Darkest Hour: Part 1

[John Wildcutter]

Chapter 1: A Pirate

There lived a pirate who went by the name of John Wildcutter, or just John for short. He was raised in Padres del Fuego by his British parents, Larry Wildcutter and Marie Wildcutter as an only child. Throughout his teenage years, his father was persecuted several times by the Royal Navy yet they never found proof to arrest him. A week before his twentieth birthday the EITC stormed his house, attempting to arrest his parents for aiding pirates. He and his parents managed to escape the house and sneak away on his father's sloop. With he and his family on the run, they had no choice but to turn to piracy.

This story tells of twelve years after the event when John has found and become one of the Ravens crew, under the command of the notorious Raven Trueheart. They had battled the forces of the EITC, the Navy, and the Undead armies for very long. Now John is serving onboard Raven's ship.

"One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten. Ten gold coins will buy me nothing but a few drops of rum." John said, sitting on his hammock, flipping his share of the plunder.

"I got fifty gold coins. It's not that bad." said his friend Anne. Her name was so hard to pronounce, so everyone just called her Anne.

John went up to the deck to see the crew shuffling onboard, carrying chests and crates back and forth across the ship as they sailed around the northern Caribbean. The crew had just been plundering merchant ship after merchant ship, and the ship was loaded with goods.

"Attention! We shall be docking at Cuba tonight to empty the cargo!" The captain, Raven Trueheart said standing at the helm.

The crew rejoiced at finally docking after nearly a year at sea. An officer on board named Matthew Sailswine flipped a coin before directing pirates to send treasure chests down to the lower decks. The ship rocked back and forth as Cuba came into sight.

They docked at a small town on the south side of Cuba, unloaded the cargo, sold it, then the whole crew went to a tavern. Sitting at a poker table were John and his friends Matthew Sailswine, Anne, Shorty (Everyone just called her because she had a name hard to pronounce like Anne's) and Shadow Night (He refused to say his real name.)

"Hey you cheated!" Shadow Night said, pointing at Shorty.

"No I didn't, I..... Never mind, you win." Shorty said, hesitating and falling back in her chair, sound asleep.

The crew nearly fell asleep in the tavern as they had been working nearly all week with the cargo they had plundered from the merchants. John soon drifted to sleep as well, dropping his rum bottle on the ground, smashing it, and sending rum splattering across the floor.

He dreamed he was tied in chains, and skeletons were surrounding him. They got closer and closer. They unsheathed their swords as they got closer to him. In the distance he heard a terrifying laugh, and the skeletons lunged at him. Suddenly he woke up, yelling, and turned around to see Anne waking him up.

"Time to leave." Anne said, and he looked around to see that he was the only one inside the tavern, as the rest of the crew had already gotten on the ship. How embarassing, he thought. Quickly, get got up and ran to the docks, which took him a total of fifteen minutes. The sun was just coming up.

The crew laughed as he got on the ship last, and to his surprise, Anne was already on the ship. They sailed away from Cuba, which went out of sight very fast due to the thick fog. Today the crew had been given a resting day as they had worked very hard the day before. The ship would sail into safe waters until the next day. But yet again, there was a story to be told.


(Sorry guys, the next few chapters will be a bit longer.)

[John Wildcutter]

Chapter 2: Agression

John sat in a wooden chair on deck watching the horizon come up. They were searching for merchant or weak Navy ships to sink. The Undead ships, however, had surprisingly disappeared from the Northern Caribbean but were still seen throughout the Southern Caribbean. Pretty soon they saw a Navy frigate ahead, and by the looks of it, it was stuffed with goods.

"Take your positions!!" Raven yelled from the helm. The crew got the message across the ship, and everyone was running around the ship, manning the cannons and pushing supplies to the lower decks.

"Ready! Aim!" yelled Shadow, aiming his rifle.

"FIRE!!" yelled Raven, and for a split second all was silent as the cannon and musket balls flew toward the Navy ship. Then they hit. Navy men went flying everywhere and the masts cracked and landed on the ship, smashing the crew. However, the navy was still yet to fire.

