Open Chronicles The Capitulation of Coraliv

[Talus]

The Red Ashes

Catapults clattered again and again, sending massive balls of flame spiraling over the water and slamming into the city of Coraliv. Naja watched the projectiles in the dark of night, her eyes lighting up each time one of the twelve ships fired.

There was a steady rhythm to it now. The ships staggered their fire so that no minute was met without a ball of flame soaring through the sky. The Archon could hear whispers of excitement behind her, her eyes closing for a moment as she took a deep breath.

She could feel mages within the city, distant pinpricks that were unfamiliar to her.

A frown touched her lips, but she did not speak. The bombardment would continue until Barrin and the others made it to the docks. Their success integral to ending this siege in a matter of hours instead of days.

Near the City Center

Talus and the others moved through the streets as carefully as they could. Most everyone had cleared the city itself, moving into buildings and basements in an attempt to get away from the bombardment.

Every now and again a building or tower would explode with fire and rock. Some of the streets held potmarks where projectiles landed, the chaos of the siege already beginning to set in as he heard screams and bells of alarm.

The group of Dreadlords turned a corner, Talus taking half a step back as he spotted two guardsmen moving quickly through the street.

They ran in the direction of the Dreadlords, clearly hurrying towards some battlement. Talus stepped forward, drawing the small dagger on his back. The instant the guards ran past the corner the Apprentices stepped forward, grabbing one of the men and lifting the dagger to pierce his throat.

Before the blow could land a voice echoed out.

"Stop!"​

It was a hushed whisper, the call coming from the Barrin. Talus' blade stayed, his eyes flickering over to the First Level in confusion as he saw that the other man had been grabbed.

"Hold them."​

The Dreadlord offered no explanation, only stepping to the other man that had been caught. Talus frowned, catching an odd blackness moving down the First Level's arm as he pulled up his sleeve and moved to the captured Guard. Barrin grasped the man's cheeks, forcing his mouth open.

An odd sort of black sludge fell from the man's palm and into the mans mouth. Tendrils of black and gray shot out from the guardsmen's throat, the man buckling and coughing as something skittered over and beneath his flesh.

The Dreadlords holding the guard let him go, allowing the man to fall to the ground as he coughed and wretched.

Talus watched as the guards skin paled, watched as he heard the sounds of cracking bone, watched as the guardsmen transformed and shifted into...the Apprentice had no idea what. The pit of his stomach rumbled, and bile filled his throat as the once guardsmen was twisted and warped in front of his eyes.

"What the fuck." Talus said quietly as the creature pulled itself from the floor, and stared at Barrin with cold dead eyes.

The First Level only smiled, glancing at Talus and the Guardsmen that he still held before he spoke.

"Go. Kill."​

Without another word the creature leaped away, rushing down the street in the opposite direction of the docks as Barrin stepped towards Talus to repeat the process a second time.

 

[Harrier]

If Mathquil recognized the names of either the speaker or the book, he made no sign of it. <I will relay your compliments and estimates,> said the ephemeral, featureless ghost. <Perhaps my master will see fit to assist you.>

He vanished.

###​

When the ghost returned to the tower, Harrier had packed what she truly needed. In a word, not much. She'd come here by ship with a pair of large trunks, and spent happy months with the contents of said trunks. Books, specimens, experiments, gadgets, tools -- a good portion of her collection. But she couldn't very well saunter through the streets with a dozen undead porters and three hundred pounds of gear. Her path to survival was very much in doubt at the moment, but whichever direction it went, it certainly didn't include luggage.

No, what she really needed was quite minimal, courtesy of years on the road. A knife, a walking stick, a tiny rod of curious black stone that cast sparks easily, a jade pen that shivered when she touched it, an inkwell and inkstick, three sheets of paper folded small, a small necklace talisman for purifying water, an extra pair of socks, and good boots.

Apart from the stick and the boots, the whole affair weighed less than two pounds and fit easily inside her weathered travel clothes.

Mathquil flickered back to her, and her silver ring went cold. Harrier listened to the ghost's muttered report as she put locking and concealment charms on her trunks, just in case things went better than anticipated.

"You're sure she said di Ossatura? And she's the one who could see and hear you?" Harrier went back out to the stone balcony. The Anirians would be landing soon, if they hadn't already, either overtly or covertly. From this perspective she hadn't a clue.

