26 August, 550
Evening Rain
Finally the bloody two skins delivered my promised shipment. Two hundred men, strong two skin warriors all. Provided the hard stone to keep them shackles tight no matter how them skins shifted. Nothing quite like a little war to beat fighting men into proper slaves. They stay quiet the whole way back home, only fussing when they realize how far theyâve drifted.
We was out drinking with the two skins. Barely speak ten words of their bloody clicky clacky language, but nothing brings men together like money and games of chance. The men like them the ball games these strange two skins play. Makes me bitter, that. Canât join because of the bum leg, so i sit and i drink the queer sauce they provide, a bitter chocolate alcohol that keeps as well as milk. Won some coin on dice, the only game don't need shared words to bet on.
When we returned to the ship, the watchman complained about spots on the slaves. Idiot. Theyâre bloody two skins, they got spots sometimes. Picked me out a fine man with them pretty curls I liked. Some men complain they dont get no women, but them lilly livers dont know the pleasure of a good tight dock. Long as its a little man they can be cowed as easily as a woman.
No more lollygagging. The monsoon season blows in. Weâve got to haul these bodies back home before we get trapped here on the barren cliffs.
27 August, 550
Evening Rain
Spots, spots, bloody spots.
Bloody watchman didnât tell me those bloody spots were bleeding scabs. We tossed the man over the railing and watched his scabbing corpse turn the water red. Thought he was a corpse, but he screamed as salt hit his wounds. Sea take you fast, friend. Nicer fate than the spots in my humble opinion.
My pretty boyâs name sounds like pebbles in a stream, so i've been calling him pretty pebble. Heâs amenable, knows what nice treatment I've been giving him. Better in my bed than packed in the hold like a barrel of fish. Still won't be letting him serve me food anytime soon.
28 August, 550
Afternoon Storm
Knew we was cutting it too close to the rain season. Sea nearly bashed us back into the cliffs. But we held it together, only harm is the holds smell foul as bile from the landie two skins. No matter, the crewâs used to the stink of 200 men.
Of course the two men shackled next to ole bloody spots started showing spots of their own. We tossed em overboard to be safe. Close enough to the cliffs that theyâll reach shore, if Water be Blessed.
One of me men kept shouting that we needed to burn the bodies, lest a fouler evil rise from their corpses. I kicked him in the arse and told him to shut his superstitious yap. We ain't startinâ no fires aboard this ship bigger than what it takes to cook a stew. Water takes what we give âem with gratitude and purifies souls well enough. Or at least thats the bull shit I shoved on him to stop his bloody squawking.
29 August, 550
Rain All Day
Damn those two skins. More like two faces. Give you the face of the Father, when they truly bed the Mother.
Spots spots bloody spots. Spots and down the lower hold. Worse, one of the crew got the spots on his hands.
I locked me cabin door, just me and pretty little pebble. Ordered through the keyhole that the spotty crew be sealed in the lower deck, water and food rolled in and distributed by them alone. Free a couple of the ratty two skins if theres need, but
Well gods be damned, if i lost the whole shipment, Iâd be well and truly dragged down by the princesses. Half a shipment is better than nothing. But if those spots spread up through the boards, then thats all she wrote. So closes the book on the salty old Asphodel.
Least pretty pebble is proactive. All kisses and touches when he noticed me mood. I brought down the finest of my whiskies and rums. If Iâm to die this week, thereâs no need to die thirsty.
31 August, 550
Water be Blessed. Goddess of the sea and her children be blessed, on this fine and terrible day.
I know not what affliction has taken me over. Not the spots, at least.
We took too long for the shipment. Waited too deep into the rainy season. I donât know what else we could have done. Returning home empty handed was not an option. And though black hearted sinners we be, weâd be weak pirates. The two skins in this new world be nasty fighters, and dont know the proper order of things. Weâd get our heads chopped off by those damn bloody black bats of theirs soon as engage them in a proper raid.
I donât know what day it currently be, but I do know the day it all ended.
It was the last day of August when the monsoon hit.
