Overtaken by the Storm

The R.E.S. Indomitable sailed the open sea. At its prow, a young scholar by the name of Filip stood and observed the water as it broke against the ship’s hull. He’d seen a pod of sea mammals he hadn’t quite been able to identify some days ago, and much of his time since had been spent here, hoping to see them again.

“Lookin’ for your fish again, are you?” An old seaman, whom the scholar had only ever heard referred to as Lucky, tromped up beside him.

Lucky was an ancient gnome covered in scars, looking like he had probably lost more bits and pieces of himself than most folks were born with. Both legs were made of wood, as was one arm, though the other had been made of more expensive, rune-laden metal. His glass eyes swiveled frantically about in their sunken sockets, though it was clear at a glance that only one had been enchanted to actually allow its owner to see.

The scholar had told Lucky more than once that what he studied weren’t fish, but whether the ancient sailor didn’t understand or just didn’t care, he hadn’t bothered to change what he called them.

“Yes,” the young man sighed, “it’s a wonderful day for it, too, but I’ve not seen a thing for days!”

The elder nodded grimly. “Men’s hooks ain’t been biting, neither. Terrible omen, that…”

Such a superstitious lot, the scholar thought to himself. Violent too, he knew, so he managed to resist voicing that thought aloud. Still, his eyes rolled ever so slightly at the notion of this crotchety old man’s ‘omens’. Everyone knew that the gods were far more direct than that if they intended to reveal their hands early. Before he could formulate a more polite response, however, the two were interrupted by a shout from the crow’s nest that quickly echoed throughout the ship.

“Bird spotted!”

All eyes shot to the sky, and sure enough, a gull was drifting lazily through the air in their direction, angling down with an apparent intent to alight on their vessel. Out at sea, birds were a sure sign of nearby land, and it had been long enough since the day the Indomitable had embarked that such a sign was welcome indeed. Whoops and hollers filled the air, the young scholar’s among them, but Lucky seemed to feel differently. From the moment he’d spotted the bird, his face had tightened and his eyes had been drawn elsewhere. He stood at the port side of the ship, staring out over the water in the direction the bird had come from.

“Best savor these moments, lads,” he muttered just loudly enough for Filip to overheard, “seems they’ll be our last.”

Filip sidled up beside him with a laugh. “What’s the matter, sailor? Are birds another of your omens?”

Lucky scowled back at him, pointing wordlessly into the distance. A dark bank of stormclouds was steadily approaching the ship. From what Filip had experienced so far on this very vessel, it was bound to be an unpleasant few hours when it reached them, but from the looks of the clouds, it was by no means the worst storm they’d suffered thus far.

Lucky read the lack of real concern on Filip’s face and his scowl only deepened. “None too bright for a bookworm, are you?” he snapped. “You see a single other cloud in the sky right about now?”

Filip looked around. There were a few streaks of white just barely peeking up over the horizon to the south, but otherwise it was a remarkably clear day. Still, it was just a lone storm system. Perhaps a plaything of the gods, or some errant merfolk magic? The Simurgh's Embrace, perhaps!

“And you see any other signs of land about?” Lucky continued?

Once again, Filip saw nothing. It wasn’t unheard of for birds to travel far enough from the shore to be sighted hours before the land they came from could be, but Lucky’s point was still fair enough.

“Those would be enough for some to get a bit worrisome where I’m from, but check one more thing for me right quick…” Lucky’s eyes narrowed as they turned back out towards the storm. “Tell me… which way does the wind blow?”

Filip quirked an eyebrow at the question, but humored the man. Swiping a finger across his tongue, he held it to the wind. He had the answer soon enough, but his voice caught in his throat as he was about to answer. It couldn’t have been right; he must have been misinterpreted his results! He wetted his finger again and rechecked. They remained the same.

“I don’t… but that can’t be…”

“We’re upwind from the storm, ain’t we?” Lucky asked.

“Yes, but I’m sure-”

“Storm’s still comin’ at us, ain’t it?” the man’s glass eyes shut.

Filip stared with utter confusion at the encroaching clouds. He couldn’t understand it, but Lucky was right. Somehow it seemed to be fighting against the wind to close in on them, but that made no sense!

