Charles Vane Black Sails Novels & Stories

Sinking to the floor, she closed her eyes. The Black Cliff was plunged into the darkness of the night, illuminated by blinding flashes of lightning. The sea and the sky staged an unspoken battle: the opened whirlpool twisted a lone ship in its grip, high waves rolled noisily onto the shore, hit rocks and protruding reefs. The terrified sailors held on to the masts, but the raging elements flooded the deck, flowed down the cut-water onto a mermaid-amulet carved from wood. From the bright flashes, the face of the sea maiden turned into a grinning mask, and the tail was hidden by another wave, wanting to separate the "wooden mermaid" from the hull and pull it into its arms. Black, impenetrable

Three of the others leaned in conspiratorially, eyes alight with interest and devious intent. Blake exhaled a stream of grey smoke. "Need to sedate him first. Make it look like an accident. Easy enough." Clouds were beading on the horizon, just a ghost of what could become a storm. Perhaps it was imaginary, but ominous no less. It was all about the signs, the dark omens the captain kept ignoring. The things that had been haunting the Black Hind's path had gone on far longer than anyone else liked to think about. Blake chuckled. His caustic amusement grated on the air, weighing like chains on the deck as he turned away. One more made seven, a veritable crew all by itself. Some even brewing wi

But as the first bone-white ship broke through the morning mist in the distance, I felt the old fire of the Deprivation wake up in my marrow. The bone-and-silk ship did not dock; it hovered a few inches above the churning surf of the harbor, defying the laws of buoyancy that governed the heavy Western ironclads. Its hull was a translucent, milky white, carved from the ribs of some gargantuan sea-beast, and the sails were spun from a material so fine they looked like captured moonlight.

The Eclipse Leviathan’s heavy iron keel cut through the coastal tide, churning white-hot foam in the dark waters of Gloomwater Bay. Thirty frigates of war sailed behind the massive flagship in perfect, terrifying formation. The hulls were sheathed in black petrified oak, and the towering masts rigged with fire-resistant solar silk that caught the brisk mountain breeze like the golden wings of diving hawks. The black sand beaches along the jagged coastline were lined for miles with cheering citizens and pack shifters watching their navy set sail to defend the realm.

I pushed ahead stubbornly, “you’re really going to sit back and watch—“ The next slap sent me sprawling to the ground, more vicious and gum-damaging than the first, and as my skull cracked against the tiled floor, I blacked out. -----

I watch the woman my brothers tell me I loved. The One. That’s what my journal tells me. Lillian Blackwood is my one. The problem is I can’t remember her. Not a single thing. All the descriptions I wrote about her don’t do her justice. Even while I watch her breakdown. While I watch my brother comforts her, over a dog named Benny. She’s still incredibly beautiful. “Are you willing to let that go?” Dylan asks as he watches the commotion in front of us.

A massive, towering wall of boiling mud and superheated black water erupted from the abyss, tearing through the sea-wolf flagship's void-iron hull and shattering its pressure seals with deafening, metallic screeches. Beta Vance stood at the helm, his golden eyes flashing with a fierce, triumphant resonance as he navigated the ship through the boiling chaos. "The enemy flagship is sinking, Queen Lyra! Their hull has collapsed under the pressure backlash!" "Keep the pressure on their flanks, Vance!" I commanded, my fangs fully extended past my lips as a cold, predatory smile cut through the darkness. "Let the trench swallow them whole."

Miro was right. Five ships. Black hulls. No lights. Moving in perfect formation. And on the lead ship, at the bow, stood a figure I recognized. Silas Vane. But he wasn't alone. Beside him stood a woman in white. Her hair was long and silver. Her face was hidden behind a mask. But her eyes — one blue, one red — burned through the lens. Dr. Reinhart. She wasn't dead. She wasn't dying. She had lied.

"A fleet." CRACK. The sky above the Crimson Spire didn't just cloud over; it shattered. A massive, purple rift tore open the clouds, and from the void, a ship descended. It wasn't like the Prometheus. This ship was a cathedral of black iron and screaming souls, bristling with cannons that glowed with Void-light. It was the flagship of the Order of the Black Sun. "How rude," Valerius sighed, adjusting his silk cuffs. "I specifically ordered no solicitors."

The Sol Invictus didn't fall, but the sight of the Sovereign’s flagship limping away, its golden hull stained with weeping soot, sent a shockwave through the Zenith Fleet, for the first time in a thousand years, the Sun had been eclipsed on the battlefield. Inside the crippled command deck, the air was freezing, the "Black Solar" strike had drained the ship's heat, leaving frost patterns blooming across the high-tech consoles, Kaelen Vane stood at the jagged edge where the prow had been sheared away, his eyes no longer just red, they were a bleeding, incandescent crimson. "The Council wants to retreat, Alpha," Jaxon whispered, his breath visible in the frigid air, "they say the woman is no l