The Obsidian Wake groaned, a deep, rhythmic wooden protest that vibrated through the soles of Nokera's boots.
It was a sound she loved—the ship's way of telling her she was still alive, still holding the reigns of a beast that wanted to dive headfirst into the abyss.
Around her, the world was dissolving into a chaotic, grey-black soup.
The sky didn't just rain; it vomited seawater back at the ocean, and the wind howled like a banshee with a stubbed toe.
"Pull those sheets tight, you spineless bilge-rats! If that main-sail rips, I'm stitching your hide to the mast to catch the breeze!" Nokera's voice cracked over the thunder, a jagged cello rasp that cut through the gale.
She stood at the helm, her claws dug deep into the salt-crusted wood of the wheel.
Her one good eye was squinted against the stinging spray, while her sapphire-blue "gift" flared with a manic, steady light, piercing through the gloom to find the crests of the massive, rolling swells.
A wave the size of a cathedral loomed ahead, a wall of churning glass and white foam.
"Nokera! She's taking on too much water in the hold!" her boatswain shouted, his voice nearly lost to the roar of the sea.
"Then start pumping, you absolute fuck-knuckle!" Nokera roared back, a wild, sharp-toothed grin splitting her face. "The Wake doesn't sink just because she's thirsty! Hard to starboard! Bracing for the roll!"
She threw her weight against the wheel, the muscles in her back bunching under her salt-heavy coat.
The ship heeled over so sharply the deck became a wall, and for a terrifying, beautiful second, Nokera felt the weightlessness of the drop. They plummeted down the backside of the swell, the hull screaming in agony.
"Gods-damned whirlpool of a night," she hissed, clicking her tongue against her fangs as she stabilized the wheel.
"If the sea-witch who gave me this eye thinks a bit of a drizzle is going to claim my ship, she's even more senile than I thought."
She adjusted her tricorn hat, which was currently clinging to her head by sheer stubbornness and a bit of string.
The storm was a monster, sure, but Nokera Sharptooth was the apex predator here. She loved the terror in her crew's eyes—it made the eventual survival taste so much sweeter.
"Steady as she goes!" she barked, her sapphire eye scanning the horizon for the jagged silhouette of the coast. "We've got a date with a tavern and a very expensive bottle of rum, and I'll be damned if I'm let the Kraken take my seat!"
The ocean didn't just want to sink the Obsidian Wake; it wanted to unmake her.
The air turned a bruised, sickly purple, illuminated only by the frantic, jagged strobing of lightning that seemed to strike the very crests of the waves.
Nokera felt the hair on her tail stand on end, a static charge humming through her fur that tasted like copper and old blood.
"Captain! The rudder's jammed! Something's fouled the lines!" the navigator shrieked, his voice thin and reedy against the percussive blast of a thunderclap that shook the marrow in Nokera's bones.
"Then get a blade and dive, you coward, or I'll use your tail as a replacement!" Nokera snarled, though the snarl died in her throat as the Wake shuddered.
This wasn't the rhythmic pounding of waves.
This was a heavy, rhythmic thudding against the hull from below. The sapphire eye flared, burning so hot it began to sting. Through the churn of the black water, the magical light didn't see fish or coral.
It saw shadows—massive, undulating shapes that moved with a predatory intelligence. They weren't just in a storm; they were in a hunting ground.
"All hands to the rail! Spears! Harpoons! Anything with a gods-damned point!" Nokera yelled, her claws extending instinctively, digging ruts into the wooden wheel. "We've got company from the deep, and they aren't here for the scraps!"
A rogue wave, forty feet of solid, freezing spite, slammed into the port side.
The Wake groaned, a sound like a ribcage snapping. Men were swept across the deck like dice thrown by a losing gambler.
Nokera felt the wheel spin violently under her grip, nearly snapping her wrists as the ship tried to broach.
"Nokera! Look aloft!"
She craned her neck back.
The sky was no longer raining water; it was raining ash.
Thick, grey flakes swirled in the gale, clinging to the wet rigging.
This wasn't a natural squall.
"The wind sounds as if it were screaming in horror," a sailor whimpered, clutching his ears.
"Then tell it to shut its arrogant mouth!" Nokera spat, though her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She looked out at the horizon, her blue eye locked onto a sudden, unnatural stillness in the center of the cyclone.
A pale, blue flicker of flame erupted on the surface of the water, unaffected by the wind or the spray.
It was a beacon.
Or a warning.
"Hold on to your souls, boys," Nokera hissed, her manic grin turning into something harder, something more desperate.
