Death has taken a stronghold here, the overwhelming stench of drying blood and urine too much to bear. But I must. Having gotten this far into their lair, I cannot turn back. This is not about cowardice and the need to keep a man's ego, as some may later presume, should I by some miracle be successful…This has become a basic stepping stone in the nature of man versus the monster. Plural, in this case. The captain, the pirate known only as Gorro, he has given me his dark blessing in this matter. He was subdued when he looked upon me as I made my quest, his red eyes glinting in awful knowledge. I am thankful for the incredible strength he has had in this ghastly journey. Without him, I should think my fate would have been easier spent in Hell.

I must remain quiet, my thoughts going to the autotransmitter as per instructions. But even thoughts can be dangerous here, for they can sense them, smell them. They hunger for the minds of men, and devour them, quite literally, especially those whose thoughts are running full tilt on the speed of subconscious panic. I must hold my fear deep inside of myself, and not alert them to me with it. I must keep calm, regardless of the horrors I know I face, regardless of how much Drako believes my fear is an asset.
I have no choice.

He moved with the stealth of a cockroach hidden in the dark, and slid the autotransmitter off of its perch against the side of his forehead. He slipped the small, silver piece of metal into his side pocket, and waited. The ship was creaking with an unnatural silence, the vast ballroom that this lair had once been now pockmarked with bloodstains and broken furnishings, bullet holes and the remains of scorches from the fire bombs marring its once incredible beauty. He had been proud to be a part of this ship when it had been made, the finest thing to sail through sky and sea in many a decade. He was proud of it still, for the delicate, engraved metal and wood that adorned the place was still under the magic of its carvers, the architects of the ship the true heroes, even while their damsel ship had been ripped apart, and ravaged.

It had been quite a prestigious post to be given, to be the first officer of The Anphograph, with Captain Cornelius Eagan at the helm-a stately man from somewhere in the northern reaches of the Mangrua, though his voice had more the softer lilt of a person educated much farther south, in Australiana. He’d suffered through the ice storm of 15,563, and had earned a few medals for that honor as well as a footnote in more than one histograph. Ice storms were rare, but when they hit, they took all that lived with them. From what Lieutenant Alexander Jacobson understood, Captain Eagan had been one of only two men known in all of modern aviation and sea history who had conquered such a natural phenomenon. He’d managed to rescue four of his crewmen besides, and that alone had placed him into immortal status. A brave and heavily decorated man…Of course Alexander had jumped at the opportunity when it arose, to work sidelong with a human legend!
They’d taken him first, Alexander thought gloomily.

He shook the feeling of dread off, and continued onwards through the remains of the ballroom. Pieces of glass cut into his palms, and little pins of seashells lay scattered across the red carpeting. The jewels of the women who had danced here, lovely young ladies bored of their husbands and careers. Beautiful women with pale faces and long limbs, graceful shoulders, and easy manners about them. They danced and smiled and were as charming as the most beautiful people of a universe should be-full of hope and life and joy. They were all gone now, as were a good ninety percent of the passengers. They’d been shipped into the bowels of The Anphograph, and after they were horribly disfigured and paraded through the entire mile long length of the ship, with broken glass shoved into their heels to make the journey extra horrible and tortuous, they were eaten, one by one. He’d never forget the smell of fear. Excrement. Blood. Piss. All the ingredients of the vilest Hell, and yet at this point, Hell seemed easier to bear.

Somewhere, on the upper third quarter of The Anphograph, the pirate captain Drako was waiting. Alexander closed his eyes and got his bearings, the memories of what he had witnessed here nearly overwhelming him. He forced himself to move on, shielding himself from their detection by scurrying behind the overturned chairs. He clung close to the outer walls, all the easier to break into a run if need be. They were too large to chase him, and would run out of breath soon. As long as he had a clear path to make a real break for it, they wouldn’t be able to follow. At least, that was his hope.
He followed his instincts, crawling like a hungry mouse along the floor of the room, his senses attuned as well as any hunted prey. He did not have much time. He felt along the walls, searching for a good crevice within the carving work to place one of the slim detonators one of Drako’s men had crafted. The metal was cold, and not for the first time did Alexander think this was an untrustworthy machination to place’s one’s hopes for life in. Not that he didn’t trust Drako at this point…There was no reason for the man to hope he failed, after all. Still, he had an unsettling eye, and a mind so deep just peaking into it had left Alexander spiraling into its dark eternity. It was Drako himself who had cut that contact, shaking Alexander into the solidity of the physical world with a blow to his lower jaw.

He found a place for the slim metal detonator in an unexpected deep crevice within the wood. He squinted in the close darkness to get a look at what it rested in, and wasn’t surprised to see the open maw of a three dimensional wolf snarling over the tiny piece of metal. He patted its snout appreciatively and continued onwards, hoping to get the remaining detonator into as good a spot. He felt along the wall, ignoring the pain in his knees as the glass and small shells cut through his uniform, splitting his skin. It was dangerous to be wounded here, for they could smell fresh blood in the manner a shark could, and would all arrive in a sweaty, stinking frenzy of teeth and horror if he didn’t hurry. He found the mouth of a wooden carp, the carving so delicately wrought the fish was hollow. He dropped the detonator into it and breathed a sigh of relief. Regardless of the outcome for himself, at least this was finished-he could accept death if it meant the destruction of those beings-he hesitated to call them human, for there was no way they could be a part of his breed any longer. He settled for the name they all understood, and filled every man, be he pirate or honest merchant trader with dread.
Inikrams.

