Chapter 82: 82: Jinnei, Junior Pirate Queen

***Jinnei Gadsint***

The island looked a bit like a balding man’s head. The gentle swell of a storm-eroded mountain, mostly covered in emerald jungle, save for an inexplicable bare patch of shredded branches and black dirt, seemingly a mile wide.

“This is where the ships are coming from?” Jinnei asked, standing up in the crow’s nest with Kip, her pirate blood-slave.

“According to the Shuweya, anyway.”

The Shuweya were the islanders who populated the small tropical islands that dotted the sea between the east and the west continents. Originally descended from Warped humans, they were gracious hosts and fierce warriors, but rumors of a cursed island had driven them away from this place and caught Jinnei’s attention.

The rumored curse also mentioned that a steady stream of ships manned by Ilethan skeleton crews were sailing East toward Gadvera.

They had to be doing it somehow, Jinnei thought. Something had to be supplying them ships, keeping the ocean siege strong despite General Andra’s best efforts and several devastating raids on the Ilethan fleet.

Jinnei had tracked the rumors all the way to this island.

It certainly looks like it’s been logged heavily, Jinnei thought, bringing the spyglass back up to her eye. It was odd, though, the pattern was different than any she’d seen before. Rather than a receding line that worked it’s way up the mountain, it was a circular patch of bald land with a trail leading around to the other side of the mountain, and another leading to the shore.

Where are all the people? She thought. Even though they didn’t see a port, there should at least be shacks build near the logging operation, where the laborers would spend the night after a long day of cutting and hauling timber. There should be fires where the Ilethan mess officers prepared the day’s slop.

“Something feels weird about this.” Kip said.

“Of course it does,” Jinnei said, still scanning the island for signs of habitation. “Why else would the Shuweya tell us to give it such a wide berth?

Then Jinnei saw movement. A glint of metal from the corner of the mountain.

“Wait, I see something.” She said, orienting her field of view on the brief glimmer. It took a few moments, then she started to make out a pattern, something was shifting, in a uniform, rhythmic pattern… like one large snake was wrapping around the side of the mountain.

What the Abyss am I looking at?

A moment of bated breath later, it emerged from the treeline, curling along the edge of the bald spot.

“Is that a caterpillar?” Kip asked beside her. The creature was so massive that he didn’t even need a spyglass to make it out.

“No, it sure isn’t.” Jinnei said, focusing on the enormous metal construction’s mouth. A series of blades felled and stripped the massive jungle trees at a prodigious rate, visibly expanding the mountain’s bald spot as it went. To the naked eye, it looked something like an inchworm chewing through a leaf.

“The flamin’ fuck is it then?” he asked, the massive scar down the side of his face drawing his mouth into a permanent scowl.

“I think we’re looking at the reason behind the sudden explosion in the number of Ilethan ships.” Jinnei said, bringing the spyglass down, taking in the enormity of the creature with her bare eyes.

Iletha was known for its rich mineral deposits, not for its burgeoning forestry and logging. The scrub covered mountains were barely able to support a fleet after being logged to near extinction some two hundred years ago.

“That thing must be pumping out enough raw timber to field a couple ships a day.”

“The island’s not going to last very long at that rate.” JInnei said, eyes narrowed. How did they even get the creature to the island in the first place? There was no ship on Marconen large enough to house the behemoth.

Between the logging operation here, and the abundance of steel in Iletha, they could afford to outfit dozens of ships fully armed with cannons in the same amount of time it would take Gadvera to deploy one.

“What’s the plan?” Kip asked.

“I don’t want to tangle with whatever that is,” Jinnei said, closing the spyglass. “Luckily there has to be another point of failure for their supply chain, and that’s production. We’re going to burn their shipyard to the ground.”

“When they got that many ships?” Kip asked, nodding toward the distant sails beyond the island, nearly a dozen of them.

“Each one’s run by a skeleton crew, just enough sailors to limp it back to iletha, where they can outfit them with cannons and crew. There can’t be more than six vessels there with a full complement.”

“Yeah, but which six?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Jinnei said, feeling a smile come on. “We’re gonna use the empty ones for cover.”

Kip chuckled evilly. “Yeah, that could work.”  Karen’s Folly could outmaneuver the larger Ilethan vessels even before the skeleton crew was accounted for. They would practically be standing still.

Sooner or later, Karen’s gonna find me and probably kick the shit out of me, but not before she gets a good look at the name of my boat. Flaunting the rules was one of the little things that made life as a privateer so enjoyable.

