Open Chronicles Shipwrecked! At the Bayou Garramarisma

Bayou Garramarisma

A blue eye peered through the one socket in a thick, cumbersome helmet to watch deckhands and guards set up a rudimentary camp near the gutted corpse of a small ship that had run aground. A man with a leather cap decorated with an old feather tightly held onto a ledger as he barked orders to the crew who stomped around detritus scattered about the mire.

Little had changed for the surviving prisoners except that their confines below deck were replaced with fresh air and sunlight. Vyke discovered during the last several minutes that he preferred being shackled and miserable under the sun with a light breeze to being shackled and miserable in the dark belly of a ship that stank of excrement and other foul odors.

Vyke, along with the other poor sods crammed into a hastily constructed cage, startled at the sudden blaring of a horn.

"Attack! We're under attack!" A voice sounded from the treeline, and then a wave of naga emerged and descended upon the half-made encampment, and guardsmen and sailors rushed with swords and improvised weapons in hand to meet them.

The other prisoners shackled alongside Vyke caterwauled and squeezed themselves together away from the bars as a swarm of crabs burst from the shoreline.

A fireball roared through the air and exploded amidst the horde of Naga, slowing the snakemen that pressed in on the weak line set by guardsmen and deckhands. The moment the first of the Allirians fell, cleft apart and feasted upon by the scaled monsters, the line crumbled. Vyke watched a stray fireball soar up into the sky, where it harmlessly exploded.

"Oh," Vyke murmured as he watched one man after another fall victim to naga savagery, "We're going to die."

As if hearing his words as an invitation, a small group of the snakemen slithered over the blanket of crabs and surrounded the cage, staring at the prisoners with beady eyes.

Vyke neither clung to nor huddled with his fellow quivering, mumbling prisoners. No, he remained in his corner, where through the bars, he watched as fate arrived on the shoulders of four undead. The suspense of it all would have struck the man with anxiety hadn't it taken so fucking long.

The prisoners observed the following spectacle with fearful wonder. The absurdity of it all had left the grime-covered men speechless. So it was that the lich's question was unanswered until the stench of freshly soiled breeches wafted to Vyke's nostrils.

Hooking his fingers through the bars, Vyke pulled himself to his knees with a malcontent grunt, "I shall speak."

Vyke shuffled out from the cage dragging his knees on the ground, and when he stood before the chattering skeleton, it was with a slouch. He fixed the helmet's fit to see the undead better through the single narrow socket. Strange and cruel, indeed. Heavy, too.

"Vyke," he curtly rasped, and taking into consideration the manner in which the skeleton presented itself, quickly added, "My Lord."

"My Lord is wise and generous. I accept these terms."