SAILING FOR THREE II ONE 0

One arm stroked in front of the other despite the inability to see either, Fugger’s swim deprived of visual stimuli--immediately. Stretched yards before him, a ship blazed and sunk, a constellation punctured into its bored side. He shared responsibility with the vessel miles further that, by this stage, had likely completed its sinking--the fate of its crew unknown, but easily guessed. Back behind his strokes Bellhound’s cupped voice chided the captain in flee. The words themselves washed into the same waves Fugger traveled, but his tone soared overhead. Fugger knew he possessed very little time, it charring and sinking away, so he ignored his first mate and paddled forward with incredible violence, foam in his wake.

Bellhound, meanwhile, ran back below deck to fling himself at any repair attempt possible. Water continued to rush into his stooping home, one Bell wished just as well he could simply escape like his coward of a captain. Despite the grave circumstances, he talked himself through with calm the various processes of binding wood and relieving the boat of its quickly filling contents, his mind preoccupied on after. With the ship’s successful salvaging, he reasoned, he’d navigate it the last stretch, dock it, fix it, and take up fishing close to shore for the rest of his life. Any possibility remotely peaceful pleased the overloaded and terrified navigator, the last crew member he realized. The dangers and death present in so few moon’s passings led Bell to consider the oceanic life could no longer fit if the mainland could not be in view while aboard. Corton flashed across his gaze. What pity he could spare to the dead did not compare to Bellhound’s own wallowing in potential, the very real circumstance of Fugger’s lead finding his navigator instead. Bellhound jerked his head suddenly, feeling the notion of their escapee’s presence. He almost wished she would creep round if only to assist in avoiding either of their deaths. His captain, he considered, good as gone.

Fugger squeezed his way through a hole and swam into near blackness, a merciful illumination only faintly past a hall, submerged innerworkings between. His broad gestures abruptly collided with a lump--its trajectory changing to sail towards the sole light, he realized it to be a corpse. He met another, then mounted away onto carpet still dry. This changed with Fugger’s emptying of Blackgill’s boots, shaking his leather and belts and other wear. He hated the wet feeling clung to him still after, but the sensation, he reasoned, felt preferable to joining the dead--an act--this round surely--his last.

Chasing into the continuing dry, Fugger scoured what sconces offered in their breadths. No porthole gave way to views of his own vessel allowing ignorance to operate in bliss, Fugger filling a found sack with a variety of valuables a scattered and still drunken mind deemed such. He fled from cabin to cabin stocking up on the sunken’s belongings, satisfied only with vigorous re-checkings. A knight came bursting through the halls past Fugger, armor jangling, his voice shrill with terror, fire roasting the floor’s fibers behind. He dove into the slowly submerging section of the ship. Fugger crept forward and watched him struggle in the black to rise up back out of safety. Fugger keenly knew how little afforded time he’d been blessed with, yet he spent the minutes on witnessing the brother’s eventually drowning. He could conjure nothing. He tied the sack he’d filled, secured it across his straps and continued on upwards the enemy vessel.

Two knights laid atop one another tangled in tapestries. Fugger tore down the ones spared thinking of some inherent value. He sprinted through a variety of ornate intricacies devastated by iron, a mess hall obliterated and kitchen horrified, beads scattered, halls and cabins submitted to the will of his and the sunken behemoth’s doing. A third knight suddenly appeared, clattering somehow silent, and he stumbled into Fugger unaware of the cat burglar’s intrusion. He, the cat, whipped his cutlass out and against the knight’s helm, a reverberation echoing against royal wooden walls. Stunned, the knight became leapt on sending him to the floor. Fugger tore the brother’s helm from out between pauldrons and revealed a slightly middle aged man with hair absent and cheekbones chipped. Fugger brought the helmet crashing back down against the face until it stopped animating. He loosened a bag knitted onto the knight and found within a favorable amount of gold. He considered a mental note to revisit the drowned for theirs as well if time permitted. Glancing across the struck with blood streaming out holes and across skin, he saw he in himself--beaten by the yard. That fate felt unavoidable--this, too, needed pass.

Several more brothers bounded down the hall obviously intent on applying repairs to the lower levels--Fugger cursed the forgotten loot in the flooded. But appreciating obstacles maneuvering out his path, Fugger worked with his good fortune. He continued the looting unabated, weighing his sturdy frame down. He accepted there’d be no swim back.

The captain came to his opposite’s quarters, and he bent to peer through its keyhole--devoid. Fugger slipped into the unattended cabin and marveled at the impressive display of artifacts and charts, jewels and memorabilia. He helped himself to it all. Most interesting of the contents stolen featured what Fugger could not believe was the knight captain’s personal diary, a potential wealth of knowledge in a world Fugger seemed to think unwilling to otherwise explain itself. That and the pocketwatch he’d seen produced the night previous belonged now to Fugger who gave the room a final once over before fleeing for the top deck, a second sack hastily secured for the journey up and--this world willing--out.

Flames enveloped another attempting to fan his and their fates out, a bag hanging by his thighs crisping and defecating into the dark, glimmering gold wobbling flat. Fugger watched the knight evacuate over his ship’s railing, a thunk in the water heard fast after. Picking the coins up off the deck, the drowned brothers of before floated into his thoughts to visually remind him of the sure fate of the just fallen. He appreciated little of it. Scrambling over to the vessel’s side, a trail of fire helped Fugger to the sight of two mounted fishing rafts, a third’s place missing. He thought less of this and more of his continuing fortune, hurling the bagged collections into his choice of boat. He took a last glance behind at the continuing mayhem swallowing His majesty’s humiliated naval power, letters in the sky twinkling in orange and yellow hues.

Fugger turned to dive over the rails but came blocked by a shattering strike to his nose cracking its bones and blowing Fugger to the floor. He sloppily unholstered his flintlock and slammed the trigger, silence hissing out the barrel. Breezes across the ocean’s surface crawled along the waterlogged craft, chilling wet Fugger. He realized his assailant.

Bellhound bounced from cabin to cabin patching what was possible, where practical. He alleviated some damage, but progress towards avoiding the inevitable lurched slow. Bell let loose a series of expletives at ever joining a lifecraft-less crew. He took a swipe at his tools which sailed through the air and into ever-pooling puddles. The navigator gripped his hair, bandana loosened and drowned. He slammed his shoes against plank and stair and ladder--obtaining with haste what little belongings he brought--until mounting his captain’s captain-less plunder. It would be Bellhound’s neither. Hesitation benched, he dove into the abyss.