The voyage to Tyrosh passed without further threat, yet the ship bore the weight of what had happened. The crew had seen the face of danger, and it had left its mark. Some grew harder, sharper in their work; others, especially the younger ones, still carried the shadow of fear in their eyes. The revelation of what the pirates truly were unsettled them the most. Anger simmered in some, quiet dread in others. For a day and a half, the Wayfarer moved under a heavy silence, until little by little the crew's voices returned, the rhythm of the sea drawing them back to themselves. By the time Tyrosh's painted sails came into view, they were changed men, tested, scarred, and stronger for it.
Jon spent most of the voyage bent over maps, his thoughts circling the same grim task. Crimson Jaw and his inner circle had to die. This mission would be the first time he would truly step into the role the System had set before him, an assassin.
The pirate captain's information lay spread before him, a map of the Stepstones marked in careful strokes. The main nest of the cult was on an island closest to Tyrosh, a known pirate haven. Two smaller outposts lay nearby, lesser islands feeding men and blood back to the heart.
Jon's plan was simple in shape, brutal in edge. Strike the outposts first, burn them out, drive the survivors scurrying to the main stronghold. Then, when Crimson Jaw gathered his flock, he would end them all in one stroke. Poison, he thought, would serve best to thin their numbers, quick, silent, and merciless.
Jon stood on the deck as the fortress city of Tyrosh rose on the horizon, its high walls catching the sun like a blade of stone. Unlike Braavos with its open waters, Tyrosh loomed like a clenched fist, its inner walls of fused black dragonstone dark against the sky, a reminder of its Valyrian roots. At the mouth of the harbor jutted the Bleeding Tower, red-stained from centuries of tide and battle, warning sailors that this was no city for the weak.
The ship slipped into the harbor, swallowed by a sea of masts and sails. Tyrosh's fleet was large, its war galleys painted in bright, gaudy colors that seemed to mock the threat they carried. Beyond, Jon caught glimpses of the city itself, streets thick with temples and shrines, each dedicated to a different god, as if the Tyroshi sought power in numbers where faith alone faltered. Marble columns and painted facades leaned against crumbling stone, and from one avenue, he could see the Fountain of the Drunken God, its spray of water catching the light. The air reeked of spiced wine, salt, and tar.
Illyrio's cargo was offloaded quickly, the merchant's factors taking charge. Jon disembarked with Ghost shadowing his step and made certain the crates reached their destination without mishap. The streets were crowded, with merchants hawking bright silks and sailors reeking of drink and sweat. Among them moved priests of Trios with their three-headed idols, red-robed followers of R'hllor, and stranger cults still. Tyrosh had no true faith, only the loudest voice of the moment.
"We leave in a moon's time," Jon told the captain of the cargo ship once the task was completed. The man did not object, seemingly happy to stay in the city, which could be due to its famous pleasure houses.
Jon had seen his crew settled in a noisy Tyroshi inn, coin enough for food, ale, and a bed to keep them loyal for the night. Only then did he climb the narrow stairs to his chamber, closing the door behind him. Ghost padded in after, curling up near the window as Jon sat cross-legged on the floor.
The familiar pulse of the System stirred, a shimmer in the corner of his vision.
[Capstone Quest Available: Trial of Tides]
Description:
To command the sea, you must first endure it where it breaks upon the shore. The wild yields not to steel nor crown, but to those who adapt, survive, and master its untamed rhythm. In the jungles and on the waves, your instincts will be tested until they are no longer thought, but nature itself.
Objective:
Survive the shipwreck and carve your path through the jungle. Learn the ways of the hunt, the climb, and the kill. Seize a ship, not as a passenger, but as master.
The words glowed before him like moonlight on black water.
Jon flexed his hand, thinking of Crimson Maw and the blood cult festering in the Stepstones. If this trial sharpened his instincts, made him deadlier and more certain, then it would be worth every pain.
He exhaled slowly, steadying himself.
"Begin."
The world dissolved into a blaze of white light, a familiar, disorienting sensation of being pulled apart and put back together. The smell of dust and spiced wine vanished, replaced by the overwhelming, immediate reality of salt spray, wet wood, and the acrid, choking scent of gunpowder.
He was no longer in his quiet room in Tyrosh. He was on the deck of a ship, and it was dying.
[Synchronizing with memory of: Edward Kenway]
The world was a malestrom of chaos. A storm raged, sending mountainous waves crashing over the railings. The sky was a bruised, violent purple, lit by flashes of lightning. But it was the sound that truly shocked him, a series of deafening roars that were not thunder. Another ship, a massive man-of-war, was broadsiding them. Fire and smoke erupted from a row of black iron tubes along its side, and a moment later, the air screamed, and his own ship's hull exploded, sending splinters the size of a man's arm flying through the air.
Cannons, a voice that was not his own, an instinct he did not possess, whispered in his mind. Jon's own mind recoiled in terror. What was this sorcery? A weapon that threw metal and fire across the sea?
Jon, no, he was Edward now, grunted as he spun the ship's wheel, trying to keep her steady in the heaving sea. He was not Jon Snow, the boy from the North. He was a privateer, a pirate, and this was his world. The knowledge was not a lesson; it was an instinct, a lifetime of experience poured into his mind in a single, jarring instant.
