Root of All Magic

Mariana waited with her teeth chattering.

Was Daniel actually going to have a man carry the instrument of his punishment?

It wouldn't exactly have been out of character for the pirate king, but although Mariana had done similar things during her own career, it seemed to her like all the little details of this cruel act added up and formed an abomination - right now, she wished that she had never met Daniel at all.

The guard appeared like a dog with the tail hanging low from fear and shame. The man really had that pathetic look in his eyes that would have made any reasonable captain back off from this heinous act.

The pirate king was not a reasonable captain.

"Take off your shirt," Daniel said.

What was even crazier was that the guard obeyed him.

The man bared his upper body. It wasn't much to look at, but Mariana wanted to be certain that she knew how he looked before the whip would dance on his skin and ruin his flesh.

She weighed her options and came to the conclusion that she was not, in fact, a moral person.

A good woman would have stopped this senseless violence from happening altogether.

She had more sense in her head than those girls who took pride in being the purest, most angelic things for intervening when men fought, although the same women got caught in the crossfire, sometimes even becoming martyrs. She was a cunning person, that was the best thing about her, not any moral backbone, nothing about her external beauty could match her resourcefulness.

She didn't say anything until Daniel looked at her and said:"You don't have to watch this, you know."

"Aye, I know," she replied. "But it happens, whether I see it happen or not."

"That is an interesting philosophical question that defies the rampant and odd solipsism of your -"

The pirate king struck the first blow in the middle of the sentence. It was a blow, not a simple touch of the knots on the back, and it looked bad, painful, too, but the man refused to scream. He merely whimpered, which was worse somehow.

It was as if Daniel had known that distracting everyone with his philosophical jargon would lull Mariana and the guard into a false sense of security.

SMACK!

Another one, and now the pirate king carried on with his musings.

"As I was saying until my guard interrupted me with his whining, Mariana Adams used to think that she was the only real person in the world. Besides me, of course, but that's beside the point…although you did consider me to be different from all the others, didn't you?"

SMACK!

"You still do think so, to some extent, at least, but something has changed. Now, you think that things -"

SMACK!

Now Mariana looked away, fearing that the victim might not make it through the night.

"That things happen regardless of the attention you give them, and that is worrying, Mariana. You've given up on the power of faith. Don't you know…"

He held the whip in a tense position, like he was about to strike again, but he didn't, breaking the regularity of the intervals.

Mariana realized that this was a mind trick to make both the pain and the anticipation of it feel stronger.

"...Mariana, dearest, have you forgotten that faith is the root of all magic? Have you abandoned that power? Don't you remember how we thought that we could end the world together?"

The strike that looked like the final one hit the guard on the back. He fell down, not moving, simply complaining with a vocalization that was unfit for a human being. Daniel had reduced him into a beast of burden.

Mariana knew that this was because of her. Instinctively, she touched her chest, and the bandage seemed to be holding its place rather tightly.

"Then we decided that we wanted to let them all live, so that we could rob their ships and rule the Karshaan Main," she whispered. She hadn't even noticed how wet her face was from her tears.

"Aye." Daniel stopped.

It was almost like the guard on the temple floor didn't exist to him anymore, but neither was he really focusing on Mariana. He wandered around, seemingly deep in thought.

She was afraid.

She was more than a bit afraid.

The intense situation got cut off when the crew of the pirate king returned with a few captives.

Wolfe was not among the prisoners.

"They left before we could take the ship," a man who seemed to be Daniel's first mate explained.

"Then you should have taken the fortress in time," the pirate king replied. "But it can be forgiven. Bring us some wine, and some rum, and someone should take care of…"

With an expression of distaste, he gestured towards the poor victim of his whipping.

"...Of that."

"Aye, Cap'n."

Mariana dried her face, but the bandage made it annoyingly difficult to raise her arms above her chest.

She didn't see Roinar the witch among the captured privateers, but Madeliene had been taken. Instead of being strangely indifferent like Captain Mariana had expected the musician to be for some reason, the lady looked nervous. She moved around all the time, shuffling her feet - and this, in turn, revealed to Mariana that the musician could have something like an escape plan, or a weapon hidden somewhere on her body.

Mariana did not let her gaze linger on the twitching hands of the musician. They could not draw any extra attention to their actions.

Aye, Mariana still wanted to be free, and after the whipping, she certainly wanted to have Daniel reform himself somehow and stop projecting his own failures onto his men in such a lethal way. He was sweet when he needed to be, but dear heavens, he was also such a vicious, evil thing!

Someone brought Mariana a goblet. She thought that this was a strange privilege, but then the pirate king sat next to her with a hand on his pistol.

So, she couldn't pull the drink-throwing trick, not at gunpoint and not with her arms almost immobile…not nice.