Here's the next chapter. I really like this chapter. Its filled with action, some drama, the death of a main character, and some hints of whats to come later in the story. Its a lengthy chapter, so be prepared for a longer read. Enjoy!
Chapter 22: Battle in the Cove
Billy saw him fall. He didn’t see him very well, it was just a quick blur before he hit the water. But he knew. It was Davy. He cried a tear of joy, but nobody saw it, for it was raining too hard. The other reason was that the ghosts had now flooded the deck of the Shadow King. Billy quickly ducked, swung around, and ran his broadsword through a ghost’s belly. The ghost stumbled backward and fell to the floor. He slashed a ghost’s face behind him and then drove the blade into the chest of the fallen ghost as it was picking itself up. He finished it off by twisting the blade and driving his dagger, which he held in his other hand, into the face of the creature. It screamed in pain and faded away.
Billy cursed as a ghost slashed through the back of his shirt. He spun around and slammed the ghost hard with his sword. It flew sideways and stumbled off the edge of the ship into the sea. Billy glanced around to see that the ghosts now were outnumbering the ship’s crew. The only reason that most of the Sorcerors hadn’t died yet was because a fair percentage of the ghosts were not trained fighters, or they didn’t have effective weapons. Either way, there wasn’t much time left. There were simply too many ghosts to fight against. Right now, though, there was Davy to worry about.
Billy sprinted to a different level of the ship and looked to see if he could spot his brother. He looked desperately, shouting his name. A ghost came up to attack him, but he simply cleaved his sword down onto the ghost’s collar, grabbed the ghost’s hair, and threw him into the sea. Desperately he looked one more time to see if he could spot Davy… and there he was!
Davy had just surfaced and was weakly paddling toward the Shadow King. He truly was alive. Without thinking, Billy unbuckled his sword sheath from his belt, dropped all his metal accessories and weapons, and dove into the sea. He surfaced, the salt water and rain stinging his eyes. His hair was a wet mess now, the ponytail that normally stuck up now just a part of his messy hair. The choppy waves were tall, and as he took a breath he ended up swallowing a mouthful of sea water.
“Davy!” he cried through the storm. Thunder shook the island and lightning lit up the seas. He spotted Davy. He could tell that he didn’t have the strength to keep floating. He slowly was starting to go under in the storm. Billy called his name one more time and began swimming in his direction as fast as he possibly could. Billy paused a few seconds for air, looking for Davy as he did. There he was, less than ten meters in front of him. They made eye contact for a minute, but nothing was said through the storm. They both swam towards each other again, but then the unthinkable happened. Billy froze as he looked below the weak form of Davy, and saw the dim form of a glowing ghost swimming up from the sea floor.
Billy tried to call for Davy, but the sound of thunder and rain covered his warning up. By the time Davy felt the icy could touch of the ghost on his ankle, he was under water.
“Damn it!” Billy screamed. He looked under the water for his brother, but didn’t see him. After a moment of desperate searching, he saw the orange glow several meters from him. The ghost surfaced for a moment, letting Davy get some air. It appeared that the ghost wanted Davy alive, likely to bring to El Patron. Billy swam furiously to reach the ghost, faster than he had ever swam before. Right as the ghost dived under water, Billy grabbed Davy from him, and yanked him up as hard as he could, bringing the ghost with him. As he came up, Davy made a gasp for breath and was able to get free. The ghost screamed in rage as Billy grabbed its neck and delivered deadly punches to its face. He finished by freezing some of the sea water around him into a group of ice crystals and drove them into its face. The ghost lifelessly sank to the sea floor, its glow fading.
“Billy…” Davy choked. Not choking out of happiness of seeing his brother, but choking due to sea water that had made its way into his windpipe. He coughed up the sea water as Billy grabbed a hold of him and began side stroking back to the Shadow King, where the battle was steadily getting worse. After a few minutes of paddling, Billy and Davy climbed up a ladder in the stern of the ship and collapsed onto the deck, luckily where no ghosts were fighting. The two brothers laid, drenched and chilled to the bone, on the ground, exhausted and panting. Nothing was said, the sound of the battle almost in a different world.
“Seems like every time we meet up again, we’re separated, eh?” Davy said finally, with ever so small a smile.
Billy chuckled. “Aye, I wonder how long it’ll be this time.”
“Well it won’t be ever again if you guys don’t come and help us out!” a voice said. The two brothers sat up and looked towards the stairs to see Sam standing there. His hat had been blown off in the wind, and his clothes were torn from battle. He had several bruises over his body, which showed through his tattered clothes. There was a small cut on his lip that was dripping blood. Other than that, he looked more or less okay. “Its total Hell down there!”
“Good to see you too, Sam,” Davy muttered.
“I’m sorry Davy,” Sam said apologetically. “I just think that it would be nice if we could do all the reunion formalities after we ensure that we will live?”
Davy nodded, drawing his dagger. “Not much to fight with, but it’ll have to do until I can scavenge a blade.”
Davy moved as quickly as his damaged leg would carry him down the steps. He saw Billy and Sam disappear into the crowd, surrounded by the attacking ghosts. It wasn’t looking good now. There had to be at least forty ghosts aboard the Shadow King, with about thirty five to fight, perhaps less considering how many were probably wounded or dead by now. Davy heard a sword swing as he stepped down on the main deck where the battle took place. He ducked down as a sword barely missed his head. He quickly swung his dagger behind him and felt it make contact with the hard body of a ghost. The ghost grunted, but other than that did not show any sign of pain. It swung again and Davy blocked the blow on his dagger. He returned the blow with a punch to the ghost’s jaw. The creature staggered backward, slightly dazed, as Davy delivered a series of quick cuts to it.
