The Curious Traveler

Ursala sat in a small boat as it drifted across the sea. Lately she hadn’t had much to do, so she decided to go on an adventure of sorts. She had heard Divide Island was quite the spectacle, and thought it might be a fun little adventure. It was quite boring alone in the boat, even with all the books she had brought. She was hoping things might be more lively once she could see the mountain that look split in half.

   She had been out on sea for around a day, and based on a map she should be nearing the island soon. She looked up from the map, and saw an outline of a island from the distance. She adjusted the sails accordingly, and watched as the island came closer, and closer. Before long the island was right in front of her.

   The boat hit the sand from the beach gently, and Ursala had climbed out before long. She grabbed one of the ropes attached to the boat, and pulled it until it couldn’t be washed away. Looking at the sky she saw the split mountain towering above her. She began what would be a short trek through the woods. Not long after she began walking a large shadow appeared. It appeared to be a boat. Ursala stood under it. She found it breathtaking, and longed to know more about it.

   She immediately sprinted until she reached the foot of the mountain. Thankfully the ship seemed in no rush. She ran as fast as she could until she was at the same level in the sky as the ship. At this point the ship was slowly descending into a lake below. She wanted so badly an explanation of how the ship worker, and if she were to get those answers she’d have to follow it.

   The boat was about halfway in the water at this point, and Ursala took a few steps back. She then took off, and leapt off the mountain towards the boat. Mid air she deployed Bubble so when she landed she wouldn’t be hurt. Within a few seconds she felt the bubble crash onto the ship’s deck. A loud pop sound resounded as Ursala dismissed the bubble. Quickly regaining her composure Ursala stood up, and looked at the crew of the ship around her not sure who to ask about how the boat works.

Ursala turned around to see the person speaking to her. The expression she gave her was rather blank, and calm. As the girl spoke Ursula's curiosity only grew. "I suppose I am a stow away." Ursala turned her attention away from the girl for a second to notice her surroundings. Everything seemed very reminiscent of pirate stories. She could feel magic all around herself. She looked back at the girl her face still expressionless. "What exactly is black sails? Also I have no ill intention towards you and your crew. I was simply curious about the ship."

  At this point Ursala could feel the eyes of the ships crew glaring at her. She started to realize she'd gotten herself into quite the  predicament considering she had no way to leave the cave without help, and judging by the looks the crew gave her they had no intention of that.

It was pretty similar to most times the ship returned to the island from an assignment. They came into the area and took a special route through Divide Island that only their crew knew about before arriving into their lair. Cirven had taken part in the assignment that they had just completed that had them 'finding' some of the currency of the land, jewels and other things from a competitor's ship. Truth be told, the competitor had beaten them to getting the loot they desired and as typical pirates, the Black Sails crew found a way to get it from them. Their way of procuring the booty was pretty barbaric because it caused them to jump into a short skirmish with the pirate group named, Disjuntores de Coroa. They were known for being more of the vigilante types that lead them to crossing against the Magic Council and other justice pursuing factions over and over while trying to keep to their cause of getting as much money and fame as they could at the expense of any who crossed them. Black Sails was the exception and Cirven made sure to show the rival group just how far behind they were in power compared to his own crew which left the Disjuntores floating on bits and pieces of what was left of their ship in the ocean. None of them were killed this time as it was more like Black Sails was sending a message but they could not guarantee that again with the possible animosity that would possibly be directed at them.

The Quartermaster had been dealing with what loot they had acquired while some others were steering the ship for him so that they arrived into a part of their lair. His ears caught the sound of a sound that he was not used to hearing anywhere near the ship, especially in their lair. A sort of popping sound. The demon made his way out of the storage area of the ship to find out what had made the noise and quickly found it to be a sudden stowaway on the ship. "Haia, Julius." He called out to the members of his crew who had approached the girl while the others on the ship cautiously looked at the girl and waited to see what was decided as their next action. "I hope this is a friend of one of yours because otherwise she will have to be imprisoned while we figure out who she is. We can't take any chances with what she is capable of, especially after she was able to make it all the way here without being subdued already by one of the crew. This just means we will have to up our guard duty of the island somehow." Black electricity coiled out around his arms and body as he approached the trio and got closer. "So I'm going to need you to start explaining who you are in much more depth to me and why you are here before I give you a pretty bad shock. Girl or not, you are a threat to my crew and will need to be dealt with as such." His voice and the way he looked at the girl were similar to how he dealt with Haia joining in the past which was completely logical. They were a crew of men and women who made more enemies than they made friends so it was only natural that they approached every new person as a foe more than anything else.

