Pirates and the golden treasure ch.01

    Hollia moans as she sleeps on her left side in a dark space, the wood floor beneath her far less comfortable, completely uncomfortable in fact, compared to the soft bed she has grown accustomed to all her life back in Stratalia. She holds in her arms as though she were a little pillow the adorable little LinLin, however she is not as little as before. In the week it took Jinron-Lia to get a ship together that would be willing to travel to the port town of Manas on Las Dias the closest merchant port to the island of Los Rodos on the far west end of Las Dias, LinLin has grown some.

 

     She had before been the size of a small ferret; she is now the length of Hollia’s arm. LinLin has thinned and elongated respectively. She isn’t much wider than she had been at “birth”, however her neck has gotten longer and flexible, and her tail longer and partially prehensile now with a small tuft of fur at the tip. She now looks more like a dragon than a member of the weasel family save for of course retaining her mammalian features. Her muzzle now in fact isn’t so much like a baby fox, now looking like the face of an adult fox with a slightly thicker muzzle, not dog thick or wolf thick, but certainly thicker than a fox of the same head size.

 

     While Hollia holds LinLin as a pillow in this darkness as she awakens she finds another pair of arms wrapped around herself and a warm body pressed up against her back…spooning her. With all the blood flushing to her face she looks behind her in the darkness to see the up close sleeping face of Rhulan. In full traveling cloths and capes they lay here, using bundles of straw for a pillow. They had gone to sleep next to each other lying on their backs. At some point in the night, in the cold holding cell of this pirate ship their sleeping bodies had bundled up to each other for warmth and comfort.

 

   Hollia slowly pulls away Rhulan’s arms,

 

    *errrrr* Rhulan’s sleeping form moans in protest at the loss of her comforting pillow as it were. Freed from Rhulan’s grasp Hollia sits up looking at the large faux-wooden door. Of course no self respecting pirate would expect normal wood to hold any adventurer, but even this door confuses Hollia. It’s not wood, but looks and feels like wood, normally people put a shield spell around normal wood to make it stronger preferring the cheaper material over stronger matter coupled with a strong lasting spell that only needs to be maintained every few months by a re-painting of the sigils by a hired sorcerer.

 

    Through the metal bars, with their invisible force field between them, in front of them, and behind them, three layers of protection allowing only air to flow through, but she suspects not magically controlled air; Hollia can see from a second window in the hull of the boat that its still dark out, the sky showing stars she knows don’t exist. The stars had been put in the sky by the same ancient power that created the sun and moon illusions. Their only purpose seemingly to help navigators travel the seas and perhaps to make the world feel more comfortable. Hollia has only seen photos from her parents of the Makai Cluster worlds when they grow dark, a sky with an ominous eerie low glow that she can’t imagine anyone would feel comfortable sleeping under.  

 

    Hollia thinks back, the brighter day flashing in her mind’s eye. It had taken her grandfather a week to find a merchant ship heading to Las Dias that he felt comfortable wouldn’t draw any pirate attention, even with a pair of sorceresses on board. A week spent further training with Rhulan and LinLin, training focusing on sensing the energy of other life forms and a little more on levitating, Rhulan had actually lied before to Ahm to get him to drop his machismo to protect them and leave to inform Hollia’s grandfather of the weakness in the Dah-hoth that had attacked the school. Hollia couldn’t have flown away to safety, in fact she could barely levitate off the ground by a foot and half for more than a few seconds, save for when using a dashing move known as an air skim.

 

     For the sake of not drawing attention and as no merchant ship would dare try to venture to Los Rodos, he couldn’t get a ship leaving from Stratalia’s coast city neighbor of Bostonia to Las Dias to travel the extra distance through dangerous waters all the way to Los Rodos; even thought of attempting an overland route but there were no ports along the river way down south west that could take them to Los Rodos even though that would have been far more convenient. However the captain had assured him he knew someone who could help them on Las Dias who had a small machine propelled fishing boat that could go into those waters and not draw attention from pirates. This would be despite having to travel across the water from Las Dias along the southern end of the larger wilderness island of Logdos Long, as the northern side is a greater haven for pirates who hassle the main land village fishing boats to the north; and then onto Los Rodos, an large island only separated from the main land and Logdos Long by a small ocean way, but surrounded on all sides and with in by thick and dangerous wilderness .