He was near the exit, a large circular door with a collection of vines carved in wood around it, the likeness so close to reality they looked as though they were actual petrified plants. Petals poked out from beneath the branches, a deep cherry color to match the wood they were created from, the angles they had been created in flowing and wistful, like seaweed in a lazy tide.
He put his hand onto a leaf, admiring its texture under his palm, knowing he had best hold onto what beauty he could find at this hour, this second when his life was in such a precarious balance. His life-how wonderful it had been to spend it with the glory that was The Anphograph-and how fitting it was that this magnificent work of art was to become his tomb.
He heard them before he saw them. Their lumbering gait, the stench of their sweaty bodies. He cast one glance over his shoulder, and met the tiny red rimmed eyes of one that had stalked him, her hand huge and bloodstained, her mouth wide and ringed with sharp, golden teeth. She squealed in delight at the presence of this victim, and several more of her ilk lumbered out of their hiding places, stinking pink flesh oozing into the blankness of the former ballroom.

She reached towards him, her vile grin wide. Fear clenched his senses like a physical blow. Alexander screamed.

My first day on The Anphograph. I may not be able to top this adventure or honor, for just this morning I have been informed that I am to be in second command to one Captain Eagan, of the ice storm fame. I keep touching my heart to be sure it is still beating, for this has to be a type of Heaven for a man like me. The ship itself is the most beautiful work of art I have ever seen, with huge circular doors with carved animals and flowers and vines writhing throughout the halls and around the doors themselves. Rich reds and golds give it a most regal feeling, and even though this is for the most part a passenger and merchant ship, no expense has been spared for the comfort of her passengers. I am a proud man today, and I don’t think it hurts to bask just a little in how incredible this experience is. In one hour we shall be leaving the Port of Synax. We shall spend exactly two days on the sea and then transfer our power to the aural energy reserves and coast upwards into the sky as the ocean drops off. The clouds over the southern hemisphere are forecasted as especially thick this week, and I do believe we shall have smooth sailing for the most part. I am counting on it, for I plan to make a good acquaintance with Captain Eagan, and hopefully he will be forthcoming with his experiences in the ice storm. A fascinating man, to be sure, he is much shorter than I had first anticipated, but then at six feet myself perhaps I put others at a disadvantage. He has brilliant blue eyes that are quick and intelligent, and I could tell when he first saw me he was making a sure assessment of my worth. What deductions he made are impossible for me to interpret, however. Like all good Captains, he does not reveal what he is thinking beneath his brow. I only hope to acquire that skill myself, one of these days…

The clouds were, as forecasted, thick and black upon the sky’s horizon as they traveled them, the ship’s navigational system flickering in hazes of yellow light off and on in the captain’s deck as lightning skipped along the sky’s surface. This area was known as Angorum, the wandering storm. It was a collection of black clouds which moved along the surface of the sky, darkly plotting out where the ships would journey as they caressed its shores. Alexander watched the lightning bursts of energy from within the permanent storm with fascination. So far he had been assigned to sea faring vessels only, and The Anphograph was the first sea and sky ship he had the pleasure of working on. He leaned away from his window as a particularly close bolt of lightning skipped close to the side of the ship, lighting the cabin with a brilliance like a wink from the sun itself.

Captain Eagan laughed. “They won’t hit us,” he assured Alexander. “We have anti-static chargers that nullify them if they try.”

Alexander nodded, and left the window, only partially convinced. A shot of lightning coursed around and above them, lighting up an expanse of black clouds above them, the thick floating pockets of water seeming to churn and eddy in swirls of fury as the wind tore through them. Captain Eagan reached into his desk drawer and took out a sheet of glass that instantly lit up with an intricate map. He pointed his pen on various points, making notes of the clouds above them that had been made visible by the flashes of lightning.

“You have to keep wary in weather like this,” he said to Alexander.
“Because of ice storms?” Alexander asked, his voice full of hopeful question.

Captain Eagan laughed, and made a small circle on one of the clouds pictured on the glass. “Gods no, Lieutenant,” he said. “In cloud cover like this…It’s pirates you have to watch out for.”

Alexander was visibly disappointed. He put his hands in his pockets and paced the length of the cabin, green eyes searching through the swirls of black above them, visible through the specialized mapping skylight. “Pirates are easy enough to deal with,” Alexander said. He smiled as another flash of lightning lit up the inside of their cabin like midday for the briefest of seconds. It frightened him, and at the same time drew him-it was a feeling he enjoyed, like looking too far down when standing on the edge of a cliff.
“It’s true they are more an irritation than anything else,” Captain Eagan said. He made another circle on a cloud and then set the piece of glass onto a pedestal, the pinpoints of areas he found troubling lit up a brilliant green and creating a visible navigational pattern through the worst of the cloud masses. “Still, one should always be vigilant, be you on sea or sky. Both places are too vast for any human being to be so arrogant and think they have nothing to fear. There is always something lurking here, lad, make no mistake. Pirates are just one of many. Who knows what’s learned to live up here, or down there in that churning dark navy sea, with nothing at all to bother it.”
The Captain’s words had left Alexander feeling foolish, and he hoped he hadn’t offended the old hero in some way. He rested his hand warily on the back of his head and wandered back and forth behind Captain Eagan, blond strands of hair caught in his grip as he stretched and tried to remain nonchalant in the face of his fears. The cabin lit up again with all the brilliance of a belch from the sun, and Alexander found himself crouching beneath it as though he was sure the sky itself was about to fall. Captain Eagan gently laughed, and Alexander, humiliated, turned to see the old man shuddering chuckles, his white beard hiding his mouth, but not the sound. “You’re too skittish for the sky,” the old man observed, and laughed again. “Maybe you should have been a foot soldier in the tropicals and stayed in the ponds.”
Alexander was not to be daunted. He stood to full attention and clipped his heels together in proud assertion. “I have been trained for all naval and aviation disciplines, sir, and it is merely my inexperience in the latter which I am attempting to rectify.”

