Rhys rallied the assembled lords and knights, their combined rhythmic chest thumping echoing through the Great Hall. He then declared himself 'Lord of the Black Sails' and proclaimed the start of a war against enemies both old and new, including the Church and the Crown, admitting he had taken the wrong side months ago.
It took a while, but Rhys managed to convey the entirety of the situation to the men who had been summoned. "I never imagined that the legends my father shared would materialize before my very eyes," Rhys began. "Or that I would find myself ensnared within them. My intention was to follow in his footsteps, governing to the best of my ability and preserving the traditions and promises for a day that seemed destined never to arrive..."
Circumstances had shifted dramatically from the era when Phylip and Oisin Blackwell pledged to safeguard these territories in trust for the Eldritch, awaiting their eventual return home. King Charles the First, a mere pawn of the Church, had instigated a brutal conflict that decimated the lands of numerous colonists from the old countries. Those survivors who submitted to his rule harbored deep-seated resentment.
The nascent Kingdom of Gaal appeared poised for dissolution and collapse within a couple of generations. Even if the Eldritch people, who had fled their ancestral islands with Phylip to escape the Church's advancing forces, would not witness the reclaiming of their homeland, their descendants certainly would.
However, fate had a different trajectory. As the years progressed and the Church embarked on its Second Crusade, the opportune moment to honor the Blackwells' solemn vow seemed increasingly remote.
"Everything shifted with Ashlynn's birth," Rhys stated, his voice thick with emotion he struggled to suppress. "She bore the identical mark that Phylip had depicted for Clair DuGaal’s lineage. It was the symbol of a witch, a Great Witch... The moment I recognized it, I immediately set sail for the Isle of the Drowned and ignited the beacon to summon Her Dominion, the Mother of Tides, or her coven. Yet... no aid arrived."
The assembled company listened with heavy hearts as Rhys recounted his desperate measures to shield his daughter. He described his attempts to cauterize the mark, conceal it with branding, and his persistent, fervent efforts to relight the beacon on the Isle of the Drowned. He laid bare every detail of his ordeal.
"Ultimately, I came to believe we had been forsaken," Rhys confessed. "That the ancient pacts no longer held any weight. Perhaps the Mother of Tides had finally succumbed to mortality. Phylip had estimated her lifespan to be at least five hundred years, but could anyone be certain he was correct?"
"I never intended to break our promises," he lamented, his head bowed in shame. "But when Bors Lothian approached me, proposing a marriage between Owain and Ashlynn and an alliance to support the Church’s Holy War... a sliver of hope emerged that I might forge a path forward for my daughter."
"My hope was that, out in the frontier, she might discover a way to connect with the Eldritch, to find a mentor as Claire had found in Phylip," Rhys explained. "Maela harbored a different aspiration: that by supporting Owain in the war and bearing him a robust heir, the Church would overlook her spiritual mark. I also harbored my own selfish desires: that Ashlynn would one day send one of her sons back to ascend my throne, thereby continuing Phylip’s lineage unbroken," he admitted, his head drooping with contrition.
"All those aspirations were extinguished on my daughter's wedding day, when Owain Lothian attempted to take her life..."
"No!"
"Why?"
"How could he!"
"Attempted? He failed?"
"Where is Lady Ashlynn? Is she unharmed?"
"So, this means war with the Lothians..."
A tempest of reactions erupted throughout the hall. It required a considerable amount of time for Rhys to restore order and elaborate further, but eventually, he revealed everything... Or, rather, nearly everything.
He explained Owain's reaction upon discovering Ashlynn's mark and the subsequent decision to bury her in the wilderness. He recounted Bors's threats and his demand for Jocelynn's hand in marriage for Owain, ensuring the pact remained intact. He detailed the falsehood Bors fabricated, procuring an imposter to simulate Ashlynn's withdrawal to the Summer Villa...
However, he could not disclose that Jocelynn was the one who had revealed Ashlynn's secret. That clandestine revelation, he kept solely for his own family to address. All other knowledge, acquired from Esselk’ti, the Witch of the Deep Currents, he shared without reservation.
"As your lord," Rhys concluded, his fingers commencing the unfastening of his doublet buttons. "I have failed you in every conceivable manner. I prioritized myself over my crew, and I abandoned our oath to contend with the Church," he stated, shrugging off his doublet to expose a torso that had never possessed the fortitude of a true warrior and had grown even softer with time.
"Baron Mervyn Stormwarden," Rhys addressed the dark-skinned baron, renowned for his unparalleled strength among those seated at the High Table. "I have failed both my ship and my crew, betraying their absolute trust," he declared, retrieving a whip from a side table, previously concealed beneath a cloth throughout the evening.
"A captain is not a king," he asserted firmly. "I shall accept a lash from you, and indeed from any man present who feels wronged by my actions..."
A hush fell over the grand hall. Rhys remained, his bare torso exposed, much like the lowliest of deckhands awaiting the captain's judgment before the mast. However, Rhys was no common sailor, nor was he a youth who could easily endure physical torment.
Nearly every gentleman present that evening had witnessed a sailor receive a flogging for their wrongdoings. Five lashes served as a punishment, ten could incapacitate a man, and twenty or more placed even the most robust young lad's very life at risk.
Yet, Rhys had just offered a lash to every man in the chamber, totaling over a hundred, and he did so mere moments after admitting to having made adversaries of the Crown, the Church, and possibly even the ancient nations across the vast ocean.
He might have single-handedly sealed their doom, and now that the truth was revealed, his survival until leaving this hall seemed uncertain.
