Mid-morning sunlight bled through violet clouds, faint and still young to his right. Kaniere, nowhere to be seen, settled at the seabed to never surface again. Another addition to the wreckages of the sea depths.
The storm had not been a warning. It had been their doom, and for a reason secret to Anubis it failed to seize him while it could. Such was the barbarity of the world, and ever since he promised himself to accept its undying existence, and to never predict different measures took to render him lifeless. The orc captain knew their demise would come, that he and his crew were probably not to survive the hour.
But not like this. Stock-still clouds floated overhead in a tint of violet, a silent announcement of the sun’s ongoing approach to its zenith. Scorched refuse took him along the waves, which pushed and rolled him through like an aftershock to the great tsunami which had capsized Kaniere like a sprout.
We all predicted it--knew we’d face shit before we could call our voyage over... but not like this, repeated he. We were waiting for pirates, not a fucking thunderstorm. Damn-- Damn it all. Anubis clung to a floating plank, and like a lost babe he held on to it stiffly.
Hope materialized before his two weary eyes in the form of land. Anubis found his energy, compelled himself to avoid fainting, to fail miserably in the process.
--
The Salvarian swordsman unfurled his lashes to a ragged, frowning face upon him. A pair of hands rummaged through his pockets, hastily frisked him for lacking wherewithal. When one approached his face he seized the wrist. Its owner gasped, shook off Anubis’ grasp and sprang back on his rear. Anubis frowned, found his energy and rose, stifling a groan as he straightened. “Back off, or I’ll kill you.”
“Hmph. I’m not afeard of dyin’.” His face wrinkled, a gizer stood wearing a graying mustache and imperial. Loose, cut-sleeved garments betrayed his sparing frame as he drew a steel cutlass, which leapt from its sheath and glared at Anubis’ face like a bared tooth. The coast stretched on one side, and on the other lush thickets rose up from tropical earth and remained grimly motionless. Dheathain watches...
“You steal from the dead often?” the Salvarian sneered.
“What’s it matter to you?”
“Well, I was almost robbed not two minutes ago, and by someone who doesn’t know how to hold a sword,” he paused, studying the inept angle the blade lay from the thief’s aging hands, “so it matters quite more than you’d think. Where did you steal that?”
“Oi! step back or I’ll slit your cursed throat!” the man barked. The manner he waved his blade about struck Anubis as reminiscent of memories of holding his first sword. Something came running up the shore, and on all fours. Heels up Anubis rose on his feet in an attempt to get a better view, then glanced briefly at the man as he snarled his second warning. “Step back, I said!”
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