“Don’t be so out of sorts about it,” Eagan replied. He pulled a wheeled chair over beside him and bade Alexander to sit in it. “Get ye out of the light if it offends ye so much. Go on, you’ve been in the navy since you were a child, haven’t you? Here, have a bit of this, it’ll take the edge off.”

He offered Alexander a vile looking flask of ink black liquid and bid Alexander to drink from it. He did so, grimacing at the oily taste, and at the same time feeling a grateful sense of calm that suddenly overcame his being.
“No good Captain survives without the Black,” Eagan said. He sighed and viewed the sky’s turmoil above them, a gnarled hand cradling his chin. “Here, lad, what do you think our best course should be? This storm’s been brewing over all the Eastern section, and I don’t see any evidence yet of it drifting off soon.”

“Perhaps further East, sir,” Alexander offered. “To follow along the coast of the storm, since we can’t avoid it.”

Captain Eagan nodded. “Yes, yes, that’s probably best. Though, I suspect our passengers will be put out over having a few days eaten up in this journey. Still, it’s that or death, and while I imagine many would prefer death to missing a business conference, such is the seaman’s life.”

The pulled the ship out further, increasing her speed and riding along the wind current of an especially nasty stretch of the storm. Only an experienced Captain like Eagan would have been able to make such a maneuver. It made Alexander respect him all the more. He took another swig of the nasty substance known as Black and choked on it.

“Takes a while to get used to, that’s certain,” Eagan chuckled. “That and flying with no wings in the air, like she had her bottom on the sea. But it’s really no different lad, up here or down there. There’s nothing solid in either place.” The Captain stood beneath the viewing portal, the flashes of lightning illuminating his white beard so fiercely he was like a warning specter. “It’s a danger to be anywhere but on land…and even then…Pity you didn’t have the chance to think twice about being a man who sails the oceans and sky, lad. They at least give you a choice in Mangrua. I’ve seen some things….People have the gall to complain about what they fight through on the land, but by God, at least on that kind of firm terrain you know where the enemy is coming from.”

Another flash of lightning. Alexander was soothed by the after-affects of the Black. He sat in his chair somewhat woozily, his head nodding down and then up from his chest as he fought the drifting notion of sleep. There was a shorter burst of light, and Alexander happened to look up into the view portal, at the sky in its fiery glare erupting over the entirety of the known universe.

A black silhouette. Mangled, torn strips of cloth. Dread and daring all confused into one black shadow.Alexander swallowed, his eyes wide. Before he could even utter a warning, Captain Eagan had spotted it and let fly a few curses Alexander was unfamiliar with.

“Damnation!” Eagan shouted and clenched his fists in fury. “Pirates!”

Of course they intercepted them and boarded. It was the custom, after all. Alexander seethed as the pirates wandered from their storm battled ship onto their more pristine and clean vessel, their wasted bodies hungry for food. The pirates said little as they moved amongst the passengers, the good percentage of them hovering around the plates of food, taking what they wanted, which was pretty much all of it. Several businessmen looked uneasily on, knowing that at least one of their set would be pulled aside to ‘confer’ with. That’s what they called brain sucking these days…a more polite, antiseptic phrase. But the old version was more accurate, for when one business associate with the right information had his mind poked into by a psychic pirate captain, well-it was an ugly business, even if it was harmless. Most of the victims to this would be sent to the infirmary for the remainder of the trip, and would lay in wait, wondering how long it would be before they were fired for allowing their minds to be siphoned of top business secrets. Suicides after such occurrences were common. No one would hire an associate who became an insurance liability.
So far, they hadn’t met the pirate captain of this hungry crew. Perhaps they would even get lucky and the pirates would only eat and take some supplies and move on-Things which were afforded to them out of all ships’ coffers because they were considered vagrants. Being a pirate had none of the qualities that had held them in esteem in the past. They were mostly pathetic souls who drifted through life, often with difficult mental process problems that made hiring them impossible, their minds too non-linear and thus insufficient for the kinds of absolutes needed for proper business work. The most they could do was steal from the businesses and then sell the knowledge either for ransom or inside dealing. Alexander could never figure out why they kept up this kind of employment, especially since most businesses paid a pittance, even for the most valuable of information. He’d heard from some that it was the challenge that attracted the pirate captains most, especially since some harborers of the information had shockingly strong minds.

The guests looked on in disdain, but they weren’t for the most part perturbed by these pirates in their midst. Most of them were here on holiday and weren’t holding any pertinent information in their brains worth siphoning. An attractive young woman, perhaps bored of her long stay on this ship, gave one of the shirtless pirates an appreciative smile, which not surprisingly was returned. Alexander raised a brow at this. Sea goers were more discerning in their affairs, but perhaps the more wealthy sea and air patrons could afford to live more dangerously.

“Mongrels and scroungers,” Eagan disdainfully said into Alexander’s ear.

“As if we weren’t behind schedule enough.”

“I’d heard they hide in the worst of storms, to deflect attention,” Alexander replied. “We should have been more on our guard.”