<That was the name, master.>

Though Harrier had left the ranks of Elbion's Maesters years ago, she kept a reasonably close eye on her hometown and the academy where she'd lived for so long. There'd been a girl -- Harrier might even have taught her once upon a time -- who dabbled in necromancy and got herself expelled. Ondine di Ossatura, or something along those lines. If she'd read one of Harrier's books, that virtually guaranteed the Elbionese connection. That particular book had sold ten copies at most. A long story.

So: another necromancer expelled from Elbion. Much younger, but apparently competent enough to stay alive and earn a place with a mercenary crew. There was a chance, and a decent one, that together they might be able to create options ex nihilo. At a guess, di Ossatura was just as low on those as Harrier.

She let Mathquil rest in the silver ring, grabbed her walking stick, and headed for the walls.

 

[Sierra]

Pale eyes widened. The sudden fear she felt was very was almost overwhelming. And then she realized it was her own.

It wasn't just due to the man's unique magical ability. It was that gleaming twinkle in his eye. The glee and pride behind his creation of the twisted magic. Eyes flickered to Talus. Fingers twitched at her side. One brushing against Hal's before she stepped away.

"I'll go spread fear on the streets. We know where the royals will be evacuating to. I suggest we cut them off. Sir." Sierra bowed her head. Barrin finished his work on the guard Talus was holding, power lusting eyes turning to the apprentice.

"Go. Take another apprentice with you."

 

[Harry]

Dark brows furrowed at the how the guard's body grotesquely shifted into the form of something beyond Hal's own understanding. Clothes ripped as the former guard's body morphed. The other noises, those of cracking bones and caterwauling caused a strange sickness to swirl in the Apprentice's gut. He looked away, rotating his head as he scanned their surroundings.

Not wanting to witness the encore, Hal turned to Sierra.

"With my magic, I can contain those that attempt to flee." His logic was sound. Aside from the damage he could do directly to people, the massive structures of ice he could shape also did well in controlling areas. That aside, he would feel at ease at her side. "I will go with you."

 

[Rob Yew]

The barrage of flaming artillery continued to pound the walls, or sail past. The Thronebreakers hunkered down behind their battlements, waiting for the inevitable approach of the warships.

Even Ondina knelt behind the stone, though the knight with the hole in his helmet remained standing.

Don Arkaitz nodded up to him "Going to introduce us to your friend?"

"We're not friends," was all Dina said.

Jakes and Kestral carried Marcos away on a stretcher and the absence of his moans of pain took some of the stress away.

Shaking his head, the leader of the company turned his head toward the younger mage. "Galen, what exactly can you do?"

"Illusions, mainly."

"How big?"

"Well, it depends on how much time I have. How many materials."

"So if we gave you half an hour and all the materials you need, you think you could do something about this bombardment?"

Galen thought about it for a moment. "I guess... I could create a sort of mirage effect in front of the walls to try to throw off their aim. If someone were able to stir up the ocean waves that might also help."

"Don't know that we got any tidecallers, get over to that tower and start preparing your ritual. I'll send Aimrik with you. Titian! Get over here."

A sullen-eyed man with long, dark hair and a web of scars across his face came over to them.

"Aimrik, watch the boy would you? He's going to work a bit of magic on us. And please, not another Raimon incident."

"Raimo-" Galens tarted to say, but a look into Aimrik's eyes set him quiet. They were calm eyes, utterly at ease in the midst of this siege.

"Let's move, mage."

As Aimrik Titian and Galen headed off toward the tower, Dina looked slowly toward Arkaitz.

"She's coming."

 

[Talus]

The Red Ashes

Naja stood implacably on the deck of the Red Ashes, her face a complete mask of nothingness. Every now and again her eyes would track one of the massive balls of fire as it slammed into the walls or some high rise building.

Sieges were, as a point of fact, boring. There wasn't really much to do until the battle started, and watching a bunch of catapults fire in repetition wasn't exactly the most exciting thing. The Archon blinked, and then glanced towards one of the other ships.

This would go on for hours, longer if Barrin and the others failed in their task.

They had brought enough for days worth of bombardment.

For a second Barrin hesitated, and then nodded.

"Go, kill any Cataphracts you can."​

The command was a stern one, and no other advice was offered as the First Level Dreadlord instantly turned on his heel and began to walk away. Down the street where he had sent the two monsters one could already hear screaming, the creatures rending flesh from bone wherever they found it.

