The wind howled like a wounded beast as the HLS Sea Flower plowed through the crashing waves. Captain Tidebringer turned his hardened face towards the west, looking at the storm clouds racing towards his ship. He turned the steering wheel to the starboard, the boards of the Sea Flower groaning in protest. She would hold, she always did. He had to trust his beloved, just as he trusted Sharp Eye up in the crow's nest to lead them all to safety.
The Sea Flower was a clipper belonging to the Horseatic League, referred to by some as simply the Hansa. Even though it didn't possess any actual land or standing army, and wouldn't normally be called a nation at all, its economical and political might made it the biggest trading empire in this part of the known world. The word of the ruling council was law on the seas, and none dared to go against them in fear of economical backlash, him included. Besides, it wasn't the first time he worked for the League, and they always paid handsomely for delivering their goods.
The wind picked up and Tidebringer had to pull his captain's hat deeper onto his head. The waves crashing against the Sea Flower produced thousands of droplets that soaked everything on the deck, including his wings. He tried to ignore the cold while attempting to estimate the course of the ship with his compass, all the while controlling the steering wheel and dishing out orders for his crew at the same time.
The sailors under his command were doing a commendable job at keeping the vessel in good condition. They made sure the sails didn't rip and that the riggings were okay, fighting the wrath of the North Sea, the most dangerous waters on this side of the equator as only true sea wolfs could. The long trek however, coupled with exhaustion and lack of sleep made their movements seem rigid, as if they weren't living ponies but pieces of clockwork machinery that needed to be wind up soon.
"Sail ho!" Sharp Eye's cry came from the crow's nest, barely above the roar of the waves. "Direction south-west, one and a half mile!"
"Their status?" Tidebringer cried back, craning his head high.
"Can't see any movement, Capt’n! Seems they've lost several sails but they're not signaling any problems! No flags, no lanterns, nothing!" The spotter's voice seemed perplexed despite the howling winds.
Tidebringer was put in a tight spot. On one hoof he was obliged by contract to get to Flankfurt before the winter ice cap would block the port, and he was still a ways away from the city. However, the Sea Codex clearly stated that he was duty bound to aid any vessel in need of assistance. Then again, the unknown vessel didn't signal for help, so he could theoretically get away with not helping them if he wanted to follow the letter of the law. Anyway, he had to make a decision quickly; every second he was losing on deliberations the storm was getting nearer, and in a few minutes it could be the Sea Flower that needed help.
"Crew, get this tackle in order! Bosun, lower the sails! Turn on starboard! We're gonna see what's going on there!" The captain decided, already adjusting the course and struggling against the steering wheel.
"Aye, aye, Capt'n!" Tightrope, the Flower's boatswain acknowledged and started to give out orders to the other sailors. The pegasus captain watched his crew at work, readying the ship for a sudden change in course. As the waves now crashed against the larboard of his ship, Tidebringer couldn't help but feel proud of his fellow ponies.
The Sea Flower ripped through the furious waves of the North Sea with all the swiftness and cunning of a sea gull, gliding above the surface of the cold, raging sea. But just as the crew was getting used to the constant tumult of the tides it all stopped. The sea was as smooth as a tabletop, and the roaring wind calmed to barely a whisper, the Sea Flower's sails now only barely rippling whereas moments ago they were swelling dangerously under the strength of the gale. It was as if they have found themselves outside of the storm's reach, but for it to end so abruptly was unseen. Still, Tidebringer let out a sigh of relief as he shook the ice-cold water out of his feathers, thankful for the moment of calm. Wings were really annoying when you had to sail the open sea.
As the captain raised his head again to look at Sharp Eye's post, he noticed her leaning out of the crow's nest, looking at him worriedly.
"What is it, what did you see?" He asked, now a bit spooked himself.
At first she didn't answer. It seemed like if Sharp Eye was trying to come up with a way to break him some news that weren't all that good.
