Chapter 679: Elowynn And Morwenna [Bonus - ]
’What a cute kid...’ Elowynn thought, her dazed brain slowly piecing reality together. ’Is this my Lord? She looks like she belongs in a dollhouse, not a war-camp...’
Her gaze drifted past the blue-haired girl, scanning the perimeter of the quartz altar.
She saw a tall ethereal High Elf with blond hair and pale green robes, watching with serene aristocratic poise.
She saw another tall, silver-armored elf with silver hair and cold blue eyes scowling in the corner.
Beside them stood a radiant silver-haired woman in jade-and-silver robes, emerald eyes watching Elowynn with the polite smile of someone sizing up a rival and on the steps sat a colossal golden-haired woman with a flagon in one hand and a half-eaten roast boar leg in the other, grinning at her as though she had just found a new drinking partner.
And then... her eyes stopped.
Standing by the silver balustrade was a young man.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a lean dangerous frame clad in tailored charcoal linen.
His messy dark hair danced lightly in the mountain breeze, framing a face that was so effortlessly handsome that Elowynn felt her breath violently catch in the back of her throat.
His blue eyes, ringed with gold, were calm and steady... These were the eyes of a person who had fought wars and emerged victorious.
’O-oh...’
A sudden dizzying heat rushed straight from Elowynn’s chest down into her stomach.
Her heart hammered against her leather corset with terrifying violence.
In all her centuries of sailing the seas, she had never seen a man look like that.
He wasn’t greasy or swaggering, and he didn’t bark orders like an insecure captain.
He had a full thick head of dark hair, unlike ninety percent of the bald, scarred pirate brutes who populated the trade ports, and his presence carried a quiet magnetic gravity that made her skin tingle.
’Hic...!’
Elowynn hiccuped loudly with her face instantly turning a bright flustered pink as she stared at him like a star-struck schoolgirl.
The seductive smirk she had honed on three centuries of lecherous captains slid straight off her face.
Her competitive streak, her shameless charm, her whole femme-fatale arsenal, all of it simply switched off and left her gaping like a fish.
She tossed her ember-red hair back and tried to give him her best smile... the one that had talked her out of three hangings but it came out crooked.
Before she could scramble to her feet and wipe the booze from her chin, a raspy and utterly unmistakable voice cut through the quiet air.
"Elowynn...?"
Elowynn froze.
The universe seemed to tilt on its axis.
Slowly, her amethyst eyes pulled away from the handsome young man, drifting two feet to the left.
Standing right beside him with one hand resting on Tidebringer’s hilt and her jaw hanging wide open in complete shock... was Morwenna.
Elowynn’s eyes went wide as dinner plates.
’Huh...?’
Elowynn sat flat on the polished quartz flagstones of the summoning dais, blinking through a dense alcohol-soaked haze.
Her vision doubled with the lavender twilight of Vineworld swimming in lazy circles around the edges of her sight.
She rubbed her temples with two trembling soot-stained fingers, her amethyst eyes widening as they locked onto the tall, scarred figure standing a mere five paces away.
"No... no way," Elowynn muttered, her voice slurring heavily as a pathetic hiccup rattled her corseted chest. "I’m dreaming... That’s it... I drank the whole reserve barrel on the dinghy and now my dying brain is hallucinating. Not only am I seeing a breathtakingly handsome young man after five hundred miserable years of staring at rotten driftwood... but my pickled skull is actually serving up Morwenna as dessert, I am way too goddamn drunk for this level of theater."
Morwenna’s jaw tightened.
The dark-haired pirate queen closed her eyes, exhaling a long shuddering breath through her nose that sounded like a furnace venting steam.
The casual slouch she had worn earlier vanished, replaced by the exasperated exhaustion of a woman whose past had just climbed out of a shallow grave and vomited on her boots.
"Give me a minute," Morwenna muttered to the group, not looking back as she rolled her shoulder joints with a sharp crack.
Silas leaned sideways, watching the exchange with an arched eyebrow.
"You two actually know each other?"
