Legends of the Treasure Child : Demon Spawn

He couldn’t help but to think of her, and upon closing his eyes he could almost smell the scent of her dark brown hair. If he focused but a little harder on the vision before him, Will remembered the soft, soft skin. He could see her before his inner eye, feel her smile upon him, her teasing wink with one eye, her dark lashes brushing softly against his cheek..! Then, she hovered before him like a fluorescent angel, her yellow wedding dress flowing soundlessly in the Caribbean wind. She was his beacon through the darkness. Through the years. Then there was a piercing sound of infant cries, and Will woke to see four small arms waving through the air. Their little noses were like lighthouses on top of pink islands, waving from side to side in search of safe havens. Jack’s twins had awoken at the same time, both craving milk, impatiently searching from side to side in blindness for something to latch on to with their small mouths. Their cries increased in volume, and Will watched as Jack finally stirred next to him. They’d shared bed for some hours, both in need of sleep. It wasn’t really the truth, since Will was undead and didn’t need sleep. He still needed time. Time to daydream about Elisabeth and his son, to slip away from his responsibilities as captain of the Flying Dutchman. There were so many fates, so much misery to behold that he sometimes just wanted to abandon all and disappear. He got up and walked over to the twins, feeling the Black Pearl rock beneath his feet. John was taking them deep to sea so they could have a moment’s peace. And wherever Will roamed, the Flying Dutchman followed.
He went over to the twins, and they both stopped to watch in anticipation. They could see it wasn’t Jack, and they both instantly screamed louder than ever. Will spoke to them, and it calmed them somewhat. Having their attention made Will shiver, and holding Daniel in his arms made him feel really strange inside. He couldn’t explain it – other than that it felt like the most natural thing in the world at the same time as he was sweating and really nervous about not dropping the baby. The little wings moved, brushing against his hands, and he’d never felt something so soft before. Not even Elisabeth’s hair could compare! He held the small screaming bundle close to his chest as he traveled the few steps back to Jack’s bed.
“God! I’d completely forgotten how much I hate nighttime feedings. Every bloody four hours!” Jack cursed while getting up. He was still bleeding from the birth, and managed to get himself up somewhat, tucking pillows behind his back all the while still cursing loudly. He removed his shirt, and undid the fastening around his ribcage. It was a bandage meant to keep his breasts warm and the milk from spilling. Will sat down with the baby in his arms, and bent forwards to hand him to Jack, just as Jack removed the bandage. A thin, almost unnoticeable sprout of milk hit Will right in the eye, and they both stopped to laugh.
“Try not to drown him” Will said afterwards, wiping away the milk before fetching the other child, tucking Nathaniel in below Jack’s other arm. Both babies found their food with great ease, and Jack sighed relived.
“How are you doing, Jack?” Will asked him afterwards when the laughter had settled.
“Tired. All I want is to sleep. And sleep. And sleep. Did I mention tha’? That I want to sleep?”
“I get that, Jack. I really do”
“They wear ye out, ye know, suckin’ ye dry till there’s no more left. The key is to keep eatin’, keep drinkin’ and gettin’ enough sleep—“
“— I was talking about your spirits, Jack. How are you holding up?”
No reply. Jack shut his eyes with a pained expression on his face.
“You’ll get through this, Jack. You always pull through, no matter what you do with your life” Will said, trying to sound reassuring. But it was one of the really few times he’d ever seen Jack so worn, so lost of his usual spirits, and Will was beginning to understand what living underneath the scolding gaze of the Thyrion was doing to Jack. Not to mention what it was doing to John. Will had seen it. The half demon was becoming increasingly more aggressive with his demon father around, often glancing maliciously at the angel spawn as well. They’d both noticed that the Pearl had picked up speed. Was John attempting to flee?
"Kiss me..?" Jack suddenly whispered. He looked up to Will, with a plea in his brown eyes. Will said nothing, but bent over to where Jack was sitting, and kissed him softly and chastely on the lips. Jack returned the kiss eagerly, drawing in every bit of smell, taste and sentiment the kiss had to offer. Will understood that the captain who was ten years his senior was in dire need of something, and Will guessed it was warmth and comfort. Would it be considered adultery if Will were to lay naked next to Jack, just to share his warmth with the poor fellow? He dared not risk it, thinking of Elisabeth and the promises which were almost within reach. He had Elisabeth, all though she belonged to the land of the living and he to the seas of the dead. Jack was caught in between, with nothing, and with no prospect of ever being able to make love to a woman again. It would be a Christian thing to do, to help out a friend in need, but Jack was still a man, and God did not allow such actions. Then Will realized that it might actually be more of a sin to kiss Jack than to lay naked next to him, but before he could contemplate any further on the subject, the cabin door opened and John emerged from the darkness outside.