“I don’t understand, sir,” he said at last, with significantly more respect in his voice than mere moments before. “Is it some kind of living storm? A rogue elemental of some sort?”

“Worse,” Lucky replied. “It’s Reekin.”

Filip erupted into a bout of nervous laughter. The laughter died just as quickly when Lucky didn’t join in. “You can’t possibly be serious,” he said. “Reekin? In the middle of the ocean?”

Lucky’s eyes opened in dull surprise. “They don’t tell tales of the Seakin where you come from?”

“Considering that sounds like the punchline to a terrible play on words?” the scholar answered, “No, I can’t say that they do.”

“Hrmph,” the old man grumbled, “it was a joke, once. Seafaring Reekin? You mention the very idea to anyone who’s faced one of those pests on land and they’d laugh you out of town!” He shook his head sadly. “First tales came in, that’s just what we did. Then the stories got a bit more dreadful. A bit more real. Then… then they stopped bein’ stories from survivors and started bein’ whispers about the remains.”

Filip’s imagination ran wild with vague terrors of the sea and ruthless pirates, and then balked when attempting to fill those places with the barbaric reptilian pests he knew from back home. “But… but they’re Reekin, sir. Surely we have men aboard who know their way around a fight well enough to handle them?”

Lucky shook his head, still staring off into the storm. It was close enough now that they could hear the rain striking the ocean’s surface. “You ever seen the Reekin in person, boy?”

“Once,” Filip nodded. “They tried to raid my hometown shortly before I left for school. Vicious little beasts, but the militia managed to fend them off without too much trouble despite being outnumbered three to one!”

“Raiding parties!” the sailor scoffed. “Sure, they’re good to get the heart pumping, but you’ve never seen them when they’ve got a mind to take a place over for keeps. They’re clever enough then, and they fight twice as hard. Twice as hard again once they have a place that you’ve a mind to take back from them.”

“So… that’s what this is? Some sort of war band come to take our ship?”

“Oh, no, no,” Lucky murmured. “No, this is far worse than that. I've seen Seakin attacks before, and this tops them all for size. Best guess? What we've got here is the nest.”

Filip’s heart skipped a beat as the first drops of rain began to splash against the ship’s deck. “The what?!”

“Reekin holes are always hidden away, deep inside of mountains or hillsides or other places you larger folk don’t often go. We Underfolk know, though. We covet the same land; dig the same tunnels. You corner a Reekin in the place they call home, and those three to one odds do a nice, tidy flip for ya.”

“But… b-b-but-” Filip stammered, his fingernails digging into the sanded wood of the ship’s railing.

Lucky chuckled a mirthless, rasping chuckle. “The Seakin built their home on the open ocean, my boy, and today you’re gonna get to see it.”

“W-we should do something, then! Run out the guns or-” Filip stopped, looking around them for the first time in a few minutes. In the pouring rain and sudden shade, men who had previously been singing shanties and laughing about what they would be doing when they reached land were now scrambling across the deck in a mad panic. The deckside guns were already in place, the crews of each staring wide-eyed out into the inscrutable downpour beyond the hull. The scholar had been so entranced by the cloud’s approach and Lucky’s terrifying tales, he hadn’t even noticed the flurry of activity that had stirred around him.

“Not much for the likes of us to do, lad,” Lucky said as quietly as he could while shouting over the rain. “It was too late the moment we saw that bird. Probably before, in all honesty.”

Filip watched, his mind addled by dread, as men shouted orders across the ship’s deck and everyone scanned their surroundings for anything that could be made out in the sudden and relentless rain. Minutes passed with nothing to show for it. Time became hard to discern as even seconds started to stretch into what felt like hours, everyone staring fruitlessly into the blinding spray of gray, gray, and more gray. Thunder pounded in Filip's ears, and his vision was clouded with the burned images of the last crack of lightning.

And then, as quickly as it had surrounded them, the storm began to dissipate. The clouds thinned, sunlight pouring through the gaps as they appeared, and the rain lessened enough that everyone’s vision returned. Filip desperately wished that it hadn’t.

