The men mostly enjoyed the silence on the ship for a while. Nothing but the faint sound of the waves licking the side of the boat, the occasional grunt and moan from Jack adjusting himself.
Remus was still and silent. For the past hour, he remained unmoved, spying on his target, like some statue looking through a telescope.
Jack eventually emerged from his cabin, holding two clay mugs of coffee. Walking up to the knight, he pressed one against his arm in offer. Finally glancing away from the scope, Remus looked down and accepted.
It tasted like utter ass, but coffee was coffee.
Leaning back against the wooden rail of the ship, Remus quietly enjoyed his hot drink. Jack leaned back onto the rail beside him, eyeing him occasionally.
"So. How’d a wimp like you become our Infernal Knight?" Jack asked companionably, a little shit-eating grin resting on his face.
"If I recall, this wimp was beating you to death with your own fist," Remus replied smoothly. Both men didn’t look at one another, preferring to stare off at the docks in the distance.
"Ah, that’s mah point. You needed my fist to beat me, couldn’t even use your own!"
That got a genuine chuckle out of the knight, which raised the severity of Jack’s grin.
"The Queen took a liking to me. Thought I would be of use," Remus said softly, not offering any more.
"Hmm." Jack rumbled, taking a swing of his coffee, then wincing. Either from pain or the taste, no one would know.
"So what we doin out here anyway? What’s in the dock warehouses?"
"A target of mine, this is his main business. I wanted to see if anything happened at night, but it seems it’s all locked up officially." The knight replied. The dock had been clear for all the time they had been there, with no lights coming from within the warehouse buildings.
Remus had augmented his telescope with glyphs, allowing a more sophisticated gaze for long distance sighting. He could also relay the audio of a far off target.
The dock seemed truly empty.
"This target. Sanctioned mission, then?" Jack asked, turning to glance down at him. His grin shifted into something a little more serious.
"No, Captain Jackson, this one is personal," Remus said quietly, still staring off at the docks as if they held answers to something.
"Oh? What did the bastard do to ye?"
"He, and others I trusted, sacrificed me to Hell."
Jack, who had been raising his coffee for another gulp, froze. His large head slowly turned around fully and gazed down at Remus.
"What?" He said dumbly.
"I said what I said," Remus answered again, easily.
Jack blinked, frowning, the haggard hamster that lived in his head, panting in exhaustion at turning the wheel.
"But that’s impossible!" Jack argued, lowering the forgotten coffee. "Mortals don’t go to Hell, only as souls. It’s one way. Are you tellen me you’ve been to Hell!?"
"I have."
The big man looked down at his companion in utter confusion. The knight was undoubtedly mortal. It was breaking the ancient agreements to have an Infernal Knight that wasn’t a Garden mortal. He never would have been recognized by the other Kingdoms.
It would cause war.
Well, more war.
But the Demonic Lieges who swore to the ancient oaths were incapable of breaking them. And a big one was this very rule.
"How did it happen? How is this possible?" Jack asked quietly. His whole worldview was cracking like an egg.
"I don’t know." Remus shrugged his shoulders unapologetically. "Whatever ritual, sacrifice, whatever it was, something must have gone wrong. They stabbed me with this particular knife, hands pulled me through a doorway just as the stabbing happened. They didn’t grab my soul, they grabbed my intact body, dragging me into Hell."
Remus paused as he took another sip of the awful coffee. Jack didn’t interrupt him with more questions.
"On the other side, the demons were just as startled as you’d imagine. Recognizing I wasn’t just shaped soul essence, but a living, breathing mortal. In the realm of Hell."
Jack continued to wonder, staring at the man. He reflected on their incredibly brief ’fight’ in the pit underneath the tavern. A few of the spectators were shouting Dentes, as if they had recognized him.
"Dentes. Teeth." Jack asked suddenly, causing Remus to actually look up at him now. "They called you that back in the tavern pit."
For the first time on the ship, Remus’s plain expression turned into a fond grin.
"My first encounter with demons was when I was dragged over. Despite their shock at my mortal nature, I still very much had a soul inside of me. So they didn’t wait long to try and get it out of me."
"Yeah, I bet they went to gut you like a fish." Jack nodded knowingly.
"They tried." Remus smiled, looking back into the distance, his posture relaxing. "I had no weapon other than the dagger embedded in my chest. This big demon, as big as you are, if not bigger, gripped me with both arms, lifting me up to hold me for the others..."
"I didn’t feel much pain, I was still in shock and confusion, terrified, really, of everything that had happened in seconds. I just reacted. I leaned forward and took a bite out of that asshole’s neck."
Jack blinked, gazing down at his companion in silence. Then he flung his head back and erupted in laughter.
"Oh, that’s good! That’s good! Dentes!" Jack cackled gleefully, his laughter so loud it changed a seagull’s flight path.
Remus just continued to smile, sipping more coffee.
When Jack calmed down, Remus continued his tale of how he was on the run, chased by hordes of angry residents. Of how he desperately searched for a way out and found none.
"It’s amazing, though. Our lot seemed to love you back at the tavern, you’d think there’d be a bit of animosity and all that. You being sacrificed into our Kingdom and all, and then just walking about." Jack commented.
"Well, I wasn’t sacrificed to our Kingdom." Remus corrected.
"The people who betrayed me sacrificed me to our neighbors. The ritual portal left me right in the middle of Beln Kingdom."
Whatever merriment was on Jack’s face morphed into shock.