[i] a collab between Yorg, TNY, & Raid[/i]

"We need the doctor!" 

Gaspar sat with his back against the door of the captain's cabin, arms frozen across his chest. Emilio lay in front of him, impaled. The boy didn't feel paralyzed; he didn't feel anything, not his limbs or the deck beneath him, not the pain in his ribs or the cold bite of the wind. Nothing. As several people rushed to the captain's aid Gaspar almost felt as though he was watching his own body. Had he not just been sharing wine with this man? 

"Go boy!" The big American was speaking to him, looking up at him expectantly. Up at him? How long had he been on his feet? The ship rolled and he teetered forwards, legs shaking. Where was the dagger? 

 "Fetch the doctor!" The man said. Gaspar turned stupidly and stumbled across the deck away from them, until he reached the railing and stopped abruptly. “Hurry!” somebody cried after him, and he sobbed involuntarily. The noisome darkness of the ocean filled his vision for a moment, then it was back to the reeling boards of the ship’s deck. Somehow he found the steps leading below, and began to descend. A wailing child passed him on his way down, followed by its bustling mother with a babe tied loosely to her chest. Gaspar shrunk to the side as they passed.

Who is the doctor? 

“Help!” Gaspar blurted out as he reached the bottom of the steps and started into the dark. A lantern was lit ahead, and he made for it. He could hear voices and footsteps. People shouting. A sailor rushed past him. “I need the doctor!” Gaspar pleaded, but the man was already gone. Speaking sent a sharp pain through his ribs. "I don't know who the doctor is!" he yelled in frustration, his voice hoarse. A blanket moved in the lantern light; an old man, waking up and scowling at the noise. "A doctor!" Gaspar said again, and the sailor eyed him with surprise, then pointed down to the end of the corridor where faint light shone through an open door. "Esra, boy. Get Esra."

"Esra?" Gaspar began calling before he had even made it into the room. His words were choked by building tears. "Esra?" He barged through the door and looked around wildly. On a bed to his right, in the pale light of a single candle, were several children's faces staring back at him, wide-eyed. 

Ahmad cries. He punches and shoves Shahid, who growls at him to stop, but he said it in Portuguese so his younger brother doesn't understand why he can't chace after his mother and twin brother. Shahid doesn't get that either. He wants to be the one on deck with the crew and the Captain. They might now be pirates, but they were more exciting than anything than his five year old brother had to offer him. Except the halls are too dark, that's how Shahid explained it to himself, they don't let me see where I am going and I don't want to trip and make a full of myself. 

When the young man rushes in though, Shahid whimpers and presses back into bed, dragging his brother with him. Despite the apparent darkness of the hallway, Shahid sees the creases of panic and the twisted clothing of their unwelcomed guest who keeps shouting. Ahmad cries out mommy when their mother's name is said. Shahid can't hear, though, because all he sees is the wet, dark stain on the boy's shoulder. Shahid knows how blood likes to bubble up from a cut or ooze out from a broken scab. He likes to watch those things happen in fantastic admiration for the liquid that gives him life.

Except, this boy doesn't have a cut or a scab, his wound is fresh, as if the monster that attacked their homes last night tore down on him. Shahid doesn't want this stranger anywhere near his brother or, more importantly, him. His stomach quivers with his fear. 

"Go, go!" he whines out, unsure of which language he's speaking until Ahmad starts begging the older brother to speak Berber. "Leave us alone! We did nothing bad! We're good."

"I need Esra!" Gaspar pleaded again. He moved forward to grasp the young boy by the shoulders, but quickly withdrew as the child flinched in fear. "I'm sorry. Please, the captain needs a doctor! Do you know where Esra is? He could die!"

Sahid gasps and whimpers. He's not being the big brother that he should. He'll deny it later, but for now, he cowers and shrinks. His younger brother points up and says, "Out, Out. Momma's Out" in Berber. He stands on the bed and tips forward grabbing ahold of the Stranger's sweat soaked shirt. Ahmad sniffles, but jumps down from the bed only to stumble and fall, but rises the way children do when they have something singular on their minds. He doesn't like the idea that his brother is out there without him. 

His sister wails as she's left on the bed. Shahid presses his hands to his ears and pushes against the wall. Ahmad grabs the man and shouts over his sister, "Out, come, Out, come."

Gaspar could now feel an ache creeping into his bones as he followed the boy out into the hall. They went quickly back the way he'd come moments before. His bare feet slapped against the floor; heel-ball heel-ball; and every time the pain from his tender heels grew worse. They felt bruised. He passed more sailors who were waking up and speaking in hushed tones.