"Well, good news is that it seems that the storm will pass further south and avoid us." She started. "The other ship however… It looks like… like…"
All the experience in the world couldn't prepare Tidebringer for what he was witnessing; the mysterious vessel Sharp Eye has spotted was like nothing he had ever seen before. The hulking mass of wood and ropes was undoubtedly a East Indiapony, its masts reaching high into the sky yet looking strangely naked with tattered scraps of sails flapping lazily in the wind. A line of gun ports could be seen through its length, but none of them seemed to house any actual cannon, giving the impression that this was more likely a military-turned-trade vessel. But what really caught the attention was the overall state of the ship.
The ship seemed old, older than any Tidebringer had ever seen. Its boards were rotting and decayed, their original color unrecognizable, some of them missing altogether. The riggings were in such poor condition that it was surprising it was still able to support the masts; large fragments were missing, and those that remained seemed to hold only by a thread. But the most unsettling was the absolute lack of any movement. No crew seemed to be on deck and no sound came from the vessel, as if it was abandoned long ago and since drifted on the open sea, miraculously avoiding being sunken. With no sails and under no flag, with its crew seemingly missing it looked like a corrupted ghost ship from legends.
"Capt'n!" One of the sailors, Tough Judge, tried to gain Tidebringer's attention, pointing at the side of the mysterious ship. "I think I found the name of the ship, but there's something fishy about it."
The captain trotted towards the deck hoof and looked at where he was pointing. True to his words, Tough Judge was pointing at a huge plate with a greenish inscription on it. It was barely visible due to the advance state of decay, but once Tidebringer brought out his spyglass he could make out what it said. In bold letters the name of the ship was written for all to see.
Judgment of Carrion
"That's odd." Tidebringer muttered to himself. "There's no ship prefix."
While not required by any sort of law, most naval vessels possessed ship prefixes for ease of identification, directly linked to the nation under which flag they operated. The Sea Flower for example had the HLS prefix, proclaiming it a Horseatic League's Ship for all to know. The lack of a prefix however could mean one of many things. Private ships often didn't possess those, as well as lesser trading vessels. It could also mean something completely different, such as…
"Pirates?" A murmur began spreading amongst the crew.
"Doubtful." Tidebringer shook his head. "And even if it was it's in no condition to pose any serious threat. The East Indiapony is completely useless in a fight –it has no cannons, its sails wouldn't propel even a lifeboat, and its hull is so damaged it wouldn't survive a proper buck. Besides, the North Sea is too traitorous for pirates to operate freely. Maybe it was used for smuggling."
"Still, if it ain't legal we should set sail for Flankfurt. We ain't got no business helpin' smugglin' vermin." Boatswain Tightrope reasoned. "Dunno 'bout you, but this whole 'Judgment of Carrion' looks like it would crumble to pieces if ya were ta step on board."
"And you came to the conclusion I would give an order to board it how exactly?" The captain eyed Tightrope curiously.
"We've sailed fer how many years? Ah like ta think Ah get ta know ya a bit. Yer a curious fellar, Capt'n, and this 'ere ship just reeks of mystery." The boatswain's face became grim. "Ah wouldn't go on this ship Capt'n. Ah get a strange feelin' just by lookin' at it."
Tidebringer gazed at the Judgment of Carrion again. He had to give it to Tightrope, the old naval ruin indeed looked like it would fall apart any moment now, and just looking at it made his skin crawl. He fought off the shiver however, finding solace in his strong sense of duty, the same sense that lead him to so many a headache over the years. At the very least Tidebringer thought of himself as a pony of honor, and he would be damned if he didn't do something.
"True, it is foreboding, I'll give it that. But think of it like this: what if it's not a smugglers ship but a trading vessel damaged by the storm? It's crew may be hiding under deck and may be in need of help. We have to check it."
"But Capt'n!" The whole crew started to lament. "We don't wanna go! What if it's dangerous?!"
Tidebringer looked at the desperate faces of his crewmates. Their tones seemed to indicate fear, but their eyes showed something else entirely. Some of them were casting sideway glances at their neighbors, exchanging conspicuous winks and smirks. One of them, Sticky Hooves, was looking at the captain with a grin plastered on his face, mouthing something inaudibly. He looked like he wanted to say something to him, something like 'You know full well what's this all about'. Wait… Oh! So that's their plan, those snidely twits.
