After another ten minutes of maneuvers, Riv stomped down the stairs from below deck, a notebook-wielding Elisa in tow. "She's stuffed to the gills, Captain. I've seen warships with less rations."

“Have you really?” Marco asked.

"Well, no, it's a figure of speech."

"They packed efficiently too. I see why Kelda wanted us to take note of it. It's art down there, once you look close." Elisa flashed her notebook at him, where column after column of inventory had been made. "Everything layered by type and weight. Salted meats, dried fruit, even some compressed grain blocks I’ve never seen before. And spices. A lot of spices.”

"Why spices?" Marco frowned.

"Because they’re valuable and small," Elisa said. "Either for trade or our own morale. People like to eat well, and spices make that possible. Kelda knew what she was doing.”

They spent the next hour pushing the ship through a series of increasingly demanding maneuvers. Sharp turns were good, but knowing exactly how sharp a turn he could make was better. Marco found he was able to make the ship dance on the water, and the ship seemed almost glad to answer his commands. He tried turning the rudder with subtle shifts of the wheel, and watched as they swung like a live fish in the water, caring much less about physics than he had thought would be possible.

Eventually, with the sun rising higher into the sky, they settled into a steady direction, chosen at random from the many directions Frisk hadn’t headed. The sea around them was vast and empty. After a busy morning of packing, climbing aboard a ship, and getting used to it, everything had now fallen quiet. For the first time since they'd left the island, nobody had anything urgent to say.

It was Elisa who broke the silence. “So. Where are we going?”

"Good question,” Marco said. He hadn’t been avoiding it, not exactly, but he hadn’t pinned it down either. "I don't think we want to get so far from the island, but I'd like to make a big loop around the territory if nothing stops us. Get an idea of what our local threats are before they come find us. We’ll likely be faster than them anyways.”

“Recon?” Aethe asked.

"Sort of. I mean, we'll fight if we find something to fight. But I'd also like to know what we are facing."

In terms of pirate hunting, the rest of the day was a bust.

Despite the wind and the motion of the waves, there was a moment in the early afternoon where it felt almost like they weren’t moving at all. Marco watched the horizon stretch in all directions, denying him the sweet perspective he would have needed to appreciate how fast they were probably going.

Riv leaned on the railing beside him, chewing on something meaty.

“So this is the mighty sea when nobody is trying to kill you or arrest you? It's peaceful.”

“Don't get too comfortable. It could be we see a ship any second. Though it's starting to get dark, so I think we'll have to take a break from even trying pretty soon.”

“Not a bad day to be out here, even if it's not for anything.”

Below deck, Elisa was relabeling their goods, trying to improve on a system that she had already admitted needed no improving. Every so often, she’d yell up at Riv to stop eating things that weren't labeled yet, which he seemed to take great pleasure in ignoring.

Aethe stood near the mast, polishing her bow in the last sunlight. She hadn’t said much since they picked their heading, but Marco had caught her smiling more than once as she strung her bow with the new tension string and made small adjustments to the knots, trying to get it just right as judged by a standard he didn't really comprehend.

Marco adjusted the sails, letting the wind catch slightly less. Propping the wheel, he let the ship continue onwards by itself, heading to the prow and looking out over the water, not doing much in particular at all. They were in a lull. A gap between moments. He knew it wouldn’t last, and he didn't really want it to.

"Alright," he called out, breaking the stillness. “Next ship we see, we're talking to it. We need information, and I bet we can get it faster if we trade observations.”

“What if it's a pirate?" Aethe asked, twanging her bowstring. "Still?”

"Only if the spyglass says its alright. Otherwise, we run. Keep an eye out as long as you can, today. If there's nothing by sundown, we'll just go to bed,” Marco stated.

“Why not later? Ships still move at night,” Riv asked.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Because there's no moon tonight, and it's getting overcast,” Elisa said. "We wouldn't see much anyway. We should still take watches, though. There are other dangerous things in the ocean besides ships.”

"Fine. Aethe, can you take the first one? Your eyes are better than the rest of ours."

The sun moved across the sky as they moved across the water. Eventually, something would show up on the horizon. It was Marco’s watch when it finally did.

It had been harder to stay awake during the calm of the night than he had thought it would be, but Marco had managed to find a combination of exposure to chill ocean air, moving around, and messing with the rigging that seemed to do the job. It was on one of his laps around the ship that he saw it, barely, off in the distance. Just a speck in the dark that was a little less dark than all the other specks, if you looked close enough.

He pulled out the spyglass. It didn't do much against dark, but it seemed that didn't matter much to how it actually functioned.

