Across the Northern Seas (closed)

[Alea Davenport]

At Kreuger's answer, the bottom dropped out of Alea's stomach. He may as well have confirmed her worst fears. She could vividly imagine the man being pulled through the trapdoor, and then handed off from sailor to sailor until he was finally thrown overboard. It wasn't right. She was so tense she was shaking, and if it hadn't been for the hands holding her back, she wasn't sure what she might have done.

Still, since mindless rage was no longer an option, she had the sense to bite her tongue and go quietly when she was sentenced to the brig. It occurred to her on the way down that the man holding her had been rather decent about the whole affair, at least compared to everyone else. He also showed remarkable sense in keeping the two separated once they reached the brig. As soon as she was able to turn around, she took a good long look at his face so she'd be able to recognize it later. She had a feeling it wouldn't hurt to remember this one.

Tamas did not look interested in talking, which suited Alea just fine. She was in a mood to ignore the other woman anyway. She quickly situated herself on top of a pile of crates, her legs dangling over the sides and her hands clutching the bars of her cage. She watched the sailors wander around the hold for a bit, but when they left she quickly became bored. And she didn't even have any friends to play cards with. To pass the time, she hummed a few strands of the Vantha song she had learned a few days previously. Occasionally she mumbled the words to it, when she could remember them, but mostly she just tried to remember the tune. Somehow, what she was humming didn't quite sound right, but she couldn't figure out what was wrong, so she just hummed bluntly along, plowing her way through the song until she grew bored of that passtime as well.

Somehow, the sounds emanating from her throat seemed to have attracted her cat. Tom was slowly stalking toward the cage, though when Alea noticed him and stopped humming, he froze. She tried to reach out and pet him, clicking her tongue in a vain attempt to encourage him closer. Tom stood still, watching her with his ears perked up for the longest time, so long that Alea became frustrated. It must have been all of a chime and half. Then, calm as you please, Tom casually turned and walked away, sitting down after a few steps to begin washing his face. Alea banged on the bars of her cell in a fit of anger, though Tom did not acknowledge the loud noise with more than a flick of his ear, and that might easily have been due to an itch.

Giving up on the idea of her cat entertaining her, she decided she would just have to escape. She rattled to bars, but they didn't seem loose enough for Alea to be able to shove them by brute force. She took a close look at the lock, trying to see how it worked. To be honest, she had never really had reason to look closely at locks before. She knew how to unlock them with a key...usually, though she knew sometimes even a key could get stuck or not work very well. But somewhere in her memory, she had the vague idea that locks would be picked with a hairpin...or a bit of wire, or other sharp pointy object.

She reached around herself, but she did not wear hairpins, and wore nothing sharp or pointy. It occurred to her that a fishing hook might work, but her gear was all the way up in her cabin, and far out of her reach. If she had some spare time after she got out of here, she might have to practice picking locks with a fishing hook...

But maybe there would be something like that in all these crates and barrels. She began opening them up one by one. The first contained some fish. Alea grimaced at the smell, but she figured she could still find a use for it. Grabbing a fish by the tail, she held it through the bars of her cell and tossed it in the general direction of her cat. If the Captain was foolish enough to lock Alea up, she would take that as a challenge to wreak as much havoc as possible.

She opened another crate and found some quantities of rope. She wasn't sure what she could do with that, but she was certain something fun would come up it. She found one end of the rope and tied it to one of the bars. When the loop slid down the bar, she frowned, thought a bit, and, after climbing up the crate pile, she tied it to the top front corner of the brig cell, looping the rope around the several bars that met in the corner, so that it would not slide down.

Continuing almost at random, Alea drew the length of rope across the cell and looped it around a bar on the opposite side. She kept stringing the rope all over her cell, sometimes wrapping it around itself when the lines crossed. She lost herself in the amusement of creation, and this entertained her for a bell or more. Eventually, she ran out of rope (at least from that barrel), and she was left with a nest of rope, or perhaps it could be more accurately compared to a web. Deciding to test the thing she had made, she pulled on one of the more tightly stretched strands of rope to see if it would hold her weight, and then pulled herself up into the nest.

