Dungeon Sniper

"Why?"

Baha growled, his gray whisker trembling with fury and disbelief.

"It was implicitly agreed that this was going to be our last voyage. My last voyage. After I retired, you were going to be the captain of the crew, so why, damn it, Shef, WHY!" bellowed the beaten man.

Shef, his longsword still raised, shook his head slowly.

"A captain of what? All those crewmen we had, now dwindled to just a handful. And the debt. You retire, get out of our faces, but still want us to pay off for the mess you've brought on the past few years?"

"Still better than starting from the bottom in another ship—"

"The ship! Yes! It's always the ship. Baha, you miserable fool, you think a mutiny just happens because someone feels like overthrowing his captain? No! ... Debts and meager crew aside, I was going to follow after you... but you were going to take this ship, Doby Mick II, with you. You didn't think I'd find out? Object? Throw a fit?"

Shef let out another cry-like laughter.

"... A captain never abandons his ship," said Baha adamantly.

"Our ship!" Shef inhaled sharply, his silky hair now wet from the heavy downpour, "You see, a captain without a proper crew and financial stability, I could go along, out my respect for you, because the past few years have been a mistake, but the years before, we had our moments, brilliant decades... but without a ship... you crossed the line, Baha."

The thunder clapped much closer now than before. The waves became tall and the wind turbulent.

Still, the two men stood facing each other, dripping wet from the squall, masking their inner, masculine tears.

"I respected you, Baha. I always have."

Shef said quietly, nostalgically.

"The last forty years together. Me, just out of the academy, ready for an adventure and you, an apprentice just one rank above me... you led me well, old man, and I loved you like a brother out there on the sea."

"A backstabbing brother, you mean," spat Baha, but Shef merely shrugged off the insult.

"We spoke of finding treasure, owning the sea, living for the future... and for a while we did. Quite well too."

"Shef, make it quick! The storm's approaching fast!"

From the towering submarine-ship, Captain Laracroft yelled irritably. Again, Shef went on without giving much of a nod toward her.

"The treasure, Baha. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

Baha kept his silence.

"You promised us there was going to be a treasure, enough riches for us to never worry about a thing in the world, waiting for us down under with the first Doby Mick."

I looked around the abettors of the mutiny, and neither Liamesh, Paterpen, nor Qeeqa seemed aware of what was going on. The mutiny was taking too long, and for an important reason.

Baha was going to abandon his crew and take the ship with him. If that was not enough of a reason to overthrow the commander, I did not know what was.

"... You mean there's no treasure?"

I turned sharply to my right. It was Hermana who asked those words with a shocked face.

Shef turned to Hermana too, blinking as if he had just realized that there was anyone else other than him and Baha on the deck.

"No, Hermana. Baha lied to us."

"I didn't lie! ... There's some treasure. I know there is!"

Shef turned back to Baha, who seemed more pained now than when Shef told him in the face that he was starting a mutiny.

"But the treasure was never your goal. You've never given a f.u.c.k about the treasures, have you? All these years, you were leading us to not riches or fame, but your personal goal on some selfish agenda."

"Enough, Shef. Just get over with it," said Baha, his eyebrow twitching dangerously.

"This is your sentencing, old man. The crew deserves to know your duplicity. Your crimes. Your betrayal."

Baha visibly started as if wanting to jump at his former friend and lieutenant, but stopped himself just before he ran right into the sharp, pointy end of the unwavering longsword raised gracefully by the Elf's determined hand.

"That's right. You betrayed us first, by dragging your crew to a vain, pointless search to wash your decades-long guilt."

"I said, enough!" barked Baha threateningly.

"The past hurts, doesn't it? Well, it's going to hurt more now that everyone knows it. I've looked into your past, Captain. The past that you've kept to yourself and shared with no one, not even me... but I found out. And it turns out that you never wanted to become a sailor, let alone a salvager like your father."

Hermana gasped next to me. It was a prem.a.t.u.r.e gasp, which made me think that Hermana knew more about Baha's past than most of us on both of the sh.i.p.s.

"Your father was a capable man. Charismatic, ambitious, persistent... you took after your father, as your old neighbors unanimously lauded... but forty-five years ago, your father still had a lot of years left in him to make a name for himself as a great captain to be remembered in history. So the world forgot about him, talented but a mere 'navigator' at the time of his death."

Baha seemed noticeably smaller as he stood still with his shoulders drooped and his coat soaked wet with the rain.

"But maybe it was better that the world had forgotten about him. He was, after all, the anonymous navigator of the most famous ship that crashed and sank."

Almost everyone let out a surprised, shocked gasp. I did too. I saw where this was going.

"And who's to say that it wasn't the young, ambitious navigator trying to maneuver around a rocky path and ended up sinking the ship, all by himself—"

"My father never made a mistake! I've read his charts for all my life, and he was not the reason Doby Mick crashed!" erupted Baha like some hurt, wounded animal.

"Shef, the storm!" cried Laracroft from above.

WHEN—

"I'm not here to accuse your father of anything, Baha. But I am here to let everyone know of your crime against your own crew. And your crime is misleading and misappropriating the crew's labor for your personal gain, and you've endangered our lives countless times without us knowing so."

