Characters: Adam, Fayrelin, Malkav, Captain Jargon, Exthame, Blackthorn
Location: The aqueducts of Felwinter
Day 4 - 3:05 PM
Fayrelin and Adam scurried through the aqueducts under Felwinter, buried to their waists in rippling black water. Grunting, Adam carried Malkav’s limp body on his shoulders as Fayrelin navigated through the underground labyrinth as naturally as a cat in the dark. She was hard to keep up with and Adam wasn’t in the best shape, even before they began this three-mile excursion in the damp sewers, so every now and then she would have to stop and wait for him. Unfortunately for Adam, he always thought her stopping was a sign they had reached their destination, so he would start to put Malkav’s body down and then sigh as Fayrelin started running again.
“Where are we going?” he cried after her.
She didn’t answer, but the gong of a bell did. It was getting louder now. Adam waded through the sewers, sinking a little under Malkav’s weight, and rounded another pipe. From above, he could make out the dim streets of Felwinter and the giggling of girls in the town square. He then wondered, for a moment, what he was walking in. They didn’t have plumbing in Ellewyn, did they? He was pretty sure they didn’t do any irrigation either. But the smell was putrid, making him gag, making him want to pinch his nose even though he knew he couldn’t let go of Malkav. All he could do was run, wheeze, cough, choke. The sewers were growing darker.
The bell rang again. Fayrelin slowed down. Suddenly, she dove into the dark water and swam through a narrow pipe at the bottom of the sewers. Taking a deep breath and wrapping his arm around Malkav’s waist, Adam followed her. He pushed hard with his free hand, barely fitting through the pipe. The water blinded him. Sputtering, he surfaced next to Fayrelin and she helped him drag Malkav’s body on shore. It was there, in the bleakness of the aqueducts, surrounded by clouds of green gas and cement, that Adam saw their destination, their doom, and it was marked by the cold, hollow eye sockets of a pirate flag’s skull staring him down.
“Pirates…” Adam breathed, losing his grip on Malkav.
The boat was fearsome. It was as big as any ship, most likely carved from a single piece of wood by an expert artisan so meticulously, so perfectly, that no model ship in a bottle could come as close as being so real. Aboard were real pirates—all Men—wearing frayed rags of cloth and hair and smoking pipes and plants that smelled worse than the sewer water. Their language was foreign, sounding something like apes in the wild, and Adam shrank back at first, until Fayrelin yanked him onto the rocky shore.
They were still in the aqueducts, of course, but they had reached the main waterway system. From here, the ceilings were high enough to admit a giant (or any normal-sized girl) and the water flowed as free and black as a dream. The ship rocked lightly on the waves, causing the pirate flag to flap and flutter in the pretend wind.
“You work with pirates…” Adam managed to squeak.
Fayrelin shrugged. “They get the job done.”
“Are you really going to sell us back to the Queen?”
“Why?”
“I…uh, don’t imagine that your share of reward money would be much once you divide it among the pirates.”
“Good thing they can’t divide then, huh?”
Adam swallowed hard. He was pretty sure he swallowed some water in there. Something was making him queasy. He watched as one of the pirates, spotting Fayrelin through a telescope, beckoned to a couple others and they hobbled off the ship, drunk and stupid.
It was a good seventy yards before the pirates reached them and another eighty-five yards or so if you counted the stumbling back and forth, so Adam had plenty of time to observe their features. The one who saw him through the telescope must have been the captain. He could tell by the captain’s hat. Under the hat, the captain had scruff that made a person want to itch like mad, feeling as if they had ticks in their hair—and looking at the captain, he probably did. But he had wide shoulders, where a faithful praying mantis was latched onto his skin, and he was far too muscular in the abs to wear a shirt. He walked with a limp, both from drunkenness and because he had a nail for a second leg, but there was a deadly precision about him that made Adam shrink behind Fayrelin.