The rope bounced with questionable stability when her feet left the ground, but she stayed still until it calmed down, and eventually it became apparent that the rope structure just might support her weight. Many of the loops had sunk a few inches, but it stayed mostly in-tact.

Sitting in the nest she had built was entertaining for a few ticks, but she abruptly decided to see what else she could find. She hopped back down and opened another crate. This one was full of huge, folded piles of cloth. Knowing instantly what to do with these, she pulled one out and hung it against one of the walls of her cell. She covered the bars between her and Tamas first, out of whatever spite she had left. She tied the corners of the cloth into the ropes near the corners of the cell, and let the cloth hang down to the floor. She repeated this until she was surrounded by cloth, and then for good measure she draped a cloth over the ropes in the middle.

She climbed into the rope nest again to fiddle with the last stretch of cloth. Most of it was bunched up, because for some reason these cloths were insanely large. But she found a few of the less bunched bits, and secured edges to ropes, until she had something almost vaguely resembling a poorly-constructed hammock. She tested the cloth, making sure it would hold her weight. Then she got into her "hammock", wrapped some extra cloth around herself like a cocoon, and settled down for a rather relaxing nap.

[Valkyrie]

The two small windows in the hold showed only blackness when Alea was wakened by the sound of the hold door opening. The door was firmly closed behind whomever had entered and Alea could smell something that seemed like hot metal and burnt wood. An odd scent on a ship indeed. Peering up form her makeshift hammock she tried to see what was happening but the darkness of the hold made it impossible to see a foot or two beyond her brig cell.

She could hear Tamus rustling around in her cell, apparently wakened by the same noise. Foot steps approached Tamus’s cell and Alea could just make out the hints of an outline in the small spaces between the sheets she had hung up and the crates blocking the front of her cell.

“What are you doing down here? And what did you do to the door? It smells terrible. Hey, what are you ---“ Tamus’s words were cut off in a pained gurgle and flash of light lit up the area around the brig cells. Alea could see that the person in question was a man and flames pooled in his hand. She heard Tamus’s body drop heavily to the ground and the man with fire hands bent towards the cell. There was that smell of hot metal again. The fire man picked up something nearby that Alea couldn’t see and swung it at the cage with a clank. The heavy slither of the chain locking Tamus’s cell falling to the ground was an easy sound to guess. With a rusty creak, the cell door flung open.

The fire man began muttering to himself and the sound of shifting cloth seemed to indicate that he was searching Tamus’s body though it was difficult to be certain with the sheet blocking her view. The only thing Alea could be certain about was that between the darkness, sheets, and crates in her brig cell the mage could not see her and was currently unaware of her existence. At least for now anyways.

[Alea Davenport]

When Alea woke to the faint rustling that indicated another presence, she felt more well-rested than she had in days. The first things she noticed were the hard crates beneath her, and a small warm ball of Tom-fur snoozing near her head. Her blanket fort was apparently not as stable as it had first seemed, and over the bells she had been sleeping, her weight had apparently dragged some of the less secure ropes down the poles they were attached to, and some of the cloth had come loose, creating gaps in her otherwise perfectly enclosed cell.

She noticed the burning scent next. Was someone cooking something? Wait, why was there fire on a ship? Oh no! Was the ship on fire?! Alea sniffed and listened, but she did not hear any crackling of flames, nor the panicked activity of passengers or crew. What she did hear was footsteps... strange footsteps from outside the cells. Was it someone to let them out at last? It was about time.

And yet... Tamas didn't seem to think so. As the stranger approached, Alea began to carefully and quietly extricate herself from the cloth she'd wrapped herself in, which was easier than she's expected because most of it had fallen off the side of the crates already. Crouching on her stomach, she peered through the cloth into Tamas's cell. She couldn't see much in the darkness, but she kept her eyes wide open and her attention on the stranger, wishing it wouldn't take so long for her eyes to adjust to the dark.

The next moment of Alea's life was both over in an instant and the longest of her life. Tamas's horrific gurgle, crumpling to the floor, the fire in the man's--no, the mage's--hands. Only days before she'd had magic vaguely explained to her, and all she'd learned was that magic led to insanity, and anyone who practiced it was willingly walking down that road. The sight of the fire in his hands made her feel sick, almost as sick as the sound Tamas had made, and she could only imagine the pain he must be feeling with hot fire that close to him. He truly was completely mad.... and Alea was in a lot of trouble.