Jinnei had managed to steal a lifeboat off the trading vessel Karen had paid passage for them on, stowing away on a ship bound the opposite way, towards Mujenan.

Which had been set upon by Malkenrovian pirates, who treated her like their queen.

She was, by all accounts, the youngest Malkenrovian any of them had ever seen. Not that she hadn’t had to break a few overly touchy fingers since she arrived, but all in all, they handled her presence well. Her lessons with Karen had come in handy, as loath as she’d been to admit it.

The story they told about their homeland was a different one than Karen had, the only other eyewitness account of the death of Malkenrovia.

***Two Months Ago***

Jinnei idly traced her foot through the grime of the brig while she listened to the story.

“The boys and us were heading back from Gadvera with a load of silks, spices, and drugs, and we were going to get ourselves quite a payday trading them for Warped parts, pelts and gold.” Lenny said, the thin captain with a single arm taking a puff of Longweed, carefully damping the Warped plant with his thumb to make sure it lasted longer.

“This was back when Mr. Eger was still our captain, the old fart.” He said bitterly, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke that hung near the ceiling.

“Anyway, he saved our lives, so I guess we owe him that. The old man took one look at the rioting going on the docks, and had us weigh anchor outside the port just to gawk.

“I didn’t have a spyglass, but Kip did. He was up in the nest.” Lenny said, pointing at his grime streaked second. “Tell her what we saw, Kip.”

“People running around like animals on their hands and feet, chasing normal ones down on the docks, pinning them to the ground and spitting some kind of black stuff into their faces. Then those people got up and started chasing down other people. I never seen nothing like it. Far as I know, there ain’t no Malkenrovia anymore.”

“Yep,” Lenny chimed in. “The captain got a good eyeful of it and he made the decision to head back, rather than try to do business with black-spitting animals.”

“Not right away, Len,” Kip said.

“Oh right, how could I forget!” Lenny waited for the Longweed to regrow, slowly shedding the burning coal at the end of the roll. Jinnei had heard that a master could keep a single Longweed burning for years, although she’d never seen anyone come close to backing up that claim. Until now, anyway. The man slept with it in his mouth.

“So the captain was debating what to do, while the crew begged him to turn tail. It wasn’t till they started heading our way that the captain made the decision. A boat was coming our way, followed by half a dozen more from the docks and we didn’t wanna stick around to find out what was happening to everyone.”

“The one in the lead actually caught up to us before we managed to turn around. It was this woman, blonde like my aunt, and big as an oak, she had two babes in one hand and a bloody, bent sword in the other.”

“She came aboard and started tossing off orders like she was the fucking king. And you know what? We actually listened, she was so scary.”

Lenny blinked, frowning. “Actually, you remind me of her, a little.”

“I can imagine,” Jinnei said, tapping her foot against the iron bars.

“All that being said, can I use the head? I got a big one brewing here.”

“You got a pot.” Jinnei said, standing from the bucket she’d been using as a stool in front of the cells.

“Oh, come on!” Lenny said, grabbing the bars with his hand. “I’m too old to be down here, I’ll be dead of dysentery in two weeks!”

“You should have thought about that before you tried to start a mutiny.”

“What mutiny? I’m the captain. It’s my ship!”

“Not according to me.” Jinnei said. “That seems to be how it works out here.”

“The men won’t tolerate this! You’re digging your own grave!”

“Actually, the men seemed pretty happy with me when I got a letter of marque, which came with an official pardon. They seemed to like the idea of making port without having a price on their heads.”

Jinnei took the two sheets of paper out of her vest to show the ex-leaders of the vessel. She never took them off her person, for obvious reasons.

“Where the Abyss did you get that!?”

“I have my ways.”

They were giving them away like candy on some kind of candy giving holiday in the town halls of the small port towns south of Mujenan, in order to turn pirates against the Ilethan fleet. Not that men who’d been trapped on a ship the last four months of their lives would know that. And she wasn’t going to tell them, either.

“Alright, you win, princess. I’ll behave, just let me use the crapper.”

“You were the captain.” Jinnei said.

“And?”

“You realize what kind of position that puts you in?”

“I do.” Lenny said, scowling through the longweed smoke.

Keeping the ex-captain alive and onboard was a staggeringly risky idea, let alone the man’s number two. Anybody with even the tiniest lick of sense would have marooned the one-armed man or just killed him.

The crew were used to following his orders, and that could be a problem.

But Jinnei had other problems.