Spots whipped through the crew, all three decks. Hands and body weak from burning red fever, we already could barely sail. And with the cliffs to port, there was no safe place to weigh anchor. Waves would smash us up on those rocks and weâd be truly sunk.
Our only hope was a small nameless bay at the end of the coast. Empty most the time, save for lizards and crabs, but on better seasons the locals would sell barrels of fresh water and salt fish from this little ole storm shelter. I knew not how many days we were from it, but if there was a chance, it was there.
The helmsman and first mate was down with spots. So it was just me and pebble trying to keep the keel straight in the storm, beaten warriors making up for fallen crew.
Honestly, if we was all fighting fit, I don't think much would have changed
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I can still see the wave that did us in. Like a thing of nightmares. The sea heaved up in a sheer wall of black water and white foam. I could only stare up at the maw of the sea and laugh as it swallowed us up.
Ah, how I wish my death was quick.
Water hit me like a cascade of rocks. A landslide of pure force. Couldn't breathe, even if i wanted to inhale water. Thought it would be a dark death, but lights flashed in me vision from the sheer force of the blows. I felt like I was slammed into the cliffs, battered and broken, but the roaring rush of water never ceased. Never relented. It was not a pretty and soft drifting of a calm drowning. It was being caught in a butter churn. mashed and mashed until my body was reduced to paste.
Then I woke up feeling as fine and dandy. Like it was a day after a good long rut with a high class whore. I was buried under what I thought to be blankets, but as I shifted it aside it was more sand, pebbles, wreckage and the lax and bloated flesh of drowned bodies.
I crawled from the heap, crabs skittering from me grave. And well, thatâs where I be. Journal pulled from duster pocket and writing with salvaged ink. Feeling just fine and dandy as I sit on a mountain of corpses, crabs picking apart rotting flesh with wee tender claws and empty black eyes.
Let me put me thoughts together.
Iâm in some limestone grotto. The Asphodel is cracked open like a beetle shell on them rock spikes, whatever they're called. Debris floats and circles in the foam. And the broken bodies bloated with water just keep floating in. Piling on the sands, getting stuck on the rocks, reeking and rotting up a storm.
Iâm no stranger to death, but its much like all fear o death and disease left my heart. I stare at faces both familiar and naught, and all I see is sagging meat. The dead fish eyes. Flesh goin soft and splitting as the flies and crabs partake.
I haven't the foggiest why Iâm alive.
More than that. Even if by the miracle of Her Waters, I was spared a drowning, my every limb should be broken. Scrapes? Bumps? Bruises? My head aching, at the very least. But thereâs nothing. Mite bit thirsty, is all. All the water in the cave be brackish, all the food and water I can find tasting spoiled.
And something about the rocks be queer. When i saw the tide going out, i tucked me journal back in me waterproof pocket and tried to swim out with it. But when I reached the mouth of the cave and at last glimpsed the sun, it burned as Fire herself bared her fangs my way. I dove deep and returned against the current (only accomplishable on me best days. Supposing this was one of them)
So have I been spared Waterâs jaws only to be left high and dry? Slowly starving in these totty rags, surrounded by corpse-eatin crabs without even a drop of booze to keep me sane?
Still dont know the Date, likely September 550
So thatâs how it be.
Blessed be the Mother of Men. I should have known the moment I rose up from her earthly womb that I had been blessed to be born again by her Fabric.
I guessed that, perhaps the stones worked like them fancy manalights. Heated by the sun, then radiating that heat out. Never heard of such a thing in the wilds, especially not on the south cliffs of the New World. Maybe I was just grasping at straws. But i waited for a tide out at night, and didnât get roasted as I left the grotto.
I spotted the barest glimmer of a lighthouse to port, so I half swam half walked along the shallows of those cliffs. Just our luck, we was capsized only a mile or two from that damn final bay. Ha. Likely to have missed it in the storm anyway, didn't see no lighthouse then. Monsoon might've doused it.