 

     As much as a short sorceress in white robes imitating like a negative reflection of Rhulan’s black and red outfit are unlikely to not go unnoticed in any port town, especially one surrounded by islands and areas the locals believe hide ancient treasures, this was made doubly unlikely thanks to LinLin. Where as before LinLin would sit on Hollia’s shoulders or in her arms, while still able to roll up into a small enough ball to fit in her arms she has gotten into the habit of floating in the air around Hollia, flying as though swimming with an up and down undulation of her semi-serpent like frame.  

 

    Las Dias is not with out sorcerers; however these tend to be robe wearing sneaks, fortune tellers, and curse makers for the locals. For these reasons the captain, an upstanding looking older man handpicked by Jinron-Lia to aid them, insisted they not linger any longer than they had to upon reaching Las Dias. Merchant ships would come and go quickly thanks to all the pirate activity, lingering too long and with such colorful magical passengers they would be fast to draw attention. The captain had insisted they stay on the boat, Rhulan agreed, she didn’t fear anyone but an un-necessary fight with pirates was something she would rather avoid.

 

     The man the captain brought back was, according to him, an old drinking buddy and shipmate was his back in the day, “a finer man on Las Dias you will not find,” he had insisted. The man was gruff, a large man, with an equally large beard, LinLin even hissed at it mistaking it for a fuzzy rabbit.

 

    He had a big laugh, a jolly man, easily liked by the other men. He said his fishing boat often goes out around Logdos Long and even far west as Los Rodos as few other fishing boats go out that way because there are no towns nearby to help in case of an emergency, the pirates pay him no mind.

 

      “what would pirates want with a man whose hull is filled with nothing but fish, the same fish that feeds them back at port mind you.” He said fist to heart in pride.

 

    The deal was set, come sunset they would switch ships and head out under the cover of dark. Apparently night fishing was common as the red squid, a delicacy of an animal growing three feet from tentacle to tip of the body, comes closer to the surface at night. He warned them he wouldn’t be able to go all the way to the island but while fishing they would give them a small silent motor boat when they got near the end of Logdos Long, the loud engines some artificers have tried to sell are far to loud and scare away fish causing most fishermen to switch to the slightly more expensive alchemically made silent motors, a silent motor is also popular for smugglers and others wanting to hide in the darkened waves.

 

    At this moment in the holding cell Hollia sighs, she is thankful her grandfather had the foresight at least not to tell the merchant captain why they were going to Los Rodos, instead saying it was part of Hollia’s training to become an adventurer. Right now, she’s sure he didn’t buy it. She looks back to Rhulan still sleeping, “maybe,” she thinks, “he didn’t know.”

 

   Hollia imagines that perhaps the man her grandfather trusted had no idea that the man had poor judgment in friends. Her mind returns to the fishing boat, in the cover of dark when they were near the drop off point a larger ship had pulled up along side them. The burly likable captain pulled his flint pistol on them, the crew drew knives and other weapons, one old man was even holding a bait hook. Hollia was ready for a fight, LinLin floated up, head reared back like a snake prepared to strike.

 

    “hold,” Rhulan held out her arm in front of her, “Feel the air, the crew may be nothing, in fact one guy feels like a new born puppy, but there is one on there whose strong; too strong for us to get away safely with out a serious fight.”

 

   She looked around, “Most of these guys are stronger than you, we may have spells on our side but we’re out at sea, at night, halfway between a pirate infested city and an un-inhabited island. It’s not a good idea, you can’t fly well enough to get away with blowing up two ships and fleeing safely right now.”

