Another upload cause this story has fr been doing so damn well omgg
Thank y'all so so much for the comments, the votes, and literally just taking the time to read this one
It seriously has made me so much more confident to write (rather upload, cause best believe I've got some drafts written lol) more fantasy based books
So thank you thank you thank you!!
I love yall so damn much <3
xoxo
P.S. I don't mind the corrections for the spelling errors, it absolutely helps when I do another run through and edit

Caspian

I wasn't sure what I expected with Finnik. I wasn't sure what to expect.

Yet once my body finally subsided from the jarring intensity of whatever the hell Alistair had done to it mere moments ago, I realized I didn't know what to expect from anyone on this damn island anymore. Even with Alistair and his men, but most specifically with Alistair.

For example, my body reacted to the Captain's touch like it was branded by a metal sword that was held to a live flame from sun up till sundown. I was wearing quite possibly the thickest material to exist, and yet no amount of clothing could make me feel any less exposed than I did then... and subsequently did now.

Everything was on fire. Including the rate of my once almost dead heartbeat, and something told me Alistair could somehow hear it. I wasn't sure how, but if it was loud enough to drown out damn near all sound from my own ears, it was loud enough to reach his.

I still felt where his hand had touched my waist, pulling me further into him. I had no control, no willpower against his touch, and that alone terrified me.

He avoided glancing back in my direction as he pushed open the doors to what looked like an antique shoppe, and allowed me to follow him in. The doors weren't latched shut yet there were no lights on to signal anyone was inside.

Alistair didn't say anything, instead he continued further into the shop, moving around the dark, cluttered, and must scented space before we made it to a door in the very back. My nose immediately grew sensitive to the layers of dust that coated almost every item visible to the eye, but I did my best to ignore both it and the pungent smell that accompanied it.

Instead of reaching for its handle, Alistair raised his hand and knocked against the dark wood four consecutive times. There was no rhythm or pattern to this knock, yet Alistair didn't say one word to announce who he was.

I heard a latch unfastened itself on the other side of the door before it was finally swung open. The rusted hinges ground against each other releasing this sharp horrid sound, and revealing more of their unkept age.

I couldn't see anything past Alistair's large frame besides the fact that this room was well lit. Once I followed him inside, I got a better view of an enormous study, and a very short man that occupied it. He very well may have been the shortest man I'd ever seen, not measuring any higher than my hip. This study was lined with bookshelves and glass encasements holding relics my common eye couldn't process...

There was an aura to this room, one that should've demanded my immediate attention and observation. Yet all that attention was drawn to the short man that offered us a polite nod.

"Finn." Alistair nodded to the man who stood next to the entrance, beckoning us further in before he closed the door that was placed behind us now. He was an older gentlemen, maybe in his sixties or so, yet his face held youth like the waters of immortality held in a palm. He had the shade of skin that matched the light scrap wood located in the the crews quarters of Alistair's ship, which in return drew my gaze there. It made some of his grey hairs growing from the edges of his scalp, all the more noticeable against that far from fair skin.

I did my best not to stare, but it was difficult not to. Every part of him was almost shrunk down to a child's proportions, and yet Alistair treated this as if it were common. As if his abnormality was.

Perhaps it was, I thought to myself. Perhaps I was the uneducated one in this scenario.

For every world my eyes had fastened their gaze upon, Alistair's had seen tenfold. Between the two of us, what I knew of the world was very well a drop in the sea he'd claimed for years.

And so I did what I do rather well.. I kept my mouth shut, taking a seat next to Alistair in one of the two wooden chairs facing the desk, and allowed the men to continue their banter.

"Ali." Finnik nodded before he took a seat at the desk across from us. "Punctual as always."

Those words made the edges of Alistair's lips tug up into a smile as he positioned his massive sword against himself and the side of his seat.

"There's someone I want dead. And when have I been known to delay a meeting with those that wronged me, and death itself?" He countered. His deep voice felt different in this closed room, yet I didn't understand why. Nothing had shifted from its place, and yet it felt like the air itself was shaking with each word. It made the hairs on my arms stand to immediate attention.

Finnik chuckled, his own lips tugging up into a smile I found surprisingly gentle. "Must they wrong you to feel your wrath? I haven't known that to ever be true."

Alistair's own slightly deranged smile widened. "Crossing paths with me and my men is a wrongdoing all in itself. A disastrous mistake I make no effort to hide the consequences of. And I stand firm in my decisions to do so. You let one man live, you may as well let them all."

My brows furrowed slightly at those words. Alistair had let me live after all... and yet... my gaze shifted down to my lower half still planted firmly in this wooden chair.

He had only done so because I wanted to die. I wanted the very thing he liked to take, not give. Perhaps I was starting to understand the conflictions that plagued Alistair. I had subsequently taken the fun out of killing for him.

Finnik nodded to Alistair, his gaze very rarely ever shifting from his towards me which I gladly welcomed.

"It looks like you let one live." Finnik's hand gestured in my direction, and I realized I may have spoken too soon. Finnik clearly knew more of what I was to Alistair than I thought. It made me question what else he knew. And what else he could reveal to Alistair.

All this Captain did was toss his shoulders up nonchalantly. "The man is built for work, and it was due time that I took a slave to assist my crew."

"Mm." I heard Fin hum more to himself. "So to what do I owe this pleasure? You wouldn't risk a journey to Sicoria for just anything. I believe the last words you said to me was that it would take a war to pull you back to these decrepit shores... and I haven't heard of any war yet. At least not one you'd care to join."

