Sounds of battle were suddenly growing stronger outside the door. Annette held her breath and changed her grip on her practice sword. Scoyl also changed his stance to a more ready-for-engage position. He held his dagger in his right hand and the practice sword in the left.

There were just two of them in the room. Well, three, but only two knew how to hold a sword. One and a half, perhaps, if Annette had to be completely honest. If any pirate decided to just wander in amidst the battle in there, their chances wouldn't be too high.

The room with no lights was dark, but Annette could usually adjust her eyes to the limited light and vaguely see the shapes and outlines of furniture or people in the last week or so that they'd been on this ship. But… it started to look more and more like some kind of hole had sucked out all the light and left only the darkness in it.

It wasn't that noticeable. It was dark there already, but the… unnatural blackness that dimmed even the small rays that would usually come through the cracks made Annette feel quite puzzled. She could only really make out the bare outlines of her own body when looking down.

"It's so damn… dark in here!" cursed the navigator, hitting something with his foot. "Can't even see my own legs!"

"Shut up." shushed Annette, quietly. "There is someone outside the door."

She couldn't see his face but she did hear some mumblings that sounded like he either was agreeing or panicking. Annie looked back to Scoyl, to see what he was doing, but saw nothing. She could only rely on her hearing for the time being.

Suddenly, the doors flung open. A big shape fell through them. Annie couldn't realize what the shape was as the light of the moon and lamps strangely didn't penetrate the room. The rectangular gap in the darkness was the only window through which they could see. And they saw pirates rushing in.

As soon as they entered, they disappeared in the shadows. Clanking of steel and yells of intimidation were now the most common occurrences in the cabin. Screams of agony in the blackness should be terrifying, but seeing only pirates come through the door, Annette kept her thinking cool and surmised that the multiple shouts must have come from the pirates. Scoyl must have been doing some serious work on them.

Is what Annette thought before she bumped backs with him. She screamed in surprise, before quickly correcting herself and spinning to put her wooden sword to use. She stopped when she saw that it indeed was Scoyl. His face was barely visible in the dark, but she did recognize it.

Strangely, the dying screams of the pirates didn't stop, even when Scoyl was right next to her. What's going on? she wondered.

*****

Keziah took a quick glance at Edmund who seemed to be recovering. He was no longer crouching and his face looked like he was just through a few hours of drinking instead of days. With that, having felt like he did his job of protecting the Captain thoroughly, he left Edmund and the wounded sailor and rolled on his back over the railing.

The six-foot drop left him with a boot on some pirate's head, coincidently accompanied by a sound of something breaking. There were two more thugs by the cabin's entrance. Keziah tore through them with an electric touch and sword slash respectively. He dashed to the door but noticed it held a wall-like darkness within it. He stopped, and with some quick thinking came up with an idea.

"Scoyl!" he yelled into the room. "Keep this up as long as you can!"

He didn't hear a response but assumed that he had heard it. Keziah then gathered some electricity around his hand and sent a wave of it inside the room. It returned to him not a second later and told him of the positions of four pirates, five bodies, his two companions, and some curled-up shape in one of the corners.

He took advantage of the fact that none of the pirates were too preoccupied with watching the entrance and swiftly squeezed himself into the tightly packed shadows. He wasted no time in dispatching the pirate closest to him with a single sword strike. Hearing no major movement, he swung Augustus at the place where the second pirate was.

He felt a meaty resistance, confirmed by a thump of something hitting the ground. Unfortunately, it also alerted the remaining two pirates, who began stomping around fearfully. Their scattering was cut short by a throat-cutting dagger and a wooden sword to the nose.

As soon as the last two pirates were dealt with, the shadows dispersed, leaving the dark of night alone to continue the battle with the moon and lamps. All their eyes were adjusted the the darkness already, so just the absence of the black shadows was almost like a night and day difference. Through that difference, Keziah spotted that the pirate hit in the face was still standing, so he took it upon himself to help him play his role better. A sparked dash and a pommel to the temple later, the pirate was down.

Keziah steadied his breath and asked: "You okay?" to Annette.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You came just in time, though."

He looked into her eyes trying to spot if she was playing tough, but saw nothing of the sort. Satisfied, he walked to Scoyl and put a hand on his shoulder. "Good job," he said to him.

Scoyl said nothing, just nodded his head with a faint smile on his face. The moment was interrupted by cheers coming from outside. Keziah walked to the door to see what was going on and saw the sailors raising their hands triumphantly amidst the dead bodies and surrendered pirates. Breathing a sigh of relief he walked back to Annie and Scoyl.

"Looks like we won," he said to them but received little reaction. They were happy, of course, but their faces showed that the fight in their mind was a question of "when" we win and not "if" we win. The young truly think they are invincible, huh? he thought. He made a mental note to make them change this concept.

"Alright guys, drag this sack out on the main deck." He pointed at the unconscious pirate he had just knocked out with a pommel. "He breathes and the Captain might want to question anybody that lives," he explained to them. "Oh, and by the way. Who is that?" He threw a thumb back at the man standing in a corner.

"Oh, that's the navigator," answered Annette. "He was just hiding here."

"Hi…" said the navigator, his hand raised in a welcoming gesture.

"Hmm…" was all Keziah said.

Annie and Scoyl grabbed an arm each and started dragging the unconscious pirate out on the main deck. The navigator followed them. Keziah stayed behind, catching his breath and starting to recharge his mana. He started to draw the mana in and once he got a rhythm he continued to passively refill his mana core.

He looked around the dim room. Bodies littered it. Keziah wasn't one puke at such a sight; years of adventuring and surviving desensitized him to corpses. And those ones didn't even begin to smell. But he still felt unsettled. He didn't enjoy killing, or death. Whenever he looked at dead bodies all he could think was "Damn, what a waste."

His breath caught, and the nauseating room which was getting smaller and smaller in his mind pushed him out of there. He walked carefully, trying not to step on the bodies. His head down, looking for a path. He couldn't not look at the faces. Some were almost peaceful, others frozen in a last scream of pain and dread.

He spotted a face he recognized, and his own froze. It belonged to a big man. Sailor, fighter, and a good man. Graceful in defeat and not overly boastful in success. Selfless, more ugly than handsome, and with so much more time to live than he was given. Keziah stared at that face. A feeling he hoped would never be felt by him again returned. Responsibility. Guilt. Shame. All together.

<Stop, it's not your fault,> Augustus tried to reach him in his mind.

"I know," Keziah said aloud, "I know… but you know how it is."

<I do. At least I think I do. I'm in your head but I can't read your thoughts if you don't place them on a plate before me.>

Keziah chuckled weakly. "Well that's good, otherwise I would have to toss you away every time a redhead goes by…"

<Okay that's enough of your sex life for the next five years, thank you very much.>

"Kidding…" Keziah faintly chuckled. "My thoughts are not that impure. You should see what some of them do to me. The quiet ones especially…"

<Dear gods, boy, I think I've had enough.>

"You're just jealous you don't have a body," Keziah teased.

<Mhm…>

Keziah smiled, and not a forceful smile but a genuine one. He let it sit on his face for a bit. It felt nice.

<Better?>

<Yeah, it just took me back a little, that's all.>

<Remember, he did it on his own. Even if you were to give him an order, at the end of the day it would still be his decision whether to fight or not. You need to accept that.>

<I think I had, but maybe it's harder than I thought.>

<It always is. You learn to know it too.>

Keziah silently nodded, took one more look at Red, and stepped out of the cabin.