There were few loyal to him until the end.
He has no idea if they truly made it.
Because they were silent rolling past the island today, no one climbing the sails, no one belting the shanties at the top of their lungs as they and sailing into port on the fateful day. He never found the man who had written the dragon song, but it had been a drunken drawl on their lips for weeks as Orr was freed from such a terrible influence. There is silence on the sail lines today.
He sits in the captain’s quarters with a gun in his lap. He methodically fiddles with the trigger.
With more and more airships passing over, more and more talks of such awful things coming out of the East, a sylvari on the lamb, he grows ever more nervous. Sailing into Lions’ Arch was becoming a daunting task.
“Captain”
He raises his head from his maps, manifests, the papers they needed to pass off their ill-gotten goods, he hums in response.
“… Captain we… we need to go” The charr’s voice drops to a whisper. He remembers her fondly, the sympathetic look in her eyes. Her name was Marigold, on account of her fur.
“Why’s that?”
“There’s talks–”
He shoves the flintlock in his belt. “Let them talk then, if they have an issue”
—
“You promised us!”
“Traitor! You said we’d be rich!”
“What kind of pirate are you?!”
“For Scarlet!!”
The ship erupts into shouts. The ship erupts into chaos and gunfire.
Ironwood shifts his attention to abandoning ship, all hands occupied, all hands trying to wring his neck, all hands with a gun and knife in their hands.
His own crew falls to his killing hands, pistols settled easy. They rush, he rushes back.
He doesn’t dwell on the betrayal and how it stings just yet, he has no time for that — he pries open and shuts the door to his quarters, shuffling through his belongings, pocketing what he can’t leave behind, scattering what he can — what he wouldn’t give for a skimmer, what he wouldn’t do for something other than a dinghy — a necklace under his shirt, a pocket of gold pieces, secrets he must take with him to the grave, a secret that no one can find. There’s a shout of ‘Coward!’ from behind the door.
A window shatters, he covers his face, but only then does he smell the smoke. The gunpowder.
The charge explodes and there’s not much after that.
He can’t feel anything beyond aching lungs, claws on his chest, Marigold’s growls and howls as she throws him out of the back window and into the ocean.
Don’t give them the satisfaction.
Good lass.
I’ll see you in the Mists.
—
Shivering. Cold. He’s inhaling seawater and clinging to a wooden flotilla.
Screaming.
More hands on his shirt.
—
The stillness in the shack is oppressive. Deathly still, he would find it appropriate later, but right now his line of sight is limited to a roof from one eye, a swollen, throbbing red from the other. Everything is stiff.
He might have died he’s not sure.
It’s not as cold as I thought it would be. Death and dying, at least.
Whatever is spoken, whatever is said, doesn’t register as words until much later, until after the fact. More hands, they lift him up and help him drink water — oh, swamp water. It has to be. It has to be something absolutely vile to taste like that, and he fights just a little.
There’d been a mutiny.
He’d been the target of such. He can’t feel his left side, he can’t look at it.
Death feels cruel.
—
His name is Fiel Farrinsson, and he’s done what he can. There’s a vague picture given to him through words on the damage done, the bandage on his ar, the sling, the lack of a forearm past his elbow. The flesh had nearly gone necrotic, and how lucky for him that the person, no. The Norn who had found him had been extremely familiar with the dead and nearly dead. It was a matter of trying to win a losing battle or to save what could be salvaged. HIs stitchwork is clean and precise, he’s wondering if he’s not a healer or a doctor of sorts. He assumes he was a pirate, or a victim of such, given what he’d found on him before the worst of the carnage had started. The Captain threatens him meekly, Fiel lets himself be threatened if it makes him feel better.
Lions’ Arch has been leveled. The sylvari is dead. There’s no news past that, he’s been out for a while, long enough. No one’s reported him missing. J. Ironwood will keep it that way for a long while.
No stories are shared. They eat and drink and sleep in silence.
When the sting finally hits, days after, weeks after even, it pierces his heart, and he weeps while the Norn is away.
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