Ged opened his eyes to blinding light, a smile graced his face, or rather the face of the one he had taken over, for he had fallen asleep and awoken in a nightmare, his first Nightmare, a trial by the Spell, one which his parents and grandparents alike had faced, and he was finally facing it. His smile widened slightly more.
They had warned him, and told him about the Spell many times before. They had recounted their experiences over and over again. However telling and experiencing are very different things and Ged realized he quite liked the feeling of borrowing another's body.
It felt, Ged decided, like borrowing a coat. It was warm, and the size was not wrong, but the pockets were in places he didn't expect.
Only then did he notice his situation, his eyes taking in what was happening around him fully. Wind struck his face making his hair, which Ged guessed to be quite long, curl and blow wildly, and as he looked forward all he could see was an expanse of blue, deep and restless, a slight bobbing accompanying the wind every few seconds. He was staring at the sea.
He looked down and again sea was all that filled his vision, except for a single thing right below him. A wooden plank, less than a meter wide, on which he was standing. The wood was old, pale grey, salt-smoothed, and it extended behind him like a tongue from the mouth of a ship. Only after noticing this fact did another aspect of his Nightmare reach him through his senses. He was bound by a rope. It was rough against his skin, almost biting into him, wrists pulled behind his back, the knot tighter than it had any right to be. He flexed against it once, just to measure it, and learned what he needed to.
He turned around from the beautiful yet precarious sea to the place where the other end of the wooden plank originated from. A ship, on which was a crew, a crew which had more likely than not put this body in this position.
The vessel was not small. Two masts, full-bellied sails in a faded red bordering on black with the pattern of a white star in the main sail, the deck wide enough for the twenty or so men who were gathered at the rail and around the base of the plank. Some were armed. Most were grinning even a wider grin than Ged himself.
"Come now lad!" one of the men circling the other end of the wooden plank yelled, placing his foot on the end of the plank and slamming it, making the entire thing shake beneath Ged's feet. Ged's smile remained, balance kept. The man noticing this didn't mind and instead continued. "We told you, walk the plank or keelhauling, we gave you the choice! You chose this! Now get to it, we don't have all day!"
Ged wondered what exactly this body had done to end up in this situation. He didn't reply to the man, but he did take one step back as if heeding the words, which made the crowd jeer in anticipation, their voices overlapping, hungry for the sound of a splash.
He took stock. The rope was too tight to work free quickly, certainly not standing on a plank with an audience. The sea below was open water, no land in sight, which meant swimming was a death sentence even if his hands were free. The ship itself was his only option, which meant the men on it were his only option. Still he remembered his grandfather's warning, calling his runes forward.
Some people needed certain words, 'Status' or 'Information' or sometimes a full phrase spoken aloud, it helped with envisioning it. Ged simply called out to his runes and there they were, settling over the jeering pirates. His smile widened a bit more. The pirates booed at that, reading the expression as arrogance.
Name: Ged
True Name: ---
Rank: Aspirant
Soul Core: Dormant
Memories: ---
Echoes: ---
Attributes: [Child of Skysea], [Free Sailor], [The Storm], [Ember of Divinity]
Aspect: [Baal's Boatswain]
Aspect Description: [A boatswain is the lowest of the low, one who cleans on a ship. Baal's boatswain is just one that worked on the Baal]
Ged almost laughed when he saw the aspect. He knew from his grandfather that one almost never had the same aspect when entering the Nightmare as when one left it, the whole point of the trial being that the Spell shaped you.
But he couldn't remember anyone in his family having an aspect as thoroughly unimpressive as Baal's Boatswain. The lowest of the low, the description had helpfully clarified. He took another step back.
He dismissed his runes. The crowd's jeering sharpened at the second step, several of them pressing to the rail, one man climbing it entirely and gripping a rope with one hand to lean further out. Some of them were quite literally frothing at the mouth, which struck Ged as an extraordinary amount of investment in a stranger's drowning.
"I request to be keelhauled," Ged said, without repose.
He had heard it from the man before he'd begun cataloguing his situation. Two options had been offered to this body; this body had chosen to walk the plank. But walking the plank meant he was in the water in moments and out of options immediately after. Keelhauling was brutal, it meant being dragged beneath the hull from one side of the ship to the other, the barnacle-encrusted wood tearing at any skin it could find, but it also meant being kept on ropes, attached to the ship, pulled back up at the end of it. He would be alive and that was all which mattered in a Nightmare.
He was also, as it happened, an exceptional swimmer. That helped.
