Death Whispers 8: Just a Little Bad Blood

Author’s Note: Death Whispers of the Etherwave is a serialized fiction story that is a part of Legends of the Privateers. Each chapter will appear weekly.

Missed a chapter? (or ‘Episode’ if you like!) Well, never you worry, as we’re only just getting started! The full list of chapters will appear here later on!

Transformed by the cataclysm of 1712, Doctor Pedro Sangre and his four courageous privateer companions confront mysterious and evil forces that plague innocent people. Together, they grapple with uncanny forces and myths come to life, risking everything to preserve peace and set right what has gone wrong.

Previously: Dr. Pedro Sangre and Lysander Riverwind met with Archbinder Lyra Valtos at the Royal Academy of Arcanum and Science on the other side of Kingston, Jamaica. There they learned that Pedro had ‘inherited’ a curse from Captain Dryden Storm and it was killing him. From there, the Archbinder used her skill in manipulating the Etherwave Arcana to see what was so special about the black blood that attacked Pedro in his shop…

Lyra passed her hand over the glass vial. Ghostly yellow-gold mist poured off her gray fingers and onto the dark fluid. The softly glowing magic collected on the surface of the black blood, then vanished. The air felt heavy, as if waiting in anticipation.

Both blood and vial were silent. Then tiny bubbles formed on the surface of the blood, and the vial shook as if terrified.

Suddenly, books around the room glowed with a ghastly blue-white light. The blood’s surface burned with a small flame of the same color. Lysander retreated while I jumped from my chair. Lyra tried to step back, but the blue-white power grabbed her hand in a glowing vise. We ran to help pull her free.

The room became a battlefield.

Books launched off the shelves like cannon shot, singed and smoking. Some hit the opposite wall, others circled around the desk, vial, and the Archbinder. Lysander dove for cover, while I ducked under two thick volumes aimed at my head.

Steaming black ichor streamed from the books to form a whirlwind over the vial of blood. At first, it was a glowing, spinning storm of paper and dust. Blue lightning danced everywhere as the debris formed a shape. A human body wearing ragged and torn sailor’s clothing melted into view, complete with the thin, strained face of a ghoul. One with burning eyes of fire.

“Another ghoul!” Lysander exclaimed, before he dodged a thick book of anatomy.

It was the bookshop all over again. I clenched my jaw and kept moving toward the Archbinder. Lysander was right behind me.

The thing raced out of the maelstrom and reached for Lyra with a wordless shriek. She ducked with a grimace, avoiding its spectral, withered hands.

We reached Lyra’s side a second later, grabbing her wrist. The instant we did, the ghoul recoiled in horror and hissed. It clawed at the air in front of us, like it wanted to lunge, but something kept it at bay.

Lyra’s hand pulled free of the glow with our help, but she stumbled backwards off balance. Lysander caught her before she hit the wall. At our feet, Sebastian was a mass of winged gargoyle anger, snarling furiously at the creature with his teeth bared.

I stumbled away from the desk as well, catching myself against a chair. The instant I did, bright green flames erupted from the scars on my right hand as the ghoul lunged for Lyra and Lysander. They threw up large, round, glowing white shields of Etherwave power that knocked the creature aside. Cracks glistened in their shields a second later.

Undeterred, the creature rushed at them again.

Memories of how the ghoul in the bookshop reacted to my hand drove me forward. I threw myself between the ghoul and the magical shields.

The fiend pulled away and hissed, misshapen face twisted in a spitting snarl of rage.

“Doctor!” Lyra shouted over the magical maelstrom. “It’s afraid of your hand! I can feel it!”

My throat felt tight at the memory of being choked by a creature like this the day before.

“Not this time,” I growled, then slammed my burning fist across the ghoul’s jaw.

It was like punching a bloated fish.

The ghoul’s jaw cracked, and I grabbed its ragged collar, slamming my burning fist twice into its gut. It doubled over, then shrieked at me with decaying breath. All at once, as dramatically as it had appeared, the creature exploded in a flurry of what smelled like burned, rotten cloth and paper.

