Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

"How do we leave this place?"

Shard asked, clutching the photograph.

"There's no escape. Once aboard our ship, no one can escape! Servant of the Spiral, Follower of the Crimson, the Fishbone Pirate Ship that races through the Storm Eye, pays homage to the great Lord of the Crimson Spiral! Praise Him! Sing His glory!"

The raspy voice screamed hysterically, and the photograph suddenly tried to break free from Shard's grip, but this time he held on tightly:

"I will only ask once, how do we leave this place?"

"It's impossible to leave! No one can leave! Oh!"

The blade pierced again, this time as if to split the entire photograph in two, and the voice inside the photograph immediately changed its tone:

"Go find the captain! Go find the captain! Only it knows how to leave! Throughout these thousands of years, all who left this place went to find the captain!"

It tried hard to fly out of Shard's hand again, but Shard simply wouldn't let go. The glimmer of his broadsword illuminated his face as he squinted at the increasingly disheveled man inside the photo:

"Are you a crew member of this ship? What's the story with this ship?"

"Everyone's mad! Completely mad! The captain sought the power of a great being to become the strongest pirate king, and then that power consumed us, granting us a form of immortality, making escape impossible. This ship's sole purpose is to hunt for our lord, and no one can escape! Not even the captain!"

It laughed madly within the photo, and a woman's voice whispered in his ear, prompting Shard to release the photo. But this time it didn't fly away; instead, it hovered in the air amid laughter. Without warning, cold green flames surged, instantly consuming the photograph.

When the photograph had completely turned to ash, Shard looked back at the spot where the frame lay. The shattered glass was intact, and the burnt photograph was still there. The man inside the photograph had his eyes closed as if in a deep sleep, but Shard did not doubt for a second that, if he kept watching, the man would open his eyes just as before, repeatedly enacting all that had just occurred.

"This ship was favored by the Evil God, Lord of the Crimson Spiral, during the Fifth Era, transforming its crew into immortal, strange beings to hunt for that Evil God across the sea. After the passing of the Era junction, it even became a powerful Relic. Is this the truth of this place... I still don't understand why we would run into this thing."

Shard's eyes left the photograph, which itself was heavily laced with the Whisper Element. If Shard could have taken the photograph with him, it could also be considered a Relic. However, the ship was simply too bizarre, and Shard wouldn't risk carrying such a thing further inside.

But it also implied that nearly anything on this ship was of value.

"What will you do now?"

As the voice reached his ears, Shard had already begun to continue deeper into the ship's cabin.

"I will find the captain; that madman didn't seem lucid enough to lie. Moreover, since the True Gods allow such a thing to exist in the material world, it suggests that there are rules here, not a complete lack of escape."

His boots carefully avoided the dry bones on the ground, and with every step, the boards beneath his feet sounded as if reverberating through the entire ship.

"Do you know where the captain is?"

"Of course not, but going deeper inside can't be wrong, Miss Princess said so... Although there were more than a dozen Circle Sorcerers who encountered danger with me on the cruise, now all others are missing. I can't expect anyone else to find a way out, and even if others find an exit, it doesn't mean I could escape."

[Are you worried about your companions?]

Her melodious laughter was truly more effective than any magic potion, a method to relieve headaches.

The further he walked inward, the more the cargo hold corridors seemed to mutate. The fungal mat on the walls thickened continuously. Human-shaped impressions appeared on the surface of the fungal mat, as if the walls were absorbing and devouring human skeletons. The foul smell became stronger, to the point that even covering his nose with his hand could not dispel the odor.

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Shard could not imagine what could emit such a smell, but when he took 30 steps inside from the picture frame and heard the gurgling of water and the crackling of burning near his ears, he immediately realized that someone was cooking on this level of the ship.

With a sword in his right hand and a light in his left, he moved swiftly forward. Skeletons on the ground and on the walls slowly stretched out hands toward the living, and as the moonlight skimmed past the walls, the skeletons' arms fell to the floor like chopped leeks yet continued to wriggle.

The ship still shook violently, and the planks could not block out the sound of the storm in this dark sea region.

More impurities appeared around, and even the air had visibly small particles. A dim green light shone from the right wall ahead in the oppressive darkness, and the gurgling water sound and something like the crackling of wood fire seemed to emanate from there.

With his sword, Shard slashed the skeleton trying to grab his arm, and reached the doorway to an unblocked cabin. It was the only room he could enter since boarding the ship.

Looking inside, the narrow room was almost the size of Shard's lavatory. Bodies piled along the walls were not skeletons, but fresh crimson chunks of flesh oozing blood. In the center of the room, a bone-framed fire pit burned with an eerie green flame, from which four iron chains hung down from the ceiling securing an iron cauldron, suspended over the bone fire, like something out of a witch's tale.

The vile-smelling liquid inside the cauldron was boiling, but surprisingly there was no blood, bodies, or bones in it; it was filled with clear water that allowed visibility to the bottom.

Next to the cauldron stood a creature with a human head, the upper body of a fish, the lower body of a skeleton, and the limbs of a pig, holding a rusty brass ladle looking at Shard. The murky yellow eyes meeting Shard's gaze in that instant caused him a moment of severe discomfort, almost losing his balance.

But the creature did not attack Shard, instead snorting like a pig,

"Someone else has boarded,"

It spoke in Draleon common tongue, the same language used by the madman in the picture.

"Are you the captain?"

Shard asked, the green flames brighter than the silver gleam at his fingertips, casting his shadow across the hallway to the door's opposite, swaying like a monster.

Shard noticed his voice had grown unusually hoarse for some reason.

"Of course not, can't you tell? I am the chef,"

the creature snorted, though having a human head, it possessed fish gills on its cheeks. It plunged the brass ladle into the cauldron to stir, intensifying the foul odor.

"Want to know how to leave? Want to know the secrets of this ship?"@@novelbin@@

It asked, squinting its human skull's small eyes at Shard.