"Ah, you're awake. Three ships are coming up on us. Pirates, by the look of it."
"Rally the men, get the sails up. Try to outrun them” Jack replied quietly, sounding resigned.
"Aye, captain" John replied. He said nothing more, simply exchanged glances with Will, then left.
Upon finishing their meal, the twins were already half asleep. They complained when both Jack and Will took each their twin and helped them burp. Then Will put them safely back into their crib, where they instantly fell asleep.
"I have to return to the Dutchman now, Jack. I'll be with you in a while, all right? I don't like leaving you like this, but she calls" Will sighed.
"It's all right. I'll be fine" Jack whispered, lying down again. He did not close his eyes, but stared into the roof, lost in some other world.
Will came out on deck, feeling his guilty conscience like an enormous iron ball hanging in chains around his feet. Elisabeth, practically living as a widow and as a single mother, because of him. And now, it felt like he was abandoning Jack as well. Will looked to John. He almost always had encouraging news about Elisabeth’s movements, what she was doing and how she was missing Will. He had foresights all the time, and they usually got stronger and more pinpointed whenever Will came on board. But right now, John was busy. They crew shouted in shock and they all stood frozen for some time to see the Flying Dutchman shoot up from the depths of the sea, matching speed with the Pearl, cutting across the waves in a perfect parallel flight.
He felt himself being pulled on board, and the very next time he opened his eyes, he found himself standing by the rudder next to his father.
John was focusing on the ships behind them. They were on no way catching up. On the contrary, the Pearl was gaining distance. He followed the dark blue oulines of the waves and their creamy white peaks back to the stems of their pursuers. Ever since it had become common knowledge that Jack had supposedly consorted with a demon and brought the Treasure Child into the world, every pirate Lord had gone after him. Very few had a notion of what or who the Treasure Child really was and how he'd been shaped in the image of Jack Sparrow. They were often surprised and taken back at finding not a gnarly little midget, but a grown man, usually one or two heads taller than themselves. And upon realizing what they were looking at, they usually chose one of two alternatives. They turned on their heels and ran, or tried to come up a convincing speech of why the Treasure Child should join them.
The representatives of the East Indian Trading Company usually proved more of a nuisance. Those who looked John up, were usually rogues – men with power, bored from being shackled on arms and legs by the bureaucracy which was the Company. They would approach him by the docks, in the lantern light outside some shady inn or in a narrow street, armed with guns, sabers and monks and priests by the dozen, who in turn were armed with faith, holy water and the Bible. The aim was to 'save' John from himself, to make him turn his face and behold God in all his might and repent his sins. -And in return, he'd make them some gold. The Company men would talk. Always talk, talk and talk, hurling out well shaped phrases in their perfect Oxford or Canterbury English, about the glory which John could find himself in, if he only helped them with some small favors.
Then there were the noblemen, who feared and envied him, whose minds would cloud up, covered by greed. Pigs, the lot of them, throwing their unwed daughters at him in exchange for a little gold. It would seem that the entire world was corrupted by greed. Everybody wanted John's supernatural powers, but no one really wanted him. It was slowly making him bitter, and each encounter with such men was fast becoming tedious.
Worst of them all, were the priests and the witch hunters. Seemingly firm in their fate and righteous of heart at first, they all began to turn on themselves after having spent some time in John's presence. It soon became a game to John, for he knew that his very demonic being was constructed thus as to bring out the worst in people who were weak of character. All he had to do, was to sit by and watch as the priests' true faces little by little began to appear, revealing striking hungers for glory and fame. They all wanted to be The One.
John knew, as they all had known, that there was an appendix to the Legend of the Treasure Child. The Treasure Child was often described as Anti-Christ, the Opener of the Gates of Hell, Carnal Brother to Lucifer and Lover to the Whore of Babylon and many, many other fancy and creative titles. It was nothing but propaganda, John told himself. The truth though, was that John had barely begun to remember his past lives – and he had yet to sort out the extent of his powers. The truth about his existence, which had become a reality, involved three factors: The human bearer, Jack, and his unfortunate encounter with the Thyrion. Secondly, John’s function as a Treasure Child, and thirdly and most importantly, his function as a direct descendant of the Demon King of the Seventh Plane. And these factors together worked as a ticking bomb; A countdown against something definitive and inevitable. Some kind of disaster in the future – but no matter hard John tried, the veils of the future were too many. He sensed their connection, sensed the danger, and the realization alone was gnawing away at him. The actions of the past would catch up, but it would do so somewhere in a distant future, and it would hit Jack the hardest.
