[The Mortal Coil] Round and round we go [open to pirates?]

Enough was enough. Dermod couldn't stand to wait another day, another hour for those morons at the Ministry to figure out what was going on at Hogwarts. Oh, he knew Rhiannon was alright. She must have been one of the first students to manage to send an owl after the Slytherin common room had collapsed; it had arrived on the evening of the 2nd of September telling the writer that she was safe, had a burn on one hand that she needed to put salve on every two hours (she'd seemed quite proud to tell him that it was the same hand from which he was now missing two fingers) and that her pureblood friends were safe. Something in the way she'd said that made him wonder if her halfblood friends were safe as well, but she just chose not to say.

A week later and another message, her hand was better but she was now sharing a room with Gryffindors of various ages as well as friends from her own house. The young girl had seemed decidedly unimpressed with that, but Dermod had replied advising that she treat it as an adventure, a study in human behaviour, as it were, and see what she learned of interest. Except Rhiannon hadn't received that letter, because by then the wards had been triggered and nothing could get in or out of the school. Since then, the Ministry had been looking into it, had been studying the portents had been...well, whatever it was that an ineffectual shower of incompetents did best. It was time to take matters into his own hands.

Dermod intended to try the Floo network. At worst, nothing would happen, but there were rumours that one or two people had got out of the castle. It was only logical that they'd used the fireplaces to transport themselves, and appalling that the Ministry hadn't thought of it first. The Irishman's own home wasn't joined to the network, so he made his way quietly to the closest apothecary, a place where they asked no questions and certainly didn't mind a patron paying a galleon for the privilege of using their fireplace. It was a cold, blustery January day and Dermod had felt the cold even thought his velvet and brocade cloak before stepping into the dimly-lit shop. Here the fire blazed merrily as he took a large handful of sparkly green powder.

"Hogwarts, potions office!" There was a gasp of surprise behind him but he had already thrown the powder into the fire and stepped into the flames…and then the world tilted, spun, and dissolved. There was swirling, dizziness, nausea and a sense of everything folding inward, collapsing into nothingness. Time stretched and colours intermingled into nothing that could be described, there was a feeling of being forced forward and down a crushing tunnel that grew smaller and smaller, of vanishing beneath the earth's crust, followed by a cascade of swirling ocean, of soaring higher than the air itself…

Dermod pitched forward on his knees and vomited, gasping in horror. His vision blurred, there was a violent ringing in his ears and every muscle ached as if he'd been wrestling a particularly vicious lethifold. Something had gone terribly wrong; why hadn't the Ministry warned that they'd tried this already, that the ward was chewing up and spitting out anyone who tried to enter the school. Damned fools should have known better than to try keeping this a secret…and it was hot, he should get out of the flames now, he thought as a shred of logic infiltrated his tortured mind. Except the heat didn't fade as he staggered forward, the words of the shopkeeper didn't coalesce into a comfortable Irish brogue…indeed, there were many more people here than would even fit into the shop, and at this moment the realisation dawned that he was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere foreign, and hot and not entirely safe. The Irishman patted his wand reassuringly as he realised he was at a disadvantage for the first time - not counting the Battle of Hogwarts - in decades.

Wiping his mouth with the back of one gloved hand, he muttered, half to himself "Where am I?"

The Mortal Coil was one of Iso’s favorite spots on Port Charybdis, and certainly his favorite place in Vodanoi. It was a bit cleaner than the other taverns, though that wasn’t saying much. At least when he came here, they threw the drunkards out the front door, as opposed to tossing them through the windows. Iso had narrowly managed to avoid being squished under some two hundred pound Swedish pirate last time he was at port. It was bad manners, is what it what. Iso was currently four…no, maybe five tankards in at this point, somehow having wandered from his spot at the back of the bar and was now sitting with a group of complete strangers.

“And I swear,” he said dramatically, as the five other men leaned in to hear the end of his story. “Thirty four days and sea and suddenly every woman who comes by looks like a horse’s arse. In my sorry state I could hardly get my mind working, let alone any other part of me! Biggest waste of a port call I’ve ever had. Drink for me boys!” Iso shouted as he raised a tankard, and the group around him burst out in raucous laughter as they banged their massive tankards together, drink and froth sloshing all over their arms and dripping all over the table. “Drink up for me boys!” he called, as they all brought the drink to their lips. Iso tossed his head back and opened his gullet, the thick beer flowing down his throat and into his already sloshed stomach. His tankard hit the thick wooden table first and another cheer went up. He raised his fist in victory, only to feel it connect immediately with someone’s chin.

