The Key: Sails and Tide

Chapter 7: Wolf Captain

  "Surrender."

The words were resonated. Elreal in all his life had never felt himself assume such power and pronounce such authority. He remembered the effect of the decree. Goors own men had bent the knee in abdication. 

Elreal prowled through the ship taking reconnaissance of the result bore from the skirmish and the damage dealt thereof. 

It was a great destruction -- but it was repairable. That which he feared was barely fixable, was the devastation of the heart. Too many compatriots had died in the revolt -- of course as anticipated.

Elreal watched the once first mate's body, lain among other fallen fellows. Sir Grog had joined profoundly in the fighting. Alas, the seadogs time had come.

Though wounded by the turn out of the event, he wouldn't weep. He knew too well that glory entailed a level of sacrifice. Well this was it.

Running now hand into thick cloak, Elreal drew out the strange piece handed him by the lord -- the strange gold key. The room was shut, and he alone in it. He dropped the piece upon the spread out map on the oak table and sighed.
   
All these ills and just for you.

He took reconnaissance of the piece, as he had done day after day -- hundredth of time. The madness of Goor may not have began with the strange Golden Key, but his quest for answers on it had been what had set him upon this path, and the troubles thereof. He knew their would be more trials. Before any of the events of the Ghost, he had sealed up his mind for his predestined awry fate...even now it was firmer.

    I hope you are truly worth the loss. Worth this peril.
He breathed distressingly.
  
This was much bigger than a youth could bear. But fate thought differently when she allowed the damnation of his lord. Now, it was his laden to bear. For now, the Ghost saw him as the Wolf. The rest of Goor's acolyte's called him  a traitor -- a wolf in sheep's clothing. But those on his own side, which were undoubtedly more...the same ones he had saved, perceived him the same wolf. Except their wolf guide -- their wolf captain!

Elreal proclaimed himself chief of the vessel -- that sheer decree bought with the head of Goor. He was master now to a great vessel. He could soar the waters to the farthest edge. To the deepest horizon. To the very end of the map known to any, and to new lands. Anywhere! Just as far as his desires could reach.

Dortha, a man-dwarf hybrid of the eastern province predominant by the Dwarven race, had been tasked by Elreal to command the fixing of the vessel. The dwarf, who by ill fate had chosen the Ghost for his sojourn South, with his best man friend and apprentice, Sicfrid, had been forced to fight during the revolt. And even now would do the biddings of the new Captain for as long as they were sure to remain on the vessel.

They had left the smoke of Port Phylidia and set sail for a new course. The bodies of the departed interred in the craft as though the men responsible didn't still walk the deck.

They would rid themselves of the abomination of the stink of rotten flesh, and the reality that they themselves too had wrought mighty hands in this -- taken lives -- so many life's at that.

Did it matter even? Yes -- but of course! Perhaps not! The marauders deserved death a thousand times for their many atrocities. Or perhaps that was just exactly what he and many others felt a justifiable excuse for their deeds.

Elreal couldn't tell who exactly he was now. The life he had avoided for many years -- the same one the House of Hands had tossed him in...he had picked it up and lived it in that moment to the fullest. A killer.

But a part of him did enjoy it. A part of him did know he couldn't be ultimately purged of this imbibed gene. Their was no turning back now. No shivering. If that life was what it took to uphold his teachers dying desires...then that life would be a part of him henceforth.

He rounded his thought and made out of the room. He had a crew to lead, and a course to reach. He wouldn't keep beating himself over needless worries. Good or bad, the world didn't care about those...all it ever craved to see was result. He would give this world that result they sought. With a ship at his command, a map in his hand and the Key in his possession...he would give the world that result.

"Ahoy!" Dierl's scream filled the vessel "Captain on deck."

Elreal smiled. It had begun.