Tales of Runeterra: Guns and Anarchy

 Tales of Runeterra

Chapter 13:

Guns and Anarchy

                The sound of the churning waves was always something that calmed her. Sarah supposed that was just the Bilgewater in her—some sort of ancestral blood that made her more amenable to the sea and the scent of salt in the air. She had to accept from a very young age that she couldn’t sleep unless the waves rocked her slowly to adrift, and unless she could hear the rumble of her crewmates’ incessant hollering there was no way that she could be comfortable enough to even close her eyes.

                Of course, she doubted that her crewmates were anywhere near, but that was hardly an issue. The fresh breeze of the ocean skirted just over her skin, raising goosebumps on her arms and sending a slight, though much needed, shiver through her body. It was that very same breeze that pulled her from her slumber.

Though a part of her wished that it hadn’t.

“Finally up, are ye’? Why doncha pull yerself out yer damned cot and ‘elp ere?”

Sarah pretended that she hadn’t heard the bumbling witch as she slowly opened her eyes. She found that her days were often spent in a better mood if she started them slowly and methodically, allowing each action to have its own purpose. Doing so allowed her to have a clearer head, and forced her to make her decisions rationally, whereas emotion would prevail otherwise.

“Ye damned deaf broad! Are ye slow in the head? I said to get yer fat arse up and ‘elp!”

The witch was still talking, but Sarah had learned to shut her out. Listening to the old crotchety thing would only bring doom and disaster, after all. And even more than all of that, Sarah didn’t take kindly to those who would presume to give her orders. She wasn’t the type to take any since her mother passed, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

So instead of hopping to the woman’s commands, Sarah slowly allowed herself to sit up in bed. The rocking of the ship made the action a fair bit harder than it should have been, but it was something she had gotten used to. She made to scratch at her head, but the rattling of the heavy chains binding her wrists made it hard to do so.

She stared at the iron ringlets, then to the heavy, rusted chain binding her to the middle of the cell she was in, then yawned. So, it was going to be one of those days, huh?

“Lassie!” the dreadful witch screamed once more, as if her voice was the one destined to awaken Nagakaborous herself from her endless slumber. “I know ye can ‘ear me! Are ye just daft?”

Sarah looked to the old seat witch. Her skin was green where it wasn’t brown and mottled, and her hair looked very much like seaweed as it draped over her head in thick, soggy strands that stuck to her skin. They had barely gotten any water in the two or so days that they had been confined here, and yet the sea witch still looked as if she had just gotten out of a swim in the ocean.

It was a curious phenomenon, all things said. And one that Sarah couldn’t help herself from asking about. The first time she did, however, the sea witch decided that she was a dumb young girl.

So Sarah decided that they were no longer on a talking basis.

Instead of taking any kind of note of the witch’s poor excuse for words, Sarah decided to look around her room. Of course, the only two things in the rooms were the cots, as well as a little hole that they were allowed to relieve themselves in that went straight into the ocean. There was the sturdy iron circlet on the floor that she was chained to, though the sea witch had decided that she felt more comfortable sleeping closer to it than in the cot that was nicely provided to her. Sarah decided not to ask why, knowing how her last question had gone.

There were two trays near the floor of her cell, by the bars, but both of them were empty. Sarah couldn’t figure out whether it was because she didn’t understand common courtesy or because she didn’t care for it, but the sea witch never bothered to save her portion of the meager food they were given.

No matter. It wasn’t like she was going to be extending her stay here for much longer.

“Lassie!” the sea witch cried. Sarah couldn’t ignore this one, so she turned an eye to the poor thing. Her wretched mouth was wide open as she wailed, revealing the shattered, uneven row of teeth within. Her gums were as black as Sarah’s hat, and far more rancid. “Are ye going to just sit there and wait fer death or are ye going to ‘elp?”

Sarah considered the old thing’s words, then shrugged. It wasn’t as if playing along was going to change anything, plus it might be a good way to pass the time until she could escape herself.

“Fine,” she ended up saying. Whatever plan they came up with would be worth almost nothing when the witch was crying loud enough to wake the dead. The guard stationed at the end of the hall outside would hear every second of their scheming. Still, she wasn’t putting much stock into the witch’s plan anyway. “What do you have in mind?”

