The Caelestis drifted slowly across the waters, like a dying beast, groaning with every gust of wind that battered its torn sails. The mainmast lay slanted, held in place by hastily patched ropes and oaths murmured through gritted teeth.
Two days adrift had turned the deck into a mosaic of dried blood, splinters, and despair. The battle that had left them so was already a distant memory, but the wounds – in the hull and in the sailors – burned as if they had been inflicted that very morning.
The sea, once promising, had become a salty desert. No ship in sight, no port on the horizon. Only the sound of creaking timber, coughing men and women, and gulls laughing in the distance. Hope was as scarce as the drinking water in the hold.
But at dawn on the third day, when the sun was still hidden behind thick clouds like velvet curtains, one of the lookouts spotted something.
– Land! A cove! – he cried, his voice hoarse with salt and sleepless nights.
All rushed to peer through the holes in the deck, like trapped rats searching for a way out. And there it was, cut against the cliffs – a small forgotten bay, hidden from the world by hills and mist. The waters around it were calm, almost treacherous in their stillness, and on the sand, like bones laid bare to the sun, lay the rotting remains of other ships. Abandoned carcasses. Witnesses to shipwrecked stories.
Commander Livia hesitated. It was the kind of place where people vanished without trace, where the sea seemed to whisper ancient names and claim unpaid debts. But the Caelestis had no choice. They needed shelter. There, at least, they would have wood, shade, and time, whereas the sea offered only death.
They approached cautiously. The sails were lowered. When they finally entered the cove, the ship groaned like an old man lying down. The scent of salt gave way to the stench of rot and old seaweed. The crew disembarked, cautious, crossing the wreckage of vessels whose names were faded and histories lost. One of them found a skeleton still clinging to the helm.
Some dived into the freezing water to seal cracks with tar and oakum, others hoisted new beams to support the mainmast, now raised with difficulty like an old knight refusing to kneel. On deck, gunners cleaned the cannon mouths, clogged with sand and salt. Ropes were tightened, sails patched with silver thread stitched by the most skilled among the sailors, as if the ship were a living banner of Isolara's honour.
Queen Luna watched everything with arms crossed and eyes narrowed. The wind played with her pitch-black hair, while her deep blue cape billowed behind her like a shadow of authority. There was no fear on her face, only calculation.
She had only three hundred Sailors of the Eternal Lighthouse with her, soldiers forged in the rigour and faith of the Solitary Isles, their dark-blue breastplates polished until they reflected the sunlight like liquid glass, as loyal as they were deadly. She also had another eight hundred sailors and gunners, many still wounded and weary, but ready to die under her command.
Without anyone noticing, the sound of drums came over the hills, preceded by banners of the Empire of Solterra – a golden solar explosion upon a red field. The ground trembled under the disciplined march of two thousand soldiers. Dust rose on the horizon like a shifting wall, until, at the front, appeared a rider clad in armour black as jet, mounted on a white steed.
It was Captain Rashid Ventoscuro, Duke of the Torre del Vento, a man not known for half measures. His helmet was adorned with black feathers, and his cloak was embroidered with golden thread. His presence was like a storm about to break, and his eyes – ash-grey – held the gleam of someone waiting only for a good excuse to kill.
He halted his horse a few paces from Luna, who stood still and impassive with her sword at her side.
– Luna Caelestis, daughter of the moon and the storm – said Rashid, in a serene voice. – We found you wounded, without a kingdom and without a throne, your bones exposed. Tradition says we should crush you here and now, in this cursed cove, and leave your bodies to rot beside the others. But I bring a… more elegant proposal.
The officers on both sides kept their hands on their weapons. The sea was too calm. The albatrosses had vanished.
– A duel – Rashid continued. – You and me. Until first blood. If you wound me, we will help with the repairs and let the Caelestis go on its way. If I wound you… you shall be my guest of honour at the Torre del Vento. You and your people. With the honours due to one of noble blood. But if you refuse… then we will fight right here, on this beach of the dead. And we will accept no prisoners. Not one.
The silence that followed was broken only by the snapping of sails in the wind. Luna's gaze did not waver. Victória did not trust Rashid's words, but she saw in his eyes that the proposal was real – and cruel. He wanted to test her blood, not just her strength. He wanted to measure her soul and her honour. And, if he could, he would claim Luna as though she were a banner captured on enemy ground. What he would do to the others, no one could say.
– You are proposing a game of honour – Luna murmured – in a cemetery of tragedy and shipwrecks?
– Then propose better – he replied with a cold smile, – or we'll dance on the sand with steel and fire in our hands.
The decision lay with her. The Caelestis needed days, perhaps weeks, to sail again. And her soldiers, even the Sailors of the Eternal Lighthouse, were at the limits of strength and ammunition.