Eagan snorted at this. “Bah, who cares! Let them take their fill of sweet cake and go. If they siphon the mind of some business associate, what do I care of it? Let their own insurance cover it-serve them right for being so bloodthirsty with each other. This economy of subterfuge is not something that goes well with me. Where I come from, secrecy is solely for those of low class.”

Alexander hadn’t heard of such ideals in Mangrua, where the captain was purportedly from, but he let this tidbit of information slide over him with a gentle smile of understanding. Eagan glared at the pirates one last time before marching out of the dining hall. If his abrupt departure was rude, no one cared, for as Captain he was a man of many duties, and politeness need not apply towards efficiency. Alexander remained, aloof and watching the small crowd, many of them curious of these vagrant interlopers who had swarmed their ship like a blanket of flies. To be honest, there weren’t all that many of them, twenty at the most, and they were more concerned with filling their stomachs and making a hasty leave than exchanging pleasantries with people who were well fed from morning past night. He could see the attractive young woman sidle closer to the pirate, her delicate fingers cradling a cup of pinkish champagne.

“What a fascinating life you must lead,” he heard her say to him.
The pirate was good looking in the way that defined stereotype. Alexander watched him from the corner of his eye, curious. The pirate lifted up a coffee mug from the table and filled it to the brim with wine, a wholly crass method of drinking it. He held it up to her in a toast. “To lovely ladies and the pull of the storm,” he said, and downed its contents in one swallow.

The young woman cocked her head to one side, allowing a flash of cool intelligence to be plain in her brown gaze. Her hair had been tightly tied into a bun, with small delicate pearls decorating her scalp. One brown tendril dared to find its way loose, and it dangled with a gentle curl before her dark eyes.

“I’m beginning to be happy I came on this dull conference trip,” she said.

The pirate was pouring himself another wine. “Are you here alone?”

“I can be,” she said.

“That’s not exactly a clear answer.”

“Did you want me to say I’m traveling with my husband?”

Alexander watched as the pirate smiled. “No,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” the young woman replied, and she sidled close to him and slid her arm into the bare crook of his, slender pale fingers highlighted against the pirate’s darker flesh. “I haven’t seen him for hours, he’s good and lost.” She gave her conquest a meaningful look. “As I hope to be, and soon.”

Alexander turned away from them both, embarrassed at this display and also more than a little ashamed at himself for taking such pains to eavesdrop on it. He patted at the gold buttons on his uniform with his white gloves, and brought them into a slightly keener shine. A strand of his hair, in matching gold, was picked off with impatience, and he straightened his posture and remained silent and official at the far end of the dining table. He could hear the door open behind him, and he ventured a guess that Eagan had returned, and was going to kick out these vagrants of the air and force them back onto their storm battered ship.

Warmth, sweet at his ear, tickled him. A tone of mystical import and dreamlike promise enveloped him.

“You are infested,” a voice said.

He turned his head, slowly, the figure who had spoken gradually coming into view. He was the same height as Alexander, but felt taller. Long, black hair streamed past a pale angular face, thin lips as white as a ghost’s. A magician’s appearance, the suggestion all the more pronounced by the shocking red of this creature’s iris and pupils.

“Who are you?” Alexander asked, sounding more accusatory than he truly intended.

On closer inspection he could see this was a man, though he was dressed in an arrangement of garbs that made him look oddly priestly. A long, black robe lined in sparkling red caressed the floor as he took a step closer, far too close to be precise, right into Alexander’s comfort zone.

“You are infested,” he repeated, and his voice seemed to carry an echo. Alexander looked over his shoulder to see what the patrons of The Anphograph made of this, but they were still hovering around the various pirates and with each other, completely at ease and not caring of Alexander’s predicament.

Alexander turned back to their newest, odd guest. He fought to keep level with man’s red eyes, though to do so felt oddly discomforting. “Are you the pirate captain?” he asked.

There was no answer. The black robed man glided his way into the crowd, where the guests and pirates of The Anphograph were silenced by his appearance in their midst. There was the complete dissolution of speech. One man coughed, nervously, while others just stared on, waiting. A young woman put her hands at the pearls at her throat. A portly pirate who had been eating, stopped in mid chew.

“I am not here for secrets,” the black robed man said.

There was an instant change in the room’s atmosphere, and Alexander could feel the collective sigh of relief more than he could actually hear it. He frowned, watching this man whom he knew had to be the pirate captain, his red eyes cast down, his gait as smooth as though he were floating. Someone laughed and the conversation was drumming up again, a constant murmer and then louder as confidence was raised. Alexander was not so forthcoming. He blocked the pirate captain’s attempt to leave.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Alexander said to him.

Red eyes would not meet his. Some part of Alexander desired him to stare at him, see if the man really could delve his way into the marrow of a soul. It both terrified and drew him.

“You’re full of fear and that is what guides you,” the pirate captain said. Alexander gasped at the intensity of his insight. “Keep it, it’s not so bad a possession for a man like you to have. Fear is what keeps a human being alive. You’re going to need it.”

Alexander frowned. “Why?”

The pirate captain began to leave the room. “You are infested.”

Alexander grabbed him by the shoulder with a strong hand. He could feel the bone beneath his palm. “What do you mean?”

A hand reached up, touching Alexander’s fingers, stroking them lightly. Alexander felt a jolt of intensity ride through him, a shiver that refused to abate crawling throughout his being. A shiver not wholly unpleasant, but unworldly enough to be disturbing. “My name is Drako,” the pirate captain said. He gave Alexander the barest hint of a smile, curling it at the edge like a smirk. “I wish there was more time for me to know you. But alas, you’ll be as dead as the others before I get back to the ship.”

