He rubbed his bloody throat, unwilling to meet her gaze.Hetried to move away, towards the transept and the hidden stairway that must leadfurther down, but she held firm to his shoulder.
“Isaac.”
He looked down at his sweaty and ragged clothes.He couldsmell her scent on them.
“Hey.Look at me.”
He met her gaze, and he found the whites of her eyesstarting to show.It took her a moment to speak.
“Was that ...really your first time?”
Isaac didn’t answer.He couldn’t stop blushing.He could notstop imagining how disheveled and pitiful he must’ve looked.
She blinked, as if certain thoughts were only now occurringto her, and released her grip from his shoulder.She stepped back out of arm’sreach, holding up her hands.“You know I’m just teasing you, right?”
He wiped blood from his neck.
“Look,” she began to say, but stopped.She sighed andcleared her throat.“I’m aware this wasn’t the best—”
An explosion shook the room.
It was felt more than heard.A waveof pressure slapped through the chapel, shaking pews and quivering the organs.Above, the ceiling quaked, old tiles of stone sliding loose and crumbling tothe ground.A segment of the vertebrae cracked open, and the weight of theceiling began to snap the fissure wider and wider, splintering the bone likewood.
“What in the fuck—” Zaria began.
Another explosion tore through the building, this one acacophony of smaller bombs all erupting together.There was a great rumblingabove, carrying the sounds of deep thuds, cracking bone, and the collapse ofgiant structures.One series of thuds, in particular, seemed to increase inintensity.It was bouncing fast and hard.
“Get down!”
Zaria pulled him to the floor just as something rushed fromthe darkness.He only caught a brief glimpse of a splintering pew before asharp wind gusted at his face, and the altar behind him shattered to pieces.When he looked, he saw the crude, dull iron of a cannonball sticking out of thecarved reliefs.In the green light of a dozen burning fires, it almost didn’tseem real.
He blinked, and the cannonball remained.It was black andround and heavy enough to sunder a hull.
Or destroy a tomb entrance.
“Oh, no,” Zaria said.“No.”
Another cannon salvo began, and this time it was louder, asif much of the structures between it and them had already collapsed.More thudsechoed out.Stone shattered.A series of bouncing crashes came rushing down thestairwell, almost too fast to react.Zaria forced him down again, and Isaacclung to the floor, only able to brace and close his eyes and listen toscreaming balls of metal smash their way through ancient architecture, thinkingof geometry and angles of impulse and what direct hits did to soft targets.
When he looked again, the entrance to the chapel was littlemore than piles of shards and dust.Multiple arcaded piers had been hitdirectly, leaving shattered stubs that resembled the molars of teeth.Smallstreams of light shone down from the stairway.If they could see sunlight allthe way down here, in the depths of the church, the destruction must have beenimmense.
“They weren’t supposed to—” Zaria nearly gaped.“They nevercome near this place.It’s cursed.It’s the blackest sortaevil.I thought they wouldn’t—”
There was another explosion.A wooden pew was smashed topieces by a crumbling boulder.With his ears ringing, and his mind workingfuriously across his studies, Isaac decided that the explosions sounded likebarrels of black powder, likely placed at the back of the skull.The piratesmust be using an ear-splitting amount of explosives to feel it this deep withinthe earth.
Isaac tried to get up, but Zaria was still holding him down,her body frozen in place.She watched the chapel entrance with wide eyes andpanting breath.
“We need to go,” he said.“Now.”
“Fuck me.Soren’s here.The Black Eye, theSaber, allof her—”
“Get off me!”
And, above, echoing down the crumbled passage of thestairwell, voices began to be heard.It was a multitude, a braying mob, anoverlapping tumble of shouts and cheers and roars.Some of them were singingshanties.He imagined an entire crew of pirates gathering in the mouth of theskull, cutlasses and daggers held beneath a snarling of teeth.
Then, all at once, they stopped.An eerie silence descendedthrough the wreckage.
“Zaria!”
