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The Mystery and The Isosceles

Ch 13: A Face Without a Body

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Out on the horizon, the sun had just peeked its head over the purple sea spilling reds and yellows like fire onto the morning clouds. The warm light ignited the gold plating decorating the sides of The Isosceles’ hull and illuminated the faces of the crew gathered nervously on deck. The men—and others, if nothing else at least their captain wasn’t prejudiced—huddled close seated on barrels and chairs and the worn decking itself as they murmured conspiratorially in the early morning light. Many among their ranks sported nasty injuries to tell of last night's struggle, but at least they were alive. Others were not as fortunate, but the dead had already been thrown overboard: Sentiment had no place on Cipher’s ship.

Despite the warmth, the mood was cold and serious. Even many of the crewmates who’d been senselessly drunk the night before had dragged themselves out to join the impromptu debate.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the door to the captain's cabin opened and the first and second mate stepped out only to pause at the sight of the congregation.

Pyronica marched up to them with her head held high and her expression dour, the clicking of heels following her. Kryptos followed a distance behind.

“What are you all doing?” She demanded. The crew looked at each other dubiously, nobody immediately rising to answer. ‘Teeth’—The ship’s loosely designated physician, named so by Bill for his former job as a barely qualified barber surgeon—was elbowed by the person next to him and hopped down from the barrel he’d been seated on to face Pyronica. She towered over him with his short stature.

“Look- we, uh- We've been talking and some here—not naming names—were kind of… Suggesting we maybe cut our losses and ditch?”

“ Excuse me? ” Pyronica demanded shrilly, her pinkish face becoming flushed with outrage.

“Look- I’m not saying I agree but-” Teeth was quick to defend himself, but another crewman rose to the challenge.

“We all know the Captain can be a bit of a loose cannon. We signed up for that.” Hectorgon grumbled. Pyronica wished she could bite his head off. “But getting himself and a quarter of us killed just because he decided he wanted some dusty old trinket? He’s slipping.”

“He’s going to get us all killed.” Someone else voiced agreement.

“We’ve got a good thing going here, why bring him back to mess it up?”

Pyronica snapped back at them, taking another step forwards angrily with her hand on her gun. “Who do you think got us to this point you useless disloyal-!”

“Look, you dumb broad, why do we keep saving him when he’d leave any one of us for dead?”

“Just because you think he’s some kind of knight in shining armour doesn’t mean-”

“I’m your first mate, I call the shots here!” She fired the pistol once into the deck right next to the foot of the last person to speak. “If I hear another damn word of mutiny your guts will be next week’s rations!”

“Alright!” Kryptos stepped forwards, gratingly false smile on his face as he passed Pyronica. “Let’s all look at this rationally. It would be very convenient to desert while Bill can’t retribute, wouldn’t it? Split the gold, head back to port and go our separate ways, enjoy your lives; toodles and all that.”

Pyronica grumbled, but took a step back regardless. She couldn’t stand the smug diplomacy as Kryptos continued like the upper class twat he was.

“But do you idiots really think we’re his first crew? He’s been alive for centuries. Do you really think he’s never had to start over on his own? He’ll find some poor schmuck to trick and possess with or without us, and when he does, well… The captain is not a merciful man.”

A collective shudder went through the crew at the unflinching mention of that word. Possession . They all knew, of course. But it was something more pleasant not to think about. Really, calling the captain a man was inaccurate. The word tasted wrong in conjunction with his name. All of them were acutely aware.

The man they looked at wasn't their captain.

It wasn't the man they bowed to and cowered from. It wasn't the man who's word they obeyed with fearful precision.

The man wasn't their captain.

The thing wearing his skin was.

Kryptos continued. “I’d suggest that next time you feel the itch to leave, you remember he’s more likely than not listening.”

“We’re heading to the usual port, get to it.” Pyronica said, before turning abruptly and walking back towards the inside of the ship as the crew reluctantly got to work. 

