Iron Quill: When You're a Professional Pirate...[The Portrait of Captain Monroe]

[Ender101]

Ingredients: The Pirate, Brass Locket, ‘I wouldn’t have done that if I were you’, Bravery in the Face of Defeat

Word Count: 1499

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Thick fog had rolled into the quarantine zone, chilling Miriam Bell to her bones. She was dressed for the night, in a warm brown jacket full of stitches; a broad brimmed hat tilted at a dapper angle; and wrinkled desert khakis. The front of her black boots poked out from green water proofed leather covers were scuffed and marred from years of use, fit her perfectly. It wasn’t until one had drawn close to the woman that one could see her anxiety, her face pale against her short red hair. She controlled her breathing through a force of will, feeling reassured by the weight of the hunting rifle nestled in the crook of her arm, and feeling naught but trepidation about the flat parcel she held against her hip.

Miriam had not expected to be part of a game of cryptic messages and restless spirits when she’d first come to Malifaux. She was a hunter of beasts, not riddles. She had come to the city to hunt Neverborn spawn, at the invitation of the Malifaux Exploration Society. The city hadn’t been anything like she’d been expecting, it was nothing like the guild propaganda Earth side; it was wild and dangerous. She had excelled here, just as she had in the plains of Africa, and the deserts of South America, the city and its surrounding forbidden jungle of stone and broken cobble streets gave her the thrill of being on the hunt, on ‘safari’.

She did not fidget as she waited, she adopted the stance of the bored hunter, her feet evenly spaced beneath her hips while she eyed the mist for any changes.

Weeks ago she had found a cache of treasures with a trio of her fellow club members, and one by one, they’d all been found dead, their rooms ransacked, mad ramblings demanding ‘its return’ scribbled in blood on the mirrors. They’d used hounds to try and find some trace of the mysterious killer, and for the first time in memory, the dogs had flinched.

How whatever it was had gotten into the grounds was another mystery altogether, one that taunted the adventurers. She’d been the only one to survive her run in with the intruder. Her hunting hound Lockley had alerted her to the presence and she’d been sleeping with a sawn off shotgun under her pillow.

She still remembered the shapes of the children darting amongst the shadows, as well as the dark shape filling the windowsill, a rusted sword in its hand, she’d spun towards him as he brought it down into her charging hound, the children gasping as the lights in the room turned on, revealing three children in bandages scattering towards the window, and a man in tattered pirate’s clothing, a brass locket swinging from spongy flesh. “I wouldn’t have done that if I were you,” she’d snarled as she pulled the dual triggers on the shotgun, her compatriots kicking in the door only moments after the first barks, revolvers raised and curses shouted as the pirate exploded in a gush of green sea water and crawling maggots.

“Bugger me,” one of the hunters exclaimed in an Irish accent as he knelt down to examine the creature’s ‘blood’. “Did you see what that sodden thing was? Rezzer by the looks of ‘im.” He slipped his revolver back into its holster as Miriam had reloaded. “Did yae see what he was wearing? The locket, looked like the one you and the others found in that ruin.”

Miriam nodded as she stepped out of bed, the shot gun pointed at the window. After a brief breath she turned out the window, weapon raised, only to see the grounds lit up and the dogs barking and howling as gusts of fog evaporated.

“Is what you found here?” The Irishman had turned to the wounded animal and shook his head. Miriam looked down at her faithful hound and gripped her rifle with white knuckles. “We’ll have one of Von Shill’s pet sorcerers to take a look at it first thing tomorrow; maybe they can tell us what the hell this thing is.”

And found out they had. The picture and presumably the other artifacts had once belonged to a ship’s Captain, Thaddeus Monroe if the name stenciled on the back of the painting was to be believed, and pulsed with a faint magic. They had tried to burn it, but only the crumbling frame was licked by the flames. Left with no other option, the Society decided to turn to what they did best. Hunt.

They’d tried everything, from guild mechanical traps, to rope entwined with magic string, using dogs to catch Monroe’s scent when he appeared. They searched the building where they’d found the old chest that held the treasures and the surrounding buildings. They’d combed the libraries for hints of the old captain. But they found nothing to avenge their fallen members or put him down for good.

For a week this trend continued, the children did little other than watch the pirate burst into water and maggots night after night, and the hunters grew more and more frustrated. But Miriam wouldn’t stop; she was too stubborn to just get rid of the painting.

That was, until she received a letter. Within had been instructions on where to meet with the portrait and as incentive she found the trigger finger of the Irishman. She’d run through the facility looking for him, only to find the words ‘come alone’ scrawled in blood on the barred window from the outside. Which was how she’d found herself surrounded by the fog, waiting for someone who might not be the hunted.

“Expecting the dredge pirate?” The voice was little more than a rasping breath, and Miriam found herself frozen to the spot where she stood, her skin crawling as the sound of his shuffling footsteps came closer to him.

“I was hoping to find whoever was holding his leash.” Her bravado and obstinacy pushing away the fright that pushed at her mind. “Who are you, and what do you want with this, Ressurectionist magic, Neverborn revenge?”

“None,” the voice hissed and a shape darted along in the mist. It wasn’t one of the children and she let the gun slip forward from her elbow by straitening her arm, the wooden stock slipping into place as her finger eased over the trigger with practiced precision. “Enough chatter, where’s my painting, I can smell it on you.”

She ground her teeth, where had it gone. She saw enough to know that it wasn’t human, at least not any more. “Where’s my friend, she clutched the package closer to herself as the wraith slipped closer to her, like a serpent writhing along the ground with a surreal grace. It hadn’t shuffled, it had slithered.

“I’ll grind his blood into paint and his make brushes from his bones and hair if you don’t give it to me,” she threw the brown paper package to the ground and the wraith screeched in triumph. She turned and watched as the pirate coalesced in the fog, forcing her to take a staggered step back.

“Your friend lives, but your soul is mine,” he reached towards her as the sounds of Monroe’s damp footsteps advanced. Fear filled her mind as those fingers splayed, cold darkness teasing the edges of her vision as its rotten smile stretched across the whole of its face.

Disgust and anger replaced the fear and the shot echoed angrily in the abandoned street. The soulstone infused round catching the creature in its outstretched hand, the painting falling to the ground as it screamed.

The sound of the bolt action lever was just as loud as another round entered the chamber. The creature flailed on the ground. “My hand, my beautiful hand,” its blood seeped onto the paper and began to melt through the paper like acid, Miriam took a cautious step backwards as Monroe melted along with it, the pendant sputtering as it ran like molten lava down the front of his chest.

“No, not my art,” his wail rose to a screech as it scrambled at the gooey remains of the portrait. The mist evaporated so quickly it might never had been, showing the shadowy creature in all its grotesque glory, the stump of its hand weakly pumped paint like blood all over the portrait’s remains.

The crooligans quietly surrounded it, watching it like children watching a legless spider flail on the ground. One was poking the puddle that had once been Thaddeus curiously.

The little girl, glanced towards Miriam with glee filled eyes, clutching a tattered teddy bear, and pointed to an overturned cart, a man’s boot sticking out of it. “Thank you,” it whispered before it joined the others in hacking away at the fallen artist, its pitiful screams being swallowed by the mist.

As Miriam ran to the aid of her comrade, she had the sinking feeling that she’d just made a new group of ‘friends’ in Malifaux.