13 - Captain

Alto tipped his head to the side. “You would trust an old drunk like me to take you across the Incandescence? After I plainly told you to fuck off right to your face?”

“You came through for me, didn’t you?” Prospero replied. “I won’t fault a man for growing bitter when his vision is clouded by addiction… but I will trust in his conviction to overcome it. We are all suffering in one form or another. Better to face a problem with allies to cushion you if things go awry.”

“Things will go awry, Baptista,” he said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve peeled myself off the floor and tried to make things right. Nor the second time - or the third, for that matter. You’re speaking to a real piece of work who’s likely to crash and burn once the hope runs out of him.”

With a gaze more tender than Prospero knew the old man to be capable of, Alto turned to Victima and breathed a sigh of relief. “Still… this is the furthest I’ve ever gotten.”

“Let’s not waste the momentum, then,” Prospero said. “I take that to mean you’re willing to fulfil your promise to my father?”

“Wish I’d never made any to begin with…” he grumbled. “-And if it were for any other reason, I’d have left you for dead. But if your father’s gone, then… it’s too damning of a responsibility to abandon, much as I hate to admit it. Now - pardon my language, but I’d like to get the fuck out of here before any of these lowlives get any ideas.”

Prospero nodded, and they proceeded towards the exit with Victima trailing behind like an obedient pup, only to find their path blocked by a familiar foe standing with his arms crossed. The light against Aldruag’s back made his disfiguring scar all the more pronounced. “...You can’t leave,” he said simply.

“Bugger off, you scrap of Dakriol dung,” Alto waved his arm. “Victima’s coming with us, and that’s the end of it. Swing that hammer of yours around all you like - won’t help a bit.”

Aldruag sighed, and Prospero imagined that they were in for another fight. That was, until the towering man lowered himself onto his hands and knees and touched his forehead to the ground like a common beggar. “You can’t leave,” he repeated. “I’m begging you.”

“B-Boss!” a Sunflower yelled from the sidelines. “Don’t lower your head to those two! They should be the ones beggin’ us to-”

“Shut up!” Aldruag’s voice was no less commanding even when aimed at the floor. “Just be quiet…”

Alto leaned to the side to get a look at Aldruag’s face and nearly toppled over. “...What, have you lost the plot or something? Doesn’t matter how nicely you ask, we’re still taking the old girl away.”

“Just listen!” he paused. “...I- we need that Voidbeast. It’s the only good stroke of luck we’ve ever happened upon in this godsforsaken Port! Just a few more days, and we were finally going to leave… I’ll give you every last coin we’ve scrounged together - just leave that creature with us! Please!”

Prospero crossed his arms. The distant skysong of faraway Voidbeasts prevented the silence from becoming too cumbersome. “Why do you want to leave?” he asked.

“Why?” Aldruag chuckled sadly. “Look around you. We’re nothing but vagrants, drunks, and criminals. Not one man here could land a day of honest work to save his life. Banding together’s the only reason any of us are still alive and out of jail.”

“-Banding together and swindling innocent people,” Prospero corrected.

“Tell me what we’re supposed to do, then!” he raised his head. “Nobody will have us! We’re too troubled or hated or - Gods - just plain too stupid to find any luck in this place! Some of these people used to be heroes, Baptista! Veterans of the Lotus War! The Dakriol Rebellion! Now look at them! Addled by war and poisoned by drink; abandoned by Hartlokus, abandoned by the Emerald City; a story older than the stars! And all they get at the end of their rope is… is me, for Gods’ sakes! What’s a man supposed to do?”

There was real sorrow in his voice now. Prospero supposed that his words had been a long time coming - an amalgamation of founded hatred. A glance towards the sides of the pen revealed most of the Sunflowers as men beyond their years in appearance, some of them too intoxicated or sickened to notice much of anything. Prospero recalled his first thoughts upon entering - that the Sunflowers didn’t seem like much of a gang at all.

“That Voidbeast was the one good chance we had to finally put all this business behind us,” Aldraug continued. “Wouldn’t matter where we went, or where we ended up. As long as it was anywhere but here, it would have been a damn good chance to turn some of these men’s lives around. Now it’s being taken from us, just like everything else…”

It was formidable for a man of such stature and pride to rest his forehead on the ground. Prospero barged into the pen under the impression that the Sunflowers were nothing more than honourless criminals.

But what is a criminal? He couldn’t help but wonder. All his life, Prospero had been taught never to steal, never to swindle, never to deride or obstruct - but what reason would he have to ever consider those paths? Innsworm was never a prosperous hamlet, but the Baptista estate was wealthy beyond comparison. He wanted for nothing as a child. But very few were so lucky.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

One look at Aldruag was all it took to prove that his life had taken a different path. The stories hidden behind his calloused hands and countless scars spoke of a man who had struggled through more tragedies than Prospero had fingers to count.

“Shouldn’t act surprised when something stolen is taken back,” Alto spoke after a pause. “Folk like you are the shit-eating rats who stole the Silver Age from us. If it were up to me, I’d lock every last one of you up and toss the key into the Celestial Ocean.”

He began to walk off. “Come on, Baptista. We’ve no time to waste.”

Prospero sighed. “We can’t.”

