HoloPirates: A Tale of Adventure

Mulier Mortuorium

I was back there. The featureless, dark void, with nothing but the water covered floor and the fog that was drifting in and out of my vision.
Oh no. I thought, and just in time, because her voice echoed through the Void.
"Back again. Been a while."
I turned around, and the lady with the pink hair was about twenty feet away, sitting at a table with a bit of food and a few lit candles. She looked at me, then gestured to the seat that was across from her.
"Sit, please." She said, her voice sounding far too pleasant for me to calm down.
I walked over to the table, my shoes clicking and splashing against the soaked stone ground, and when I got over, I pulled the wooden chair out, then sat down and scooted forward, still feeling hugely uncomfortable.
"I have a dinner prepared for us. I felt that if I pulled you away from whatever dream you were dreaming, you needed some compensation."
I nodded, and I looked down at the food. It was a beautifully cooked steak, sided with mashed potatoes and gravy. I looked back up at the lady, and she was already digging into her soup, which looked like dumpling soup. She caught me looking at her, then gestured to my steak.
"Eat, please." She said.
I grabbed the fork, then dug into the steak, tearing it with my teeth.
"It is pretty good." I said.
"Thank you. I will pass your compliments on to my chef."
"You have a chef?"
"Yeah, my wife."
I looked up at her.
"You swing like that?"
"Yeah, is there a problem?"
"No thats cool." I said.
We kept making small talk, just going over random little things, and I finished my steak while she finished her dumpling stew.
"Damn that was good." She said, setting her napkins and spoon into the bowl, and then setting the bowl aside. "Well, it was nice getting to know you."
"Same here."
"Although, I have to say, I never did catch your name."
"I'm Micheal Fuentes. And you?"
"Mori Calliope." She said. "And since you clearly aren't from around here, I am the Goddess of Death."
She readjusted the bowl, then looked back up at me, and in that moment, I saw a more devious gleam in her eyes.
"Unfortunately for you." She said. "You let your guard down FAR too easily."
In a flash, she reached across the table, and she grabbed me by the neck, squeezing me and cutting off the flow of oxygen to my entire body. I spazzed and gasped, trying to get her off of me, but she had a grip of iron, refusing to let go of my neck as she squeezed harder and harder. But suddenly, as a last ditch effort, a thought popped right into my brain, and I reached down, drew one of the knives from my belt, reared back, and stabbed her right in the shoulder, shoving the sharp blade of the knife right in between the joint of her shoulder to cause the maximum amount of pain.
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!" She shrieked, letting go of me immediately.
She collapsed to the ground, clutching the knife in her shoulder, and she painstakingly pulled the knife out of her shoulder, wincing and wheezing in pain as she did it, and as she did it, she looked right at me, her eyes shining with murder as the Void very slowly faded from existence.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"GAH!!!!"
I sat straight up in my bed, and I realized that someone was shaking me.
"Micheal?"
I turned to the left, and there was Botan, her face poking over the edge of my bed as her lion ears twitched. She had an extremely concerned look on her face as she looked at me, and I rubbed my eyes.
"What are you doing Botan?" I asked. "Why are you up?"
"I uhm. I couldn't sleep." She said. "But you started to shake and cough, so I woke you up."
"Oh. I uh, I was having a nightmare."
She nodded to herself, then climbed down off of the bed, and I followed her, climbing down off of the bed and standing on the deck.
"Do you think we should go for a walk?" I said. "Maybe just around the gunnery deck?"
She nodded, and her ears twitched again.
"That does sound nice, actually. Let's go." She said with a smile.
We both weaved in and out of the bunks, passing up all of the sleeping crew mates as we went through, and for the record, Noel snored like a chainsaw, loud and booming through the crew quarters, although the rest of the crew didn't seem to mind. As we got up to the gunnery deck, Botan looked around, and then she looked at me.
"I'm not sure if I ever said this. But genuinely, thank you for sparing me back on the Isle."
"Oh its no problem, really." I said. "Fauna really pissed me off by saying I had to kill you."
She nodded, then her eyes settled on one of the cannons as she thought over her next words.
"Its just, I was born to kill. And I never saw just how tired I was of that life. I wanted something more, but I could never get it."
She stopped, and her eyes rested on mine.
"Can you keep a secret?"
"Sure thing."
"Okay, sometimes, I would climb to the top of the mountain, by myself, and I would look out over the sea, wondering what was out there, and knowing that I could never get out there."
This time I nodded, and I took my turn to speak.
"I get that. It always seemed so far away, right?"
"Exactly."
"I mean, where I'm from, there really wasn't much opportunity." I said. "I mean, there was, but the rest of society didn't seem too keen on offering me any of it. So to make up for that, I tried to apply myself in everything I did, and even in things that I didn't need to do, and yet, I was always treated like a failure."
As I sat down on the cannon, Botan sat down right next to me, and as our eyes met, the feeling of every feeling and thought that I had been keeping pent up inside of me wanted to come out. I wanted to tell someone, anyone, all of my problems, and just to have them listen.
"I just, everything that I did wasn't good enough. All of them, the authorities and the people in my city, just treated me like an outcast." I said. "So I started acting out, and that just made everything worse. My mom just screamed at me, and seeing her hurt made me feel horrible, and it just made everything so much more terrible than it already was."
The conversation trailed off, and Botan looked at me with a concerned look.
"I'm really sorry Micheal." She said, looking me in the eyes. "I really do wish there was something I could've done."
"Its fine, it isn't your fault." I said. "I'm away from that now, happily."
She gave me a nod, and suddenly, I saw a light begin to come through the stairwell that led up to the very top of the deck, followed by a series of footsteps. Once they got close enough to the stairs, they began to walk down, and I saw that it was Marine, holding a metal lantern that cast an orange glow on everything around it.
"Oh good." She said to me from across the deck. "You're already up. Could you excuse us Botan?"
"Of course." She said, giving her a slight bow as she stood. "Have a good night, both of you."
"You too Botan. See you in the morning."
I got up from my spot at the cannon, and I walked over to Marine, who was still holding the lantern by the stairs.
"Am I in trouble?" I asked.
She gave me a small laugh.
"Massive trouble." She said. "Come on, there's something I want to show you."