." Rui's voice came from the shadow at his feet barely sound, meant only for Ryuuken's ears. "Remember the plan."
Ryuuken's teeth pressed together hard enough to ache. "Damn it. I almost forgot. That silver-haired brat&--" He caught himself.
"Emerion said you can beat him half dead," Rui whispered.
The pause lasted one second.
A savage grin spread across Ryuuken's face with the specific satisfaction of someone who has found the loophole in their own frustration.
"Damn right I will."
He moved.
The speed he hit was near the sound barrier a blur of brown hair and steel aimed at the Captain's legs, the discipline in the strike keeping it non-lethal despite everything his instincts were telling him.
The strike stopped.
Not parried. Not blocked. Simply stopped embedded in a shimmering bubble of water that had materialized around the Captain's lower body between one heartbeat and the next, Ryuuken's blade swallowed by it and held.
"Young man," the Captain said, not turning, "you should fight head-on rather than striking from behind. Though I suppose that is consistent with House Corvus."
"I don't need a sword to beat you!" Ryuuken kept his grip on the hilt with one hand and raised the other fist.
"Too careless," the Captain murmured, glancing sideways. "Your defense is exposed."
A hand made of compacted water erupted from the Captain's shoulder and connected with Ryuuken's face before his own punch could complete. The force of it sent him backward his back finding the deck, the new impact waking every recently healed injury simultaneously. His sword landed beside him with a metallic ring.
"Oh my." The Captain watched him with mild interest. "It seems the punch helped you recover your sword. I'll have to be more careful."
Water began to rise around him slow, deliberate, building itself into a translucent suit of armor from shoulder to toe. The material was dense and layered, the kind of construction that suggests considerable practice.
"Ryuuken, you okay?" Rui asked from the shadow.
"Do you believe something fragile like that can hurt me?" Ryuuken was already up.
"Be careful," Rui said. "The Captain's ability is Water Manipulation not elemental magic. The distinction matters."
"Isn't it the same thing?" Ryuuken pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why are you interrupting me for this?"
Rui exhaled slowly. "Elemental magic users generate their element from their core they don't need an existing source. The Captain manipulates existing water. He doesn't create it." A pause. "And we are surrounded by the sea."
Ryuuken looked at the dark water on both sides of the hull. The implication arrived.
"Then what does knowing that do for us, genius?"
"It means don't get caught in the water. If you strike carelessly again, instead of trapping your sword, he might trap you."
"So what do I do? Just watch?"
"For now yes. Use your speed to avoid his attacks. Only strike if I find an opening in his defense."
Ryuuken's expression communicated his feelings about this plan in considerable detail. He said nothing and began to move a constant high-speed orbit around the Captain, too close for the water hands to extend properly, too fast for the armor to track.
"Such a clever tactic," the Captain observed, his eyes trying to follow the blur and finding the task genuinely challenging. "I would be in serious trouble without my ability. You are worthy of the title of Knight."
Ryuuken didn't answer. Kept moving.
"But titles won't save you from death," the Captain said.
The water armor sprouted spikes.
"Fall back make distance!" Rui's voice came sharp and immediate.
Ryuuken retreated at full speed. Several spikes caught his arms on the way out the contact like being struck by something between ice and a blade, no blood but a deep, vibrating pain that traveled up to his shoulders. He looked at his arms, confused.
"Water spikes," Rui said. "They'll hurt without cutting for now."
The next assault demonstrated what for now meant.
The Captain launched a volley upward water arrows, dozens of them, sent into the pitch-black sky where the moon's absence made them invisible. No trajectory to read. No glint to track. They came down from the dark and Ryuuken worked on sound and instinct alone, his sword moving to intercept what he could.
Some got through. These ones drew blood.
The spikes had been probing his defense. The arrows were the real assault.
He found himself pinned the armor too spiked to close the distance, the arrows too numerous and invisible to deflect cleanly. Every direction had a cost he couldn't afford to keep paying.
"Rui-- what do we do?"
The shadow was quiet.
"Rui?"
Nothing.
"Tell me what to do!" An arrow caught his shoulder. Another his leg. He kicked his own shadow in frustration. "Rui, you bastard answer me!"
The shadow gave him nothing back.
The arrows kept coming from the dark, falling from the invisible sky, and the Captain stood in his spiked armor watching the blur slow down as the cuts accumulated, with the patient expression of a man who has always known how this ends and has simply been waiting for the arithmetic to finish.