During the discourse between pirates, Noe had watched from her puppy-esque position clinging to Lacey. The cave was horrid too, but she was becoming desensitized. Horror can only cling so long before immunity overrides its basic nature.

With a deep breath, she stood straighter and attemped to recover some composure, but the black circles under her eyes made her look merely tired and years beyond her age. "My mother's tales spoke nothing of this. I don't know..." She paused and shrugged.


That got her attention. Turning to Lacey, she gaped.

"So... we really are not the first to come across this cur--strange land. Perhaps..." She wouldn't give voice to it, but hope bubbled up within her. They could come out of this alive.

Crunch.

Iale and Lacey exchanged looks; they both knew what that sound signified.

"Keep walking, you lot," said Iale in a warning tone of voice. She thwacked Emerson on the shin. "Keep that lantern high as the sky, matey. None o' ye look down."

The horrible crunching was intermittent, not constant; it takes a lot of human corpses to fill a large cavern, and stories with the floors made of bones are always bit exaggerated. But the rest of the crew felt that even one body was bad news. Still, they kept their mouths shut. It was as good as a death sentence to show fear and cowardice among pirates at a mere skeleton.

Luckily, Winnie Loco was a bit naive; he didn't even slow down, probably thinking that the crunching was made by volcanic rocks or something.

At long last, they came to the edge of the lake. They could feel it before they could see it; the cavern was so large that fluctuations of hot and cold had caused an uncanny wind, blowing across the surface of the glassy water, causing faint ripples. Emerson lifted his lantern.

There was the edge of the water, the shallow water, the deeper water...and it just kept going. A misty fog swept the surface of the water, obscuring almost every other part of the cavern. Emerson turned up the phosphor level in his lantern, illuminating the scene as much as possible in grim light.

"I see something out there," said Jim nervously, squinting his eyes to try to maximize his vision. "It's...like a..."

"It's a bloody box," said Iale, scratching her head. "Floatin' in the water." She turned to Lacey. "What do we do, cap'n?"

Lacey smiled at the girl, thankful she seemed to be coming out of her shell again. It wasn't much, but it was a start. They moved on.

Crunch.



Lacey glanced at Iale with a knowing look, her eyes scanning slowly on the ground ahead of them with a sinking feeling. So many bodies...how had they got here? It was like a battle field. How many stories had been told about bone littered ground...it was not quite the same when you saw it, never quite as completely covered as it appeared. She hoped Noe listened to Iale's advice as they moved on.

Stopping at the edge of the massive lake, Lacey watched as Emerson raised the light. It was impossibly endless, and the eerie mist that hung over it didn't sit well with the blonde. Every inch of her screamed DANGER, but there was...something...



Her green eyes narrowed, the blonde pirate thinking. If they all ran out there, chances are, they'd all die. If she sent a few, they might not be strong enough to carry the bloody box back. Glancing around at the crew, she let go of Noe's hand for a moment. Walking closer to the water, she tested the viscosity, stepping out onto it.

The water was.....water.

It was still, shallow and tepid; it didn't seem to have any special properties at all. The only thing odd that Lacey noticed was that there were no living things floating in it: no fish, no kelp fronds, no algae. It was likely that they could not survive in such a deep, lightless place.

Behind Lacey, Iale drew her sword. Part of her knew that there would be nothing to fight down here in the dank emptiness of the cavern, but she knew the sound of sliding metal against the sheath would be a comfort - even though in the past she had drawn many a blade on Lacey to attempt to cut off her head.

"How's the water?" she asked casually.

Lacey smirked, feeling heartened by the sound of Iale's unsheathed sword. It meant that the small pirate was ready for action, and Lacey knew first hand that the red head was a worthy foe. Looking over the lake, she thumbed her pistol hammer.

"Warm. Wet. It aint like th' other stuff. It's just water. Shallow here, but I'm not sure what it's like out thare." Turning, she looked at the pirate with a mischievous grin and false bravado.

"Up fer a swim?"