– I don't like this, My Queen – said Livia, in a low voice, but sharp as a finely honed dagger. – These terms… this 'duel'… it feels like a smokescreen. What stops him from killing you anyway, even if he loses? Or from sending his two thousand upon us the moment you lower your guard?
Luna did not answer immediately. She stared at Rashid and his troops for a moment longer. Then she turned to Livia with an enigmatic smile.
– Nothing, Livia. Absolutely nothing stops him.
She approached the Duke of the Torre del Vento slowly, and, when she stood before him, her cape billowing and her armour gleaming with dust and old blood, Luna spoke with the same calm she would use at a war council table.
– My First Officer raised an interesting question. What stops you from attacking us even if you lose the duel? What stops you from breaking your own terms and ordering a massacre?
Rashid smiled – the smile of a wolf tired of playing with smaller prey.
– Even a starving lion respects the rules of the hunt, Your Grace… – he said, while pulling a linen cloth and cleaning his sword, as one would caress a pet. – But I am not a lion.
And he laughed. A dry, hollow laugh, like the creak of a rusted door on a moonless night.
Luna did not avert her gaze. The silence between them was more eloquent than any proclamation of war.
Then, she too laughed.
– Very well, Duke, I accept your challenge. But not for honour. Never for honour. Honour is the luxury of fools and the dead.
She turned and returned to those loyal to her, where Livia awaited with narrowed eyes, already anticipating the command to come. Victória did not take her eyes off Rashid, fearing an ambush from him at any moment.
– Position our troops. Quietly – Luna murmured, just to Livia. – Whatever this man's words may be, the scent of treachery already lingers in the air. I want the musketeers on the flanks, artillery hidden atop the dune, and the Sailors of the Eternal Lighthouse ready to descend upon them like thunder.
– And if he's honest? – asked Victória, with little conviction in her voice.
Luna gave her a final look, full of ice.
– If that's the case, we win without firing a single shot. But if he lies, which is most likely… there will be no one left alive to lie again.
A circle had been drawn in the sand with the blade of a sabre. A ring of onlookers formed a tense semicircle – soldiers from both sides, eyes fixed, hands on sword hilts.
The sky had closed in, foggy, with neither sun nor shadow. The wind, which once blew strong, now seemed to hold its breath.
Luna entered the circle. She wore a short tunic. Her sword was a curved Isolarian blade, forged of fine steel, the guard adorned in the shape of a crescent moon. She stared straight ahead, her face calm, her expression carved in stone, as if the duel were nothing more than a dance.
Rashid, for his part, appeared like an actor in a sombre play. His tunic was black as night, and he carried a heavier sword, broad-bladed with a cross-guard, sheathed in silence until the final moment. Rashid's eyes were half-closed, his smile absent. He was a man who had killed more often than he had slept.
At the signal of the judge – one of Rashid's own lieutenants, with a trembling hand but steady voice – the duel began.
The approach was slow. Every step mattered. Neither wanted to be the first to strike. A duel to first blood was a game of precision, not strength. One mistake was enough.
Rashid advanced with a low feint, too fast for a man of his build, and Luna stepped back just once, dodging with the grace of a palm leaf. She replied with a diagonal slash, which he blocked with the flat of his blade, producing a dry sound of steel against steel.
– You have good form – Rashid murmured. – They taught you well.
– You're holding back – Luna replied, cold. – Want to see how long I can last? You will.
Four exchanges of blows followed, each quicker than the last. Luna relied on speed, moving like water, circling Rashid, seeking openings at his flanks. Rashid, more static, stood firm like a wall at high tide, deflecting blows with his blade and replying with calculated thrusts, each one closer to its mark.
At one point, Rashid launched a brutal vertical attack that would have cleaved Luna's shoulder had she not thrown herself to the ground and rolled in the sand. She rose, dirty, panting – but smiling.
– In a hurry, Duke?
– I'm hungry – he replied, spinning his sword with one hand. – And curious.
The duel had gone on long enough to ache the wrists and blur the breath. The thrusts became less theatrical, more dangerous, more desperate.
And, in a single moment – one Luna had been counting on – Rashid made a mistake.
It was a misjudged step, or perhaps a knee that gave after a thrust heavier than it should've been. His boot slipped on the sand, and his body toppled under the weight of its own arrogance. He fell sideways, his shoulder hitting the ground with a dull thud, and his sword slipped from his hand, landing halfway between him and the edge of the drawn circle.
Luna did not hesitate. She pivoted on her heel, lifted her blade in an elegant, fatal arc, and surged forward. A clean strike, swift – a slash that would cut Rashid's skin and earn her the victory. His blood would be spilt. The triumph, hers.
But the world rarely grants clean endings.
She did not see the movement in her blind spot. Did not hear the stealthy step in the sand. The circle was supposedly sacred, inviolable… but the Solterrans do not respect lines drawn on a beach.
A soldier of Rashid crept in with a short dagger. As Luna raised her arm for the final blow, he emerged behind her left flank and slashed her arm with a quick, dirty cut, slicing flesh beneath the shoulder. Blood burst in living droplets, painting the sand and her white tunic.
