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The Saint Rose’s crew would not have left the spirit beasts unguarded. If bluffing failed, I intended to engage the marines while Sarah took any opportunities to help. Having partially recovered from my internal injuries, I could again use mana to strengthen my body and move faster than any but the most exceptional mortal humans. Fighting the marines should be far easier than when I did so earlier tonight. I expected to take no injuries.

Of course things couldn't be that easy. The Saint Rose’s quartermaster complicated our plan. She cultivated at the mana gathering stage, the first full stage for practitioners. And she had posted herself to oversee the cargo during the attack. Apparently everyone except me was in the know and thought these spirit beasts were something special to all be trying to steal and guard them.

We rushed into the cargo hold, noticed her and the marines, and halted.

“Uh, hey ma’am!” Sarah tried, “we heard you need help down here.”

The quartermaster immediately ordered the marines to detain us. She knew us by sight, and she knew we didn’t belong anywhere near the cargo.

I shot Sarah a glance, “It was worth trying.”

Two marines stayed back with the cultivator, and two more came forward to capture us. I prepared myself for a difficult battle. Sarah believed me to be human, and I didn’t intend to show her otherwise if I could help it. As such, I couldn’t afford to be reckless and get heavily injured beyond human limits.

 

We couldn’t avoid a fight, so I decided to get started on my own terms. I used mana to strengthen my shoulders and arms, swinging my cutlass toward the first marine. He easily parried me, but my powerful blow simply pushed his sword aside and continued through his neck, decapitating him.

I wanted to kill the other marine too, but the quartermaster cast a spell that controlled the ceiling to splinter and deform. Jagged pieces of wood pierced through my sword arm and into the deck, limiting my ability to swing it. The weakened ceiling then collapsed. I barely rolled out of the way when a heavy locker from the crew quarters above landed where I had just been.

Now I was all tangled up after rolling while my arm had been pinned. The surviving marine was about to slash me while I re-oriented myself, but Sarah threw a knife at him. He deflected it with his sword, but she bought me a moment to kick apart my arm’s wooden bindings. I was about to overwhelm the marine after that despite my injured arm, but the quartermaster again intervened. A tangle of splintered deck rose up and snared my feet, causing me to whiff. The marine easily avoided my attempt to end his tiresome existence.

I’d had enough of her. I threw my knife into her stomach. Or rather, should have done so, given I’d empowered my throw. She wore some kind of chain armored vest under her shirt! At least I knocked her breath and bought a moment of time.

‘Hell! I want that! Armor that can block attacks from a mana gathering stage practitioner...’

I stopped sulking at the unfairness of it all, brightening up when I realized that I could just take the armor from her after we finished. Whatever, while she was busy recovering I hurled my cutlass through my marine opponent’s chest faster than a mortal could react.

Of course, by the time I considered approaching her directly the esteemed quartermaster caught her breath and started casting again. How was I supposed to approach against two more marines and her incessant meddling? I didn’t see much of a choice, so I grabbed the headless marine’s sword and charged. The quartermaster opted to reinforce the final two marines directly. Their speed and strength remained the same but she managed to shield their bodies from what should have been fatal blows. Whenever I tried to get to her directly, they intercepted me instead.

‘This is going to take forever and I’m not certain I won’t get tired before she does.’

“Ali, I have an idea!”

I heard Sarah shout.

“Alright!” I responded, with no idea what the idea was. Because I couldn’t really pay attention to what she was doing, I just tried to keep the marines off her.

A few moments later I had a chance to check on her, but I sort of wished that I hadn’t; we were all going to die, horribly.

‘I never even had a chance to spend an entire day just relaxing in a field, feeling the Terran sun and taking in all the colors, ah. My life has been short and tragic!’ I reflected.

Sarah was releasing the spirit beasts!

The cages for the spirit beasts were only secured against animal escapes, so Sarah did manage to open them. I could only hope that she wasn’t crazy for thinking it was a good idea to introduce wild animals to a melee, especially since we were confined inside a cargo hold.