Most ports weren’t worth the risk to stop in, but there were always the few that had realised just how lucrative their presence could be. It was a simple exchange, really. Don't speak carelessly to outsiders, wait on Bill and his men like a royal procession, and in return, ill-gotten gold will flow through the streets like water. They needed a few safe ports, places to restock and recuperate. Besides, the itinerant  nature of the people living in major ports meant nobody would question a few disappearances when Bill’s vessel broke and a new one was needed.

“You get too worked up on his behalf.” Kryptos’ longer strides caught up beside her.

“You don’t do it nearly enough.” She snapped back.

The rest of the crew were a bunch of ingrates, Bill was the reason they could live freely and do whatever they wanted. He was the only reason plenty of them were even alive, he was the reason she was alive.

She’d been on ships her entire life, leaving Europe with her father as a little girl after her mother was burned on accusations of witchcraft. She was never a good girl, violent and vicious, and happy to bully the other powder monkeys as she watched her father and the gun crew work. Some people didn’t mind, but the only person to have ever turned around and praised it was Bill. He was the first person she ever met who saw cruelty and admired it. Who rescued her, and took her away to a place where she could be as savage as she wanted.

She’d been imprisoned the first time she saw him. Already sentenced and slated to hang for using the ships cannons to fire on the mansion of a governor. She’d been locked in a damp cell when the door had been kicked in by a gaunt man in garish golden clothes, weapon drawn and face irritated. He’d come to retrieve his ship’s master gunner who’d apparently been locked up after a drunken brawl, but was clearly angry at the inconvenience. When he began speaking to her on a whim and learned of what she’d done, he laughed and offered to take her instead.

She didn’t trust him. He was a stranger. A man. One with unclear intentions who’d appeared from nowhere, and offered to take her away. She had enough street smarts to know not to go anywhere with him, but the alternative was the gallows. She accused him of indecency, and he just shrugged.

“Decency is overrated, but don't flatter yourself darling.” He told her with a lazy grin as he leaned on the bars. “All humans look disgusting to me.”

At the time she never questioned the way he phrased it; like humanity was a group to which he didn’t belong. But she relented and took his offer. His smile widened, and he made short work of the cell door lock. 

Her name was Veronica. He dismissed it, and said he’d give her a better one. 

He did.

“Yes, well.” Kryptos’ voice brought her back to the present. “We can’t sail anywhere if you shoot all our crew.”

“If the mutinous idiots want to talk a big game they should be prepared to deal with the consequences.” Pyronica snapped back. “You owe him too.”

In a way, he supposed that was true.

His head had never been on the line the way hers was. As the youngest son of a noble family, his life had always been comfortably miserable before meeting Bill. He’d had practically no autonomy to speak of over his own life, overbearing family members and rigid social structures dictated everything. The rest of the crew still saw him as a spoiled nobleman. He’d never starved and begged and slaved the way they might’ve. But that didn’t mean life was easy.

His whole life he’d been told exactly what to do, how to stand and speak, how to dress and act, and how to carry himself at all times. Even when he usually wanted to do the exact opposite. It was like living in a very ornate cage with eyes that never slept plastered on every wall. Social affairs, parties and balls were insufferable; those sorts of things were meant to be for entertainment. Why then, did he have to spend them all stiflingly dressed and smiling politely at people he’d rather shoot? He felt like a spring wound tighter and tighter until he felt he’d break in two.

Everything came to a boil when his parents decided to have him marry for the sake of their politics. He meekly accepted, like a puppet dancing to its strings. He’d been doing that since before he learnt to walk.

Bill had crashed the party. He didn’t know why or how, maybe he was scouting it out, maybe he was planning to attack, maybe he just wanted free food. But they’d spoken.

Maybe Bill saw something in him.

Maybe he just knew an easy mark.

Kryptos still remembered the question clearly. Still recalled Bill looking out at the dolled-up nobility that felt so sickeningly fake behind the plaster and paint. Bill looked at him, and spoke.

“What’s money and power with this many strings attached? Don’t you want to taste real freedom?”

Bill gave him a vial and asked him to poison the wine.

He never looked back.

Bill watched his two seconds in command from the mindscape as they separately returned to their quarters. Incorporeally, he observed the crew working out on deck now that they’d finally decided to stop with the whining and do their jobs. It was so much easier to get people to do what he wanted when they were in stabbing range.