 

   Hollia looked up at her, the smile on Rhulan’s face and the look in her eyes told her things would be all-right, but also something else.

 

 

   “Okay,” she had said to her mentor, even knowing something else was up. What exactly she didn’t have to wonder for long. Feeling the air, sensing the energy as Rhulan had told her to do she could feel something that overshadowed everyone else, save for Rhulan, in the immediate area. It seemed easier this time to feel the life signs, something she attributed to there being so few people around so far out at sea.

 

    Taken aboard the larger ship a most unusual woman paid off the fishing captain with a bag of gold coins. With nod the man took the coins and headed back to his own ship, a big goofy smile on his face. Hollia scowled at him, he was clearly a villain, no remorse for leaving them at the mercy of pirates.

 

   If Hollia wasn’t already familiar with the strange aliens her parents would deal with she would have been taken back by the woman who was the captain of this ship. Although her cloths were the typical brown coat, white button shirt, pants, and what not of a pirate captain, the one wearing the coat looked very strange in such cloths. Hollia would have thought the woman a Kuhrai, a cat-woman, except shorter than any Kuhrai she had ever seen, this woman was a normal human height even though her bootless feet were the typical paws of a biped feline walking on her toes as it were. Her head was that of a black panther, with some shoulder length hair from between her ears and the back of her head.

 

   The woman’s hands convinced Hollia that this was no Kuhrai, her hands, while a Kuhrai has essentially human hands covered in fur with claw like fingernails; this woman had paws with retractable claws, only the inner claw digit being opposable as shown by her holding a scimitar sword in her hand pointed at them. Hollia only knew of one group of creatures on Aesperia that look like her, cat-girls, the strange always female feline creatures found all over the world in all sorts of forms, some with less fur, some completely covered, some almost human like save for the paws, some stripes of fur, ears, teeth, and eyes, while others while on all fours would be hard to tell apart from a normal large cat. Only problem is while researchers have found them smart enough to learn basic language skills, and some puzzle solving, they aren’t human level intelligence, with no patience in fact to learn most things. So this woman garnered an unintentional stare from Hollia, trying to figure her out.

 

 

     “Have a staring problem little girl,” hissed the woman, bringing Hollia back to reality.

 

    “Now be good and don’t give the Captain Cata any problem.”

 

   Rhulan tempted fate, “Cata?” with a smile and raised eyebrow, “Are you serious?”

 

   *rrrrrr* with a growl through her impressive teeth and claws unsheathed, an un-necessary show given she was holding a sword and had a second in a scabbard on the other side of her hip, she ordered them taken to a holding cell, she would question them in the morning after a good night’ rest.

 

    On the way to the cell Hollia noted one odd person sweeping the halls, her mind still open to sensing the power of the people around her this one ordinary man had a power lower than anyone else, in fact so low she couldn’t believe he was a man.

 

    Being a student her curiosity is always grabbing onto anything that sticks out, on the original merchant ship she had spent the entire time watching the tolphins playing in the water, their beaks standing out against their sleek streamlined bodies, and now wandering over a low power for a man when she only recently began to try and sense these things.

 

   “Who knows,” she shrugs her shoulders now standing in front of the door to the holding cell in the lower quarters of the pirate ship. Rather than have a normal wide hull the lower deck was a prison of sorts. She thinks back to being on board the deck, the crew of the fishing boat despite the smaller size had definitely been more men, being night and the situation she couldn’t be certain. However fist raised she vows that she will get out.

 

    While leaning over inspecting the door she shuts her eyes tight trying to sense the energy of the door, she doesn’t want to try a full breaking spell, the light and sound could draw any guards that may be on deck or down the hall where she can’t see. Perhaps sensing the energy of others and spells is a step towards how Rhulan can so easily break lock spells.

 

    “You’re going to want to back away from the door.”