Talus shivered, then looked at his two friends. "Good luck."

The young swordsmen was not entirely sure that they were the ones that needed it after what he had just witnessed. Both Sierra and Hal got to walk away from a man that had just turned two men into utter monstrosities.

He still felt sick.

Talus turned, falling into step behind Barrin before he turned and spoke again.

"Don't die." He told the other two Apprentices as the pack of Dreadlords headed towards the docks.

 

[Harrier]

The fight-or-flight instinct is a dangerous thing, never more so than when there's nowhere to run. And an island is the definition of 'nowhere to run.' As Harrier walked its streets, Coraliv began to tear itself apart.

The fault lines predated the siege, of course. That merchant lord and those laborers had always seen themselves as natural enemies. When he bolted his sturdy door, unwilling to share an extra five minutes of life -- assuming the door could buy him even that long -- they tore it down. They dragged out his bodyguard, put cheap blades through gaps in ornate armor, and threw the merchant from his own roof. Then they, the laborers, barricaded themselves inside and pretended they'd managed to escape what was coming.

Harrier paused in the bloody street outside the barricade. Prudence suggested an escort. She eyed the fallen guard. Converting him to a basic walker would be a simple affair, but tonight demanded more. A proper sacrifice, then, to make a strong and agile protector.

Fortunately, she had something of comparable strength to jettison.

"You lied to me," she said to thin air. The silver ring went cold on her finger. "There are tunnels after all, aren't there. Ways into the mountain. I'm embarrassed I took you at your word, Mathquil. As if my death would free you."

She knotted her fist and drew away the considerable strength she'd invested in binding the ghost over the years.

"Be free, if you can call it that. Fade or pass away."

The night air shuddered, and again when she threw all that power into the armored body at her feet. The guard got up, reclaimed his gilded sword, and stood ready -- still bleeding, minds numb and half-dead. He vibrated with aggressive energy totally at odds with his blank, slack face. When Harrier walked away, the undead bodyguard followed.

Her fresh sense of security lasted minutes, if that. Screams rattled down a smokey side road. Harrier squinted and regretted the lack of a reliable ghost scout. Al-Kaateb might be able to fill that function, but Harrier was loathe to risk the clairvoyant scholar that way. Better he stayed bound to the jade pen.

An inhuman figure emerged from the smoke: bluish skin, long arms and claws and tongue, all daubed in fresh blood. Harrier took a shaky breath and admitted to herself that she had absolutely no idea what the creature might be. An unknown species, a cursed man, an Anirian weapon, a warped specimen of undead -- something interesting, one way or another.

Now was definitely not the time for curiosity.

The creature loped toward her with incredible speed. Her freshly undead guard took the initiative and met it halfway in a brutal tangle of claws, blades, warped flesh, and armor.

Irritation, of all things, bubbled up in Harrier's gut. She'd just now made her protector with an eye to the long term, but the enemy creature looked capable of doing serious damage. Best to avoid that on a night like this.

Harrier threw out a hand. The creature's latest victim, a dead civilian woman of no consequence, lurched dully out of the smoke and latched onto its back. The creature threw her off with ease -- and the bodyguard's ornate sword punched through the creature's skull.

The tongue proved to be the most interesting and easily accessible sample. Harrier wrapped it and kept moving, undead guard in tow. Those claws had left scrapes and dents in the bloody, gilded armor, but he moved with the same frenetic energy as the moment she'd created him.

The two of them -- the living woman and the obviously dead man -- climbed the steps to the battered walltop. Harrier leaned over and eyed the sea at the base of the wall. Her gaze tracked to the beautiful Blackfort and the rest of the fleet, then settled on Ondina di Ossatura and her -- at an educated guess -- undead companion.

"Di Ossatura, I presume?"

 

[Rob Yew]

"In the flesh."

Dina stood. She did not come to a height with Harrier. Their companions loomed behind them. Mirror images. Well, mostly. Dina was shorter, her hair darker, and her eyes opal black. Harrier's speech was educated, her cadence professorial. Dina's was as flat and lifeless as their shared profession. The younger necromancer looked past Wren to her companion, eyes narrowing on the terrible gouges in the armor.

"My, my."

Don Arkaitz frowned, glancing between the two women. "Who is this then?"