It was a while since Bill had been able to actually use any of the powers that came with being an interdimensional creature. Obviously, humans couldn’t reshape the laws of physics, but when he possessed a vessel even the purely mental ones were cut off. Precognition and clairvoyance couldn’t be filtered through a human brain without frying it. While being cut off from physical sensations was insufferable, Bill could at least take the opportunity to check up on things. He’d already scoured nearby islands and found a man who resembled his last vessel closely enough, going to get him would be his crew's problem, and there wasn’t much more Bill could do after relaying it to Kryptos and Pyronica.

Instead, he turned his once again all-seeing eye to those hated twins on their ship. He watched the brothers arguing over something or another, but noted with some satisfaction that Stan’s wounds seemed to be slowing him down. His face was ashen, and he swayed on his feet. Hopefully it’d get infected and the stubborn old idiot would keel over. He was shouting something at Ford, and-

Ford .

Bill couldn’t express how much he hated that man.

Not only had Ford betrayed and tricked him thirty years ago, but he’d not even had the common courtesy to die like he was supposed to afterwards. Bill should have killed him himself. Or better yet, make him his next vessel. He’d fitted the archetype close enough; male, brown hair, light skin, young adult… Cut out the eye and get rid of the inconvenient finger and nobody would have noticed the difference, just like they hadn’t ever before. 

When people were distracted by the scars, the teeth, the solid gold false-eye and loud clothes they never noticed it was the wrong face wearing them.

But no, Ford had to go and get too ill to be of any use.

Bill took some solace in the memory of the last night he’d had Ford on his ship. If the old man’s reaction to seeing Bill when they’d fought was any indication, he still remembered vividly too. 

Ford had laid on the floor, his breathing ragged and his appearance unkempt. Bill had towered over him, watching with satisfaction as Ford flinched when he stepped closer. His eyes were squeezed shut but opened frightfully as Bill touched his face. Bill had taken his jaw in a gloved hand and pulled his chin up to face him as he spoke softly.

"I'll let you die. But I get to do whatever I want with you for the short remainder of your worthless life."

In truth, making any kind of formal deal with a dying man wasn’t much use. But it was fun .

Bill wanted to see Ford suffer. Ford had promised him Cascada—he’d promised him salvation —and then gone back on it. He deserved every bit of pain and humiliation Bill could inflict. Making him take one final deal if he wanted it to stop was just a bonus. It wasn’t as if Ford could have fought back even if he’d tried to, but making him agree to his own torture meant Bill had one more thing to hold over him. It meant that no matter what he did, it was Ford’s own choice . It meant that Ford was letting Bill hurt him. It meant that Ford wanted it.

Not really, obviously. Bill wasn’t stupid, he recognized a deal under duress when he saw one. But the accusations were one more weapon.

He had a hunch of how Ford might have been saved, and a quick look inside the man’s mind confirmed it.

If it was one being Bill hated more than Ford, it was a centuries dead shaman, and if there was a being he hated even more than that, it was The Axolotl.

As far as Bill knew, The Axolotl didn’t have much reach into the material world. Not because he wasn’t able to, but more because he preferred a hands-off approach to the whole deity thing. Bill had a sneaking suspicion the overgrown tadpole was responsible for the seagulls that always seemed to increase in number whenever Bill got a new body as some sort of godly guilt-tripping. Other than that, he only knew of one direct result of his interference.

Jheselbraum the oracle.

The woman was more of a frontier physician really, but that was what she was referred to as. Bill had his human posse, and The Axolotl had his. Bill had only ever interacted with her once, and he’d rather not remember that pathetic moment of weakness.

After the shaman betrayed him and destroyed Bill’s gateway to the world alongside Port Cascada, Bill tried to distract himself from his isolation in the mindscape by taking and discarding human hosts at random. For a bit, it had worked. 

He didn’t remember whom his first vessel was, it had been so long ago and the original identity was irrelevant. But what he remembered was how absolutely vibrant the world was when he experienced it for the first time.

