The Sword Saints

32. Hard Lessons on the High Seas

(Yuna)

"Honor your friends, honor your family. Honor everyone and everything that deserves it, for life is but a fickle thing and one will never know when life will be taken away."

- The Book of Sympathy: Ch. 1: verse 13.

The dust settled and Yuna found that she was all right.

Splinters littered her hands and legs, but Yuna was fortunately none the worse for wear. Padrick rushed to her side and helped her to her feet. He was frantic. It was jarring for her to see him as anything but calm and collected, but she could tell he was trying. She gulped. If only she could say the same for herself.

"Are you well? Are you hurt?" He gripped her shoulders. She shrugged his hands off of her.

"Just a few splinters, I'm fine."

He gave her a good once over. He didn't protest, so he must have been satisfied. He drew his sword. She was about to draw her bow, but then Sybill pushed past her in a hurry. She knocked into Yuna's shoulder without so much as a word. She would have said something, but when she turned to look at what had Sybill's attention, she swallowed her tongue and stifled a cry that crept up her throat.

Ressylus, Sybill's first mate and a man she considered family, was pinned beneath the mast, blood pooling beneath him. Strong, lively Sybill knelt next to him. Her arms shook, and her body quaked with each sob. Yuna could only stand and watch, but she inched closer. The crew – some tried to lift the mast, but it was too heavy. If everyone tried it could've been done, but many were bracing for the impending attack.

It didn't matter though. Any sane man would know that Ressylus didn't have much longer.

Yuna knelt beside the captain and gripped her shoulder. Sybill didn't react to it. Her eyes, tears flowing like a flooding river, stared at her dying friend. The mast laid across his stomach. He coughed blood every few seconds. One of his arms was pinned but his left wasn't. He shakily lifted it above him and stroked Sybill's cheek.

"Y-your father wou – would have been very p-p-proud of you, chi-ild. As am I." He coughed up more blood.

Sybill's voice was a whisper. "Please, no."

He said one last word to her. "Live." Then he was gone.

Yuna stepped back and back some more because in that moment of clarity, she realized that it had been Ressylus that pushed her out of the way of the falling beam. The breath was knocked out of her. She clutched at her heart, a numbing pain spreading through her body as the guilt struck her like a hammer to the head.

It was her fault, all her fault... all my fault. She wanted to cry, wanted to run and hide. Why hadn't she moved? If only she'd just stepped aside, the mast wouldn't have been a danger and Ressylus would be alive. Tears did then begin to sting her eyes. All the guilt and turmoil that she'd been wrestling with, it all came roaring to the surface, clawing its way into her psyche, tearing a hole in her mind.

Padrick shook her, his eyes wide. She was vaguely aware of the other ship, now pulled up next to theirs. She could see the pirates in her peripheries, grappling hooks and rope in hand, ready to pull their ship to the Rishka, ready to board and kill them all. They were so close now, so close that above the patter of the rain and crashing of the waves, she could hear their wicked laughter.