Before he could deal an ending blow; however, he felt the presence of another ghost behind him, and turned quickly to deal a deadly slash to its face. He followed through with a powerful head butt to its chest, knocking it backward. He spun around and gave the ghost he was attacking before, who had now gotten back up, a stab to the throat. It screamed in pain, and Davy gave it a few good punches to the face before finally stabbing the glowing figure through the heart, twisting his blade to make sure that it truly was dead. The ghost collapsed to the floor and faded.
Davy turned around quickly, remembering the other ghost, but he was a tad late and the ghost gave him a slash across his upper left arm. Davy cursed as blood began to stain his shirt and trickle down his arm. The ghost pulled his sword back to prepare for a stab, but Davy was able to sidestep it, unfortunately right into another ghost. The ghost hissed and raised its sword to strike Davy down. At the last moment, Davy ducked to the side and the sword cleaved down into the other ghost’s skull. While the ghost was shocked, Davy quickly drove his dagger into its head, twisting and doing everything he could to make sure that the ghost would die. It collapsed as Davy withdrew his blade.
He now attempted to get through the crowd of fighting pirates and ghosts, attempting to find some of his officers. They needed to figure out a way they could escape this battle. And then he saw Matt. He was locked in combat with a white ghost. Foulberto Smasho. Davy, horrified, tried to move through the sea of fighters to save his friend, who was losing the battle, but he was too late. Before his very eyes, Foulberto disarmed his friend, driving one dagger into Matt’s stomach, the other slitting his throat. Davy watched as his crewmate, officer, and friend crumpled lifelessly to the floor, blood staining the area around him.
“No!!!” Davy bellowed in rage. He charged at Foulberto, bringing his dagger down on him. His foe calmly brought up his two daggers and blocked Davy. He twisted his blades and Davy’s dagger flew out of his hand, skittering across the blood soaked deck. Smasho gave a small kick to Davy’s chest, sending him falling to the floor, just a meter away from the dead form of Matthew Scurvytimbers. He held a dagger pointed at Davy, a silent warning not to move.
“You swine!” Davy roared. “You treasonous, villainous, monster! How do you live with yourself?!”
“I wouldn’t really say live,” Foulberto said, gesturing to his ghostly form. “But as I said, I believe we had different interpretations of my offer.”
“You’ve killed too many of my friends and crew tonight, Smasho!” Davy said.
“Ha! Too many? Fireskull, El Patron wanted to kill you all here and now. I, on the other hand, want you all to survive this attack. I’ll leave you with the thoughts of all these lost sailors in your head, so you know what you are going up against. I assure you, amigo, this is just the beginning. El Patron and I have some different plans, you see. And mine call for you to live just a tad longer, which is why this attack is over.”
Smasho barked a few orders in Spanish, and the attacking ghosts looked at him, puzzled. The battle paused for a moment as the exhausted Sorcerors backed away from the ghost or ghosts they were fighting to catch their breath.
“NOW!” Smasho bellowed. The ghosts all nodded and faded away until they were nothing. “I’ll see you very soon Davy Fireskull.” And then Smasho was gone.
Davy surveyed the deck of his ship. There were over a dozen of his crewmates dead, including his long time friend. They came to Raven’s Cove with over forty crewmates, and now there were probably twenty five or thirty. Too many people were lost, and Smasho had said that this was just the beginning. He examined his exhausted, bloody and bruised crewmates.
“Mates, we have little time,” Davy said, weakly standing. “I wish we had time to rest, but we do not. We need to leave Raven’s Cove and make for port right now. Make for Tortuga! Once we are on our course you may all rest, but right now we must work more! Bandage any wounds fast, but I want to be leaving in the hour! Go!”
The crew weakly began to go to their stations. There were slight adjustments to stations due to the many losses that had occurred that night. As Davy wished, the Shadow King had exited Raven’s Cove within the hour, making way for Tortuga, away from the stormy island of Raven’s Cove.
~~~~~~~~~~
“You did what?” El Patron roared, glaring furiously at Smasho. Smasho did not flinch or show any sign of fear to his captain. Foulberto had just arrived back on El Patron’s ship, El Tyrano, where the rest of the crew waited. They had successfully made a tunnel just large enough through the cliff for the ship to get through. The crew was awaiting orders to begin sailing through, but El Patron wasn’t giving any orders until he was done with his first mate. “You let them go?! You fool! We could have had them!”
Foulberto calmly opened his mouth to speak, “Captain—”
“Shut up!” El Patron said, giving him an infuriated slap across the face. “You let them get away! The Great-Great-Grandsons of Tiberius Fireskull, who locked us away! The ones we swore vengeance on!”
“Captain!” Foulberto said, with calm assertion. “Patience is key. If we kill them now, what if we need them later? You are rushing things, Captain. They will die anyway, once we have what we want in our possession. Do not act like this was our only or last opportunity.”
El Patron snorted. “Very well then, but I will not forget this. I was generous enough to accept you back into this crew instead of leaving you here on Raven’s Cove. Do not disobey me again.”
“I won’t, Captain, I assure you that,” Smasho said. “Now, what do you plan to do?”
“We must locate the Blade of the Damned,” El Patron said. “The ghost ships that I sent out may have located it by now. If not, we’ll need to search the Caribbean. Although I believe that I know someone who may know the location…”
“Then we will find this person?” Smasho asked.
“Yes we will, and we will then find what we are looking for. And when we do, the Fireskull brothers will wish they had died tonight.”
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Any comments? I'm hoping that I can finish
The Lost Phantom this summer and start the next book. I'm very eager to get to the end of this book... you guys will love the ending...