He turned around, his head lolling from side to side as his dark eyes tried to focus on the man in front of him, a man who as looking extremely displeased as he held his jaw where Iso had just punched him. Iso stood up. “Barry! Is that you?” He exclaimed, coming forward. “You’re huge!” He put his hands out to helpfully demonstrate how wide the other man’s stomach had become. “What, did you eat the poor Missus--?” Iso barely had time to finish his hilarious joke before the man’s meaty fist buried itself right in Iso’s stomach. Iso’s feet slipped back a few inches at the force of the blow, but he stayed up right, looking at the other man with surprise.

“Barry, come on,” Iso smiled, coughing up a not insignificant amount of blood. “Come on, are you still mad about Marina? She came on to me and I can never turn down a damsel in distress--” Another punch, this time hitting Iso square in the jaw. “Don’t be such a sore loser! Come have a drink with me--”

Barry swung for Iso again, but this time Iso’s bandaged arm shot out like a piston and caught the other man’s fist, stopping the punch dead in the air. Iso clicked his tongue, his eyes suddenly sharp and narrow. “You’re ruining my dinner, Barry.” With that he twisted to the left, sweeping his legs in a semi-circle as he slid his shoulder under Barry’s arm and flipped the other man over. Barry’s prodigious girth hit the wooden table, splitting the wood clean down the middle and scattering the patrons seated there in a cloud of splinters and broken glass.

The tavern had grown quiet now. The Japanese pirate looked around, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. A beat passed. And then another. Suddenly a cheer went up, all the drunk pirates and spies back in the spirit as conversation resumed and everyone went back to normal. People were in such good spirits here. Somewhere in the back, the fiddler band began to play again, and it was a song that he knew. Iso grabbed a tankard from someone else’s hands and jumped onto the table, his boots sticking to the wet wood as he raised the tankard in his hand.

“Oh, poor old man your horse will die ~ !” Iso shouted, and immediately the other patrons looked up, the music swelling in the background.

“And we say so, and we know so” they sang after him.

“Oh, poor old man your horse will die ~ !”

“Oh, poor old man” they sang back to him, more of them joining in this time.

“Say, I old man your horse will die ~ !”

"Say, I old man your horse will die!"

“We'll drop him down to the depths of the sea ~!” He shouted, twirling on the table.

"We'll drop him down to the bottom of the sea" they shouted back, this time almost everyone was also standing and yelling along.

“We'll sing him down with a long, long roll ~!”

“Where the sharks'll have his body  and the devil have have his soul!”

Another cheer, and with a great bow, Iso dropped down from the table and began to move through the crowd. He walked over to a less populated area of the tavern, by the fireplace, and emptied his tankard. He rested his arm against the brick fireplace, watching the tavern pulsate with more song and shouting. That had taken a lot out of him. He was ready for a little sleep. Or a lot of sleep. Maybe he should visit the Lotus Eater girls first, then he would plenty of sleep…

He was deep in thought when suddenly the fireplace beside him flared to life. Someone was flooing in, which was unusual. Ships were the main mode of transport for people around here. But nonetheless, someone came through. He was much older than Iso, that was for sure. His face was creased with age, the face of a man who frowned a lot. And though most of his skin was covered, from what little Iso could see, the man had his own collection of scars. Iso could smell blood on him, but that was normal for most people in this line of work. His arm twitched, his bandaged fingers itching forward. Intriguing. Iso quickly moved forward, popping up at the older man’s side. 

“You’re in Port Charybdis, ooji,” Iso answered, calling him the Japanese equivalent of ‘gramps’. “This isn’t really the type of place you want to end up on accident. You lost or something?” He raised an eyebrow. "Have a drink with me?"

"Where am I..?"

