“Avast!” – Pay attention.

  WHEN THE GREY tide lapped back up onto shore, it brought with it half of Port Royal. It was the same as years before when the earthquake hit and the tidal wave, every so often the sea wanted to claim a piece of Port Royal. It was the toll sailors must pay for the right to cross the Caribbean—that’s what some of the natives said. Rogers had heard it said.

  He barely clung to the barrel, and rolled end over end up the sodden shore along with the tide. He had survived by clinging to the ropes that hung from the side of galleys and brigs. He’d pulled himself up onto a felucca at one point, only to have a massive wave overturn him and pull him under, where he saw a gaggle of purple glowing eyes in retreat, leaving Port Royal be for now. He’d drunk seawater and spat it back up, swam hard as he could for shore only to be pulled back out by a ferocious riptide. Then he was pulled under by first one whirlpool, and then another, and then spat back up a mile out to sea or more and clung for dear life to a lifeboat with a madman trying to row in all directions.

  Rogers had tried holding out a placating hand. “Easy,” he panted. “I won’t hurt you—”

  The man swung an oar at his head and Rogers ducked it just in time.

  “Please, sir! There is room enough for the both of us!”

  But the madman screamed some inarticulate words and launched himself at Rogers, which was a bad move, as Rogers still had a dagger fastened to his hip and withdrew it and jabbed it up through his jaw before throwing him into the sea. The man sank and Rogers remained there in that boat, underneath the new sun, roasting in the heat. In the distance he saw the Hazard, the Lively, and some other ship sailing away together.

  For a whole day, he’d tried rowing for shore, but it did him no good. Currents always carried him back out. Bodies floated in the water. Sharks picked at them. As the day turned into night and the shore of Jamaica began to vanish in the north, he fell asleep. When he woke up a bloated pig was bobbing up and down in a tangled mess of rope and a half sunken raft.

  The water seemed calmer, so he tried rowing again.

  It took him the entire day just to come within sight of land again. His arms were filled with acid, and his chest muscles and abdomen burned with the effort as he rowed into the night. A blessing current seemed to help carry him more or less the direction he wanted to go. He fell asleep at some point, and when he woke up his boat was drifting half a mile out from one of the brigs he’d confiscated from the Clement brothers—her rigging sagged pitifully, and she leaned to one side in the sea, a sign she was taking on water. There was no crew, it was a ghost ship. When he swung north he saw the familiar shoreline of Port Royal, its docks hammered, mostly turned to splinters, half her ships sunk or battered.

  He rowed. Past a xebec, which was slowly sinking, and a tartan, which was adrift with all masts splinters and smashed.

  Then something struck his boat. Struck it so hard it tipped him over, and in terror he began to swim for dear life. He imagined a shark snatching his legs any moment and dragging him under, or those purple-eyed fiends returning to finish the job, or some firmament-born creature devouring him whole.

  He swam until he nearly gave out. He swam through floating debris. Wood planks and barrels and trees and ropes. He grabbed one of the barrels and paddled. His arms had given out, and now his legs would, too.

  As he got closer to shore he saw that the Monster that had risen from the sea and stormed the city had come to a halt. It appeared to have solidified like some dark tree, the fleshy bodies that had made up its exterior now hardened into what looked like from this distance to be blackened bark. At every moment Rogers thought he was dreaming. He became delirious from thirst and hunger, and when he finally flopped onto the beach his legs kept spasming with the effort of swimming. His legs kept trying to push water, even though he lay pitifully in the sand, beside dozens of bloated corpses, a dead donkey and two dead horses, all rotting in the sun. Seagulls pecked at them. One of them tried to have a taste of him, but he had strength enough to bat it away.

  When some living soul finally found him, it was nighttime again, and he was lifted and dragged over to a fire lit by the beach. A cup of water was put to his lips and he gasped at the touch. His throat constricted in such eager need of survival. A woman was trying to feed him bread, slowly, piece by piece.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  He was in and out of it for a day, vaguely aware that more people were gathering around their encampment, and through blurry vision he saw men gathering all the corpses on the sea and throwing them onto wheelbarrows.

  “You’re the only one’s left in charge, ayuh?” some a dim-witted, foggy-eyed, half-toothless fellow that came to sit beside him. “You’re the only one c’n mebbe talk to them.”

  “What?” croaked Rogers.

  “Them ones settin’ up shop at the top o’ the hill, ayuh.” The idiot pointed up the hill, towards Fire Lane and the castle that was the Admiralty Office. Being high enough inland and up the hill, that part of the harbour city had survived.

  “Who’s—” He swallowed hard. Felt like sand in his throat. He took another drink of water. He looked down the beach at two children jumping up and down on a drowned horse. “Who’s up there? What are you talking about?”