"I think the Lady of Ash is calling in a favor, and she's using the whole damned ocean to do it."
The ship began to tilt, the bow lifting higher and higher into the air as the water beneath them started to spin.
A whirlpool was opening—a gaping, toothless maw in the sea—and at the bottom of that swirling abyss, Nokera saw something that made even her fearless blood turn to slush.
"You want a piece of my hull, you overgrown, bottom-feeding bastard?" Nokera's roar was half-drowned by a literal wall of seawater slamming over the bow.
She didn't wipe the salt from her good eye; she didn't have a hand to spare. Her claws were sunk so deep into the oak of the wheel that the wood began to splinter and weep sap under the pressure.
Beneath the Obsidian Wake, a shadow longer than the ship itself rippled through the bioluminescent churn.
It wasn't just a fish; it was a god's mistake, a mass of tentacles and gnashing chitin that pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly hunger.
Every time it brushed the keel, the ship leaped like a startled horse.
"Nokera! It's rising! It's coming up for the kill!" the master-at-arms shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the black water to port.
"Let it come!" Nokera screamed, her head thrown back, her sapphire eye bleeding a trail of blue light into the rain.
"Do you hear me, you senile, sky-dwelling cowards?! You sent your pet to fetch me, did you? You'll have to do better than a oversized Squid to drag the Wake to the locker!"
A bolt of lightning, thick as a castle tower, split the sky, illuminating the world in a blinding, strobing white. In that flash, the creature's face broke the surface—a nightmare of lidless eyes and a beak that could snap a mast like a dry twig.
"Hard to starboard! Now, you miserable scallywags, or I'll gut you myself!" Nokera's muscles felt like they were made of overwrought iron.
She fought the helm, the rudder screaming as it resisted the sheer force of the whirlpool's pull. "Give her everything! Every scrap of silk! I want this ship to fly or break trying!"
The ship heeled over, the railing dipping beneath the froth. Men clung to the rigging, their screams lost to the howl of the wind.
Nokera felt the Wake lift—not from a wave, but from a massive, wet limb coiled around the stern. The wood groaned, a sickening crack-crack-crack of structural failure.
"Not today, you slimy prick!" Nokera hissed.
The creature shrieked—a sound that vibrated the very teeth in Nokera's head—and released its grip as the fire scorched its sensitive flesh.
"That's right! Run back to the dark!" Nokera cackled, her voice a manic, melodic rasp. She threw her full weight against the wheel, finally catching the edge of the storm's outer current.
The Wake surged forward, shooting out of the whirlpool's Maw like a stone from a sling.
She stood there, drenched, bleeding from her palms, and laughing as the giant shadow faded into the deep behind them.
The sea gave a heave that felt like the world's foundations were cracking, and for a heartbeat, the Obsidian Wake was suspended in a valley of churning, black glass.
Then the limb came. It wasn't just a tentacle; it was a pillar of wet, suckered muscle, thick as a mast and smelling of ancient, rotted deeps.
It slammed across the stern with the force of a falling mountain, the impact throwing Nokera's crew into the scuppers like loose gravel.
The massive limb whipped upward, a blind, questing lash of spite that caught the brim of Nokera's tricorn hat, tearing it from her head and sending it spinning into the howling dark.
"My hat!" Nokera's screech was a jagged, high-pitched cello string snapping.
Her ears pinned back against her skull, and her sapphire eye didn't just glow—it pulsed with a manic, murderous heat.
"That was custom-made, you bottom-dwelling, slime-coated whore!"
With a snarl that showed every one of her serrated fangs, she tore a heavy, silver-inlaid flintlock from her belt.
The wood was salt-stained and the hammer was rusted, but the powder inside was a special, volatile concoction she'd bartered from a very nervous alchemist.
The ship bucked, trying to throw her overboard, but Nokera hooked a clawed foot into the deck grating, leaning back into the gale.
She didn't aim with her good eye; she let the blue light of the witch's gift lock onto the pulsing, bioluminescent nerve-center of the tentacle as it rose for a second strike.
"Give it back, or I'll turn your guts into a new pair of boots!"
BOOM.
The flintlock didn't just bark; it roared. A slug of lead, etched with stinging runes, tore through the salt-thick air and buried itself deep into the creature's flesh.
The reaction was instantaneous.
A gout of black, oily ichor sprayed across the deck, and the limb recoiled with a wet, thundering shriek that vibrated the very marrow of the ship's hull.
