Completed Old Dreams and the Sea

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Dewdrops gleamed in the early morning sunlight, evanescent as dreams. Elinyra watched and listened to the unfolding symphony of a new day; insects stirring from plants in search of nectar, birds stirring from the trees in search of insects. A snuffling hedgehog was returning to its den, late for its daytime slumber. The druidess smiled sadly, warmed by her affection for the creatures of her beloved forest, but numbed by the beginnings of grief and a name that lingered like a thorn in her flesh.

She stood from the bed she’d made from leaf litter and stretched as if to dispel the melancholy. Today she’d return to the rough, rarely-used road that would leave Falwood on its way to the city of Alliria. It would be a long path across lands she’d never seen before. Beyond the forest. That was a disheartening thought, indeed.

“Je'ti attolre fon iach fy absendien.” I pray thee, be well in my absence, she spoke reverently and touched the rough bark of a nearby oak with her left hand. She glanced up, green eyes brimming with tears, into the strong, twisting branches of the old tree.

“Stay vigilant, guardian.”

Tearing herself away, she gathered up her few supplies; the food she had gathered over the last few days, an acorn that she resolved to keep as a reminder of home, her bow, and her strength.

As much as she wanted to hope, she knew in her heart that she’d never see the Falwood again.


It was a cold, windy day when she arrived at the first of the settlements that dotted the coast of the Akiva Sea; A little over a ten-day since she left the Falwood behind. Ragged clouds hung ominously over the sea and frothy waves lapped at the shore. Not a good day for seafaring – in fact there was not a fisherman to be seen on the rough water. That was unfortunate, because a good ship was the fastest way to get to Epressa barring a very long land voyage to a portal stone and it was unlikely any captain was daft enough to put a ship out in this weather.

Elinyra wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or concerned that Captain Eghrak of the Sea Demon was just that daft. The oddly cheerful dwarf wanted to barter the cost of her passage, which annoyed her greatly, but eventually they settled on what she presumed was a fair price. She took a restless post on the deck, tasting the salty wind blowing in from the sea, and watched some other passengers file onto the ship. Among them...

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Daft as he was, he was a decent captain. Decent enough to win the hearts of his men, and hire them a proper guard for the crossing.

Least, that's how Garrod had spun his offer when they met further westward, along warmer shores and brighter seas. Gods, how he missed those warmer seas. As he rest top a barrel, slumped against his fat-bladed sword.

"Oy, Garrod, you sure yer worth the coin ye charged me?" Captain Eghrak grumbled, as his boots came to a clunky stop within earshot.

Garrod smirked, his eye still shut. "Yes," he answered simply.

Eghrak huffed a gruff and throaty rumble. "Haven't done a damn thing since ye joined us, have you?" he smiled behind his thick mustache.

"Well," his green eye cracked open, and he stared down at the dwarf captain. "Must be I'm lucky then, wouldn't you say?"

Eghrak grinned wide with crinkled eyes, and laughed small. "Right, right," he said as his thick fingers pulled a pipe from a well worn belt pouch. A small glass match which he struck against his jawline, the crystalline stick's head burned bright, and he dipped the flame into the bowl of his pipe. Blade weed burned, and he puffed blue smoke from his lips in a big plume. "Well, spose it doesn't hurt," he said as he turned around and went on with more captainly business.

The monster hunter leaned his back against the cabin's wooden wall, and went back to trying to get some sleep, his kit, piled about beside him. Only his white-bone relic remained fixed to his arm. Its opal jewel shimmering, almost gleeful as it watched all those who came aboard.

Elinyra

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The last of the passengers of the Sea Demon had filed on board. The captain hardly needed to shout commands to the crew; they were experienced enough to make ready to cast off with impressive speed. Mooring ropes were hoisted and coiled up, the few items of cargo on deck had their fastenings checked, and a single sailor climbed up to the crow’s nest with the ease of a squirrel up a tree. Captain Eghrak took the wheel as they brought in the anchor and set sail.

“Kiva preserve these fair winds,” the dwarf petitioned jocularly and blew a large puff of blue smoke into the northeasterly wind. “Although I could do without these blasted clouds!”

Hesitancy gripped Elinyra like a steel trap as she watched the seaside village drift out of sight. The ship would generally be following the coast, which brought her the barest touch of consolation. The empty plane of the ocean made the forest-dweller deeply uncomfortable. She let herself imagine there were trees and mountains beyond a horizon obscured by a ragged mantle of stratus clouds.

Her other problem was the rocking. The sail billowed with a wind favorable to their journey, but the seas remained rough. It began to rain, really no more than a mist, but enough for the other passengers to seek shelter below deck. Elinyra remained above, herself fastened to the deck with both hands on the railing; her feelings of unwellness were not going to be cured by crowding into a wooden box.

It was quiet on deck without the other passengers; just herself, a few members of the crew, the captain at the helm, and someone who didn’t quite look the part of a sailor. The white-haired man sitting on a barrel, seemingly oblivious to the weather and the activity around him, struck her more as a soldier. The armor, the weapon, one ominous-looking gauntlet styled like a skeletal hand – it all seemed out-of-place for nautical gear. He looked like he was expecting trouble. If he was here for protection, then it begged the question: protection from what?

Likely just another passenger, she told herself. But no, she had seen him on the ship before boarding.

By Awen! If she was going to be stuck on this ship for at least another few days, she might as well assuage her fears at once. She tried not to look as unpleasant as she felt when she smiled wanly and greeted him.

