Othello came across the deck of the ship in a full sprint his Gift lifting his massive frame by the steel bracers around his wrists and ankles, he held his hatchets in both hands and some were floating around him. He was carried across to the other ship landing with a crashing thud against an Arynnite man sending him hard to the ground. He held no weapons and was begging for mercy to which Othello gave to him by sending three hatchets sinking deep into him. The ones who stepped up to Othello with their metal enchantments were sadly wasted, their own weapons ripping from their hands and then they were cut down.

"WE IN THE TAKIN' PRISONERS BUSINESS CAPT'N RAEL?!" Othello yelled over the storm, with each victim falling blood would cover the savage Gifted. Othello hadn't felt such freedom since all those years ago when he washed up on the beaches of Cambria, but it wasn't just freedom Coheed or Rael gave him but for the very first time in his life Othello found brotherhood. A place where he belonged, even if it was pillaging and murder.

Verula had been undisturbed for most of her time on the ship, mainly studying the equipment they wanted her to improve. The captain had even given her his spare eyeglass so that she could tinker and astrolab with them and examine the enchantments layered on the glass lenses. But she had ideas already that she'd drafted, regardless of how viable they would be when she finally got down to the actual crafting. Nonetheless, her newest journal was half-filled, parchement was stacked on the desk and there were already ink stains on her hands.

Given the loudness of some of the other scientists and her reason for being on board in the first place, Verula was given a cabin closer to the Captain's quarters with an enchantment to drown out noise if she needed it. So caught up in her drafting of her newest idea, and with the muting enchantment already activated at a level 2, she didn't immediately realize that the noise was different from what she'd been dealing with so far and simply raised the muting level higher. Until the ship lurched in such a way that meant they had been hit and she was knocked out of her chair to the floor. Not knowing what was happening, she scrambled to her feet and wiped the ink along the bottom of her dress, something she'd put on to relax in today. Whatever was happening was not normal, she was certain of it as she stuffed all of her parchments, the enchantment scrolls she'd brought with her for reference, and her journal into her enchanted carryall satchel. 

Laxi, the little glass dragon, was silently snarling at the door as Veurla thanked whatever higher power that she'd thought to bring a prototype of a set of glass half-gloves. Still in the testing phase for the design, at most it would only protect her hand since she hadn't added any other enchantments beyond her standard indestructible matrix. The glass pole by her bed, intended for a glorified walking stick, had the same enchantment and she grabbed it before snatching up Laxi and sticking the glass dragon in her carryall too. Whatever was happening, she really hoped it wouldn't come down to her quarters.

“We are today!” Rael bellowed over the storm. “I want some left alive!” He was already marching across the deck of the foreign ship, shouting at his men and Othello alike. They could have their fun, but he was here for more than carnage. Drawing the scythe on his back from its sling beneath Victory, Rael carved through the first Arynnite he passed, barely breaking stride while the man’s intestines spilled onto the deck.

The screams of the dying slammed against the clamor of the storm and the crash of waves against the broken hull of the Arynnite ship. It made for an almost blood curdling cacophony to his enhanced ears, but Rael had long ago learned to revel in the deafening din of battle. Ducking a vibrant red charge of...something from some impossible creation one of the Arynnites wielded, Rael continued his march across the deck. The battle was for his men.

What he wanted was the plunder. The magic these shores held and the knowledge of the prisoners they would take. And so, he left his men to their carnage, reaching the rail of the downed ship and climbing it to swing his way across to the next. A handful of warriors had already landed on the second vessel and were already wreaking havoc across its deck. Soon, Rael would be among them.

Noted. Othello made a mental note of his Captain's orders but also by manipulating metal chains and shackles he started clapping the preverbial 'cheeks' of those who would cower in fear. They were binded and bonded, the Gifted man weighing down five to ten Arynnite men or women at a time. He didn't avoid killing indiscriminately either, those who didn't cower and opted to use their fancy trinkets were delt with by the horde of silver balls of steel that followed Othe and his floating hatchets.