Ossatura's lips twitched. "Maester Harrier Wren. Rumors of her demise have been greatly exaggerated."

"A maester, from Elbion?" Arkaitz looked hopeful. Poor man. He should've known better.

"Former maester."

"Ah," any thought of further support from Elbion vanished. The soldier recovered quickly. "Welcome to the walls."

Another fiery boulder whistled overhead.

 

[Harrier]

There was certainly something off about the girl - not as a mage per se, but as a person. Blunted affect could mean nothing or, conversely, anything. Harrier filed di Ossatura in a bin marked 'do not turn your back.'

Don Arkaitz, by contrast, came across as an unambiguously useful man. A well-groomed noble, pragmatic and accustomed to combat, perhaps the leader of this fighting band. Damage and incoming catapult fire suggested his mages, if any, were dead or poorly suited for defense.

"My walker killed a monster in the street," she said. "I don't know if it was Anirian. There might be a second front."

The wall shivered at a brutal impact. Harrier stumbled against her guard.

"But I suppose this is where we are. You know, di Ossatura...decades ago, men used to butcher whales here." She pointed at the water. "Right here."

 

[Rob Yew]

The girl’s eyes widened in understanding.

“Did they now?“

Don Arkaitz, however, got to his feet. “A second front? Forget mirages. Kestral, go grab Galen and Titian and investigate. Ondina...”

“Yes,” she turned to her armored companion in the gray and white tabard, “Go.”

The armored hulk and Kestral went clanking away to find Galen, permitting Ondina to return her attention to Harrier.

“So, whales,” there was a fire in her eyes. An excitement that hadn’t been there before. “Where do you propose we obtain the energy for such an act?”

 

[Harrier]

"You know, I've spent years of my life on the water. The Cairou River, Black Bay, Bayou Garramarisma." Harrier stepped up to the crenelated bulwark and rested a hand on the stone, trusting her guard to watch her back. She kept Ondina di Ossatura in her peripheral vision, though. "There's an abundance to steal, a little here and a little there. The surge of waves, life on the seabed, the future of the balance."

Down there in the dark, a wide stretch of water grew still and cold. Small bodies flopped weakly in what became a bitter slush.

"The local fishermen and crabtakers will have a weak harvest for years, assuming they survive the night. That's all sacrifice too, in its way."

In her mind's eye she dove deeper, stealing bits of strength from anemones and barnacles. With that strength, she listened for the resonance of ancient pain, grandeur brought low: the whales slaughtered to extinction by the ships of Coraliv. She found their scattered remains as she'd found a hundred thousand bones before.

To raise all those skeletons would be impossible, even for two necromancers, even with all this gleaned and curated power to draw upon. One had to manage one's expectations.

​

 

[Sierra]

Sierra couldn't help the jerk of her head in Talus' direction.

Don't die.

Eyes flickered to Hal.

The same words he'd spoken to her when they'd been stranded on the island. Stormy-greys zeroed in on Talus and she gave him a quick, silent nod. As if to echo his request. They both know it would be a silly thing to respond to. To promise.

Death was always close to a budding dreadlord. The nature of the lifestyle that none of them chose for themselves.

Sierra silently fell in line next to Hal as they made their way deeper into the twisting streets of the city. She knew where the entrance to the tunnels were that lead outside the city. An underground cave system with another escape route to the sea. The royals would be waiting there for a small boat to take them to their escape ship. Hopefully, she and Hal could cut them off before it was too late.

 

[Harry]

There was an uneasy silence between them as they first separated from the group. Hal, like Sierra, only offered a nod in response to Talus. After making some progress, his pace gradually slowed.

“I’m glad to see you’re fine,” He said, finally able to flash a smile at Sierra now that they were out of sight.

With some assistance from Sierra, the two traversed narrow pathways and through the caves. Barrin had ordered to eliminate any Cataphracts they could. Heavy, enchanted armor made otherwise unremarkable men a rather pesky challenge. At least, according to second-hand accounts that was the case. Hal had never fought against a heavily armored opponent, at least none outside of drills conducted at the Academy.

They stopped near the exit of the cave system. On the other side would be fresh air, and a path to the docks where their targets would be.

“Isn’t this kind of similar to when we went on that mission before, when on the way back we got stranded?” He reminisced with her, “Maybe I’m falsely remembering.”

