Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Every Generation Welcomes the Pirates of the Past
The deck of the Dark Opal was so stained with blood Will nearly lost his footing. He regained it just in time to impale an attacking pirate with his sword, then plant a boot on the dying man’s chest and push the body away, freeing his blade from the bisected heart. His crew was overrun. Most of Will’s fellow sailors were dead or close to it. He leapt over Red Marissa’s body, trying not to look at her sightless eyes. Beverly was cornered on the starboard side and he had to get to her before it was too late.
But it was too late. For all of them, every soul on the Dark Opal , from Captain Crawford to Red Marissa, the cabin girl, and even the fearsome bosun Katz. Their fate had been sealed the second they’d seen the Ravenstag on the horizon, flying Captain Lecter’s flag – a stag’s skull as opposed to the traditional Jolly Roger, a heart in its teeth, dripping viscera stitched with scarlet embroidery.
Captain Lecter didn’t take prisoners. And if any sailors of the ships they conquered were in fact taken alive, their fate, according to legend, was worse than death. Will had heard it whispered by ancient mariners, tavern wenches in port towns, and by the sea breeze itself. The crew of the Ravenstag were cannibals, and those they captured were eaten.
Will ran another cannibal pirate through with his blade and whipped the sword free to slice across the face of another. Beverly twisted free from the man holding her and stabbed him in the leg with a dagger, twisting, forcing his tendon to contract and dropping them both to the bloodstained deck. Just as Will was poised to come to her aid, a strange silhouette caught his eye. From behind the main mast came a man wearing some kind of articulated costume, the creation framed in metal and wood. It was certainly not one of his own crew, which meant he was a pirate, and unlike any Will had ever seen. The man leapt at him, and Will was almost too bewildered by the figure’s otherworldly appearance to react.
His attacker wore a suit made of treated shark skin, a fin rising from his back. Over his head was a kind of cowl made from the skull of a hammerhead and fitted with a metal jaw lined with shark and orca teeth. It was spring-loaded on a hinge, and covered in blood, bits of flesh hanging from the maw.
I will bear screams.
Will slipped his sword blade into his other hand, blunt side against his palm, and used it to catch the spring-loaded jaws as they came down, aiming for Will’s shoulder and neck. The man inside of the suit made wild, feral sounds, grappling Will and trying to toss him aside, forcing him to drop the sword. Will held on until he regained his balance, then lashed out, kicking the shark-skin pirate hard in the chest. He stumbled against the mast, momentarily stunned.
Will still had a hold of his sword. But the world was muffled. The sharp tang of blood, the booming report of flintlock pistol fire, it all went away as his mind and heart combined their efforts into one singular force.
Kill .
Will abandoned his sword and knelt before the dazed shark man. He tore off the fanged headpiece and wrapped his hands around the pirate’s neck. The pirate gurgled, his pale, terrified eyes gaping up at Will as he straddled his chest and squeezed with all his might.
He heard Beverly shouting his name, but it seemed slow and far away, echoes over an endless chasm. The man who wanted to be a shark, wearing the harvested parts of ocean predators, was younger than Will would have thought. Beardless. Just out of boyhood. Just like Will.
Even as he noted these details, watching blood erupt in his opponent’s eyes, Will kept squeezing.
And then he released the throat. Only to grasp the shark boy by his hair and chin and snap his neck with a crack so audible Will could hear it over the din of battle.
He lost precious seconds watching the light fade from the boy’s eyes before getting to his feet, slicked with sweat and blood and breathing heavily.
“Will!” Beverly cried. She was trapped beneath a man who had cut the clothes from her back and was preparing to dig his knife into her skin. Make an angel of her. Will knew her attacker instantly. It was a pirate known as Buddish the Prophet and Will had once seen his victims stretched out on the prow of a ship like figureheads, their backs flayed open and the skin unfurled to give them a grisly but angelic silhouette.
Will whipped a knife of his own from his belt and threw it just as the Prophet made the first slice. The dagger lodged in his neck. He yanked it free in disbelief and collapsed in a fount of his own blood.
But the battle was over. The Cannibal Crew had overrun the Dark Opal. Will helped Beverly to her feet, sword drawn, but they were surrounded.
Beverly tossed a panicked glance over her shoulder at the roiling sea as the blood-bedewed Cannibal Crew closed in. “We have to jump,” she hissed in his ear as the points of swords came closer and closer.
Suddenly, the crowd of pirates parted. A massive pirate with a scar on his lip and a sea dragon tattoo that curled around his whole body stepped forward, hauling Captain Crawford along by the ropes binding his arms to his torso. Crawford’s face was bruised, blood leaking from his nostrils. More pirates brought forth other bound hostages — One-Eyed Jimmy, their navigator, and first-mate Zeller.
“Lower your weapons,” the enormous pirate growled, sounding just like what Will imagined a sea dragon would sound like.
“The Dutchman take you!” Beverly roared back, spitting. “Captain Lecter’s prisoners end up on the dinner table. We lived by our swords and we’ll die by them!”