He sang as he stalked. The world knew of the Eldouir family and their top predator but they were sleeping on the Allemeade apex predator. Screams, singing, and ocean waves echoed in the storm.

"sangin inna rain!
imma jus' sangin' inna rain," the gifted man sang just as an axe sunk into the face of one man and a metal ball made a sick thunk like noise as it assaulted another's cranium, " Wha'ah glorious feelin'!
I'm happy again!
I'm laughin' at clouds!"

As much as the storm tried to wash away the blood coating the raging metal bender, it seemingly failed. Pearly white teeth smiling our behind the blood and ichor....

The unfortunate downside of engaging and raising the muting enchantment on her quarters is that while she felt the jostling of the ship and some of the vibrations from the heavy impacts of… whatever was happening on the ship, she couldn't hear anything and therefore didn't know what was actually happening. For all she knew, it was an enchantment implementation gone wrong from a small experiment or someone majorly screwed up and somehow broke one of the ship's enchantments because they got too cocky and curious for their own good.

So she lowered the muting enchantment, something that she remembered being told went both ways. Verula expected to hear alarms, people rushing through the ship to repair whatever happened, or for the captain to be addressing the incident. Instead, she heard sounds of fighting and yelling, voices with distinctly not Arryn Frey accents and the voices of various ship personnel crying out before being cut off.

Fuck.

She raised the mute enchantment back up, activating it as high as it would go. Maybe whoever it was would bypass her door as she made herself as hopefully inconspicuous in the corner of her quarters as she could. She might have muscles from working her equipment solo for so many years but she was by no means a fighter.

It was the first victory—the first real victory—he’d tasted in years, and it felt good. Better than good. It felt right. Powerful. Familiar. It felt like Coheed.

Rael brought his blade through another abdomen, bringing it up to slice across the back of a retreating Arynnite. The man screamed, arched, and then toppled over the side of the ship. Blood wet the deck, mixing with rain to create a river of red running from bow to stern.

His men had already started depositing prisoners below the mainsail, men and women forced to their knees, begging for their lives as their teeth chattered in the rain. Others had already made it below deck. Warriors ransacked the rooms, killing and capturing indiscriminately.

Othello came to stop beside Rael, his gift in constant display murdering and capturing at will. The blood dropped below his feet pooling and white wolf like teeth shined brightly against the crimson ichor, "Would ya like to lead tha'way Captain?"

From position the steps and hallway of this ship looked cleared, men were dragging bodies up which seemed to becoming from the heaviest look of Arynnite warriors, it made the Gifted man even more curious.

There was a moment of clarity. She had to leave or something would happen and she wasn't exactly keen to find out just what that would be. She'd already grabbed all her parchment and scrolls and journals so she didn't have anything that she urgently needed. And Laxi was stuffed into the satchel as well.

Cautiously, she lowered the enchantment, listening for any sounds. It didn't seem as though there was anyone in this particular hall of the ship. Not yet, at least, so now was the moment. Verula slipped out of her quarters and went deeper into the ship. It was enchanted to fly so there was an emergency door in the back by the captains quarters. They'd all been shown where the mechanism to release the enchantment on it was, just in case. It let her out just above the water and once the door closed, the enchantment would activate to reseal the door again.

“Let the men have their fun.” Rael had no intention of leading a party into the bowels of either ship. His warriors were capable enough of rooting the Arynnite rats from their holes, even if @verula managed to slip past and escape unseen.

On deck, Rael turned on a heel, grin growing to menacing proportions, wet with rain and flashing with every clap of thunder and bolt of lightning.

“Find me someone,” he called, attention leaping to Othello and his eagerness to serve, “who can tell me about my new ships!” His face turned to the assembly of prisoners on the deck. Men and women on their knees, hands bound behind their backs. Some were already bleeding, others were already shaking. The rain made it impossible to tell who had already pissed themselves, but those who hadn’t would soon.