 

[Talus]

The Red Ashes.

Someone had found Archon Naja a chair. It was a high backed thing, almost a throne. She sat upon it lazily, leaning back and watching Coraliv as it slowly became consumed by the siege.

A fire had sparked within the inner city now, one of the projectiles likely having struck something flammable. She could see the faint orange haze in the distance, smoke rising into the nights sky. She glanced briefly at a small mechanical contraption in her pocket, then motioned to one of the officers nearby.

"Prepare one of the ships."​

There was a nod, and then the man ran away.

Southern Docks

Talus felt sick to his stomach. The middle of Coraliv was now in chaos. Buildings were falling down, fires had been set, and civilians rushed so quickly all over the place that it was hard to keep track of where anyone was at any given moment.

The work he and Sierra had set here worked well.

In the chaos Dreadlord Barrin had taken eight more men, using his magic to twist them and send them right back into the crowd. Each time the process had made Talus want to vomit, and each time Barrin had that sickening look in his eye.

As they passed through a small alleyway Talus tried not to think about it, his fingers tightening on the small dagger in his right hand. He was still at the front of the group, and as they approached the opening to the southern docks he held out a hand. "There will be more than guards here, Sir."

He spoke to the Dreadlord quietly.

"The Docks and walls will have the majority of their forces. The Militia and some of the Cataphracts." He paused for a moment then frowned. "Probably that Mercenary company too."

Barrin nodded, pulling the others close and speaking just loud enough for Talus to hear as well.

"We cut through them all, head towards the main gate house. The mechanism for the harbor chain will be there."
​

There was a small chorus of agreement, and then the Dreadlords prepared themselves.

Talus was the first to step out of the alleyway, the small dagger switched to his left hand as he drew his sword with the right. Almost as soon as he stepped out he spotted group of guards patrolling the water, one of them spotting him.

"INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS IN THE BA-"​

His words ended as the chainmail cloaking his body suddenly crunched to the side of a pea.

 

[Rob Yew]

Ondina could feel the ambient energy being guzzled up for Harrier's spell and her opal-black eyes watched the older woman's power at work in the world between worlds.

She reached out and added her own sorcery, leeching from the coral as she had seen Harrier do to feed their combined summoning. She stole from the waves too - taking their strength from them. But the future of the balance? A rarer term. Something she'd seen alluded to in scripts, more common in the elvish annals. They had a different name for it, the Echoes of the Earth. For the world was alive and it remembered all that had happened. Drawing strength from those memories upset this balance Harrier spoke of and tilted the natural order of things. It could deplete the fertility of soil, dry up seas, and make natural disasters more likely in the future on an order of magnitude.

The College would disapprove.

Elsewhere ​

"What do you mean, they might be already inside the city?"

"Yes, Galen," Aikrim and Kestral said at the same time as the three of them and Duvain went through the city at a jog.

"You're a mage, don't you sense anything?" Aikrim asked gruffly.

"I- let me see." Reaching out with his mind, Galen extended his senses and thought as far as he was able to while they jogged.

 

[Sierra]

Eyes flickered to Hal as she glanced down those narrow stairs carved into rock. Their targets should be down those. She could feel emotions beyond so there were people down there. Hard to pinpoint how many.

Since they'd been rescued from the island, she hadn't been able to spend alone time with Hal save for a passing glance. Maybe a quick brushing of fingertips. It was too dangerous to do anything else. And now that they were mostly alone on this mission, the temptation was all the stronger.

"If only we were so lucky to have the same outcome."

As if a look could say a thousand things, she let hers linger on his glacial blues before giving him a silent nod and moving forward.

The empath clutched a pair of throwing knives in her hands as she crept down the stairs, silent as a mouse. Her magic remained firmly outward and not in Hal's direction. Whispers as they got closer began getting louder.

"...should've been here by now."

"Papa, what are we going to do?"

The first knife sailed silently through the air, finding its mark into the neck of one of the king's soldiers. The other two had enchanted armor and turned in time to see Sierra throwing another knife in their direction.

 

[Harrier]

The College would absolutely disapprove. Even disregarding the necromancy, this whole affair sat comfortably within the colloquial boundaries of black magic. Despite the lonely years since she'd been a Maester of Elbion, Harrier felt...reservation.