The men were awfully tight knit, and she wasn’t sure killing the slob was worth the risk, he was also one of maybe fifty Malkenrovians she’d met in her entire life, including the rest of the crew. She wasn’t eager to start killing them.

And her last problem:

She didn’t know anything about captaining a ship. Confidence, the ability to kill all of them, and an enticing piece of paper could only get her so far.

“I’ll make you a deal…”

*** Present***

“That’s right, light those bitches on fire!” She cackled as they launched burning arrow after burning arrow onto the understaffed ship’s decks, effectively paralyzing them. A crew of five men couldn’t steer a ship and fight a fire at the same time.

They were surrounded by burning ships and chaos, keeping the wrecks between themselves and the destroyers that were trying to get them in range of their cannons.

“Umm… captain?” Kip shouted down from the crow’s nest, squinting into the distance.

“What?” Jinnei asked from the helm.

“The caterpillar’s doing something.”

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Jinnei couldn’t see anything but smoke and fire from her current vantage point, so she handed off the helm to Lenny and jumped five feet up to the sail, thanking her high Body as she clambered up to the mast as nimbly as an ooze-weaver.

About three quarters of the way up, she spotted it, through the smoke and the bobbing forest of masts, she saw the giant metal bug…heading for the beach.

What’s it doing? She thought, frowning.

The creature’s head plunged into the water with no hesitation, followed by segment after segment of the massive creature, until it was nearly gone.

Is it…pooping?

Little brown dots covered the beach where it’s ass had trailed, as well as bobbing up and down in the water, like some kind of floating turd.

But they weren’t turds. Jinnei narrowed her eyes to make them out the elongated brown shapes better. They were ships.

“The damn thing eats wood and craps ships!” Jinnei shouted, eyes wide. The caterpillar slid the rest of the way under the waves, disappearing from sight.

Why would it leave the island now? There’s still more than half the forest left. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

“Kip, Lenny, it’s gone Abyss-ways! Get us out of here!”

“Opening Aport!” Kip said, scanning the encircling ilethan vessels and pointing out a gap in their defences.

Lenny smoothly twirled the wheel, causing everyone’s balance to subtly shift.

“We’re gonna present a target for a hot minute!” Lenny shouted as they whipped past the burning ship, putting them in view of one of the heavy destroyers that was even then turning to face its cannons toward them.

It was like watching her life flash before her eyes in slow motion as Jinnei climbed the rest of the crow’s nest to better see what was going on. It took minutes for anything to happen on the ocean, the ships moving like lumbering beasts riding their momentum.

Plumes of smoke, fire and thunderous noise erupted from the side of the destroyer, sending lumps of iron whizzing through the air around them. One took a piece out of the port railing, sending wooden shrapnel through Tom’s hand, but by and large, they were unharmed.

“Ha-HA!” Lenny shouted, his longweed cigar pointing up as he grinned. “You Ilethan dicks couldn’t hit the broad side of a harbor whore if she was giving ya a hand!”

Before the cannons could reload, Karen’s Folly would position themselves ahead of the closest destroyer, then bring it down to a contest of speed.

They were home free. It was just a matter of working through it.

It was partway through this maneuver that Jinnei looked down.

The crystal clear tropical ocean around them was only a few tens of feet lower than the draft, and Jinnei spotted a shadow moving under the water ahead of them.

“Lenny, hard to port! Do it!” she shouted, her voice straining as she attempted to shout over the din.

Lenny looked up at her, mouth open. The former captain swallowed whatever objections he might have had to putting them back in the line of fire, and did as he was told. As per their agreement.

“Put us next to the destroyer!” She looked down at the mess of running sailors beneath her, addressing them. Get everyone abovedecks and ready to move, NOW!”

“Are you trying to kill us!?” Kip demanded.

Jinnei grabbed the back of Kip’s head and forcibly directed his attention to the north, where a large green blob was slowly turning toward them under the water. They weren’t turning fast enough.

“Oh, sweet Elani and dour Llortan, Lenny! Sea monster at our one o’clock! It’s almost on top of us!”

“Hold on!” Lenny grunted, releasing a puff of smoke along with an invisible wave of Bent that Jinnei could feel wash over her skin.

The entire vessel tilted as it picked up a burst of speed, turning at an unnatural rate.

“What was that!?” Jinnei demanded as they turned on a Dust.

“You don’t spend ten years as a pirate captain without picking up some tricks, princess!”

“Call me princess one more time!” Jinnei said, eyeing the blob gaining speed as it angled toward them. She jumped out of the crow’s nest, used the rigging to slow her fall before landing on the deck, her feet sending up little splinters as she landed.

