Francisco 

The next time Cisco regained consciousness, he was in the brig of the Kraken, his aggressively-estranged father’s flagship. While his wrists weren’t bound anymore, he was suspended from a pair of hooks above his head. His shirt was gone, and his hat lay in tatters by his feet. There was no sign of his weapons or his baldric. Around him stood his seven other brothers: Bolivar, Camilo, Dimas, Eduardo, Geronimo, Hernando, and Iker. Each of them held a cat o’ nine tails. They all gave identical cruel grins when they noticed he was awake. Then, without speaking, they each took turns whipping him. Nobody spoke. They just wailed on him. Despite his heroic resolve not to scream, Cisco couldn’t help himself. This only made the whipping intensify. 

“Stop.” A single word led to the cessation of pain. Husarna had come to gloat. 

“Oh, son of mine,” he said, shaking his head in mock sadness. “You know what happens to traitors. Be grateful we haven’t tied weights around your legs and made your walk the plank. How hopelessly mundane.” Cisco responded by spitting blood at him. Husarna didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, he laughed. 

“Ah, still have some fight left in you, I see. But soon we will arrive at our destination. Oh, and soon you will receive your reward as a traitor deserves. Does the Grand Kingdom still hang its enemies?” 

Cisco summoned up enough energy to say two words: “Fuck you.” 

Husarna laughed again. “That’s the spirit. But you’ll have more torment in store for you. For you see, my queen knows ways to torture a man in ways unknown. Doubtlessly you’ve crossed paths with the Sirens before, I’m sure?”

This was enough to give Cisco pause. He knew enough about the Sirens that they weren’t naturally hostile to outsiders, but even so...they were known to lead sailors to their doom if the mood took them so. Cisco shuddered to think what they might have become under his damnable father’s influence. The Ocean Cyclone was more powerful than he could have ever imagined. Husarna carelessly dropped a bundle of bandages and sewing needles onto the floor. 

“Bind him up, lads,” Husarna said as he left. “We don’t want him bleeding out before the real fun can begin.” 

After that, the next-next time Cisco woke up, he was being dragged ashore. Apparently he had passed out from the blood loss even after his wounds had been bound up. He wasn’t surprised to see the crystal spires of Versea in the distance. So they had come to the city of the Sirens, such as it was. He knew there was another city hidden deep below the sea where only they could go. 

The gates were adorned with seaglass, coral, and various shells. Sand stretched as far as the eye could see. Flags and pennants - mainly with the emblem of the Bronzehand - whipped in the salty air. The gates opened at a single command from Husarna. There was no garrison present - at least not one Cisco could see. He was still struggling to remain upright and coherent with his back still stinging from all the punishment he had endured. Every time he stumbled, he got another punch in the ribs. Finally they emerged into what looked like the main square. A throng of people stood solemnly by a statue of a goddess garlanded with seaweed, a sharktooth necklace around her neck visible above her stone robes which seemed to flutter in the wind. It took Cisco a moment to realize that everyone gathered around the statue was an entrancingly beautiful woman. The Sirens were all clad in blue saris with green sashes. If any men were around, they certainly weren’t in the square. The tallest, most graceful of the women stepped forward, a simple driftwood crown studded with aquamarines around her forehead. 

“Welcome, Francisco De Soto. We’ve heard so much about you.” The queen’s hoarse voice sounded like the surf crashing along the shore, with a quiet fizzle of foam detectable there as well. Her Anglica was heavily accented, as if it wasn’t her mother tongue - which to Cisco’s exhausted mind, it probably wasn’t. 

Husarna barked with laughter and approached the queen without showing her any sort of deference. He was still chortling as he wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her shoulder. 

“You see, my boy, Jasi Devante Szarmantia is the Callista of the Kalyps, or as we mortals know them, the Sirens. She is their queen, and my consort.” 

There was a strange red glow in Queen Jasi’s eyes, identical to the one emanating from the Ocean Cyclone. Cisco was aware enough to be cognizant of that, even if it was hard for him to focus on anything else. One of his brothers noticed his lollygagging and tossed a jug of saltwater against his back. That livened Cisco up, though it also elicited a yell of pain. 

