"Hold fire!" a nasally voice cries from the trees. A white handkerchief waves from the bush, quickly greying under the rain of ash. A barrel-chested man steps out, primly dressed in worn, decorated red and gold naval attire that I do not recognize. It is not of Praedor, nor is his bronze skin. His accent further betrays his foreign hailing. "You are vastly outnumbered, please. Hold your fire. I have been sent to negotiate, my yellow friend." His sparkling white teeth are flashed with every word spoken.

The captain lays a hand on the man loyally hovering just behind him. He murmurs something to Increas and the officer silently nods and slinks towards the ship and the water, gesturing a discrete party to follow.

"Ah, Paisley," Captain Avery greets, baring his teeth with unintelligible expression between irritation and amusement. He leans on his crutch, placing a hand upon its end and his chin upon his hand. "I haven't seen you since—"

"Your mutiny." Paisley frowns. He beckons to the men behind him and a few more faces melt from the shadows.

I shiver at the sight. I had only been able to make out perhaps six men in the gloom before, but more materialize, like apparitions. A row of twelve hover behind Paisley, laden with weapons reminiscent of Harvey's strange and terrifying collection. More eyes glow behind them, and I wonder how many more are concealed beyond, carrying unpredictable devices of doom.

The leader tucks his handkerchief up his sleeve and smiles tightly to the captain. "You've lost a leg. The missus had been looking forward to a good fight... that's a shame."

Avery sneers. "Cut the pussyfooting."

Paisley's shoulders lift carelessly and he gestures around to his followers. "We would like your map and the keys to the treasure. Hand them over, please. Thank you."

"Thank you?" Avery laughs, then spits at the ground. "You want my map? Come and get it."

Paisley's eyes sharpen and he grins maliciously, his teeth long and jagged like a wolf's. His canines trip over his lower lip. "I will take it off your corpse, gladly."

His men raise their weapons and I dive my head into the sand at the very same time that an earsplitting blast ripples the water around my knees and plasters my hair back with the damp. My voice cries with a chorus of others in one awful screech of surprise and pain, my eyes flying open to watch our side flung back towards our ship and their side painting the blackened trees a new sickening hue. A fresh coat of crimson. An arm lands in the water next to me and I scream, scrambling away, towards the hull of the ship.

Harvey Cobbe howls gleefully from the deck, raising a botefeux over his head in triumph, the smoke of its tip joining with the smoke belching from the canon and billowing from the foliage lining the beach.

I stare back in horror as smaller gunshots racket and I realize that they aren't all dead—not their men, not ours. Multiple pairs of narrow eyes flicker under the light of a surreal ball of energy swirling in the air, blasted by one of their volatile arms. The captain is heaving himself to stand, brandishing his blade laboriously before the massive weapon buzzing over the beach. With the crew rising and drawing their weapons behind him, he steps on the back of the unconscious, well-dressed enemy leader and glares into the trees. His sword remains fixed on the nova caught in the air, trembling. One great ball of light and electricity, like a star the size of me, humming powerfully. Bullets fly from the cover of the trees, but each one stops midair around him as if time has frozen. The silver pellets turn, quivering.

The captain laughs madly, his upper lip curled to expose his gums in a vicious snarl of concentration and rage and lunacy. Sweat trickles down his brow and he draws his arms back like an orchestral composer and casts them forward like a sorcerer. The bullets and the ball of light shudder and bolt back to where they came from at greater speeds than they had come, propelled by unseen force, and the forest erupts in flames and screams, and explosion, and silence.

The captain staggers a step away from Paisley to collapse onto one knee, hanging his head to breathe.

From the forest, the only sound left is the gentle crackle of flames as they dance along branches and trunks, leaves and coconuts, clothing and skin. I stand in the water for a moment, transfixed by the scene before me. My head spins as my eyes run over patches of red and black sand, my nose suffocates through a familiar smell—Mother?—and my skin feels strangely cool under a layer of someone else's innards.

Elian Arrow and Professor Woods lift Paisley to his feet, Officer Langley preparing for questioning with his rapier drawn before them.

Mrs. Marks crouches beside the captain, her lips moving.