A second later, the blue glow around the books in the room shattered into bright crystal dust, then vanished. Bits of burned debris rained around the studio. Books collapsed to the floor, trailing tiny columns of gray smoke. In the center of it all, a sinister curl of blue mist coiled up from the black blood before the fluid burped softly.

“There’s a ghoul in that blood?” Lysander exclaimed, while he gasped for air.

“No, Lysander, not even close,” Lyra replied, far too giddy about this for my taste.

A pleased grin spread like butter over her gray face. She glanced around at her disheveled office and scattered books that steamed slightly.

“That, gentlemen, is a rare fiend called a Death Whisper. Which means your black blood isn’t ‘blood’ at all. It’s a type of ink charged with the darker aspects of the Etherwave. Cursed ink. It’s what a Death Whisper bleeds when you cut them.”

She picked up her oak cane, then leaned heavily against it while she caught her breath.

Lysander frowned uneasily at the blood-ink.

“So can a good sword or even pistol shot bring one of those down?”

The Archbinder shook her head.

“If only it were that easy. From what little I know, they can be destroyed that way. But! Some have said they’ll put themselves back together in minutes. Fire causes them a lot of problems, though, so does a ghost blade.”

Then she shook a finger at me and pointed at the green fire on my right hand.

“But you! You, my good Doctor Sangre, are the first I’ve ever known who can dispel these horrid things with a touch,” Lyra exclaimed.

I clenched my right hand and the emerald flames vanished in a soft burst of embers. The green stains around my scars slithered a bit, then went still. I leaned against the back of a chair with both hands, letting out a weary sigh.

“Touch? More like a fist, Señora.” I drank in deep breaths of bitter air to clear my head.

She tapped her cane against the floor with a grin. “Either way, it worked, which surprises me in a way.”

Carefully, she walked over to her desk, frowning at the vial of dark liquid.

“You see, gentlemen, Death Whispers come from… let’s call it ‘corrupted’… ink. The original curse that is part of what’s killing you, Doctor, is based on the idea to ‘preserve’. Death Whispers rarely preserve. They’re destructive stalkers pulled from the depths of the Etherwave Arcana.”

Then she pointed at my hand.

“If I was to guess, your original curse, with its unique alterations, rubs out the corruption of a Death Whisper. Since that curse was altered to exhaust a creature’s spirit and magic, you might actually be consuming them.”

I made a sour face over that entire idea of eating mysterious fiends.

Lyra snapped her fingers. “But that gives me an idea about a way to keep you alive… more or less.”

Snatching up a stray piece of paper, then an inkwell and pen, she scribbled out what looked like instructions and a list of ingredients.

Lysander glanced at me, then gave the disheveled room a pensive look.

“So they bleed ink?” he asked.

She paused in what she was writing, then nodded. “Yes, a type of it. I’ve never summoned one until now. But from what I’ve read, they ‘build’ a body using ink and pages of nearby books. Some even say that the emotion behind the written words is involved, too.” Lyra gestured at the vial with her quill pen. “In any case, that means you have the remains of a Death Whisper in that vial! Delightful!”

Lysander wandered the room, recovering singed books from the floor to put them back on nearby shelves. Sebastian helped by sniffing nearby books suspiciously, teeth bared, in case anything else might appear.

I picked up a book from the floor myself, then flipped it open. Its edges were freshly burned. Inside, large, haphazard blotches of lettering were now faded. It was as they had become wet, then drained off the side of the page. I snapped the book shut, then placed it on the Archbinder’s desk.

“That would mean the lightning storm we saw in the bookshop, and here was some sort of ‘summoning circle’?” I looked down uneasily for another book to help put away.

Lyra nodded. “A type of one, yes.” After a moment, she stood up from her desk, pressed a fist against her lower back to work out a knot. Then she pointed her quill pen at me. “Doctor, you and Lysander said it knew you? The Death Whisper from the shop?”