 

 

   The voice of Rhulan startles her. Standing behind her Rhulan is now fully awake, Hollia is stunned, she had senses Rhulan’s power, but couldn’t tell the difference between being asleep or awake, or perhaps was too focused on the door. She sighs; in either case she is just kidding herself, trying to impress both herself and Rhulan hoping she could miraculously open the door. A lost scene plays in her head of showing a clapping Rhulan that she had all by herself silently broken the door’s protective spell and facilitated their escape.

 

    “Well, come on.” She says.

 

   “huh? Okay.” Hollia walks back to where Rhulan is standing. With a yawn LinLin gets up and up beside Hollia coiling into her arms wanting to go back to sleep.

 

    *vvvvv, kik, tik, viiip* The door opens, the sound of boots on wood can be heard entering the cell, “Scrags to the rescue.” comes the man’s voice as he appears into the spectrum of visible light, as much as one can be said to do so in a badly lit hull of a boat.

 

    “What took you so long?” asks Rhulan, with no signs of surprise at all.

 

   Hollia looks back and forth confused as they talk.

 

   “Hey,” he says, “Not like I expected this to happen, one moment I’m resting on that fishing boat next thing I know you guys are on this fricken pirate ship. And how the hell was I supposed to know this crazy cat-lady would have such a messed up door. I come down here, I expect to see you guys waiting outside the door or the door to be open, but no, you’re both sleeping and this thing…”

 

   He points at a strange metal folder looking thing on the wall, something Hollia has never seen. Its shaped like a taco shell with a thin opening and blinking lights on it.

 

   Rhulan looks down at it, “a pass-card slot?”

 

   Hollia looks back up at Scrags holding a thin object made of plastic, a material extremely rare on Aesperia, but something she has seen used to package goods by some alien races, something her parents had to carefully dispose of because of something…she think about it, yes something about it causes it to not corrode naturally, becoming a poison as it dissolves. She can’t imagine why anyone would make something like that, and a key?

 

    Scrags shrugs his shoulders, “yeah, what the hell you know? First I have to search around spying on these people just to find out what the hell these slots are. I have shit to pick them with, I mean damn man, I have been a thief since I was a kid and I have never seen crazy shit like this before man. Then I find out they use these paper thin pieces of plastic, of the all the dumb things as keys. I mean key on a chain is one thing, got tons of tricks to switch them out, but that Cat lady had your key in her fricken shirt pocket. It was like trying to steal a folded piece of paper, and from a cat of all things.”

 

    “you done?” asks Rhulan tapping her foot.

 

  “yeah, yeah.” he says hands raised, “but I’m charging you extra for this having to deal with this high tech junk.”

 

  “Then you can swim home or stick around with the pirates.” she says coldly, “Push come to shove I would have put Hollia and LinLin in a protective bubble and blasted out the side.”

 

    Scrags scowls but shrugs his shoulders and forgets about it. They sneak out of the lower deck via a taller than one would expect stair case, finding a guard Scrags had rendered asleep with a basic potion he slipped in the man’s drink. On the deck they find no one, but the ship is certainly larger than they had thought. Looking over the side its clear it’s three floors high, the size of a military ship, such a massive pirate ship in the water off Las Dias is not something Rhulan or Hollia like at all.

 

    As they cross the edges of the deck towards a life boat they see crouched down behind a barrel a tuft of unkempt brown hair. Upon closer inspection they see the man Hollia had senses was weaker than a normal man perhaps trying to pick a slot lock.

 

   “Let me guess shanghaied?”

 

   Scrags’ comment startles the man who hadn’t heard them coming.

 

 

   “Its none of your business demons.” the man growls, “I wont work for that fucking vampire any longer, you monsters, witches, God damned freaks!” he yells as he throws down his tools.

 

   “woah.” whispers Scrags, “don’t know what your story is pal but I happen to have the key.” He takes out the slot card with a smile on his face, “tell you what you keep quite and we’ll give you this after we take this boat. You could take any other and go where ever you were going.”

 

   The man eyes the card and then glares at them, “No, no more deals with devils. I have had enough; I just want to go home. I…I’d rather,” he glares at them, clearly unsure of his own actions, terrified yet angry.

