Fog of Shadows

Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night, at the Pirate Academy. It was the storm of the century. The harsh, howling winds and the bullet shower-like rain whipped against the closed windows of the student dorms'; carrying with it, bits and pieces of the trees from the surrounding island, sand, and salt water from the dark gray and black ocean. Though all ships had been carried inland, only a fool would have decided to remain in their cabins and wait out the storm there like scared rabbits from a blood hungry fox. All the students retired to their dorm room on the academy grounds. Thunder bellowed like a galloping herd of wild stallions and lightning struck with such force as if God himself were trying to down the earth itself. In their dorm room, snug and warm under thick blankets of feathers, safe from the battle outside, the girls from the Eldorado and the Aurora slept soundly in their bunk beds.

All except one, that is.

The captain of the Eldorado, Alisea, lay awake with her head barely sticking out from underneath the blanket; looking out at the storm through the weather-beaten windows of the Girls Dorm. She was not use to the softness of the bed or the velocity of the storm. In all her waking days, she has never encountered such a mighty storm. She also, probably, will never again until the day she dies. It was frightening and slightly exciting. Her head was full of worries; would she and her crew be able to leave port as planned tomorrow? How much repair would they have to do before all damages were erased? The typical questions a captain asks themselves on nights such as this. She rolled on her back, hoping that taking her eyes of the storm would allow her enough rest so she would be able to be the leader she ought to be or at least function like a normal person. She stared at the solid wooden bottom of the bunk bed above her, losing her mind in the seemingly endless swirls of the woodwork when the sudden movement of the person above her caught her attention. The girl looked over the edge at her.

It was Donnie, her pink pigtails hanging down like stalactites and her blue eyes glowing in the darkened room; giving her an almost unworldly appearance. "You can't sleep either, can you?" asked the young women in a sleep dries voice, making her otherwise sweet and young voice sound much older.

"If you can't what makes you think I could," replied the captain in an equally dry voice.

"Do you think the guys are any better off?"

"The beds are too soft, no sane sailor could get any shut-eye in this." The young female captain returned her eyes to the wood above her," to be honest, I don't even think we will be able to leave tomorrow anyways."

With that, Donnie returned to her bed and again tempted to seduce the Sandman into granting her rest. Alisea, on the other hand, returned her attention to the window; for her, there was no rest for the night.

Sometime around daybreak, the storm lessened its grip upon the world and the young captain, at last, got some rest.

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Captain Flinn awoke before the rest of his crew; his eyelids were heavy from the rest that he did not get. He got up and fixed his bed before heading outside, hoping that the fresh morning air would help wake him up. Outside, the young captain filled his lungs with the air that was full with the salty aroma of the ocean and the pungent aroma of late fish. The academy courtyard ground was completely covered with sand and various plant-lives from both land and sea. He was not the only who had risen early; other students and Pirates, men who had already sailed the seven seas countless times, were up to inspect the damage. Their faces filled with the annoyance such a storm brings with it. Flinn looked closely, but among the crowd, he saw many of his graduations class, but none of his friends from other dorms. He made his way swiftly to the beach, hoping there were not too many damages to the Aurora and as he walked the sand and dead branches from the trees crunched under his booted steps.

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As the blue-haired captain walked along the beach, shaking his head at the amounts of seaweed and other trinkets the ocean offered, his attention was drawn to another captain who came his way.

"Hey Alise' have you had any more luck last night then I?" he asked as the brown-haired came closer, but, as a response, she only shook her head. With a sigh Flinn returned to looking around, "A storm of the century; I am actually surprised there was not more damage. My guess is that, if nothing happens, we should be ready to set sails over morrow; possibly even tomorrow, if we work hard enough."

"Let's hope that Lily and her folk were spared by the storm; the last thing that any of us could handle would be a mermen's funeral." Replied the young women, her eyes wondered as did her lover's. Close to the shrub, where the sand kissed the green, something caught her attention. From the distance she was at, it looked like a pale corps and for a moment, her blood ran cold. Flinn followed his lover's frozen gaze to the object that had caught it. Gently he tugged her arms for her to follow him; he secretly hoped that their eyes were only playing tricks on them. Luckily, on closer inspection, the object mistaken for a body was nothing more than a sun-bleached tree trunk in the crude shape of a person. Alisea was about to sigh in relief and let her heart beat slow when she noticed strange markings on the trunk that looked like claw marks of something with four fingers. They looked as though whatever was holding onto it, did so as if its' life depended on it. As she inspected the trunk more closely, Flinn again tugged her sleeve and pointed to something that was no more than a few feet away, and this time, it was not a tree trunk.