Written July 31st 11:36 PM
When the rotting, waterlogged corpse emerged from the captain’s quarters dragging Alice with it, Ailith knew. She had been waiting for this moment for months, looking over her shoulder and around every corner, the chance of Elijah finding her again always in the back of her mind, and here he was. He was wearing somebody else’s body, but there was no denying the hatred in his eyes.
“Well, well, well. We meet again, Ailith.” Elijah’s drawl was raspy, like rocks rubbing together in his throat. It sent shivers down Ailith’s spine.
“I wish I could say it was a pleasure,” Ailith ground out. Fuck, fuck, fuck! She needed an escape route, she needed to draw him away from the rest of the group. Alice was already being dragged away by a group of undead sailors, her eyes meeting Ailith’s for a split second. The panic Ailith saw in them cut through her. They needed to protect Alice, they couldn’t let another ally take the fall for them.
There was a split second of silence before they all burst into action at once, the First and Last moving as one well oiled machine. Ailith raced towards Elijah, yelling “Do what you have to do! He’s mine!” over her shoulder at her friends as she did so. She got in a couple good hits before he was able to retaliate, and retaliate he did. Whatever pact Elijah had made to come back from the dead had given him supernatural strength, his strikes driving the breath from Ailith’s lungs. She could feel bones cracking under the onslaught, her lip splitting as Elijah’s fist made contact, snapping her head to the side. Ow. Ailith shook out her arms, activating her tattoos as she ran through different scenarios.
She knew what needed to happen. She had tried to prevent this last time, but her friends were too damn stubborn to let her die. Ailith knew she could outrun them and that Elijah would follow. If she got far enough away, there would be no one who could reach her to heal her. She could reach out to her ki and do it herself, but she needed Elijah to kill her. It was the only solution she could think of, the only way to keep them safe. Feyra was going to be furious. Ace would be inconsolable, Xiv would say she was being stupid. Talus might have her back, but she doubted he’d approve of her decision.
Enough of this, Ailith thought. She ducked another punch and ran away from the group, seeing that Ace had already started towards Alice. Good girl. She scampered up a rope connecting to an adjacent ship, shimmying her way around the crows nest and ducking out of line of sight of the zombified archer cherry picking them from the vantage point. As expected, Elijah followed suit. Ailith knew he would have no trouble following her, but she didn’t expect the well aimed arrow that sliced the rope Ailith had just been standing on, sending Elijah down to the deck of the ship below her. Ailith took a second to glance up and see Feyra standing at the edge of the ship she had just left, bow raised and ready to loose another arrow at the archer right above Ailith. There was a faint whistle as Feyra let the arrow fly followed by a dull thud as it found it’s mark in the rotting flesh of the zombie. Ailith could see Xiv and Talus each battling their own groups of zombies, Talus’s sword a blur as it sliced into soft flesh, Xiv tossing vial after vial into the fray. They seemed to be holding their own, which spurred Ailith into movement once more.
She ran down another rope, leaping onto the deck of another ship, rolling to absorb the impact. There was a lone zombie on this ship, but he was manning an entire wall of cannons, each of which was trained on The Disaster’s Mistress. They needed Jack and his ship to transport Xiv’s mithral and get them back to Halophell. It was about to be two on one. Ailith ran towards the corpse, swinging her cane and letting the thorns cover the rest of the distance. She heard Feyra shout something in the distance that was carried away by the wind, but she soon felt a presence behind her. Whipping around, Ailith saw Feyra stepping onto the ship, following her as best she could. Feyra was stubborn, Ailith knew this. There was no way she was going to be able to convince the other woman to turn back, to leave Elijah to Ailith alone. She just hoped that either she or Elijah finished the job before Feyra got hurt in the process.
Elijah and the zombie converged on Ailith, trapping her between them. She managed to deflect some of their attacks, redirecting them towards each other, but it was no use. They were stronger and she was outnumbered. Ailith’s body was bruised and bloody; she could feel cracked ribs protesting with each heaving breath she took. Her knuckles were purple, her right cheekbone throbbing from where Elijah had broken it on his fist. She couldn’t last much longer. She gritted her teeth and looked towards Feyra, desperation written plainly on the redhead’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Ailith whispered, body swaying as black spots filled her vision. Elijah chuckled low and mean, grabbing her face and turning it back towards him.
“I want to watch the light leave your eyes,” he rasped, hand gripping her jaw tightly. Ailith didn’t fight it, she didn’t have the strength left. Elijah drew back a fist, grinning madly. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he sighed. He drove his fist into Ailith’s chest with astonishing speed, cracking her sternum down the centre. The noise that left her body was inhuman as she tried to breathe around the broken bone, Elijah’s grasp on her face the only thing keeping her upright. No air was entering Ailith’s body; alarm bells were ringing in her head, her body was screaming with the lack of oxygen. Her vision started to fade. The last thing she saw was Feyra loosing an arrow at the back of Elijah’s head before she was pulled into unconsciousness.
