My name is Inigo Montoya...

The air had a tinge of saltwater to it that the elderly man found both familiar and relaxing. The sound of the ocean tide coming in to crash against the beach and dockyard and back again. Looking up at the sky with his hand over his squinting eyes, he could see and hear seagulls calling overhead. All around him he could see dozens of women tending to a fleet of wooden ships, oiling the wooden frames and decks to keep the wood preserved in the water and checking the rigging for any fraying to keep the sails strong. It was just strange to find that there were no sails in sight. The ships looked naked without them.

Sitting at one of the dock posts were a ship was tied back, Phin smiled as he breathed in the ocean breeze with his eyes closed. Whatever happened earlier that morning where he woke up in that temple, his breathing had never been clearer. He never felt better in his life. Opening his eyes and looking down at his waistline it was still a shock to his system. For the first time in a LONG time, he had to pull his belt tighter just to wear his pants. Did he lose weight? Or was it something else? The aches and pains in his knees, his hands and back were all gone. He could wiggle and bend his fingers again, where years ago he could barely hold a grip around a wooden spoon. His arthritis was gone, whatever blocked his breathing was gone, and considering he had just eaten, he hadn’t needed his insulin pen.

Looking over to where the Queen stood, she was speaking with some of the dock workers who bowed and explained something to the tall woman, but he was too far away to hear. While leaning in to at least get a hint, he felt a gentle hand rest on his shoulder, prompting him to look up and smile up to see Phillipus smiling down at him. Gesturing with a nod for him to move so they could both share a seat.

“How are you feeling Mr. Thracy?”

Giving his stomach and chest a pat over, the man breathed in and exhaled slowly, a smile on his face as he wiped his fingers over his mouth and chin.

“I haven’t breathed this good since I was in my twenties… Then again I’ve been smoking since my twenties.”

“Smoking?” The woman asked, tilting her head to the side slightly where her curly black hair spilled down her shoulder. “You mean with a pipe?”

“Uhm… Kinda.” He shrugged, explaining himself. “After we had Gary, Cleo pushed me to stop smoking. Took a while but the damage was there when I stopped.”

Turning his attention back to the queen talking to her subjects, Phin pointing over to the Amazonian royal.

“So, you’z two are… Together, right?”

Smiling warmly, Phillipus sat taller, folding her hands in her lap. “I am the queen’s consort. We have been together for many centuries.”

“WOW!" Looking between both women, Phin didn’t know how to respond to that. Scratching the back of his head, the man chuckled nervously. “Bet you’ve got some stories.”

“Nothing I would share with an outsider.” Narrowing her eyes playfully, the woman smirked. “If anything, the centuries have taught me a healthy amount of discretion.”

Raising his hands defensively, Phin nodded. “Right, right, I get it. Happy wife, happy life.”

Seeing the queen approach the two, Phillipus got to her feet and turned her attention to Phin to do the same. Clumsily he did, unsure if he should bow or nod, but the soft hand on his shoulder again told him he didn’t need to do so.

“I see that you two have been sharing words while I addressed my subjects, anything of interest?”

“Mr. Thracy was explaining the mantra of… What was it? Happy wife, happy life?”

“Uhm… Yeah.” Phin nodded.

“Hmm…” Not commenting on the two’s personal conversation, the Queen looked back at the shipwrights tending to their fleet. “It would seem they have yet to find where the sails have gone off to.”

Scratching his head again, Phin looked back at the wooden ships. “Yer missing sails?”

“Indeed, it happened just after you came to us. VERY strange indeed because the guards have NO memory of anyone stealing them off our ships.”

Phin didn’t know how to react to that. Who would steal the sails from a dozen ships? And why?

“Well… Hopefully they’ll turn up, would you like to see the progress of your vessel’s repair Mr. Thracy?”

