Well, I fell like I oughta provide some context for how everything came to be. I’m from a small port village, where I lived with my parents and siblings. My pa was a shipwright, he repaired the ships that came in and built some for the local fisherman. My ma was a seamstress, she repaired the sails and ran the books. My older brothers worked with my pa and my little sister worked with my ma. I weren’t much good with the tools of the trade, so I went out with my uncle and learned how to fish and captain a boat. He’s the one who taught me to navigate around the spires, how to handle myself in storm, and how to make sure everyone on the boat comes home alive.

  Life was all well an’ good for the most part. The older I got, the harder the times. Some sort of war started on the mainland and suddenly our taxes were going through the roof. The church was collecting more to support the holy war, and the navy was collecting their tolls from passing ships. Then there were less fish, and the fish we were catching weren’t good, some deformed and some outright putrid. So, families started getting sick. Less merchants were passing through, so money got tight, and families started dying.

  My family was doing alright, between my parents’ savings, and my uncle’s abilities to still catch fish, we weren’t on the brink. But then our savings started to run out, and my uncle got sick. Then my ma got sick, and my oldest brother. Then they died. It was a rough time, y’know?

  My da had been working on a vessel to repay my uncle for all he’d done for us, something that could carry a crew and cargo while still being able to manoeuvre through the spires and outrun pirates. One night, he called me into his shop and gave it to me. Told me I was inheriting my uncle’s legacy and his legacy. We dubbed it the Wave Rider and she was a beautiful craft. He told me he’d take care of my sister and my brother, and that I should take to the seas and see what I could find, be it fish or opportunity.

  So, I got together a crew, some of my uncles’ men and some of the other people who needed a way to provide for their families and had worked on a boat before, and we set off with every intention of catching some fish. We brought some weapons with us, just because ya never know what ya might find out in the open blue, and we were thankful we did. We were attacked by some pirates that were worse off than us. Sick and weak, they still boarded our vessel and attacked us, and we fought them off, killed a bunch of them, then boarded their vessel and finished them off. While we raided their ship hoping to find something, a naval ship spotted us. They refused to listen to reason, so we ended up fighting them too. We were losing that fight so we grabbed what we could and ran.

  Some of our crew was captured and they had immediately started sailing back towards my home. The crew demanded we do something before they get there because we all know what happens to pirates and the families of pirates. Even though we weren’t actually pirates, the navy thoughts we were and that’s all that matters. So, we came up with a plan to sink their ship and save our people. We snuck up on them and punched a lot of holes in their ship and while they were sinking, we boarded and started to rescue our men. Of course, we were seen so we had some fighting to do, but it weren’t much as the ship started going down faster and most people wanted to get off before they went down too. We ended up rescuing some of their other prisoners as well and managed to get a bunch of the food and water off of their ship before it went down. Then they attacked us from their lifeboats, and we ended up capturing some of them.

  “What about the rest?” Tiffany asked, staring at him. Dell just shook his head.

  When we got back, we offloaded the food and the prisoners and explained what we had done to the church in hopes they could protect us or help us. They called backup and tried to kill us, so we ran away, back onto the water and away from the land. Our families were captured and sent to the mainland not long after we left and there was nothing we could do about that. We’d taken to hunting other pirates, as well as some naval boats out of revenge, in order to sustain ourselves. We had no long-term plans. Then we made a mistake, trying to take on a slaver ship. a slaver ship that we didn’t realize had been sanctioned by the church and kingdom in order to bolster their forces in the war.

  We lost that fight and were condemned but-

  “What do you mean sanctioned by church and kingdom!?” Tiffany screamed, “What kind of corruption has happened that the church isn’t actively stopping it, but condoning and even taking part in it?”

  Tiffany, look, I told you I’m not a religious man, I genuinely don’t know. Corruption and people being people are all I’ve seen from government and religion, so I try to stay away from both. Anyways as I was sayin’, we lost against the slavers, and we were captured and condemned. But they’d heard of the whippy little ship avoiding the navy and sinking other ships near the spires and decided they had use of us. One of the reasons for the problems with the fish were the undead kraken hanging around the spires. So, they released enough people for me to crew my ship with and put some crusaders on board to keep us in line and take care of the kraken when we got to it.

  Those crusaders weren’t bad fellas, they were very idealistic and also full of righteous fury about the slavery and stupidity of their betters, and they were fairly certain that they were sent on this mission, so they’d be taken care of as well. Two birds one stone type a thing. I suggested we abandon the mission, but they were also certain that their betters were right, this was the best chance they had to attack the kraken and hopefully exorcise it. They told me they’d rely on my skill as a captain to get them there and keep them out of the beast’s fearsome tentacles. I couldn’t let them down, so we set course for the spires, to go slay the kraken.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Now this is the part of the story y’all already know, but I’m gonna tell it again for Rowan’s benefit. By the way lad, you’re taking all of this fairly calmly. I tried to fight these skeletal bastards for the first year I lived here, I guess having one of your heroes here must have that effect, eh?