It was chaos.

I was too busy dodging and rolling around a blur of claws, fangs and fur to really understand the situation. A pair of spotted creatures like dogs kept me on my toes while a large cat and snouted pig bothered the quartermaster and marines. At some point I noticed foxes scurrying around underfoot too. I couldn’t tell what Sarah got herself up to at this time, but I hoped she would be okay and had ran away by now. I tried not to injure the ferocious animals since the whole point of coming down here had been to free them up for Hana and her friends.

The quartermaster fared little better than me. She remained mostly occupied avoiding a large spotted yellow cat that kept trying to maul her, rather than fighting it directly. Apparently she shared my concerns about harming the beasts. 

Whenever I had the chance, I wove my way toward her, narrowly avoiding snaps and swipes from the deadly creatures. Thankfully, these animals’ speeds remained in the mortal realm, despite easily outclassing an average person. I still didn’t want to take my chances trying to outperform them as a group in an actual fight.

My target noticed my approach and had her marines block the spirit beasts so she could focus on me. The marines had no chance against the creatures, but the quartermaster’s reinforcement held and they toughed out the encounter. Fortunately, the marines couldn’t focus on the spirit beasts and me at the same time, so I dodged past them. The quartermaster had previously noticed me coming.

She quickly performed well-rehearsed hand seals to cast another spell, but I got to her first. I struck her acupuncture points and injected mana to disrupt her casting. Her spell failed, and she puked out bad blood from the backlash.

‘I may only know almost exclusively movement techniques, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do something basic like interrupting a spell!’

She tried to hit me back, but I expected that and dodged her blow. I started to hit her joints to disable her, starting with a kick to the side of her near knee. She fell to her knees and raised her open hand to me, looking at me with wide eyes, blood dripping from her mouth; her lips were moving like she wanted to say something. Maybe she wanted to give up, but maybe she was trying to cast another spell. I chose not to take a risk; I killed her.

Without their superior’s support, the marines didn’t even last a minute before they also met their demise at the animals’ natural weaponry. I prepared to face the spirit beasts alone, wondering how, or if, I could manage to escape from this cargo hold without hurting anything valuable.

I then witnessed a baffling scene. Sarah had not wisely fled as I expected. Instead, she faced the spirit beasts, with a knee to the deck and her head bowed fearfully . She even spoke as if the animals would understand her, “Thank you, spirits for your generous mercy.”

Amazingly, the spirit beasts did not tear her apart.

“They can understand you?” I questioned, incredulous.

The big cat snarled at me. I threw up my hands and backed away from it. “Whoops. My bad big girl.”

Sarah tried to speak soothingly, but her voice trembled, “Ali! please be polite. Spirits are said to be proud and intelligent. Naturally they can understand speech.”

It was news to me that animals could understand people, but on the other hand, I didn’t recognize half of these types, and I was in another world, so who knows. I decided to trust Sarah on this topic, so I followed her example and pretended to be all humble with the beasts.

Seeming to understand that we wouldn’t attack them, the animals mostly left us alone. Occasionally one would come by and sniff us. 

Sarah made her way over to me while I looked over the quartermaster’s corpse. The spotted dogs started eating the marines.

“I don’t recognize them,” I informed Sarah.

She looked at me strangely.

‘Oh no, does everyone know about this?’

“They’re hyena spirits,” she explained patiently, “the cat is a jaguar spirit. Everyone knows foxes. As for the other… who knows? People say the mana on Avalon makes them smart. I don’t know how it works.”

“Ah, interesting. I must not have been paying attention or something,” I tried to play off my previous ignorance. I failed.

“Why haven’t you heard of spirit beasts before? You joined the crew from Fort Breslow.”

I racked my head quickly to explain myself.

“Um… I uh, didn’t get out much? I came to Avalon without being asked. It’s hard to say. Yeah.”