"Let me put it this way: if the Judgment is indeed abandoned, I'll… turn a blind eye when it comes to securing any abandoned equipment and other goods. How does that sound…"
"We're in!" As expected, the whole crew was now the epitome of enthusiasm.
If asked Tidebringer would be the first to admit that convincing his crew to accompany him by allowing them to loot the ship wasn't the most honorable thing he ever did. However, it served its purpose. Sighing, he looked at the Judgment of Carrion one more time. For a brief moment he thought that he heard the echo of hoofsteps coming from the deck of the foreign vessel, but he dismissed the notion as his mind playing tricks on him. Shaking his head, he ordered his crew to prepare to board.
"Ponies!" Tidebringer looked over the sailors from the deck of the Judgment. "Remember: our main priority is to find any survivors, or if that's the case then their bodies. Only after we confirm the ship's abandoned are you allowed to secure valuables, not the other way around! And what in the blazes is that smell?!"
The air on the ship was nothing if not stinking, the nauseating stench so strong that even an experienced sea wolf like Tidebringer had a hard time keeping his lunch in. Most sailors were used to things smelling bad, be it rats, filth, dirt, or the occasional swelled up body of a floater, but this was on another level entirely. It was as if the ship itself was rotting to the core, putting the "Carrion" in its name.
"The crew must be hiding below deck." The captain reasoned, not seeing a single soul on the main deck. "Alright, you know the drill. We're going down there, and try not to look like a bunch of buccaneers." He ordered, eying the small group of ponies he took with him.
Tidebringer decided to take only five of his men onboard the Judgment. Of course, Sticky Hooves just had be the first to volunteer, no doubt planning to rob the ship of any single shiny trinket he could get his hooves on. Along with him there were also Tough Judge, Ironshoe, and the brothers Red Hammer and Gold Sickle. All of them were equipped in lanterns and had a hatchet, both for utility purposes and for self defense. After all, there was no telling what they were going to find onboard the mysterious ship.
The doors leading to the lower deck were partially open, beyond them a small ladder. Tidebringer gingerly stepped inside and went down, looking carefully around the corridor. There was something strange about the way it looked, something the captain couldn't quite place. It was as if everything here was strangely… distant? He couldn't find a better way to describe it; the wooden cabins seemed not to belong here, seemingly out of place yet exactly where they should be. It was as if he was looking at a dream, as if he somehow stepped into another dimension entirely, a parallel universe so alike to his own yet strangely different. There was something in the air here, something other than the overwhelming stench and far more foreboding. Tidebringer couldn't shake off the feeling that he was somewhere he shouldn't be, in some sort of eldritch mockery of the waking world.
His five companions didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, or they were hiding it better than he did. Out of the six ponies on deck Sticky Hooves seemed the least affected, though if it was thanks to bravery or stupidity was up to debate. He descended the wooden ladder quickly and started to look around, all the time grinning like a foal in a candy shop.
"Last time I allowed them to loot anything." Tidebringer muttered.
As they went along, searching for the ship's crew, they began noticing something strange. Each and every cabin they entered was empty. It wasn't just that they were abandoned, they were completely devoid of anything. No tables, no cots, no nothing. Once or twice they found a pile of rubbish in them, maybe remnants of long wasted furniture or cargo, but aside from that there was nothing. And that continued throughout the whole floor.
Sticky Hooves was steadily losing his good humor. It slowly downed on him that what he at first assumed was going to be a veritable gold mine was shaping to be anything but that. This rotting bark didn't have anything worth looting, just a bunch of useless, worthless junk. His only hope was that he would find something on the lower decks, and even then he wasn't that big of an optimist. Why did he have to volunteer again?
They were descending the ladder leading to the lower deck, Gold Sickle taking up point. Not a minute after he got down a loud crash echoed through the corridor, followed by a loud curse curtsey of the stallion. His companions, realizing that something must have happened quickly got down and one by one were greeted by something far more terrifying than a tripped over sailor.