The storm was back at its full force now, and Shef had to shout out of his lungs for everyone around to hear him.

"All for your repentance! To clear your father's name! To fulfill your hubris, to let the world know that your father was a great man, to finally reveal the embarrassing past that you've been scared to let others know all your life!"

"You're WRONG!" cried Baha through the deafening thunder and wind ready to fall on top of us any moment.

The much bigger Drowning Salamander swayed and hit Doby Mick II with enough force for everyone to lose balance and touch the floor with all fours.

HEAR—

I got up and looked around the chaos before my eyes when something flashed across the floor, unmanned, unwielded.

Shef had lost his longsword, and Baha had noticed it too.

Baha ran towards Shef staggeringly and landed a punch on the perfect Elven face.

SONG—

The Reptil pirates had jumped and landed on the deck to break the fight and expedite the mutiny process.

NO—

I saw Elysia lying on the floor, unmoving, and ran to help her up. She had not recovered fully from the severe seasickness and looked deathly pale.

FEAR—

"Baha's done! We didn't tell you earlier only because you were a scribe and you'd dutifully write it on your journal! You have to side with us, or Shef's going to kill you too!"

Liamesh was holding Hermana by the shoulders, coaxing and threatening her at the same time.

"You think I'm mad because I was kept in the dark? I'm sick of you. You too, Queeqa!"

Hermana flailed away from Liamesh's grasp and growled back at the three traitors in front of her. Queeqa looked as if he had been crying.

"You heard Shef! We have no other choice!" croaked Paterpen.

"Drown to deaths, all of you! I'd rather die than be a traitor!"

TRUST—

I surveyed the dark, chaotic scene once again with limp Elysia in my arms. A couple of Reptils noticed us standing dumbly and were coming for us with swords raised. Hermana turned her head adamantly and our eyes met.

US—

I nodded reassuringly, and I must have looked the part too, because Hermana blinked and nodded back, with not a word exchanged between us.

Next was Baha, who had struggled from five Reptil's hold and ran into my direction, shouting something at me.

JUMP—

Then the song began.

It was a beautiful humming that reverberated everywhere, around the air and within all the bodies. My heart synchronized with the beats and waves, making me tremble and shake, but not in an unpleasant way.

It felt as if being rocked in mother's hands, listening to a cozy, welcoming lullaby.

Everyone heard the song. All of the movements stopped. The storm lost all its sound amidst the fulfilling echo of the underwater music. The sh.i.p.s no longer swayed either, and I pictured hundreds of Black Whales supporting the sh.i.p.s from all sides, stabilizing them.

Hermana had kept her gaze at me, and Baha blinked at me, as if asking if I had any part in it.

I guessed I had some part in it.

The trance was not going to hold forever. So I turned and faced the side of Doby Mick II that was unblocked by Drowning Salamander.

Holding Elysia close in my arms, I ran and jumped, knowing that the other two would follow suit.

A bolt of lightning flashed above my head for a fraction of a second, and I saw not a hundred, but a thousand glistening backs before I broke the surface.

We were in good fins.

.

.

.

At this point, one could say I was an expert at finding myself in unwanted, messy situations, more often than not in the form of being a captive, and it was about time experience m.a.t.u.r.ed me and things started to work in my favor.

When the first 'Whale Song,' a faint humming that emulated a one-word phrase with each note, reached me, I did not let it go unnoticed. I realized pretty quickly that no one else was hearing the 'vibration' except for me, and unlike the previous times when I had been idly used to things happening only to me, I was not going to take it for granted this time.

Prolonged Premonition Perk could not have come at a better timing. I would say other Perks worked in chains for me to 'tangibly' feel that time had slowed down, but I would analyze that later. For now, I was proud to say that I was finally able to take control of a situation, if not the most hectic situation I had had so far, and make the first move when everyone else was lost and out of control.

And yes, even if by 'control,' I meant jumping into the ocean with an unconscious Elfina in my arms.

... And I might have lost consciousness too when I had made that jump. Hence this random, spontaneous, expository soliloquy.

Yup. Really needed to work on that next, not getting blacked out at every important moment.

.

.

.

The warm sun basked and greeted me the first thing I opened my eyes. I felt warmth on my back too. Wet, too firm to be comfortable, but warm nonetheless.

WELCOME—

The world hummed beneath me. The sea was at peace, and I was lying on top of a slowly cruising Black Whale, one of its thousand-members pack.

Elysia, Hermana, and Baha were each lying on the other whales, soundly sleeping.

FRIEND—

The whales began to hum the particular word after one another, and I was smiling inadvertently at the indubitable friendly ring to the note.

"Thank you," I said, c.a.r.e.s.sing the smooth back of the Black Whale on which I was sitting.

The warm, lazy afternoon-ish song took a turn and became more serious all of a sudden.

THANK—

US—

LATER—

I could feel the whale under me tensing, making me sit straight with the equal gravity.

NEED—

YOUR—

HELP—

... Well, another lesson for another day: nothing was free in this world.

Any world, really.