“Now then, Jasi, where is our lovely daughter?” Husarna said, craning his neck to look around the assembled Sirens, none of whom had moved or said a word during the entire encounter. 

Jasi beckoned, and two guards wielding barbed spears produced a younger-looking woman with flaming orange hair, a set of mismatched eyes - one pink, one purple, and wearing a flowing black sari with purple slashes around the shoulders and thighs. Her green sash was tied around her mouth, and her wrists were bound with a cord of glimmering metal that Cisco couldn’t identify. 

“Nadine Aurielle Szarmantia, our princess. Come now, don’t be shy. Haven’t you got a kiss for your father?” The guards removed the sash from around her mouth so that she could speak. Instead, she spat at the ground by Husarna’s feet. 

“You are no father of mine, you murderous bastard. That gauntlet doesn’t belong to you. It belonged to my father, the true Prince of Tides!” 

This prompted sardonic laughter to erupt from Husarna’s mouth. 

“Prince of Tides? What a quaint title for the bygone Grand Prince of Oceran. Hear me, little one. I am Grand Prince now, and you will obey me.” He lifted her chin with the bronze hand as it gave off a faint metallic whirring noise. “Away with her!” he shouted to his minions. The same two guards who had produced Nadine took her away, deeper into the city. Nadine struggled to get free, but one swing from the butt end of a spear put a stop to that. She went limp and the guards were able to drag her away. Cisco was impressed a little bit, and aroused by her fire. 

Husarna turned and glared at his pirate brethren. “Well, you layabouts! What are you waiting for? Build a gallows! We’re going to see Francisco dance and twist in the wind at sundown. By the time the two moons are up I want his body ‘neath the waves to be eaten by the sharks.” 

Cisco was too weak and weary to resist as he was led away in the same direction as Nadine was. He was probably bound for whatever hole they had stuck her in and it was likely they were both destined to die for Husarna’s cruel pleasure. Some time later, Cisco saw the door of a cell open as he was heaved inside. Nadine was in the cell next to his. Somehow, Cisco doubted very much that these cells were built by the Sirens. Neither of them spoke. Instead, they were content to wallow in their individual misery for the time being. For whatever little time they had left, that is. 

Cisco coughed up some blood and felt a searing pain in his side that he hadn’t noticed before. Maybe a fractured rib. He couldn’t tell for sure in the darkness of this shithole. He was meant for the rope - no friends, no weapons, no solutions. There was no way out. Two pirates remained as jailers - one assigned to each cell. But they quickly grew bored of their duty and drank from bottles of grog they found nearby. They played a game with coins and the empty bottles to amuse themselves, something Cisco recognized but had never had any interest in playing. The Dance of the Dubloons, it was called. Nadine began to cough in the cell next to his. That attracted the attention of both pirates who moved closer to her, both still clutching their bottles. The coins clinked to the ground, ignored for the time being. 

Nadine managed to snatch the keys from the pirate in front, who wrestled with her to get it back until she took hold of the bottle and smashed him over the head. She tossed the keys to Cisco, who caught them and set about unlocking his cell and clambering through the door. The adrenaline of the moment washed away his fear and exhaustion. He clonked the other pirate with the other bottle and let Nadine out. They stole the jailers’ gear and then they both raced out of the jail and back towards the plaza, where a gallows fitted with two nooses stood at the ready, only waiting for their next victims. 

“Well, this won’t do,” Cisco muttered. He turned to Nadine. “Unless you’ve any other ideas?”

“Why, yes, actually,” she replied with an impudent expression of unbridled joy. “The only way out is through!” And with that, she charged headlong out of the passage and back towards danger. 

“That’s the spirit, lass,” Cisco muttered, and then he hastened to follow her. 