“Get to the fore!” Jinnei shouted, pointing with her drawn cutlass as they pulled up beside the destroyer’s loaded cannons, ushering the crew to gather at the front of the vessel.

Just when Jinnei thought it was strange that the destroyer wasn’t bombarding them with iron, Karen’s Folly jerked out from underneath their feet, dropping down a good foot and a half, then tilting upward, toppling nearly every one of them.

When Jinnei got her feet back under her, she saw the most horrifying thing she’d ever experienced.

A massive wurm with steel plating fused to its skin, along with metal legs that erupted out of gaping wounds in the side of the creature, was holding onto the ship’s aft.

It opened its mouth, and the stench of rotting flesh washed over the entire ship, causing a few members to gag and spit. Inside the gaping maw, Jinnei saw whirring saws buried in bleeding flesh, along with tiny sparks buried deeper down the thing’s black gullet.

Two round blades the size of king’s tables extended from the creature’s open mouth, cutting the steering wheel in half, along with the man gripping it for dear life, Lenny. The ex-captain glanced at her for a moment before the blades drew him back into the creature’s gullet, along with half of the ship’s aft.

“Damnit!” Jinnei shouted. “up the mast!”

Penetrating Strike.

Penetrating Strike.

6/8 Bent remaining.

Jinnei cut a massive wedge out of the main mast as easily as a soft cheese. She dodged nimbly out of the way as the mast of their besieged ship came down violently, landing on top of the destroyer’s railing and entangling to two vessels.

“Move!”

Jinnei lead by example, leaping up onto the fallen mast and racing across to the enemy vessel.

An ilethan seaman tried to stop her on her way to the captain, and she dispatched him by catching his blade with her own before twisting, snapping her shoulders forward and catching him on the temple with a violent elbow.

She swooped up to the pale captain, and put a blade under his throat.

“Tell your men to fire on that thing or I’ll take your head off.” She growled, pressing the edge of the sword into his neck hard enough to draw blood.

A faint odor of rot was her only warning.

The captain exploded into strange, black, snake-like tubes, causing the men coming to his rescue to flinch backwards.

Jinnei put a foot in the small of the man’s back and pushed away, her back slamming against the railing at the stern.

The captain turned, eyes glossy, a dreadful smile on his face.

“The One recognizes your scent. Very familiar. Nostalgic, even? Has The One killed you before?”

The battle quieted as every eye was drawn to the hideous monster that had formerly been the commander of the Ilethan ship.

Air Blade

Haste

Ephemeral Form.

Penetrating Strike.

Penetrating Strike.

Penetrating Strike.

0/8 Bent remaining.

Jinnei swung a ranged attack at the monster, followed by Karen’s specialty: A bum’s rush.

The creature warded off the air blade as she activated her movement skill and the Dodge Ability that made her temporarily insubstantial.

Jinnei rushed forward in the blink of an eye and her body slipped through the creature’s defensive tube…things, thanks to the Dodge ability.

Then Jinnei spent every point she had cutting the creature into chunks.

One strike cut the captain in two, a second in quarters, and the third added a couple extra pieces of bloody gristle to the mess.

Once the creature was on the deck, Jinnei put her blade through it’s skull, twisted, then kicked it off the side of the ship.

Karen called it the Double Tap.

“Alright, listen up!” Jinnei shouted as the crew of Karen’s Folly poured in around her.

“Fight that, or fight me!” she shouted, pointing at the creature turning its attention toward them, bloody maw hanging open.

Leadership has reached level 5!

+1 Will

Please choose-

Jinnei shook the prompt away.

“Cannoneers!” Kip shouted in Ilethan, divining her purpose. “Blow that monster new holes or die! Your fucking choice! Now FIRE!”

A cascade of thunderous explosions rocked the ship beneath her, and the bellowing giant’s mouth was torn to pieces, inkly black blood splattering all over her former ship’s deck before the creature sank back under the waves, drawn backward by the heavy metal studding its body.

As the creature died, a wave of Warp engulfed them, billowing out of the monster like smoke from a forest fire. The miasma was so thick, Jinnei thought it might make her retch.

She felt the All-too familiar sensation of a Break coming.

“Lash me to the wheel,” she said, turning toward the ships wheel. “This is the Karen’s Folly now.”

“What about the Ilethans?” Kip asked.

“Lock them belowdecks before we all pass out. That was a doozy.” She said, fighting off the flu-like symptoms as best she could.

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