“Okay...”

Fortunately Sarah seemed considerate enough not to press the issue, despite my evasiveness.

“Well then you explained to them that we were here to help, and didn’t just release wild animals. Whew! So your idea wasn’t as desperate as I thought,” I concluded.

Sarah shivered and shook her head, “No, it was very desperate. I just didn't want to see you cut down while I did nothing. I’ve never talked to a spirit before tonight, and I can’t understand them. I didn’t know if they agreed when I opened their cages.”

And here I had thought I was the impulsive one. I felt strange that instead of running away, Sarah had risked getting savaged by animals just to help me out. I was a bit too busy looting to reflect on that though.

I finally got our quartermaster’s chain shirt off and inspected it, “Damnit! This is just normal armor that she reinforced with her own mana!” I threw it down. What a waste of my excitement.

Sarah noticed I was done and recommended we find Hana.

“You said you agreed with her that we would help her steal the spirit beasts, so where is she? I’m nervous to stay here. We should go find her.”

I agreed with that; someone might come to check on the quartermaster’s team. Not to mention, the hyenas were almost done scavenging the marines and I didn’t want to be their next meal if they were still hungry after.

We were just about to leave when more people showed up. I groaned in frustration.

I didn’t recognize any of the newcomers, and they didn’t dress or equip themselves quite like our crew. I assumed they were Hana’s pirate allies. Unfortunately, they didn’t know to assume the same.

“What in tarnation happened down here?” one of them exclaimed, coming to a stop. He had only one eye, the other covered by a leather patch. He was also the only one among the group to have animalistic features, in his case a dog-like tail and ears, patterned similar to the hyenas, as well as fangs.

“Why are there two girls in a pile of dead bodies?” A bearded one with a bandana for hair added.

The eyepatch hyena smacked the beard pirate, “That’s what I just said ya doofus.”

‘Maybe they were too busy to worry about us leaving.’

Eyepatch, Beard, and their cronies started checking out the scene while continuing to bicker. We tried to look small and slip away.

Eyepatch grabbed Sarah’s arm roughly, “where do ya think you’re going girls?”

“Let her go!” I demanded. He ignored me.

“We obviously helped the spirit beasts or we’d be dead too!” Sarah said.

“We’re with Hana!” I continued, realizing that Sarah’s explanation approach was better than simply protesting like I had done, “We released them!”

Eyepatch eased up on Sarah and scrunched up his face for a moment before letting her go, “that actually makes sense.”

She tried to leave, but he pushed her to her knees and shouted, “Don’t mean I trust you for a second. I know you ain’t part of our crew.”

Seeing them treat Sarah so poorly had me seething, but attacking the pirates right now also seemed like a terrible idea given their unknown strength and greater numbers. As such, I just clenched my teeth and bore through my grievances.

“You keep custody of these two.” Eyepatch signaled to Beard, “Figure out their story. Make sure they don’t try anything funny. I’ll make sure the freed captives make it back to the ship.”

Eyepatch spoke with the hyenas, making some of the most horrifying sounds that I never expected to come from creatures that looked like either demons or dogs. They seemed to enter an agreement and all them and their animal mates followed him and the other pirates out.

 

The spirit beasts, those ungrateful creatures, with no argument, just left us alone with a group of strange pirates! We probably could have freed ourselves, but I didn’t want to fight them and get on Hana’s bad side after all the effort we went through helping with the spirit beasts. I figured, once everything calmed down, that vixen would come explain and we’d be treated better. I attempted to model the very picture of patience. 

‘If she doesn’t, well I guess I’ll be in a right fucking temper.’

Sarah, of course, didn’t have any real choices under the circumstances. I tried to tell her that we’d be fine, but I wasn’t so sure myself. I mostly just wanted her to feel better. I too had known that feeling of being powerless.

