Here is how the bards will tell it: Thus, a girl became a ghost.

Here is how the pirate will tell it: Do I not haunt you?

Here is how it happened:

Odette Rainmaker dreamed of demons. She'd slept only twice since her encounter with the blood drake, and each time had been fitful at best. Her mind was an echo chamber for the souls she'd lost at sea, for the lives she had not taken. It wasn't her fault, she had cried at the dragon in her dream. He'd called her a liar, and she'd woken with a start, hand against her mouth to stifle her screams.

The voices seemed to creep out of her head and into the tunnels around her: Liar, liar, liar. She ran from them now, reckless and shaking with something shadowing fright. Her movements were desperate, thoughtless, which was why she was hardly paying attention as she flung open a grandiose oaken door and promptly stumbled over a pile of bones and ash.

It took her a silent, wretched moment to realize the pile of soot was actually a body.

The body was charred beyond recognition. Victims of fire looked nothing like victims of water, Odette realized. This one was diminutive, curled upon itself, and shrunk to little more than a lump of still-smoldering flesh. It was a far cry from the bloated, floating corpses she'd so often seen at sea.

Despite the temporary horror that flowed through her and passed over again, Odette's eyes were drawn not to the body but to what lay beside it. A scroll, glowing a gentle sapphire blue, was strangely intact and seemed untouched by the thus-far-invisible fiery tongues.

Odette brought the collar of her shirt over her mouth and nose in an attempt to keep out the crispy human smell as she crept closer to the body. She was losing track of it as dark smoke slithered in around her. Gods, there was so much of it. Where was it coming from? Was a fire still burning within the room? She'd have to leave to avoid it as soon as she picked up--

--the scroll. There it was. She quickly tucked it into her pack with its companions before unsheathing her sword. It would do very little against the smoke or the unseen flames, but holding it made her feel bigger, more confident, more like the fearsome pirate she liked to think she'd once been.

"Hello?" She wasn't sure if the echo that answered was her heart or a war drum. Odette cleared her throat and choked slightly on the smoke forcing its way between her lips as she spoke. "Anyone else here with me?"

"I'm always with you, Rookie."

The voice was horrifyingly familiar, and Odette recognized it before she'd even spun around to face the figure. Bile rose to battle the smoke in the back of Odette's throat as she faced her old captain. Captain Rainmaker stood mere inches away, dark skin ashen with death, hat slightly askew atop wild curls, and mouth quirked into a menacing half-smile that Odette had never quite perfected.

"Did you miss me?"

"Not really," Odette replied, lashing out with her cutlass before she could think better of it.

Fortunately--or perhaps unfortunately, a part of Odette would remain ever unsure--her sword passed straight through her Captain's body as if it, too, was made of smoke. With a grin and a salute, her Captain dissipated, fading into the black.

Odette's brow furrowed as she tried and failed to track the specter's remains. Captain Rainmaker's disappearance did little to ease her mind and she turned, still trepidatious, toward where she thought she'd left the door. It had been this way, she was certain of it. But the smoke had caged her in. She could barely see an arms-length ahead of her now.

The dense smog was coalescing again. Odette could see it melding together to create another wretched figure--or perhaps to grant said figure passage into this world. She wasn't sure which would be worse.

This time when the darkness ran together, it was her old crew mate Yurie who emerged from it, his pale skin a stark contrast to the dark smoke.

"What about me, Captain?" The title, as always, was dripping with mockery. "Do you miss me?"

"It's only been a week," Odette chided, though her voice wavered. It was that damn smoke crawling into her lungs, that's what caused the break in her words. "Give it time, First Mate."

Only after she'd suffered another coughing fit and rubbed severely at her eyes to clear them of the stinging smog, did Odette notice that Yurie was no longer alone. Captain Rainmaker had reappeared, a few feet to his left. And next to her was a figure still swirling in shadow, one that sent her stomach broiling--the mysterious mage who had destroyed her ship all those moons ago.

Turning slowly, Odette realized that there were twelve figures in total, all forming a loose sort of circle around her. She was trapped inside the room, her only exit beyond one of the many ghosts that haunted her.

Yurie. Captain Rainmaker. The mage. The Deathcoil was there too, very much alive and very pissed off. The blood dragon had escaped its abode and steam curled out of its nostrils to join with the pressing gray all around them. It was only when Odette's gaze shifted to the Facechanger that she realized all twelve figures loosely aligned with what she remembered of the twelve Old Gods.