The witch, and Sarah was sure that her name was Minerva, cackled now that she was finally being acknowledged. She turned her wrinkly old hands to the inside of the tattered garments she called a robe and pulled something out.

Sarah leaned forward, finally interested. Now that was something to take note of.

XxX

In hindsight, it probably wasn’t a good idea to go along with Minerva’s plan. It was stupid, and the chances of success were so low that it was laughable. They could die for the attempt, and have their entrails pulled out and fed to the sharks circling slowly undertow, but at the same time…

“Hahahahahaha!” the witch cackled. “Die you foolish cretins!”

… it was so much fun.

Sarah was currently dangling from a rope tied to the mast. She wasn’t sure how her foot got caught in it, or how she ended up upside down in the air, taking aim with one eye closed at one of the slavers running in a panic below her. The blunderbuss she pilfered was shoddy at best, and she could make a better one with two pieces of iron scrap and some gunpowder, but she supposed that it was the best a bunch of dirty slavers could afford.

Deciding that her life was in danger either way, she closed both of her eyes and tasted the wind. It wouldn’t throw off her aim too much, and she had a general idea of where the stupid man would be running. She squeezed the trigger and felt the dangerous recoil of the barely working firework, then opened her eyes.

She was turned around—again, she was dangling from a rope and it wasn’t trying to keep her steady—but she was able to find the man she was aiming for. He was currently cowering in a barrel that was one good rocking from falling overboard, and very much still alive. Another man next to him, however, was staring blankly at the slowly clouding sky, red pooling from between his eyes.

She shrugged. She didn’t hit her target, but at least she hit a target.

The cackling of the sea witch brought her attention back to the front of the ship, where the wrinkly old thing was waving around the orb she showed her. It was just big enough to fit exactly in the palm of her hand, and it was glowing a sickly green even in the mid-afternoon sun.

There was magic in it, Sarah was sure, and she couldn’t wait to pilfer it before the end of their little excursion.

“Die you foolish mortals. Die!”

She sure hoped that she would make it to the end of their little excursion.

Tentacles, translucent but no less powerful for it, stretched out of the sea as if they were reaching for the sun. They towered well over the slaver’s ship, dangling in the air and squirming like snakes, for just a second before they slammed down, hitting the deck with an ear-splitting crack. The wood bent and buckled under the creature’s onslaught, and though it didn’t do any immediately fatal damage, Sarah could only hope that the ship held out long enough.

“Get the witch!” one of the crew members yelled. He raised his hex rifle—an expensive thing for lowly slavers like themselves to have—and took aim at the witch’s head. As enthralled by her power trip as she was, Sarah doubted that she would have the awareness to dodge the deadly bullet aimed for her skull.

So Sarah did what she did best. She threw the gun she had used, now out of ammo, somewhere on deck and hoped dearly that it hit someone important. She pulled another stolen gun from her waist and took aim.

The witch’s continued survival was essential to her own, so Sarah wasn’t willing to let her die just yet. She didn’t even need to line up her shot before she let loose, pinning a bullet between yet another slaver’s eyes.

“They should really make this harder for me,” she thought. And she meant it, too. The entire reason she went along with this plan was because she thought it might be a little bit of fun, and these dumb pirate wannabes were making this almost boring.

A small part of her wished that she hadn’t killed Gangplank already. Another part of her was glad the bastard was currently digesting in about a hundred different Slaughterfish. There were rumors about him coming back, but she refused to believe them until she saw him in person.

Until then, she took careful aim at a rather gruff man dressed in red with a big ol hat. Her first shot took the ugly thing right off his head, and her second one took the ugly thing right off his shoulders. He fell to the ground, mere feet from her horrid little sea witch, who was still cackling away without a care in the world.

The old bag was horrid, and her voice was even worse, but Sarah started to find a certain charm in it all. Even more than that, however, she started to find a certain charm in the glow of that magical orb. Sarah herself wasn’t particularly experienced in the arcane arts, but it wouldn’t be hard to find someone in Bilgewater who was. A little bit of coin, and she could get that certain someone to work for her easily enough.

The tentacles smashed down again, and the ship let out a ghastly scream as holes the size of her torso started to appear in the cracks. The ship was likely taking on water now, evidenced by the fact that the ship was starting to slow. If she looked hard enough, you could see the ship start to dip lower as well, and Sarah started to come to the horrifying reality that sea witches didn’t need a ship to traverse the sea.

