Taking his exit from the hold with a shrivelled and vacant belly, Mikey dragged his feet to the starboard railing once more. His skin retained the faintest scent of charred meat whilst he peeled with the slightest brush. 

As Mikey arrived at the railing, under the cold moonlight, he came to see Gisla waiting patiently.

“Finally decided to show up?” Gisla asked with a smug look, her hands brushing over an opened page in her book.

“No thanks. Not up for it. Let’s call a truce, for the night, yeah?” Mikey bluntly gestured his surrender, flopping onto the ground once he had arrived beside her.

“What ever could you be talking about?” Gisla asked in a playfully sinister tone.

“This back and forth banter, I’m too tired. We’ll pick it up tomorrow,” Mikey responded, essentially sighing out his words.

“Oh? So we’re working it on your time? Just take your pick of banter when you can be bothered for it?” Gisla asked, placing her hands on her hips.

“I AM the captain.”

After Mikey's response, Gisla left an anxious silence in the air. Taking a few steps to widen the gap between herself and Mikey, Gisla rolled up the sleeves of her dress in anticipation.

“This one’s called Onyx Grip,” she spoke out to Mikey, cracking her knuckles with the roll of her fist. “About the truce? I refuse.”

Mikey, struck with a fearful realisation, sat up and turned to Gisla. Her fist curved along a sharp lateral arc, resembling that of an energetic uppercut, with a clawed gesture from her hand. With a flinch, Mikey’s eyes widened and he made an attempt to shoot to his feet. He failed.

An ominous onyx emerged from the sail’s shadow in the form of a human hand. Mikey rose on the palm, being enclosed in the trap by the feminine fingers folding over him. He made a vain attempt at escape as he scrambled up the palm of the hand, but was ultimately pinned, from the waist down, between the middle and ring finger of the conjured fist.

“Eugh! The fuck are you doing you bit-” Mikey pushed out as the air was squeezed out of him, though he immediately found himself dry retch from the sudden momentum.

A cruel grin emerged from Gisla, the rare moment of power over Mikey going straight to her head.

“I ought to call you puppy again, c’mon, fight back!” Gisla taunted as the umbrous hand began to shake Mikey like a bottle of champagne. His wheezing was drowned out by a gust of wind, the cold air slipping over his sweating forehead.

Mikey, in a desperate attempt to free himself, drew his hand to his neck and gripped tight - the jerking movement of the conjuration making it difficult to hold. The skin around his neck suddenly flared with brilliant light, rapidly illuminating his blood system. Mikey’s skin quickly embraced the flare, allowing the light to spread all over his skin.

“Hey! Hey, that’s cheating! What are you doing?!” Gisla weakly screamed out from behind the cover of her eyes.

The flash completely dispersed the summoned hand, banishing it from the three-dimensional world. Mikey, who was blinding to the naked eye, approached Gisla.

His slow approach began with him pulling an empty bucket on deck with his telekinetic abilities.

“Courtesy of Galliard,” he announced with menacing intent. Mikey unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants to the floor, before he unleashed a full reserve of urination into the bucket. The burbling liquid filling the bucket was a brief warning to Gisla, still blinded by the light.

“NO! YOU WOULDN’T!” Gisla roared, clumsily shuffling back with her arms waving to avoid the unseen obstacles.

“I tried to call a truce, princess,” Mikey replied, the last tinkling of his stream dropping into the bucket. “Now, here we are.”

He reached down for the bucket, grabbing the handle, and hauled it after Gisla. She found herself bumping into barrels, tripping over loose ropes and, finally, hitting the wall of the forecastle - her back flat against it.

“Mikey, Mikey! Please Mikey! Never again - NEVER AGAIN!” Gisla pleaded.

“Captain, the Blackjack has company,” Lady spoke out in a phantasmal voice, appearing beside him with her gaze focused out over the water.

“As you can see, I am in the middle of Tharix’s greatest revenge story. They will write ballads of the wrongs that are righted on this nigh-” Mikey had gone on to ramble, his hand cradling the bucket’s handle with excitable anticipation.

“I’m sorry captain, but this is no jest. With your permission, I would sound the bell,” Lady replied, prompting Mikey to deactivate his blinding spell and return Gisla’s visual orientation.

“You survive tonight Gisla, but I’ll make damn sure your crimes are not lost to the ages,” Mikey warned her, placing the bucket of urine on the ground and joining Lady in her gaze over the water. “So, what is this company?”

Gisla, shaken and recovering from the mere thought of what was to happen, bent over and gasped for a reviving breath of air.

“You don’t hear them Mikey? They loathe me out of envy. All of them lost to the seas, searching for a vessel,” Lady forewarned, convincing Mikey to take a closer look over the railing.

Candlelight eyes stared at Mikey through the veil of waves on the surface. Many of them swayed and shifted, yet never alleviated their gaze.

Gisla marched over to Mikey with a stubborn attempt at addressing the severity of his early grievances.

“Gisla shut up and go find Adendé,” Mikey didn’t avert his eyes from the sea, worriedly hovering his hand over the hilt of his blade. “He should be in the hold. I don’t know what’s about to happen.”

Gisla, noticing Mikey’s change in tone and demeanor, nodded and bolted for the stairs.

A drop fell to Mikey’s cheek with the vanishing of the pale moon... It had begun to rain.