Soon they were climbing the stairs back up to the deck. The boy seemed to be following the noise of a wailing child that was growing steadily louder. The pair emerged on deck, into the air again, and Gaspar shivered. The planks around them were dented and scorched, here and there broken entirely. The huge armored figure was nowhere to be seen, but he had the distinct feeling that it must be hiding nearby, for he saw no body. The smallness of the ship amidst the surrounding dark was suddenly pressing on his mind, like the half-heard growl of an unseen jaguar. The boy made a b-line for his crying sibling while Gaspar hurried after him, tired eyes searching wildly about.

There was a crowd growing around the fallen captain, and in its middle crouched a matronly woman with a babe strapped to her back. Esra, the doctor, it had to be. In any case, nobody seemed to be calling for help now, and in fact Gaspar could barely even see what was happening for all of the bodies pressed tightly inward. No-one payed him any heed, and it was just as well, for he felt at the same time relieved and horribly useless. With a heaviness he sat himself down on a nearby coil of ropes and hung his head. 

Ahmad lets go of the stranger's hand once he sees his brother. "Samy, Samy!" he shouts, racing into the cluster of men to pull his brother back. "Mother will be angry. We must go before she sees us--" Ayat stands before them and pushes them back. She isn't wearing her scarf and Ahmad's eyes stay on the bare spot of her scar. She never talks about her scar. Shahid likes to makes up stories about how she got it. Most of times it's because she was injuried in some great battle. 

"Get back you fools, back!" Ahmad stumbles, toes catching on the uneven deck. Samy is the one who pulls him back first. Back towards the stranger who sits far away from the mass of shouting straining men. They slip easily through. Ahmad turns back to look at his mother, but all he can see of her is Deena's mass of curls as she rests on the back of her mother, unaware of blood. 

Samy cries so much and Ahmad hugs him because that's what his mother would do. He looks between the gaps of legs to see the Captain on the floor. He looks like Captain Sharkas did last night. Pale and purple and too stiff. His mother shouts in Berber, moving the Captain's body around, ripping skirt to staunch the flow of blood. Then, something is pulled out of his chest and Ahmad wonders how it got there in the first place.

The group doesn't disapate. 

Indeed, how could they? They have known death so intimately these last few days it is as if they are getting ready to greet and old friend. Esra uses her elbows to push men into position once the pain sets into the bones of the Captain. She keeps her hand presses against his heart; it slips on sweat and blood as he thrashes.

Emillio needed to be heavily restrained as the mess of his abdomen began recollecting itself. The giant, sold lance was removed, only the tip of which had penetrated his chest, yet the tip indeed did stick out his back for those desperate moments when he laid in a heaving mass on the floor, only moments before. Leonard and another sailor held the other end of the lance and put it down gently on the floor, admiring the strange aura of the thing, the magnificent handiwork of it. Epu had managed to fetch a torch and was holding it under a dagger when he noticed children scattering along the deck. 

"Boy," he cried out to Gaspar, not really knowing his name, "get these children out of here. This is no place for them!" he said in Portuguse. 

When Epu returned to the scene he watched as his Captain was held by four men and a woman, writhing in an unhuman anguish. And then he noticed that the pain was no longer from the wound, but from a manipulation of the wound, and a fouly mysterious one at that. Muscle collided with sinew, and blood retreated back inside of him; his ripped veins and punctured lungs recoiled like pulled twine, and his skin crawled over itself, reforming magically. The Captain screamed in horrible despair as everyone looked on at the strange event, and those who held him could feel his riviting body, the power and energy climbing through his veins. Soon there was no scar other than the one that'd already been there, and all the blood that was left on his chest dribbled onto the floor and soaked into the deck. He stopped screaming and settled into a heaving unconsciousness, where his body would routinely twitch. Epu decided fire was no longer needed, placed the torch back on the sconce, and dropped the dagger to stab into the floor. Epu looked at Leonard, who looked astoundingly from the scene to him, then to everyone else. 

"God save us all." He murmured in English. He collected himself and ordered the sailors around. "Pick him up!" He finally ordered in Portuguese, "to the bed in his cabin."

Esra does not know what is being said around her, even if it was shouted in Berber, she still would not have heard it. To watch the rapid stiching of skin entraptures her. She brushes her fingers along the smooth stomach, hand quivering. Since when do her hands quiver? She murmers out phrases of awe and fear. The push of Deenas feet into Esra's sides disrupt her rapture. She does not move from the Captains side as men carry him inside. Is she following because she is concerned on a medical level or enchanted by the surely evil magic that mended the disembolwed man? Either way, she checks his pulse to give herself an excuse later on.

Allana watched on as the Captain struggled. She wasn't sure what to make of it, her employers said nothing of this, knew nothing of this man's strength. She stood with a new-found confidence, her strength rebuilding within her. "Well, that's something you don't see everyday" she commented offhandedly to Mahmud.