“It did,” I confirmed. “Also, it tried to choke me to death while dragging me into that ‘summoning circle’.”

She tapped the quill against her gray-white cheek.

“That’s not good. Don’t let it do that. There are some rumors that a Death Whisper can trap a victim in a book through their summoning storm. Supposedly, the victim can be let out later.” The Archbinder shook her head sadly. “Provided they survived the whole thing.”

Lysander returned two more books to the shelves while Lyra handed me the instructions she wrote. I looked over the list, blinking at some of the ingredients.

“Now, this is for a ritual I tend to use on graveyards that get unruly. Think of it as a type of purification ritual,” she explained. “Lysander speaks highly of your skills as an alchemist. Make an elixir with those ingredients. One drink every three days should slow down the curse that’s trying to kill you.”

“Fire peppers? A rooster’s foot?” I read slowly. “Powdered burial shawl? Hair of the…” I shook my head a little. “Señora, will enough of this eventually remove the curse? Or just delay it killing me?”

“… or make you immune to hangovers?” Lysander suggested in a low, wry tone while he continued to shelve books.

I ignored him. Lyra grinned and continued.

“Remove? No. Slow it down? Yes, a good deal. If we’re lucky, it’ll make the whole thing hibernate!”

“Curses can hibernate?” I asked, surprised.

Lyra waved a hand idly in front of her. “Oh, all the time. Especially the worst ones. It would help if we knew more about this Codex Luminari. This is a lot of curse for ‘just an old book’.”

The blood-ink in the vial bubbled for a moment, then went still. She gave the vial a sideways glance.

“Also, I’d like to keep your blood-ink to see just how it’s connected to your curse. That alone might give me a way to strip that curse out of you.”

“The blood-ink is all yours Archbinder.” Fatigued relief underscored my words. I folded the paper she gave me, then put it away in a coat pocket for later.

A sharp pang of guilt gnawed at me over the mess in Lyra’s studio. I reminded myself to repay her for the damages once I knew the cost. When I turned to recover both the old journal page and my notebook, I noticed something interesting.

Neither one was singed.

It was almost like the Death Whisper avoided them entirely. Also, there was now a thin trail of pale brown letters in the margin of the torn journal paper. I stuffed the journal page into my notebook, then picked them up. It was all something to think about later.

“Señora, before we go, would you happen to know if these designs here on this paper and in my notebook are part of a ritual? Maybe one that involves Death Whispers?”

Lyra opened my notebook, then glanced over both designs and notes. I had no idea if she’d ever studied the old thayan language. Apparently, she knew enough, since she soon shook her head with a frown.

“Not any ritual I know of, Death Whispers or otherwise.” She traced a finger over one of the drawings. “To me, these look like something a surgeon would use. What? I couldn’t say.”

I nodded thanks when she handed both back to me.

“Be careful.” She fixed us both with a hard stare. “If someone is willing to use Death Whispers to get this Codex and secure its secrets, neither you, nor your crew, are safe.”

“Thank you, Archbinder,” I replied with a small nod. “We understand.”

“Pedro? What about Argall’s warning?” Lysander reminded me as I turned for the door.

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Señora? Would you happen to have heard the phrase ‘wood-boned man’ before?”

Lyra frowned and stared at the floor thoughtfully, hands clasped in front of her.

“Wood-boned man? No, I can’t say that I have. It’s an odd phrase.”

“It is,” I replied. “Well, thank you, Archbinder. You’ve been a great help.”

We barely made it outside her door before Lyra called out to us one last time.

“Good hunting, gentlemen. Oh, and Doctor Sangre? Please try not to die before I find a cure for your curse?”

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Hoist the Colors is a work of pure, unabashed fiction. Actually, when it's not swinging off the rigging, or shivering some timbers, it's rather shy and retiring. Did I mention it enjoys baking? Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. So he really is all to blame here.

Any resemblance to persons living, dead, shoved overboard, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author's, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.