The Facechanger was reminiscent of the Facechanger, of course. And Captain Rainmaker no doubt recalled the Rainmaker, though only in name. The Deathcoil was Death itself, and the blood dragon was the Soothsayer, who could detect not only the future, but the truth and lies in every sentence. Yurie was the figure she'd seen in the second scroll's chamber, who stood back to back with a vaguely Orcish god, just as he'd stood back to back with Odette during the King's initial pit-fighting test. And the Lifegiver...

The Lifegiver was the woman whose skin glowed emerald, though her face was obscured by smoke. She held a wailing baby in her arms, with skin as green as her own and small bumps dotting its forehead that would no doubt someday grow into horns.

"Take it," the woman said, oblivious to the room's other figures. "Take it! Please, you must. I will drown it if I have to, but I would rather see it live."

Her birth mother, Odette's mind supplied. She could not remember the woman, but the lines she recited were familiar from dreams she'd had as a toddler, a child, a young adult. Her fathers had always assured her that the stories of pirate women drowning unwanted children were nothing but seafarers' careless lies. And despite her many travels, Odette had never found anything to prove them wrong. Until now.

Odette stepped toward the Lifegiver, uncertain as to whether she wanted to attack the woman or comfort the crying baby in her arms. As she did so, the figure seemed to remain the same distance away, always just out of reach. The other eleven figures adjusted themselves to remain in the same carefully crafted circle, although Odette never saw them move.

She paused her useless quest and turned to survey the rest of her onlookers. Sudden anxiety spiked through her as she was confronted with her own face, mere inches away.

Further scrutiny revealed that it wasn't her face--not as it looked now, anyway. This woman had the same emerald skin, the same dark wild curls, the same sharply angled jaw and unfiled teeth and mole beneath her lower lip. The eyes were hers in color, but there was an unfamiliar hardness in them. Scars from years of battle ran like rivulets down her face, her neck, her arms. The other woman was older than Odette was--that much was evident from the confident weariness she carried and the sun-sharpened wrinkles tugging at her face.

With a start, Odette noticed that for all of the wrinkles puckering the woman's skin, none of them were laugh lines. Where were her laugh lines? What had she done with all those years, if not smile and frown and laugh?

"Yeah, I know you," Odette--the other Odette, the one who'd emerged from the smoke--said. She'd perfected their old Captain's smirk, and the sight of it sent something strange and slinking into the present Odette's stomach. "You're that scared little kid who never quite made captain."

"You would know something about that, wouldn't you?" Odette spat. Everything felt too still. Everything was rushing towards her.

"Would I?" Smoke-summoned Odette didn't look convinced. "I could be anything. I could be a captain. I could be a gods-damned hero."

"So which are you?" Odette asked, mouth dry and throat stinging. "A captain or a hero?"

Smoky stepped back, gesturing widely like she was putting on a performance for the twelve attendees. "I'm alive, aren't I? Does the rest really matter?"

"We could play these fucking games all day or you could just tell me what I want to know." The bravado would hardly work on herself of all people, but it was what Odette always resorted to when she was--well. It was what she resorted to when she was scared.

"Have I always been this impatient?" Smoky asked. The question was directed at no one in particular. "Gods, I was annoying."

"Was?" Odette quipped, but even the one note wavered.

A snort of a laugh from Smoky did little to alleviate her anxiety. "Okay, kid. Let's fucking play." Smoky stepped forward, and Odette found herself locked in place as calloused fingers lifted her chin, forcing her to make eye contact with her shadowed clone. "There's one more scroll to find, yeah? Find it."

"How?" Odette batted at Smoky's arm, but it passed right through like an arrow passing through fog. Still, Smoky took the hint and dropped her hand before stepping away.

Again, Smoky gestured around the circle at the gathered ghoulish creatures. "One of us has the scroll you seek. The rest of us... well. The rest of us have jack shit." Odette's gaze remained locked on Smoky as she strolled in a loosely-measured circle around her prey. "You have three tries. Three duels. Three chances to find your quarry. In order to find your precious scroll, declare your adversary, defeat your opponent, and claim your victory. If thrice you fail..." Her pacing came to a sudden halt and she lifted her hands in faux apology. "Twelve against one. I like those odds."

"'If thrice you fail,'" Odette mocked, sneering at her shadow. The goosebumps breaking out upon her arms were merely a result of the rapidly lowering temperatures within the oblong chamber. "Gods, you must be the King's man then. He's got you talking all presumptuous."

"Pretentious," Smoky corrected.

"Precisely."

The corner of Smoky's mouth lifted in what must have been, by now, a rare smile. "Go on then, challenger," she said. "Pick your poison."

