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pirate-melody · 4 years

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An Unexpected Reunion

I wrote a short story from the point of view of my D&D character I play who is a former pirate. I thought people here might enjoy it.

Elijah had not expected the Band’s trip to Bolwerk to end like this. Of course, thinking back on their plans, there had never been a way for the pirate to disguise himself getting off the ship, making his situation inevitable.

Elijah sat in the brig of the Stouthearted, manacled to the bulkhead. He had traded his clothes for prisoners’ rags, and he was waiting patiently to be taken to jail. Six months ago, Elijah would have sworn he’d die before being taken in, and had anyone told him he would willingly give himself up in the future, he would have laughed in their face. It turned out that there was a lot he would do to keep this group out of trouble.

He heard Hermac’s and Al’s voices coming from the deck above, as well as a couple unfamiliar ones. The unfamiliar people turned out to be guards from the dock, which the Band had been expecting. The two observers climbed down the ladder into the brig, presumably to do a head count of the prisoners, but they came face to face with Elijah.

He hadn’t expected to be recognized so quickly, especially since he hadn’t engaged in a single act of piracy for six months. He certainly didn’t deserve the frenzy the dock erupted into.

Since Elijah had fallen off his habit of piracy, he had expected that his reputation would retreat into the shadows. None of the Band had recognized him except for Hermac, even when he had used his real name, so he had been careless when Captain Surcouf had asked for his name. Even when Surcouf had connected some of the dots, Elijah thought that the story he had come up with on the spot would keep the half-elven captain off his scent. The pirate had no such luck.

Elijah and his “compatriots” Selva and Sokali were rounded up by a group of observers and a peacekeeper, and they were marched off the ship. Al-adin had already been escorted to some sort of meeting by a separate group of guards, but Hermac and Noname had managed to stay with the prisoners disguised as the ship’s caster and an observer, respectively. Elijah assumed that Mickey was also nearby, invisible, but he wasn’t sure where Veezara had gone.

The group paraded up to the enormous cliff face and stepped onto the massive stone lift that would take them to the top. The trip up the cliff did not take long, but Elijah was alarmed by how shaky the lift was as it traveled. It didn’t seem to be propelled by magic. After a short trip through the streets of Bolwerk, the prisoners were escorted into a large building that seemed to be at the center of the city. The extent of the building’s decorations—intricate columns, stone statues, colorful banners—told Elijah that this was the capitol building. He hoped that the Band’s visit to this building did not resemble the last time they were in a capitol building of Nyvald.

The guards led the prisoners up several flights of stairs and down a long hallway with a tall ceiling. A set of doors halfway down the hallway opened, and the group walking inside what seemed to be an anteroom outside of an important meeting room. This seemed to be the place where Al had been escorted. Inside the room there were a couple of benches, for people waiting to be let into the meeting room, and the guards let their prisoners make use of them.

A younger halfling woman sat at a desk next to the doors that let to the meeting room.

“Welliene. Could you get Captain Graeme for us?” the peacekeeper asked her. Welliene unsuccessfully tried to hide her glance at Elijah before she entered the meeting room.

Hearing the name “Captain Graeme” in the meeting with the Howlers had been jarring. At first Elijah thought someone had been talking to him, but no one had ever called him captain. Most of them hadn’t even known he was a pirate. Upon being told that there was a Captain Graeme in Bolwerk, part of him hoped that it would be his brother. It didn’t make sense that his brother would be a Nyvaldian captain if he had been apprenticed to a blacksmith, but Graeme was not a common surname. The one good thing to come out of his disastrous meeting with Surcouf was that Elijah confirmed it was truly his brother they were going to meet in Bolwerk.

Upon the realization that he was going to meet his brother now, Elijah did not know what to do. There wasn’t much he could do, shackled as he was. Elijah didn’t know if his brother would even care that he was here. They had been apart from each other for more than half their lives. It had been ages since they were children.

The door opened. Welliene entered first, seating herself back behind her desk. As another figure came through the doorway, Elijah caught sight of a profile remarkably like his own. The person looked over at Welliene as he closed the door, confused as to why he had been called from his meeting. Welliene pointed in Elijah’s direction, and as the person turned toward him, Elijah was greeted with the face of his long-lost brother, Nathaniel. At first, they could only meet eyes, unsure of what to say. Yes, they were twins and had grown up together, but they had ended up on opposite sides of the law. One brother was headed to prison while the other was advancing his military career. Handcuffs opposite a uniform.