But once they regained the sunshine, their eyes dazzled by the light for a moment, they realized they weren’t alone. And there wouldn’t be any glorious, vain combat to be had. Before they could recover from their momentary disorientation, both of them had been clubbed back down to the ground and beaten into submission. Helpless to resist, they couldn’t fight back as they were forced towards those ever-menacing gallows. Here, Husarna grandstanded, soaking it in even more - crowing with delight over the imminent death of his most-hated son and this petulant child who had been nothing but a nuisance to him ever since they had crossed paths.

“Here now, I sentence thee to thy ends. You shall sink beneath the waves, your flesh to be devoured within. Go now to thine demises, with a minimum of fussing. Believe me, this will hurt you more than it will ever hurt me.” The wicked pirate overlord couldn’t articulate another sentence. He was too astonished by what he saw above him.

A legion of mysterious saviors, presumably for his captives, had come. They ringed the walls, their spears and longbows primed and aimed at the motley assortment of sea scum and sea witches alike. Amidst the tense silence. Cisco could hear the urgent gallop of hooves. Then the gates at the far end of the plaza burst open, and an honor guard of Hisatsinom Solar Guard thundered through the threshold. At their forefront was the only and only Phirias Eathelin, the younger brother of Robidas. And while Robidas was the Stormchaser, the hero sent beyond the elven realm, Phir was the Stormkeeper - the protector of their homelands. 

Well, at least that explained the grim battalion of solemn troopers standing along the walls, having subdued the pirates and sirens around them. Husarna regained his composure, such as it was, and spat at the ground in front of Phirias’s horse. 

“A pox on all of you, you mangy curs! Bloody fuckin’ knife-eared bastards.” 

Phirias dismounted from his prized horse, who was named Leodegrance, and made an impatient, dismissive gesture. For an elf, this was incredibly rude. 

“Hear me, Husarna Bronzehand! By the aegis of my lord father, the Pathfinder, Tyrisus Eathalin, you are hereby bound and arrested. Your ruthless attacks and your blatant reaving by your seawashed scum are an affront to these sacred lands. We have been in pursuit of you for four days, and now, we have you.” 

“You’ll never take me alive, you windblown heathen whoreson!”

Phirias equipped his own longbow, and with two quick shots, freed Cisco and Nadine from the nooses around their necks. 

“So be it, then.” Phir said. “I surmised you would resist.” 

“Boys!” Husarna hollered, “Kill ‘em all!” 

With that command, an all-out melee ensued. Cisco and Nadine had no choice but to fight barehanded. Even though the pirate garrison was relatively weak, they made up for it in pure savagery. The Sirens, too, were terrible in their bloodletting wrath. Elves were, of course, functionally immortal - unless they were killed in combat, that is. 

Phirias himself fought Husarna to a standstill. Breathing heavily, the pirate king let out a harsh laugh. “You do know, that it is upon these hallowed sands that you will meet your death?”

“Save your breath,” Phirias replied. “You never know when you will have your last one.” As soon as he finished his taunt, a spear thudded into Husarna’s back, right between his shoulder blades. The Bronzehand toppled over, rendered speechless by his impalement. Even he couldn’t make mock of it as his body slumped to the ground. Then Phirias beheld who had thrown the fatal missile: Nadine. Upon seeing their overlord slain, the remaining pirates cowered in fear, yet again losing all the will to fight, cruelly or otherwise. 

Then another surprise was in store for the scathed survivors: a cadre of legendary Aresar warriors. They were led by their chieftain, Eon. In the fury of the battle, the Ocean Cyclone had rolled away from Husarna and had come to rest precisely where Eon stood. He folded his wings about his shoulders, and with one deft movement, flicked the orb up into his hand. 

“Ah, the Ocean Cyclone. We feared that it was on the loose again. This relic was the accursed byproduct of a foolish experiment by your Predecessors. It was tainted by the corrosive influence of the Lords of Night. Their corruption ruined what could have been, in better circumstances, a rousing success for your species.” Once his explanation was finished, Eon smashed the seaglass sphere against the ground. The remaining Sirens, including Queen Jasi, came back to themselves. The bewitching mind control spell cast by the Cyclone was broken.