“Hail, sir. You are remarkably well armed.” Her gaze flicked to his greatsword. “Is piracy a concern on this stretch of sea?”

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Garrod's eye peeled open, the green band of his iris narrowed ever so before it grew fat as his pupil constricted in adjustment to the light. He blinked as droplets pittered and pattered against him.

"Pirates?" he asked, over the din of so much churning sea and falling rain. His arms were still crossed easily about his chest. He slowly unfolded, and sat up a little straighter. He luxuriated in the little movements that stretched his muscles, and his whole frame arched one way, then the other. "No, not too often," he looked the woman over. Noted the ears and the wrap around her arm. He smirked. "Can never be too safe though,"

He figured it was best to look like he was doing something. The captain was a salty seadog, but these passengers? One never knew what business a little inspired confidence could bring. He came off the barrel, and his boots slapped against the deck. He rolled his shoulder, and craned his neck as his muscles carried his weight.

"Sides' the sailors can handle most of the scallywags that would harry such traveled coasts," He ccast his gaze out to the waves, and the distancing shore. "Monsters though," his eye seemed to twinkle in the grey-light, and he wore a cat-like smile. "Can't ever really account for them, now can you?" He scratched at his scruffy jaw with his dagger point claws. "Names Garrod, by the by," he said and bent low to the pack that seemed stuck in behind the barrel. He rummaged through its insides and pulled a waxed cloak that he was quick to drape around himself, pulling the hood up.

He rose and grabbed up his sword, taking it from the thick leather strap that helped him shoulder sling the weapon with ease, its long run against his back. He set to patrol the perimeter of the ship, his stride easy despite his odd armor, and the choppy seas.

"Might want to tie down if you aren't used to this weather!" he called back to her, and jabbed a finger towards some lines of rope that were stored beneath the rails of the ship.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

"Monsters?" She raised an inquisitive eyebrow. She supposed the tales of sea monsters that trickled into the villages in Falwood must have some truth to them after all. Although in her rather small experience with humans, she'd noticed they bestowed that crown on a great many things they didn't understand. Then again, she'd found herself thinking more about her own monsters of late.

A sudden wave broke against the side of the vessel, making the deck buckle for a moment. Elinyra nearly slid into the railing but managed to correct herself before then. She was getting her sea legs... slowly.

"What sort of monsters are you speaking of?" she persisted as she trailed Garrod on his round.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

His eye narrowed at the sound of her voice as the ship rocked, its hull groaned as a wave sprayed over the side and splashed across the deck in white-turned-glass-clear wash.

"The sort that prey on ships," he said as she came closer, and he went on with his walk as the ship lurched up along a wave's crest. "Rogue Sahagin, and kivrin for one," he stopped, turned to her, his eye measuring her reaction. "Not that I personally have anything against the folk," he said easy. "But," he turned forward and went on with his steady step. "They've been known to press-gang sailors and travelers," he seemed to laugh a little. "Put captures to work in mines, and trading vessels, but, its good for business to call em monsters, rather than uncommon pirates," he shrugged. "Faced down a pack of Krakarl once," he shivered, and his face scrunched in disgust. "No fun, that,"

He came to a stop near the prow of the ship, the sound of the hull cutting through the rough sea a constant roar he found... oddly calming. "Why leave the falwood?" he asked her without looking. "You an emissary or something?" He looked to her sidelong. " Don't know too many elves travel alone beyond the cover of the canopy,"

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Garrod's question caught Elinyra off-guard, and for a moment she paused to consider what - if anything - she should tell him. Those few of her kin who truly understood her condition considered her self-exile a merciful solution. The more pragmatic among them would describe her departure as an act of cowardice, because she couldn't face what had to be done to protect the forest.

She hid her apprehension well enough in the fact that the rocking ship made standing still an awkward endeavor. She braced herself against the front railing so she could hear Garrod over the hissing assault of the wind.

"I have an important duty to carry out for my circle and for my people," she replied. Warily, she asked,

"Do you know anything of the blight of the Eldyr Tree?"

 

[Garrod Arlette]

"An important duty," he repeated, and turned his eye out to the sea. He knew little about such things. "I wish you luck," he said quietly, though her question caught him off guard. "The Eldyr Tree?" he asked as he turned to regard her anew.

His mind scoured his memories for the name, his eye cast over to the horizon, that distant line of land that stretched thin across the north and east. He knew the land he could see was not the Reach, and much less the Valen Wilds that spread before the spine. But he had worked that territory long ago, as a much younger man, still under the wing of his mentor.

"Nothing more than old fairy tales," he said with a sad smile. One too many nights of a red faced and falling over Sinns acted out in the theatre of his inky memories. "Of glory past. Of curses and demons. Though," his eye squinted, and he recalled a time they had trecked across the hills of the spine on a Wyvern hunt. "You can see the blight spread across the old wilds from miles away," he turned back to her. "And the Eldyr Tree, there at its center, taller than any castle keep, or tower a mortal ever built," he looked her over again.

"You plan on goin there?" he didn't hide his doubt. "Tough land, that." he turned back, and began to walk the other side of the ship as the wind whipped and the rain went on falling. "Best not to go alone if you can help it!" The ship dipped down into the trough of a wave, and the prow sliced into the water as gouts of the sea flared up and over the ship's nose in violent wash.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra managed to remain steady against the heave of the ocean, although her hair and face were now thoroughly soaked from the last wave's passing. From what the druid could gauge of the sea's general temperament, it cared not at all about the ship nor its occupants. Still, she asked the storm kindly if it would be on its way soon.