It was just a small nameless place. Wasn't even occupied most of the year; no point in the rainy season when no boats risk the trip. But it seemed like some unlucky bunch had returned to clear debris and relight the great lamp. They had shooed away all the wee crabs and lounging lizards, and set up a little lean-to. They had made headway clearing debris from the bay, chucking it in untidy piles.
I gave them quite a fright. Tall man, hair a ratâs nest, clothes tattered and torn. I begged them for water and a meal, in what few native words i knew. And bless the kind souls, they welcomed me to the fire.
I donât know why I didnât guess my fate sooner. You normally hear of risen corpses after a plague. Mass graves that escape burnings. Villages wiped out before they can be put to the torch. For the most foul Blessed of the Mother rises from an overcrowded grave, the Fabric so reeking of death it cannot help but weave a perversion.
All I knew was, the soup in my hands smelled as sweet as hot piss. Water did not slake my thirst, and that sweet chocolate alcohol I had enjoyed not one week prior may as well have been chinky wet mud.
But when I took a man on the beach for a bit of a tumble, I found my teeth at his throat.
And oh, the orgasm that flooded my mouth.
It was not a pretty thing. Flesh thick and ripping. Muscles twitching under my lips. Blood seeped into sand as the scent flooded my senses.
But I never tasted nothing better. No broth more savory, no alcohol stronger, no sugar sweeter. I came into him on the spot, gulping greedily as I slaked my lusts new and old.
The rest of the men followed suit, tired bodies crumpling between my jaws. I rested afterwards, dumbfounded, surrounded by fresh gore and quietly scuttlin crabs, painfully bloated as the bodies were silently swallowed by the sands and surf.
I remember saying âSo thatâs how it be.â
Then prayed to the Mother over my fluid-filled gut, for granting me the blessing of the Vampire.
October 17, 550
Rain probably
Made it to the capital of the New World Folk. With coin and taken from the dead men, I set myself up a tidy little apartment in familiar quarters among me kinsmen. Nobody knew me this far north. That was fine as far as I were concerned.
Been holed up in the library. I ainât against a bit of book learning, not when there be gain at the end of it. And Iâve got much to gain.
Been fiddling with ideas. Wasn't worth the effort when the slave money came easy. But now that ship has sailed, a little risk might be worth it.
It didnt much matter to me as a slaver, slaves were slaves after all. But the two skins werent some monolith. One of the New World Folk, the Makabaya, are being slowly dismantled by the new guard, The Alliance of Three (they got half a dozen names between em so why bother remembering anything else). Each side be hungry and thirsty both, literally. While they make a wonder of the poor soil of this Father forsaken jungle, itâs not enough to feed their armies. And outside the blasted rainy season, thereâs droughts so fierce no rain will fall for months. And for reasons I could barely ken, this one River be the only one for hundreds and hundreds o miles. No lakes exists beyond those crafted by the hands of man.
Thatâs why they kill, or for the unscrupulous, just sell enemy troops. Get rid of enemies and gain coin besides? What could be better?
But Delland and Liam and the United Islands donât give a whit about the power struggle between these New World Folk. Delland and the United Islands both got their asses rammed straight out of the New World. Those black glass bats of the two skins were just the start of it. Damn Screaming Current ain't safe even on the best of days, and the diseases the merchant folk brought back scared near everyone off. Was up to reckless little lowlifes like me to bring our crumbs back to the rich folks. Military action be out of the question.
But silver and gold from the mainland had been pouring out here to the New World by the bucket full, one departing ship at a time. The fatted cow was primed for slaughter. I just needed time to study it. Bring in more men of low scruples like meself. And then find an artery to bleed it dry.
I figured we could set up in that pretty little bay at the end of the white cliffs. It was terrible for fishing and awful for farming. But when the silver starts flowing, food won't be a problem. The city folk here already import it from further afield. Just gotta tap into that.
July 8th, 552
Glorious night.
Sailed back to the bay, two skin ship ladened with liberated silver. Men were waiting there. Unscrupulous types like myself, as well as a few old friends. I saw the greed light up their faces at the haul. Drained em and turned em all that night. Safest that way.
I think Iâll call the port White Cliffs.
Now to oversell it like a penny whore.