The hull of the hammer hand groaned under its own armor—slabs of black tide wood reinforced with fused cartilage from deep-sea leviathans. The hammer hand was no sleek beauty—it was a war beast. And its captain no less brutal. Hammerhead stood on the prow, arms crossed, his bone-flattened skull catching the morning sun like a dented war helm. Broad-chested, sun-scarred, and wrapped in a cloak of stitched crab carapace, he was an intimidating sight. The hammer hand ran heavy oars too—each pulled by chained cultivators with broken wrists and iron gags.
Discipline was law. Hesitation was death. One of the deck-spotters shouted. "Crimson Typhoon 20 leagues ahead, red sails!" Hammerhead stared. His flattened brow caught the glare like a war drum. "The Crimson Typhoon," he muttered. "Finally." He turned to his helmsman, a wiry man missing both lips from an old acid-curse. "Stay wide. No flags. No fire signals." The helmsman hesitated. "Should we reach out to the other two—Salt Viper and that cursed widow's skiff?"
Hammerhead didn't laugh. "They're not allies. Just more vultures circling the same corpse. I don't plan to share the bones." He turned back toward the sea, gaze hard on the far-red sail. "I'll be the new Pirate King of the Quatzequatel Sea. Or I'll feed it my corpse trying." The Salt Viper slithered across the sea like a mirage—narrow, fast, and coated in overlapping scales of lacquered teak and sea-jade. Its sails shimmered faintly green, treated with powdered basilisk hide. Where it passed, fish died by the dozens in its wake—its hull enchanted to leak venom slowly into the sea.
Below a green silk canopy, surrounded by cushions and chanting disciples, Snake Man sat coiled in meditation. He was a whisper of flesh and tendon. Emaciated, bald, draped in tattered ochre robes and a necklace of dried fangs. His limbs were impossibly long, folded thrice over, yet his posture betrayed perfect ease. But it was the serpents that marked him as nightmare. Five great snakes coiled around him—each alive, each awake, each an extension of his spirit threads:
The Black Cobra on his right leg, wreathed in poison fog. The Red Adder on his left leg, hissing sparks of flame from its flickering tongue. The Blue Krait up his right arm, chill with frostbite venom. The Golden Viper wrapped along his left arm, humming with paralytic pulse. And the White Fang Serpent, thick and blindfolded, sleeping around his midsection—its scales translucent, filled with some unknown ichor. One of his lieutenants approached, head bowed.
"We sight a ship… crimson sails. It matches the reports of the Typhoon."
Snake Man's eyelids crept open. His pupils were vertical slits of violet. His arms unspooled—stretching easily six meters in opposite directions before curling inward again. The Red Adder stirred, sensing his mood. "They travel to the inheritance like a moth to flame," he murmured. "But the ocean has many coils… and I am patient." He rose, joints crackling in slow spirals. "Set course. But do not engage." His lieutenant blinked. "You don't want to strike, master?" "I want to observe. I want to see which serpent strikes first—so I may crush its skull and consume the marrow."
The five snakes raised their heads in unison, as if they too tasted ambition.
Where the Hammer Hand cut like a fist and the Salt Viper glided like a curse, the Star bite danced. Its sails glittered like torn butterfly wings—fragmented chroma stitching that caught the light in impossible colors. The ship's hull were made of phoenix wood and enchantment-buoyed, it floated just above the waves with barely a whisper. Its mast was a living tree, rooted in a sacred patch of moss taken from the paradise glades.
At its bow stood Faeluxe, Captain of the Star bite—a winged sword-dancer of the razor-pixie clan. She was five foot five, with gossamer wings that shimmered in alternating hues of blood and moonlight, she hovered inches off the deck. Her body was all sharp grace—sickle-thin legs wrapped in sheer gossamer, a corset of scale, and a dozen bladelets tucked along her forearms like folded petals. Her hair was a mess of dried star fish's caught in long blonde hair that whipped in the wind. Her eyes were luminous pools of starlight and mischief.
She did not speak to command her crew. She danced. And the crew followed. Mostly sprites, storm-fey, and wind-cut goblins—all devotees of her cult of speed. As Faeluxe spun midair in a cyclone flourish, her curved wing blades snapped open—each feather a honed edge—and the helmsman adjusted course. A voice from the whisper-shell beside her ear crackled. "The Crimson Typhoon sails, my lady. They draw others in their wake." She smiled, licking a curved dagger idly.
"Of course they do," she purred, eyes narrowing with mirth. "Inheritances always call the most interesting meat." A sprite approached bearing her war mask—a snarling fox carved of dream wood and lacquered in venom root purple. Faeluxe took it gently, pressing the mask to her face. Her wings flared out in a halo of impossible color.
"I will become the next Queen Pirate of these seas," she declared, voice ringing like a bell's echo through broken glass. "Let them run. Let them gather. Let them bleed for the crown."
The Star bite turned like a dancer mid-step and glided after the others, silent and fast.