"I must do this alone," she muttered, though she couldn't be sure it was audible above the roar of the waves. She thought they were easing their display of power, little by little. Or perhaps her exhaustion had finally caught up to her.

She shivered, as much from the chill of the night air as the memory that crept across her consciousness like a spider on a windowsill. Curses and demons seemed uncomfortably fitting. A strange commonality, but commonality all the same.

"It is late. I wish you a good night," the waterlogged elf said suddenly and started to walk to the stairs leading belowdecks. She turned back to Garrod with the first genuine smile she could recall in the last ten years. "Thank you, for the conversation.

"I am Elinyra."

Despite her dislike of being confined in the hold with the other passengers, Elinyra quickly fell asleep in an open hammock, swaying in the endless tumult of the sea.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

He watched her pass through the dark of the cabin door and into the shadows. "Elinyra," he said to himself amidst the swirl of storm and sea, and he turned away, his eye cast out to the dark waters that swelled against the hull of the ship.

The vessel rocked more gently as storm clouds billowed across the firmament and the moon peered through the parts in the rolling sheets of purple-grey. The world around grew quieter, and his gauntlet's points and edges gleamed beneath the silver glow. Light traced around the opalescent jewel fixed upon his old relic, and the gem eye seemed to drink in the luminescence, and rain water gathered around the well of its fixture.

Twisted, your fate, oh bearer mine. Came the old and familiar voice. To come across such a one, in such a place. Always a laugh, hidden behind jagged green teeth. Always the hiss of hunger. The bite of cruel humor.

It was harder to think, when things grew quiet. For Belephus could be heard all the clearer when the world grew tranquil.

"Oy!" A voice from on high came up. Garrod turned his eye up to see a man waving down to him from the crow's nest. "Mind grabbin me some rations?" He waved a bucket tide to some rope. "Rather not have to climb back down, ropes bein as slick as they are,"

The rain pattered on. A low and gentle sound. The sea winds howled, and the waves crashed. Quieter now. "Ayy," Garrod called back, and went toward the cabin. Might be something he could find that would help him stay up through the night.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The sky cleared and the sea became as smooth as glass over the next few days. Elinyra took to sleeping on the deck at night wherever she could be out of the way of the crew but still be beneath the open sky. She found that she enjoyed sailing at night more, when she had the comfortable familiarity of starlight above and, on rarer occasions, such small miracles as the phosphorescent glow around the ship as it moved through the water. And the night helmsman didn’t have the captain’s habit of smoking and bellowing bawdy sea shanties.

It was on one such evening that she stood near the aft admiring the blueish glow dancing on the small waves. Tonight’s show was especially memorable because of the other colors radiating from somewhere below the surface. Glowing, shifting, like an underwater aurora.

She heard footsteps from her left, but she couldn’t look up from the mesmerizing spectacle that spread out beneath the ship nearly to the horizon. The silence she’d been finding quite enjoyable was presently broken by the person scratching their fingernails on the railing.

“What... is... this?” she asked whoever it was, wishing they would stop that irritating scratching.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

He had been on the opposite side of the ship from Elinyra when the light show first started. The ethereal glow, otherworldly. As much time as he had spent upon the seas, he had never seen anything like it. It pulled him closer to the railing, his eye studying the way it bent and moved beneath the water. It looked alive.

"That can't be good," he muttered beneath his breath.

The sound came quick and grating. Not the natural roar and howl of winds that eased the waters of his mind, but the scrapes and scratches and harsh crunches of structure being lost. Bit, by scraping bit. He grit his teeth, and his clawed hand scratched deep lines into the wood of the rail.

"That damn sound," he growled as he looked down the starboard hull and straight into the water.

"We've sprung a leak!" a voice called out from the cabin. "All hands on deck! All hands on deck!" came the cry, and sailors ran about, double time.

"Garrod! What in the blue hells is that light?" the helmsman called out.

"Engineers, below deck! Breaches need plugging!"

A scream came from bellow deck. Horror filled, it trembled with agony. Passengers screamed shrill and came storming out from bellow deck in a panic, wide eyed an manic. Their faces painted by the false aurora's light.

"Get away from the rails!" Garrod shout out, his heavy sword still at his back, he grabbed up a sailor's axe hung beneath a long wet appendage, translucent and aglow with a ghostly light, stretched slowly over the wooden barrier.

"Wraith slugs!!!" Called out one of the sailors. "Wraith slug swarm!" A bell clanged and clanged and clanged as the ship drifted through the night.

A growl came from Garrod's mouth as he brought the axe down on one slug's arm. The head went clean through and chunked into the taffrail, a spray hissed out of the amputated tentacle, an it burned against the wood with trails of vapor.

A large gelatinous body was steadily pouring over, and Garrod looked at it wide eyed as he yanked the axe free and stepped back.

You might need my gifts, oh bearer mine. The old demon whispered with glee.

 

[Maeve Blackwood]

When the sea was smooth, it was of no difference than a storm to Maeve. Her ship sailed through the water when necessary, as ghost ships are wont to do. She rose from her bed in her captain's quarter, taking in a deep breath and savoring the smell of rot and decay. The wood would always be ruined, the ship would always have holes, and the flags would always be tattered. It was a wonder how the ship moved, but it was entirely supernatural.

