La Vieja Ana

Taras and Ricardo began to move the boxes as if the fate of the entire ship depended on this task, and they were not so wrong. Tonight 5 more sailors had died in La Vieja Ana and although 2 weeks seemed little, since finding and today more than 7 sailors died in the entire ship. And that doesn't include the side fights, using the mutiny as an excuse.

"Richard, look at this!!" Taras yelled hopefully, waving his hand at a misplaced plank in the forward storage wall. "This plank could be the hiding place, there was a time when the captain transported 'smurfette' so I wouldn't be surprised if there were some hiding places around the ship..."

"Smurfette? The real one? The one that makes you a dwarf? Is it so rich?" Ricardo asked with a smile, also noticing the abnormality of the plank.

"He has been captain of a merchant ship for 60 years, he does not lack money, what he lacks is the desire to use it or to do something else..." Taras said moving the wooden plank on the wall.

"But why do I save a little?... with that shit you could send someone to the port and make him come back with a ship to rescue us" Ricardo asked somewhat dazed.

"Do you remember the question he asked you when he recruited you for the ship?" Taras asked as he inspected the plank, trying to figure out how to get it out of the wall.

"If I remember it I wonder if 'Did I have any outstanding debt in this life?' … What's so special about asking that? I guess as a captain of a merchant ship, it was logical to check that your sailors didn't have any outstanding debts to pay, it could cause problems if you take them off the island without putting the plates" Ricardo replied, feeling the plank of the wall to find an opening to open it.

"He wasn't referring to money, he was referring to the fact that you left unresolved issues in your life... He asked us all the same thing, you're not the only one who got confused with the same issue" Taras replied, already a little tired of looking for a way to opening it without breaking it, he used his knife to pry up the plank.

"Is there something special about asking that? I guess he wants to have a clear conscience if things go wrong, like this trip, no one would like to see the father of a family die" Ricardo said, copying Taras' idea, using his knife as a lever .

"There's a rumor going around the ship... It is said that the captain never used anything that a normal sailor couldn't do, it's like he was forced by something not to, even when we escaped the sirens, no one ever remembers used some relic to save our asses". Taras said, somewhat tired from the search work, he decided to rest on a box and let the young cabin boy take care of the physical work with that plank.

"It's not the first time we all almost died, in these 60 years nobody saw him use anything mystical, everything was resolved with sweat and tears and dead men... How many ship captains do you know who don't use relics, boy?"

"It's weird... A ship is much more expensive than a relic, at least most of them, and being a captain for so long... It doesn't make any sense that it managed to survive 60 years." Ricardo answered, as a nobleman he knew quite a lot about relics, and he didn't bring anything from his family, that's why the captain's question always reasoned in his mind.

He was born noble, but he did not owe anything to anyone in his family and that filled him with pride, and the caps he would earn on this trip would be the first fruit of his own efforts and his first step as a sailor.

"Not only the captain, no high-ranking member ever used them, and they were merchants for 60 years, money they had to spit out, and they never used it... Ron a former high-ranking military officer from a distant sea, Paulo is said to have been in charge very, very high in the pantheon before deserting the church, the fat man was the owner of the well-known brothel in Los Santos and everyone knows Tomas's past, he always used to talk about his beloved, what few knew was that his wife She was the daughter of a high-ranking nobleman."

"The list goes on boy and not only with the original members... the current lookout, Dima, was a pretty important pirate captain, they all decided to come to this ship for some reason, nobody uses relics... and the position of cook was never filled, no I know if you realize that there is some hidden requirement to be a senior member of this ship"

"And they don't let us buy them from us, Old Ana's weirdest rule..."

"And what is the reason for this hatred of the relics on the part of the captain?" Ricardo asked somewhat surprised, the relics will be a fundamental part of humanity's struggle against other creatures, it was very rare to see someone denying them, even his grandfather, a lifelong sailor, who conquered the caves, used them.

"Nobody knows kid… But 'we always get out alive'… Do you know what the first officers mean by that expression?"

"And the logical thing is to think that we got out alive... But many of us die on this trip" Ricardo said bitterly, he didn't like the thought that had crossed his mind.

"It's not us who come out alive... It's Old Ana who doesn't die and life always comes out, unfortunately you probably never heard Adam say that phrase, because he said it with irony, as if looking for the ship to finally sink..." . Taras commented, but his tone was not the usual one, it was as if what he was saying was something that he had thought about for a long time, but he will never dare to tell others.

"You think it was normal to listen to the dead in ritual, that was the last clue I needed to realize that there was always something fishy about this ship..."

Ricardo was quite nervous, what Taras said might not be true, but there was a detail that made him even more nervous and that was that Taras had always been able to remember the names of all the officers on the ship since he met him, he would never do that, Unless he feared for his life.

But Taras did not stop because of the nerves of the young cabin boy, he always wanted to tell someone this, but he never had the courage, but he could die at any moment on this trip and see someone as young as Ricardo, being dragged by some insane old men, he would that a slight trace of heroism rose to warn him. Now, if he died, there was another person who carried his secret.

"If you want some good advice, kid, get out of this crew when we get to port, year be you really don't have any outstanding debt in this life"

"We can't trust anyone on this ship, to save our lives more than ourselves, never forget that, Ricardo…".