Saeris intro

Seaman Ryan Smith ran to the port side of the giant ship with his musket held firmly in hand, hardly stumbling from the rock of the boat as it fired another full broadside into the French galleys in front of the young sailor. Bracing his right foot on the barrier, the only thing that prevented him from plunging almost 50 feet into the ice cold waters of the English Channel as they fired another round of cannonballs, he used the knee as a rest and fired at the closest ship. While he held no expectations of hitting the enemy from such a distance the bullets passing overhead should at least worry some of the younger and lesser experienced crew members on the opposing ship.

A voice cried over the sound of other seamen firing similar harassment shots, the last sound anyone wanted to hear in the middle of a hard battle against a Napoleonic ship-of-the-line, “Pirates approaching starboard!” and out of the early morning mists came a smaller but far faster ship, the hastily prepared starboard broadside causing only glancing damage to the light vessel. After a brief return volley that was pointless against the far heavier ship, the pirates swung aboard amidst a covering fire of muskets and pistols, landing with sabres and cutlasses ready as they rolled and attacked with practised ease, slicing with humiliating ease through the first few British sailors.

Spinning his reloaded musket around Ryan sent a bullet through the stomach of the closest pirate who came charging towards him, then span the butt of the gun into the face of the next, buying him just enough time to whip out his rapier and move towards the fray. Furiously but methodically slicing and slashing his way forwards, Ryan felt a lance of pain fire up his leg, followed by a warmth as he turned to see a bullet wound in his left calf, bleeding swiftly onto the blue fabric of his uniform. With a groan he turned around just in time to see his attacker shot down by a hail of bullets from a group of armed powder-monkeys swarming up the stairs to help in the fighting. Outnumbered and slowly being cut off from their ship the pirates fell back and tried to retreat to their vessel. Many were shot or cut down and the survivors wasted no time in setting the ship off back towards the safety of the slowly dissipating mists as the first fingers of dawn began to be strengthened by the rising sun.

However the pirate’s galley, though fast, couldn’t outrun the chasing cannonballs and was blasted into the sea by a heavy round from the starboard cannons. But the British dreadnought had made one huge mistake, the pirates distraction and the loss of quite a few powder-monkeys to aid the battle had meant that the cannons on the port of the ship had run out of gunpowder and so had been forced to stop firing at the ship-of-the-line which had moved closer and primed all of the guns on its own port, which was aimed straight at the Britains. Seaman Smith realised this only as he felt as much as saw the shadow of the equally sized pride of the French Navy pass over the deck.

Turning with a feeling of horror as the immanent doom sank in time seemed to slow, and it was almost comical as the single syllable that spelled the death of everyone on the boat was so drawn out, the French captain mocking the British as he shouted in their own language “FIRE!” and 30 cannonballs tore straight through the strengthened wood, splintering it and ripping straight through to the other side. The deck heaved and then shattered, throwing Smith into the water along with his comrades and thousands of millions of pieces of wooden debris. He lay still in the water, the cold numbing what felt like more broken bones than he realised he had as he heard French muskets begin picking off anyone who looked alive, or whose corpse drifted too near. Holding his breath and forcing himself to not move a muscle. With a sigh of relief he heard commanding shouts and the welcome silence of musket fire as the Frenchmen decided to move on, only to be followed by the hopelessness of his situation and envy for those already dead, a much swifter death than the one that faced him. With a groan he felt the sodden gunpowder in his tin, removing any hope of a death through gunfire be it his own.

Ryan was about to give up hope when a sudden chill filled the air and the mist seemed to swell in again with unnatural swiftness. However the final straw in him deciding that he had snapped was what he saw next, a tall, dark haired man with inhumanly pale skin walking towards him. Walking on the water. As the attention-grabbing male reached him, he paused and looked down. A low voice reached Ryan’s ears though he had barely seen the lips move “Well well, we have a live one after all. Impressive.” He chuckled darkly, a laugh that sent chills down the seaman’s already half frozen spine. The stranger reached down and lifted Smith out of the water by the throat, and with his new, closer look Ryan realised with horror what was about to happen as two elongated incisors became visible in the man’s mouth as he leaned into Ryan’s neck... and then everything went black.

Out of the blackness came a voice, not the voice of the vampire who bit him, but with a similar tone that spoke of dark places and concealed shadows, of unending night time and rivers of blood. “Welcome to eternity, my son” the voice seemed to come from both within and without “You now stand as one of the proud soldiers of the night. And as with every new birth, it was sealed in blood. Now, you must be given a new name that will be yours for eternity. Listen to the voice inside you, hear the shadow of your heart speak. Who are you??” Without even thinking the male who had once been Ryan Smith answered “Saeris”