The Kiva's Fury was beautiful in what could be called its life. Now, it was just a desolate ship. She stepped down the stairs from her quarters and walked out on the deck. She stretched, her undead bones popping. How long had she slept? Or stared at the ceiling, rather.

The skeleton crew she worked with (pun intended) were not human. They were more kivren, sharing the same fate as her own. An ethereal glow surrounded Kiva's Fury, magic helping where manpower was short. She cracked her neck and looked out at the sea. That's when she noticed the other ship, sailing in the distance. A wild grin blossomed on her lips and she quickly called out.

"Oi! Helmsman! Turn her port side. Take a look, in the distance thar. I be feelin' a wee froggy, maybe we can 'ave some fun!" she yelled. The quiet waters were perfect, for a good portion of the crew heard her. Excitement seemed to bring them back to life, metaphorically. "Faster! Faster! Put some more wind in those sails. We'll see wha' we can get from it."

Maeve moved toward the bow of her ship. The pirate in her crow's nest turned his telescope in the direction she had pointed and spotted the other ship, and cackled with glee.

And so Kiva's Fury went, and as it drew nearer its ethereal glow began to light the way. The ship, once grand and luxurious, was now only a shade of its former self. The wood had blackened with rot and barnacles clung to its hull. The sails couldn't possibly be any good, what with being in rags, but they still moved in the wind, and it was stained a dark, dark red. Coral clung to its topside, having formed during the time the once wrecked ship lay deep beneath the ocean.

Elinyra Garrod Arlette

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

It had been the captain's second-in-command, a half-orc woman named Shi Lynn, who'd come up. Elinyra had met her only a few times, but she seemed unusually peaceful for someone with orcish blood... until she found a crewmate lazing around when there was work to be done.

"I don't know. But it's pretty, ain't it?" she remarked in a thick accent Elinyra could not place.

"Yes, truly." The scratching noise continued to grow in volume, but she noticed that Shi Lynn was completely still.

The next thing they heard was the shouting from below deck. It didn't sound like the celebratory kind.

"Get away from the rails!" Elinyra heard Garrod yell from across the ship, among other screams that tore through the still night. The two women shared glances of confusion before Shi Lynn darted away towards the cabin. Elinyra made for her belongings, which fortunately she'd kept close at hand. She hurriedly strung her bow and threw the quiver strap over her shoulder, her mind reeling at the unfamiliarity of the battleground.

She looked up, instinct and training pressing her to find higher ground. She took off at a dead run towards the nearest of the ratlines. They were only a few yards away, but something slithered over the railing just at the bottom of the ropes. At first all she could see was a glowing tentacle grasping the rail, followed by several others that floundered on the deck until they found solid holds. Then something like a body rose from the ocean, prismatic and smelling sharply of some acidic ichor; something almost twice as big as the elf.

The tentacles seemed to work in a unified motion, bringing bits of broken ship towards a lightless mouth as the creature dragged itself over the ship railing. Elinyra nocked an arrow and aimed at the mouth.

There was no cry of pain as the arrow found its mark, not even so much as a gurgle. The creature didn’t flinch either, although its entire form went dark like a snuffed candle. Yet it continued to move forward at an almost leisurely pace, even when she plunged a second and third arrow into its mucilaginous skin.

In the surreal flashes of light and shadows she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, but too late. A caustic pain spread through her left shoulder blade only a moment after she’d felt the creature touch her back. Again, that sharp acid odor assailed her. She forced herself to roll away from the grasping creature despite her shoulder's objection.

Her right hand was shaking on its own accord. She felt the thorn digging into her palm again, a phantom pain that should have long passed but haunted her like an evil spirit. Something darker and hungrier than the horrors of the sea. She tried to will it away.

“Oil!” She heard a shout, almost distant in the symphony of panic and battle and cracking of the ship. “The lantern oil, whatever you can find! Dump it on them!”

And amidst all the chaos, the approach of a ghostly ship on midnight waters went perilously unnoticed.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Gelatinous bodies. Tentacles moving in unison. slowly crawling across any impediment. Arrows had little affect, as did limbs lost. While he had never faced these horrors, he had faced others like them.

The call for oil came loud across the chaos. A voice made bold by desperation. Sailors started to dump the oil onto the creatures, quick, working in practiced unison against the slow encroachment of the slugs. Oil lanterns tossed forward, their glass broke, their oil spilled. Swaths of fire came to life in hiss and roar and screeching whistle as the briny-water was boiled out of the the amorphous monsters that had been caught in the sudden bombardment.

Others had slick golden oil splashed onto them by souls brave enough to close in. A tentacle caught one such sailor by the ankle, his skin bubbled and popped and sloughed away as the appendage went on with its work, dragging him closer to that hard mouth that so greedily ground whatever reached its chitinous plates with a crunch and a crunch.

It was the screams that got to him. The looks in their eyes that had Garrod snarl and wind his arm back to throw the axe with a smoldering grunt. Head over handle, handle over head, the axe did fly. With wet squelch and deep cut the flung weapon sunk into the slug, who but wrapped its mass about it an slowly began to eat away at wood and steel with fizzle bubbles and pops.

The greatsword came free. Angular slab of cold steel with runes aglow, red hot. Golden white. The white dagger claws of his gauntlet stabbed against the steel, sparks striking out from the spike of motion. A long scrape of nails against flat steel blade. Red hot dots of glow sprayed out. The run of the sword ran with golden blue flames. Tongues, hungry to find any flesh they could take.