Drako tried to leave again, but this time Alexander grabbed him by both shoulders, and pinned him against the frame of the door. Some of Drako’s shipmates looked on in warning. An especially large specimen crossed his arms over his chest and began making his way closer.

“I want to know what the hell you meant by that!” Alexander shouted at Drako.

Drako raised a hand, palm held upright, halting his huge shipmate from ripping Alexander to shreds. Drako smiled, but it was sad, this time, as though he had been longing for some other outcome and had been denied it.

“Inikrams,” Drako said. “Your ship is infested with Inikrams.”

I have long tried my best to conquer my sense of fear. This is not a part of myself I am proud of, nor do I make any excuse for it. My fear has crept into every part of my body, settling in the bowel, moving over and over into an obsessive chant in my mind. “You won’t make it. You aren’t good enough. You are failing” are my mantras. It collapses me. Even though I am an officer and I am working on the ship The Anphograph, alongside a man who faced down the deadliest Ice Storm known to all seafaring men…I am not worthy of this post.

I can mask my fear, but it is inside me. Eating.
What can I say other than my first, most shameful thought, was to abandon my post? The challenge came and instantly my Fear spoke up within me and said “You can’t do this. Go before you die. Leave.”

And yet, along with this Fear there is an innate stubbornness inside of me that refuses to listen to it. Unwisely at times, perhaps, but it is not something I can call courage so much as a need to battle Fear and stomp it beneath me. It is antagonism above all else. Still, all this has ever seemed to accomplish was the winning out of my Fear in the end, where it would taunt my achievements, and say, ever so quietly “You could have been more. But you failed most of this test.”

There are Inikrams on this ship.

My Fear is being well sated.

He ran down the corridor of the main vein of the ship, the ornate carvings alongside him grinning in mockery at his panic. The captain’s central post was located another fifty feet in, and even before he slung open the door, he had a good idea what he was going to find.

He stood in the open doorway, the bodies of two officers laying face down in their own pools of blood. Alexander swallowed, his fear so intense he felt immobile, his body melting into the carvings at his back, their gargoyle faces nudging against his spine, wooden teeth trailing along the bones. The viewing portal was full of the violence of the storm Angorum, lightning coursing across the glass and reflecting onto the hideous shadows beneath it in dark blue and white streaks.

Captain Eagan lay face up beneath it, his eyes wide, mouth slack jawed in an eternal final scream.

He could hear the shriek, almost like a laugh. It echoed past the viewing portal from every corner in the room. The tone shocked Alexander into action and he slammed shut the door, temporarily locking out the horror within.

He wrapped his hand around a carved vine, its wooden leaves full of sharp edges. He tried to find his bearings around his fear. He had to think of the passengers. He had to think….

The wailing from below decided their fate first.

The Anphograph…is dead.

He lay huddled beneath a pile of laundry, watching them. They were much larger than the rumors had suggested, even the disgusting appearance had been played down. Vaguely human skin stained with what had to be a near decade of blood. Teeth sharpened to fine points, voices guttural, cruel, speaking in a language consisting solely of curses. Alexander held his breath as this group of Inikrams passed, and closed his eyes against the torture they put upon their victim. He could hear bones crack and pop, a man’s unbearable screams. They always attacked the men first, had been the legend. They always ripped them apart limb from limb and then they’d find an attractive girl and torture her until she finally died. That was all the legend had told him. Nothing more than rumors remained of these things that crawled, virtually unseen, across their world. Legend said, once you’ve seen a Harpy your life is over. Alexander had seen ten now, at last count. His death times ten.

He had no chance. Eagan, the man who survived the most violent Ice Storm of the century, he was picked off first, as though his courage and stamina were of no consequence. Alexander had no hope with such odds against him. Still, it was his fear that kept him hidden instead of resigning to his fate. He kept his breath as even and calm as he could while he waited for the Inikrams to finally be finished. He couldn’t say how long this particular session took. Every man they finished, they’d bring in another and start their sick game all over again. He could hear them laughing over the screams, a grunting, pig-like utterance.

He couldn’t decide the moment that they had finally tired of this game and left the room, to hunt for more victims to maim and kill. The screaming was a low echo that spread throughout the ship in the manner of white noise, his mind playing it over and over even as it ebbed and finally stopped. The silence that followed was full of memory of what they did.

He swallowed back his bile, kept his eyes clenched shut, his breath shallow and quiet lest they find him. The ship’s laundry bins would only provide a temporary cover. He would have to move soon, after they were finished here, he would have to find another place to cower and bite deep on his fear.

Footsteps were approaching. He clenched his jaw firm, his eyes wide. He could see his own reflection in the steel tubing of the laundry bin, a distorted vision of a man consumed by mad terror. Red rimmed eyes, lips cracked and bleeding, blond hair matted from sweat. He looked like a man condemned for ship’s treason, who was about to be hurled off the deck and into the swirling mass of the storm Angorum, as an offering to her violence.
The laundry bin was wrenched aside. Alexander reacted solely from instinct. His white knuckled fist rose up and out and hit its target square in the jaw. He could feel the pain of the impact against his fingers, a searing jolt that only partially shook him out of his trance of fear. The pirate captain, Drako, was rubbing his jaw, unnatural red eyes laughing at Alexander.

“I thought…” Alexander began, not entirely sure if he should afford this man an apology, “I thought you were…”

“Of course I know what you are thinking,” Drako replied.