As he checked, they were drifting forward. Slowly, he began to see more detail. Stomping on the deck to get the attention of the others, he glued his eye to the telescope until he got a better idea of what he was really seeing. It was a larger ship than theirs, clearly rigged out as a fighter rather than a transport or passenger ship. Most of their investment seemed to have gone towards gun capacity, with a full five cannons on the side of the ship facing them. Nobody was on the deck that he could see, but they were still pretty far away.

"See something?” Aethe wandered up the stairs, rubbing her eyes. When Marco pointed, she startled a bit, then went back below decks to get the others. "Marco found a ship. Get to your positions.”

During the day, they had stacked a few barrels of cannonballs strategically on deck, putting them close enough to the cannons themselves to be useful but also in a place where they could be ducked behind. Riv stayed out in the open for now, but Elisa was immediately down behind them, only stretching out a single arm far enough to interact with the cannons.

“Do we go in firing?” she asked.

“Can't,” Marco said. "They might be civilians. But we go in fast. If they aren't pirates, we can run. No way a ship that's shaped like that can keep up. Keep an eye out. The ship’s value is 2. Maybe they’re just carrying a lot of goods, or maybe their equipment is better than ours. Hard to tell until we get closer.”

He took the wheel, bee-lining towards them. Aethe commandeered the spyglass, keeping an eye on the ship as they came closer and closer until she suddenly laughed, chuckling so hard she almost dropped the device on the deck at her feet.

"What?"

"it's just... look yourself." She shoved the spyglass towards him. “It's hard to explain.”

The ship was more clearly nefarious now, at least to the extent a ship a could look evil. There were weapons mounted to a lot of the flat surfaces that would take a hook to hold them, and the sails were black instead of the more standard white. There was even an insignia of a dagger piercing a heart on the sails. All that, though, paled in comparison to the proof Aethe had seen.

“This Is The Pirate Ship Known As The Mankiller,” it said, in roughly painted script on the hull. “Prepare To Be Boarded And Killed.”

“Well, that does make it easy, I guess,” Marco said. “My vote is let’s test out how strong they are. If we’re outgunned and outmatched, we’ll run. Are you all ready to try out those autocannons, finally?”

“Yes, let’s.” Aethe tugged on her bowstring. "I've been waiting to see how they do."

With ammunition and powder close by, the cannons started firing as soon as they were in range of the pirate ship. Not every shot was a hit. In fact, most of them were clear misses. The cannons fired at a slow, steady pace, though, and within five shots, one of the cannonballs did finally make contact. It didn’t carry any enhancements from Elisa, since she couldn't load the cannons with magic nearly as fast as they fired. Still, it punched hard at the side of the enemy ship, cracking a board inwards and filling the air with the resulting crashing, shattering sound.

The pirates were awake after that and came streaming out from below in surprising numbers. Marco’s ship carried just four, but the enemy ship seemed to carry a good twelve or fifteen sailors, not counting the captain. They scrambled to the cannons, which were primed and ready to fire judging by how quickly Marco was forced to take weaving, zig-zagging evasive action.

A pair of cannonballs hit the ocean in front of the ship, sending up spouts of seawater that rocked The Foolish Endeavorsideways and splattered the whole crew in water. Another whistled past the stern and bashed into the mast, bruising but not breaking the heartwood it was formed from.

“I don't think they like us!” Riv shouted. "We are cleared to fight, then?"

"Yes! Elisa, can you get magic into those cannons any faster?" Marco yelled.

"I'm trying! they fire too fast for me to enchant all of them!"

"Do what you can. Riv, get ready to board. Aethe..."

An arrow was already loosed before he finished the sentence. It struck one of the pirates mid-run, knocking the man clear over the railing and into the dark ocean. Marco didn't think the man had a lot of thoughts on the damage, given where the arrow had hit him.

“Good arrows,” Aethe said. "But they know where we are now. They'll hit us eventually, and that's a lot of guns."

"Not if I can help it." Marco turned the wheel sharply, attempting to curve out of the pirate ship's firing angle. The Foolish Endeavor obeyed instantly, giving not a single groan as it tilted into the turn.

"Marco, they're adjusting! They're trying to match us!" Elisa called from the port side.

“Good!” Marco yelled. "Just keep firing!"

The next shot she fired from the enchanted cannon bore a glowing swirl of fire around it. When it hit the pirate ship's deck, it exploded upward in a flash of burning energy. There was a shout as two men jumped overboard just before a barrel of powder caught and blew out a good section of the deck.

“Nice! That should slow them down!” Riv shouted. "Let me know if you need me to do anything.”

Another shot slammed into the pirate hull, then another, then another. At this range, the cannons were hitting as often as Aethe was, and she had already hit or outright killed three pirates.

“We're winning!”

“We're holding our own,” Marco said. "But they won't miss forever. Everyone brace!"