John heard a 'FIRE' from the other ship and before he knew it, wood was splintered in several places across the deck. The crew once again returned fire, this time causing the Navy ship to begin burning and Navy men running around, wreathed in flame, falling overboard. Pretty soon the back side of the Navy frigate was sunk and the ship took no longer than ten minutes to be sent to Davy Jones' Locker. The navy frigate had made a small hole in the ship, where a little bit of ocean water was leaking through. John went down and nailed a plank of wood on it and returned to the deck.

"They have probably sent out a distress. More navy ships will be here and we must be ready. Seperate the cargo and the ammo. I want all the ammo on the cannon deck, and all the cargo on the lower decks!" Raven said, then dismissed the crew to do so.

Everyone worked very fast. It wasn't even an hour before Raven's orders were completed. Raven then sent out scout parties to collect all the loot thy could find from the ruins of the frigate. They didn't find much, as a lot of the treasure had been taken to Davy Jones' Locker as well. The only good plunder they found were copper bars imported from England. Then John turned around in his row boat and saw something moving in the water. John slightly tapped Shadow's shoulder and he looked around too. His eyes widened at what he saw. There was a shark swimming straight at the rowboat.

"Come on ye bilge rats, back to the ship now!" Shadow yelled, and the crew picked up their oars and moved as fast as they could back to the ship. The shark was faster, and got even closer. The shark then disappeared into the dark blue water and no one could see it. Everyone stopped rowing.

Then John's oar fell a tug. He desperately tried to pull the oar back to the rowboat, but when he did, half of it was missing, and there were huge teeth marks along it. The shark did the same with the other oars, until there was no way to move. The shark leaped up onto the rowboat, sending one of the crew members' flying into the sea.

"Swim to the ship!" Shadow told the crew, and everyone desperately tried to swim. The shark was closing in on them.

John heard a yell and turned around to see a crew member being pulled down to the depths. Everyone in the other rowboats were already on board the ship. Shadow and John were the only ones remaining from the rowboat they were in. Shorty threw two lines, which they quickly climbed up. The shark leaped out of the water and bit Matthew's line in half, barely missing his foot. Shadow slid onto the deck of the ship, and nearly fell unconscious. John got on deck shortly after Shadow, panting. But the shark wasn't done yet. It banged it's nose against the bottom of the ship, trying to breach it, rocking the ship.

John quickly grabbed a musket and looked overboard. He saw the shark with it's dorsal fin sticking out of the water. He fired the musket and... missed. The shark was still beating against the ship. While trying to load the musket, he heard a fire, then the ship stopped rocking. John looked into the sea to see that the shark was sinking, and blood was in the area where it was beating against the ship. The crew cheered and celebrated.

As they continued sailing south, they destroyed many small Navy vessels in their way who had come to answer the distress call. John felt that these small vessels were not the only Navy ships who had heard the distress. There will be more, and bigger ships, he thought. He worked all day, scrubbing the hull and pumping the bilge, his blue coat getting slightly ripped. They bypassed Tortuga and Devil's Anvil throughout the night, with half of the crew working and half of the crew sleeping. John sat in his wooden chair, drinking rum and staring ahead of the ship. The ship turned southwest into what pirates' thought were safer waters.

By two in the morning, most of the crew was sleeping, although some were still on deck, walking around or drinking rum. The man in the crow's nest who went by the name of Bartholomew was keeping a sharp eye out for incoming Navy or EITC ships, and just in case, Undead ships because they were heading into the Southern Caribbean. The fog had been very bad the last few days in the Caribbean so everyone was always on alert. Suddenly, the bell from the crow's nest rang very loudly.

"ENEMY SHIP! ENEMY!!" yelled Bartholomew down to the deck. The whole crew nearly fell out of their hammocks and they rushed up to the top deck. John was falling asleep at the moment but that woke him up. He hopped out of his chair like a tiger searching for it's prey. John turned around at looked from the bow. There, in the water a few leagues off was the Royal Navy fleet.



(Any feedback or criticism would be appreciated.)