Ursala appreciated the man going by Julius. He got straight to answering her question. He seemed to have more understanding than the rest of the crew. When the second man walked up Ursula could tell just by the way he loved he had to be powerful, especially when he gave a warning shot using black lightning. What made it even worse was when the crew all stepped back from this man.

  While her facial expressions didn't change Ursula took a step back from the man, and explained best she could. "My name is Ursala. I suppose I'm a traveler of sorts, and I hadn't been on any nice islands in a while, so I was traveling to this island for a vacation. Once I got here I saw the flying ship. I wanted to know how the ship flew so I followed it." She didn't particularly like how the man threatening her, but she understood. He obviously was one of the people in charge. He had to be protecting his crew above all.

   Ursala paused. She knew she'd have to give a better explanation than that, but couldn't think of anything to prove she meant no harm. She was drawn a blank. After hearing what he said about  imprisonment Ursala readied herself to run if necessary. While her facial expression remained unchanged, she did nervously hold her hands together. She looked towards the crew of the ship around her, and felt extremely cornered. She took a few steps closer to the side of the boat trying to make it look casual. If she was about to be attacked she wanted to be ready to get away from the majority of the crew as fast as possible.

Ursala looked at with a confused sound in her voice, while her face remained blank. "You want to interrogate me over a drink?" She had heard of alcohol before, but the thing was she had never really drank it herself. So when this woman spoke of it she assumed she must be meaning water, or something like that. She thought about it think it had to be a trap of some sort, but after a few seconds of deliberation in her mind she decided she didn't really have any other choices seeing as she was surrounded by multiple wizards, almost all seeming to be stronger than her. She nodded her head slowly. "O-okay?" For the first time Ursala's face showed an actual expression. She looked extremely confused, not expecting to be invited to drink with the crew. She expected to be chased, or attacked, but not invited to drink. She decided to follow the woman, not sure what to expect next. The expression was short lived though, and quickly faded off her face replaced with her normal stone-faced expression. For the first time in a long time Ursala was rather excited about not knowing her future. To some it might seem scary, but now that she wasn't going to be chased, she had calmed down.

Cirven was about to speak to his crew mates when his captain in her new looked showed herself and took over the situation. The black electricity that was streaming over his body stopped suddenly and his face broke from the seriousness it had into a expression that looked more like he was half annoyed with his mouth open from the shock of it. "Captain...! You always come in when I'm doing my intimidation thing. At least let me have some time to shine first next time." He shook his head and smiled showing the personality that he usually was in. He was a lot more carefree in the eyes of everyone usually, especially when Ana was around but he dropped that trait when he needed to be serious. At this point, he knew that Ana had things pretty much under control for the most part and would accompany her for some sort of back up.

"Looks like we have some added company for our meal, boys. Let's go and enjoy it!" Cirven spoke out to all of the crew around them and was responded to by a resounding cheer from most of them as he followed closely behind Ana and Ursala. He wanted to make sure the girl did not try anything weird because he didn't trust her still but would act his part as he followed behind with his hands held on the back of his head and a grin on his face as if he did not care about anything at all.

The group would arrive to the dining area and everyone would take their seats with plates of food and drink already laid out for them thanks to those on board who were kind enough to set everything up. Cirven mouth salivated at the sight of the food but made sure to wait to see where their guest was sitting before getting his own seat so that he could stay near her.

