Chapter 3: Pounding Echoes

'Get the swabbies to clean it up. Fucking idiot!' Mikey thought to himself, a trickle of blood rolling down the bridge of his nose.

Wallop!

A swinging fist rocked Mikey's temple, prompting a deafening ring to vibrate through the cavity of his ear. The momentum from the blow would have sent him right off the chair were his wrists and ankles not bound.

In a daze, Mikey's blank eyes desperately fluttered in an attempt to stabilize his vision. The cold sting of a palm lightly slapping his cheek, to garner his attention, clapped against his numb skin.

"Ah, there we are sunshine. All wakey wakey now are we?" an echoing voice could be heard through the chorus of confusion in Mikey's mind. The figure overhanging him had an eye-cut potato-sack mask, hiding the face of a voice Mikey was too mazed to recognize.

However, as Mikey's vision began to clear, he noticed a second figure behind the masked menace. It was Captain Tornstar. The golden lion on his shoulder was dimly lit by the cracks in the floorboards above.

"Alright, I'm sure he's learnt his lesson. Take a break on the beatings," the man spoke out, gesturing for the excitable interrogator to get out of the way.

"You're well aware you had this coming Mikhail, I've no doubt about it. Diana let me know you were a fast learner, though it does seem that controlling that temper slipped your skillset," the captain went on as he held his arms folded together. He looked down at Mikey with a rather casual belittlement.

"Y- yeah, sor-" Mikey went on to mumble, though was swiftly struck by another swipe of the interrogator's open palm. The hit rang his ears once more, temporarily deafening Mikey. He managed to keep his vision minorly clear however, barely catching the captain slapping the back of the interrogator's head as he kicked him out of the room.

A few moments passed and what was left of Mikey's attention span began to return. He tried desperately to hang on to consciousness.

"I will apologise for that last hit, my subordinate tends to go rather overboard when he gets excited," the captain said as he took a seat opposing Mikey and leaned forward against his hands. "You can still hear me, yes?"

Mikey gave an exhausted nod, nearly dropping his head on the floor as he went to raise it back up.

"Right. First of all, good shit for putting my daughter in line," the captain chuckled insincerely. "She definitely had it coming, I'm just surprised it took someone that long. Of course she's still my daughter, so naturally whoever did it would get their ass kicked."

Mikey made no effort to reply, though lifted his head with a bit more strength than before.

"But anyway, enough about that. You've paid in enough blood and sweat I'm sure. I'd rather talk about you Mikhail. Withholding your magical abilities is rather suspicious, don't you think? So let's do this with a bit more formality. Where are you from Mikhail?"

"Z… Zeal," Mikey managed in reply. "Orphanage."

"Shit! I was hitting an orphan?!" the captain leaned back in shock, rubbing the back of his head with a gesture of unsympathetic and exaggerated shame. "Well THAT's not going to rub off my conscience any time soon."

Mikey licked his outer gums before spitting out a goey splatter of blood beside his feet.

"Right, well. That raises an even bigger question. How does an orphan like yourself come to learn magic? You hiding some scary demon in your belly?" Captain Tornstar raised a brow in rather light-hearted curiosity.

"I don't… know," Mikey responded with a tired exhale.

"You know what? You're tired," the captain stood up from the chair and headed for the door. "After having the nails beat off of you. That's fair enough, I'll come back soon. You can tell me all about that fancy mark on your hand when I get back."

The captain glanced at Mikey briefly before closing the door behind him.

Finally allowed the chance to clear his head, Mikey's vision began to discern what was recently a shroud of darkness. He'd been locked in a mouldy storage room, sodden with either discarded or digested fish-guts.

Shuffling his wrists around and feeling for the knot that bound him, Mikey hooked the tips of his fingers around the thick rope. A soft glow of light surrounded the rope as Mikey cast an intangibility spell on it, having it phase straight through his wrists and relieving the tension on his arms.

Mikey then aimed to lean forward and untie his ankles, however the rush of blood into his head left him grimacing as he flopped forward onto the ground.

Hazily, after an unknown number of minutes, Mikey rolled onto his side and stretched for the binding around his ankles, repeating the same spell.

