[Lisheo]

The ship was abandoned, floating in the cold grey waters. Captain Kell stared at it from across the deck of the Sorceress, a hard look in his eyes, and a hard cast to his face.
“What’s your thought, sir?” asked First Mate Corbie, frowning. “I ain’t never seen anything like it. Ever, in all my years of sailing.”
Kell sighed, and glanced back towards the ship, which was bobbing gently in the waves. “Well, the way I see it, is they signalled the distress. They sent the bird.”
The bird in question rested now, in a cage in the rookery below, under the tender care of Auspice, the Birdkeeper. Several hours ago, it had alighted upon the deck, a crumpled roll of paper strapped to its leg with strands of ox-hair. Auspice had taken great pains to make sure the bird was alright, indeed, he had fed it and watered it, and then taken it below decks.
The roll of paper had read, simply: “Need help. In trouble.” This was concluded my a rough sketch of the ship’s location, and that map had led Kell and his crew here, to where the ship floated less than half a mile away, a black raven perched atop the tallest mast, looking down at them with malice-filled eyes.
“Nothing’s moved on that boat in an hour, Cap’n. I don’t see no point in going aboard. Chances are they all got the plague or somethin’ worse.”
Kell pointed a gloved hand towards the crow. “One of Grief’s get, Corbie. We all know the bastards of the Unkindness don’t go near plague ships.”
Corbie opened his mouth, then shut it. He took a deep breath, and spat on his palm, slicking back his hair. Finally, he spoke again. “Fair does, Cap’n. But if something is to befell ye on that ship, I warned you.”
Kell nodded. A small part of his mind issued a warning of caution, Corbie was possibly right. Perhaps it wasn’t the plague, but it was something. The ship was drifting dead; no one was crewing it.
The ship’s name itself spoke of danger: the Lady Tragedy. An ill-omened name, if Kell had ever heard of one. He sighed, and cracked his knuckles. “Get a raft ready, and a crew of three good men.”

The three good men were Corbie himself, the huge, hulking mute nicknamed Talkative by the crew, and the ship’s physician, Doctor Badelus, a slight man who seemed doomed to perspire even in these cold conditions. Poor bastard had a stammer, too.
“We-we-well, Captain Kell, I cannot, and I mean cannot, for the life of me, th-th-think of anything infectious that could kill a whole shipload of hardy sailors and stay infectious. You have m-my-my word for it.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Kell said softly. He hoped the man was right; he had only served with the Sorceress a handful of months, not long enough to be known as reliable or simply over-confident. “Do you know about anything else that could kill an entire crew?”
There was a pause, as Badelus ran a hand over his scalp. “Well, other than th-the First, the godlings, I can’t think of anything. Not something that could do it all the way out here.”
“Excellent, so torn apart by a deranged God,” Kell murmured. Talkative gave him a strange glance then, one that sent shivers down his spine, but as quickly as it happened, the big man looked away. “Good odds. But still, we must check out this ship. It’s better if we know exactly what happened, in case it happens to others.”
“Or us,” spat Corbie.
Or us, Kell silently agreed.

The deck of the Lady Tragedy was as solid as they come. The dark wood creaked, but nonetheless, from the exterior, the ship looked more than hale.
“Seems fine,” said Badelus. “But then, I am n-no ex-expert. Not at all.”
Talkative shrugged, and inspected the mast. Kell knew already that it was solid, in fact, the entire ship didn’t look to be damaged. If there was a breach, it was belowdecks.
“Right, lads,” said the Captain in his most commanding voice, the one used in case of sea serpents, monsters, and a lack of rum, “Something happened here. It’s up to us to find out what. If the crew are dead, we give ‘em a proper burial. If they’re sick, we let Bad here have a look at the poor bastards and see what he can do. If they’ve abandoned ship, we have to go and find them.”
His three looked at him, and nodded.
“Down, then, sir?” Corbie asked. Kell responded with a curt nod.
“Down.”