Without thought or reason, Odette drew her blade and pointed the tip of her cutlass at her shadowed self's chest. "You," she said. "That's my first opponent: You."

Smoky Odette leaned forward in a mock bow, hand sweeping out to the side. As she did so, the other figures in the room disappeared, leaving the two of them alone. Smoky drew a blade that was identical to Odette's own, though the new gold embellishments along the hilt were certainly new.

"On your mark then, Captain," Smoky said. Sarcasm to rival Yurie's dripped from her mouth.

Instead of calling it verbally, Odette roared and lunged forward with her blade, a sudden rage washing over her. Smoky spun and met it with more elegance than Odette had wielded in her life. Their cutlasses clashed together once, twice, three times, carving clean arcs through the air, swiping at smoke.

"You could always surrender, you know," Smoky said. It was more of a taunt than a genuine offer.

"Yeah," Odette replied, meeting her blade again in a flash of colliding steel. "So could you."

The shadow fought like a dance while the flesh fought like a fury, quick and messy but prone to burning out. Odette's mind wavered as she thought of the charred mass of bones she'd abandoned near the doorway. Had he fought his own adversaries in an attempt to reach the final scroll? Had he surrendered? Had he failed?

Her trailing thoughts, no matter how fleeting, had caused a lull in her motions, and Odette stiffened as she felt ice prick at her neck.

"Gods," Smoky sighed as if the battle had been nothing more than an inconvenience. "I was such a messy bitch."

"You're not going to kill me," Odette insisted. Her eyes crossed as she tried to keep her focus on the blade pressed to her throat. Every time she tried to step back, their positions stayed the same. Every time she tried to escape, there it was--the sword's sharp edge biting into her neck. "You can't kill me."

"No?" Smoky seemed bored now, eyes hooded with something caught between impatience and exhaustion. "Why's that, kid?"

"I have two more chances." Odette swiped her hand up, trying to clutch at the handle of the blade, but Smoky's grip didn't falter. "I had three duels, three tries--"

"--to defeat your opponent," Smoky emphasized. "I hate to hit you while you're down, but you didn't fucking win. It's fair game to kill you whenever I damn well please."

Gods above and below, this was it then. Whatever smoke surrounded Odette had her in as much of a chokehold as her future self's blade did. It surrounded her, coddled her, prevented her escape. Odette let her crossed eyes flutter closed.

"Fine," she whispered. Then, before she could die, she asked herself: "Do you remember the land-death rituals, at least?"

Even without opening her eyes, Odette could sense the other figure's hesitation. "What?"

"The land-death rituals; salt to echo the sea. Spread it across my forehead, my eyes, my lips. Let the sea claim me where it can't. Let it take my mind, my memories, my spoken soul..."

"I remember the fucking words," Smoky snapped. There was a catch to her voice, though, like maybe she didn't.

"Really?" Odette let one eye peep open. "When was the last time you performed them, then? Or are you always out at sea, setting the bodies--"

"I know the fucking words, okay?" Smoky insisted, pulling her blade away from Odette's throat to gesture for emphasis. "Salt, sea, et cetera. I got it. Your soul will be at peace or whatever. Would you just shut up and die already?"

"Why don't you shut up and kill me?"

Before Smoky could level the blade back at her neck, Odette ducked, dropped her cutlass, and launched herself at Smoky with all the strength she could muster. Smoky, startled, dropped her own sword to avoid piercing Odette's chest and Odette couldn't help but grin as she pinned her future self to the ground.

Smoky fought back, attempting to roll the both of them over but Odette sat herself squarely on the shadowed clone's stomach, refusing to let her get away. She reached out, fingers brushing her future self's dropped blade, drawing blood from her lip in her concentration, and then she had it. Steel met skin once more, but this time it wasn't hers.

"You wouldn't kill me," Odette told her mirror. Her voice still wavered, though she was more certain this time. "You can't kill me, but it's not because of any stupid fucking rules. It's because, try as you might, you don't hate me. You miss me."

Her shadowed self laughed. It was a spiteful, twisted sound. "Fuck you, kid."

"I don't know what happened to make us so miserable," Odette continued. Her hands and voice were steady now. No blood poured from the shadow's wound, though the sword pressed deep into her neck. "I don't know what path we followed, but I'm going to fix it, I swear. I'll fix it for both of us."

The blade must have struck nearly all the way through, but instead of blood or ash, the figure morphed back into the smoke. Odette was left sitting on the floor. The blade in her hands had vanished too, leaving her with only her own cutlass five feet away and a hollow sort of feeling settled inside of her chest.

