Dawn- An age of Darkness

The creaking of wood woke me up. The helmsman was sleeping and so was the old man. The ship was moving in all sorts of direction, so there was more than enough swaying. The big guy who was behind the ship's rudder was fast asleep. No wonder the ship was swaying. Come to think of it, would this really be alright? What if we went in the opposite direction?

"Hey wake up, ye fat ass!" I screamed.

I might have picked up some random pirate words. After spending all day with the pirates, it would have been surprising if I hadn't. Actually come to think of it, I always ended up talking like the people around me, didn't I? Maybe it's a side effect of the curse? It wasn't very prominent, so I never paid any attention. But this was still rude of me to say so.

The helmsman woke up in a very shaky mood and looked straight at me. His bloodshot eyes lusted for blood. Oh shit.

"What did ye say?" he howled.

I didn't know how to react but I had brought this onto myself. Sometimes I really could be so dumb. "Soryy, you were sleeping so…" I tried to rack up my brain for excuses. As expected, nothing was coming to mind.

"Huh!" He picked up a club. It had metal strings on it. He came towards me with a slow pace. He was going to mince me, there was no doubt about it.

I had nothing against him but I didn't want to get squashed. So, I unsheathed my sword. He was big but I couldn't let him scare me. I haven't done anything wrong other than call him that. But wait, isn't that wrong too…? I was contradicting my own thoughts and that kind of ruined my mindset. I really was dumb.

Before he could reach me a voice resonated. "Yerrr! Sea dogs! I'm tryinn to get some shut eye!" It was the captain.

The big guy stopped, looked at me, and gave an expression that didn't bode well for me. "Don't call me that." It was more of a threat than a request. I nodded, vigorously.

He returned to his duty. And as if nothing had happened, started snoring again. I sighed. Just what was the point of all this then?

"Let that be a lesson to you. Never call dwarves fat." The grumpy sleeping guy next to me was apparently, not sleeping.

"And you just happen to say that now!" I grumbled but sat down anyway.

The old man was awake after all. He was smiling. I felt the urge to strangle him but controlled myself. My heart was racing, so it was a little hard to fall asleep. I was really lucky to survive this. Let's make a rule for myself…. Never call anyone fat or thin…. And so I embarked on a journey of self-realization… wait, what?

The next morning I woke up with a headache. It was like that hangover I got when I stole a can of beer from the fridge and downed it at one go. I groaned and sat down. The world was magnified and I wanted to throw everything up. Motion sickness? But- I almost threw up just by thinking about it.

I wasn't prone to motion sickness: I never had seasickness either. But apparently, last night's swaying wasn't good for my body. People around me didn't really look any worse than they already were. I did see two other guys throw up by the fence: maybe they were new recruits. Seeing that made me want to throw up even more.

"Drink up boy." The old man handed me a black liquid of some sort. It looked horrible, smelled worse.

"What is this?" It was hard to control my guts and talk at the same time.

The old man had awoken much earlier than me. He looked just as fit as he used to. Come to think of it, he looked much better now that we were at the sea. What was he, a fish or something?

"Do you really want to know?" He was smirking again.

I didn't want to play the old man's games. "I don't care." I closed my nose with one hand and drank the stuff. It tasted sweet and perhaps a little sour. "Not bad…" Moreover I felt better. My seasickness died down a little.

"By the way." The old man's grin widened. "That was pretty expensive. You're lucky we harvested it from the siren last night."

"Siren? Har-harvested?" The glass was still in my hand. My eyes twitched, my face twitched. Just what the hell did I just drink? Just what the hell did you just make me drink, old man!?

He came close. "You see…." The old man whispered in my ears. Needless to say, only moments later, I threw up everything and the whole morning, my guts and my mood was literally on fire. The chuckles around me weren't helping either.

Seagulls were flying by. Some of the pirates were trying to catch the birds. But they were failing miserably.

It was close to midday. Thanks to a certain somebody I had no appetite and was currently starving. I did feel better though. I didn't want to admit it, but that black stuff was definitely some sort of medicine. I still wasn't going to thank the geezer though, never.

The wolfman-Gack was jumping around from the mast but he wasn't making any progress. I was feeling rather amused to see that. His scary face didn't seem all that scary now. If only he had a better personality, I could have even called him cute.

"Hey, newbie go and call Brend. He's got the best skills among us with throwing stuffs." Gack swung around his sword but he couldn't do anything to the seagulls. "Damn it! I wanna cut some throats but these things! Damn it!" The seagulls were basically flying around him in circles, almost mocking him.

I ignored the last bit of what he said. "Sure, but I'm not joining you guys." Oh boy! He didn't see me smiling did he?

I instinctively had my hands on my throat making sure it stayed attached. Placebo effect was the real deal. Gack for his part didn't really care about me and kept swinging his sword. His disappointment was definitely amusing.

The pirates had already assumed I would join them or something; so, they were ordering me around like an intern. But, I had better things to do than go around and pillage stuff.

However, for the time being, I'd be their errand boy. I didn't want to meet Trerortra anytime soon again, after all.

My worries about the monsters of the sea were the real deal though. Occasionally monstrous fish or squids would show up out of nowhere and we'd have our food. I liked octopus more than squid and maybe because of that, we didn't see a single octopus yet. Was there any octopus in this world though?

According to the pirates, Brend's cabin was next to the captain's. Nobody apart from the captain himself was allowed to enter. No wonder they pushed the job onto me. But if nobody was allowed, how come they wanted me to go in?

"Hey, am I really allowed? It's okay for me to go in right?" Before knocking on Brend's door, I shouted at Gack.

The guy looked at me without any emotions. "If the captain finds out, ye'd go without a day of food. But let's say ye don't listen to me…. I'll take yer throat. I'll leave the last decision to ye."

Yup, I knew what I'd do. Why the hell did it have to be pirates? I almost wanted to cry.

I knocked once and went straight in. The life of my throat- my life to be exact- depended on it. The door was a bit hard and I had to push a little too hard but eventually, I went in: wait, was this a lock?

There was someone in there. Someone with a much curvier body than Brend.. I couldn't believe my eyes. "Hey, you're- !"