And then it was this ‘The One’. Through the ages, there had always been a ‘One’. For the laws of nature applies even to the Realm of Hell. For every action, there’s a reaction. ‘The One’ could be man or woman, human or no human. It would be more accurate to call it an entity, than actual person, but it was in most cases believed to be the soul of another being, and it was a perfect match in every way. And it held the power to bind the Thyrions. How, exactly, was unclear, but John had inherited vague memories from other Thyrions which suggested that it was a binding between souls and not by the means of rope or chains. And for the Thyrions, such a binding was usually lethal, for they roamed with the wind and lived like the free wind, and then to be tamed and become placid, well, that was unthinkable, undoable, slowly killing them. It was like being slowly tortured to death, or to be sucked dry by some vampire, a little more every day.
No one had knowledge of this outside Hell, of course. Just like the real truth about Jesus Christ and God was being guarded and kept secret from the world, so was this truth. The general and completely wrong belief in the human world was, that The Treasure Child, and not the Thyrion, could be caught and tamed. The knowledge of the demon branch of Hell known as Thyrions, had been lost with the end of the Spartan Realm thousands of years ago. Only a select few who’d bothered to dig deep enough and learnt how to transcribe a long since lost language, knew bits and pieces of the story, but not by far enough to piece it together so it actually made sense. So somewhere along the way, the word ‘Thyrion’ had been misplaced with ‘Treasure Child’, yet they were originally two different figures in ancient Greek mythology. It made sense, for it was clear what the function of the Treasure Child was, but no place was it mentioned who or what the Thyrion really was, or what it was meant to do besides being some Demi-god people were sacrificed to. So thus, the popular version for the specially interested, was that being ‘The One’ was as close one could ever get in order to become the Alchemist who could make gold.
The priests often wondered about this: If The Treasure Child also was Anti-Christ, then who but Christ resurrected or God himself could destroy him? If a priest was ‘The One’, for it had to be a priest, a Man of God, right?, then what? Would he be elevated to the grace of God? Would Christ be born anew in the priest’s body? John simply loved to make an effort to delude the surviving priests, sending them on their way with their heads filled with doubt, spreading rumors which helped further the distortion of the real truth.
The Catholic Pope would send out agent after agent in search for John Sparrow, or The Golden Sparrow were also one of his many names, hoping that it would be just the right one to bind the demon, and in turn, it would make Catholicism the reigning religion, crushing the ridiculous Protestants. The Pope gladly sent his bishops and priests to their deaths, for this was the prize of the century, no, the prize of the millennia. And the Protestants and the Jews, the Turks and the Chinese, they all thought the same way. It kept John rather busy while he attempted to walk the fine line between acting as a civilized salesman, earning his living within the salvage industry during daytime, and killing off pursuers in the night. He was getting a tad annoyed with all the attention and he fondly remembered how quiet and simpler things had been, when he’d been a Thyrion back somewhere during the Stone Age.
"All hands stand by!" John growled out the command, and looked at Mr. Gibbs. He’d made a decision.
"Oh bugger" the first mate muttered to himself before he turned to the crew and shouted:"Ye heard 'im, gents! We're in fer a ride! Buckle up!" He watched Ragetti and Pintel dive to the nearest mast, clambering to the nearest rope work, while they shouted: "Shite, he's goin’ tha’ do it again, he's goin' tha' do it again!" The commotion was over in less than thirty second, which was just long enough for John to fish out a ornate long pipe from inside his vest and prop the opening full of leaves before he ignited them and blew and sucked to get the smoke going.
"Ah, there's nothing like Irish leaves!" John said to himself, inhaling the scented smoke. He held his breath for a moment as he closed his eyes and focused. Then, he very gently exhaled, and the smoke flowing out of his mouth was pure fog, thick and never-ending. Lighting cracked in the heavy skies above, and soon, a mighty wind filled the already full sails of the Black Pearl. He heard her rejoice, welcoming the forces of nature both beneath and above her which were coming to life. She was obviously more than ready to go for a joyride, ignoring the whimpers and pleas of the crew who had nestled close to her deck and tied themselves up. From out of nowhere came ten stories high waves, and the Black Pearl stood vertically against the giant wave for about three seconds, before John turned her hard to starboard, sending her plunging into the dark, wet alley which the wave shaped. They did about fifteen of those, before everything settled and the men decided to emerge from their hiding places. The wind died, and the restless clouds above gave way to dawn – a near heavenly apparition as the clouds parted and rays of divine sunlight shone down on the deck, and for the briefest of seconds, the deck seemed littered with sparkling diamonds. Pintel managed to untie himself somehow, all though he was seeing double. Ragetti was sprawled on the deck, fighting for air, not realizing the nightmare was over. Morty was spewing over the railing along with a good deal of his fellow crewmembers, his legs shaking from the joyride he'd just been through. People were soaked, coughing and talking gibberish.
