Page 70 of Virelai's Hoard
Riley
The green mist was so thick on the deck of the ghost ship that Riley feared she might choke on it. It hung close and menacing and coated her surroundings in eerie shadows. She heard nothing above the thunder of her own heart. No wind, no waves, no flapping of the sails. Just a heavy, oppressive silence. She took a step forward, and the loud creak of the wood beneath scraped at her earbuds–made her flinch. She moved to a damp-looking plank besides. Her boots clung to it, pieces of rot coming off with every step, and that made her skin crawl. She pushed forward, squinting through the mist.
“Patch?” she called. “Eryx?”
Nothing. She was alone. Just her and this creepy ass ship.
She caught a flicker in the mist, and she turned to it. Breathing came easier as the green thinned around her, enough to spot the source of the light. A torch. It illuminated four crumbling steps leading up–she must’ve reached the quarterdeck–and Riley hesitated before gingerly testing them. She stepped up. Another torch. This one illuminated a signpostwith a single sign nailed to it. An arrow. It pointed to an open hatch leading below.
A quirk of her eyebrows.
Was she gettingdirections?
Maybe Eryx and Patch came this way?
As she cautiously approached the sign, she made out a few words carved beneath. Words she could read.
This way.
Riley peered down the hatch. She could make out two rungs of stairs. Impenetrable darkness swallowed the rest. She stumbled back.
“Fuckthat.” She glared at the sign, then startled. The writing had changed.
It’s not a trap.
Riley shook her head, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling. Rubbing the goosebumps off her arms, she took another step back, and then another. “There’s no fucking way.” When she looked at the hatch again, her head tilted, ears picking up the echo of–a squeak? No. This ship was playing tricks on her mind.
She turned her back on it and relied more on instinct than sight as she fled the quarterdeck. There were no other torches anywhere else. No other hatches anywhere else, either, which was impossible. Almost as impossible as being on an empty, rotting ghost ship, sailing on green mist-infested waters with shifting signs and mocking reassurances. Reluctantly, Riley returned to the sign. It had changed again.
Where else will you go?
Riley scowled at it. There had been no signs of Patch on the rest of the deck, nor Eryx, nor anyone else. They must’ve come this way.
Time dragged on, and eventually, Riley relented. She descended into the darkness, step by careful step. Unlike thewood of the deck, the ladder rungs felt smooth and solid under her feet and fingers. So smooth she nearly slipped off them when the hatch banged shut above her head.
“Fuck!” She clung tighter to the ladder, gasping in a shallow breath.
The pinprick of light she was going by cut off entirely, Riley had to feel her way down. Her hands shook so hard they cramped around the rungs, and she fought her own muscles to release, grip onto the next, repeat.
“Fuck your creepy ass ship,” she muttered as she went down. “And your creepy ass sign.” Her voice echoed down the ladder, which sent a shiver skittering up her spine. How long was this thing? “This way,” she mocked. “Not a trap. Absolutely not a fucking trap. Fuck you.”
She didn’t know who she was swearing at, but it helped. Her hands steadied, and soon her heartbeat settled. She felt the oppressive weight of the darkness. The soreness settling into her limbs with the repetitiveness of the motions. A subtle chill in the air pricked at her skin as she descended, and it settled into her bones. It was a long time before she realized there was no ladder in existence that could possibly go that deep, not on a ship this size–not on a ship of any size. She should’ve been deep underground by now. Maybe she was. She imagined feet over feet of earth piling up overhead, and she fought off a shudder.
Just as she thought she’d spend an eternity descending these damned stairs, Riley’s boot hit solid ground. A wooden floor.
A torch flickered to life at her side, and Riley shielded her eyes from it with a hiss. She blinked away the sudden pain, and eventually her vision settled. The light barely illuminated the wooden walls of a dark corridor. Aship’ssort of corridor. Not underground, then.
Riley gave up on trying to figure out how anything worked and started walking. She flinched when another torch shot tolife, and she mostly fought off the next as she reached the third torch.
“Can’t you just light them up all at once?” Riley grumbled at the fifth torch.
She was ignored.
Resentment settled in at having to follow a path already laid out for her like this, but the corridor went straight ahead. No turns, no intersections, no doors. Just the plain wooden walls at her sides and the torches. She tried not to think of how much easier this would be with Patch by her side, how sorely she missed him already. The traitorous little vermin.
“If you touched a whisker on him, I’m gonna find a way to make your stupid ship sink,” she told the empty corridor. Her voice echoed, then faded back into silence.
Am I dead?