He was in a bar, that much was immediately obvious; and not the sort where he would expect to find good wine and good company, either. He staggered to his feet to find his arrival had already been noticed, he had to look up to his new companion who was a good seven or eight inches taller than him. In other circumstances this wouldn't much have concerned the Irishman, but he was so stunned by his sudden detour to wherever-he-was everything seemed faintly unnerving and threatening for now.

There must be a translation charm of sorts on the place...no, wait; the man had used at least one word he didn't recognise, so...he spoke English? That potentially put Dermod at an immediate disadvantage, but for the moment he was simply grateful that he didn't have to cast the charm himself or go looking for someone who he could understand. But it was the man's response that truly shocked him.

Port Charybdis? He'd heard of the fabled seaport of course; there were few in his circle of friends who hadn't. But he couldn't think of anyone who'd actually been there, and he wasn't even certain of it's location beyond being, in his mind, to the East. Which made sense, as he quickly sized up his new companion. Aside from his height and the look of a man who not only got into physical fights but thoroughly enjoyed so doing, his arm was... interesting. Interesting enough that Dermod immediately suspected that to take an interest would lead to more than just a physical altercation. He let his eyes drift quickly away, seeing for the first time a broken table which, even as he watched was reformed, the result of an unseen spell.

"Lost? Doesn't even come close..." he muttered loudly enough to be heard, and then "I thought this place was a myth. A drink sounds good right now - do they serve firewhisky here, or something like it? Make it a double?" His mind was racing; foremost in his thoughts was how he was going to get out of here when he wasn't even entirely certain where here was, but for now what he needed was information, and this was the best way to get it. He held out his right hand, glanced at the empty fingers of the glove that didn't quite disguise there was no longer anything there, and then shrugged. "Morfessa. Dermod Morfessa - all the way from Ireland" he said, by way of introduction. The likelihood of anyone out here recognising his family name was next to zero; safer even than claiming to be the deceased Kevan Taite.

Iso took the man’s proffered hand, having gotten used to the weird western gesture many years ago. He supposed it was a way of showing that he was unarmed, which Iso always appreciated. “Ireland? You're a long way from home, ooji. I am Isonade, captain of the Demonfish, originally of Okinawa,” he introduced himself. He raised a thick black eyebrow at the man’s hand, which seemed to be missing a number of fingers. That wasn’t weird for a pirate, since the oceans were littered with thousands upon thousands of their limbs. His own arm was probably floating around somewhere in the ocean in a shark’s belly at this point. But Iso didn’t think Dermod (as that was this man’s name) was a pirate. He was definitely not filthy enough to be a pirate. Pirate people had a sort of odor about them.

“Does the Coil have firewhiskey?” Iso repeated with a laugh. “What do you think we use as tap water here? Half the dishes are cleaned with it.” He gestured his good arm at one of the waitresses, signaling for two doubles. Iso walked over to the newly-fixed table, picking up two of the chairs that had been knocked over in the fray and setting one down for himself and his companion. He graciously took the chair that was missing a back leg, in case the man was still a little unsteady. Flooing was always discombobulating for the Japanese pirate, and Dermod didn’t look like he had his land legs quite yet.

“You have a nice accent,” Iso said. “Almost as hard to understand as mine.” Iso’s English was … okay. Technically very poor by all standards, but he knew enough to get his point across. Pirates weren’t known for their impeccable grammar, and even Iso’s Japanese and native Uchinaguchi were littered with profanity and errors. He was democratically terrible at most languages, as communication was never his strong suit. At that moment, their firewhiskey floated over to the table and settled in front of them, spilling just a little as they touched down. Iso reached for his glass, his eyes flickering back to Dermod’s hand. His curiosity got the better of him and he leaned forward conspiratorially.

“It looks like we have something in common,” he grinned, wiggling his bandaged fingers. At the moment, only Iso’s hand and a portion of his forearm were exposed. Iso grabbed his black long sleeved shirt by the hem and pulled it up, so the head hole was wrapped around the circumference of his skull just above his forehead. He tied the sleeves around in a knot, so that he now wore it as a make-shift bandana. He was sitting comfortably shirtless in front of his new friend, his bare tattooed chest on display. He rested his right arm on the table in front of him, the long white bandages covered in layers of Arabic and Japanese runes wrapped from the tips of his fingers to all the way around his olive shoulder.