They were surrounded.

On all sides, ramshackle constructions of wood, metal, and even stone and soil bobbed in the roiling seas around them. Gnarled trees and towering bird roosts meshed with curved ship’s hulls and webs of rigging in a way that looked to Filip like an entire fleet of ships had collided with a small island and naturally formed this floating abomination. The alien construction of the vessels was disconcerting enough, but it was nothing next to their passengers.

The Reekin - or Seakin, as Lucky had called them - stood on nearly every available surface, staring down at the collection of Humans, Dwarves, and Gnomes. Each and every one bore a unique mask or headdress made from everything from shark jawbones to seabird feathers to personalized caps stolen from naval officers from every nation in the northern hemisphere. Many bore elaborate spears made from driftwood and shark’s teeth or carved whole from whale bone, but an unnerving number held firearms looted from their past victims.

For a time, the Reekin were motionless, but as the pitter-patter of the dying rain faded away, figures on each ‘boat’ - for lack of a more fitting term - picked up the slack by beating on drums, skulls, and anything else they could slam their weapons against to make noise. The men and women on the Indomitable went from being buffeted by water to being assaulted by a powerful, rhythmic song. The tempo increased and the volume climbed, driving up Filip’s heart rate to terrifying levels.

Amidst the warsong, one Reekin with a headdress larger than any other Filip could see stood from an elaborate chair atop the largest vessel. With a wave of his spear - the rib of a whale with a duwallish naval officer’s sword lashed to its side - the music immediately ceased. The sudden silence was almost worse than the unholy din that had preceded it; Filip nearly fell over as his body tried to continue bracing against a force that was no longer there.

“Big-folk!” the Reekin captain cried from his perch, adding with a devious grin, “and gnomes…” Lucky and another Gnome Filip could see both clenched their jaws tight in annoyance. “We Sea Demons want to add ship-yours to ship-ours; grand Reekinfleet!”

Cheers erupted throughout the so-called fleet, but the captain waved them down.

“You strange, big-folk. Fire not on us, though ready you be when storm-wizards stopped their magic.” The captain stroked his chin and adjusted his headdress with the tip of his spear. “Wise Tok-Tok speak often of mercy for mercy. We offer this.”

The captain of the Indomitable, a woman Filip had seen only rarely throughout their voyage, shouted in return, “What mercy do you offer us?” Filip got the sense that she had a few choice words she desperately wanted to tack onto the end of that sentence, but she refrained.

“Big-folk ships have little-folk ships hidden inside, yes?” the Reekin answered. “Smart, yes? Smart, like armor on skin. Reekin make own small-ships, but big-ships too large yet. You take little-ships-yours, leave big-ship-yours and hats and swords. You kill us none, we kill you none.”

Murmurs spread throughout the crew. Mercy from Reekin was unheard of - even considering it was usually they who required it in the first place. The human captain seemed to agree.

“And how can we know you won’t use our longboats as target practice the moment you have our ship?”

The Reekin captain looked around at his people and their ships. At the human skulls and the stolen clothing and weapons, and at the wood from ships they didn’t build. When he finally looked back at the captain, he had a smile on his face. “Impossible to know… but you is not dead yet, no?”

The captain seemed to be considering this, much to Filip’s horror. They were leagues out to sea, with no way of knowing how far it would be to reach land. To be confined to longboats and sent adrift into the open ocean… surely that would be suicide, wouldn’t it? And yet, taking any violent action here would be much the same. Through the slats in the wood of the ships that encircled them, the scholar could just make out similar shapes and silhouettes waiting behind them. Even if they could somehow survive delivering more than an initial volley of cannon fire, any of these Reekin vessels they sunk would be replaced the moment it was below the surface.

Chances were, they were doomed either way.

As Filip’s mind reeled and the reality of his situation began to set in, he thanked every god he could that he was nothing more than a scholar, and not the woman who held his life - and the lives of everyone else on the ship - in her hands. He barely had the constitution to contemplate the choice that now faced her, let alone make it!

The captain swept her eyes across her crew, reading their expressions, weighing the options, testing her conscience…

And then she gave her answer.