The other two weren’t as scary. The one on the left may have been the captain’s first mate, but his eyes were shielded by what looked like two patches—though they turned out to be dark sunglasses of another time. His hair was silver and spiked and so rigid that it didn’t even shake as he walked. Black fabrics adorned his otherwise lanky figure, but he had a certain nimbleness about him that made something as simple as shaking hands with him seem impossible. He couldn’t be touched.
The last of the three pirates was an ugly little thing with a head as bald as a stone and muscles that swelled like blowfish. He was far more intoxicated than the others, belching out practically every hole in his body, and his eyes were as wrinkled as raisins. Whether he was a young man in an old man’s body or vice versa was a mystery, but he had a hook for one hand that he swung back and forth in his drunken stupor.
The first to reach them, surprisingly, was the captain, who gripped the back of Adam’s neck, pried him away from Fayrelin, and studied every inch of his perspiring face. “What are ye supposed to be, lad? A lil’ sissy in a dress?”
“Methinks she likes the dress,” the drunken pirate laughed, falling against Fayrelin and rubbing against her breasts. “The good Priestess knows I do.”
The tall, silver-haired pirate interlaced his fingers. “It’s a boy, Blackthorn.”
“Eh? A boy?” Blackthorn pinched Fayrelin’s breasts with his good hand. “Feels like a lady to me.”
“Tell me what this feels like,” Fayrelin growled. She reared back his fist and stuffed it through Blackthorn’s already black eye.
He stumbled back, guffawing. “Feels like a good time to me!”
“Why did ye bring us this girly boy?” the captain asked, pushing Adam’s head back so that he could peer up his nose. “He don’t look so tough. Where’s your hair, sissy boy? Ye got any besides what’s on your head?” He grinned and his teeth were almost all gone. “What’s the matter, huh? Ye gonna cry, lil’ baby?”
“Your breath…stinks…” Adam wheezed. His face turned green. “You could wake the dead with that.”
Maybe not the dead, but it certainly was enough to wake Malkav. He stirred, rubbing his eyes, and sat up. “Where…where am I? Who are these people?” He blinked. “Adam, what the hell is going on?”
“I think our lives just got a whole lot worse.”
“You should be thanking us,” Fayrelin said. “We didn’t have to come rescue you, you know. We’re not heroes—but we’re not villains either.”
“That voice…” Malkav whispered. “I remember it…”
“You should. I was the one who convinced you to become a Rogue. And since we’re friends now, you may as well know that my name is Fayrelin. At least, it is for today.”
“Why’d you come back for me?”
“I’ve been following you,” she shrugged. “It’s what we Rogues do. We follow each other’s shadows, so you’re never really alone.”
“Then who’s following your shadow?”
With a sly smirk, Fayrelin turned to the pirates and held out a hand of introduction. “Malkav, Adam… This is my crew. Say hello, boys.”
“Captain Jargon at your service, ladies,” the captain laughed, slapping Malkav on the back as he yanked him to his feet. “But ye can just call me Cap’n.”
“Exthame,” the silver-haired pirate said with a small bow. “It is a pleasure.”
Blackthorn stepped forward, still laughing, and held out his hook to shake Malkav’s hand. “And I am—”
“Don’t care,” Malkav said, pushing his hook away. “Look, ‘Fayrelin’ or whatever you call yourself, I want to know why you came after me. You were right. You could’ve let us die there. Why didn’t you? Why did you want to keep me alive?”
“I want to have the pleasure of killing you myself,” Fayrelin said with a straight face. Her left eyebrow lifted. “No, I’m kidding. I’d rather just have all your possessions. …No, I’m kidding again. All I really want is to sell you back to Queen Isabella for a profit. It’s all for money. That’s all I care about.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Malkav asked. He waited for a response. “…Come on, say you’re kidding.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Will you tell us?”
“Would you trust me either way?”
“Probably not.”
She turned her back. “Then it doesn’t matter what I say, does it? …Come, boys, let’s get aboard the ship. It’s time to set sail. We have a long journey to make before dark.”
Giantess World