A stab. Whole blade pushed forward. Twisting turns of blaze touched oil coat as steel punched through acidic mass. Blaze came across the body of sea and light. A scream, born of liquid turned to steam. Garrod ripped the blade free, slashed across the midsection of another mass of aurora flesh, heel tip dug in and turning with the weight. The steel road ripped through. One slug ripped in two, fire eating away at its mass, accelerated by oils.

Garrod turned the weight of his sword, handling the momentum of the swing to turn onto another such creature with a whirlwind strike that streaked gold flame. The oils caught flame. Wholly and hellish. The slug flesh shrieked. But so too did the passengers of the Sea Demon.

Elinyra Maeve Blackwood

 

[Maeve Blackwood]

While Kiva's Fury made its lumbering turn toward the Sea Demon, Maeve raced to the crow's nest. She quickly climbed the mast with the practice of someone who did it often. The pirate liked a hands-on approach, and the vantage point was perfect. As she reached the top, the first spray of fire licked at the night sky. Immediately, she grabbed the telescope from her crew member and squared in on the fiery battle taking place against rather disgusting creatures.

"Shiver me timbers," she breathed, a cold, unearthly cloud of fog that was every bit as creepy as her ship on the horizon. "Am I goin' t' 'ave t' save 'em then pilfer 'em?"

Maeve brought the telescope down a bit from her eye, so she could look unfiltered at whatever it was that was laying siege to their ship, a firm frown thinning painted lips. Another sigh, and she handed the telescope back before sliding down the ladder. She landed on deck with a thud and a creak of the wood beneath her, hardly pliant in its death.

"Full speed ahead!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice disembodied and wavering. It wouldn't be heard over the crackle of fire and the screams that were echoing from the Sea Demon. And though the ship sailed along at a decent speed, it was not nearly fast enough for Maeve, but she didn't toy with the bond she had to the ship; to make the ship go any further would take a lot of energy that she didn't really have right now. She needed more than a skeleton crew to properly man the spectral vassal.

"Blimey, Maeve. Ye needs t' stop bein' so nice," she muttered under her breath, recovering from the leap. A moment later, she darted across the deck and threw herself into the water. The change was swift, her legs coming together as one limb. Then that limb split again, revealing eight grasping tendrils. The kivren used those tentacles to push her faster beneath the water.

When she reached the other ship, it was a battle she swam through. Swirling under the boat, she went to the side less sieged in her opinion. One of crimson arms rose to the boat, leading the others so that Maeve could climb the side of the ship. Her tentacles would be the first part of her body seen, and it dripped water. In the dark, flashing fire, she could easily be mistaken as one of those creatures.

Garrod Arlette Elinyra

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The Sea Demon was in a bad way. Cold sea water was beginning to rise in the ship’s hold, and the fires set on the wraith slugs cast a smoke screen across the whole of the upper deck, making it impossible to determine the full extent of the creatures’ damage. The flaming oil proved an effective weapon, but it seemed a choice between death sentences; melted and eaten, burned alive or drowned.

Elinyra didn’t consider any to be a preferable choice, even as she faced down two of the sizeable sea creatures that were sampling bits of the ship as they encroached on her position. She turned to jump down the stairs to the middeck until a cloud of smoke drifted up, stinging her eyes. She had no idea what she’d be vaulting into.

And out of the haze a ball of light came charging. It was Shi Lynn, holding a lantern. She cast the oil-filled glass at the slugs, but was met by an acidic tentacle that fouled her aim. She reeled back, clutching her eyes with a cry of agony and rage, avoiding the limb’s grasp but falling backwards over a broken section of outer railing into the sea. The tentacle blocked Elinyra’s path, but she had a grim feeling that she couldn’t have helped Shi Lynn anyway.

Surrounded by such callous death and casual chaos, Elinyra was filled with a mixture of anger, anguish and disgust that erupted into sanguine rage. Her hand tingled, her palm damp and stinging as if her old wound had opened and started to bleed. That stinging sensation seemed to extend beyond her hand, like a bitter, living growth poised to strike.

She cast her right arm out towards the nearest wraith slug with all of the fury she held inside, as if throwing a stone, and a whip-like vine erupted from her hand. The weapon lashed out and wrapped around the tentacle that stood in Elinyra’s way, the vicious, barbed thorns along its length bit into the slug’s gelatinous skin without regard to the creature’s caustic defense. Necrotic lesions spread from each point of entry, withering and destroying the appendage.

This was enough to make the slug pause, as if it was baffled by the loss of one of its limbs in its own brainless way. Wasting no time to consider her surprise at this newfound talent, Elinyra pressed the offensive. The vine whip whirled and coiled and lashed out, again and again, each time finding a weak point to grasp. Elinyra’s lack of training in using such a weapon was countered by her unbridled fury.

She rushed back to the port side of the ship once she’d dealt with the two wraith slugs on the upper deck, but there was no bobbing head, no sign of anyone hanging from the side of the ship nor in the water. Elinyra cursed and made haste for the remaining battle.

Just at the bottom of the stairs, she saw the smoke part as another tentacle slithered over the railing. A dark form pulled itself up on the deck, smaller than the wraith slugs and undeniably solid against the flickering bursts of flame, but an invader nonetheless. Elinyra snapped her whip up, ready to strike.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

It stunk. All the flesh that burned. Human. Dwarf. Evlish. Slug. It all swirled and mixed and choked not just the senses or breath, but the mind too. As tears ran down the side of his face, born from all the madness that swirld about and that thick putrid smoke that stung at its whites, he bared his teeth and stood wide of stance, with sword held before him.