It was intense. Just the sensation of breathing was overwhelming. The sound of a heartbeat in his ears was deafening, the air had taste, his muscles tensed and relaxed as he ran fingers over the skin and all of it was new. All of it was intense and vibrant as he moved from body to body and life to life. Eating, sleeping, drinking, all of it. He wanted all of it. He wanted to freeze, he wanted to burn. He wanted to touch, he wanted to tear. He wanted to drink and he wanted to drown . All of it was so new. All of it was intense . All of it was satisfying. Every new thing was a high.

The sea smelled like salt, he would have never thought that. It tasted like salt too, and it made him vomit when he drank it. Vomiting felt disgusting, and feeling that was incredible. The sun above that same sea made his vessel's skin turn a different colour, and when he waited long enough it burned and blistered and peeled. It was a different burn than the first time he stuck his hand inside a fireplace, but both were painful. Feeling pain for the first time was blinding. It was fun . There were so many human things that were fun. Rum and violence and meaningless games, nights spent in seedy ports, and all the different ways he could find to dispose of spent bodies once they became too damaged for him to continue inhabiting them. He spent centuries chasing sensations. Everything, pleasure or pain, was good.

Until it wasn’t.

Until eventually, every sensation and experience had been done over and over until it was all done in. At first, even the blandest of meals had been enough to satisfy. The newness of it all made even the slightest hint of flavour overwhelming. But with the years it stopped being enough, until he wanted none of it, and couldn’t even feel the hunger pains of the resulting starvation.

Everything followed that same pattern. The pleasure, the pain, none of it was fun anymore.

That was when he surrendered himself to asking for help.

Jheselbraum was kind, and he hated her for it. She spoke gently. Insultingly so, like he was some wayward child in need of direction. Or a pitiful addict like those strung out in the opium dens.

“Technically, everyone's addicted to being alive.” Bill retorted behind a broken smile. “You should see their reactions when I make them quit.”

In the end, he shouldn’t have bothered going to her. There was no help to get. She told him he was too destructive. That if she helped him find a way to enter the world as himself, every living thing would suffer. Never mind that he was suffering. He should have killed her, but the frilly bastard wouldn’t let him. Instead he decided he would have to take it upon himself and find his own way back to his old gateway and salvage it.

He had a sneaking suspicion of how Ford had heard about ‘Port Cascada’. Bill’s first permanent body had been back in the early 16th century: A conquistador captain who had been easy enough to convince to hand over his body and ship to a ‘divine being’ on promises of glory and a city made of gold. They’d been a band of thugs already, Bill just made it official. When he eventually lost that first ship, the crew scattered and some took with them stories and relics.

Ford’s father was a merchant dealing in exotic goods and antiques from the brave new world. If any of Bill’s old things had found their way there, he needed them back. He needed to find Cascada again, no matter the price. He’d sail to the arctic and personally dig out time baby if he needed to. Compared to that, breaking into a shop and killing the owners was nothing. But he couldn’t find anything useful. Whatever had given Ford the name wasn’t there anymore. 

The registry gave him a few crumbs to follow though. He found records of his first crewmates’ ships diaries; bought but never sold, and yet still nowhere to be found as he turned the house upside down looking for them. The only other relevant item was an old tapestry with an item description Bill was sure he recognized. It had been sold to a Spaniard with a name Bill thought he remembered from his old crew, a possible descendant if nothing else. Following the lead eventually brought him to the Northwest family.

The Northwest family brought him to a young girl returning back from London. He led his crew in intercepting the ship and taking the girl to demand the relic in ransom, but in doing so was shot and bled out back onboard The Isosceles.

It had happened before. Plenty of times, enough that it was routine. Pyronica disfigured the body to avoid anyone identifying it and catching on. They’d done it often, discarding used vessels into the sea. But this time it didn't go to plan.

This time, the body was found by the worst possible people. This time, a discarded corpse with its face burned off set off a chain of events that lead to Bill’s most blatant death yet. This time, there would be no quietly recovering the remains and carrying on as if nothing had happened.

This time, Stan, Ford, and everyone had to die before they could tell.