For a crew of seafarers, they were surprisingly adverse to the idea.

"Arr, I be used to sailin' on it, not swimmin' in it," spat Slip.

But Winnie Loco, who had a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy, had already dived into the water. The skinny young man flapped like a fish for a moment.

"It's shallow, ye great stinkin' pile o' mung beans," said Iale sarcastically.

Winnie sat up. The water came up to his nipples.

The crew splashed through the water, which did not get any deeper than their waists. It was warm enough near the shore, but as they went on it became warmer, finally reaching a temperature approaching that of a steaming bath. It was very comfortable, especially in the dank, chilly cave. Iale, however, was forced to dog-paddle, glaring all the while at everyone as though daring them to make a comment. No one did.

"Now, this is more like it," said Lucius, in a fine temper. "This must be a natural hot spring. I've never seen one so large."

"Aye, like the hot springs on the ol' Gioran coast," said Noggin, who had apparently been everywhere in the world at some point. "Best bath o' me life."

"Only bath o' yer life," said Iale, sniffing and snorting as some water went up her nose. It was fresh, but she didn't appreciate it one bit.

The box that had seemed so close before was further away than they had thought. Finally, they reached it. It was the plainest and most boring box that they had ever seen, no longer than a foot wide and a couple inches thick, made from something like pine wood. It floated, bobbing and waving as if borne by a stream of bubbles.

Double Sum Sam, pure piratical greed gleaming in his eyes, stepped forward, his arms out.

"OUCH!" he yelled, jumping back. "It's bloody hot!"

The water had been getting steadily warmer; the water around the box was close to boiling. The crew was beginning to sweat.

"Anyone know how to throw a rope lasso?" suggested Noggin, shrugging.

"What...you don't know?" asked Slip incredulously, raising an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes. "Great, one thing that might actually be useful to know..."

Johanes bobbed in the water beside the rest of the crew.

"I know how." He said casually, it was just one of those things that he'd picked up along with general insanity. "Does anyone have any rope?"

Johanes could reach the bottom but he was an old man, floating was easier.

Noe slipped into the water like an otter, allowing herself to feel the heat of it's lush waves. Lacey was right; it was just water, nothing to be frigtened of or afraid. Smiling, she spun in the shallows and flitted up to the blonde pirate. Noe had practically been born in the crystal blue water of the islands, and swimming was second nature to her.

Why walk when you can feel the flow of the current around you, anyway? Grinning, she hugged the older woman about the wait quickly before standing up and acting like an adult.

As they neared the hottest water, Noe's face began to tighten. She didn't like where this was headed; she had hotsprings in her own family's lands, and she knew what bubbling meant. Somewhere around here was a rift, volcanic probably. And volcanic rifts meant gasses, and other such horrid things to kill an unsuspecting person.

"Careful, there may be toxins in the air! If you begin to feel faint, anyone, speak up so we may flee to better air." It was the only thing she thought could help.

Lacey waded along beside her crew, suprised at the warmth of the cave, and perhaps slightly concerned. Volcanic rock, bone littered beach...had she just walked them over a volcanic vent? Would the whole island explode? That couldn't be right. Volcano's rumbled a lot. This place didn't rumble.

As they moved, she wondered if the box was moving away from them. It didn't seem to be getting closer. Turning slightly, the blonde looked over the head of her mugrobi cook, checking the shore. They seemed to be much further out than she had expected. Raising her sword slightly, she prepared to stop them, brow furrowed. This...



Spinning around, she looked at Double Sum Sam. They had reached the box, bobbing and floating calming in the water. Indeed, the water had gotten steadily warmer as they moved. It seemed the source of the heat sat directly under the box.

"Sam, ye bloody greedy mongrel, get back."



Lacey pulled a face, not really sure if anyone had bothered. She glanced around.

"Come on hearties, someone got a rope fer th' man?"



The green eyed woman nodded.

"Aye, good point Noe. I ent carryin' any of ye back to the Cutlass. Squeal if ye feel woozy."