"What in the fuck happened to that good luck of yours, eh Garrod?!" Captain Eghrak half laughed behind a grin that was all teeth, long and gummy with a bestial horror, his eyes just as wide too. He was soaked, and he laid down a sailor he seemed to have pulled out of the sea. He put his hands upon her chest, and was quick to pump down in steady beats. "To, us! Sailors of the Sea Deamon, to us!" The captain bellowed out above the roar of fire as he went on with his work.

Survivors still stabbed at and hacked at the burning bodies of boiling bubbling slug flesh tangled with and wrapped around souls lost to their pulling arms and grinding maws. Eghrak snarled.

"To us you salty sea dogs! Heed your captain's call, less you want to be slug food!" the mustachioed dwarf roared as Garrod hacked down clean an arm that dared to reach out and try and grab them into the fire.

Some heard the call and rallied there behind the captain and Garrod, and together, the band of sailors drove back one more slug as all the ship burned before their line.

Shi Lynn coughed up a swell of sea water, and the Captain's grin took on some humanity.

"Captain!" Another voice called out. "The Hull is shredded to bits, and, and these bloody things are coming through the planks!" A young sailor Garrod knew as Filoa reported, a fish spear, worn and corroded, but still sharp and held strong in her hands.

"Oy, Garrod!" The captain shout out as the monster hunter cleaved down on one slugs' brainless head, runes ablaze, a blast of fire ignited about the metal core that was the greatsword, and the slug ballooned outward and popped into a cloud of smoldering flesh, steam, and licking flames.

White vapors whisped about Garrod's blade as he stepped back, his sword whirring from the low guard thrust, back into the long tail side stance. "Yeah?" he managed through heavy breaths.

All you need do, oh bearer mine, call out to me... his demon whispered.

"I think we can handle ourselves out here, go an..." the captain's eyes caught some movement to his side, saw Elinyra with her thorn-vine-whip, and looked to where her eyes were looking. "What in the blue blazes..." Some other sailors saw it too. A humanly shape. Only... just a whee bit off. Just a whee bit stranger than it should've been. Some readied to charge it, "Hold!" the captain barked, and they held. Through gritted teeth the dwarf captain snarled. "Who dares bored the Sea Demon? Ye master of these slugs?!" he demanded.

Garrod took two sharp steps forward, and brought his sword down with another overhead cut. Blade still hot, it sizzlled and hissed as it went through.

Elinyra Maeve Blackwood

 

[Maeve Blackwood]

Clearly Maeve wasn't thinking clearly when she ascended the side of the ship and then plopped down on deck, octopus legs writhing as they carried her. She looked at Elinyra, at her whip held at ready to swat her.

"Don't! I be a...scallywag!" she called out, raising her green, rotting hands in the air. The emerald pendant she wore glowed with her frustration. With the thrum of magic in her veins, she spoke a single word and the arms of her lower body came together, and in their place she grew legs. Maybe that would earn a warmer greeting, if not for the creatures. One of which seemed to have followed her path. Hearing it, she swung around to face the eldritch slugs.

She threw her arm out, palm upward as she spoke in her native language. Coral began to blossom on the creature, thickening and growing into it. The creature writhed until it was too confined to move and then a wicked grin split Maeve's lips. She closed her palm, nails digging into greening flesh. With another word, the coral exploded, leaving nothing but petrified slug pieces.

"See! Heartie!" she shouted over the sounds of battle and the crackling fires on deck. "Yer ship be sinkin' 'n fearful things are aboard. I be nah here t' hurt ye; I be here t' save ye."

Another slug approached her, and she repeated the same spell, more coral decorating the floor of the deck. She couldn't help but wonder why their ship was attacked by something clearly sentient. She looked past the two, to her own ship finally nearing the Sea Demon.

"Wants t' fight, or flee? Looks like these things aren't stoppin'. Ye wants t' hop on mine?" she asked with a cant of her head to the frightening, unearthly looking ship. Its holes didn't seem to be a problem, what with the ship being a ghost ship and all.

She looked to the Garrod, then, also ready to fight her. A ghastly smile crept on her lips as she awaited their answer. Did they even want to be saved?

Elinyra Garrod Arlette

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Maeve’s words cut through the fog in Elinyra’s mind like a ray of sunlight. As if emerging from a dream, she blinked and stared at the kivren. The thorn whip shriveled up like a strand of dry grass and fell to the deck, leaving her empty hand clutching a slippery warmth that dripped from her palm.

She cast a helpless glance at the ghost ship pulling up next to the Sea Demon, unsure if she felt relieved or terrified at its appearance, then to the captain.

“Captain?” she asked once she found her voice again.

The seasoned old dwarf knew a pirate when he saw one, and this kivren was clearly not the normal sort at that. He threw a concerned look towards the huddle of passengers cowering behind Garrod and the other armed members of the crew. He knew full well that their survival hinged on his decision – but to try to save the sinking vessel, or to risk their lives on the word of a pirate of all things? On any other day, he would have cut the scum down here and been done with it.

Eghrak surveyed the ship as well as he could beyond the smoke and the sharp odors of burning slug flesh. It seemed that they had driven back most of the swarm, a task made easier by the foolhardy idea of dousing the vermin with oil and setting them alight, but the damage done in the process could spell the end for his precious ship. Eghrak was stubborn, but not stupid, and he wasn’t going to have the drowned souls of his passengers on his conscience.