"Ha! Does it sting? Does it burn, you overgrown calamari?" Nokera cackled, her voice a rasping melody of pure, unadulterated spite.
She jammed the pistol back into her belt and grabbed the wheel with both hands, the wood splintering under her grip.
The Wake surged forward, catching the edge of the whirlpool's outward current.
Nokera threw her weight against the helm, steering the ship through the spray and the blood-slicked rain, leaving the wounded shadow to thrash in the dark behind them.
"Steady, you beautiful bitch!" she crooned to the ship, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the storm was thinnest.
"We're not done yet, and I'll be damned if I let the gods have the last laugh today!"She stood there, drenched and hatless, the white streak in her dark fur matted with salt, looking every bit the manic predator she was.
The crew's cheers were short-lived, a thin, pathetic sound swallowed by the throat of the storm.
The Obsidian Wake had barely found its footing on the backside of a swell when the ocean simply... stopped.
The water didn't flow; it bulged.
With a sound like a continent snapping in half, the true shape of their nightmare breached. It wasn't just a limb this time.
A mountain of barnacle-encrusted, rubbery flesh rose from the abyss, blacker than the storm and twice as hateful. Beady, plate-sized eyes reflecting the sapphire glow of Nokera's own orb fixed upon the ship.
The Kraken didn't just want to eat them; it looked personally offended that they were still afloat.
"Belay that cheering, you sack-less sea-slugs!" Nokera's scream was a whip-crack of pure adrenaline.
She slammed her chest against the wheel to hold it steady as the ship tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. "She's back for the main course! Look at the size of that bitch!"
The Kraken roared, a bass frequency so low it made the sailors' noses bleed.
Three more tentacles, each thicker than the last, breached the surface like rising towers, blotting out the lightning.
"Canoneers, to the ports! Load the grape-shot and the chain! I want that overgrown calamari blinded and bleeding!" Nokera kicked the deck, her claws extending through her boots to grip the wood.
"Riflemen! To the shroud! If it has an eye, put a hole in it! Fire at will, you beautiful bastards! Fire until the barrels melt!"The deck erupted in a synchronized thunder of black powder.
The Wake shuddered as the broadside slammed into the Kraken's main mass, tearing chunks of grey, rubbery flesh that fell back into the sea like boulders.
Plumes of acrid smoke swirled into the rain, illuminated by the constant, flickering strobe of the storm."That's it! Give her hell!" Nokera cackled, her face a mask of manic malice.
She wrestled the helm, the ship's rudder fighting against the massive displacement of water as the Kraken moved. "We're running for the shallows! She can't follow us into the Reef of Broken Teeth! Move, you piece of driftwood, move!"
The creature struck.
A tentacle smashed through the mid-deck, pulverizing a cannon and sending splinters the size of javelins through the air.
Nokera didn't flinch as a shard opened a red line across her cheek.
She just bared her fangs, her sapphire eye burning with a sapphire fire that seemed to be drawing the lightning toward the mast.
"You want my ship? You want my soul?" Nokera screamed into the teeth of the gale, steering with a desperate, surgical precision through the debris.
"Come and take it, you god-forsaken bottom-feeder! I'll turn your heart into a footstool for my private quarters!"
The Wake surged, catching a monstrous burst of wind.
They were racing against time, the Kraken's bulk creating a wake that threatened to swamp them, while the crew's rifles popped like firecrackers against the rising tide of tentacles.
"Take the helm! If you let her broach, I'll skin you and use the leather for a new hat!" Nokera shoved the scrawny helmsman toward the wheel, her claws leaving deep, jagged ruts in the wood as she released her grip.
The helmsman looked like he was about to vomit his heart out, but he gripped the spokes as if they were the only thing keeping the world from spinning into the abyss.
Nokera didn't wait.
She vaulted over the quarterdeck railing, her salt-crusted coat snapping behind her like a bat's wings.
She hit the main deck just as a tentacle the size of a redwood trunk slammed down, pulverizing the port-side bulwark into matchsticks.
"Get up, you miserable, barnacle-brained bilge-rat!" she roared, snagging a stunned sailor by his harness just before the backwash of the wave could suck him into the black. She flung him toward the mainmast with a strength that belied her thin frame.
"To the shrouds! Keep the lead flying! I want this overgrown, bloated slug riddled with more holes than a syphilitic dock-worker!"
She whipped out her boarding saber—a heavy, curved piece of steel etched with jagged runes that hummed with a sapphire-blue malice.
