Chapter 4

                                    

                                          
"Oi! Be careful with me jewels ye filthy bastards!" Cora snapped to the men who were unloading their latest plunder into the very cavern where this all started. For 10 years they'd been hoarding their plunder in this cavern, waiting for the day that their curse would break, and they'd be able to spend it all. And tonight, it was finally time. 
Elizabeth was shackled as she was escorted through the cavern that was lit with moonlight and fiery torches. 
"Come, me Cora," Barbossa said as he reached out a hand and led his daughter to the pile of treasure in the middle of the cavern, the pile of treasure that sat like an altar and at the top sat the stone chest. 
Elizabeth had the good sense to be unnerved as she was ushered up behind them. 
"Gentlemen, the time has come!" her father decreed as their crew cheered, Cora joining in with them as Elizabeth noted the way the girl stood in the moonlight and didn't change. "Our salvation is nigh! Our torment is near an end! For 10 years we've been tested and tried, and each man here has proved his mettle a hundred times over and a hundred times again!" 
That cheer was the loudest of them all. 
"Suffered I have," Ragetti called as Barbossa continued speaking. 
"Punished we were, the lot of us, disproportionate to our crime! Here it is!" And he kicked the lid from the stone chest as it clattered to the ground, revealing the treasure that lay beneath it, the treasure that Barbossa ran his fingers across. "The cursed treasure of Cortes himself. And every last piece that went astray, we have returned. Save for this!" 
Cora pushed her hair behind her shoulders as she let the medallion around her neck glimmer as the crew's cheers echoed throughout the cavern.
"Come, me first mate, me daughter, me Cora, do the honours," her father invited as she slipped the medallion off her neck. 
"Lizzie, nothing personal," she grinned as she fastened it around her neck and the pirates cheered as their captain spoke once more. 
"Who among us has paid the blood sacrifice owed to the heathen gods?" he asked as they cheered. "And whose blood must yet be paid?" 
"HERS!" they roared.
"You know the first thing I'm going to do after the curse is lifted?" Barbossa asked, waving off his daughter who gave him a pointed look. "Eat a whole bushel of apples!" 
And the crew chanted, "Blood!" as Barbossa forced Elizabeth to bend over the chest and his daughter handed him a blade that seemed to be made of a crystal stone rather than steel. 
"Begun by blood," her father said, never one to miss out on theatrics. "By blood undone." And he ripped the medallion from her neck and he forced it into her hand that he promptly sliced open as Elizabeth gasped.
"That's it?" she cried and her father grinned. 
"Waste not," he replied as he curled her bloodied hand around the medallion and over the chest and the chants grew louder before they silenced, and the last gold piece fell into the chest.
Cora watched with rapt anticipation as her father staggered away from Elizabeth, his eyes closing as he inhaled a great breath just like the crew did as they waited. 
"Did it work?" asked one of the crew after a time, for nothing magical seemed to happen. 
"I don't feel no different," Ragetti said. 
"How do we tell?" Pintel wondered and her father rolled his eyes as he drew his pistol and fired a single shot right through Pintel's chest. 
"You're not dead!" someone exclaimed as Pintel remained upright. 
"No," he exclaimed, relieved he was alive before it settled on him what just happened. "You shot me!"
"It didn't work!" Ragetti cried out. 
"The curse is still upon us!" 
And then her father was grabbing Elizabeth by her arms, his nails digging into her skin. "You, maid! Your father, what was his name?!" he demanded as he shook her. "Was your father William Turner?!" 
"No." 
And while everyone else remained still, Barbossa raged on, picking up the bloody medallion. "Where's his child? The child that sailed from England eight years ago, and in whose veins flows the blood of William Turner?! Where?!" 
And Elizabeth said nothing as she let a smug smile sit on her face. And this time her father really did smack it off as Elizabeth went flying along with the medallion that he'd gripped in his hand. 
"You two!" Bo'sun growled as he faced Pintel and Ragetti. "You brought us the wrong person!" 
"NO! She had the medallion!" Pintel insisted as the pirates grew thirsty for blood.
"They did no wrong. They acted under me orders and brought us the one who had the medallion," Cora defended, her voice powerful and unwavering. 
"Yes, that was all we did! She's the proper age," Pintel continued. 
"She said her name was Turner. You heard her," Ragetti pointed out before they seemed to realise that maybe, she had been lying. And for a split second, the image of the Mystery Man's face flashed in her mind before she pushed it away.
"You brought us here for nothing!" one of the pirates raged as he turned on Barbossa. 
"I won't take second guesses from the likes of you, Twigg!" he spat back. 
"Who's to blame him?" another pirate sneered. "Every decision you have made has led us from bad to worse!" 
"It was you who sent Bootstrap to the depths!" another called as the crew roared in agreement and Cora placed her hand on the hilt of her sword as she gave her father a nervous look, one she hid well from the men. Her father had led a mutiny. She remembered and she wasn't naïve enough to think that the crew wasn't capable of doing the same, even if most of them were incapable of tying their shoelaces on their own. She was a fair fighter, yes, but that was against the living. Even someone of her skill would be nothing against undead warriors.
"And it's you who brought us here in the first place!" Bo'sun added as he drew his sword. 
Her father did the same from where they stood atop the altar before the armed pirates and Cora jumped atop the chest with her own weapon in hand. 
"If any coward here dare challenge me, let him speak!" he challenged. 
"And I didn't see ye blistering sea scum coming up with any bright ideas for lifting the curse or finding Bootstrap's child?" she pointed out, ready to go down fighting. 
"I say we cut her throat and spill all her blood, just in case," one of the men suggested as the rest of the crew agreed before Jack squeaked as he pointed at something and the Barbossas realised that Elizabeth was gone. And she wasn't the only thing that had disappeared. 
"The medallion! She's taken it!" the captain cried. 
"FIND HER!" Cora demanded as she thrust her sword into the air and the crew went running for the row boats.