“Alright,” he snarled with a defeated grimace at the pirate then jerked his head towards Garrod and Filoa. “Garrod, Filoa, help the passengers onto the other ship. Any of the crew who want to go can go with you.” He walked up close enough to Garrod to add under his breath,

“I’m sure it’s obvious to you, boy, but I’ll warn you anyway; don’t trust this kivren and her unholy ship.”

“What of you, captain?” Filoa asked with some alarm.

Eghrak glanced up at her with a hard, determined grin. “I’m the captain of this ship. No captain worthy of memory leaves his ship behind.”

“But, capt-”

“You have your orders, sailor!” he barked and set off to see to the damaged ship and whatever foul creatures still lurked aboard.

“I’ll try to slow the fires – buy us more time,” Elinyra offered, heading for the nearest burning part of the ship without the need for assent.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Caught between slugs and a ghost ship. Was that a saying?

Only for those as miserable and unlucky as you, oh Bearer Mine. The voice of his demon whispered cooingly sweet.

Garrod hefted his blade up, and rest it against his shoulder as he stood up, some slouch to him as he stood with some ease. Most of the sea slugs dead, and now nothing left but a choice. He gave the beguiling sea-witch a nod of acknowledgment. A motion for peace. However small, and however brief. He would help the passengers on board, and when the last was to cross, he would see Filoa, and the look of betrayal there in her eye, and he would look to the captain, and see how he stubbornly squared up against a stray slug.

With quick boot-strides, Garrod crossed the deck of the Sea Demon.

"Yo ho! Come to help me save the ship, eh Garrod?!" Eghrak grinned heartily.

A heavy swing of his sword down, split the slug open, an upward slash, with his whole body arced behind the motion stirred up gale-winds that blasted the slug back into the licking flames.

"Haha! Yes!" Eghrak shouted with delight. Until a heavy blow to the back of the head dazed the old sea dog. "Wha... who..." he turned and saw Garrod looking down at him. Pommel still raised over him "Have ye gone daft?" the Captain asked. A second blunt blow across the temple clunked his lights out. Garrod grumbled, and worked his sword awkwardly onto his back before he heft up the old captain.

"Can't risk you goin and getting yourself killed, captain," The monster hunter said through clenched teeth. "Who the hell is going to pay me if you do?"

"Captain!" Filoa cried out, rushing over, stopping only some yards away from Garrod and the unconscious Eghrak. "Garrod... are you ok?"

Garrod was red in the face, breath held as he struggled to hold the densely weighted captain up. "H-help me," he managed.

Filoa nodded, and together they dragged Eghrak off the Sea Demon.

Elinyra Maeve Blackwood

 

[Maeve Blackwood]

Now that she wasn't being seen in the same light as those slugs, Maeve breathed a sigh of relief. Her ship pulled abreast, and lowered its gangplank across the rails of the other ship. They'd have to climb up onto it, but it was sturdy, if somewhat otherworldly. It was a walk made of dying coral, bumpy in some places. It gave off the same ethereal glow that lightened Kiva's Fury. She crept her way closer to her own ship, walking as if she were still controlling tentacles. A smooth glide, really.

"All aboard Kiva's Fury!" she called out, her disembodied voice seeming to echo. There was a smug grin that followed those words, a lighter side of the pirate. She glanced to Elinyra first, having noticed the whip crumble into death, but that was a discussion for a different time. Preferably after she finished playing hero. Her gaze met Garrod, and she spoke.

"I can save the ship, but 'twill take a lot o' time 'n energy t' force the water back out."

It was a little late in the exodus from the sinking ship, but she'd offered it for the captain's sake. After all, she lost the Kiva's Fury for some time before she raised it from the depths. She looked up at her ship as people crossed the coral walkway. The tattered black sails were greened with algae, and the ship itself seemed like it could sink at any moment--and it could. What wood remained in the ship was rotted, and the underside of the hull was covered in a thick blanket of barnacles.

When the last of the Sea Demon's crew and guests were upon the decrepit, rotted ship, she looked back at the various fires still there, pinpointing the enemy slug things. As a show of good measure, she beckoned the sea to her will and sent sprays of water over the fires so they would go out.

A moment later, after making sure everyone had switched ships, it was her turn to climb up onto the gangplank. She wasn't in a hurry to return to her ship; perhaps she felt some melancholia at it's demise. She could fix the ship and patch it up temporarily, if that's what they wanted. She waited quietly for an answer.

Elinyra Garrod Arlette

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The Sea Demon’s passengers were grim and silent as they crossed the eerie glowing gangplank onto Kiva’s Fury. The sight of a ship stitched together by nothing but some arcane force, combined with the curious gazes of the skeletal crew, struck fear into the hearts of even the most expert of sailors.

“All afire and smells like swamp gas,” muttered one of the Sea Demon’s crew with a mixture of awe and terror. “Gods save us…”

But quite a few of them had not forgotten that it was this vessel and its captain that had saved their lives. Filoa smiled and thanked Maeve once she had finished assisting Garrod with carrying a very dense dwarf over to the other ship.

Filoa threw a smug glance at Garrod. “Seeing as the captain’s out cold, and the first mate is still in a lot of shock from her swim earlier, I guess that puts me in charge for the moment.” She laughed, as if she couldn’t believe her luck – or lack of it.

“So I say, aye. We should save the Sea Demon if we can. Call me sentimental, but I ain’t ready to let this old girl go towards the abyss yet.”