Gold Sickle was pressed against a wall, a steady stream of rapid curses escaping his lips. His wide eyes were glued to something on the ground, not five feet from him. Shining their lanterns on the mysterious object the five sailors stumbled back in shock. There, on doors that seemed to have fallen from their frame lie the form of a unicorn, horn sprouting from its forehead. It was… impossible to determine anything conclusive about it, be it its color or gender. The body was rot-ridden, decaying in a gruesome fashion, not from the passage of years but from something far more horrible. It bore the signs of leprosy, an advanced stadium of the illness, flesh ridden with decay that bit right to the bone. Its coat was completely gone, its naked skin dotted with suppurated wounds, some of them still festering with infection. It lacked large chunks of its flesh, hooves almost separated from legs due to rot and decay, like if dissected by the plague itself. Its eyes were gone, leaving two empty, bloodied holes in their wake, staring into nothing with two maggot-ridden eye-sockets. Tattered remains of what once must've been a uniform lie scattered on the floor or glued to the carcass by its own blood and puss.
"Sweet Mother of…" Tough Judge managed only that before he twitched violently and threw up on his own hooves.
"Sonuva…" Red Hammer breathed out. "This aint no ship in need of help, it's a bucking Yellow Jack! Let's get out of here!"
"Not so fast!" Tidebringer halted the stallion before he had the chance to backpedal. "The ponies on this ship might've been infected with something, but we still need to check for survivors. We just need to be careful with what we touch and we'll be fine."
Reassured by their captain's words the sailors composed themselves and went towards the next door, giving a wide berth to the dead unicorn. Sticky Hooves however didn't follow them right away. He waited until the captain vanished behind a bend and with a gleeful smile moved to the body.
"Can't believe how blind they are." He smiled greedily. "Goner has some gold chompers we won't be using anymore. Looks like Lady Luck has finally smiled to me."
He carefully opened the dead pony's jaw and one by one, using his hatchet he pried them out. Grinning, Sticky collected the loose teeth with his hoof and bolted in the direction the captain went, trying to catch up to the group.
He didn't even notice that one of the teeth had accidentally pierced his skin…
"Alright ponies, last deck. If nothing's here than we're going back onboard the Flower." Tidebringer ordered.
The six sailors made their way to the bottom deck of the Judgment of Carrion. Nothing really changed during all this time: the ship still looked like it was rotting in front of their very eyes, and aside from some more junk and the occasional dead body they didn't find anything. There was however something that felt awfully suspicious to the captain.
First of all, the number of bodies didn't make much sense. A ship of this size had a bottom crew limit of thirty sailors at minimum, yet after adding up all the deceased they happened upon there was hardly even ten of them. Either they were going to find a literal pile of bodies somewhere here, or something was definitely fishy about all this.
Then there was the issue of where they found the corpses. There was no logic behind their placement, as if they were laid out at random. They found a body in a storage compartment, at least four lying on the corridors, and a few more locked in cabins. Yet what was most disturbing was that they didn't find any lying in hammocks. One would think that the ill would be bed ridden, or at least kept in beds by the healthy, if there were any, but that wasn't the case. To make it even more bizarre they happened upon a room that wore signs of battle, and two bodies, each of them leprosy-ridden and with hatchets sticking out of them. Were the ill fighting each other? Maybe mutiny? Just what exactly happened here?
Lastly, Tidebringer couldn't pinpoint how old the ship was exactly. East Indiapony were relatively new vessels, but the level of decay suggested that it drifted for some time now. She sheer magnitude of destruction and putridity contradicted everything he knew about ships. It all didn't make any sense!
Tidebringer shot a look behind his back, finding his "trusty" companion Sticky Hooves smirking at him.
"Any luck in acquiring… half-legal cargo?"
Sticky shook his head. "Nope. This place's a wreck, Capt'n."
