Anathta came running up. “Why?” she gasped. “What is my brother doing?”

“Sailors…”

Ibbalat gestured, indicating the rope, its other end –

Ana’s fingers were gripping the rail next to his, and she screamed Phanar’s name into the ocean.

“Ana, get below! This might be the end for us…” the mage yelled over the wind, over her screams.

This was it. What Phanar said. He had to say something, before the next wave.

“I – I love you, Ana –”

“Look!” she cried, pointing –

Suddenly the rope went slack, and a dark shape emerged from the swelling and receding surface of the water.

Redgate, holding Phanar by the arm. Both sailors, holding Phanar by the legs.

The champion gently lowered them to the deck, touched down with his own feet, and then tutted as he wrung out his robe. “Now I’m drenched,” he complained.

“What –” Ibbalat’s mind was still scrambled from almost spilling its contents to Ana. “What’s happening?”

Kani, arriving last, rushed to Phanar and cried: “Is it him?”

The mage understood her at once.

Ord Ylon.

Thunder answered, the voice of tearing air bellowing down at them – and Ibbalat quivered, not from the freezing water permeating his clothes, not from the imminent threat of the storm: from the fear. The fear of the dragon.

He raised his voice: “Ord Ylon couldn’t do this, Kani – he’s a druid!”

“What about his wings?”

“Wave!”

Everyone held on tight, clutching ropes, rails, masts. Everyone except Redgate, whose change to a semi-transparent state left him alternately floating above the deck one moment, then floating with his feet and shins extending through the deck in the next moment, as the ship’s angle shifted. The water wasn’t going to touch him.

The rest weren’t so lucky. The wave rose above the prow of the ship like the sea had decided to reach over the rail and smack them with a ten-ton backhand. Ibbalat lost his hold on his rope, but thankfully he was still a few seconds away from being pushed overboard when the wave was spent.

Spluttering, he staggered to his feet, turning to check the others were okay –

He saw Phanar helping Kani stand up; he saw Redgate, flickering with shadow, gently lowering Ana back to the deck – the champion had obviously prioritised her, saved her from the worst of it with his powers…

“Here you are, my love,” the arch-sorcerer murmured to her, the casualness in his voice only reinforcing the fact he was completely unafraid of the situation in which they’d found themselves.

Sometimes, Ibbalat admitted to himself, he kind of hated Redgate.

“C’mon, ye landlubbers!” Ulfathu cried semi-drunkenly from the doorway – finally, he’d awoken. “Get below deck, else She’ll take ye, never t’ be seen again! These be strange and wicked seas!”

The ship was pitching at such angles, getting to the cabin door was a matter of running uphill and downhill almost simultaneously. At one moment the horizon was a hundred percent sea, then at the next a hundred percent sky. Still, Ibbalat made it, his heart pounding.

There was an awkward moment when, rather than rushing straight below-deck like a coward, he tried to hold the door for Ana (and Redgate). But as soon as they got close, the champion simply sank down through the boards with Ana still in his arms, leaving Ibbalat feeling foolish, and –

“Come on, yer clod!” yelled the captain. “Young master!”

“Go!” Phanar roared, taking big strides that the deck seemed to yank out from beneath him, making him sway and falter as, Kani hanging off his arm, he struggled to get to the door.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Ibbalat thrust himself through the opening and half-stumbled, half-fell down the ladder-like stair – it was only the presence of the sailors jammed into the space that stopped him in his tracks. Even in these dire circumstances he couldn’t help but feel a twist of contempt as he spotted Redgate holding Ana close, ignoring the press of bodies to float with her down into the ship’s hold. Then Phanar and Kani crashed into his back, driving the air from his lungs and pressing his bearded face into the dripping coat of the crewman in front of him.

It took another thirty seconds for them to get themselves sorted; in the meantime another wave struck the ship, booming like the sides of the hold were drum-skins being hammered from the outside – Ibbalat could feel the Dremmedine shudder, hear it creak. Water was seeping in through the walls and ceiling. As Ulfathu and the others who actually knew what they were doing started barking orders, sending men scurrying, the adventurers and their hired champion gathered by the hammocks.

“Is it him?” Kani was still panting, shock splashed across her usually-placid features as she clung to her hammock.

“He shouldn’t have access to any elemental magic!” Ibbalat explained, taking his own grip and digging his hand into the pocket of his pack. “We’ve been over this. This is… something else.”

“You’re all so panicky!” Ana said with a snort from her hammock, easily framing her body to accommodate the wild tipping of their orientation. “This isn’t the first time we’ve sailed through a storm.”