“Comparing battle wounds is the traditional introduction on Port Charybdis, ooji,” he said with a sleepy smile as he raised the glass to the other man expectantly. “If you want to fit in with us, tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine.”

Captain of the... Dermod's mind still wasn't back to it's usual self, so the name of the ship distracted him long enough that he failed to hear the man's origins. After a moment, he decided it didn't matter, though he was less than comfortable with Isonade's obvious interest in his maimed hand. One the one hand, this looked like the sort of place where an injury of that kind was an asset, something that helped you to fit in rather than drew undue attention; but he still hated the knowledge that he was somehow less than he used to be. Spells that he had never given a second thought for the first fifty five years of his life now needed forethought and concentration. He decided to overlook the man's curiosity in favour a getting a drink inside him.

“Sounds like my kind of place” he said, and almost managed a chuckle as his new companion offered him a seat (Dermod didn't fail to notice that he was being offered the chair that was still fit for purpose, rather than the one that would be better consigned to the fireplace). And then he really did snort with laughter, because that was just about the worst compliment he'd ever received, and yet it was...absolutely perfect. “So we have one thing in common already – technically English isn't my native language either. Don't suppose speaking Gaelic would get me far here though...” In fact, Dermod could hear very little that he understood. He'd been hoping there would be at least some French or Italian words, but for the first time he decided he was very fortunate that this man had been the one to see him arrive so unceremoniously.

And then the firewhisky arrived, and Dermod reached for his glass reflexively with his right hand, and again the other man's eyes flickered downwards. And then came the inevitable question, but not worded in quite the way he would have expected. No “were you in an accident?” or “did you have a potion explode?” - this was a show and tell session, and the Irishman wits were recovered sufficiently that he recognised the unspoken challenge, albeit friendly challenge,  immediately, though he was disconcerted when Isonade removed his shirt there and then. Dermod's instinctive reaction was to glance away; he had rarely shed any items of clothing in the presence of another man and it felt strangely disturbing. Looking back a second later was even less relaxing, for those tattoos clearly meant something.

Still, two could play that game, and the invitation had been issued; but in a way that Dermod found to amusing to resist. This time his smile was absolutely genuine, because he certainly would tell his story, but not only that. He had no idea what ooji meant, but he'd heard it several times now and it was clearly the equivalent of 'old man'. In other times and circumstances he would have been insulted, but there were far more important things to worry about here. Opening the clasp that fastened his cloak, he let it fall across the back of his chair as he took another good mouthful of the firewhisky (which, while not any vintage he recognised, was very good indeed).

“My boy, you want to hear a story, you've come to the right place. I've made a career of storytelling...though I don't believe that's quite what you have in mind right now” he paused, leaning a little closer as if to prove that the other man's impressive tattoos being on display didn't concern him at all (which, of course, they didn't). Reaching up with his entire hand he flipped open the neck of his button-through shirt, revealing the Ngetal symbol. “Not a scar so much as a gift” he said, gesturing “and not merely an ornament, but a link to members of my bloodline, so I will know if they are in danger and in need of my help...”

He paused, but his own words shocked him like a jolt to the heart. Fool! Of course Rhiannon was alright; he would have known otherwise if she wasn't. She might be tired, or bored, or frightened or angry or any number of things, but she wasn't sick or in pain. On the one hand the knowledge was comforting, or would be if he could take the time to savour it, but there was also frustration that if he had only stopped to think, he might not have ended up in this situation at all. But he hadn't offered much of a tale, and the writer knew better than to sell a listener short

“...where was I?” another sip of whisky and already the glass was half empty. Dermod briefly wondered if they accepted galleons here; if not he was potentially in trouble. Then he lifted his own shirt, revealing a twisted, puckered scar on his torso; there was evidence of a similarly healed wound on his back; he dropped the shirt after a few seconds; age and dignity weren't about to allow him to sit about half-dressed in a public place “Centaur arrow” he said “and unfortunately there's no exciting tale to that one; he caught me off guard and I regained consciousness a week later...” Deliberately, the Irishman gestured with his maimed right hand, a half-shrug that seemed to say “Is there anything else you'd like to know..?”