"Unfortunately," Morwenna grunted, stepping up onto the raised dais. "We crossed cutlasses across the western trade lanes a while back."
Silas watched her approach the dazed corsair, scratching the back of his neck as a faint, deadpan smirk tugged at his lips.
’Is this whole territory run on bizarre coincidences?’ Silas mused. ’First, Aki accidentally summons Ther’Abella, who used to serve under Eluned’s royal guard... Now her very next ticket pulls a high-seas relic straight out of Morwenna’s old pirate days... What’s next on her third roll? Aeliana’s long-lost second cousin from the silver groves? Not that I’m complaining about free high-tier women for the vassal seat, I’m just curious what she pulls next—’
PAH!
A concussive deafening crack ripped through the courtyard.
Morwenna’s open palm struck Elowynn across the left cheek with the concussive force of an iron broadside as the shockwave peeling off the impact was so violent that the surrounding flowerbeds flattened, sending a storm of violet rose petals swirling twenty feet into the air.
Silas flinched.
Aeliana subtly took half a step backward, smoothing her robes, while Aki let out a tiny horrified squeak.
Elowynn sat frozen, her head violently jerked to the right with a bright crimson handprint swelling across her pale porcelain skin.
She blinked, her tongue running over her numbed lips as she slowly turned her dazed, amethyst eyes back toward the towering corsair.
"Mor... Morwen—"
CRACK!
Without waiting for the syllable to clear, Morwenna’s arm whipped back in a vicious unyielding backhand.
The knuckles connected squarely with Elowynn’s jaw and the rotational torque lifted her bountiful frame completely off the flagstones, sending her skidding three yards across the quartz.
Two broken molars and a fine spray of crimson blood splattered onto the pristine white stone, hissing faintly where her residual ember-mana reacted with the ambient air.
’Two teeth...?!’ Elowynn’s tongue probed the gap in horror. ’Those were expensive!’
Morwenna shook out her hand, standing over the groaning corsair with her boots planted wide.
"You back in your goddamn senses yet, Embershade?"
Elowynn pushed herself onto one elbow, coughing up a mouthful of copper-tinted phlegm.
She reached up with a bruised hand, wiping the blood from her swollen lip, her fox-like eyes wide with a mixture of dazed shock and wild desperate realization.
"Yes... holy shit, yes," Elowynn wheezed, shaking her head until her flickering, ember-red hair danced like sparks. "I can’t believe it... you’re actually—"
Morwenna took half a step forward to yank her up by the scruff, but the second she leaned down, the full stench of five-hundred-year-old fermented grain mash washed over her face.
"Ugh—cough!"
Morwenna violently recoiled, clutching her nose and coughing so hard her ribs shook.
Her face contorted into pure disgust as she stumbled backward down the steps of the altar.
"Gods above! What in the name of the deep did you bathe in?! It smells like a drowned still in a sun-baked swamp! Don’t move! Stay right there! Don’t you dare exhale in my direction!"
Elowynn pouted, sitting up and pulling her knees against her heavy chest, adjusting the leather laces of her corset with an aggrieved childish huff.
"Come on, Morwenna! It isn’t that bad! A little aged rum never killed an honest sailor!"
"That isn’t rum, that’s industrial bilge water!" Morwenna bellowed from ten paces away, violently fanning the air with Tidebringer’s flat.
Aki blinked rapidly, her small boots pattering against the flagstones as she nervously approached Silas’s side.
She looked between the bruised disheveled crimson-haired beauty and the furious pirate queen with her head tilting in bewilderment.
"Um... Morwenna?" Aki asked softly, pointing a hesitant finger toward the newcomer. "What... what exactly is your relationship with this woman?"
Morwenna crossed her arms tightly over her chest, scowling fiercely.
"We were alli—"
"We were friends!" Elowynn cut in brightly, scrambling to her feet and dusting off the seat of her dark leather shorts, completely ignoring the fact that she was missing two teeth and dripping blood onto her cleavage.
A dazzling shameless smile split her small face.