Luna staggered back with a muffled cry, the pain poisoning her fingers. She stumbled, still gripping her sword, but the movement had ceased. The wound bled freely, hot and undeniable.
On the ground, Rashid watched her with a sadistic gleam in his eyes. His breath had recovered, and the fall now seemed merely part of a well-rehearsed play.
– It seems the first blood shed… isn't mine – he said, voice drawn out, almost amused.
Then, he stood with a theatrical groan, brushed the sand from his clothes, and raised an arm.
– Soldiers! Capture them!
The silence shattered like thin ice. Rashid's troops, already prepared, already in position, already expectant, surged forward like a crimson swarm. Swords drawn, muskets raised, faces impassive. There was no hesitation, no pretence. The order had already lived in their eyes long before Rashid uttered it.
Luna clenched her teeth, ignoring the pain in her arm, and raised her blade with her good hand.
– LIVIA! – she shouted. – Now!
The crack of the first muskets was like the breaking of a long-contained storm. From atop the dunes and among the wrecks of old rotting ships, the Sailors of the Eternal Lighthouse opened fire with lethal precision.
Rashid's soldiers, still in advancing formation, were struck by a hail of bullets that tore through uniforms, pierced shoulders and skulls, and spread panic among the less experienced.
Luna's sailors, though fewer in number, fought with the ferocity of those who have nowhere to flee. The shattered hulls of dead ships became improvised barricades. Behind broken beams and scorched sails, men and women loaded and fired muskets with steady hands, their eyes glazed with adrenaline and blood.
Rashid's troops, taken by surprise, hesitated – and that was a fatal mistake. In a crossfire battle, the first moment is enough to separate the victor from the buried.
Among the wreckage, her uniform stained with smoke and sand, Victória moved with the agility of a sparrow caught in a hailstorm. Her fingers, blackened with powder, handled her flintlock pistol swiftly, holding it as though it were an extension of her own arm.
She spotted a group of Rashid's soldiers trying to flank on the right, climbing over the nearby rocks.
– No. You won't spill any more blood today! – she growled through gritted teeth, voice forged of steel.
She raised the pistol with surprising firmness for her size and fired. The crack was sharp, brutal, and the recoil jolted her arm, but the shot was true: the bullet struck an enemy officer in the chest, flinging him backwards with a silent scream. The body hit the rock with a dull, final thud.
Without waiting, Victória dropped to her knees behind a shattered helm and began reloading – powder, lead, ramrod – with movements almost choreographed. A few seconds later, the still-hot barrel was ready again. She threw herself to the side, rolled between charred planks, and fired once more, this time at a soldier attempting to scale the makeshift wooden wall. The bullet tore through his thigh, and the man screamed, tumbling back into the arms of his companions.
– Go back to the desert that spat you out! – she shouted, now on her feet, short sword in hand, smeared with another's blood.
It was total chaos. Rashid's soldiers advanced with cries, trying to regroup, but the gunfire came from all directions. The Sailors of the Eternal Lighthouse, protected and disciplined, kept firing, reloading, firing, as if the battle were just another training session.
Despite their numerical superiority, the fight was not in Rashid's favour. Many of his soldiers were already falling into panic – firing blindly, retreating in disarray. The sand began to turn red. They were being undone by concentrated fire and well-placed ambushes.
They began to retreat. What started as an orderly fallback quickly became a rout – troops dropping their weapons, running without looking back.
Rashid, covered in dust, blood, and wounded pride, tried to escape through one of the side ravines. His sword, hastily sheathed, slapped against his thigh as he ran towards an exhausted horse that had belonged to one of his fallen lieutenants.
However, Rashid, with tense muscles and stumbling legs, could not outrun the speed of the Sailors of the Eternal Lighthouse. He was surrounded while still panting like a cornered beast.
Two Sailors advanced and, with brutal efficiency, brought Rashid down and shackled him in naval iron manacles.
– Rashid Ventoscuro – said Luna, her wounded arm hastily bandaged, mounted on a Solterran horse. – You are my prisoner. You shall be judged for treason and breach of word of honour before the Council of Isolara – she continued, calming the horse. – If you're lucky, you'll have the death you sought, but it won't be by my hand.
Rashid laughed. A hoarse, dry laugh, from a man who had already lost everything.
– You think you've won? – he spat on the ground. – What do you think they'll say, out there, when they learn you've captured a duke of Solterra? You'll be hunted, and I'll be freed sooner than you think.
– Then let me be hunted. I'm already hunted by one kingdom, what difference will it make to add another to the list? And you want to be freed? So be it, Your Grace – she said with a mocking smile. – I'll be delighted to free you… however, not here. It would be rude of me to release someone in the middle of nowhere, especially someone of noble birth. We'll do as you wish, but only in your own home.