"I got a rope...somewhere," said Jim, fishing around in his unusual knapsack. It was tied around his waist, for some reason, with a long length of rope. It took Jim several moment to realize this.

Iale slapped her forehead.

"Oh, it's got rope on," he said, sounding confused. Quickly, before Lacey had time to get angry with him, he slipped off the rope, holding his waist-sack to his chest like a safety pillow as he handed the rope over to Johanes.

"Work yer magic, old man," said Slip, sniggering.

Johanes fiddled quietly with the wet rope, making a lariat. It wasn't an ideal situation to lasso something in but he was an old man and he was used to making do in less than ideal situations. Such as the less than ideal situation of being batshit insane most of the time. He tried to swing the lariat and found that it wasn't going to work.

He looked at it for a moment. He lengthened the diameter. He looked at his target. He contemplated trajectories and physics and several variable calculus. He threw the rope, wrists flicking in an odd way, the lariat becoming less a mass of sodden rope and more flying noose aimed at a non-existent neck.

It landed over the box, Johanes pulled at his end of the lariat until it tightened. He tugged. He wasn't strong enough to pull it closer.

"Well, I suppose it's time for me to hand this over to some nice strong youngster." He said, now affecting some of his prior senility. "Can a old man get some applause? Young people these days, don't know nothing. When I was young, we used our noggins..."

He glanced around at those present and sighed.

"And pigs flew in the sky!" He cackled, before lapsing back into quietude.

Everyone stared at Johanes. He was crazy even for crazy.

Slip moved to take the rope, but Adder had gotten there first; his muscles bulged as he fought to drag the box backwards. It was being pulled down by some sort of current, a whirling in the water that they only began to notice as the rope strained against the force of the water.

"Whirlpool formin'," said Iale, dog-paddling backwards; it wouldn't do to drown here. Nothing near as glorious as a death at sea. Besides, she didn't imagine anyone would save her.

The others backed away as the water began to pick up speed. No one said a word about the whirlpool; it was practically normal for this cavern. Adder's arms were feeling the strain, and so was the rope; as they looked, tiny hemp fibers began to break away from the main fold with ping-ping noises. It had not been meant for such a struggle.

"Almost," he said between gritted teeth; just as he said this, he felt the box give a tiny bit. Slip grabbed the rope in between Adder and the box, and began to help. Jim and Noggin, who were nearest, also pitched in. Slowly, surely, they felt the box began to slip out of the whirlpool.

At the same time, there was a rumbling somewhere in the cavern. It sounded like distant thunder. Very few people noticed it; most of the pirates' eyes were trained on the simple box trailing towards them through the turbulent, boiling water.

"Got it!" said Slip triumphantly, cackling as the pine box broke free and drifted towards them. "Bloody heavy for such a little thing."

"Let's crack it open," said Double Sum Sam greedily, rubbing his hands together. The background rumbling was growing louder; the others had begun to notice now, and were backing up slowly towards the shore.

She was aware of the sound, but not it's source. Initially the dark skinned girl had assumed it was her own blood in her ears, however she soon realized it was much more than that.

Feeling like she was just along for the ride in this whole ordeal, Noe took several steps backwards as the pull of the whirlpool pulled forward. She didn't need to say anything anymore, they all felt the omnipresent strange evil here.

Instead, she waded towards the shore, attempting to be prepared for... something.

Lacey watched as the crew pulled the box in, frowning. She stopped watching the odd chest and instead looked around them, lifting her pistol suspiciously, sword put away. The blonde could feel a shaking, hear a noise. Her forward motion stopped.

"Wait la-"



The green eyed woman turned to them with surprise, a strange roiling in her stomach. This was going to end badly.



The Captain had begun to back up too, closer to Noe. Growling, she shoved her pistol in its holster.

"Iale, the whole place is shakin'. Grab it an' run! Run ye clockin' erses!" Turning, she grabbed Noe's hand and began to run towards the shore, dragging the mugrobi along with her. The blonde didn't want to die buried in a cave, it wasn't right!