Dragging himself to his feet, Mikey waddled forward towards the door - bumping into the walls with the rocking of the ship. Clumsily fiddling with the door handle, he eventually managed to turn it - though helplessly stumbled forward onto the floor as the door flew open.

'Get up Mikey,' he thought, trying to rally any amount of adrenaline within himself. 'Get up!'

Clambering up a nearby staircase, nearly buckling under his own weight with each step, Mikey slowly made his ascent.

Disoriented and having fallen victim to the rocking of the boat around himself, a spray of vomit erupted from Mikey's mouth. Almost slipping on the dripping mess below his feet, he'd finally reached another room.

Sent into a desperate squint by the sudden illumination around himself, the excess of light warped the distance of the object around him. The cold numbness of his skin rapidly turned to a deep heat. The rush of blood through Mikey's body overwhelmed his senses.

The blinding of light quickly turned to black.

"Search the ship," a voice called out in the darkness. "You'll find him."

Mikey could make no effort to utter a reply, as his thoughts brushed past the echoing call.

"Trust him," it finished.

Mikey began to awaken once more on some sort of cushioning. A pallidly lit room left a pair of dancing figures along the ceiling boards. One was quite smaller than the other.

The two shadows flared in conflict.

"No you big, stupid idiot! I didn't say kill him!" the little one slapped at the taller one. " 'Teach him a lesson', does not mean turning him into a shit-covered zombie!"

"No, you knew something like this was bound to happen if you pushed someone like you do," the taller one replied, not at all reacting to the flurry of open palms.

"Yeah, sure, some dirty chef's assistant. But he's a mage, father! He can help me get THROUGH all of these scrolls! I need him ALIVE," the shadow pleaded for understanding.

"No no no, you made it clear you could heal his injuries. What's happened to the world's greatest mage now?"

"A few bruises? Sure. Couple of broken bones? Easy going. But do you know how difficult it is to heal a damaged brain? We'll be lucky if he even remembers what colour the sky is!" the little one rambled on, swirling in a pent up frustration.

"Alright alright, yeah whatever. Well you take care of the orphan little brat, he's your pet now," the taller shadow disappeared from the ceiling, followed by the clicking of a door handle, "but if he bites the hand that feeds him, don't come crying to me."

The shutting of a door left the little shadow alone on the ceiling, as Mikey's eyes slowly fell to a close once more.

"Orphan?" the shadow asked itself, seemingly pondering the mere definition of the word. "Gross."

Lost in a shroud of helpless slumber, it would be the jingle of a small ball that awoke Mikey. The chime grinded his teeth into a cringe as he made a sorry effort to sit up. His arm clung to the backrest of the couch he appeared to have been sleeping on.

"There we are puppy, how we feeling?" a feminine voice called from some nearby desk or table. Though blurred from the first light in his eyes, Mikey already held a thorough enough dislike to recognize Gisla's voice.

Mikey grunted in reply, clearly not impressed by the tone she took.

"Right, well," she began with the mimicking of her father's tone, "I'm going to make you a deal puppy. You forget what happened the other day and help me with my work. In return, you can have all the cold steak you want and no longer have to work for that Bumpy or whatever his name is."

'The other day?' Mikey thought to himself.

"Hey? Are you listening?"

"I don't want anything to do with you," Mikey weakly waved her away, forcing himself onto his feet and limping for the exit from the tyrant's room. The shifting of weight onto his left ankle had him grimace in pain. Likely he rolled it passing out.

"Wh- why not? It's a great deal?!" she questioned in great offense.

Mikey made no initial effort to reply, though opened the door to the main deck.

"Three more men! Now! We're losing our grip!" A sailor called out from the central mast. Crew members made a bolt for the sailor, rushing past the Captain's quarters. Swabbies zoomed by in every direction, saturating the boards with water as they mopped up the morning's mess. To top it off, swinging ropes and cargo left every chance for things to be dropped, swung or hurled in somebody's direction.

Mikey squinted with a grimace of both anxiety and discombobulation. His fractured mind still hadn't recovered enough to take on the deck's challenge yet again.

'Fuck,' Mikey thought to himself as he shut the door before he fell into its roaring chaos. Turning back to the princess who seemed to be holding her hands on her hips in victory, Mikey groaned with no amount of enthusiasm.

"Fine."