The Beast of the Sea~Chapter 16

“Pirates? You mean like Shiver me timbers and Yo ho ho?” I asked, not believing that pirates were still around. They were something you only saw in movies and history books.

“Not as friendly as those pirates,” El said. “Just like how everything will upgrade as the years pass, pirates became more advanced as well. Kind of like how the gods adapt to new homes, pirates adapt as well. Except instead of sailing ships, cannons, and swords they normally use speedboats, rocket launchers, and guns.”

“But that is a sailing ship with a pirate flag right there,” I pointed out. However, it was getting closer and I knew that our ship wouldn’t be able to outrun it for long.

“I don’t have all the answers,” El said angrily. “Demigods very rarely go into the Sea of Monsters because of all the dangers that are here. It isn’t like I have a map in my pocket with a list of things to look out for.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t blaming you or anything. But we better do something fast,” I said and El nodded. She gave the wheel a hard turn and before long we were heading right for the pirate ship. “Not what I meant!”

“Look, they will eventually catch us if we keep running away so our best bet is to attack and hope we knock out their rudder or sail. Just something to slow them down until we escape,” El explained.

“She’s got a point,” Joe agreed.

“Does this ship even have any weapons?” Angel asked, obviously nervous.

“Of course it does. I didn’t name this ship the Orca simply because it is fast,” El said and she slammed her foot on the deck.

The deck itself came to life as planks of wood shifted to the side to make openings. About six cannons then rose from below deck, three on each side of the ship. They seemed to be on some kind of turn table as they were able to swivel back and forth, giving the person firing a greater range of attack. In response however, about twenty port holes opened on the other ship and a cannon could be seen coming out of each small opening.

“That is a lot of cannons,” I said nervously. I watched as the ship got closer and in only a few moments, we would be passing each other. The ship’s cannons pointed slightly forward so that they could fire at the enemy without hitting each other.

“Fire!” El roared and the ship responded by firing three cannonballs at the ship. One hit the side of the ship, but didn’t cause anything more than a crack. Another hit a cannon and I heard people inside the ship yelling about keeping the gun powder away from the sides. The last ended up breaking through the side of the ship, making a large circular hole in the ship. “Alright, hurry up and reload!”

When I noticed the ship wasn’t listening this time, I quickly figured out El was ordering us to do that. I went over to a small stack of cannonballs and tried to pick on up, but the thing must have weighed a ton or more. Joe and Angel seemed to be having problems as well.

“If only they were lighter,” I said under my breath, but that gave me an idea. My hand began to glow with some blue fire and I grabbed one of the cannon balls. I thought very hard about the small sphere of iron being as light as a feather. The cannonball responded to my thoughts and slowly became engulfed in the blue flames as well. I went to pick it up and sure enough it was very light. I grabbed two more from the pile and did the same, before dropping them into the cannons. As soon as I let go of them, the blue flames vanished and I assumed they were back to their correct weight.

“What did you just do?” Angel asked, not understanding how I could have picked up one of the cannonballs, let alone three.

“Short version; I made the cannonballs believe they were lighter so I could pick them up,” I said, but she looked confused. “My dad is the god of belief. I can make things believe the stuff I want them to believe, and if it is an object without beliefs, I can pretty much make them do whatever, within reason of course.”

She still looked confused but I didn’t have time to explain anymore. As soon as the cannons were loaded, we were now directly next to the huge ship. I could see in the small hole we had made that crewmen were running around with barrels of gunpowder and cannonballs. One guy was carrying a lit torch, most likely ready to fire the cannons at the order of the ship’s captain.

“Fire!” El shouted again, but this time the cannons seemed strangely quiet. In fact, they didn’t even seem t be responding anymore. “Fire, fire, fire!”

The cannons however didn’t seem to be following her orders at all. Joe went for the manual approach and grabbed a lighter from his pocket. He lit the fuse on a cannon, but a moment later the fire went out.

“What is going on?” Angel asked, but none of us could answer her. Then, before any of us could react, the ropes on the ship came to life, similarly to how they had wrapped around us during the storm. They wrapped around us this time as well, but seemed to only be wrapping around our hands and feet.

“El, are you doing this?” Joe asked as the rope tied itself in a knot and he fell to the floor. He got his answer however when El was dragged from the helm by two lengths of rope, which quickly tied her up as well. Then, all four of us were pulled against the main mast as another piece of rope wrapped around all of us.

“Not me,” she said as she struggled against the ropes. “What is wrong with my ship?!”

“I’m afraid this isn’t your ship anymore,” came a voice from the deck of the large ship currently next to us. “I am going to add it to my fleet, just like all the other ships that cross my path.”