Guided from one dock over to the other, Phin followed behind the two women and their guards, but was insisted on walking between the two. Their smiles hinting it amused them to have the man stand between them. Looking up to Hippolyta, the woman smiled back to him and pointed forward ahead, where Phin found his fishing boat hoisted up where he could see fresh boards being installed. The sight of which made the man grin as he picked up his pace to check over his old fishing trawler. Raising his hand, he let it trace over the course chips of the ship’s paintjob in contrast to the new wood hammered into it. Nearby a trio of amazon women carefully carved new components for the ship frame damaged from its crash beaching up onto the island. Seeing the Queen and her consort arrive, they stood and bowed just as Hippolyta made a simple hand gesture, telling them to be at ease. Their attention on the elderly man hobbling from one end of his boat to the next, they found his gait and mannerisms amusing.

“Hello ol girl, getting a face lift huh?”

Seeing the man admire the handy work of her shipwrights who held back chuckles as he pressed his ear against the hull and tapped at it with his knuckles to ear the difference between the new and old hull, the Queen took a step forward to join in his curiosity when she noticed a plaque at its starboard hull.

“What does this mean, who is this… Inigo Montoya?”

Titling over to see the name plaque of his boat, Phin chuckled a bit.

“I know… It’s bad luck to give your boat a joke name. But it was her favorite movie, plus she got a kick out of it.”

“Movie?” Asked the Queen, her head tilted in confusion as she gripped her staff and looked to Phillipus, the other woman shrugging.

“Eh… You’re probably right, it’s an oldie, not many know it.”

A cry overhead caught everyone’s attention, looking up to find the flitting shapes of large birds flying under the light of the noon sun. Raising his hand over his eyes to try and keep out the sun hitting his eyes, Phin thought he was looking up at vultures circling overhead.

“You’ve got some pretty big birds here.”

Squinting to the light of the sun overhead and raising her own hand over her eyes to look up, The queen could see what he was talking about. She had never seen such birds on her island before. Hearing one of them call out, it didn’t even SOUND like a bird, it almost sounded like…

Bringing her hand away from her eyes, Hippolyta called to the guards and shipwrights to arm themselves as the birds overhead descended. It wasn’t until they landed on all fours and blew out a turbulence of rotten air from their wings that the amazons realised the birds that were circling them the entire time were not birds at all. Whatever they were, they were truly hideous. A twisted, putrid amalgamation of a carrion bird and what one would dare describe as a woman. Their arms were oversized and lanky, sporting curved talons like the claws of an eagle where their hands and feet would be. Their backs hunched, where a pair of black feathered wings folded over their backs, the feathers greasy and bristled in appearance. Their bodies were almost completely covered in those feathers… Save their faces.

Ratty strands of clumped hair hung from their leathered scalps, faces withered and wrinkled like a crone, but with the uneven, overgrown, chipped teeth of some terrible animal that pulled back their thin lips into a **** sneer. Their eyes glassy and sickly as they looked up and grinned back at the queen, and to the man who backed up out of fear.

“Ssssooo… The old male wishes to see his ship restored?” Hissed the leader of the harpies, standing up on her clawed feet to branding a finger and scrape it against the fishing trawler’s hull. The sickle shaped talon easily carving a groove into the wood as she approached Phin. “Hoping to leave our paradise and tell the rest of your filthy kind how to find ussss?”

“Ocypete?!” Gapsed Hippolyta, gaining the harpy’s attention as she looked over her shoulder from her extended neck, like an owl. Her smile so sickly wide, her lip threatened to split as cracks formed, bleeding as a result. “What has become of you?”

“I have embraced the GIFTS of our goddess, my Queen.” Hissed the former general as she brandished her talon to the woman triumphantly. “This… THISsss was NEVER a punishment! I am closer to our goddesss of justice more than ever! Like this, we can finally punish those mortal filth that made ussssss suffer so long ago.”

Narrowing her eyes and taking a defensive stance with her royal staff as a weapon, the Queen and her guards eyed the creatures warily as she found they made to surround Phin, who quickly found he no longer had an exit.

“HE does not count sister.” Hippolyta declared. “This one is not one of the warriors so long ago who used and defiled us. As your queen, I command you to cease.”