Alistair stretched his long legs out, shifting his weight in the chair to better position himself before he replied. "Azul and The Holy Men can eat shit and bathe in piss the rest of their lives and it wouldn't disturb a single current in my waters."

Finnik chuckled, his shorter arms reaching for his desk before he leant forward against it. "Alistair... both the living and the dead and well aware of that. Whose soul are you hunting?"

"A captain." Alistair replied. That deranged smile of his had lessened some as the conversation took a more serious turn.

"Dead or alive?" Finnik questioned a bit coyly, to which Alistair's eyes immediately narrowed at the man.

"A smart tongue like that serves better severed."

My head damn near snapped itself off with how quickly it panned in Alistair's direction. His words dripped with malice.

"Gentle," Finnik replied, though I noticed his body had grown more rigid to that awfully serious threat. "Whose secrets could I pass on then?" This whole conversation had now made me wish I had fought to stay on that ship. This whole visit to this island was not what I was expecting, and with every passing moment here, I realized I had no desire to try and stay in hopes of separating myself from Alistair.

Something told me that if I did, I may be exchanging one prison for another.

"And to defend my reasoning, the last man you came looking for was dead. That was information I told you I knew to be true, and yet you didn't believe me."

The look Alistair had firmly set on Finnik, didn't change any.

"To defend my reasoning, the man had blown a massive hole through Ol' Bess."

"Yes, then a Sicoria pirate blew a hole straight through him as ramifications for what him and his crew had done to your vessel. The debt was settled."

"Not by my standards." Alistair countered.

"And so your grand plan was to what? Dig his dead body up just so you could further disfigure a corpse? You can't kill the dead, Alistair."

Alistair's lips curled up into a somewhat sinister smile again, making my skin crawl immediately. "And you don't know nearly enough about me nor the sea to make a claim such as that."

All my eyes could do was dart back and forth between the two men as they conversed intensely, wondering who was it that had the upper hand here... Alistair, or Finnik?

"It's been some time since we last sat face to face. What makes you think I haven't learned?"

Alistair's smile widened with Finnik's question. "The same amount of time has passed for us both, has it not? I do not doubt that the mysteries of land and sea have presented themselves to you with each item you've managed to steal, and yet... do you not feel that?"

The easiness of Finnik's own smile had finally started to fade some, distancing itself from his face. "All who've felt your presence knows the radiance of your powers, Alistair." The shorter man spoke with less ease.

"The air has not shifted by my doing. It would do you well to learn about those shiny objects your sticky hands like to come attached to. For certain things can hold a soul, the most dangerous thing to wager... and all magic comes at a price."

Finnik still didn't look like he fully understood. Granted, I didn't understand any of this at all, but luckily Alistair had no issue educating us both.

"The air hasn't shifted by my doing. The relics you've acquired since my last visit... they're what is responsible for this. What you should see when you look around at the riches that surround you, is the souls of many that have been shackled by my own hands. And what you feel... what makes the hairs on your body come to life with each word I speak, is their own pleas, their own cries for mercy as they pray that I haven't come to collect."

The look in Finnik's eyes shifted drastically at that as he looked around this once comfortable yet large study with a new sense dread. I, myself, followed his gaze to the many items held in those glass cases. Some daggers. Some pendants. Some armor.

"Then did you dig his body up?" The short man asked, to which Alistair chuckled.

"I took what was still owed to me. And the men that witnessed it, now understand that a debt isn't settled until I settle it."

My hairs stood at attention again now, however it wasn't due to these relics Finnik had collected. No... what I felt was absolute fucking terror.

It had reminded me of the threat Alistair spoke of. When he had spoke to me during the heat of that ambush.

"If you die on me," the voice had whispered, "I will retrieve your soul from the depths of fucking hell itself and yank it back into the land of the living with my own bare fucking hands."

Every part of me felt his sincerity in those words then... but hearing him now, I was starting to realize he may not have told a single lie.

"A captain then?" Finnik finally spoke. His voice had an edge to it, however it sounded like it was trying to balance itself with the slight fear that meshed into this old man's wrinkles on his face.

"Aye." Alistair nodded. He had finally melted a bit of that wicked smile off his own face, causing my own heart rate to steady again. At least for now, he no longer looked ready to kill. "His men wore a red skull emblem on their leather coats, the same emblem engraved in the handle of their swords."

Finnik nodded slowly, taking a second to think. "That be Gaelick and his crew. I heard stirrings about one of his largest fleets being buried at the bottom of the sea. My assumptions are that was your doing?"

My head whipped back to Alistair a bit unintentionally. I knew that that ship had been met with canon fire as a direct order from Alistair that night, however I somehow assumed that a ship of that magnitude would be discovered stalled at sea.

"Aye." Alistair nodded. "And now I want the captain's head."

Finnik took yet another pause before he answered that. "You sought out the right location, however Gaelick left these shores by sundown this previous night. He had his eyes set for Azul in an attempt to recuperate the damage from the loss of all those men. You stayed true to your word of leaving no survivors."

"Incorrect," Alistair interjected. "That Captain is a survivor as far as I'm concerned, and as long as he still breathes, no ship was genuinely sunk."

"Perhaps it was a misunderstanding? Gaelick hasn't been at sea long. Not in comparison to you." Finnik suggested, to which Alistair outwardly and harshly laughed at.

"There was no misunderstanding. The message sent and received was as clear as the air on my ship. And I'm not looking to chew the fat with him, the only conversation had will be between swords, and I'm inclined to make that man awfully well acquainted with the edge of mine."

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