A smaller, questing limb, thick with serrated suckers, whipped across the deck, coiling around the legs of the ship's cook. He let out a strangled yelp as he was yanked toward the churning, toothy maw in the water.
"Not on my watch, you slimy, bottom-feeding heap of whale-shit!" Nokera hissed. She leapt, her boots skidding on the blood-and-salt-slicked wood.
With a manic, melodic snarl, she brought the saber down in a shimmering arc of enchanted steel. The blade bit deep, shearing through the rubbery flesh like a hot knife through lard.
The severed limb thrashed on the deck, spraying thick, ink-black ichor across her face, but the cook was free, scrambling back toward the safety of the hatch.
"CANNONS! KEEP THE RHYTHM!" she screamed, her voice a jagged cello rasp that stayed perfectly in tune with the thunder. "If you stop firing, I'll use your bones for the next load! Aim for the eyes! Blind this god-forsaken, ink-shitting pond-scum!"
She wasn't just fighting; she was dancing.
Every time a tentacle rose to crush the Wake, Nokera was there, a blur of midnight fur and blue light.
She hacked, she stabbed, and she laughed—a high, wild sound that made the Kraken's own roar seem dull and mindless.
"Is that all you've got, you pathetic, deep-sea mistake?!" she taunted, looking directly into one of the Kraken's massive, plate-sized eyes as it breached the surface only yards away.
"I've seen more spine in a bucket of jellyfish! You're nothing but a wet, pulsating pile of refuse sent by gods too cowardly to face me themselves!" Another limb rose, aiming for the mainmast. If that wood snapped, they were all dead.
Nokera didn't hesitate; she grabbed a loose rigging line, bit down on her saber's hilt, and swung out over the churning abyss, her sapphire eye burning like a star.
"Hey, you oversized, multi-armed bag of rot! Look at me!"
"Pips, keep her steady or I'll use your entrails for fishing line!" Nokera's voice was a jagged rasp against the thunder. She didn't use the ratlines; she didn't have time for the commoner's path.
With a predatory hiss, she slammed her claws into the salt-soaked oak of the mainmast, hauling her lean, agile frame upward with a speed that made the crew gape.
Wood splintered under her grip as she ascended, a midnight blur of fur and sapphire light. A massive, wet limb—thick as a tower and smelling of ancient, rotted deeps—lashed out, trying to sweep her from her perch.
Nokera twisted in mid-air, her boots finding purchase on a crossbeam as she bared her fangs.
"Missed me, you bloated, ink-shitting heap of whale-vomit!" she taunted, her voice a manic melody.
"Is that the best you can do? I've seen more coordination in a decapitated chicken! You're nothing but a spineless, multi-armed bag of wet trash sent by gods who are too yellow to face me themselves!"
She reached the top-gallant, her sapphire eye burning with a heat that made the rain steam off her fur. Below, the Obsidian Wake was being pulled into a tightening spiral.
The Kraken's main mass was rising, a mountain of rubbery, barnacle-crusted hate. And there, just beneath the surface of the churning black water, pulsed a single, massive eye—a pale, lidless orb reflecting the strobe-light of the lightning.
Nokera froze.
The water.
The deep, suffocating, crushing blackness.
Her tail twitched, and for a heartbeat, the 'cat' in her wanted to bolt, to climb until she touched the stars and never look down. But then she heard the Wake groan—a sickening, splintering sound of a hull reaching its limit.
"Not my ship, you overgrown puddle-stain," she hissed, her voice dropping to a deadly, quiet hum. "Not today."
She didn't think.
If she thought, she'd stay on the mast.
She leapt.
It was a seventy-foot drop into a nightmare.
Nokera was a streak of blue fire against the grey sky, her boarding saber held reversed in a white-knuckled grip. She hit the water like a spear. The cold was an physical assault, a crushing weight that tried to steal the air from her lungs.
For a second, the terror nearly took her—the feeling of being submerged, of being prey. But then she saw it.The massive, golden-grey orb of the Kraken's eye, inches from her blade.
With a muffled, underwater snarl, she drove the saber home.
The blade sank deep into the vitreous humor. A cloud of black, stinging ichor erupted, blinding her. The Kraken didn't just scream; it vibrated the entire ocean.
The pressure wave of the beast's agony nearly crushed Nokera's ribs as it thrashed, its massive limbs flailing in a blind, tectonic frenzy.
Nokera kicked frantically, her lungs burning, her heart hammering a rhythmic, panicked beat against her chest. She broke the surface with a desperate, ragged gasp, coughing out salt and ink.