Nathaniel spoke first.

“It’s been a long time. You’ve. . . grown since I last saw you.” He meant more than just the change from twelve-year-old to adult. Nathaniel didn’t seem to have been expecting his brother to have acquired such a muscular physique.

“I could say the same about you,” Elijah quipped. To say that Nathaniel had not been idle in maintaining his frame would be an understatement, though he was not quite at the level of his brother.

Silence again.

“I can’t do this in here. Get up,” Nathaniel said as he gestured for his brother to stand. Elijah did as he was asked. Immediate protest came from the observers on guard. “He’s in chains, and I have my sword with me. He won’t get away. I need to talk to my brother in private.” The word “brother” was said with such disdain that Elijah started to think that he might have to fear the aforementioned sword.

As the observers opened the door, the soldier gripped his brother by the shoulder and marched him into the hallway. Elijah nodded to Hermac that he would be fine. As the door to the anteroom closed, Nathaniel checked that there was no one else in the hallway. Then he surprised Elijah and enveloped the pirate in a hug.

“It’s been so long. I thought we’d never see each other again.”

“I missed you too,” Elijah replied with obvious delight in his voice. He wished that he could return his brother’s embrace, but his manacles prevented it.

Nathaniel eventually relinquished Elijah from the hug. His manner became solemn, and Elijah knew that the conversation he had been dreading had arisen. He didn’t want to transition directly into his brother chastising him for his life choices, so he made sure that he spoke first.

“How did you get this job? I thought you were apprenticed to a blacksmith; I went to so many blacksmiths looking for you.”

“You looked for me?” Nathaniel was touched. “My adoptive father does a lot of work for the Bolwerk armory. He had some connections that got me a job as an observer, and I worked by way up to captain from there.”

“Your master took you in as his son?” Nathaniel nodded. “I didn’t have such a lucky end to my childhood. The merchant I was apprenticed to didn’t consider me worth fifty gold pieces.”

“And because of that you became a pirate?”

“I didn’t have a loving father to run back to. I didn’t have anyone. The pirates were better to me than anyone had been for years. And when I was with them, I could look for you.”

Nathaniel gave a tired sigh.

“You didn’t know where I was, but I always knew exactly what part of the ocean you were in, what ships you had robbed. For years I got pitying looks from everyone: coworkers, subordinates—even the admiral. And then you disappeared for months. I thought you were dead.” Little did Nathaniel know how close his brother had come to death. “But now you’re here. How are you here? No one heard anything about you being captured.”

“I wasn’t captured. You need to talk to my friends.”

“The minotaur and the kobold?”

“The Howlers sent us.” Nathaniel’s eyes widened.

“You mean you’re the group I’m supposed to meet with?” The soldier paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. “The Howlers are bad news. Why are you involved with them?”

“What about you? You’re the person they sent us to.” Elijah got an exasperated look that could only have come from a brother.

“Once the captains leave, I can get the guards to leave too. We can talk about that once we’re alone.”

“The magic user and the half-elf observer are with us.” Nathaniel raised an eyebrow.

“That makes things a bit easier.”

Nathaniel led his brother back into the anteroom, and Elijah did his best to put on a show of defeat for the guards. He met Noname’s eyes to let her know he was okay and returned to his previous seat. Hermac had moved closer to the outer door, making Elijah suspect he had been trying to eavesdrop.

It was fortuitous that Nathaniel had picked that specific time to return, for no sooner had Elijah leaned back against the wall than the door into the captain’s room opened. As the captains filed out of the meeting room, marking their attendance with Welliene, they caught sight of Elijah Graeme, apparently-still-infamous pirate. Some of the captains saw Nathaniel’s supposed distress and respected their colleague’s feelings by only sneering at the pirate, but a most of them deigned to give Elijah a few choice insults. One of the captains had the gall to spit in Elijah’s face. Through the captains’ barrage of scorn, for the sake of his brother, Elijah said nothing.

With the captains gone Nathaniel convinced the peacekeeper and his observers that the prisoners would be fine if they were left alone with himself and the caster, as well as this observer for good measure. Finally, the Band was able to talk about their mission. Despite Nathaniel’s disappointment that came with the Band working with the Howlers, Elijah could only look forward to getting to work beside his brother for the first time in eighteen years.

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