 

   “Enough,” sighs Rhulan, with a wave of her hand and a green glow she says, “sleep.” The man per her command falls to the deck asleep.

 

   “Forget him Scrags, he’s just a proto-human, a ten year old kid could kick his ass. Some poor soul whose somehow found his way here on this ship. Best to just leave him here, where we’re going and anywhere on our world for that matter he’d just be prey for just about everything that eats meat.”

 

   Scrags swipes the card and they lower themselves in the boat to the dark waves below. As they head out Hollia can’t help but ask, “What’s a proto-human?”

 

   “hmm, oh” says Rhulan, “We are Aesperians, I surmise this part of our history is lost as well. But two thousand years ago our people came to this world, colonized it…we,” she looks forlorn, “we didn’t mean to, but things happened that way. Well I can’t really describe how everything went down to you really.”

 

      A vision appears in her mind, she is dressed similar but different wearing a costume with leather pad armor and no cape, her clothing spandex tight to her skin minus the armor. Bolts of energy whirl around her as she stands in a tube, her power channeling into the golden floor panel and ceiling panel trying to keep control of a massive vessel in the airless cold void of space, on a screen she can see man in a black outfit similar to her own but with a cape and a warrior’s helmet on with a force field over the faceplate throwing bolts of energy at the winged metal vessels of their enemies with his back to a massive black swirling vortex. A blast of red energy from one of the fighter craft hits him causing him to loose his focus for a brief moment causing him to fall into the vortex, its color changing shortly after into blue. Rhulan had no choice but to follow through and guide the massive craft away from their enemies into the vortex, seeing upon arrival the large impossible flat world with some parts illuminated by an unseen sun.

 

   “Rhulan?” the voice of Hollia brings her back to reality.

 

   “Sorry,” she says shaking her head, “What I mean,” she smiles and shrugs her shoulders with a more uplift tone and mock scholarly voice, “Proto-human: definition, a human with out any advancements, no powers, as in no specialties, no innate magical potential either. We are Aesperians, a long time ago before we colonized this world our people lived in another where those people also lived. They were afraid us because we were so much more powerful than them, but we also weren’t as powerful as we are now, and in far less numbers. We were forced to gather as many of our people as possible and flee. Something happened while we were fleeing, we were attacked by their armies, someone special to me…my brother.”

 

     Her force trails off forlorn again, “He got hit and went into the vortex before our ship did, I don’t know where he meant. I spent two centuries trying to find him after we established ourselves here.”

 

   She attempts a crooked smile, seeing tears in Hollia’s eyes she says, “Oh don’t worry. He’s a tough one, I know he wouldn’t be taken down that easily.”

 

    *waaaah* Hollia grabs onto Rhulan’s waist rocking the small silent motor boat.

 

    Rhulan pats her head as LinLin goes from licking Rhulan’s face to going to town licking Hollia’s face, tickling her to laughter, “LinLin?” she says smiling again.

 

   “Dry your tears.” says Rhulan through a smile and sad eyes, “that was two thousand years ago, a lot has happened since then. Our people are better off really. I mean no where else I can think would we have learned magic. This world is better than anything we could have hoped for. Really we just wanted a primitive world that wouldn’t have the strength to pose a threat to us, and instead we got a world with no people…well no sentient people, that we knew of at the time. Four million people and a whole world to spread around on is a good deal.”

 

   “But your brother?” sniffs Hollia.

 

  “Oh,” Rhulan’s mood changes, “I’m sure he’s fine, he was even stronger than me back then. And look at me now? I mean…uh,”

 

   “She took over the world.” interrupts Scrags, “Really you people at Stratalia, I swear you’re supposed to be the best school in the world and you guys burnt those same damn books.”

 

   “Huh?” says Hollia.

 

   “The Lady Empress here must think we all lost that history. Well I told you before we at the thieves guild aren’t too fond of burning books. She’s talking about the Ark, AKA, the Metal Castle. You should know the story, really I can’t believe your family tossed that one.”

