Pirates For The Mainland

The next car they sat in was just as comfortable as the one that had been ruined by Andrews and his foolish attack, but this one also held the bar, much to the delight of the pirates.

"Please, help yourselves," Redstone told them. "A good drink after a bit of exercise will relax the body."

"That's not how the body works at all, but I won't argue right now," Dart replied, grabbing a bottle of wine from the well-stocked wall behind the oak bar.

"Toss us a rum would you, dear?" Nog said to Dart, slumping herself down in a chair.

Picking out the fanciest bottles, Dart tossed over a rum and a whiskey in the direction of her mates. The captain snatched her drink out of the air with one hand but Neko wasn't paying attention, taking the blunt force of the bottle into his face with a harmless thud.

"That never gets old," Dart said, giggling to herself.

"Well, I suppose I'll just have to get a new bodyguard then," Redstone said, enjoying a drink in a much larger chair of his own. "If he couldn't stand against you three, perhaps Andrews wasn't worth the ridiculous coin I paid him."

"Are you suggesting we should be weaker?" Nog questioned, taking a swig from her bottle.

"No, not at all," Redstone replied. "I'm merely suggesting that he wasn't worth the money. I only pay for the best, and I don't think I was gone from the car for more than a few minutes before he failed."

"Well, we aren't exactly you average pirates," Neko said.

"We aren't even your average follower of the dead emperor," Dart added.

"Is it true what he said?" Redstone asked, leaning forward intently. "Are you three empowered by the dead?"

Dart and Neko made sure to keep their mouths shut. Their captain didn't enjoy talking about the old days and wished to keep them buried. If anyone were to explain their history, it would have to be her.

"That's more or less true," Nog answered, surprising her mates. "You're funding our trip so you have the right to know a little bit about us, I suppose."

Redstone sat his cup down and looked to be paying full attention to Nog. Telling a short story was worth getting him to shut his mouth for a while, according to the captain.

"How much do you actually know about the emperor?" Nog asked Redstone.

"Not too much," he answered. "I had heard that he was another godlike figure fighting for the control of humankind. Fighting against the goddess and her father. Other than that, I'm not sure. I didn't and don't care much for the business of gods and followers."

"Figures," Nog said. "In short, the emperor was just as you say. He fought for control of mankind, rising up against the established order, claiming to be the true god. He empowered his most devoted followers with the means to slaughter anyone who opposed him and waged a war so bloody that it turned the seas red."

Nog took a good long drink of her rum and sat the half-emptied bottle down hard on the table next to her.

"We were foolish," she continued. "We enjoyed his ideals, he speeches, and all that other shit. He made the world under his rule sound wonderful. We were convinced that killing off the nonbelievers was the right thing to do and we did just that. For two long years we made a mockery of enemy champions. No matter how much their goddess blessed them, they couldn't best us. We were unstoppable.

"But, towards the end of the war, we realized how we had been tricked. We understood where our power was coming from and witnessed firsthand the cruelty of our god emperor that he had been hiding from us. His world wasn't a paradise. In captured cities even the converted weren't safe from him. He picked at the people like inventory, tossing ones he deemed unfit for his world into the ocean after spilling their blood in his palace. All of his power was fueled by death. The same power he gave us."

Redstone looked pale, but had managed to keep a hold of himself.

"If things were so successful, how did he lose the war to the goddess?" He questioned.

"We three stopped killing nonbelievers," Nog answered. "And we started killing his champions. Among his armies there were twenty soldiers like us; death parasites that became violent drunks when surrounded by battle. We sought out each of them and took their heads. Without his empowered soldiers, the emperor couldn't hold back his enemy and was eventually defeated. We're all that's left of his most special children."