  “I dunno. New pirate lords, they seem t’think. Men from the bloody-damned firmament. Ne’er seen their like, ayuh. But they needs someone to talk to who’s in charge. That’s what they asked, ayuh.”

  “They asked…to speak to someone in charge?”

  “Ayuh.” He spat and looked out to sea.

  “And who are they? You’re not making any sense.”

  “Them Africans,” the idiot said. Then he used both his forefingers to pull back his eyelids—far, far back, until it looked like his eyeballs might pop out of their sockets. “And them big Purple Eyes. He’s up there, the Purple Lord.”

  Rogers tried standing up. He made it to his feet with the idiot’s help. He looked up at the sun and squinted hard. It had been too long without a sun up there, and he’d forgotten its brilliance. Imagine a day when the sun is gone so long no one remembers its warmth or brilliance at all. He looked up the hill at the colossal, black-barked tree growing out of the top of the hill, and extending its hundreds of branches across the sky, some of them even touching the clouds. “What in God’s name is happening?”

  “Port Royal belongs to him now, ayuh. The Purple Lord, he’s the one you prob’ly want t’speak to.”

  ____

  Rogers climbed the hill slowly, trudging through the sludgy muck that had been vomited up from the seafloor. Dead fish lay everywhere and the city reeked. A few sad souls flitted here and there, picking through the rubble to salvage whatever they could. But the further he went up the hill the less destruction there was. In fact, there was a clear demarcation line where the tidal wave had not reach, and it even appeared as though the Monster That Had Risen had made a clear beeline through parts of the city that had been under reconstruction. Buildings had been toppled, but those right beside them had been spared.

  He kept walking. Past Patrick’s Tavern which still stood, its doors open and no one within. His favourite coffee-house was there, its only customers the gulls picking at the bones of fish someone had left out on a plate. Crossing Lime Street he saw a single dead militiaman, ripped in half at the waist, entrails spilt into the mud. A riderless horse milled about with nothing to do, its saddle askew. He tried to approach it but it was skittish and ran off.

  Rogers heard music, and followed it. The stillness and silence made him think of leaving, but he had never been a coward, and once had even been an explorer, and such a man had a need to see what was around any bend and to overturn any unturned stone. The stench of dead things filled the air.

  The music became louder. A fiddle and a drum, perhaps a tambourine.

  Despite the cramps in his legs, he kept walking. Up to the Meat Market, to the epicenter of all major commerce in Port Royal, where the Monster That Had Risen had set down its roots. The ground was Corrupted here, split in place like old clay, with runnels of mud flowing into the cracks, along the roots of this new Monstrous Tree. He looked up at the impossible tower of stone-like bark, the circumference must have been a hundred feet and there was no telling the height.

  He finally found the source of the music. It was emanating from The Golden Goose. Woodes walked over and stood in the open doorway, looking in on the dark room.

  “Come in, Captain,” said the man seated at the center of the room. He had once been Otis, the proprietor, but no more. The deep purple light that came from his eyes also underlit the skin around his eyes, allowing Rogers to see the veins and skeletal structure beneath the flesh. Rogers could even count his teeth.

  Movement on the ceiling. Rogers glanced up. He steeled himself against the horror, a sort of spider of enormous size, the head of three paikes attached to black stalks, like necks, and each one was as long as a man is tall. The heads were not really alive, he knew that, only animated to look that way, and from the spider’s belly there was a hideous bloated white bulge. Each paike’s head glittered with purple eyes.

  Rogers cast about the rest of the tavern and saw more strange figures, forms that defied God’s holy order. They all had different numbers of eyes, but all of them were purple. Except for the Africans, all of whom stood at the back of the tavern looking back at him. He recognized some of them as the men the Clements had brought over. The Africans were sodden, some of them coated in blood, and were joined by what appeared to be Caribee tribesmen. All of them were armed with spears and shields, all of them stared back Rogers with stern resolve.

  “What…what is this?” he whispered. “What are you—?”

  “That is why we are here to lay out—”

  “But what…what is all—?”

  “Avast!” barked the Purple Lord. “I am told,” he spoke slowly, “that this island’s leadership retreated to a place called Kingston, and that you are the most senior man left in Port Royal to represent England. I am told you are the man to speak to.”

  “About what?”

  The Thing That Had Once Been Otis tilted his head and smiled. “Why, your surrender, sir.”

  “The surrender of who? What?”

  “The whole World, Captain Rogers. I am the Envoy. Our Master would like to discuss the surrender of your World.”

  Rogers looked down at his cuffs and noticed they were a little uneven. He fixed them, then sat up straight and said, “What is your position, sir?”