I dive into the water to cleanse myself, scrubbing the cherry red grime from my skin and squeezing it from my blouse. Some of it, I only imagined, I think. Standing over the water around me, the ripples around my shins carry away only wisps, rather than the buckets I had pictured, and I come to the grounding realization that, thankfully, things aren't so bad. Scraping the last of the red and black from the hairs of my arms, I hear the calling of my name and reluctantly look back up the beach. Men are marching into the burning bush. Thenshie and Rootwig, the heathens, huddle together on the beach, gnashing their gums and hissing.

Dr. Oswald smiles at me with sympathy and holds out his gloved hand.

"Walter," he calls again, quieter now that he has caught my wet eyes—I promise, it is from the sea water. He holds his cane in one hand, his medical bag slung around his narrow shoulders. "Strength and safety in numbers, Walter. We don't want to fall behind, or be lost."

I nod, biting my lip, and run my fingers through my dripping hair, pushing it back from my face. Standing up with a reluctant wince, I clumsily lift my sodden shoes high out of the water a few steps until I am with him on the beach. My eyes fall from his hand to Paisley's blank stare and the black hole through his forehead. Dr. Oswald takes my hand and leads me away, but I continue to stare.

"You shouldn't have to see these things, Walter," the doctor mutters, almost angry as he squeezes my hand tighter. His cane pokes the underbrush, tapping lightly and anxiously. He looks pointedly down his nose at me, prodding my chin to turn my gaze from the massacre all around to the fires ahead. "War is a terrible thing, my dear boy, and it is likely worse amongst these lawless, faithless men. Slaughter! But not if we can help it."

He pulls me quickly through flames that suck the saltwater moisture from my clothes and skin, giving a brittle feel to my whole exterior as we emerge from the heat to the cover of damp canopies. Over a log we climb, through trampled grasses we trek, and after what feels like forever, we arrive in a clearing with the rest of our party. The Aquians are not among them, and they did not follow us through.

The doctor holds my hand tighter, pursing his lips. A jolly roger flows in the wind on a pole far in the distance, near another patch of woods to the left of what appears to be a village. The tapered tips of tall clay buildings, reminiscent of termite mounds with holes for windows, poke from below a grassy ridge many yards ahead.

"Stay with me," the doctor pleads softly. "We can follow behind and tend the wounded. That canon blast on the beach was too close a range for comfort, but it saved our crew. In this open space, I'm sure we won't be so lucky."

He raises one crooked old finger to where the flag stands, below which, an army swarms in wait. At least two-hundred men to our not-even-thirty.

"What are they waiting for?" I ask with dread. There weren't supposed to be so many. We had already taken a good portion on the beach. That man, Paisley, had said we were outnumbered there, which indicated... the captain and his officers had slaughtered more than thirty men and survived unscathed.

It is indescribably difficult for me to distinguish the pressure on my heart as awe or horror, and perhaps the feeling is a mixture of them both; a concoction so powerful between emotions so repellent that like how alcohol cannot mix with cough syrup, it stirs the same wrenching nausea.

Dr. Oswald walks with me towards them. "I would think we are out of their range, as they are out of ours. Although... I have an awful feeling they have a better arsenal than we. No matter. In war, it isn't the weapons that matter. It's the faith."

"You called them faithless only minutes ago," I point out quietly.

"Ah, but, only in the same way that you are faithless, Walter. No religion. Religious faith, I believe, leads to more just fights, with higher moral standards. But, we are entering a fight where I fear it is kill or be killed, without standards, and in this case, these men, and you and I, too, believe less in our savior above and more in that man," he points and nods towards Captain Avery, "as a leader, and that is essential to provide direction and morale and, I do believe, an upper hand. Who would have thought? On the day we met him, we had the audacity to pity him."

We pause quietly on the edge of it all and look up at the smoky sky. Black plumes blunder overhead, circling lazily from the drafts sent from the encompassing waterfall. The smoke hovers over the island, growing thicker gradually over the isle.

Dr. Oswald straightens beside me as the captain approaches, and I do the same.

The captain nods to the both of us. "Are we fighting, gentlemen?"

"I have sworn an oath to do no harm, as you know, Captain Avery," the doctor replies solemnly.

"Hmm." The captain frowns disapprovingly, then looks to me. "And you, sir?"

My heart cannot help but flutter at the address. I bite my lip, hesitating. After thought, I slowly nod.

He laughs at me. The audacity!