‘This situation has gotten out of control. Maybe I should have just warned Saint Rose’s crew about Hana and helped them against the pirates in the first place. Ahhh, but then I’d have to suffer through another month and a half of salted beef. I guess I’d rather die trying.’

Waiting below decks in Saint Rose for something good to happen became far more bearable after making that resolution. I still grew increasingly uncomfortable waiting. Beard didn’t seem to believe anything Sarah or I told him. If he didn’t let us go soon I was gonna tear him apart.

 

Hana finally arrived. Sarah screamed when she saw her. I realized my mistake. ‘Hell. I should have warned her earlier that Hana wasn’t a human.’

“What the hell! She’s a spirit too?” she said in shock, taking in Hana’s black-tipped ears, ferocious fangs, and so many tails.

Hana seemed amused at Sarah’s change in attitude. “Indeed, little cutie. Still willing to follow me around?”

Sarah responded by trembling. I was sort of scared too, given how strong Hana seemed, but I didn’t think Sarah could sense cultivation so I was surprised. Maybe it was the demonic appearance that got to her.

Hana laughed at us, but told Beard that indeed we had agreed to assist her and we were friendly to their purpose.

“Thanks Hana,” I said, trying to seem grateful despite being upset. We went topside intending to board the pirates’ ship. When we came up, Sarah mentioned that the medium-sized, two-masted vessel was called a brigantine. The pirates had attached their ship to ours with various grapples and ropes, giving them ability to easily board us. Now that we were finally leaving Saint Rose, I wasn’t upset to be gone, but also wasn’t thrilled at first impressions of our new crew mates. Sarah didn’t look pleased either. I’d have to make things up to her later, somehow.

Suddenly the scene brightened. I looked up to an object in the night sky. Glowing embers formed into a huge ashen eagle. It ignited and dove toward us, wreathed in fire and billowing dark smoke. The eagle crashed into the ship we intended to board, exploding in a blast of heat. The brigantine’s deck transformed into a furnace, its rigged and sails nothing more than tinder in the inferno. That ship belonged to hell now. There was no exceptional cultivator present to smother the flames.

Even at our distance, the attack scorched Sarah and I as well, and painfully. We were lucky, though, and seemed to have burns only, at least at a quick glance. If we weren’t delayed in the cargo hold before coming up, it could have been us dying in the hellfire.

The brigantine’s unfortunate crew and the spirit beasts we’d taken such pains to rescue surely wouldn’t survive.

The surviving pirates’ situation had suddenly reversed from a highly successful raid into a desperate battle to subdue the Saint Rose’s crew, should the pirates have any hope to escape. And we had just thrown in our lot with those pirates, too. What an irritating turn of events it turned out to be.

Sarah drew me out from my depressed thoughts by making a horrifying noise, looking at her burned body. I was so stupid! Of course she was mortal and a human besides; what I could consider a minor injury may prove disastrous for her. I barely understood demonic first aid, much less that of humans. I figured that a small stream of energy couldn’t make her any worse, so I shared a tiny fraction of my mana with her, keeping in mind she had no cultivation base to absorb any excess. I didn’t see any visible improvement, but she calmed down at least. I hoped I did something for her.

While I tried to treat Sarah, the pirates hacked away at the connecting ropes with their cutlasses, working quickly to separate the flaming wreck from the embattled galleon before it too caught fire.

Hana and whichever cultivator created that terrible eagle clearly engaged in an absolute battle, holding nothing back. I could barely focus on Sarah under their wild pressure.

I also caught sounds of intense fighting between the pirates and galleon’s crew. This engagement had reached a critical point where either side needed to subdue the other in order to go anywhere on the single functional vessel, but I couldn’t force myself to care about that right now.

I continued any effort I could think of to stabilize Sarah, who had fallen unconscious. I didn’t realize when it happened, but I realized she had become my only friend or person I trusted on all of Terra, after even just a week together; I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her now. Why was she so frail? I cursed humans for their weakness. I cursed myself for failing to protect her even while standing next to her.