He motioned to one of his pirate crew and they hurried forward, dragging Alexander out into the open. “You have to get out of this section. They like the dark, and this place has too many shadows for it to be safe. We’ll go to the upper third quarter, at the surface, they aren’t fond of the open storm, there.”

This didn’t sound like a very useful option since that meant physical exposure to the storm Angorum. The location Drako was aiming for was outdoors, where the rain and anger of the storm coldly beat down upon the ship, rivers of waters streaming off the deck and over the sides as though they were sailing upon a turbulent sea and not in the air. Angorum was how they traveled, but she was a rough ride, and was known to greedily pluck those men who were stupid enough to attempt a closer look at her from the upper third quarter deck.

“If there was another option, I would have used it by now,” Drako said, shocking him.

Alexander clutched at his forehead as he walked ahead of the pirates, heading for the stairs that would take them further up.

“How rude of you to invade my mind,” he said, forcing bravado to the fore.

“I’m permitted it, I’m saving your life,” Drako said.

He pointed in the direction of the winding stairs. “Onward.”

“Inikrams have always been a problem of air travel. They travel in large groups, packing their clan into small cargo vessels, then slide their way into the belly of an unsuspecting ship. They still haven’t found a way to get the codes for the docking doors to be hack proof.” Drako clasped his hands and brought the tips of his index fingers to his chin.
“Some say that they were born inside of the storm Angorum, and are her evil progeny, but this is not the case. They were once human, it’s true. Evil, Lieutenant Jacobson, can overtake any human being, and change them in ways you can’t even begin to understand, especially when that human being is a psychic one, such as I am. Everyone has a choice, they can follow what they love, or they can follow what they hate. These creatures follow hate.”

Alexander lay huddled beneath a leaking tarp of canvas, the storm beating down on them with her icy cold grip. Lightning flashed across the surface of the deck, several of the charges narrowly missing the ship itself and brightening the turmoil above and below in their flashes of white. He shuddered and hunched further inward, his back rigid against the concrete pillar that served as a decorative lookout tower. The deck was drenched in a good four inches worth of water. He was soaked to the very bone, and he shivered against every onslaught of wind that found its way beneath the tarp.
One of Drako’s men handed him a biscuit, which he took only halfheartedly. From what he had witnessed, he did not feel he could eat ever again.

“You are a privileged man,” Drako continued. “You don’t understand the nature of this storm, being such a spoiled land-dweller. Don’t protest it, you know it to be true. I feel you are better adapted to the land, Lieutenant Jacobson, although I do admit I am as ignorant of that continent as you are of mine.” He gestured with a smile to the swirling black above and below them. “Still, this is the destiny you yourself have chosen, all because you will not listen to your conscience. I told you before that you are a man of fear and it is fear that will save you.”

“Fear has no place in the skies,” Alexander said. The common cliché fell from him automatically, and he felt shame at knowing he was failing its warning.

Drako laughed, and patted him sympathetically on the arm. Alexander took a bite of the biscuit, discovering he was hungry after all.

“What are they?” he whispered. He shook his head, thinking of their dripping mouths, of the sagging lumps of flesh that might, once, have been breasts.

He clenched his fist tight against his thigh, thinking of how they had delighted in torturing that stream of men who had come into that room. How long had he hidden there? It felt like days-perhaps it had been.

“They were once women, human women,” Drako said. “Some had psychic propensities, although this is not always the case. They come into contact with Angorum and bring with them all of their frustration, and hatred, and dissatisfaction with themselves and the cruel thoughts they have against others. They are women who, for the most part, consume themselves with thoughts of cruelty and self loathing.”

“Angorum can change a person,” one of the pirates near Alexander said. It was the portly one whom he had seen earlier at the banquet.
“If you live inside of it long enough, that is, and if you give her enough ammunition to work with. I say the first Harpy must have been full of plenty of nastiness to get as changed as she did. That one would have been the start of it all, and since then they take off of a ship one or two hopefuls that are nasty enough to mould into one of them. It’s not magic, Lieutenant. It’s conditioning.”

“But why only the women?” Alexander asked, confused. “They were all…”

“It’s a sorority,” Drako explained. “They don’t admit men into it. I’m sure there are similar monsters on land, though I’m not privy to them. You’re the one who knows those best, having been chased into the sea and air, and not, I may add, by your own will.”

Alexander closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “On land…It’s just people who do bad.”

“Like the ones who murdered your family,” Drako said.

Alexander’s eyes shot open wide. Fear began welling deep inside of his soul, branching out, bathing itself in the blood of decades past, shadows crawling over and around him while he cowered away from them.

Drako…He’d managed to get that far inside of who he was?

“Monsters,” Drako said, his face turned away, the storm flashing and bringing him into full, white-faced relief against it. “Some are easier to point out than others.”

They say as the moment of one’s death approaches, their life flashes before their eyes in all the brilliant hues that had enveloped it. The soft pink of a mother’s caress. The terror of the black that was a first night alone. The deep comforting auburn hue that covered an evening meal with mother and father present. I have thought on this in the moments since my discussion of a plan with the pirate captain Drako. Some people have such fond colors rainbowed over their childhood. My memories are colored abyss black and torture red. Those hues aren’t easily described, nor would I wish them on my worst enemy.

I was ten. My father was a farmer, who had just come in from his early evening tilling of the harvest, and mother was at the dinner table, arranging it formally as she always did although it was just the three of us. She had come from a wealthy business family who had disowned her when she stooped in station to marry father. She was a brave woman, who knew well the cost of love. When I think back, we were very happy and generally pleased with our lot in life. People may not believe me when I say this, but sometimes wealth can be more a burden than a joy-I think the simple pleasure we took in life, free of worries about whether or not the most recent stocks we purchased would rise or fall due to a trade in secrets was a large part of that happiness.