Rael had never been a needlessly cruel man, but he had questions. And they needed answers.

"Fair 'nuff, fair 'nuff," Othello kinda moaned as they turned their backs to the stairs to the bowels of the ships. Given his orders Othello turned on his wet booted heels, it was blood and water that splashed but more so blood now, he eyes his prisoners with a gleam in his eyes that wasn't water either.

Othello was needlessly cruel and he had been given a direct order from the Captain. He squatted in the middle of the bounty grinning, "let's dew it tha' easy way aye? Tell'em wha'wants ta know and y'all can go back ta'shittin' yerselves."

Not a word. Just scared looks and more piss, were the Arynnite folk so docile?

Gross.

He stood, counting, give a few and carry a few numbers they had enough to spare. A chain would wrap around the throat of the first man on his knees jerking him up and off the deck. He was suspended and choking, Othello was looking for... Another man stood, "Don't hurt him! Please!"

"Bango!"

A steel ball smashed into the pleading man's face, it carried him into the side of the ship crumpled and dead. Othe drug the man choking right up to Rael, "Tell'em mate, tell us o'bout our spoils..."

And the man would spill his guts.

She hadn't been sure if she'd gotten out safely but when no one seemed to follow her or yelled something in her general direction, she assumed she was in the clear as she swam the small distance to shore. She might not have been trained for survival or ever had an interest in it, but if anything she was stubborn as she slipped away.

Eventually, Verula would make it to a small town and then continue on to Elyusian.

[EXIT VERULA]

There was not a Coheedsman aboard who flinched at the sight of the crater the steel ball had made of the Arynnite’s face. Some went so far as to cheer, others merely looked on with sneers for smiles, eyes leering from one captive to the next while their brothers raided the decks below.

Rael stood apart from his men, watching Othello wrench the truth of their salvage from a frail Arynnite with long white eyebrows and a hunched-over back. After a wrought, pensive moment, Rael took a step forward and then another, descending the three short stairs that had separated him from the flat of the main deck and the captives it held.

The old man had already said more than Rael could have dreamed: he’d told them in a wobbling voice about the enchantments on each ship, that they were scientific vessels, designed to explore the furthest reaches of Terra Nova, venturing where no Arynnite had gone before. He’d told them of the trap doors below deck, reiterating that they were scientists, researchers, that they bore no ill will toward Coheed and posed no threat.

“You’re going to show me how it works, and then—”

Rael was too wrapped up in the moment to notice the hatch opening behind him or the Arynnite that emerged above it, a steel barrel in his hand, its end trained on Rael’s back.

Othello had got Rael what he wanted, a victory of bountiful information. He wore a smile on his face that oozed pride as he leaned against the mast listening as the old man spilled his little guts, but that's when he saw the Arynnite aiming something at Rael as his back was turned. A bright orange light was radiating from the tip, Othello pushed off the mast, "behind ya'!" he shouted to Rael but he was already in action covering the small distance to put himself between Rael and the orange glow of the Arynnite's rod.


The light discharged just as Othello put his metal manipulation to quick work, the light almost met the center of Othello's chest but like a blur it was interceded by a steel shield pulled from a fellow warriors hand that deflected the orange like into a little nova wave of energy. Bits of it singhing bits of the Gifteds beard. Othello could feel the pull of steel in the object being held by the Arynnite and it was recharging, the Gifted man didn't hesitate raising a hand to jerk the object from the Arynnite's hand a cruel grin spread across Othello's face as more than a dozen steel balls plummeted from their ship into the other man's body. It smashed his skull, ribs, broke arms, shattered his pelvis, and dislocated knees. Then the corpse was skyrocketed across the deck.

Othello was grinning as the corners of his beard that had been singed let off a pillar of smoke, he looked like a mad dog but a happy happy boy.