Three ships lay stationary upon the increasingly churning water. The bright light of the star above had been cut off by the gathering clouds. The wind that had been blowing steadily, now swirled and whirled in all directions around them.

“Queen? Are you done sulking yet?” Kuru’s silky voice carried over the intensifying sea around them.

The Pirate Captain didn’t stir, she remained a huddled pile of scales and torn dress. The group of crew members remained huddled by the railing, almost as if they were already to leap down to the waters. SarthDarah had to assume they would, being crocodile shifters they would easily survive and swim back to their islands.

It would only be a short time before the Minotaur’s ship reached them. With the sudden change in the weather, none of them wanted to waste any time. Even the Pirate Captain seemed to feel this way, because she rose slowly after a moment more of silence.

“She could have killed you with that. Even your precious ship barely survived the blow; and I am quite certain that is only because she decided to not blow the whole thing to ashes. The enchantments to resist heat and decay were nearly overloaded, and remain barely active at this point. What happens if that ship opens fire on us?”

Kuru had laid it all out plainly. Captain Queen shook her head, knowing that there was only one answer to that question.

“What do you think you can do? A small group of humanoids are no match for a naval vessel of the Minotaur's.”

“Don’t think us so weak.” Lavia cut in. “We can handle a few bull headed chumps.”

SarthDarah let out a grunt of laughter, her new squad mates seemed full of spunk and ready to go. The large lady stepped forward and came to stand in line with SarthDarah and Kuru. They faced the Pirate Captain with a definitive glare. It was their ship now, nothing Queen or her crew said would make a difference.

“I don’t think you weak, my need for submission is obvious. That does not change the fact that ye not be prepared for what is incoming.”

“We never got a chance to prepare for anything, yet here we are.” The white haired man said coolly.

The Pirate Captain growled, her menace audible from across the deck. This was a warning, though it held little threat. After SarthDarah had shown her power, none of the crew left on that ship were going to press their luck at the moment.

With the six of them now standing in two lines of four, SarthDarah felt like she was heading a superhero lineup. With Kuru their sponsor, the rest of them made for an extremely mixed group. From the small pixie women and stout dwarf, to the large Jorn and larger Lavia.

The cold air pulsing out from the young man with the white hair seemed to be battling the heat of SarthDarah’s aura. She looked at the man, a question on her tongue. His eyes met hers, the cool blue looked almost as if it had dancing crystals in the color. He seemed to laugh and smile at every glare and questioning squint she gave him.

“Stop that.” She hissed at him.

“Stop what?” His tone was teasing.

“Children please.” Lavia placed a hand on both of them, breaking their nearly formed lines. “The gator girl is getting upset, more so now that you stopped paying attention to her.”

“Don’t call me that.” Queen came stalking up to them.

“Would you all focus, they're here.” The dwarf’s music stopped. “If ye’r gonna help us defend this place, that would be great. Otherwise, get out of the way.”

The Captain's anger didn’t subside, instead it rose to another level. Her fury giving rise to a visible aura. The gray white bellowing of air around her signaled that the Dwarven man had taken it a step too far. No one backed down though, SarthDarah had proven she could fight evenly with the girl.

“Fine, I need to release some rage anyway. I’ll make the first move, disabling their ship will be key to keeping ourselves from being sunk within moments. You can handle the raid that will follow.”

With a glare that spoke volumes, Captain Queen left the ship. Her tail elongating was the last thing to disappear before they heard a splash. Within moments of the first one, several more splashes sounded from behind them. The crew had jumped as well.

“Do you think they’ll actually help?” SarthDarah asked.

A few shrugs came from the men around her. Lavia gave a reassuring smile as she looked back towards the incoming ship. SarthDarah looked to Kuru, Anunt and Lyria stood next to her. Their eyes met, and with a moment of understanding, SarthDarah knew that Kuru trusted her to succeed.

Nothing else mattered.

SarthDarah looked over her team, the five other defenders stood in a semi circle near the front of the ship. The Minotaur ship was close enough they could hear the yells and shouts from it. The massive ship was nearly twice the size of their own, it broke through a rising wave and SarthDarah could finally make out the individuals running about.

Getting a head count wasn’t easy, the bull heads all blended together as they ran from side to side. They hoisted up a couple of colorful flags, and SarthDarah guessed they were meant to signal something. Several of the Minotaur crew members pulled on ropes attached to a high pulley system. As they pulled, a massive door opened right in the middle of the ship deck.