Below decks, things were... unpleasant. Crusted dark smears coated the walls, which Badelus identified as “lifeblood, of some sort.”
The men stalked through to the crew’s quarters. Things took a down turn here, too.
Bodies, piled upon each other. Not a single mark on them, but all of them pale and lifeless. Eyes stared sightlessly towards the wooden roof, and arms were frozen outstretched. Talkative pulled one away from the pile with relative ease, and Badelus approached it, opening his black bag as he did so.
A number of items were produced, and he spent several minutes examining the corpse.
“Well?” Kell growled. “What do you have to say?”
The Doctor’s face was dark. “Nothing killed them.”
“What?”
“These men died what appears to be a n-natural death.”
“They’re piled up several feet high, and you are telling me it was a natural death?”
“That’s what my instruments are telling me. No l-la-lacerations, no internal bleeding that I can detect, not even any sickness. These men are healthier in death than they probably were in life, sir.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I-I-I know, sir. I know.”
“Talkative?”
The mute responded with a grunt. His face, tanned and normally good humoured, was creased, his eyes red with horror.
“Find some flammables. Whiskey and the like. Soak them, and burn them, and we’ll sink this accursed thing once we find out what happened. Stay with the bodies, and Corbie, stay with him.”
The First mate nodded tersely. Kell pointed at Badelus. “You. You’re coming with me.”
The physician swallowed. “Aye aye sir.”

The Captain’s Quarter’s could have been an end to the nightmare, but that would have been too easy. Instead, the Captain’s body, identified by his ridiculous hat, a slash of humour among the horror, was nailed to the floor of his cabin.
It seemed every one of his bones had been broken. Badelus began sweating even more profusely upon this discovery.
“S-s-sir, this is bad. Very bad. I don’t think we should stay here any longer.”
“Quiet,” Kell snapped. He reached out, and picked up the leather-bound Captain’s Log.

Novambar 17th, 4:46 PM.
The skies are clear, and the sea is calm. This is a perfect day for us. About time we had some good fortune. Caleb’s death shocked us all. No one among the crew has any idea what happened. Seems he just got sick and died. The good Doctor couldn’t recognise whatever ailment killed him. At least he passed in his sleep, and seemed untroubled.

Novambar 26th, 2:44 AM
Doctor is dead. Died from the same thing that killed Caleb, apparently.

Dassem 16th 6:20 AM
The food was found spoiled. All of it, every single grain of rice, every hunk of bread, every drop of water. The rice has blackened and shrunk, the bread rotted, and the water appears more like blood than anything else

Dassem 17th 7:03 PM
Jrent has lost his mind. The solitude and reduced rations can do that to a man. He sits in the hold now, arms wrapped around himself, slowly rocking, and constantly informing us that “it” is onboard. Sen thinks he saw something during the morning watch, but that is preposterous. We are several miles out to see, far enough from inhabited land to be bothered by anyone or anything. It’s just the news of the supplies that has gotten to the men, that’s all.

Dassem 20th
Jrent was right. It is here. We’re going to kill it. Flush it out of the aft storage chamber, where we have it cornered. I’ve never seen anything like it. Like a man made out of wrong.

Dassem 21st
It jumped off the ship today, after Giles wounded it, grievously, one should think. A sword right through the neck. Amazingly, the thing was still alive. It plunged into the sea.

Dassem 26th
I die.

And with that, the log ended. Kell flung the damned book against a wall, sick to the stomach. Something wrong had happened here, and he wanted to get off this ship as soon as possible.
Badelus looked up at him, eyes wide.
Faint screaming could be heard.
The crew of the Sorceress.

Talkative roared, a thing of indescribable anguish. Corbie looked up at him, a strange look in his black, beady eyes.
“You can go to them,” he whispered. “But you’ll die. It’s not worth it.”
Brown eyes met his own, and wrenching a wooden leg off a stool, Talkative ran to try and save his friends.
Corbie stared at the ground, his face a mask of unreadable emotions.
The raven atop the mast spread its wings, and hurled itself into the sky, not wanting to see the slaughter below, the work of one of the First.

The thing, nameless now for so long, reduced to little more than a monstrous slave to its own unique hunger, finished with the crew. It had required sustenance, and had taken it. The crew were dead now, but a death more perfect than any other. Cured of any minor sicknesses, wounds healed, all their pain taken into the thing that stood looking at their bodies.
An arm, wrapped in pallid, loose skin, reached out, pointing towards the sky. A clawed finger traced the path of the raven that flew above, above and away.
A toothless maw opened, and red-rimmed eyes of milky white brightened. Somewhere near, there was something that would replenish the thing to its former strength.
It staggered towards the railing, and pitched itself into the icy sea.