Her first instinct was, of course, to attack him. But she was behind bars and couldn't reach him. Even if she could disable him in theory, there was no way she could do anything to him until he got within reach. Her best bet for now was to watch, and listen, and remember.

Still not fully comprehending that she had just witnessed a murder, she kept very still and silent, watching this man, trying to understand what he was doing, trying to remember every detail she saw. It may have been her mind going into denial, but all she could think about was how she would explain this to the Captain later. She tried as hard as she could to get a good look at the man's face, or, failing that, anything she might be able to recognize from him later. If only he would speak, she could memorize his voice...maybe.

As she imagined explaining everything she saw to the Captain, she could only see one inevitability. With no evidence of another person, would they think she had done it? She had been the one fighting with Tamas earlier, and no one on board really knew her well enough to trust her. ...Not even her new friends. No, she had to find a way to get witnesses down here, and fast. Besides, if she couldn't take him on herself, she wanted help.

She still waited to see what the man was looking for, but once he stood up or moved from Tamas, Alea released everything that had been building up in her throat and screamed. She screamed loud, and hard, and with everything she had. She wanted to be loud enough to wake the dead, or failing that, at least the entire ship. It had been a mere handful of days since she'd gotten her voice back after a season of silence, and she was making up for all that lost time in this scream.

The ship and the dead aside, the scream certainly woke Tom, who sat up with a jerk, claws clinging to the crate. He looked scared enough to attack something, and would likely go for the first hostile face he saw.

[Valkyrie]

The mage pressed his hands against his ears and shuddered as Alea’s scream ripped through the hold. After the last note of her shrill cry ceased he stopped and squinted in the dark in Alea’s general direction, startled and unsure of what to do for a moment. He was startled again by the bang on the door that followed but chuckled when he realized what the sound was.

“Thought that would help you now didn’t you missy? But no one can get in here. I melted the hinges so the door can’t open!” the mage crowed triumphantly in Alea’s direction. The mage stepped away from the brig cell and Alea could not see him through the darkness though she could hear his rustling around. The man murmured a few curses as he stumbled around the dark hold and chuckled again when he finally found what he was looking for. A small light flared in the room and then the mage returned to Alea’s cell holding a lit candle.

Now that there was a steady light source available Alea would have a chance to get a good look at the man. He had at least some Vantha in him judging from his black hair but his eyes stayed green without any changes she could see so clearly one of his parents was not a Vantha. If Alea looked closely enough at the man she would see that he had beads of sweat dotting his forehead and his eyes appeared quite bloodshot. Though Alea may not understand the finer intricacies of magic, she would certainly know that too much of it could have a very negative effect on the mage using it. This mage appeared to be very exhausted from the effort it took to manifest fire hot enough to melt metal.

“Now how did you get your self locked up in here with that sailor? I thought this one was a storage space. You must have done something bad to get stuck in the storage space.” The mage gave Alea a smug smile. He had seen the chain on her cell and knew she couldn’t get near him. The banging on the door had ceased by this time though the mage appeared to have little concern for it.

[Alea Davenport]

Alea wasn’t sure exactly what effect magic had had upon this man, but by the look of him he was pretty far gone. This must be what the late stages of magic looked like, right before a mage entered total insanity. Alea would have to be careful; there was no predicting what he would do next. On the other hand, his mental stability was clearly in question, and, if she was clever, she might be able to influence his decisions. At the very least she should be able to get some information out of him. Crazy people couldn’t keep secrets very well, right?

If he hadn't killed her yet, he probably wouldn't kill her randomly, and if he did kill her randomly nothing she could do would affect that, so she reasoned that there could be no harm in challenging him a little. "Not as bad as what you just did. What did she ever do to you anyway?" she said in a cavalier sort of tone.

