Welp, still can't add images so my apologies on behalf of Wattpad for ruining the aesthetic, but I still wanted to bless yall :)
Enjoy, lovelies!
xoxo

Caspian

I awoke to an empty bed.

An empty room actually, which was... different, to say the least.

And judging by how high the sun was as it now shined through Alistair's window, I had slept for far too long.

The crew was already heavily at work by the time I managed to dress and make it down to the main deck, whilst Alistair and Cael were nowhere in sight. We were accustomed to it, and this would've felt like any other working day had I not immediately noticed how drastically this ship had slowed down during my slumber.

"We're nearing up on them now," Snips spoke as his first words to me before he handed me a wrap of thick rope. "Thank the gods." I heard him add quietly under his breath.

The rest of the crew looked better than they had, yet there was some weary shared amongst a few of their faces.

"Isn't that a good thing?" I asked Snips, hoisting the rope over my shoulder as I started to follow him closely across the main deck of the ship, to its side.

"Aye." He nodded, looking back slightly to me with his response.

"Then why does everyone seem most uncertain?"

Snips slowed slightly so we could continue our brisk walk side by side. I still couldn't understand how his shorter legs managed to carry himself so swiftly, so much so that my longer strides struggled to maintain his pace.

"The Captain has another less appealing plan once we do reach them."

Before Snips could continue, we heard the sounds of his name being called, cutting across the ship's clear air from where in which it came from. Once our gaze had turned in its direction, I could see now that it was Finn.

"Damn it. I need to take measurements for this utterly ridiculous expansion. Just- uh, adjust these three beams here, and see if you can't have Hobbs show you how to cross stitch that torn sail there. Coop might actually be a more fitting expert if you can find him."

I nodded to Snips, watching as he set his own wound up rope down next to where I stood, before turning and making his way over to our cook.

I still felt fairly awful about that request I had foolishly agreed to, yet I was more surprised to find that Alistair had decided to keep his-... well technically my word.

When I thought about that, all it did was remind me of everything else that had transpired since. I had a faint recollection of the night before, yet the last thing I could remember was Alistair requesting me to go back to sleep. He had felt... well... it was very nice, I settled on, which I know it shouldn't have been, however...

"Go to sleep."

I felt my face getting warmer than it should've recalling those words and the way he had said them, specially with the cool front upon both it and this ship has a whole.

And that was the exact moment when I forced work on myself as a distraction. In an effort to keep my mind off this, I mindlessly completed both Snips and my own tasks, which was single-handedly the most work I had done in a day since forcefully boarding this ship. I attributed much of this success to the cool day this cold front had created. My clothes were, for the first time, not drenched with sweat.

Once the sun had started her grand descent, that was when we heard the first calls from Coop in his position up above. He called it the crows nest.

"Sail, Ho!"

I looked ahead immediately, my eyes narrowing as I just made the outline of a ship up ahead of us. It was the sound of Alistair's voice that quickly pulled my gaze away from what was in front of me, to what was behind me.

"Hoist the colors!" He commanded to his crew, his voice spreading throughout the ship as they began to unbind the ropes holding those blood red sails in place. Instead, I watched as Alistair's men threaded a white sheet through the secured holes, pulling that same thick rope through before stringing it up where the first red sail had been.

I hadn't been on these seas long, but all merchants knew the color of surrender.

At first glance, the material looked like any other sail, but once I got a closer look, I realized it was nothing but. The light from the sun shining through it so easily had proved just the case.

"Why does that-" I started, speaking more of less to myself as I assumed none other was close enough to hear, but a voice from beside me startled even myself.

"It's a bedsheet." Snips explained. That pulled my attention from the makeshift sail, towards the short man. He hadn't waited to continue explaining this time. "This is the first this ship has ever raised the colors of surrender." He explained.

That only left me even further perplexed, but I didn't have much time to dwell on that.

That ship was now moving closer into our view, and all I could do was watch as Alistair made his rounds, perhaps assuring his men as he went. Not a single one seemed the most approving of flying that flag of surrender, including myself. I didn't understand what Alistair had planned, but if even his crew didn't feel comforted about it, I found it even harder for myself to.

Yet there was something there. Something that still trusted this mad man, and his even madder ideologies.

He had spoken to every pirate as he made his way towards the right side of his ship, which was starting to position itself to the left face of the enemy's. We were drawing near enough now to see the men on this ship, and once I caught sight of the magnitude of pirates that surrounded the main deck, my uneasiness only further multiplied.

Alistair's voice was what pulled me back towards him now, as he approached both Snips and myself.

"Have Coop cast a rope above for the enemy's messenger to board. Per pirate code, they will be forced to engage in the treaty pertaining to the act of surrender." Alistair ordered Snips, to which Snips quickly agreed... however the disdain of this decision remained on his face, refusing to fully accept whatever plan Alistair had decided to enact on this day.

Once Snips had hurried off to relay this very request to Coop, Alistair turned to me finally. He and I were now left about as alone as could be, considering our position on the main deck.

And the first words that stumbled past my lips were "we're surrendering?"

There were many reactions I expected to my sudden words, anger being the most prominent, and yet the edges of Alistair's lips twitched up again. I now realized that if Alistair would do nothing else, he'd find enjoyment in the most dire of situations. This realization should've come sooner.

"There isn't much time to explain my reasoning. I just need you to trust both I, and my wits about me."

I couldn't help but think that was almost impossible to do. Alistair was as wild and unpredictable as the sea itself.

"I'll be back before the nightfall. Before the next nightfall at the latest." He added, to which I felt immediate dread wash over me once again. That had been even longer than I expected.

