Ghost Ship

I awoke the next morning to the sound of… silence. My blood ran cold. Every day, there was always some sound - the sound of footsteps on the main deck, the sound of chatter, even the sound of metal on metal if a sparring match was being held. Yet today, I woke up to absolute silence.

I sprang to my feet, grabbing the bow I kept next to my bed and a quiver of arrows. As I sprinted to the ladder, I distantly noted that all the hammocks around me were empty, their occupants nowhere to be seen. I climbed the ladder with full speed, focused on helping my comrades.

In hindsight, it was a foolish thing to do. My comrades had definitely all been completely subdued or were already dead, considering the absolute lack of sound. Moreover, an enemy capable of overwhelming all of them was likely still present and perfectly able to kill me in an instant. Nevertheless, in that instant the only thought I had was to fight against the enemy, to protect my allies as well as I could.

Yet when my head breached the hole used to climb up to the main deck, I froze. The ship was… empty. There was not a single soul to be found on the silent, ever-moving ship. Cautiously, I climbed completely up the ladder and got onto the deck, head on a swivel for any potential enemy waiting for me.

As I moved slowly through the empty ship, I found not a single sign of life. There had been no blood spilled, no corpses or weapons to indicate a battle. Worse still, there were no signs to even show that a crew had ever existed on the ship at all, save for a few barrels of ale.

A chill ran down my spine. For the first time, I cursed the ship for the way it moved by itself, the way it could move in any direction it saw fit. It was creepy in a way words could not describe, being on a ghost ship sailing and changing directions by itself, the only living soul on a vessel I could not control.

Finally, thirty minutes later, I found myself before the utterly useless steering wheel, blankly watching the boat push on unerringly into the distance. There was nothing I could do to change direction - not that I would have known where to go anywhere - since the ship would not turn no matter how hard I turned the steering wheel.

I had scoured every part of the ship, discovering nothing but rations in the lowest deck, enough for a hundred lifetimes. Though the idea of eating nothing but stale biscuits and canned foods for the rest of my days did not sound appealing, I had bigger concerns at hand….

Where had the crew gone? Who had taken them, or had they gone by themselves? And… had they ever been here in the first place?