Color burns in my cheeks and I clench my fists at my sides, glaring hotly at the ground.

Shaking his head, Captain Avery smiles. His eyes are tired, their green almost closer to gray. Damp hair falls from the slipping pink ribbon at the back. His dirty fingers clench around my shoulder briefly, then withdraw to slip into his coat. "Stay back and only draw your sword if you have to. Use your Gift, Walter. You have it in you, and it is powerful, I am almost proud to say. It is an advantage. If you want to make a difference, use it."

Proud.

"I will, sir," I promise, standing straighter, taller, stronger. My jaw sets and I nod stoically to him.

He smiles at me again, drawing out his pipe. He turns, and I frown as I watch his eyes find Harvey Cobbe amongst the crew.

"Is now the best time to light a pipe, Captain?" The doctor clears his throat.

Captain Avery turns back. He spins the pipe around in one hand, tilting his head. "Not with the intention to relax, no. But Mr. Cobbe has some unusual herbs that I hope might return me a little vigor. Unless, being a doctor, you have a better suggestion?"

The doctor bows his head in affirmation, his eyes crinkling with a mellow amusement. Soot stands out starkly on his powdered wig; damaged and brittle, but fixed perfectly in its place. His hand raises to gesture past the captain, replying, "Mrs. Marks can help you. Her methods will be more effective, and safer, than Mr. Cobbe's."

The captain frowns, quizzically watching our one female companion rifle through her bag a mere few yards away. His shoulders raise apathetically and he begins towards her, answering over his shoulder, "We will see. Follow Leslie, gentlemen. You will be with his party from here. Good luck."

"Good luck," the doctor returns.

"Good luck," I murmur.

We watch after him a moment longer, eyes upon the dark stain on the back of his deep blue coat, where the crest of Praedor would have once been emblazoned in gold. The doctor pulls me gently onwards to our assigned party and we soon are amidst the thick of sweating men and the pungency of gunpowder.

Leslie bellows oaths over us all about the strength of our backs and the sting of our steel. He mentions the clearing and the canons at the other end of it, and the order that we are to enter, with myself and two of my savant compatriots taking up the tail, Mrs. Marks on one end and the doctor and I on the other.

The too-short tails of Professor Woods' tweed coat could be the last I ever see of him, I think, as I catch him heading a different direction beside the gunner, Cobbe. In his hand, he holds a long rifle, the tip trailing through long blades of grass in his wake. Cobbe carries his own rifle over his shoulders, between Lucy and his wild white hair.

They did not say goodbye. I don't chase them. I wonder if I will come to regret this.

Behind them, Captain Avery advances through the long, wispy greens, holding Dorian's paw. Officer Langley glides at his other side, his short cloak waving from his back.

My legs move without any conscious control, following Leslie and the last of our wily bunch into the clearing in a wide spread. My feet are moving beneath me, of course, but it feels as if I am floating. It is so dreamlike, watching all the men, and the woman, that I have grown familiar with over our journey separate on different paths, all with unknown futures.

The doctor who delivered me as an infant strides at my side with worried lines over his face and a sword concealed in a cane, his white coat dyed with red that would never come out. I hold a rapier in my sweating hand—a hand unused to weapons greater than a small, rusting axe used to chop wood. Curious blue wisps flit through the grass, glowing in such an entrancing manner that I long to stop and wonder. The sky swirls in a mass of black, engulfed in the smoke from the barracks and the bush at our backs, raining soot down on us like grim snowfall. It spirals, like a maelstrom, menacingly slow-moving.

Shouts sound from the men in front of me and my feet come to a stop altogether. I tilt my head back and raise my hand to shield my eyes, squinting to the dark sky ahead. Four spinning black masses arc beneath the restless clouds, gaining speed in their descent across the clearing.

A gasp escapes my parted lips, my eyes widening. Suddenly, I want to do nothing but run, but my legs refuse to do anything at all, frozen, quivering, in place.

One of the heavy balls plummets in my direction, towards the four men scrambling in opposite directions only meters before me. Its rough surface angrily quakes in the middle of my eyeline, and I am mesmerized by the fascinating turning of itself through the air. Rolling, as if bowled. Fast and powerful, as if by a god.

Gloved hands drive hard against my shoulders and we, two, fly through the whistling air together.