Lynesse

It's Probably Pirates - Part One

Ratchet. 

I’d hate the place if I didn’t love it so much. All rough and rumble, corrugated steel and haphazard wood. Haven of pirates and cartel. A mercenary in good standing with Steamwheedle could make a killing, killing here. Khaeris made sure to mention that the Tart – Dicenne? – the fire staff (and whip, apparently) guy had his forge here. Damn shame I didn’t have time to make it by. Still, it only enamoured the dirty, dusty town by the sea to me more. I reminded myself that I was here for work, not play.

My job was simple – A whole supply of Grog had been stolen from the Laughing Zhevra tavern. This was bad. Pirates need their libations or they get ornery and it wouldn’t take long for news of a shortage to spread. The establishment itself was, well, a charming shithole. But it was Ratchet’s charming shithole and Sunwell forbid anyone say otherwise. 

A quick talk with an overly gruff proprietor didn’t get me anything by way of information. ‘I’m not getting paid to do your job,’ well no shit, Hemlock. It took a long conversation, and I use “conversation” lightly in the place of “drunken ramble”, with a troll who looked like he bathed in rum to get any kind of a lead at all.

He’d seen a small group make off with a bunch of crates in a small boat, but nobody believed him, because he was an alcoholic and an addict. “Jus’ you wait,” he told me, “They be back.”

I waited. Played a few games of dice and nearly emptied my flask; Water is my usual choice of drink when I’m on the job, but you don’t drink the water in Ratchet. Stumbled around back and flopped over on some stacked boxes to wait as I’d been advised. Sure enough, at the crack of dawn a small group of pirates, assisted by one of the “waitresses” made off with the last few barrels of Grog, as well as a crate of limes. She seemed pretty upset that they wouldn’t spirit her away with them, and started hollerin’ enough to raise an alarm, but they pistol whipped her quick and she dropped to the ground like a sack of overripe cabbage.

Being quiet and tailing people has never been my strong suit. Fortunately they were making so much noise and arguing that it honestly didn’t matter at all. They put everything in a rowboat and instead of going out they started to row south, parallel to the coast. This area was notorious for sea-caves, between that and the numerous small islands that speckle the shallow sea like freckles? Tons of places to hide ill-gotten gains. It’s why it’s become a pirate haven.

They dropped anchor and hadn’t seen me, but it wouldn’t take long with how the thin band of bright was growing on the far horizon. Two splashes marked the crates hitting the water. My ears flicked at the sound of a chain dragging across the wood. The pirates were definitely sinking the stolen goods. I ducked behind a weathered stone and hastily started to ditch my armor. I had a few knives I could take with me, but the axe would be a hindrance and the plate would sink me.

For the record, the sunrises on Kalimdor beaches are beautiful.

By the time they’d finished their work, the sun was up and shining bright. I hid behind the rock and waited for them to leave while hanging out with a few little blue and red crabs that scuttled around in the shade the rock cast. I waited another few minutes for them to row out enough that they were out of sight before I hopped up and slipped into the water, sliding under the surface. 

The mouth of the cave was surrounded by brilliant living coral, and there was no way to know how long the tunnel leading into the cavern with the air pocket was. I popped back above the surface and took a deep breath before diving down again, propelling myself along best I could. Endurance swimming had never been my thing, but I’ve got decent breath control from some evening time extra-curricular activities. It doesn’t matter, though, because the second all the lights went out when I swam into the passage was predictably disorienting. 

We’re not made to be in conditions like that. Elves are the children of the sun for a reason. I felt a flash of panic race along my spine and I had to fight to push on. Even I get scared sometimes, but it’s worse when you can feel your lungs burning because air is important and utterly non-existent underwater.

Drowning’s always been one of my worst fears. I kicked and kicked and kicked up, felt my back scrape on the rocks. Nope. No air. No way of telling where I was or if I was even going the right way anymore. There’s only so much mental chanting of ‘don’t breath, don’t breath, don’t breath’ you can do before you’re forced to and I was rapidly reaching that point. It didn’t matter where I was, why, or how close I was to some kind of surface, if there was some kind of surface.

Gods fucking damn, I thought as I took a breath I hadn’t wanted to take, this was a stupid idea.

The water rushed in and burned like fire.