Ailith didn’t hear Feyra cry out as her body hit the deck of the ship. She didn’t feel Elijah punching down wildly into her prone body until finally there was a resounding crack! as her neck broke and her heart stopped beating. Ailith was spared the sight of Feyra falling unconscious mere feet from her, her arm outstretched towards Ailith’s body, reaching for her futilely.
Death was quiet. Peaceful. A welcome respite from the constant running and fighting Ailith had been doing her entire life. She could stay here, in this dark place. She could be content with this. But there was something missing. Someone who should be here, but she couldn’t find them. This wasn’t right. She needed to go back, there was something – someone? – calling for her, she could hear them now, getting louder and louder. Ailith turned towards the noise and started to run, through the darkness until a swirl of light, not unlike the one atop her cane, came into view. She didn’t hesitate – she ran for it, through it, blinking as it grew brighter, blinding her as the noise in her head reached a crescendo —
Ailith gasped back to life, senses coming back to her all at once. Elijah stood above her, a bloody grin twisting his face. She watched as it began to morph into confusion at the sight of her stirring beneath him, but she burst into a flurry of motion he had time to react. Propelling herself off her back and into a crouch, she coiled her muscles and used the momentum to push her cane straight up into the soft underside of Elijah’s jaw. This close to him, she noticed that the edges of his borrowed body were flaking away, getting dragged away by the wind. Elijah howled in rage, spittle flying into Ailith’s face.
Ailith answered Elijah with a snarl of her own, teeth bared against the throbbing pain in every inch of her body. “I’ll see you later,” Elijah gasped out, the speech garbled around the hole in his jaw, before fading away into nothingness.
“I look forward to it,” Ailith growled to the air, limbs shaking with the effort of staying upright. Looking around, Ailith saw that Talus had made his way over to her and Feyra, and had succeeded in re-killing the zombie, leaving the area clear for now. Xiv stood on the deck of the main ship, a good 60 feet above them. Ace was nowhere to be seen still, but the fact that Talus was with them and not Ace had Ailith not worried about the young girl. Elijah had been dealt with, but they still needed to stop the dragon turtle from catching up to Jack’s ship.
Sparing a quick glance at Feyra to make sure the other woman was unharmed, Ailith leapt off the side of the ship, stumbling slightly as she landed on the dragon turtle’s shell. She brought her cane down over and over in the same spot, alternating with her fists, wincing at the pain. Talus and Feyra joined her, each firing into the same spot as it cracked open, exposing soft flesh underneath. Feyra nocked a nasty looking arrow with a dragon’s head carved into it and loosed it at the cracked section of shell, the dragon turtle thrashing in response.
A burst of steam exploded up through the crack, the heat of it knocking Ailith out briefly. She woke seconds later to Feyra’s hands on her, her healing magic coursing through Ailith’s body. We need to finish this. Up close Ailith could see that Feyra was battered, blood streaking down her arm from an arrow wound. Groaning in pain, Ailith rose to her feet once more, raising her cane over her head and bringing it down as hard as she could, plunging it into the crack in the dragon turtle’s shell.
“No. What have you done?” The dragon turtle bellowed in pain, and abruptly stopped swimming. The stillness was eerie after the constant motion. Water began to lap at their ankles and Ailith realized with a jolt that the dragon turtle was sinking. They needed to get off this creature before they got trapped underwater with it. Xiv’s water breathing potions were only going to last so long. Ailith just wanted to close her eyes and rest, but she knew they needed to find Xiv’s mithral. She ran up the side of the closest ship, pushing herself as fast as she could possibly go. She trusted the others to find their own ways up; she was the fastest, she could find Xiv’s mithral for them. Her search turned up nothing on the main ship. The promised mithral was nowhere to be found.
“There’s nothing here! It’s empty!” She called to the group as she made her way out of the ship’s hold. The rest of the party, Alice included, all looked back at her grim faced as she emerged, exhaustion plain as day on their faces. A sinking feeling grew in the pit of Ailith’s stomach. Xiv’s question from a few days prior rang in her ears. Is someone on this ship going to betray us? The answer had been a cryptic “maybe,” which at the time Ailith had joked meant someone was already betraying them. Ailith felt a familiar rage building up inside of her as Ace calmly took out her piece of copper wire and murmured a few words.
“Captain Rathbone, there is no mithral on this ship. Do you know where it might be?” There was a beat of silence before Ace relayed Jack’s reply. “I have your mithral. Come back to the ship.”
Feyra’s hand on Ailith’s arm was the only thing keeping her from jumping down to the water, running to The Disaster’s Mistress, and beating Jack senseless. That absolute bastard. She had died – literally died – in pursuit of this godsdamned mithral. She had almost lost her friends, they had put their lives on the line for this person and he just used them to fight a dragon turtle he had a quarrel with. She was going to kill him. Good luck to anyone who stood in her way.
“When we get back to that ship,” Ailith ground out, looking directly into Alice’s eyes, “Jack is mine.”
Here, There, and Everywhere 