"You," one of the pirates seethed, the word barely a word at all, more the sound of air escaping something punctured.
"You can't just change!" another man in the crowd yelled, his voice cracking slightly on the last word.
Ged shrugged his shoulders at that. "I'm requesting to be keelhauled."
"Can he do that?" a third voice asked, directed at no one in particular.
"I mean, no one ever requested to be keelhauled."
"Get the captain, he should know!"
The first man that had spoken, the one who had been stamping on the plank, sighed heavily and scratched his nearly bare head with one weathered hand. "Who cares what he requests! We're pirates for Storm's sake!" he roared towards the crowd, which cheered this declaration with an enthusiasm that suggested they had forgotten it temporarily and were glad for the reminder. He turned back to face Ged. "As for you-" and he slammed his foot down again making Ged wobble slightly, his arms tensing instinctively against the rope.
But before he could follow through with whatever came after the wobble, a creak rose above the lapping of the waves against the hull and the breath of wind in the sails. Everyone, including Ged, turned towards it. The door to the captain's chambers had swung fully open, and standing in the frame was the one Ged guessed to be the captain.
He was short, that was the first thing Ged noticed, not extremely short but shorter than most of his crew by a visible margin.. A cutlass hung at his side, easy and familiar. A captain's hat sat atop his head with a red feather pressed to one side, and his general attire beyond that matched the crew, an open linen shirt, baggy sailcloth trousers, two brown boots that had seen considerable weather.
Ged noted something else. Around the captain's neck hung something on a cord. He couldn't make it out. The more he looked directly at it the less it resolved, as if the thing itself was fooling his eyes. After a few seconds Ged gave it up. There were more immediate things.
"What are you all shouting about," the captain said flatly, stepping out onto the deck. "I still have a migraine because of yesterday."
His eyes landed on Ged, standing two feet from the end of the plank with his wrists bound and his hair in the wind. The captain's expression did not change. "And what is this?"
He made his way through the crowd, which parted without being asked, until he stood at the base of the plank beside the first man. The pirate who had been stamping straightened noticeably at the proximity.
No one answered for a stretch of time long enough to become uncomfortable.
"What is this?" the captain asked again. The second asking was quieter than the first and somehow worse for it.
"Captain, well, you see-" the first man began, after noticing that no one was going to speak up. "This boatswain of ours was cleaning the deck and he hit a basket of provisions for three days, sent it tumbling into the sea. According to law we gave him two punishments to decide between, walk the plank or keelhauling. He chose to walk the plank, but just as he was about to he said he wanted to be keelhauled instead."
"I see," the captain murmured.
The sea itself seemed to quiet. Even the wind dropped a degree, the sail slackening. The pirate at the captain's side let out a slow breath of relief, as if the murmur were the end of it.
Then the captain raised his hand and brought it down in a clean motion, smacking the back of the man's head. The impact was crisp and decisive and sent the pirate stumbling hard into the side rail, which he struck with his hip and clutched at to keep upright. He was not a small man. The captain had barely seemed to swing.
Ged smiled at that. The captain was an awakened, he didn't know what rank but he was sure he was an awakened.
"How idiotic can you be!" the captain said, not loudly, which was somehow more cutting. "Walk the plank or keelhauling. How is the former an appropriate punishment? That's just death. Do you want to do the boatswain's work? No, I don't think you do, you lazy piece of crap."
'The captain has a bigger temper than the crew,' Ged noted.
"As for you." The captain turned and looked across the plank at Ged, his voice returning to the same tone as before. "You will be keelhauled until I am pleased. Three days of provisions is not a trivial loss. Your own rations will be cut in half for the next three days. Crew, tie the man and throw him overboard."
'Not ideal,' Ged thought, walking forward off the plank and back onto the deck.
The captain did not move as Ged walked toward him. He simply watched, and when Ged was close enough the man met his eyes fully and held them.
"You're a lucky one," the captain said quietly, and no one but Ged seemed to hear that, before turning and walking back through the crowd which parted again without being asked, and slamming the door to his chambers behind him.
The crew wasted no time. Several of them laid hands on Ged at once. He did not resist. Fighting all of them would be idiotic to say the least, and besides, the ropes they were tying now would be the same ropes they pulled him back up with, which meant they were, in their rough and cheerful way, his lifeline.
In a few minutes he was secured, hoisted, held up on four men's shoulders above their heads, and under the roar of a crowd too excited to wait, they threw him overboard and into the cold water below.