A cannonball smashed into the main mast, and the world tilted, the great mast groaning, threatening to collapse.
"She's finished, Captain!" a man yelled over the roar of the storm.
He knew it was true. He drew his cutlass, a familiar weight, but also a strange, heavy metal object from his belt. A flintlock pistol. The knowledge of how to use it, the powder, the shot, the spark, was suddenly in his head, as natural as breathing, and as alien as the Others. Is this the future? he thought, a flicker of pure, unadulterated shock cutting through the battle rage. Or another world entirely?
He joined the desperate, losing fight on the deck. He moved with a reckless, brawling grace that was completely alien to Jon's own precise style. This was the fighting of a man who fought for survival and plunder, not honor.
Then, a massive wave, a true monster of the sea, rose beside them. It hung there for a heart-stopping moment, a wall of black water, before it crashed down upon them with the force of a god's fist. The ship shattered beneath his feet. He was thrown into the churning, black water, the chaos of the battle replaced by a suffocating, silent darkness.
He woke with a gasp, his lungs burning, coughing up saltwater on a white sand beach. The storm had passed. The sun beat down, hot and unforgiving. Wreckage from the two ships littered the shore, a testament to the battle. A few yards away, another man was dragging himself from the surf. He was dressed in strange, hooded white robes, and he clutched a small, glowing cube in his hand.
"You! Shipmate!" the man called out, his voice hoarse. "Help me! I'll pay you handsomely!"
Jon, Edward, pushed himself to his feet, his mind clearing. He saw the man's fine clothes, the arrogant tilt of his head. He saw not a comrade, but an opportunity. "How handsome?" he asked, his voice a low, rough rasp that was not his own.
The man, an Assassin named Duncan Walpole, scoffed. He began to stumble towards the lush, green jungle that bordered the beach. "More than a dog like you has ever seen. Just get me to Havana!"
He ran. Jon, seeing his prize escaping, gave chase. The jungle was a dense, humid world of tangled vines and treacherous ground. Walpole, for all his arrogance, was quick, but Jon's [Tree Runner] skill gave him a decisive advantage. While Walpole crashed through the undergrowth below, Jon took to the canopy. He scrambled up ancient, moss-covered trees, his grip sure, and ran along thick branches that formed a natural causeway above the jungle floor.
The chase became a true test. He nearly lost Walpole when the man scrambled down into a narrow, rocky ravine. Jon didn't follow. He used his momentum to swing from a thick, hanging vine, clearing the ravine in a single, breathtaking leap and landing silently in the branches of a banyan tree on the other side. He was faster, more agile, and he used the three-dimensional space of the jungle in a way the land-bound man never could.
He finally cornered him in a small, sun-dappled clearing. Walpole, exhausted, wounded, and breathing in ragged gasps, drew his sword. The fight was short and brutal. Jon, using a combination of the man's own hidden blade and his cutlass, ended it quickly.
He knelt over the body, his hands moving with a practiced efficiency, searching for his prize. He found a purse of coins, a strange, intricate map, and a sealed letter bearing the sigil of the Governor of Havana. He broke the seal and read. It was a letter of introduction, promising Walpole a great reward for the delivery of the maps and the strange, glowing cube.
The grin came unbidden. It wasn't Jon's, but Edward's. And yet, for the first time, Jon didn't fight it. This was his chance. He was no longer just a shipwrecked sailor. He was a man with a purpose. A man with a name to steal.
He stripped the man of his hooded white robes and the twin hidden blades strapped to his forearms. He then made his way through the jungle, following the coastline. He eventually found a small cove where a group of merchants were being held captive by a handful of red-coated soldiers.
This was the final test. The objective: "Seize a ship, not as a passenger, but as her master."
He did not challenge them. He was an assassin. He used his new [Air Assassinate] skill, dropping from the high branches of a palm tree to eliminate the sentry with a silent, shocking blow. He used the chaos to his advantage, his pistols and cutlass a blur of motion as he cut down the remaining soldiers.
The merchants, their faces a mixture of terror and gratitude, were freed. Their leader, a portly man named Stede Bonnet, offered him a reward. But Jon, Edward, saw something better. He saw the man's ship, a beautiful, swift schooner anchored in the cove.
He didn't ask. He took.
He stood at the helm of his new ship, the Jackdaw, the merchants now his reluctant but grateful crew. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and blood.
[Capstone Quest Complete: Trial of Tides]
[Reward: Will of the Wilds(Skill), Naval Battle Mastery]
Effect: Stamina cost for climbing, running, and swimming is permanently halved. Connection to nature deepens, allowing the Sight to passively highlight animal trails and sources of fresh water.
The world dissolved into white, and Jon snapped back to reality, his body aching with a phantom exhaustion on the hard cot in his room in Tyrosh. But his mind was different. It was sharper, wilder. He no longer just understood the sea; he had felt it. He had the salt in his blood, having borrowed the reckless, freedom-loving soul of a pirate assassin. And he knew, with a certainty that was both thrilling and terrifying, that he would need those instincts for the wars to come.