No scroll appeared, but the eleven other adversaries did. A spot in their makeshift circle was empty.

Odette recollected her blade before standing once more to face them. "Two more challenges, right?"

No one confirmed her count, but Odette didn't need them to. She was bad with numbers, yes, but not that bad.

She spun in a slow circle, measuring her opponents. One of the eleven of them had her scroll. She ruled the old guardians out--the Deathcoil, the Facechanger, the blood dragon. Odette already had their treasures, and she didn't think the dungeon's masters--whoever they may be--would have double-dipped.

Her birth mother was snarling now, angry at whatever invisible force refused to take the child in her arms. "I'll drown her, then!" It was a curse and a promise. "I'll drown her, you'll see!" Though she would make a vicious opponent, Odette doubted she held anything more important than the infant in her arms.

Yurie was useless; surely, he carried nothing more but a flask full of gin and a pouch full of coins--prizes she would covet on any other day, but her bones ached and her soul was weary and she really wanted to finish this whole mess so she could go home. She wanted to find a home, to make one, to set sail across the sea where she wouldn't need to rely on the kindness of strangers to save her reckless soul.

The figure just beside Yurie gave Odette pause. The mage seemed to flicker in and out of existence, whether at intervals it decided or through the whims of the universe, Odette couldn't be sure. The few discernible features it had changed with every one of its reappearances. Once, it had a tiefling's red skin peeking out from beneath its hood. Then, it had an aarakocra's curved talons protruding from its sleeves. White skin hugged its arms, then brown, then sky blue. Soon, all of its features bled grey, mirroring the smoke around it.

Heart beating fast, chest heaving with exhaustion and exertion, Odette marched forward, staring the thing right in its face. Still, its features were clouded to her.

"What are you?"

The thing did not answer.

"Do you know what you did? Do you remember?" Odette insisted. Her knuckles went pale while she gripped tightly to her blade. "I spent so many nights cursing a name I didn't know."

Still no response.

"Who sent you? Was it another pirate we'd pissed off? Did some poor fucking village pool together their money to get revenge on the people they thought ruined their lives?" The creature remained, unblinking. Odette's voice and breath caught on the next question. It was something she'd wondered since that day--one of the many questions she'd always had. "Did the King send you?"

With each passing second of silence, Odette could physically feel her blood pressure rising, could hear the rush of it in her ears as she stared the creature down.

"Well, if it isn't the mage that killed me." The voice came from her old captain Rainmaker, standing casually to the side with her arms crossed over her chest, twin swords swinging from her belt. "Is that your second claim then, Rookie?"

"No," Odette said, whirling to face her. "You are."

The Captain looked at her discerningly, a single eyebrow raised. "Are you sure? I'm afraid I don't know the rituals as well as you do. Your soul will be trapped down here forever when I kill you."

"Yeah," Odette said, shoulders squared. "I'll take my chances."

The Captain didn't wait for her to call a start to the fight. She lunged forward, a flurry of shadow and steel whipping through dark smoke. Odette took the brunt of the attack with her bad shoulder, flinching as the sword cut through her already-ragged clothes and into her bruised skin, drawing blood.

She dropped instinctively to the floor, rolling through enough dirt and silt to infect a much shallower wound than this one. "Damn it. Damn it!"

"You took my name," Captain Rainmaker said, scanning the shadows. Odette tried to roll onto her feet but cringed and barely kept herself from crying out again. "You took my crew. You took my fucking life. I intend to take it back."

Finally, Odette staggered to her feet, switching her sword to her non-dominant hand. It would have to do. "It's mine."

"You think yourself worthy, Rookie? Worthy of my name--of my title? I spent twenty years crafting that reputation and you snatched it away like any other two-bit treasure." The Captain's narrow twin blades shot forward, one after another.

"Fuck you, talking to me about being worthy," Odette spat, swatting them away. "Someone had to be Captain. The Gods looked upon me and said, 'fuck it, she'll do,' so I did. You're really going to fault me for that? You--the woman who taught me to steal anything and everything worth bleeding for?" Odette wasn't sure where the water was coming from. It stung against her cheeks and she wiped it away, reminded once more of a time when she'd been drowning. "Try me, then. I'll bleed for this."

"Yes," her old captain agreed. "You will."

Captain Rainmaker had always been an efficient artist. She only ever played with her kills when she knew she would win. She was playing now, spinning into another double blow like a whirlpool caught in too-calm waters. She met Odette's cutlass with the first blow and her forearm with the second. The wound was shallow, but a death by a thousand cuts was still a death.

"Surrender," her captain insisted.