"Pips! The lines! Throw the gods-damned lines!" she shrieked, her voice thin and wavering as she bobbed in the violent wake of the retreating monster.
The Kraken was diving, a wounded god fleeing back to the lightless depths, but the whirlpool it left behind was a hungry, swirling mouth.
"Get me out of this wet hell, you useless bilge-rats! Now!" She clawed at the churning water, her eyes fixed on the retreating silhouette of the Obsidian Wake as it fought to stay upright in the aftermath of the titan's departure.
The Obsidian Wake was a bucking bronco of salt-slicked oak, but Nokera didn't wait for a life-ring.
She hit the side of the hull with a wet thwack, her claws unsheathing with a metallic snarl as they bit into the damp wood.
She scrambled up the side of the ship like a demon made of sodden velvet, vaulting over the railing and collapsing onto the deck in a heap of tangled fur and heavy, gasping breaths.
The Kraken's death-throes had turned the sea into a boiling cauldron, but the massive shadow was finally, blessedly, sinking into the abyss.
"CAPTAIN'S ALIVE!" the master-at-arms roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of disbelief and sheer, terrified joy. "THE CAT KILLED THE KRAKEN!"A ragged, thunderous cheer erupted from the survivors.
Men who had been weeping into their boots moments ago were suddenly throwing their soaked caps into the gale, howling like wolves.
They surged toward her, a wall of grimy, salt-stained faces eager to hoist their fearless leader onto their shoulders.
Nokera didn't move for a second. She stayed on all fours, her head hanging low, seawater and thick, black Kraken ink dripping from the tip of her nose.
Her fur, usually so sharp and punk-styled, was plastered to her lean frame, making her look half her actual size.She looked less like a fearsome pirate queen and more like a very angry, very drowned rat.
Then, she began to vibrate.
With a sudden, violent blur of motion, Nokera started to shake. It started at her ears—which flattened and flicked—and traveled down her spine to the very tip of her sodden tail.
A spray of saltwater and ink exploded off her in a 360-degree radius, drenching the front row of the cheering crew and silencing them instantly as they wiped fishy-smelling brine from their eyes.
She stood up slowly, her sapphire eye flickering with a cold, predatory heat that suggested the Kraken wasn't the only thing capable of murder tonight.
She ignored the cheering.
She ignored the victory. She marched straight up to Pips, who was still white-knuckling the wheel.
She leaned in close, her face inches from his. The smell of the deep sea and alchemical gunpowder rolled off her in waves.
"Pips," she said. It wasn't a roar. It was a murderous, low-frequency whisper that vibrated in the poor boy's teeth. "If you do not find me a dry towel in the next five seconds, I am going to find out if your skin is absorbent enough to do the job instead. Do you understand me, you cross-eyed son of a sea-slug?"
Pips didn't even nod; he just vanished, his boots thudding frantically against the deck as he dived for the companionway.
Nokera stood there in the center of the deck, huffing, her fur still spiking out in wet, pathetic clumps.She looked down at her empty belt, then out at the churning, black graveyard of the ocean.
"Gods-damned, ink-shitting, over-sized bottom feeder," she hissed, wringing out the hem of her coat with a vicious twist.
"I'm going to need a very, very large bottle of rum. And a new hat."Nokera didn't wait for the deck to stop pitching.
She marched toward the helm with the stiff, indignant gait of a feline that had been tossed into a bathtub and intended to sue the universe for it.
Every step left a sodden, ink-stained bootprint on the wood.
"Move, you cross-eyed barnacle," she hissed at the sailor currently white-knuckling the wheel.
The man didn't just move; he practically dematerialized, stumbling over his own feet to get out of her predatory path.She gripped the spokes, her claws clicking against the handles—a rhythmic, sharp sound that seemed to calm the ship's own groaning spirit.
Just then, Pips reappeared, skidding across the slick deck with a massive, somewhat-gray towel clutched in his shaking hands. He didn't dare speak; he just draped it over her shoulders and retreated to a safe, non-murdery distance.
Nokera grunted, snatching a corner of the fabric to scrub at her face, wiping the stinging Kraken ichor from her good eye. She looked like a drowned rat in a noble's coat, her fur spiked out in pathetic, wet clumps, but the manic heat in her sapphire eye was back in full force.
"Listen up, you salt-crusted bastards!" she barked, her voice a jagged cello rasp that cut through the dying gale. "We're done playing tag with the deep. Hard to starboard! We're setting a course for Luskan!"
The name hit the deck like a chest of gold.
The City of Sails.