With a shrill scream that stunned the guards and their queen, Ocypete backhanded the staff out of Hippolyta’s grip with one claw and grabbed her by the chest in the other. Pulling the amazon off her feet and slamming her back into the wooden docks, knocking the breath out of her lungs as she looked up to find a bird’s talon pin her head between two knife blade long claws. Phillipus found herself in the same straights as she struggled against her former sisters. These monsters fighting with all the fury and intensity of wild, rabid animals as she fought off her attacker who tried to bite her face off. Only keeping her just at bay with the shield she had acquired at the last minute.

“YOU are no longer my queen!” Hissed Ocypete, her wings outstretched as the woman under her claw struggled to break free. Being pressed down with so much **** it was hard for Hippolyta to breath.

“You have become soft, soft and weak like the others who desperately cling to your beauty, and in doing so you cater hand and foot to these filthy animals who soil our paradise the longer they sssstay here!”

“They are innocent!”

“Innocent?! Let our gods decide if they are innocent or not when I drench my claws in their ichor.” Smiling sadistically, Ocypete gripped at the queen’s neck. “And perhaps you along with them for the crime of letting them step foot on our… AaaaaAAAAAAAAAARGH!”

Rearing up in rage and trying to reach what was stabbing into her shoulder, Ocypete rounded back and pushed off what was on her back with her wing. Seeing Phin tumble onto the docks and sprain his arm when he landed, Ocypete drooled in her mask of rage. Looking over to her shoulder, she found a small cylinder like a pen stabbed into the meat of her shoulder, plucking it out and sniffing the fluid dripping from the small contraption, she crushed it and turned her rage blinded eyes over to the injured fisherman sitting up and cradling his arm.

“HOW DARE YOU ATTACK ME!”

Rushing forward like some crazed animal, The Queen was still dazed and trying to regain her footing when she gasped at the sight of Phin trying to get away, only for Ocypete to swipe her talon across his stomach with one claw and grab him by the throat with the other, her face twitching in mindless fury as she slammed him against the dockyard over and over again, screaming into his face, raising her claw over her head to form a fist.

“I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU ON THE SPOT LIKE YOUR FILTHY SON!”

The blow never came, what did was the impact of bronze staff striking the harpy in the face so hard it created an air burst. The monster’s feet lost grip with the ground below, only for her face to meet it instead. In the split second Ocypete’s head practically bounced off the wooden floor boards of the dockyard, a dull whistling sound filled her ears just as the headpiece of the staff met her again, right between the eyes and sending the offending monster across the sprawl. Kicking up splinters of wood in her wake until she came to a stop at one of the dock posts, colliding with it with enough momentum to reduce it to a spray of wood chips.

Staggering to all fours and wiping blood from her nose and lip, Ocypete looked up to see a furious Amazon Queen standing between her and the ruined man behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she found a regiment of amazons lead by their remaining general and princess heading their way. Hissing with rage, the harpy got to her feet and spread out her wings, giving off a screech that was heard by the other harpies she came with who opened their wings and took to the air.

“This… Isn’t… Over!”

Launching herself high into the air, Ocypete joined her flock overhead and flew off out of sight. With the enemy in retreat, Hippolyta turned to fall to her knees where her daughter Diana and Phillipus tended to Phin, the man convulsing from his injuries as Diana propped his head up to keep him awake and breathing. Looking down at his injuries, his stomach was bleeding profusely, one of her amazons had put pressure on the wound to buy time but by the way his eyes twitched, and his breathing faltered, he was both in shock and concussed.

“PHIN! Stay with us, we can get you back to the purple ray chamber, just stay awake for us.”

Looking up with dazed eyes, and a cloth dabbing at his mouth, Phin reached out with his good hand to rest it on Hippolyta’s wrist. “Hey sweetheart… Just going to pick up some dinner for…” Leaning his head back, Phin Thracy went limp. Going into a panic, Hippolyta and Phillipus try to rise action from the man. Only to be heart broken to find him dead. Hot tears running down her face, Hippolyta pulled the man into her arms, sobbing into his shoulder while her amazons watched, stunned in their queen’s grief.

Slowly and gently laying the man down on the ground, Hippolyta wiped a tear under her eye, gently resting a hand over Phin’s chest.

“Nubia…”

“Yes, my Queen?”

“Prepare my panoply of war.”