"And if they are to kill you?" I asked him.

"Unfortunately," Alistair replied with an even more sinister smile, "I'm fairly difficult to kill."

Alistair's words held truth, and deep down inside me I knew that to be true, yet somewhere even deeper inside me held a feeling a weary that weighed heavier on my heart than I could've expected. My sentiments were only further solidified by the hesitancy with his crew. Perhaps they felt what I know I did- that feeling of being unprepared.

"Such an unfortunate reality." I heard Cael say as he soon after joined Alistair and I where we stood. "However, I'm choosing to put just a glimmer of faith into his assessment of this situation. Alistair doesn't have the time now, but I assure you that in due time, I will explain everything."

My gaze had held his now, his face holding far more assurance than the other men, and so I found myself nodding.

Alistair's lips didn't utter another word to me. Once he had turned on his heel to leave, I finally saw the orders from Alistair himself, come to fruition. A large rope was tossed across the sea from our ship to Gaelick's. Considering neither of us knew what this ship's captain looked like, I accepted that none of this could end well.

As if my initial fears weren't enough, the second one of Gaelick's men finally anchored themselves to the rope tossed, using it to come across the turbulent sea to our vessel, the look on Alistair's face and the smile playing at his lips let me know this would be no simple surrender.

Once the pirate was close enough to boarding this ship, I noticed it was a shorter pirate, much the same build as Snips, but his hair was short and almost as black as Alistair's. As I looked closer, I noticed that in his hand he bore a white piece of paper. The rope had almost brought his feet safely to the floorboards of the Captain's... but before he could sink his feet onto the ledge of Alistair's vessel, there was a sudden gust of wind that practically stopped his momentum mid stride.

All I could do was watch as the enemy pirate who once looked all too confident in his efforts, turn to that of horror as he soon realized his body was barely going to make it to the side of this ship. The sound his body made when it in returned smacked itself hard against the side, was rather bone chilling. I watched as the enemy's pirate grasped against the edge of the ship in desperation, with that piece of paper still wenched between his fingers.

When Alistair approached the shorter man, whatever hope this man once had of survival should've left him... yet this just further proved that Gaelick didn't quite understand who it was he was hunting.

Alistair slightly bent down, offering what looked to be assistance, but instead of pulling this man up over the ledge, Alistair snatched the piece of papers out of his hand so quickly, the man lost his grasp.

Both Alistair's crew and Gaelick's could do nothing but watch as the pirate fell down to the sea below, his screams following him there. There would be no recovery once the current swept him under our rudders.

Alistair paid this sudden death no mind as he read the note this men was holding. Instead, I watched as Cael passed both a quill and ink to the mad Captain, before he scrawled a letter of his own on that same white paper.

Once whatever he had scrawled out on that paper was complete, I watched him pass this note to Snips, who willingly took it before he started his ascent up one of the tallest beams. He was climbing towards Coop who was still nestles in his crows nest.

The actions that were quickly unfolding on this ship now had made me realize that I might have been the least knowledgeable on what exactly Alistair had planned. My eyes followed that letter closely, watching as Snips maintained a strong grip on it as he climbed. Once he reached Coop, he passed this paper on successfully before he himself started to climb down.

I couldn't understand why this letter had made its way from Alistair to Coop, until I looked closely. Coop had stabbed the paper to the end of his dagger, and before my mind processed exactly what Alistair had ordered, that same dagger went soaring through the air with speeds only I could trail by the glimmer on sunlight reflecting heavily against the metal.

Once that dagger hit its intended target, one of the many pirates that had now gathered on the deck of Gaelick's ship, I felt my breathing hitch. The dagger had flown straight through the left eye of one of Gaelick's men, killing him instantly.

As the now angry faces of these enemy's pirates found themselves facing Alistair's, I watched as our Captain feigned surprise...

As if he hadn't meant to send the first enemy pirate straight for the sea, and the other straight to the enemy's floorboards.

There was unpredictable... then there was this bloody pirate.

I expected Gaelick's men to immediately reply with canon fire, or some sort of militant engagement, but one of the many pirates just approached the now dead man with both a note and a dagger sticking from his shattered eye socket, before they unfolded its bloodstained remnants and read Alistair's proposal.

They must have now known that any additional messengers they sent forward would most likely not make it back onto their ship, for as opposed to sending men, Gaelick's men first wrote out something on that very same piece of paper, before their ship returned Alistair's request with a raven.

Imagine my surprise when Coop shot yet another dagger through the air, killing the bird mid flight before it could even reach Alistair. We all watched at the raven fell to our main deck like dead weight, smacking against the wooden floorboards before Hobbs retrieved the note from its bloody beak, and handed it to Alistair.

Once Alistair spread open this now fairly bloody and wrinkled paper to read the contents of the note, I watched as that sinister smile widened.

His glance casted back to this enemy ship and its men, their hard faces far less than welcoming, and yet that hadn't troubled Alistair in the slightest. Once he gave that ship and its men a nod, one of their crew members released a rope from their own beams, casting it across the sea to our ship, which Alistair managed to grab with ease.

Before he could steady himself on that rope, Cael had approached him, beckoning the Captain's ear towards his. The tall dark skinned man had said something to which Alistair lightly laughed at, yet whatever he returned with had done nothing to put Cael's slight weariness to rest. Instead, he looked more worried now than he had.

But alas, no pirate could do anything once Alistair hoisted himself onto the ledge of his ship.

His head turned slightly once more to his crew, yet somehow, even from across the ship to where I stood towards the front, his eyes found mine. His lips never parted but I heard him clear as day when his final words assured me with...

"I'll return to you soon."

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