Iale didn't think twice about obeying Lacey's order; in fact, she had already begun to swim hurriedly towards the shoreline, her small arms pumping madly. The others waded as quickly as they could, suddenly very aware of the warmth of the water and the rumbling in the cave.

With a resounding crash, the first boulders began to fall into the lake; they could not see them, but they could hear the heavy splashes and feel the reverberation around them. Waves began to pick up behind them, simultaneously pushing and pulling; the mist obscured everything, and they could not see how close the shore was.

"It's too dark," yelled Slip from somewhere in the obscured cave.

"Follow my voice," yelled Emerson, and without hesitating, everyone obeyed; now was not a time to be questioning authority. The crew began splashing frantically in one direction, towards the sound of the man's voice. Behind them the crashing grew louder, the water hotter, and the air more and more stifling.

All at once, there was silence.

It was an unnatural silence - not the absence of sound, but the sensation that all sound was being blocked by an even louder lack of noises. The crew halted in the water, waist-deep, in front of the silhouetted, grey figure of Emerson, half-visible in the mists.

In front of him, they could see three dim incandescent circles, like dots of filmy soap catching the blue and purple lights from the air on a sunny day. Two were quite small, like the reflection of torchlight on diamonds; in the center, a larger and brighter circle shone like a miniature moon in the blackness. Around these lights came the subtle suggestions of form - a soaked clump of white whisker, the inference of a nostril, the fleeting glimpse of fey stripes stretched over taught muscles, the scent of hot breath and ancient teeth.

Their stomachs roiled and their heads grew light, and the sensation of standing over an endless precipice once again washed over them. A background roar continued in the corners of their ears. All eyes were trained on the beast.

It stared at Emerson - or at least it seemed to. Its eyes roved all over the crew, searching the souls of each individual; the center eye was trained on the trembling man in the soaked white shirt. If knowing was an act of violence, Emerson was being ravished and slaughtered. The very ends of his nerves were aflame under the sharp scrutiny of the beast.

Johanes smiled, he seemed to know what he was looking at and he was happy to have seen it. Strangely, he did not mind being known so intimately. He had lived long enough to have forgotten himself and remembered and forgotten again, it was an almost welcome feeling. Something in the world knew what he had been, even if he didn't, mostly. He wondered if the creature's presence explained why he'd been more lucid on the island... It was probably just a relapse into sanity though.

He got the feeling Emerson was having an entirely different experience to the one he was having. He wondered if he should say anything... He didn't want to annoy the magnificent creature before them. Although if Emerson got eaten by a mythic beast, it would be a hell of a way to go.

"Potatoes." Johanes whispered to himself. "High in Potassium."

Rocking crashing into the rapidly warming waters around them, Lacey held Noe's hand tightly as they made for the shore. The darkness engulfed them and for a moment it was impossible to find the way out of the roiling water. Swearing, she continued on in what seemed forwards.



Turning to the left, swearing heavily, she began to make her way towards the man. It seemed to be getting easier to see, when suddenly, it was silent.

Immensely silent.

The blonde stopped short, hand resting on her pistol, other hand tightly on the mugrobi girl's. In front of Emerson were three lights, a hint of wet fur, muscles, whiskers. The woman gasped as she felt light headed, unwilling to say the creatures name, as though it would make it too real.

Although all others (save the crazy Johannes) were scared silent, Noe was suddenly awestruck in the most religious form of the term. Here, before the man in white, the man she'd tried to save on the rigging what seemed lifetimes before, was a-- was a Dapao. Her heart beat like a thousand hide drums in her extremities, and she felt blood rushing through her, born on the riptide. Lacey's hand over her own was the only contact that made her believe this wasn't just a dream.

In her pocket was the watch that had a likeness to the creature in front of her. No mere sculpture of metal and man could capture such... such... beauty. Ferocity. Like a hurricane.

