Cecil turns towards Tripes with a toothy grin. "A ghost story, eh? Well.... Let me tell you about an island off the coast of Fausteqine
I was a youngin', workin' a cargo ship headed back home to Anthia, and I was helpin' the Second Mate on his watch. It was raining ice, I swear, a stormy cold slush falling from the sky. We were a small little boat, so it was me and his job to watch for ice floats, and make sure the ship didn't drift off in the storm.
With the rain and the dark, you could barely see your hand in front of your face, so we stayed close and double checked each other, prodding out into the darkness with these little lamps on the ends of sticks. In the darkness out there, though, I saw an island, with a big, old looking light house.
I pointed to it and asked what was out on that island.
He shook his head and said "Nothin'. It's bleak, nothin' there that'd be of interest to you, at the least."
Now, this peaked my interest, of course, but when I asked him what he meant by that he said that he 'didn't wanna be spookin'' me into uselessness.
Being the headstrong lad I was, I demanded an explanation. He told me that nobody had lived there for decades.
But the light in that light house was on, so that didn't make a lick of sense to me, "How could it get turned on if there was no one to light it?" I asked him.
"I said no
body. Didn't say no one."
Then a most curious thing occurred. That lighthouse went out.
And I heard a creaking.
And a ticking.
and a horrible scratching from under the ship.
I looked over the edge, and the sea around the ship was cracked up ice, shiny and black. It groaned as it grinded into our hull. I ran to ring the bell, but I felt the chill overtake me. I could hardly move for the ice that was pricklin' my skin.
I screamed over the howling wind for that second mate to warn the crew, but when I looked at him, he was grinning, larger than any man had grinned before, and grinding his teeth to the tune of that devil's symphony of crackling, screamin' ice.
I blacked out, and when I woke, we were in the warmer waters of Western Tritte. The second mate was gone.
They said that I probably got knocked out during the storm and that the second mate probably fell overboard, and maybe it's true, but I don't believe someone that had been through as many Faustian storms as that man would've fallen that easily.
Either way, not a bad story, eh?"
Cecil took a drink of his whiskey, sliding a throne the barman's way.
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