“This is the first time Storm-Shatterer failed me!” Ibbalat replied darkly. “That spell’s the reason why we’ve always been okay in storms!”

“You said it might take some time,” Phanar reminded him.

Finally, he found what he’d been looking for. He pinched at least three wane-leaves in his fingertips and withdrew them from the pocket, then shoved them straight in his mouth, swiftly chewing them and sucking their sap out.

Their sour, almost citrus flavour instantly calmed him. It probably helped that he didn’t usually chew more than two at once.

Phanar sighed.

“If it takes much longer –” the young mage began, then –

Boom.

Crack!

Everyone swayed, staggered, fell – except Redgate, who just floated there with his face upturned, as though he were able to see right through the deck to the storm raging above them.

“Master!” Ulfathu yelled from the stair. “Can’t you speak to the wind?”

“The wind isn’t listening tonight!” Ibbalat yelled back. “I sang my head off at it!”

“And you – champion?” The captain regarded Redgate. “Issen there anything you can do, sir?”

“I was brought on board to slay a dragon,” the Mundian replied smoothly, his masked head still upturned. “Not sail a boat. I thought this was your area of expertise, captain? Indeed, is not my life, and the fate of Tirremuir, in your very hands?”

Ibbalat saw Ulfathu throw up those hands then dig his fingers beneath his eyepatch, rubbing at his sightless eye.

“No,” Redgate continued, more softly, so that only the quartet could hear his words. “I think there is a battle taking place.”

With that the champion drifted upwards, and a set of wyvarlinact wings sprouted from his back. Ibbalat stared in awe. The wide, jagged appendages would’ve had a metallic glint, but the same near-transparency that covered him in waves washed over them, casting them into shadow.

Then he went through the ceiling, and was gone.

Thoughts of the bird-form spell started filtering through the slow-burning candle of Ibbalat’s consciousness.

“I could follow,” he muttered, chewing frantically on his wane.

Phanar reached out, waited a moment for the equilibrium of the ship to change, then slapped his hand down on the mage’s shoulder.

“You would die in those winds,” he said plainly. “We will wait.” He turned his eyes to Kani. “Are you okay?”

The redhead nodded. She looked like she was about to be sick – her knuckles were white as she held tightly onto her hammock’s straps, and her face was ashen.

“Can you…?”

“This is not Wythyldwyn’s war,” she grunted. “Wyrda, Goddess of the Sea… I have no power here.”

Wave. Wave. Wave.

Somehow, they clung on. Somehow, the ship didn’t come apart at the seams.

Wave. Wave. Wave.

Were they coming less frequently, less powerfully, now? Or was he just imagining it?

Storm-Shatterer, he thought with some satisfaction. Finally.

A sailor rushed in from the deck, babbling something about demons that Ibbalat couldn’t quite make out.

“What did you say?” Phanar called across the hold.

“I says,” the crewman yelled back, “there’s hunnerds o’ demons around the edge o’ the ship! Flyin’, like! Keepin’ us outta the worse of it! Sommat at the front, too, sommat big!”

Redgate, Ibbalat grumbled.

“Redgate,” Anathta murmured, an odd twang to her voice. She looked panicked in a strange way now that the champion had left them – not panicked by the storm, exactly…

Is she missing him already? Ibbalat wondered. Or is she afraid for him out there?

So, maybe they weren’t going to end up drowning tonight. Maybe he shouldn’t waste his wane. But he wanted more, damn it, and he could always resupply in Tirremuir, supposing they got there.

He wanted to distance himself. Draw into himself, away from Anathta, away from Phanar, away from this whole predicament.

He shoved another three leaves in his mouth.

To the Twelve Hells with it, and Redgate too, good riddance.

It was less than five minutes before the champion returned, sinking through the deck to float again in front of them. He reached up, removed his mask, and showed them his gloating smile.

“Pirates,” he said almost with relish. “The Tirremine navy had a number of wizards at work. I taught them a little lesson in caution. Once I brought them the pirate officers they quickly saw the error of their ways.”

“You didn’t…” Phanar looked up at him enquiringly, but the warrior didn’t seem to know how to finish the question.

‘… eat them?’ Ibbalat said to himself.

“They’re perfectly fine, and were properly apologetic,” Redgate answered, as if knowing full-well what Phanar had been getting at. “We should be able to continue on our way unmolested in the next several minutes. I shall attend the captain with my happy news.”

Ibbalat finished his wane that night, and had none left for when he woke up.

* * *