  “He refused to listen to us for several months before we finally caught him in a trap and explained the situation,” Pat chimed in, “I’m fairly certain he would’ve continued trying to evade and defeat us and many more had we not finally captured him. A few others have much less patience than us and were planning on taking him apart and putting him in a cupboard somewhere.”

  Well, I’m glad was you guys that caught me an’ not some a those other bastards. I didn’t even realize I was dead ‘til these guys explained it to me. What with this being a dimension of undeath or somethin’ like that.

  “Dell, shut up and tell your story,” Tiffany snapped, “We can explain all of that in good time, I’m sure Rowan would love to hear of your heroic feats.”

  “I’m interested to see what embellishments he adds this time,” Pat said, miming looking thoughtful, “I wonder if he’ll single handedly gouge out both of its eyes before plunging into its brain, or if he’ll have to cut his way through the rest of the body.”

  CARRYING ON, ahem, thank you. So, I had a couple of these crusader fellas with me and a few of my trusted crew mates and we’ve been told to go fight this kraken and maybe, maybe, we won’t get executed. The crusaders talk about how they can’t wait for this war to be done, cursing the lich and whatever dark forces it spawned this time. Then as we got closer, we went over the plan. They wanted me to go through the spires and hopefully sneak up on it so they could hit it with several divine magics and hopefully kill it in one fell swoop. Failing that, we were going to try to circle around it and repeatedly attack at any open opportunity. Me and my crew’s whole job is to keep the ship moving so we don’t die before the crusaders can channel enough magic to destroy the thing.

  I would love to say that everything went to plan, but it didn’t. plan a failed right out tha gates because the bastard was waiting for us outside the spires. Almost took us out, but we were just a bit faster than it were. We charged into the spires and used our speed and maneuverability to stay out of its reach, but that just seemed to piss it off more. It was tearing down some of the giant stones spires and using them like spears, but we were far too nimble for that. The crusaders started to channel some big magic and asked us to try circling and getting closer.

  So that’s what we did. We weaved through the stone forest until we were almost right under the rampaging behemoth. It was smashing spires where it thought we were and throwing things all around, completely unaware that we’d gotten so close. Then the crusaders let loose with all of their holy magic. It burned the giant bastard badly but didn’t kill it, and we weren’t left in a very good position after that. It became a lot harder to avoid its flailing tentacles, but luckily there weren’t as many, half or so being burnt off. We could also see a lot of its insides, or at least where it wasn’t too much of a burnt black mess.

  Eventually, we ran out of luck, or maybe I made a mistake, I’m not sure, and one of the tentacles smashed the Wave Rider to bits. The only reason I was saved was because one of those crusader fellas thought he could get us all off before the kraken struck. He’d grabbed a few of the guys and pounded across the deck to pick me up too then dove just as the kraken swung. He got us all into the water but was weighed down by his armour. I tried to swim down to save him but wasn’t able to. I was able to grab his sword which was stuck on on of the spires though. The other fellas were a lot luckier and landed on or near enough to some of the broken spires to climb onto what was almost flat ground. Dunno how lucky I’d really say we were, given that we were now all stuck with a pissed off kraken. The guy that drowned probably had the easiest time of it.

  My crew was the first to go, they were roped together so when one of them got taken out by a massive tentacle, the other two wen with them. The crusaders were flinging magic left and right trying to take it down, but it didn’t seem to be doing a whole lot. Then the tentacle came down again and one of the crusaders got flattened. The last crusader called out to me, told me he had a plan to kill this thing. We just needed to get on top of it and he could use his magic to destroy its brain, and failing that, he wanted me to try to use the sword I had to stab its brain because the sword was blessed and should be able to do the job.

  So, when the kraken swung its tentacle next, the crusader dodged and then launched himself on, using his sword to hook to the slippery bastard. Then he started to do some crazy stuff, running up the tentacle while casting spells at the kraken’s face, not falling off even when the kraken whips the tentacle through another spire. ‘Twas truly heroic. Meanwhile, I stabbed a tentacle and was hanging onto the sword for dear life. The kraken through its tentacles into the air and finally managed to dislodge both of us. Both of us fell towards the things head, the crusader used some kind of magic to pull me to him and cushion our fall. Then he handed me his sword and channeled his divine magic, sending a radiant pillar of fire directly into the things brain, except it didn’t quite work and the crusader was crushed by a tentacle before he could finish, when that happened the shaking from the tentacle hitting itself caused me to fall off the side.

  I thought I was dead for sure until I landed in the kraken’s eye. So then, I did what was asked of me and cut my way through the slimiest fuckin eyeball one ever did see and plunged the blessed sword into its brain. Then climbed out while the bastard was sinking, managed to catch a piece of wood from the rider to float on while I watched it go down. Then, about a day later, I was picked up by that slave ship and hailed as a “hero” while being told by the same priest that had already sentenced me to death once, that the god of light wouldn’t be denied his due and that they had another mission for a hero such as myself. Then they sent me to fight the bastard that trapped us all in here, for whatever fuckin reason.