 

   Rhulan glares at him.

 

   “Hey,” he says, holding up his hands, “I mean come-on, the school is Stratalia as in Strata-Lee, as in one of the three heroes who saved our people from genocide at the hands of the Galactic Federation of cosmic ass-holes. Rhulan, her brother Rhoan, and Strata-Lee her partner in crime.”

 

   He smiles at his own joke, “together along with some business men they built a giant metal ship. Crashed it here, he went somewhere else, the lady here left us to fend for ourselves to go look for him. After this point you should know the rest of the story, I mean what did the school suppress the knowledge relearned from the Stingers?”

 

    He smiles broadly as Rhulan smiles and says, “fine. What ever.”

 

   Hollia is genuinely confused, “you mean the part where Miss Rhulan fought them off and saved us from their control? Before taking over.”

 

   “yeah, that.” says Rhulan, “I left behind a descent world developing nicely, at some point they made everyone farmer slaves, I fought them off with the machine army of the ark, which by the way no one else could control anymore. There own fault really for letting the ship go to rust and malfunction. I tried to establish this world making it something grand. But you know how that went.”

 

   She smiles as Hollia thinks, “oh, the Rhulan Empire, and then…” she trails off knowing the ever popular way in which the story ends.

 

   *bump* the boat hits the shore.

 

   “Huh?!” says Hollia. She looks around startled, they are at the island.

 

    “Nothing like a good history lesson to make time fly while traveling.” says Rhulan as she stands, “lets see your history teacher top my teaching skill”

 

     She chuckles as she stands and levitates to the dimply lit beach, the rising sun of morning illuminating the landscape.

 

     Scrags shakes his head mumbling, “History lesson, I swear, crazy lady actually tricked me into helping with that.”

 

   “You say something?” Says Rhulan looking out the corner of her eye

 

   “Oh nothing, just mumbling about the knots,” with a little laughter he mumbles, “what have I gotten myself into this time?”

 

   He watches as Hollia stands up and focuses, floating slightly into the air, unsteady, over the side of the small boat and the short distance to the shore, LinLin easily swimming through the air after her.

 

   “You could have just jumped.” He offers.

 

   Hollia looks at him and back to Rhulan, “I’m still a student she says cheerfully. Have to practice. Never know when flying will come in useful.” She puffs out her chest, “Some day I will soar.”

 

   Scrags just shrugs.

 

   As the sun rises a very different scene unfolds onboard the pirate ship of Cata.

 

   “Peter!” screams Cata, half a his name, half a wild cat’s roar.

 

   The man jumps up, sleeping next to the empty life boat port, the pass card falling off his chest to the deck. He rises up straight.

 

   She spins him around with a single light swipe and knocks him to the deck, scrapping his elbows, his face right in front of the pass-card. He turns pale.

 

    “Well,” she says, “Care to explain how that got there…on you’re person? How my captives have escaped, and you’re here…sleeping…next to the…”

 

   She narrows her yellow feline eyes at the empty port and back at him, it doesn’t add up.

 

   “Take Mr. Peter Jones to a holding cell.”

 

   One of the ten men behind her on deck gestures with his head, “come on

man, don’t make me drag your lily ass.”

 

    *errr* *huff*, “fine.” He drops his eyes trying not to glare at Cata as he follows the other man below deck.

 

    “What do want to do now,” asks an older man with an unkempt beard, “Captain?”

 

    “This doesn’t add up.” She says, “Either that ungrateful man helped them and they betrayed him…but a white magician betraying someone, the other looked like the type though. Something about her doesn’t sit right with me.”

 

    *rrrrr* a low growl escapes her throat, “Just keep Mr. Jones in a cell. Mr. Boarders come with me.”

 

   The older man, her second mate on the ship, follows her up the steps to the captain’s chamber as the poor weak; “Proto-human” man is taken below and put in the same cell Rhulan and Hollia had been in.