"Tha' will be quite enough from ye, Captain Sparrow!" Gibbs said, taking the wheel from John, shoving the half demon gently but firmly aside. The tone in his voice made it abundantly clear to John that the fun was over.
"Sorry. Got a bit carried away there" John said with a wide apologetic grin on his lips. He gazed around, pleased with his handiwork. Debris was floating everywhere in the water around them, and there were even an odd survivor here and there.
"Fish them up!" John commanded. He watched them round up the half-dead survivors and bring them on board. He walked over to where they were kneeling, before he said: "You're the few lucky survivors. You've lost your captains and your ships. Join the Black Pearl, and I'll make decent men out of you. Or else, you may walk the plank and sleep forever in Calypso's womb. Your choice." John immediately looked over to Pintel and his ragged mate, nailing them both to the floor with his golden eyes, knowing he'd just stopped them from starting off on some ridiculous discussion probably concerning the expression 'Down to see Davey Jones, or end up in Davey Jones' locker'. And he knew where it would all lead: Pintel would argue about the right verbal expression which would be just that: 'To see Davey Jones', but Ragetti would argue against, telling his friend that sine Davey Jones now was officially dead, then it was entirely proper to use the expression Calypso's womb, because they certainly couldn't call it 'Will Turner's locker, for in their eyes he was and still would be the nosy whelp who came to rescue his beloved puppet and all that, Captain of the Flying Dutchman or no. And Morty and his pal would not be able to shut up, John just knew. He'd heard them debate before, and the foursome just loved to argue among themselves even if it meant going against their own principles for a while. John shook his head towards them in silent threat, telling them 'Don't you even dare to ridicule me now' with his molten red stare. Not a single syllable left their lips.
"Right then" John said, "all hands to work. Next shift is in four hours, and we have a treasure to find!" he shouted, earning himself a satisfied howl from the men. He'd made sure they'd been dressed up in uniform looking outfit instead of rags. Each and every man had undergone a serious shave and bathing, and routines concerning hygiene on the Black Pearl were followed with military precision. The cells below deck had been cleared out, leaving only one cage behind for 'safety' reasons. The rest was used as storage hold for treasures which would be wrapped in large bags made out of waterproof canvas. One section had been built into a proper armory, and Morty had been promoted to Armorer, He was in charge of the keys, and was responsible for keeping the blades trimmed and the gunpowder dry. He'd had a good run with Will Turner while the captain had been on board, for they'd experienced a bit to see if they could come up with a stronger and more fierce gunpowder. It seemed Will had a great deal of experience concerning chemicals and their reactions with one another. Sulpheric acid, carbon and more acid. Morty had been amazed, and had held Will in great regard once he'd seen the ex-blacksmith's nimble fingers piece together an invention which allowed cannon balls greater speed and harder impact by lessening the recoil of the cannon itself. It made the Black Pearl more stable and the firing range longer. A simple invention in itself. Two powerful springs fastened to each side of the cannon, which were crossed and then fastened to the framework the canon rested on. It took some testing – and a seriously large hole in the opposite hull of the Black Pearl before Will had figured out what went wrong. Morty had been mighty impressed, and Will had finally, in his eyes, elevated to something more than just a bony kid with an attitude.
John went to check on Jack, expecting to get reprimanded about conjuring up the storm, but to his relief, Jack and the twins had slept through it all. Then there was a slight hiccup from Daniel, and Jack was suddenly wide awake, making his way out of bed all the while keeping his legs together so he wouldn't bleed.
"Shh, Dad, It's all right. I'll check on him" John whispered, helping Jack back into bed.
"Wha' time is it?"
"Morning, Dad. It's morning."
"I thought I heard the wind blow a bit" Jack said, as he dug himself back into his cave of blankets.
"Aye, it was a bit windy there for a while, but it's all passed now. We have some new crewmembers."
"Wha’ you do this time?"
“Well, uh, just a little something. Nothing to shout about.”