“Hey!” she yelled. “You old bag! Are you tryna sink this ship?”

The sea witch didn’t bother to answer with words, but she did turn to her. She looked Sarah in the eyes and cackled harder. She held the orb aloft, letting the glow of the midday sun reflect off of it. A little of the glow got in Sarah’s eyes, and it wasn’t the first time that the bounty hunter regretted helping the damn wretch out of the cells to where she could get a bit of ocean water on her.

Still, not everything was bad. That little bit of her conscious that felt bad about double crossing the witch was now dead and gone. She herself was betrayed, which meant that it was open season for backstabbing.

With a huff, the bounty hunter pulled herself up. With her first swing she snatched the pocket knife out of her boot. In truth, it wasn’t even that much. It was a tiny blade made from the serrated tooth of a nasty fish she found in the slaughterdocks. She wouldn’t trust it to cut any meal or survive against any real blade, but a rope?

A rope it could handle.

She flopped back down, the world spinning as she once again dangled from her feet. She took a moment to survey what was going on: the men running afraid of the ethereal tentacles, the cackling sea witch, the captain staring angrily at, not the person destroying his ship, but her. Then, with another heave, she pulled herself back up. Her hand caught the rope, keeping her in a midair V, and she hacked at the string, determined to get herself out. It took a few seconds, more like a minute really, but she managed to cut through the decaying piece of rope. Her body flopped straight again, but this time right side up.

Just in time, too. She was starting to get a headache from all the blood rushing to her head.

“Girl!” the captain screamed. And it could only be the captain of the ship. A voice that deep and angry could only belong to the fetid bastard that snatched her from her crewmates while she was drunk at that bar. Damned bartender must have slipped her something to get her that wasted. “Come down and face me! Captain to captain!”

Sarah looked over he shoulder, and she saw the man brandishing his sword in the air, no doubt challenging her to a duel of some kind. She scoffed at the little display of bravado.

“Sorry, darling. Captain Fortune doesn’t do swordfights. Always been more of a gun girl, myself.”

“Then never say I didn’t try to do this honorably!”

The man sheathed his sword, and in its place he pulled a pistol from his coat. It was a fair bit better than all the other guns on the ship, save that sweet hex rifle, and laid out in intricate designs from the trigger to the barrel.

Sarah had excellent eyesight, thank you very much. She needed it both to aim and to see the wretched face of the bastard that shot her mother dead as he burned in a fantastic gout of flame while his ship sank helplessly into the harbor.

That was a rapturous day. Much more exciting than whatever today was shaping up to be.

Anyway, the man shot his bullet or whatever, and she didn’t bother to dodge. She could see from his stance alone that his bullet was going to go wide, and it didn’t look the type to have more than a single round per shot. Sure enough, the captain cursed his horrible aim, then started the laborious task of reloading his gun.

If her mother was still alive, Sarah was sure that she would have done away with such inefficient designs. Sadly, things were not meant to be. Oh well, more time for her. She stashed her handy little knife back in her boot before pulling herself up. If she was going to get out of here, she needed to be in place for when—

A high-pitched whistle sang past her ear, and Sarah turned in alarm to see the smoke rising out of the captain’s gun.

“You reload quick, don’t you?” she asked, a grimace finally showing on her face. Was the damned man some kind of Noxian army vet?

“Of course I do!” the captain shouted back. “I used to be in the Noxian army ‘fore I was kicked out. Had to know my way around a gun before the commanding officer took it out on my hide.”

Fortune cursed. Why was it that she was always right? Changing plans, she aborted the idea of climbing the rope and instead began to swing her legs. She finally started a good momentum when the ring of another bullet rushed past her ears. It didn’t hit her, not really, but a passing glance was enough to open a bloody red hole in the side of her white button-down shirt.

Which was a shame, really. She didn’t have a great deal of them that were made with women of her build in mind.

“Stop moving, you damn rat!” the captain shouted, already in the process of reloading his gun. His aim was getting better with every shot, which didn’t bode too well for the swinging bounty hunter. She swung her legs harder, and her arc grew even wider. Another bullet rang out, and this one just barely nicked her stomach.