The sun had set. The air was full of an aromatic navy blue darkness that only the country air can provide. I remember standing in the field, watching the sky, the back screen door to our home slamming shut as father walked into the house. I remained outside, arms outstretched, like a human scarecrow in symbolic homage to the sky. I had an imagination back then. I wondered how many black crows would mistake me for their straw made friend and would settle fearlessly on my shoulders, and wonder why there were no strands of hay to make their nests with. Scarecrows had never worked in our fields, the crows have long since become too sentient to be fooled by them. Human beings do tend to hold onto things long after our original use for them has gone. I think we miss the innocence our past dredges up.
He’d gone into the house, my father. I heard one shot, a muffled cry that must have been my mother, and then another shot.

Someone laughed. There was a distinctive sound of loud, angry noise that I later classified as music to the officers who showed up thirteen days later, wondering why father hadn’t paid his weekly tax bill. I remember broken glass, and then the sound of an auto engine, the newer kinds that they had back then, the ones that have a more high pitched hum than they do now. I remember my arms were still outstretched, waiting for crows, and remembering in a tiny flash that crows were considered a bird of death.
I don’t know why I need to tell this story of my past. Perhaps because everything that was once me will soon be obliterated. I found my fear in that house, following it for thirteen days before the officers found me. I was ten, they put me in the navy, it was suitable for an orphan with no family on either side to take me. My story isn’t so unremarkable. Most of the navy men I’ve worked with started as orphans of the land. Some even had similar tales to tell. I’ve sometimes wondered, deep in some fear riddled place in my heart, if that incident all those years ago was planned more than I realize, that this was some grand experiment on the part of the business owners of the land to conscript and thus replenish the ever dwindling navy recruits. A part of me calls it paranoia, while the more reasoned part of me knows that no man in his right mind would willingly make his life on this sea and this sky.
I cannot think of this in front of Drako, lest he tell me it’s the truth.
Drako was staring at him as he slid the autotransmitter off of its perch against his forehead. Alexander sighed, and placed the rectangle of metal into his inside breast pocket.
“I don’t believe you,” Alexander said in finality. “There can’t possibly be any hope.”

Drako lay ensconced beneath the partially waterproof canvas tarp, his long black robe spilled about him like an inky puddle. His eyes were bright red amidst a sea of strands of coal hair. The rain from the storm pelted down around him, and he seemed to Alexander to be one with the streams of water, a living lake with two fire points for eyes. Alexander turned away and stood up, standing on deck, his arms folded against his chest as the onslaught of the storm found him. He lifted his head through its violence and could see at every shock of lightning, the outline of the tattered ship that Drako captained squatting in the sky above them.

“How does that old, old cliché go? There’s always hope?” Drako smiled, his teeth yellowed against the inky black.

“I’m thinking of victory, and revenge, and all the sweet things that go with destroying monsters.”

Alexander frowned. He half turned, wanting Drako to clarify. The good looking pirate who’d had his lady conquest stolen from him by Inikrams spoke up first.

“We get the explosions onto the main post points. Where the support beams are. They only build two on these types of ship models, as cost cutting measures. We blow them up, and the ship just folds on top of itself like a deck of cards laid flat.” He held out the two tiny pieces of round metal that would serve the purpose, neither of them large enough to take up much space in his palm. “It’s not our job, Lieutenant, to save your ship. None of us are in legal rights to do this, only you.”

“I’m not the one for this,” Alexander protested.

“You are and you’ve always known it,” Drako said. A shadow of cloud fell over them, hiding him inside of it completely, making his voice seem

disembodied as it floated out above the sounds of the storm. “You are an honest man, Lieutenant, and honest men are impossible cowards.
If you are willing, I will tell you a secret about yourself that you are unaware of…” he paused, and Alexander could feel his grin even if he couldn’t see it. Fear crept up inside of him, like the touch of something magic and strange.

“You keep calling it Fear, and that’s not what guides you, Lieutenant Alexander Jacobson. You call it Fear when in fact, it is conscience. Take its hand and walk with what your destiny has forced on you. Keep it close. Let it save your life.”

Alexander closed his eyes, and held out his hand. The two tiny bombs were placed within it, and he clenched his fist around them. Two bangs, two shots, and maybe a base, vagrant pirate’s laughter to end it all.

“I understand,” Alexander said.

“I don’t think you do,” Drako said. He shifted where he sat, the water lapping around him, consuming his legs, and the hem of his black and red edged robe.

“You still look at this with resignation. They’ll smell that defeat on you, and will use it against you. Remember, Inikrams still have some psychic abilities, and they enjoy wallowing in the failure and sorrow of their victims in more than simply a physical way. Come closer to me, Lieutenant…There is something important you need to see…”

Alexander crouched down beneath the tarp, sighing and only half listening.
Drako grabbed his arm.

Pulled, inside of a dark and furious mind. He could feel his body tumbling, though he knew he was still on solid ground, could hear the furious shrieks and screams of the tangles of mind he’d wrenched from past businessmen. He could hear the thunderous applause of Angorum, coursing through his blood like a living entity. Alexander dove down into it, further and further into the black of her streaming water, her electric light, her constant, unwavering will. He dove inside of a place in the storm that had no chart known to man, where Things lay in dark waiting, Things far worse than women gone mad.

Black overtook him.