The power she gleaned came at the cost of many small creatures' lives and many livelihoods too. She didn't hesitate, but she felt a keen and unexpected sense of responsibility to craft a spell worth the cost.


"Bones don't last," she said grimly as the wall shuddered from another impact. Portions of the wall simply wouldn't hold much longer. They needed to act quickly before there was nowhere to stand -- or before a collapse killed them. "But there'll be enough. We have three options, as I see it. Raise one or two skeletal whales, ignore the physical and focus on whatever whales' ghosts we can wake, or a hybrid approach -- several spirits bound to a skeleton. Your thoughts?"



Thronebreaker

 

[Rob Yew]

"Dreadlords are powerful battlemages, but they are blunt instruments."

And often stupid, Ondina thought.

"A hybrid approach may be best. Ram a ship, release the skeleton animation, and let the spirits do the rest."

Vengeful spirits could still inflict suffering and they would likely be harder for the dreadlords to deal with since they couldn't simply fireball them to death, as was their wont.

 

[Harrier]

"A two-stage approach, the best of both worlds, combining a further sacrifice with a false-" Harrier took a shaky breath. A flaming catapult stone was just arcing down toward them. She'd quite like to be a lich someday, but this was not the moment. A frustrated grunt escaped as she committed a portion of her hoarded power to a basic College Magic ward. The projectile crashed into a skein of subdued indigo light and broke apart. Pieces rattled off the walls. The battlemages on that ship could have seen the ward. To save her life, Harrier had just made herself a target.

She drove her mind's eye deep into the frigid sediment below the water. The seabed trembled. In the dark, she just barely saw a bloom of dull mud rise to the surface. Agonized whalesong rang in her ears -- and only hers, for the moment.

"Out of time," she said belatedly. "If you've got bones, ghosts, or power to weave in, do it now."

Thronebreaker

 

[Angharad]

All those in the city could do was endure.

The defensive artillery did its best to fire back but the artifice of Vel Anir seemed to outrange all but their heaviest pieces. The city had to target moving objects, the siege vessels had the entire island to aim at. At least those manning the walls had the satisfaction of feeling like they were hitting back. Others ran as firemen to put out the flames or pull bodies from rubble. It was the time of judgement for Coraliv and Vel Anir had found her wanting.

Angharad watched grimly. The elven vessel was safe from all but a direct hit. Ancient magicks and the treesingers of Fal'Addas had overseen its construction. It didn't make her feel any better about watching the city burn around her.

The screams began, closer this time. Angharad's head shot up, eyes squinting in the dark. There! "Ar aghaidh libh!" she roared, "Stand to!". Elven marines swarmed to the ready, manning the gunwales while those on the dock fanned out to protect their mooring.

 

[Rob Yew]

Bones rose up from their watery grave, clicking together beneath the surface of the waves to form a recreation of a once-living titan of the ocean. She had little skill with the binding of ghosts. And better necromancers than she had memorized the anatomy of hundreds of creatures and knew how to replicate them perfectly, or how to reassemble them into a more terrifying construct. Ondina did not. The only alteration she made to the construct was to add several ossein layers to the skull, then she poured in the power she had gathered into herself and the water below the walls churned as the two necromancers brought their creation back to life.

 

[Talus]

The Red Ashes

Naja slowly leaned forward in her chair, fingers lacing into one another. She had seen the stone fall from the wall where it should have struck, the slight shimmer in the air as something had stopped it. Magic. Even a fool could have spotted that. "Dina."

She could sense...something stir beneath the wall. Magic and death collected itself within the ocean, looming and pooling into one place.

A woman came to stand next to Naja, wearing the same black armor as the others and with a face that might have been carved from stone.

"Upon the wall." Naja gestured towards where she had seen the ward. There was a tight nod, and then the other woman took in a breath. Naja looked up at the sky, her hand slowly swirling. There was a sudden spike of magic, and then slowly the clouds above began to darken. They welled and whirled, covering the sky and eclipsing the moon.

They were too far to throw a fireball, but that did not mean they were powerless.

Dina let out her breath, and a spark erupted from the clouds above. It lanced low and lashed towards the wall.

Southern Docks

Chaos erupted.

The Guards cry had been enough to alert a dozen other men, and as soon as they understood what was going on they raised their own alarms. Before a minute passed bells were ringing and the sound of yelling could be heard all along the battlements.