“Hey witch!” she yelled. “You wanna give me a hand here?”

“I can’t hear you!” the witch replied. “I’m a daft young lassie!”

She supposed she deserved that. A roll of her eyes, and she returned to her swing. She was close enough to the mast now to reach her legs out, wrapping them enough around the wooden beam to secure herself to it. Another shot rang out, zipping through her knotted hair, and the errant thought to comb it as soon as she could came to her head.

She wondered where she left her comb. Did she leave it in her room on her ship? If she did, then it was almost certain that her no-good crewmates already nicked it. They wouldn’t dare steal anything of value, but the little things they didn’t think she’d miss? Gone in a night.

“Next shot is going for your head, lassie!” the captain yelled. He had already refilled the gunpowder and was taking aim once more. Fortune glared at him, then stuck her tongue out. She doubted the man could see it from where he was standing, but that hardly mattered. The tentacles slammed down again, right on time in the practiced rhythm it had adopted and rocked the ship something hard. The man’s shot went wide, very much so, and allowed Sarah her time to breathe. Deep in, deep out, and a rational frame of mind for what she was about to do.

She whooped as she yanked hard on the rope. She didn’t trust a bunch of dirty slavers to rig their ship correctly, and sure enough, with all of her weight in the pull, she was able to pull the knot keeping the sails together. The large, gull eaten thing fell alongside her, but Sarah cared very little for it. She was able to rappel down safely, and that was all that mattered.

The pirates screamed as the sail fell over them, trapped them just long enough for the tentacles to slam into them, reducing them to mush and staining the fabric. Several of the pirates were aiming for her wretched little friend. They were now much less alive.

Speaking of the sea witch…

“Thanks, love!” Sarah yelled. This time, Minerva honestly didn’t seem to hear her. Her cackling had grown almost monstrous in volume, and her head was cocked back to have her shout endlessly at the sky.

Sarah shook her head, though a smile had come unbidden to her face. The sea witch was a horrible thing, but she was becoming more and more endearing by the second.

“Damn you, Fortune,” the captain howled. Sarah turned to see the man, much larger now that she was on the ground, come stalking towards her. Nevermind that his ship was literally being torn to pieces around him and almost all of his men were either dead or about to be dead, the man still had eyes only for her. His pace was almost leisurely as he reloaded his gun, much slower than he did than when she was in the air. “I should’ve known that taking you on the ship was going to be a bad idea.”

Sarah looked around. There was more blood staining the deck than a slow day on the slaughterdocks. The men he had brought with him were quickly turning into either mush or vapor depending on how fast the tentacles were moving, and she could see the horizon slowly coming up to her eyeline, which meant that the boat was definitely sinking.

And yet, this man was still focused wholly on her. Interesting. She smiled and, without turning, pointed her last gun at a brave young man that was running towards her witch. He fell to the floor of the ship, a hole through his leg, and only had enough time to scream before a tentacles smashed him through the wood.

“You were the one that invited me on here, darling,” she said. She didn’t bother to pose, it was an action wasted on such a man. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were obsessed with me.”

The captain scoffed, then, instead of taking aim, he pointed at her. “Obsessed? With you? No, I’m not obsessed.” He took a moment, his eyes going back and forth as he pondered on something. Sarah wondered if the man even saw the state of his ship anymore. “Or… no. I guess you could say I’m obsessed. Obsessed with the idea of finally getting revenge on you for what you did!”

Sarah, who was inching her way backwards, looked back to the man. If she squinted, she could say that he had quite a likeness to Gangplank, if Gangplank was shorter, stockier, and far less impressive. “What I did? I don’t remember doing anything with you, sweetie.”

“Of course you wouldn’t!” The captain roared. “But that’s okay. I don’t need you to remember. You won’t be remembering much else in a few seconds.”

“Oh really?” Sarah asked. She took another look behind her, and, upon seeing that she wasn’t lined up, took two steps to the left. Confident now, she turned back to the captain with a smile. “And why won’t I be?”

“Cause imma kill ya, of course!” he yelled. Sarah had to give it to the man. He wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box, but he made up for it in gusto, he did. “Any last words?”

