Salt Stained Journal - Entry 133
I find the grammar, slang, and structure of the author’s writing intolerable. For the sake of my sanity I am making adjustments in my recording of the entries going forward. Professor Salida can do with me what she will.
Salt Stained Journal - Entry 133 - Unknown Author, presumed experienced deckhand of The Saphire, a Blue Realm aligned ship out of Carldalgo that disappeared 2 years ago.
Wicked day, hateful day.
It’s been three dawns and I still struggle to write it in my head. My old salt sense told me we were off course but Mr. Toons shouted me down when I inquired. “I don’t recall the Mistress star resting off the bow on our last excursion, Mr. Toons.” I told him. He didn’t take it kindly, thinking I was being impertinent. I wasn't. Threatened to lash me if I let my tongue flap about in the wind anymore so I kept my gab to myself. I wish I hadn’t.
I could sense the Captain was nervous before the rest of the lads and lasses. He’d been glassing west nearly hourly for the whole morning. The wee foreboding in my bowels was growing. There was only one thing these days that would make Hagrim nervous and, if I sensed it right, might be the end of our little independent outfit.
The top-eyes spotted their sails coming up 45 degrees off the starboard bow just as we sighted Gran Columb due south. The shape of the sails was what jolted me - square, flat, standing still but erect, like a painting. Mr. Toons ran all over the deck, shouting for maximum sail, a hard course to port, and for the buckos to load their flintlocks. Mr. Toons and Hagrim knew, like I did, that if we could get her right around we had a chance. The Tekkas were coming with Posidon’s breath at their back but Mr. Toons knew they were slower than The Sapphire. “By god…” I heard Sticky Shane say as I looked up to see ivory canvas stitched with glinting gold; hulls carved like temples. What appeared to my eyes to be massive tree roots hugged their vessel, plunged into the waves, and trailed behind them. A massive barked squid dragged through the water. No colors were flying. No hail, just a dead heading at The Sapphire. Ole Hagrim wasn’t nervous anymore, he was cold as a Nordane berg “Mr. Toons, raise a warning rocket.”
Minutes passed as we charged around the deck, every man and woman, working in silent struggle, harder than I’d ever seen ‘em work - each of us praying to some greater power for a reprieve. In Davies’ Caribbea they’d never experienced the fear that our lot usually thrust on others. I could remember it though, and 20 years hadn’t dulled the fear of being hunted. I paused for a moment as their bow glinted light and caught me. That terrible ship was gaining far faster than it should’ve done. My salt sense jittered in agony. It wasn't Posidon’s breath that was pushing ‘em - their speed wasn’t of the sea.
All at once they answered our rocket with a chant. All in unison. Men and women with shaved heads lined their deck in rows. Bare-chested, faces painted, eyes like dead coals. Low and slow, like something ancient waking from a dream, the chanting grew louder. Their ship was full to the brim with Tekkas, most of ‘em just chanting, swaying, not working a rope or anything else I could see.
Their ship, as it neared, was squared off, like the keeps in old Muntare. The chanting Tekkas started walking up the forecastle, where there seemed to be a pyramid temple, and up its steps. As the first reached the pinnacle, they sacrificed themselves willingly. One after another as the tides seemed to redden.
No one else aboard The Sapphire had the eyes to see it like I did but they all stopped when the sea went quiet…the air changed. Got heavy, hot, like breathing through smoke. Water around us went dead calm - like glass, our sails hanging limp and useless. And then they came.
The front of their ship came open, a bridge clacked down onto the gunwale of The Sapphire and creatures streamed aboard. Not men. Not beasts. Creatures called by the ritual. A jaguar, obsidian-skinned and burning from the inside. A winged serpent that screamed in a tongue that scraped the bone. The buckos shot wildly around them, hitting more of us than them. The Tekkas never fired a cannon at us, instead they unleashed them on us.
I saw my captain, old Hagrim, who’d fought off sirens with a broken harpoon, get pulled silently into the rigging by something with too many limbs and not enough face. He was gone.
I dove. Didn’t think. Just went. Swam blind through the muck and splinters to the shores of Gran Columb. I tore into the jungle as fast as my legs could carry me. The journal tied around my neck, saving me once again.
Don’t know what I’m going to do now. It might be worms and beetles in the night again, like at Torquay. Hiding. Can’t recall a god I haven’t already prayed to.