Alto trailed to a stop and mulled those words over before turning his head. “No, lad. We’re not about to waste our time hearing the woes of a bastard like Aldruag.”

“...But they’re just like you,” he said.

Alto frowned. “What?”

“These aren’t… terrible people,” Prospero began. ”No man takes pride in committing a crime. He only does so when he feels that there is no other option. Or, perhaps it’s been his way for so long that he knows of no other life. It has become a part of his identity - just as drinking became a part of yours. And, changing one’s identity… it is not a simple thing to do, Alto.”

Those who have fallen from grace can rarely convince others of the goodness in their hearts, he thought. Is it asking too much of a stranger to look past superficial traits? It’s a great commitment to ask of anybody… but a necessary one, if we plan to better our souls.

Prospero couldn’t recall the text from which he’d lifted that thought. So many of the ideas explored in the manor’s study had conjoined into a fractured shell of half-finished vows. But what use was philosophy if he had no desire to apply it? The topic of the ‘good life’ had always intrigued him from the perspective of a sheltered teenager. What, exactly, did it mean to live ‘a good life’ in his circumstances?

“Gods above… you sound exactly like Gaspar,” Alto scratched the back of his head. “The world isn’t such a kind place, Baptista. Folk like you, who try to see the good in everyone, are always the first to find a knife in their backs. I’m not insulting you, mind - you’re just a young man who hasn’t seen much yet.”

“It’s not about finding the ‘good’ in someone,” Prospero replied. “I would hardly call us ‘comrades’, but we’re working together now, aren’t we? I don’t dream of a world where men are just and righteous to a fault. Only one where those who have fallen are given a second chance to stand. That is… to me, at least, the sort of world my father desired, also.”

He turned to Aldruag, who remained there still with his face planted in the dirt. “You took Victima with the idea of using her to leave the realm, correct?” he asked. “You don’t seem to me like the type of man who leaves a plan half-baked, so I take it a few of the Sunflowers have experience with Voidbeasts? Am I right?”

Aldraug lifted his head. “Aye…” he nodded. “Like I mentioned, a few of us are veterans. Old Realmstone engineers and fleecers. Things would have been bumpy for a while, but I reckoned they could have taught the others a thing or two in due time.”

“Victima is quite a large beast,” Prospero said. “I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I suppose that means she’ll need quite a crew to keep things steady?”

Alto grumbled. “You’re not wrong,” he began. “I’ve been at it for so long that a handful of men was all I ever needed after a while, but a strong crew never goes amiss. Realmstone engineers aren’t cheap, Baptista - and nobody likes being a fleecer.”

“It sounds to me like there’s a way we could all benefit from this situation,” Prospero crossed his arms. “Aldruag and his Sunflowers are looking to move on from this Port, and we’re looking to leave as soon as possible. Provided there’s food and water to last the journey, I don’t think any of these men would object to manning Victima for as long as it takes us to reach another realm.”

“Uh-huh. Mhm,” Alto nodded along to his words. “-And what makes you think I want these rat bastards anywhere near the deck of my Voidbeast? After all they’ve done to me?”

Prospero couldn’t deny that it was a good question, and that asking Alto to forget the Sunflowers’ transgressions was inconceivable, if not borderline offensive. He was tempted to navigate the argument with nonchalance, but he knew that anything short of speaking from the heart would be futile. “...It’s not a fair thing to demand forgiveness from a victim,” he began. “Neither is it just, nor expected. It’s the privilege of those who have been wronged to assume the position of judge and jury, and their decision - no matter how cruel or unfeeling, is rightly theirs to make. But, it is a decision, and a decision that weighs heavy not on their shoulders, but on those of the men they judge. Can you look at any of these souls and say for certain that their hearts are wicked and their intentions impure?”

Alto cast a wide glance over the pen, and within the shadow of his beloved companion, he met eyes with men who, troubled by inaction and wayward loneliness, did not seem at all distinguished from himself. He wanted for nothing more than to see Aldruag and his followers jailed for their actions, but there was no certainty in his heart that the man’s confession and desperate pleas were anything short of completely authentic. Prospero had told him precisely that there was a choice to be made. Those scattered lives were his to judge, but lives regardless. Any one of them was not lesser than him, not any less cursed with dreams and ambitions as him, and not any less poisoned or wanting as him.

-And they did, indeed, require a crew.

Alto sighed and walked up to Aldruag. A second earlier, he would have placed his boot on the man’s head and condemned him to a life of squalid chancing in the darkness of Glassoph. But he found himself, blessed with a sudden and immaculate purity, with his hand outstretched, and with the unwelcome strain of forcing oneself to make the right but unsatisfying choice, he said, “You’ll work for nothing but scraps of tack and water, and I’ll drill every last one of you until your ears bleed and until your dreams are nothing but maddening tapestries of stars in the deep - and you’ll grin and bear it and call me ‘captain’ all the while, or you’re getting left behind in the freezeboil, and then once we’re clear of Glassoph, you’re getting shoved onto the first desolate, wasting Port we end up at - no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Am I making myself quite clear?”

Aldraug raised himself to a kneel, then with shallow trepidation took Alto’s hand in his own and rose to his feet. “...I fear that calling you ‘captain’ is something my heart won’t endure,” he said.

“Worry not,” Aldruag’s scowl deepened. “You’ll be saying it plenty.”