"Sisters-in-arms! Comrades of the open brine! We plundered the western straits together, traded blows beneath the blood moons, and swore eternal rivalry! Until... well, until she went and got herself murdered by those pompous Corporate bastards five centuries ago!"
"Don’t listen to a single word falling out of that shameless mouth!" Morwenna snapped, pointing Tidebringer’s tip straight at Elowynn’s nose. "Believe nothing until you verify it with your own eyes! I didn’t die! The fleet went down, but I survived through spite, which is why I’m standing right here in one piece and we were not sisters-in-arms, you lying wretch! You spent three decades trying to set my rudder on fire!"
"Details, details!" Elowynn laughed, her amethyst eyes sparkling with manic unbridled relief.
She took a step forward, her hands clapping together in delight. "Who cares about the old skirmishes?! You’re alive! I’m here! We’re serving under the same Lord! The seas of this realm won’t know what hit them once the two of—"
"Wait, wait," Aki interrupted, stepping between them with her hands raised in a small, authoritative barrier. "Excuse me, Miss Elowynn... You aren’t serving under Morwenna’s Lord. I am your Lord..."
Elowynn stopped dead in her tracks as she looked down at Aki.
She looked at the long flowing blue hair, the brilliant, youthful blue eyes, and the oversized pastel pink Keep looming in the background behind the quartz terrace.
She blinked once and twice.
"You...?" Elowynn murmured, her brow furrowing in genuine, drunken confusion.
"Yes, me," Aki nodded with solemn dignity, puffing her chest out slightly. "This place is known as Vineworld, or more specifically, Aki’s Wonderland... It is an official Vassal Territory tied directly to the High Seat of Blessed Land. The main territory, and Morwenna’s Lord, is him."
Aki turned her small hand, gesturing toward Silas.
Elowynn’s eyes followed the gesture, and the lingering alcohol fog in her skull seemed to evaporate in a fraction of a second.
Silas stood leaning casually against the balustrade.
The afternoon wind ruffled his dark untamed bangs, once again framing a sharp composed jawline and a pair of deep blue eyes, ringed with gold, that observed her with quiet amused calculation.
A sudden breathless heat rushed straight from Elowynn’s collarbones down into her stomach again.
’Again...?’
Her posture shifted instantly.
The drunken slouch vanished, replaced by the effortless serpentine grace of a born seductress.
She pushed her chest forward, letting her voluminous bust strain against the worn leather of her coat with her lips parting into a sultry half-lidded pout as she ran a delicate calloused finger down the side of her neck, right over the tiny beauty mark beneath her left eye.
"Well now..." Elowynn purred, her voice dropping into a smoky melodic tone that dripped with promise. "A vassal territory, you say and you’re the master of the main house, handsome? Tell me... does the High Lord accept private late-night audiences to inspect the... unique talents of newly arrived pirates? Because I assure you, my flexibility on the deck is entirely unmat—"
Silas didn’t blink, flush, or even shift his weight.
He casually walked straight through her carefully rehearsed aura of lethal temptation, stepping right up to the edge of the altar.
Without a word of acknowledgment for her shameless proposition, Silas extended a firm calloused right hand.
"Welcome to the family, Elowynn," Silas said, his voice calm and steady, utterly grounding. "I’m Silas Graves... Be a good Hero for Aki. She’s young, she’s building this territory from scratch, and she’s going to need someone with your naval instincts and combat awareness to help her achieve everything she wants in this life."
Elowynn froze.
Her outstretched finger hovered in the air and her prepared arsenal of dirty quips and pirate innuendos died in the back of her throat.
She looked down at his broad warm hand.
Slowly, she slipped her own fingers into his grasp and his grip was solid, lacking any sort of hesitation or grease, treating her with the clean unadorned respect of a sovereign greeting an ally.
Before she could recover her swagger, Silas leaned in slightly with a teasing conspiratorial smirk dancing in his gold-ringed blue eyes.
"By the way," Silas murmured in a low whisper, "since you two have such a long history... you wouldn’t happen to have any embarrassing gossip about Morwenna’s former life, would you? Did she always shout at clouds, or is that a recent development?"
THUD!