His voice was full of rage and power. Just the sound of it was enough to make me want to shrivel into a ball and disappear, but that was before I had even seen the guy. As soon as he walked to the edge of the rail, I saw him stand over us. He had a long red coat that was covered in small rips and tears, as well as a few holes that could have been bullet holes. He also had a large brown tricorn hat on his head, which had small nicks around the edges but seemed to hit him none the less. The hat was over top of his head which had to be mostly hair. His long black hair covered his ears completely and went down to just before his shoulders. He also had a large black beard that was braided into about seven separate sections. Normally if I saw a guy with braids of any kind I would laugh, but this guy was terrifying enough to pull it off. The worst of it however were his eyes. Despite him being high above us on his ship and his face being mostly hair, I could still see those horrible red eyes looking down at us. It reminded me of a few of Ares’ children, but these eyes seemed like they belonged to the war god himself, even if we had never met before. The man in one motion then jumped over the rail of his ship and landed right on the deck of ours.

“This ship truly is a work of art,” he said as he examined it. He walked up to one of the cannons and ran his hand along the barrel. “Clearly the finest blacksmiths crafted these cannons.”

“Get off my ship!” El shouted at him, once again pulling at her ropes. She was obviously mad by now and was shooting a death glare at the tall man, who was most likely a good foot taller than she was.

“Once again I must correct you,” he said as he pulled out his long sword and pointed it at El. “Every ship in these waters is under ownership of Blackbeard. Those that refuse have their crew killed and their ship sent to the bottom of the sea, not always in that order.”

“You are going to get such a thrashing when I get out of this,” El commented. I looked over and saw her shift her hands around and I noticed she was trying to regain control of the ship. Unfortunately, Blackbeard seemed to notice this as well.

“That won’t work. I control this ship now child of Poseidon. Your abilities are inferior compared to mine,” he said as he pointed his sword at her.

“How? I have control over sea fairing vessels,” El said, obviously confused at Blackbeard’s statement.

“Yes, but I am a child of the war god Ares,” he said calmly, but it quickly gained an element of malice. “I have control over weapons and this ship is a large weapon. Like I said, this ship is no longer yours. Crew, go below deck and see if they have anything valuable.”

“Yes Captain!” a few crewmen said. About ten of them dropped ropes onto the deck and began to climb down. As soon as they reached the deck, I thought El was going to explode.

“Get off my ship!” El shouted and water began to shoot up from all around the ship. While some of the water towers began to crash down on the crew boarding the ship, a smaller one looked like it was tipped with ice and slashed our ropes. I reached for my weapon, but El grabbed my hand. “He is a son of Ares, he can control your weapons if you take them out.”

I took my hand away from my sword, but El turned toward Blackbeard and began raging toward him. I looked over and Joe was fighting hand-to-hand with a few crew members while Angel was pulling a few pirates overboard with a few water tentacles.

“Oh look, the kids want to play war,” Blackbeard said as he watched El charge him. She thrust her hand forward and another tower of water went crashing down toward Blackbeard. However, he just stared her down and watched as the water came flying at him. Faster than I could see, he swung his sword in front of him, cutting the water clear in two.

“That doesn’t seem physically possible,” I said to myself, but when you live in a world of magic some things get a pass. El look more shocked then anything and Blackbeard clenched his fist. Two cannons on his ship fired and I saw two nets open up and wrap around El, preventing her from moving an inch.

“El!” Joe yelled as he tried to get to her, but two more pirates got in his way.

“I got her,” I said and I started running over to her, but a pirate hit me from behind with something and I fell to the ground in pain. I looked around and Angel was getting cornered as well, with more pirates than she could take down. Joe was also being outmatched. While he could most likely handle himself if he was older, his younger body seemed to tire more easily and he was punched in the gut, falling to his knees. Two lines of rope that were attached to the nets began retracting and El was pulled into the air. A small door in the side of the ship opened up and a few crewmen were waiting to pull her inside, but she managed to get one of her arms free and grabbed the side of the large ship. I expected El to control the cannons to fire at Blackbeard or maybe use the ship to tie up all the pirates like Blackbeard did to us. The ropes definitely came to life, but only long enough for a lifeboat to fall into the water below.

“El, what are you doing?!” Joe yelled as he punched a guy in the face after getting back to his feet.

“Saving all of you,” she said with a large smile. With her other hand she whipped up some water and all three of us were dragged and then dropped into the small safety boat. “It is up to you now.”

With another wave of her hand, the small lifeboat seemed to be given a sudden push and we began moving at incredible speeds away from the ships. As I looked back, I saw El get dragged inside the ship as the small door closed with a sound that echoed over the sea. I also looked back at the SS Orca, but only saw Blackbeard’s red eyes looking at us as we sped away. Eventually, I lost sight of the ships altogether.