Badelus and Kell ran out to find Corbie sitting despondently on the ground.
“He’s gone,” said the First Mate sadly. “Told him not to. Heard the screams, Cap’n. Knew he’d die”
Kell said nothing. He merely pulled out his knife. Badelus began to stammer, as if to say something, but then a scalpel was in his hand, and his face was set in grim determination.

It climbed aboard easily enough, claws digging into the wood. A large man appeared above it, and began striking at it with a club of some kind. He battered at its head and shoulders, but it didn’t care. It had long since lost the capacity to feel real pain.
After a time, the big man’s frantic attack’s ceased, as the creature drew out all of his illness and his hurt. The last word to escape his mouth was something like “friends.”

Kell arrived on the deck in time to see the monstrosity, a thing of swathes of hanging white flesh and grossly distorted muscles, lay Talkative down. The big man’s expression seemed almost to be one of peace.

More humans, the creature reflected. One of these seemed to be the source of the power it had felt earlier. It strode forward, mouth open wide, arms outstretched to embrace them both.

They died easily, in the end. Their knives didn’t harm the being in the slightest. It didn’t know it, but it was older, much older, than such things, and what is old, is strong. When both husks were placed on the deck of the ship, the thing turned, and howled with its tongue-less voice.
“So, you did indeed awaken,” said a soft voice from behind it. The thing turned. Another human stood behind it, unarmed, unafraid.
No. Not a human. Something else. Something shimmering and dark and complex, like a jigsaw, something that only had true shape when all its different sections were connected.
The raven landed on the man’s shoulder, and vanished, leaving a thin curl of shadow float away. In that one moment, the man changed. Taller now, face hidden by darkness. Eyes that seemed far less human.
“We are much debased, you and I. I am not even a shadow of my former self, much of what I was has been lost to me. But you, look at you. You, Clurset, once one of our most powerful. A rival of the Old Ones themselves, the Feeder on Misery. What has become of us?”
The creature began shambling towards him. He was the one with the power the being needed, he was the sustenance that was needed so badly.

Corbie, sometimes known as the Unkindness Grief, burst apart, dozens of rooks, ravens and crows taking to the sky. They climbed, and climbed, and climbed, until at last, they reached the optimal height.
And then they hurled themselves downward, tearing at Clurset, ripping, biting, pecking, each beak gouging deep into its flesh, drawing something of its essence into themselves. All Clurset could do was flail hopelessly, for there were far too many crows to ever hope to defeat in the state the being was in now.
When the First was at last dead, with no trace of him left, the birds landed once again, congealing into the familiar shape of Corbie, however, this time, he was accompanied by a handful of large ravens that hovered above him. Clurset, even so fallen, had increased his own power quite a great deal.

That night, a great host of carrion birds flew away from that spot, where two ships burned brightly, a burying at sea, the only honour Corbie had left to give his companions.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

I liked it, although I don't understand why you gave the story this title. The idea of having the guy kill people by stripping them of their pain was, at least for me, very interesting. Just to know: Is this set before or after the Skyship?

[Lisheo]

It's set before. And the title is just the concept of a ship floating without its crew, which kind of inspired me to write it.

[Fist Gamet]

I do think that you have a talent for this and that The Unkindness has the potential to be a terrific and memorable character/species/race if you develop them and write them into a full story. I am not disparaging what you have done so far but writing up a few thousand words on an idea is relatively easy (albeit very well done) so I would really like to read a full story set in this world and time. Let me know if you have no intention of doing so and I will happily steal the idea

[Grimjust Bearegular]

Holy sh#%, that was awesome!!


You are a really talented writer. What you write seems quite original, although I recognize some things from the Malazan world. But that's a good thing really.

[Lisheo]

Thank you very much, Fist and Grimhilde.
And yeah, I am working on a proper, full story.

[Hinter]

Really good, and as Fist Gamet said, The Unkindness is becoming a great character.