West.

Dago wanted to change course, but the East was giving him a strange feeling. He thought his gut was trying to tell him to avoid that part of Hell at all costs. He walked down the West path for as long as he could. He finally came across a cliff that was overlooking a giant black sea. He shivered a bit, realizing there was a strong wind whipping up. He was standing a bit too close to the edge of the cliff and he windmilled his arms to try to stay upright, but soon found himself falling into the ocean.

As soon as he hit the water, he felt all the air knocked out of him. He struggled, trying to get to the surface, but never found it on his own. He thrashed in the water, but quickly found himself blacking out.

A dull pain, right at the base of his skull woke him up with a groan. He tried to open his eyes, but quickly shut them again. Where ever he was, it was bright and it made the pain in his skull much worse.

“Sir, the castaway is awake!” came a confident voice.

There was a small hissing noise, which made Dago’s eyes fly open. That sounded familiar, like something he’d heard before he died… There was a huge sea serpent looking at him straight in the face. Dago gasped and tried to get away, but found that he was apparently tied to something very tall and behind him. He swallowed heavily and shut his eyes, expecting to get eaten.

“Loora, back off, we need to question him,” came an airy voice.

The sea serpent moved and Dago peeked at who his captor was, or rather, at his stomach. Dago tilted his head back and looked up at the over seven foot tall man. He wore clothes that made Dago think of pirates and privateers and had cold green eyes. The ropes were removed from around his arms and he looked and saw that he was tired to a mast of a huge ship. The tall man still regarded him with a look of a petulant child.

“Who are you?” the man asked, frowning.

“Who am I? What the fuck does it matter, who the fuck are you?” spouted Dago all of a sudden before he could think about it, “My name is Dagoberto Fidencio Vivar, not that you’ve heard of me. Are you some kind of reenactment junkie?”

Dago wasn’t certain why he was mouthing off like this. He didn’t think he could help it. The moment he tried to say something, several hundred more words try to tumble out at the same time.

“Hmmm, who is your father?” the tall man asked, seemingly unbothered by Dago’s current state of word vomit.

“I don’t fucking know, I don’t fucking care. If I could un-know my mother, I would do that, too,” Dago said, frowning at how much he said, “She never mentioned him, not that she mentioned much. Bitch.”

The tall man frowned again, but didn’t pry further in the subject. He seemed satisfied that Dago was telling the truth, but wasn’t happy with the results.

“Do you know who Dimitri Archer is?” the man said, eyeing Dago suspiciously.

“He’s an old bag with a magic spell to make himself look thirty-five. He died the same time I did and was a mean asshole who thought I was a VD trap,” Dago spouted again.

The man raised his eyebrows a bit when Dago said that, but nodded, convinced of what Dago was saying.

“Put him in the brig until we get back to the castle,” the man said stepping away from Dago.

“What the fuck is a brig? Hey, you bastard, come back here and tell me who the fuck you are!” Dago yelled as he was dragged away by several crewmen and tossed into the brig.

It took them a couple of days to return to the castle, in that time, whatever was effecting Dago’s mouth had worn off, not that he was done talking. He had grown hoarse from yelling as much as he could have. It didn’t do him much good. He remembered Zed being like that one day, babbling off whatever the fuck came to mind. He wondered if that was the same thing and what had caused him to be like that.

Once in the castle, he was immediately thrown in another cell. He didn’t spend very long there before he saw a small lantern coming down the hallway. It stopped at the cell across from Dago’s.