While being lead to the dining room by the woman named Haia, Ursala could feel the stares of the crew. She could tell that Haia was trying to comfort her, but at this point she was no longer scared. She felt rather excited at the prospect of being with a bunch of pirates. It was truly a scenario like that of her story books. While being seated Ursala stared at the food, and drinks that had already been set up for everyone. The food looked delicious to Ursala's surprise. She expected food made by a bunch of pirates to be, well not good looking to say the least, but this food looked amazing. She looked around not knowing whether she could eat or not. She wasn't entirely sure of the etiquette on a ship, but the food looked good. Ursala grabbed a roll off one of the main dishes, and placed it on her empty plate. Her drink had already been filled, so Ursala took a small sip of it. The second she tasted it she put it back down not wanting to drink any more. "What is that?" She spoke quietly to herself whilst examining the contents of her drink. She considered speaking up, and asking, but not wanting to be rude every now, and then she would reach over to the drink and taking the smallest sip possible. She'd reluctantly swallow it before taking a bite of the roll to get the taste out of her mouth.

Ursala looked all around her. The crew seemed to get along pretty well, almost like a family. She remembered reading books with groups like these, and they were her favorite books. While waiting to be addressed she simply took in the fun atmosphere. Everyone seemed so happy, and content, because of this Ursala couldn't help but feel enchanted. She took another sip of the drink right before Julius answered what it was. "Hmm I've heard of beer. It's basically alcohol, right?" The question was more of her thinking aloud than an actual question. She was about to reluctantly take another sip to be polite, but then the person everyone was calling captain started talking to her again.

Ursala listened to her occasionally getting lost in thought about what she was saying. "Keeling hauling is something along the lines of torture.... I think." As the captain continued Ursala picked up the mug infront of her and politely started drinking it, but after a few sips she had enough and put it down. It was then that the captain replaced her drink with a much better looking one, and she felt stupid for not realizing the captain was kidding sooner. Ursala watched her chug it down in amazement. Her face remained solemn like always while she answered. "I'm Ursala." She spoke before loosing her train of thought, and glancing back towards the fresher beer she picked it up, and sniffed it. It smelled much better than the other one, if you could call it a good smell. Getting back on track she put it down, and answered the remaining questions. "If you mean where I've spent most of my life so far, that'd be Clover Town. Recently though I've been traveling quite a bit. I guess you could say I'm traveling in search of adventure, but other than that I came to this island for it's split mountain. I saw your boat flying over head, and decided to follow it out of curiosity." As she finished she picked the beer back up, and took a sip. This one did taste better than the other one. Although Ursala wasn't all to fond of it, she tried to mimic how the captain drank it. She tried to chug it, but half way through the drink she choked on it. She put it back down, and coughed a bit trying to clear her throat. After she cleared her throat back out she took a small sip of the drink deciding not to try and mimic the captain again.

Cirven simply ate what food was placed in front of him while listening to everyone's exchanges with the new stowaway. He did not exactly trust that the girl wasn't a threat at all with how she made her way onto the ship and did so without many even noticing her around the island. He thought that maybe they should take this experience as some sort of way to learn that they needed to up their security around the island somehow. He figured he would bring it up to Ana later where the island would either have hidden cameras placed everywhere or that they would have hidden crew members keeping an eye out on the island and who enters it because they had really been getting too many people who had just stumbled upon them. He understood during the time when they were really first being established but after all this time you would think they would have some sort of safety net to protect them from intruders as well as keep an eye on things.

Cirven chugged down some beer and let out a loud wide-eyed burp that surprised himself and made the entire area quiet for a short time. "Wasn't expecting that one. This stuff is pretty good, huh?" He laughed after and some of the men joined him in his laughter. He turned his focus onto the new girl who sat near him. "So your name is Usala and you came here to find some sort of adventure from Clover Town? You nearly had me take your head off just for showing up on the ship for some sort of adventure craving? You should think before you leap next time. Maybe actually sneak on the ship and not just come down right onto the center of it in the middle of everyone." He smiled at her showing that he was only teasing her a bit or at least semi-teasing her. "Seeing as the Captain took my thunder earlier I'm going to take her's a bit now and say that she will probably give you an option in joining us or something worse happening to you. If you want adventure in your life then joining won't be a bad idea but know that if you cross the crew you will be dealt with by me personally." Cirven gave off a dark and emotionless glare to her as he spoke and then broke out from the expression with his fang filled grin. "I'm sure you understand that you don't want a dog demon to be after you." He then went back to eating the food in front of him and waited for the conversation Ursala was having with the captain continue.