As she awaited his reaction, her mind was racing. Maybe she could stall him long enough for the other sailors to find a way into the hold... Well, that was about the extent of her plan until she knew more about the crazy man in front of her. She had no way of getting out of her cell, and couldn't look for one without the insane mage noticing. She briefly ran through scenarios enlisting the aid of her horse and cat, but that would require a level of communication or control over them that she just didn't have.

[Valkyrie]

The mage’s face grew cold as Alea asked what the sailor had done. He squinted his eyes angrily at her and left out a huff of disbelief.

“How can you even ask that? Weren’t you down here with the rest of us? Don’t you remember what they did to us or did you forget already? They kept us down in the cabins during that horrible storm, I thought we were all going to die and were going to have to spend our last hours in that horrible vomit caked hallway. That is what she did!” the mage turned away from Alea and paced up and down the hold, his candle growing smaller and larger as he moved.

“I want revenge on them, and so should you. I’m going to poison the sailor’s rations. Then they will get to know how it feels to be at the mercy of someone else! They’ll kill me anyways for this, but I don’t care. At least I will take them down with me.” The mage smirked and let out a low cackle. After a moment his thoughts appeared to collect and his smirk turned into a look of worry having realized he had told Alea all of his plans.

“You hate them just as much as me, don’t you? You won’t tell them, will you? You can even help me poison the food if you want! They won’t be able to smell it on top of all this salted fish. We can get them back for what they did to us. I know they are going to kill me but I can lock you up again afterwards so they don’t even have to know you were involved! What do you say?” The mage leaned in close to Alea and smiled. His breath reeked horribly and his bloodshot eyes focused intently on Alea.

OOCTime to see where Alea’s anger and ethics will lead her

[Alea Davenport]

In the seriousness of the moment, Alea had almost forgotten her anger at the sailors. The nap had mellowed her somewhat, and while she still did not think they had made the right choice, revenge was not the most pressing thought on her mind. The most pressing thought was the dangerously insane mage intent on killing everyone willy-nilly.

Now, contrary to popular belief, Alea was not stupid. She was perfectly happy to get into childish fights when the worst consequences were being thrown in the brig. But if she made a wrong move now, not only would all the sailors die, along with the passengers since she doubted any of them could sail a ship, but worst of all, she would die too! Possibly more painfully and horribly than sea-stranded passengers if she pissed off the angry mage fast enough.

The good news was, he seemed already inclined to believe she was on his side. If she could keep him thinking that, she would have the freedom to... well, she wasn't sure yet, but nebulous plans were already forming in her mind. She just had to get free, and keep anyone from dying. Well, anyone else. Now that she thought about it, Tamas dying... created feelings that she really could not afford to deal with right now. For the moment, a veneer of surrealism covered the sick lump in her chest. A moment ago, the death of the sailor had just been something that had happened, something someone else had done. But the mage had done it because of the same feelings that Alea still had. And now, Alea was in the unique position to pretty much single-handedly control the fate of everyone else on the ship. The possibilities alone made her feel like she could be violently ill. She tried not to think too hard about these things, tried not to let them distract her from what she needed to do.

With gritted teeth that he would hopefully misinterpret, she said, "Sounds great. Now let me out; I wanna make sure you're doing this right." Realizing a bit late that the mage could take that the wrong way, she kept talking, hoping to keep him distracted long enough for her to figure out a plan. "What kind of poison do you have? Will it kill them instantly? How are you going to make sure none of the passengers accidentally eat it?" She peered through the dimness around her, trying to assess her resources, and her options. If she could find a blunt object, that would be pretty useful. Where was a glass bottle when you needed one?

The more she thought, the more paranoid she became. She kept glancing back to the mage, trying to gauge his intentions, his moods and reactions, and make sure she could stay a step ahead of him. Such a task was a bit harder than she liked. Her attention did not much enjoy being split between so many objectives at once, and she was not entirely sure what would fail first.