Elinyra had returned about this time from her round of the ship. Maeve’s water magic had done more to douse the fires than she did, which she considered a boon, and the last of the slugs had been slain. Now that there was finally a moment to breathe, she keenly felt the blistered skin on her left shoulder as well as the gash in her right hand. It became increasingly difficult not to gasp with every motion of her arm and torso.

She winced as she hauled what remained of her gear off of the Sea Demon, just behind the last of the ship’s remaining crew. She, too, had to pause to consider the nature of the ship she was boarding with a measure of trepidation. The smell of death, the feel of it, enveloped her. Enveloped everything. Like the veil between life and death.

Taking a last deep breath of the salty sea air, she passed over.

She settled in the most secluded place she could find in the perished ship’s hold and set to healing herself before seeing to the injured among the other passengers and crew. In the dim light of a lantern, she set out what precious little remained of her supplies; early as it was, the journey was proving more dangerous than she had prepared for. Unwrapping the bit of sailcloth she’d used to bandage her hand, she was surprised how little the gash had bled considering its depth. She dunked the hand in a bucket of water and started to rinse the dried blood from the wound with a healer’s efficiency.

What she saw when she brought her hand into the light caused her breath to catch in her throat. It looked as though a knife had pierced her palm, but the flesh around the wound was black and decayed. Strangely, there was no pain. She could flex her hand as normal. But there was something horribly wrong.

“There is some unnatural sickness within you,” the archdruid had told her. “There’s nothing more I can do. I’m sorry.”

Elinyra resolutely bound her hand again. Whatever kind of healing she needed, she would not find it on this ship. In the meantime, the less anyone knew, the better.

Garrod Arlette Maeve Blackwood

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Garrod nod in agreement with Filoa's suggestion. "The captain seemed mighty keen on saving the old ship," he tacked on, and saw Elinyra emerge from the bowels of the wooden construction, a nod in the druid's direction as she made her way across the Kiva's Wrath. His eye noted the singe marks on her robes, the run of blood that trailed behind her.

Yet she moved off. Effort taken in keeping the pain behind her eyes from letting out.

He looked down at his own arm. Belephus, white as dry bone, his red pants, the same rusty color they always were. Better to hide the blood when it did run. He heard the others mention stink. Swamp gas and the smell of fire. How used to stench had he become? To the vile and defiled. He cast his eye up, and looked around the haunted old thing they now tread upon.

There was a sense of kinship there in his heart. A drop of understanding that rippled out from his chest.

The ship, Kiva's Wrath, like him, was but a vessel. A thing to be captained. Possessed. He smirked, and he could feel Belephus smile there in the dark of his mind. Could see the green flame of his mouth split the abyss behind his lost eye. Always a smile.

"Excuse me, Captain," he said with a curt bow to the Kivrin sailor, and he moved on, found some crate to sit atop to better look over the passengers as the waking dead that crewed the ship lurched about.

You owe them nothing, Oh Bearer Mine, Belephus cooed, all too pleased. Yet you look over them, while you starve me, to whom you owe your life.

Garrod looked down at the gauntlet, and the white jewel that gleamed there in its setting. It seemed to smile at him. The strange lines that curved and twist about the armor's geometry, cruel and happy. Garrod's own lips twisted up, bared teeth, half-mad was his upturned expression.

When was the last time he had taken the demon off?

Elinyra Maeve Blackwood

 

[Maeve Blackwood]

Maeve nodded to Garrod and Filoa, understanding the need of saving a ship. For she'd been through it before. The Kiva's Fury was raised from the dead, a corpse among a watery grave. It had broken her heart, but then again it was also her fault. It was that rage, that anger that blossomed from the shipwreck, that had guided her to raising it from the depths. Tonight, it would be some of that rage-filled magic that saved the Sea Demon.

She watched as the last of the ship's crew loaded onto her ship, then turned away. She sought the stairs that would lead downward, following the gentle sound of lapping water to where the hull was damaged. A chunk was taken from the ship and this was where Maeve would have to work her magic. Saving a ship wasn't on her itinerary today, but here she was, and there was the water filling the hull of the Sea Demon.

The water was high enough that for Maeve to completely move into the space, she had to shift. She ducked under the water to better inspect the damage, and then she began casting. The emerald pendant around her neck began to glow this time, its wearer having to pull on more magic than she usually did. It cast an eerie glow in the water filling ship.

Calling upon her magic, the sea witch held her hands out toward the hole and began to speak something that was unintelligible. Whatever it was that came out of her mouth, it worked. The water started to recede, flowing out the very hole it came in through. It took some time for her to manipulate it out, and then she had to hold it there. It was difficult, controlling the force of water, and then holding it back like a wall. In the light of her pendant, the water shimmered brightly.

Now was the tricky part. She had to maintain the wall between water and ship while rebuilding some kind of barrier. The ship had already risen back up without the water weighing it down anymore, and she shifted again, carefully while maintaining the water wall. Holding one hand palm toward the water, she took a deep breath and then conjured again.

Coral, though dead, began to form along the hole, growing upon itself to form a solid barrier against the water. It wasn't as pretty as live coral, but it would work. It was a temporary fix though it would last for at least a month--she hoped.

When she arrived back on deck, she was soaking wet, just as she had been when she first entered the ship. She moved to cross the coral gangplank, gaze sweeping over the refugees from the Sea Demon in search of their captain. She said out loud, to anyone that was listening:

"That oughta do the trick. Least long enough fer ye t' get the ship repaired."

Elinyra Garrod Arlette