“No one else has to die.” A smooth, resonant voice, laden with a sensual accent cut through the rabble of the pirate crew. The Great Sea Dragon flung the prisoners down on the bloody deck and stepped aside for Captain Lecter to come forward.
Will had no doubt it was him. Stories about the Cannibal Crew were rampant on the high seas. They said Captain Lecter was fallen nobility, that he had a taste for fine things, a classical education, and cooked the flesh of his victims into sumptuous dinners for his loyal sailors, murderous demons all.
The man before him was of regal bearing, of that there was no doubt. He was dressed for fighting in a red loose-sleeved shirt and a black waistcoat with brown leather trousers and fine studded leather boots. A jeweled-handled sword hung from his belt. Will expected him to be more adorned, dripping with gold and silver and gems, but he wore only a modest emerald ring. His ashen-brown hair was neatly gathered in a low knot, though the sea breeze teased a few strands loose. The captain’s eyes were cold and dark, shark’s eyes the dead boy had likely once coveted. That is, until the captain’s gaze settled on Will. Then something seemed to breathe them to life.
Beverly clutched Will’s arm, then moved protectively in front of him, as if that would do anything but ensure he had to watch her die, not the other way around. “Will…!” she hissed. “Overboard!”
“Before you commit yourselves to Davy Jones,” the captain said, running a gloved hand over the decorated shoulder of the Great Sea Dragon as he passed, “I have a proposition for you.”
Beverly shot Will a wild glance. He put what he hoped was a reassuring palm on the bloodstained blue fabric that covered her shoulder. Her favorite shirt, ruined, he thought, noting the pointless detail despite the fact that they were about to be torn to pieces by the Cannibal Crew.
“What kind of proposition?” Beverly demanded, her sword arm wavering. Again, she glanced at the sea.
“After my crew has stripped your ship of everything of value,” the captain said, the relentless tropical sun illuminating the sharp cuts of his cheekbones and making his dark eyes glitter like slivers of onyx, “I will leave these prisoners on it, with enough provisions to reach Tortuga. In return, you,” he motioned gracefully to Will, “come with me.”
Will and Beverly shared a panicked glance.
“You can’t have him!” Despite being beaten bloody, Captain Crawford’s booming voice captured the attention of pirates and survivors alike. “I won’t stand for you torturing and eating one of my crew. Just kill us all so we die clean and toss us to the waves!”
One-Eyed Jimmy whimpered.
Will slowly lay down his sword and unbuckled the belt of daggers he had strapped to his hips. “What are you doing?” Beverly cried. “Do you know what they do to their prisoners? Eat them one limb at a time and feed them their own flesh! Will, let’s swim for it!”
Will squeezed her shoulder affectionately, likely for the last time, and brushed past her, pulling his arm free of her grip. “Captain Lecter,” he said, trying to keep his voice from wavering. He knew he was going to break before his ordeal was over and Davy Jones took him, but not now, not in front of his crew. What was left of them. “You’re feared on the seas for y-your cruelty, but… they say you never break your word of honor.”
Captain Lecter closed the distance between them while still keeping an eye on Beverly, who was poised to attack despite the wound on her shoulder blade where the Prophet had attempted to skin her alive. “I always keep my promises,” he said. Will found that, impossibly, the captain’s voice was resonant and soothing, chipping away at his fear like a sculptor at a block of marble, revealing the figure hidden inside.
“Then promise.” Will tried to keep his voice from shaking. “Promise you’ll do as you say. You’ll… let what’s left of my crew go with what they need to reach Tortuga. And… I’ll go with you.”
“Tell me your name.”
Will felt that giving it to him was like relinquishing a vital key to a guarded treasure. But he steeled himself and said it aloud. “Will Graham.”
The soft smile deepened and though the expression was by no means overt, Will could tell – the way he could too often and too easily read the emotions of others – that the smile was only the surface of something both curious and covetous. Will felt like a rare bird being stared at through the bars of a cage.
“Very well,” the captain declared after a long beat. “I promise to spare your crewmates and give them means to find sanctuary ashore in exchange for you, Will.”
Why did those lips saying his name feel like an intimate touch? Like being branded and marked for ownership?
“No, Will, you can’t!” Beverly shouted.
“Stand down, Katz,” Captain Crawford ordered from where he’d been forced to his knees on the deck. “I hate it just as much as you do. But it is Will’s decision.”
Bev turned to Will, sheathing her sword and pulling him into a tight hug before they were roughly separated by the large hands of the Great Sea Dragon. “Tell Molly I love her,” Will said, grasping Bev’s blood-and-tear-streaked face. “And don’t tell her how I died. Y-you have time before you make it back to shore. All of you, make up a story and stick to it.”
“All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story.” A beautiful pirate with short dark hair appeared from behind the Dragon’s massive shoulder, and took Beverly by the arm, leading her over to kneel next to the rest of the captives. Will noted the long-barreled musket she wore strapped to her back and the way she lingered near Captain Lecter as if her slender little body could protect him from any kind of.
Then, someone slipped a bag over Will’s head and bound his hands behind his back. Will was lifted and born away onto the Ravenstag amid a symphony of cheers woven through with Beverly’s screams.