The lawless, beautiful, filthy crown of the North where the only thing cheaper than the rum was a man's life.
"The Navy's probably still counting the splinters of those three galleons we gutted off the Sword Coast," Nokera mused, a cruel, toothy grin splitting her face as she wrung out her tail with the towel.
"They're likely realizing by now that it wasn't a storm that took their payroll and their pride—it was us. Why do you think that overgrown, ink-shitting pond-scum was so eager to drag us down? The gods don't like it when you touch their favorite shiny toys."
She threw the damp towel onto the deck and spat a glob of salt-phlegm over the railing."But the Navy's slow, and the Kraken is currently leaking its brains into the abyss. That means we've got a head start on the hangman!"
A roar went up from the crew—a wild, primal sound of men who had seen the bottom of the locker and climbed back out.
"LUSKAN!" they howled.
"Drink until the sun hides in shame!" one shouted.
"Food that hasn't been weevil-ridden for a month!" another added.
"Women! Poker! And I'm going to break the nose of the first City Guard I see!"The deck was a chaotic mess of celebration and relief.
They were pirates, after all; the only thing they loved more than surviving a miracle was the promise of a place where they could blow their gold on sin and silver-work. Infighting, gambling, and the sweet, burning sting of cheap grog awaited them in the shadows of the Hosttower.
Nokera watched them, her ears twitching as she felt the Wake catch a favorable wind.
She leaned into the wheel, her sharp features silhouetted against the receding storm clouds.
"Aye, enjoy it while you can," she whispered to the wind, her sapphire eye scanning the horizon for the first sign of Luskan's jagged towers. "Because once we hit port, the real trouble starts. And I still need to find a hat that matches my mood."
The storm didn't die so much as it surrendered, the bruised purples and blacks of the sky bleeding out into a bruised, golden orange.
The Obsidian Wake sat lower in the water, her hull scarred and her rigging weeping salt, but she rode the swells with a newfound, rhythmic pride.Nokera stood at the helm, her boots finally dry, her fur fluffing back out into its usual defiant, punkish spikes as she watched the sun dip toward the horizon.
"Pips," she murmured, her voice a low, satisfied cello rumble that carried across the quieted deck. "My pipe. The long-stemmed one with the silver inlay. And the good leaf—not that shredded rope the quartermaster tries to pass off as tobacco."
The boy scrambled away, and as he did, a low, gravelly hum began near the mid-deck.
It was a familiar vibration, the kind that starts in the chest before it hits the throat. One voice joined another, then ten, until a sea shanty rose up to meet the dying wind—a slow, steady rhythm to time the scrubbing of the blood-stained decks.
Nokera leaned against the wheel, a rare, genuine smirk softening her sharp features.
She watched her crew—her beautiful, murderous, half-drowned bastards—working with a precision that only comes after staring into the Maw and spitting in its eye.
They had gutted three Navy galleons, outrun the King's law, and blinded a god of the deep. It was a good day to be a pirate, a very good day indeed.
"CAPTAIN! LOOK ALOFT!"
Nokera's sapphire eye snapped toward the port side.
One of the deckhands was leaning over the shattered railing, a hooked boar-spear in his hands, pointing at a bobbing, dark shape caught in a patch of relatively calm foam just a few feet away.
"Is that… by the Hells, it is! It's the captains hat!"
The crew let out a collective, ragged cheer that was more of a barked laugh.
The sailor lunged with the spear, the iron hook snagging the sodden, salt-caked felt of the tricorn. With a triumphant heave, he swung the dripping, pathetic-looking garment onto the deck.
Nokera didn't move from the helm, but her tail gave a sharp, satisfied twitch.Pips appeared at her side, carefully handing over her pipe and a flickering match.
She took a long, deep draw, the sweet, herbal smoke curling around her ears as she watched the sailor bring her "crown" toward her.
"Tossed it back, did she?" Nokera mused, the smoke trailing from her fangs. She took the wet, limp hat from the man's hands, looking at the ragged tear where the Kraken's sucker had gripped it.
She didn't put it on—not yet—but she draped it over the hilt of her saber to dry in the fading heat of the sun.
"Luskan's just over the horizon, boys," she called out, her voice echoing the peace of the evening. "The Navy is looking for a ghost ship, and the Sea Mother is licking her wounds. Let 'em wonder. Tonight, the Wake sails on her own terms."
She stood silhouetted against the fire of the sunset, the blue light of her eye blending with the golden horizon. They were broken, they were filthy, and they were the most dangerous thing on the water.