Men and Militia poured into the small space of the docks. Some of them wore armor, others smattered together rags of leather.

Axe like blades on the ends of halberds went sweeping low towards Talus, slicing at the Apprentice. His blade came up, severing the length of wood before the sword went sliding forward through a man's throat. There was no hesitation as his blade withdrew and found it's next home.

Battle broke out now, sword and steel flashing as ordinary men found themselves quickly overwhelmed by magic.

Some were crushed, Some were charred, and others received a fate far worse.

 

[Harrier]

These were the critical stages when Harrier needed to focus. Even when magic swelled in the clouds, she gambled by pressing on, knitting bones and souls together in the mire of the disturbed seabed.

The other magic spiked. She hunched in anticipation and tied the final energetic knots.

Something like lightning struck immediately behind her. Heat, shock, and brilliant light washed over her. An impact -- a body, or part of one -- threw her forward.

Just as she pitched over the broken crenelations, she caught a glimpse of the undead bodyguard that should have lasted her a decade. His half-melted, smoking armor had drawn the lightning. His flesh was on fire. He would last, at most, a minute.

Desperate, she stripped some energy from his broken form and wrapped it around herself -- her only prayer of surviving a fall from that height into water that cold.

The sea still felt like ice as it swallowed her whole.

###​

A set of bones the size of tree-trunks breached the surface of the frigid water. A dozen old spirits inhabited the corpse, overlapping each other until one could almost see them with the naked eye. With empty eye sockets, the barnacle-crusted skeleton examined all the hated ships, and remembered.

The undead dire whale charged the fleet in a blind, implacable fury. It neither noticed nor cared about the half-frozen necromancer clinging to its back.

 

[Venanin Sen Shiir]

The wind stirred and carried the scent of brine and salt whipped around like a dancing maiden enthralled by a bard song. Sliver white hair flew around the pale angular face of the young apprentice as a deft gloved hand touched another oiled projectile the size of a castle corner stone. The pinch of ruby dust in the apprentice's hand disintegrated in a flash at the muttered invocation and somatic twist of a hand and the stone caught fire.

"Loose!" The captain said immediately sending cinder and flames within inches of the minor dreadlord's youthful features.

The wind shifted as the ends of the warrior-mage's hair curled from the heat and sent the stink of burnt hair to mingle with that of the sea. Lavender eyes cast about as the air began to positively crackle with the expended magical energies taking form somewhere close by. Trepidation and anticipation spun within the young dreadlord's chest forming a dervish of sensations that could only come during battle. That's when it breached.

A massive beast rotten and riddled with writhing things beneath its skin that could barely be comprehended much less described as anything but horror. The frigate on which they stood would be hit first, and nothing in the apprentice's repertoire would do more than anger it. The catapult clicked to the left as the beast rushed forth like a titan springing from some hoary hell.

A deft hand ripped the silvered bastard sword from its scabbard with a hiss like a striking viper, whilst the other dug in another pouch and produced a small saphire as the beast drew dangerously close. Arrows and bolts rained toward the creature to no effect, and the Dreadlord knew death was clawing once more for more souls.

A whisper to the saphire and it was hurled away at the beast, splitting and changing as it flew, until it became small shards of ice. It would do little but not enough. As the beast stench became a maisma of dread, the apprentice stepped into the catapult's basket curled low and struck the lever. Then, in a rush of wind, the worst decision in the face of death was made.

 

[Daria]

On Red Ashes:
Daria stood unmoving at her place on the Archon's ship, her brows slowly pulling in as the water stirred in the distance.

The girl had been silent, impeccably so, as she and the other apprentices awaited their orders from the Archon. None had come yet, but Daria watched on patiently from her place amongst the others. Their moment would come soon enough.

On land, smoke poured into the sky above. From their place at sea, the source of the fire remained hidden behind the city's impressive walls. But that did not concern the naval party. The harbor chain keeping the ships out did.

Daria's attention was on neither.

Her head tilted a smidgen forward, her gaze sharpening on the sudden cresting of a wave... as the carcass of a whale broke out of it. She studied it for a moment more, verifying her assumptions with a few hard blinks and a closer look. Yup. Dead whale.

"Necromancy," she announced flatly.

She raised her hand, a large explosion jettisoning off and marking the direction of the charging threat. Water sprayed everywhere, impossible for the Archon to miss.