He came to with a dull ache in his jaw. He rubbed at it, slowly realizing he was laying on his back out in the open, on deck. He was soaked to the skin, like he’d been caught drowning.

“I had to hit you to bring you back,” Drako said to him.

“I think you’re right after all. I was wrong, you’re too eager to die to be good for this job.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Alexander said, getting up.

He still had the detonators in his palm, clenched tight. He looked up at Drako and nodded at his crew. “Tell me where to go, and I’ll do it.”

The crew did not acknowledge Alexander. They were waiting patiently for the final decision of their captain, the pirate Drako. Drako was still seated beneath the tarp, as though he had never left it, and Alexander half wondered if it was one of the other crew members who had hit him instead. He rubbed his jaw again, feeling a length of dull ache along the left side.
Drako’s pale hands were on his knees, curled into taloned fists.

“Take your fear with you,” Drako ordered him. “I don’t like handing over lives that can be of use to me.”

“I’m of no use to you at all,” Alexander said. “So, I’ll do as I wish.” He put the detonators into his pocket, and the larger pirate who had given them to him directed him towards the colorful lines of the ship’s blueprints hovering as a holograph over the mist that was sitting on the deck like a pool of smoke.

“You’re wrong, Lieutenant Alexander Jacobson,” Drako said, and smiled widely, his yellow teeth looking oddly sharp in the storm’s moonlight. “But I’ll forgive you, this once. When a man lives his life by lies…One has to be accommodating when he discovers the truth.”

She lunged for him, and missed him by the nearest shaving of an inch. They were all crawling into the main ballroom now, their bodies swollen with feeding, their naked flesh caked with dried blood. One held a head in her hands and petted its hair. From its mangling it was impossible to tell if it had once belonged to a man or a woman. The monsters were after him. He could see no resemblance between them and him in any manner whatsoever. They were so unclean, so filthy in his sights he couldn’t begin to imagine what it was, what thought had it been that had been so vile it had to manifest itself in this physical form…

He ran out of the ballroom, into the corridor. He was positive they were going to chase him and escape before the allotted time of the explosion. He ran, and ran, even after the blast detonated, throwing him ten feet further along. He couldn’t stop running. If he could find a way, he’d make it up to the upper decks, to run outside beneath the boiling storm of Angorum and her anger, and he would run along that deck-Run with all the fear of life and monsters behind him, and run off the rails and straight into Angorum’s maw, and let her consume his fear herself.

A large hand brought him down. One of Drako’s men. Alexander lay winded and sputtering on the deck floor. He raised a bloodied hand to his sight, noticing with odd calmness that his baby finger was missing. One of the Inikrams had managed to get a bite of him after all.
A cloth was wrapped around it by a familiar portly member of the crew. The remainder of the crew was strangely agitated, but they made no move to leave The Anphograph, instead they remained on deck, waiting as the ship slowly folded in on itself from the blast.

“What are you doing?” Alexander shouted at them. “We have to get on your ship, we have to get off of here, the ship’s collapsing!”
The crew ignored him. They were focused on one place only, the solitary door that led out onto the open deck. Gargoyles carved into the wood stared back at them, silent. They waited, and the ship cracked and creaked, glass breaking, metal strained and bending and giving way as the supports shifted. There was another sound. Shouting, grunting, a chorus of rot that was slowly making its way up the only path given to it. Inikrams.

“What the hell are you doing?” Alexander shouted.

Drako placed a pale hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it gently.

“Harvest,” he said.

Alexander cradled his injured hand, finally feeling the pain of the bite. “I don’t…” he began, but was so confused he could barely articulate the question, “What do you mean?”

Drako, for the first time since Alexander had known him, hesitated. He patted Alexander’s shoulder as though he were a child who was about to find out his parents were dead. Alexander had a terrible understanding of that gesture. He remained still, and wide eyed, and wondered how long it would be before his madness finally took real root and left him wallowing inside of that place he had only glimpsed in Drako’s soul.

“Haven’t you ever wondered what the purpose of those Piracy Laws were?” Drako asked. “Why we are treated so well, even though we are nothing more than the ‘vagrants of the sea and air’? And how do we survive Angorum’s endless fury? There is no place to farm food here, no charity large enough that will sustain an entire crew indefinitely. The corporations pay pittance for the secrets we manage to steal. How do pirates survive here, Lieutenant?”

“I…” Alexander blinked, trying to focus his mind on something other than the red hue of Drako’s eyes, and the screaming torment that was very, very close now to the one door behind him. “I don’t know.”

“We survive because we provide a service,” Drako said. “These ships attract what we need, and we cull those numbers so they don’t attack more of the corporate vessels.” Drako smiled, and his teeth were razor sharp, his skin as pale as bleached linen. “One Harpy can keep us going for over a month. A whole harvest keeps us in the clear for a good year and a half. This is a good haul, Lieutenant. We haven’t had an opportunity like this come along for a long, long while.”

The monsters were beating at the door, the gargoyle carvings doing what they could to hold them in. Behind him, Drako was still talking, while Alexander’s mind ran in circles, over and over, running and running in fear, heading straight for Angorum’s yawn: "The skin is tough, kind of greasy. They’re gamy tasting at the beginning, Alexander. But you’ll get used to it. Everyone of my crew has.” The doors broke free. Gunfire erupted over the shout of the storm, the Harvest at its highlight. Streams of blood washed from the door to stain the white of Lieutenant Alexander Jacobson’s boots. Alexander, surrounded by monsters.

Above, around and below them, the wandering storm Angorum cracked her lightning whip and swallowed Alexander’s mind whole.

END