Odette held her head up high. "No."

Another whirlpool of spinning blades came toward her and Odette stumbled backward, avoiding the first glancing blow and clumsily knocking the second away with her own sword. Her mentor's strikes had at least grown predictable.

Odette yelled and swiped at her captain with a backhanded swing, aiming more for brute force contact than any deep cut. Her mentor caught the cutlass in the center of her now-crossed blades and deftly twisted them in separate outward arcs. Odette watched, as though a ghost herself, as her cutlass was torn from her hand and went flying into the shadows.

Her captain dropped her blades, perhaps to level the playing field or, more likely, to engage with a more rigorous challenge. It was her captain's fists that flew towards her now, one after the other, like weapons themselves in the ways they were wielded. Odette lifted her arms in defense but was unable to swat every blow away. She threw her own jab but her captain had always been quicker than her pupil. She dodged it with embarrassing ease.

Odette was so focused on their impromptu boxing match that she'd forgotten to worry about her captain's other weapons--her steel-toed boots, one of which kicked Odette's shins out from under her, sending her to her back in the dirt, and the other of which slammed onto Odette's bad arm, pinning her down.

"Surrender," Captain Rainmaker said again. "Surrender, Rookie, and I'll let you live."

The King wouldn't. The King would have her head if she gave up now. There was a part of Odette that had known it as soon as she'd set foot in this dungeon. Perhaps others had collected the scrolls but had been killed just because the King didn't like their faces. Perhaps he'd sent his knights after them and blamed it on the Old God, Death. Perhaps Odette had been doomed before she'd even begun.

Still, she was so fucking sick of being haunted. She was tired of being a bloody god of vengeance. She was tired of lying, of playing a role she'd crafted when she was young and didn't know how to escape. So when her captain, her mentor, her lawless Pirate King, said surrender, Odette's tired, tired body said: "Okay."

Her captain cocked her head to the side. "What?"

"I said yes, okay? Whatever. I fucking surrender."

The Captain blinked once. Twice. Then she threw her head back and laughed. Odette flinched at the sound--she'd only ever heard it when she'd slipped on a wet deck during battle, or messed up when packing the cannons, or when she'd boasted too loudly about her latest fabricated exploits and Old Stinkeye had (just as loudly) called her on her bluff. It was never a pleasant, joyful sound. But this time, as her captain continued to laugh, it morphed into something resembling glee.

Then, her captain did something that shocked Odette more than anything else had throughout this entire fucking quest. Captain Rainmaker held out her hand.

Shakily, uncertainly, Odette took it. She was pulled to her feet and her captain, suddenly terrifyingly solid, pulled her rookie pirate to her chest in a bone-crushing hug. Odette could not remember the last time she'd been held by anyone. The water in her eyes wasn't drowning her. They were tears. Odette--damn her--was crying.

The Captain pulled away and for the first time, Odette noticed something glowing blue in her hands. Odette sniffled and wiped at her eyes, if only to ensure that they weren't deceiving her.

"That's the final scroll," she said, awed.

"It is," her captain confirmed. "You've earned it."

The other figures had dissipated. Odette wasn't sure when that had happened, but there was something not dissimilar to acceptance settling in her soul. She wasn't afraid anymore. She would always carry the ghosts; they would always haunt her, but they couldn't hurt her anymore. She wouldn't run from them. She'd live alongside them.

Odette eyed the scroll, a small part of her still hesitant. "But I lost," she insisted. "I lost our duel."

"I'll tell you a secret, Rookie," Captain Rainmaker said. "It's one every good captain knows. Sometimes, it's not about winning. Sometimes, it's about surviving."

"I survived," Odette whispered, at once determined and doubtful.

"That's more than most of us can say," the Captain smiled. It didn't seem menacing anymore. Gods, if Odette didn't know any better, she would almost call it kind. The Captain reached out and offered her the scroll. "Congratulations, Captain," she said. "You survived."

A weight lifted from Odette's shoulders; she wasn't sure how long she'd been carrying it. Her smile finally mirrored her old captain's as she reached out and grasped the final scroll. As she did so, the dark chamber suddenly filled with bright light and Odette had to shut her eyes to avoid going blind.

When she opened them, her captain was gone. So was the smoke. All that remained was a set of sturdy iron doors, each embossed with an intricate etching of the peaceful New Gods. Odette's portrait had been engraved alongside them. She inhaled sharply and packed the final scroll away, eyes never leaving the double doors that promised escape, that promised fortune, that promised survival.

Then Captain Odette Rainmaker stepped forward, toward the great unknown.