Captain - Do babies drink rum?

"To the ground!" Captain shouted. Everyone on the ship dropped down immediately, hovering alongside the dead, staining their faces with the blood of their friends. The only figure standing was that golden statue with its teeth protruding from its mouth.

Only when a time without danger had passed, Captain rose and ordered the oars to propel them away from that carnage. Two other sailors were ordered to take the castaway inside the ship's superstructure. After some more time, Captain returned to the bow, where only Dedo-Torto's lifeless body lay with blood trickling from his mouth. In the distance, the gray woman statue still pointed forward, an expression of anger on her face, her eyes illuminating everything that was happening there. Colorful rays and flaming stones still crossed the sky, and the white dragon still ravaged the colorful fleet. To the left, the black and red ships, now clearly visible, had finally come close to where Old Curious had been taken by surprise. The dark side's war formation had proven effective, hovering in an area where their shots hit the colorful side with precision, while the latter retaliated with what little strength remained, obscured by smoke. The old ship hadn't been perceived as a threat, it seemed.

The daylight seemed to grow increasingly dim as that titan moved away; the battle soon became nothing more than distant smoke, and the roar of the dragon was soon replaced by the sound of the waves crashing against Lord Curious. After a long time of rowing back home, Captain, from atop the ship, spotted something curious on the horizon ahead. As they continued on their course, darkness approached, as if the sun lacked the strength to illuminate from that point onward. The region was a perfect division, almost linear, slicing the sky and the ocean into two slices—one with crystal-clear water and an almost white sky, the other with a sea as dark as the night that dominated the sky above. "The end of the titan's sight," Captain thought. The transition was immediate, and when night took hold of the vessel, a strange feeling settled upon the old sailor. The magic had finally ended. From there on, he would only have to worry about not deviating from the route, what he would say upon reaching land, and above all, what he would do with the bodies on his ship. His next step should be to interrogate the captive, or rescued man, to try to understand what the hell was happening on that coast. Captain headed towards the interior of the ship, where he found some sailors resting and others dying. Luckily, the ship's sole nurse had been safe when the arrows rained down on the vessel. The castaway lay on a bed surrounded by a few sailors. The old man walked past them and approached the stranger.

"Can you understand anything I'm saying?"

"Es sosseso susa sssua, soso, ose e se saos sassse as sissa."

The man's tongue twisted in his mouth as he spoke. It sounded like a snake's language. Captain realized he wouldn't have much success there. He decided to keep an eye on the man and leave it to the king to decide what to do to extract information from the castaway. He would probably be tortured until he lost consciousness and then remain motionless in a cell for the rest of his days. Perhaps it would have been better to let him die at sea.

For four days and three nights, the captain stood steadfast before his men. Only in this way could he ensure that there would be no more fights. He made it clear that anyone who touched the stranger would be thrown into the foulest of the royal dungeons, where men fed on each other's excrement. However, sorrow and fatigue overwhelmed the crew. Fourteen deaths were recorded, including Parrot's, whose body was so heavy that it had to remain motionless in the middle of the ship. The rest of the men were placed inside empty barrels, sealed, and then sent to the depths of the hold. It was only on the fourth morning that one of the crew members mustered the courage to ask the captain the long-awaited question:

"Sir, what will be done with all the gold that Parrot turned into?" Roda's face already showed signs of age, but he had been baptized with the name of a sailor when he was still a child, at a time when they said he was faster than any wheel in Pangeia. He grew up on a ship. Without a mother, Roda claimed that as a baby, it was rum that nourished him, not milk. Taverns were his second home, where he spent every bit of money he could get. It was no surprise that he was concerned about the fate of all that gold. And what an immeasurable amount it was! When the captain stopped to think, he realized that Parrot's weight in gold was enough to provide for several generations of a man. The entire crew could have a life of comfort with that money, but would it be truly honorable for the young lad to be exchanged for coins? The captain had not yet resolved his doubts.

"Do you really want to sell one of your comrades like a piece of pork, Roda?"

"Absolutely not, sir. But, you know... it's too much gold. I've never seen so much gold!"

"Get back to the oar, lad. Let the king decide the fate of the poor boy."

"Yes, sir." Roda lowered his head in a sign of respect, then turned around, tightened the red band he wore on his head to hold his hair, and sat where an oar awaited him.

Only when night finally fell did the great lighthouse of Royal Port assure the crew that they would soon be home. The light was greeted with celebrations, but the captain was incapable of feeling any joy. All that blood was on his hands. The journey around the world would be a surprise, and that was why he hadn't asked for the king's authorization, making him, as captain, entirely responsible for the deaths of the crew... and there were the dragons, in addition to the ships and the lightning, fireballs and... Parrot. How could he, alone, explain everything to the king? Surely he would be considered mad. He should take his men with him as witnesses or request that they be consulted later about what had happened. The docking at the port became a source of laughter for the merchants and sailors passing by the pier. The attempt to circumnavigate the world was taken as a joke by most of the tavern patrons and soon spread throughout the capital. The captain didn't care about being seen as a fool; he knew that this journey would change his life, and he was not wrong. When the gangway descended from the ship, the men pushed to get off the vessel. Everyone who saw them burst into laughter, but the faces of the Curious Lord's crew were as solid as the titan they had faced. After realizing that the laughter was not met with the same enthusiasm, questions arose. The captain paid no attention. As usual, he waited for each man to disembark from the ship, even though this time there were no thanks and celebrations that were memorable whenever they completed a journey. Then he approached the guard protecting the ships and asked for two officers to follow him for an emergency. The request was granted. The three went down to the holds, where the castaway had been housed alongside the barrels containing the bodies. Two men guarded the stranger, reducing the risk of him attacking or being attacked. After releasing the two sailors, the captain informed the soldiers of how they had found the man in the sea and asked them to take him to the castle, where he should be taken as a prisoner. The guards looked at each other, hesitating at first, but the captain's friendship with the king was well-known, so they did not oppose the order.