Now here, Sarah actually took a second to start thinking. Did she actually have any last words to impart on such a poor, wretched man? He obviously didn’t have much going on his life, and whatever she was about to say would likely be of utmost importance to him. Treasure, if you would, to a man devoid of any kind of meaning or purpose.

No good words came to mind. To be honest, she didn’t expect any to. Final words weren’t the sort of thing that she bothered with. To plan for that would be to assume that someone was capable of killing her. If the death reaver of Bilgewater wasn’t up to the task, she doubted anyone was.

Still, that didn’t mean that she was caught speechless. When it came to quips she was the greatest in all of Valoran. At least, of all the people she had met.

“You’ve got dangerous eyes… I like that.”

The man, flattered as he was, smiled as he lined up his shot. He could be forgiven, then for not noticed how she had already started to move. He fired shit shot, and it rang true as it flew. Her head would have exploded had she stayed where she was.

She hadn’t, however, and the only person to be caught unawares was the poor sea hag, once again too distracted by her own power to notice the very credible danger happening all around her. Minerva, eyes and mouth wide open as she came to terms with her eventual death, could only stare at the broken shards left in her outstretched hand.

“Lassie?” she asked. Her crooked nose pointed at Sarah as she looked directly at her.

“You know, you should really pay more attention to your surroundings,” Fortune responded. “Wasn’t that how you got captured in the first place?”

The tentacles, no longer under control of the now broken orb, froze in place.

For all of one second.

Then they continued their assault, energy renewed and in a frenzy. Their first victim was the still frozen sea witch, her incessant wails cutting through the din of the open, empty sea. She was, of course, an immortal lich, so she would recover quickly as long as the ethereal tentacles dropped her somewhere in the sea. Sarah wished dearly that she would be long gone by the time that happened.

The second victim, of course, was the wayward captain. He had already started to reload his gun, but it was too late for him to notice the state of the ship. A particularly large tentacle, almost as big as the mast, slammed down on the ship. It hit the deck with a loud, meaty thud, crushing the captain before he could even tell what was happening.

And in the midst of it all, finally alone, stood Sarah Fortune. Her smile was still there, though the adrenaline of the moment was quickly wearing off, allowing a healthy dose of fear to take its place.

“Oh barnacles,” she said. She holstered her hands on her hips as she watched the tentacles prepared for another strike. As long as Minerva wasn’t dead—or as dead as a sea witch could be—the flow of magic from her to the tentacles would never end. She was hoping that the captain’s bullet would hit Minerva right between the eyes, like all of her shots did, but she greatly overestimated the late captain. “How the hell am I going to fight a damn spirit kraken?”

Luckily, that wasn’t a problem that she had to deal with. She heard the telltale whistle of a cannonball well before the blasted thing hit the ship. She braced herself as the greatly abused ship took yet another beating, then turned to see something that brought her great joy.

There, on the horizon, was her own ship. Her crew was beelining straight for her, just as she planned they would.

“One day to notice I’m missing, and another day to pursue me. I’m so glad the old reaver’s ships were some of the fastest in Valoran!”

Miss Fortune whooped as she ran to the ship’s port, then vaulted over the cracked railing. The sea witch explained that the curse of her orb only targeted the vessel they were on, so she assumed that it wouldn’t care for a lifeboat or two.

Sure enough, it only continued to hit the ship as she slammed feet first into the lifeboat and sent it down to the water. Like all the other things on the slavers’ boat, the life raft was shoddy and poorly made. There were cracks in it galore and the wood was rotting, but it would serve her needs.

Back to the ship it was for her, and though the entire trip was harrowing and annoying and she didn’t get her hands on that fancy pearl, at least it wasn’t all for nothing.

“Now, how did you end up in the hands of such a motley little crew?” Sarah asked the beautiful hex rifle she held in her hands. In her back pocket sat the ornate gun of the captain, who had thrown the work of art away right after he used it. “No matter. I don’t really care about my partners’ past, only what they can do for my future. And something tells me that we are going to have an excellent future together.”

Taking a page from Minerva, Sarah threw her head back and cackled as she allowed the waves to send her gently coasting towards her ship. The sea breeze was freezing, as usual, sending goosebumps up and down her arms and cooling her down. As she kicked her feet up and sat back, she could only wonder at all the things she had to enjoy in life.

And, for once, she figured that she enjoyed everything about it.