[Svasra]

HD Permission The mage seemed to consider Alea's words as she agreed to help, eyes narrowing as they watched her with the flickering light of his candle. Slowly, his smile crookedly spread, and he chuckled quietly. "You ask a lot of questions, missy," the man grumbled, moving closer to the cell with res already spreading from his hand to the metal chain that kept Alea locked in. The smell of melting metal permeated the air once more before he drew back and hit the weakened metal hard enough to break it, as he had done with Tamas'. As the door swung open it became apparent he had used a stout pole as it remained in his hand as he waited, leaning against it slightly while trying to even out his breathing. When Alea joined him, he ambled over towards the food storage, speaking as he went, "The sailors eat before the passengers. If we only poison their food it will take them out, and then have time to remove any excess poisoned food before we eat it." The fire of the candle was the only constant source of light which flickered as the mage walked, randomly casting things into light. The brig was filled with various crates and bins, one section devoted to food - from the sharp smell it gave off, others having groups of crates pushed neatly against the wall. One crate's lid was dislodged as it showed it held candles, and candle-holders. Prying open the crate filled with some fish, the mage wrinkled his nose. He withdrew a vial, filled with a green liquid, and began to peel off the wax. The smell of faint mint twisted around him as he opened it and looked towards Alea. He offered the vial to the girl, as his hand twitched erratically as he held it. "You do the honors, missy?"

[Alea Davenport]

When the mage's hands started to glow, Alea stepped back involuntarily, her heart suddenly pounding. She had seen glowing hands like that before! Of course, at the time she'd had no idea what they meant. She had only recently learned that magic existed after all, much less how dangerous it was. Realizing how close she had been to such a dangerous and unpredictable phenomenon made her heart pound in her chest, but she swallowed and tried to regain her composure before the mage suspected anything. As far as she could tell, the most unpredictable thing about magic was the person using it, and she did not want to give him any reason to use it on her.

Luckily, she was not too distracted to notice the crate of candle holders. Glancing at the mage walking ahead of her, she tiptoed to the open crate and surreptitiously lifted one of the slightly heavy objects. She took care to keep the holder from banging against anything, not wanting to alert the mage. When she had it free, she hid it behind her back, and then stepped softly and quickly back into step behind him.

Alea slowly accepted the poison from the mage. At least she'd gotten it out of his hands, but... what did she do now? Should she keep playing along and wait for a better opportunity? That seemed risky; if she actually poisoned the food, not only would she probably be blamed for conspiracy when this was all over, but people might actually die. There was no guarantee she'd be able to warn anyone in time. This was probably as good an opportunity as she was going to get.

Without warning, she splashed the poison into his eyes. Hopefully before he could react, she then swung the candle holder at the side of his head, putting the force of all her fear and anger behind the blow. She had no idea how the mage would react, but she kept her eyes on his hands, getting ready to dodge a counter-blow, or more fire if his hands started glowing again.

[Svasra]

The man watched with a slightly narrowed gaze as he relinquished the hold on the poison, turning his eyes towards the fish with an obvious look of anticipation. As Alea thought though, the time was harrowing the mage's nerves, and he turned towards her impatiently. "What is-" His angered words were abruptly cut off with a surprised yell, the potion splashing over his face and into his eyes. In his scattered state, this was one action he had not been suspecting, and it was definitely not to his benefit. Though the potion had been altered to only be effective through digestion, it was not pleasant when exposed to the skin, especially his already over-sensitive eyes. Blinded and furious, the mage rubbed his face, res beginning to slowly leak around his hands, though his limbs shuddered. Before he could concentrate to turn the res into fire, a blow struck him smart against his head. Stumbling back, the man roared in outrage, shielding his head with his arms as his eyes stayed determinedly closed against the sting of his potion. "You little wrench! Traitor! You are one of them! One of the sickening crew that sticks us into the hold like dogs!" he yelled, and blindly swatted towards Alea with his stout pole, though the hit was slow and lumbering as his other hand wiped across his face. The banging on the door had returned, with the noise of sailors on the other side, yelling through the door. From the noise of it, it seemed that the sailors were throwing themselves against the door, determined to get in. As the mage heard it, he blinked a few times, squinting as he tried to bear the pain. "ARG! You will pay, you little girl!" he grumbled, and began to swing his pole. It was obvious he was new to it though, as the pole swung in solely straight lines, as though he didn't have the knowledge to do anything particularly tricky with it. The swings themselves were quite weak, as sweat ran down his brow, and began to wet the cloth around his neck. A small creaking sound came from the door, it sounded like the men were going to make it through after all.