Tidebringer was sure the dolt was lying, but that wasn't important right now. Without a word he checked another cabin, only to find it empty like the rest. His patience was wearing thin. At this rate this whole escapade would prove to be a pointless waste of time, and that of course spelled trouble. Once the high up's in Hansa realize his transport to Flankfurt was delayed they'll demand to know what happened. He'll have to report to the Captains' Council, have to answer a bunch of pointless questions to some anonymous penpusher, only for the whole thing to be filed somewhere in the endless mess bureaucracy was, forgotten for years, and his wage cut in half as "punishment for endangering the good name of the League". He already felt a massive headache brewing, and the constant rocking wasn't helping. Luna curse the tides, he was so sick of it all…
A sudden sound pulled him out of his musings and almost made him jump out of his skin. A terrified shriek pierced the near total silence, making his blood run cold. He knew that voice, it was one of his ponies. Red Hammer! He was crying in pure terror!
In less than a second Tidebringer bolted out of his room in search of the stallion. His horrified shriek was coming from several cabins ahead. Running down the corridor the captain almost collided with Gold Sickle, Red's brother, who was trying to get to his sibling as fast as possible. The two stallions ran side by side, and they both tackled the door behind which Red Hammer was open, bursting inside in a shower of splinters.
Red Hammer was huddled in a corner, curled in a ball, hugging himself, and shaking like an autumn leaf. With wide eyes he stared into space, as if he saw something that shook him to his core, mumbling to himself incoherently. Tidebringer cautiously approached the stallion, Gold Sickle inches behind him.
"Red, are you alright?" he asked.
"Gold…" Red Hammer barely whispered.
"It's me bro, I'm here. What did you see?" Gold Sickle sat beside his brother.
"Gold…"
"Talk to me, Red! This is important!" he begged.
"Gold… circling the infinite abyss, twin pools of pure nothingness within the sea of gold… gold…" At this point Red Hammer was wheezing, curling even more as sobs began rocking his body.
Tidebringer took the time to scrutinize the cabin in hopes of finding whatever scared the living daylight out of the stallion. He looked around the whole thing, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only explanation he could come up with was that the aura of this place has finally gotten to him, but that didn't make any sense. Just what in all the fury of the North Sea was going on here!?
"We're leaving. Now! If any of you looted anything, throw it away." He ordered, panic beginning to creep into his voice.
"It's but a tiny dot… a tiny dot… gold all around, but this tiny dot… it holds the blackness of all black, the shadow of all shadows… gold…" Red Hammer, still sobbing, was whispering loudly to himself, beginning to rock back and forth.
"Sticky! Start being useful for a change and help me carry this poor fellow." The captain snapped at the sailor.
"Oh… err… Aye, aye, Capt'n!" He nodded swiftly and helped Tidebringer with his task.
"It'll all be fine, I promise!" Gold assured his older brother.
"Fine… is the powder the world crumbles into…" was Red's last words before he lost consciousness.
"How are we supposed to get him up the ladder…"
"Shut up and move!"
The Sea Flower's crew was anxiously awaiting the return of their comrades. It was already some time since the captain went on board the Judgment of Carrion, and nopony has seen neither hide nor hair of him. By the time lunch came, most of the crew was on deck, worriedly watching for any signs of their return.
They didn't expect for them to return like this.
The door leading to the lower decks of the Judgment flew from their hinges as Tidebringer bucked them open. The captain quickly cleared the way for the rest of the expedition, four stallions carrying the unconscious form of Red Hammer between them. Without a word they crossed the gap between the two ships, and then promptly collapsed, exhausted from carrying their companion.
"Take him to the medic!" Tidebringer ordered. "Bosun, set course for Flankfurt, full sail! We're leaving!"
The ponies set of to work without a word. The urgency in Tidebringer's voice was all the motivation they needed. Within moments the Sea Flower departed from the East Indiapony's side, leaving the rotting ship to its own fate. The wind was picking up again, tides following suit, crashing against the boards of the vessel. The Judgment of Carrion quickly disappeared from the captain's view as the Sea Flower sped off to its destination, making him breathe a sigh of relief.