Dim oil lamps floated onto deck from the hold, hung beneath or behind cover from the water. A light pattering from the growing shower had begun to hit Mikey’s shoulders, though he remained vigilant.

Adendé and Gisla returned to deck, arriving beside MIkey and surveying the sea.

“Lost spirits; so many. We must be over a grave,” Adendé commented as he looked back and forth over the sea shore, barely able to see the glow from the waves and ripples formed by the rain.

“I don’t see anything - I don’t understand what we’re looking at!” Gisla squinted, trying persistently to see something through the rain, but finding nothing but the mix of salt and freshwater.

“Lady, sound the alarm. I don’t care if it’s raining, we need everybody up here,” Mikey commanded, as Lady obliged.

Ding ding ding ding!

The alarm rang, tearing the crew from their hammocks and snoozing, which swiftly brought them out onto deck.

“It’s raining, this better not be some lame ass prank,” Lazarus commented, a sword in his hand as he cautiously looked out into the darkness.

“Lost spirits. They won’t kill you, but they’ll attempt to devour your soul. Magic affects them - swords do not. If you're brave enough to bare knuckle it, you might disorient them at best,” Adendé informed them concisely. "Just, whatever you do, stay out of the sea."

“Spirits in the rain, how romantic,” Galliard quipped as he rolled his shoulders in preparation.

"This is the part where we come up with a witty pun about knuckles and sandwiches, Galliard," Lazarus said as he dropped his soaking doublet, his wet shirt sticking to the definition on his body.

Liza was leaning against a wall with her arms folded, taking shelter from the rain under the overhang of the captain's quarters. She sighed lightly, more inconvenienced than worried about the so-called spirits.

The crew waited with great unease, a drumming silence accompanied only by the falling rain.

Crash!

A wailing spectre emerged from the water at the apex of a wave, riding the momentum as it crashed against the hull.

“Save me! Save me from her!” the figure cried out, feigning the appearance of a sailor with its incorporeal clothing hanging loose like melting wax.

The undead sailor flew up before falling towards the nearest living body on deck: Adendé.

“Watch closely Mikey,” he called out as the spirit sprawled out its arms, attempting to forcefully embrace the masked giant.

Inviting the challenge, a sudden spark of electricity surged from Adendé's fist as he cocked it back. With the spirit fast approaching, he stepped forward with a clap of thunder rumbling from his sole, dragging along his fist behind him for a monstrous rear hook.

Krakoom!

Despite the seemingly incorporeal form, Adendé’s lightning encased knuckles clobbered the spirit like a sad sack of meat. The spirit was sent blasting off into the rainy darkness with a faint streak of electricity trailing it, before disappearing beneath the surface of the water.

“Here they come!” Adendé called out to the awestruck crew, their eyes briefly averted from the sea and to Adendé. This was only for a moment however, as rapidly following the initial spirit was a sudden tidal wave of lambent green. The wave was made up of dozens of weeping phantoms, all falling straight for the deck and its inhabitants.

Liza was the first of the crew to move, darting into the rain and leaping onto the railing. A spirit flew over her, aiming to land on Gisla, which she tackled from behind. The two tumbled away, though the spirit eventually slipped through the floorboards below Liza - phasing through the solid wood.

Gisla, inspired by Liza's acrobatics, took a ready stance to face the oncoming spirits.

"Give me your body woman! I need it! Please!" an obese and bloated sailor screamed at Gisla as it flew towards her, his hands reaching out to grab her.

"To Hell with this!" Gisla's inspiration immediately dissolved in the face of her aggressor.

Turning and running through the rain, her heels splashed in the shallow puddles on deck. The bloated spirit chased after her, crying for her to let him in.

Lazarus and Galliard found themselves back to back, the horde of spirits especially interested in their athletically developed bodies.

"Bring it!" Galliard roared as they came tumbling towards him.

The two young men began battering the spirits as soon as they came into range, ducking and weaving under swipes and returning with heavy punches to send them staggering.

One, two, five, twelve, eighteen: the numbers continued to add to their horde, as the boys fought the tireless phantoms off.

Mikey, who neighbored Adendé, was dodging and weaving spirits that were flying in. Though he was intent on replicating Adendé's thunderous fist, he struggled to find an opening which let him.

Two sailors, flying towards him, forced him to duck under them - though the slippery boards left him to lose his footing.

"Why are you wasting time Mikhail? Hit something," Adendé taunted, his fists sending phantom after phantom barreling back off into the sea.

"I can't catch a break! They won't back off!" Mikey replied, pushing off the railing and skidding along his behind to avoid a descending spectre.

After landing, the same spectre launched forward towards Mikey. Its mouth was tightly closed like it'd been sewn, but it's envious eyes screamed for Mikey's compliance.

Before reaching Mikey, as he brought his hands up to punch it away, a great rope whipped down from the sails above. Entangling the spirit's, the ropes grabbed not only the ones around Mikey, but also those that surrounded the other crew members.

"I've cleared the lower levels, but something else approaches," Lady would say as she manifested in her ghostly form beside Mikey, looking out to the blackened sea.

Lady had used the free ropes above deck to bind and hurl the spirit's back into the ocean waves.

"This isn't a grave," Adendé spoke out in realisation, watching a distant movement in the darkness - too far to distinctly make out. "It's a feeding ground."