With a small gasp, Noe folded herself into a bow, just above the waterline. At first she began to mumble to herself in a dialect of island mugrobi, phrases of liquid heat like the water they had just left, the words gaining speed if not volume. If any of the crew were familiar with the odd strain of the rare language, they would have heard her telling a story about a wounded sailor and a Dapao, known as fable but still told to youths going a-roaming. Her mind was racing, faster and faster, trying to remember why her mother had told her it was so telling of the Dapao, even if the story was false.

She remembered like lightning, and leaning into Lacey, she whispered at the blonde pirate. "Open water. Capt'n. They do not come into places like this. Not-- not willingly."

But what could capture one of the Great Lords of the world?

Slowly, their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and they could see the whole form of the beast now. It was not a color they could understand; it appeared as a mottled mixture of hues, ever-changing, the outlines of its form shifting and tossing like a mad ocean. Parts of the dapao seemed to float away on the air like so much smoke, while the water beneath it seemed to flow in between its stripes, rebuilding it.

yOU HAVE BEEN TOUCHEd

It was a shadow of a meaning, nothing more. Certainly not words, certainly not Estuan; they certainly did not hear it with their ears, or even remember the sound of the words inside their minds. But the meaning found its way to them all the same.

Its eyes bore into Emerson's skull.

hIDE IT AWAy

- a flash of meaning inside their minds, untranslateable; they saw a horde of dark beings, shadowy and grey, their expressionless faces melting like putty; a twinge of bottomless terror -

The crew moaned in unison, their hands clutching their heads.

Vik sat straight up on his cot aboard the Cutlass, shocked out of his sea sickness induced slumber. He was drenched in sweat but the horrible bouts of sea sickness he had experienced since the ship set sail seemed to have subsided.

What bothered him was the haunting words that were seared into his mind. It was no dream, that he was sure of.

What did that mean? Vik wondered. Then he noticed the disturbing quiet of the ship around him. The Cutlass and her crew were never silent, something monumental had happened while he slept. Vik slid his hammer out from under the cot and slowly made his way to the stairs leading to the deck.

Angel rubbed her forehead and moaned as she leaned against the railing of the ship. 'What the clock was that?' Despite her dislike of mythic lore, even the crazy golly could not dispute that the sensation that had just passed through her was real. Suddenly, guarding the ship didn't seem like such a good idea.

Hearing footsteps behind her, Angel turned to regard the newly awakened Viktor. "S'about time you woke up." Her words were slightly slurred as the buzz from the vision had not left her quite yet.

Viktor rubbed his head with both the heel of both hands. "Something woke me, I heard something. Or rather heard it in my head...its hard to explain." The blacksmith disliked being vulnerable and he'd had quite a bit of that lately.

"Where is the crew? The captain?" He asked, regaining his composure. After looking at their strange new location he added. "Where the clock are we?"

"Well, this is it! The island the treasure is supposed to be on. Captain Lacey and the others went looking for it while I stayed behind to guard the ship... and make sure sleeping beauty didn't keel over." The red-head raises her eyebrow and looks at Viktor, indicating that he was the beauty she mentioned.

"By the way... I heard it too..."

Vik couldn't help but let loose a small half smile at being called "sleeping beauty". The severity of the sea sickness had rocked him to the very core, it was definitely tough to appear tough and confident in front of a crew of surly pirates when you're heaving your guts over the side.

"I didn't see you as the type to miss out on an adventure like that. Figured you'd be leading the charge." Vik teased, the usually rock solid demeanor of Miss Firehair was a little shaky.

"I wonder if whatever we heard involves them. Hope they're not in some kind of trouble." Vik said. He tightened his grip on the leather bound handle of his hammer. He felt a strong tint of danger on the still air.

Lacey gasped at the voice in her head, before the violent writhing beings flashed in her mind. Groaning, she dropped Noe's hand, clutching her head.

"Emerson...what is it? What have ye done?" Turning to the others, she pointed at the box.

"Drop it. Aint no good bein' rich if yer dead." Looking up at the dapao, she swallowed. What did they do now?