“They’re gonna be pissed when our former captor hits their ship. Or when they get here and realize we aren't the pirates and don’t intend on willingly selling ourselves.” SarthDarah ran a hand through her hair, the shortness of it a sudden reminder of how new this body was to her. “We better have a plan to stop them before they get close enough to board. Just in case, plan A turned tail and fled.”

“I can do that.”

“I still don’t even know all of your names, who are you?” She was already annoyed with this guy.

“Eldrin.” The man with the white hair bowed. “We already know you of course. I’m surprised Kuru didn’t tell you who we are.”

SarthDarah was going to be continually irritated with this man. Did he have to get a jab in on her? Of course Kuru told them who she was, but why didn’t Kuru ever tell SarthDarah who any of these other people were?

“You can call me Ironfiddle.” The dwarf said as he began to play a few quick notes on his lute.

“Ok, well at least I know your names now. We don’t have enough time to play twenty questions though, so I’ll just ask that you all trust me and fight like your lives are on the line.”

“Isn’t that how you’re supposed to play?” Eldrin’s sneer was audible in his question.

The six of them stood waiting, watching, each of them focused on the incoming enemies. The wind was roaring in their ears now, the clouds in the sky turning dark. The salt smell on the air sharpened as the waves washed over the sides of the ships.

SarthDarah glanced towards Jorn just in time to see his head disappear over the side of the ship. She shook her head, hopefully it wouldn’t hold him back once they were fighting. On her other side, she saw Duerlin with both hands on his sword. The plain black sheathe blended into his armor well. The dark leather looked singed, almost as if it had been burnt at one point. SarthDarah almost felt a need to ask him about it.

As the ship swayed, she felt sure that this was going to be different than any of her other fights. It wasn’t against a bunch of plants, and it was going to be way more than one on one brawls. There was no way Minotaur's would fight fairly.

With the darkening clouds, it was hard to see when the waves broke and a massive scaled reptile launched from them. It opened a hole in the Minotaur's ship, giving it an immediate change in direction.

It sucked downwards and to their right. Roars of anger let loose from the horde. The sudden rush of water swelling into their ship caused it to stop getting closer, and it happened not a moment too soon. SarthDarah guessed she could jump the distance easily, a Minotaur should also be able to cross that distance.

As the ship fell down the next wave, she used her momentum to launch into the sir. SarthDarah felt the ignition of her fire aura, the wind and flame burning a storm around her. The gap between the ships was a heartbeat of time to her. The sudden decision had been of instinct, not cunning.

“Fight!!” SarthDarah’s command came as she was midway between the ships.

When she landed, a hurled ax landed next to her. She recognized it as Jorn’s, it had sunk into a bull headed humanoid. The blood spurted out of the wound, making an arc around her as she landed. SarthDarah let her flame flare out around her. The Minotaurs all flinched as she stood amongst their horde.

“All hands, attack!” Came a shout from the deck above her.

Six harpoons rushed past SarthDarah as she ducked and twisted out of the way. Her goal was to draw all of the attention of the attacks on herself, letting her new squad get aboard without much interference.

“I’m going for the captain, the rest of you clear the deck!” SarthDarah shouted as she dashed between attacking groups of minotaurs.

Jorn was already pulling his ax out of the fallen Minotaur, Lavia was letting out a battle cry as she soared down towards the two minotaurs closest to SarthDarah. Duerlin was unsheathing his longsword, its fiery aura making a trio of minotaurs hesitate for a moment as the rest of the group arrived.

Ironfiddle was riding down on a sheet of ice that Eldrin had created and skated across. SarthDarah could feel the music the dwarf played invigorating her. It was an odd sense, but the upgrade inside her vessel could feel the buffs that the song created.

“Judgment of the mountains, let thy fury rein! Holy storm of vengeance, power in a name! All their defenses sunder! Laid low, by the Hammer’s Thunder!” The intense electric booms and wails of his lute seemed to be magnified as the fighting began to swell around them.

Eldrin had iced one Minotaur as it swung a club at Duerlin. Duerlin had used the assist to slice deeply into another of the minotaurs, but his blow hadn’t gone all the way through. In the moment the bull headed creature realized it was about to die, it unleashed a guttural roar. It glowed red for a moment and then burst outward in a flash of light and gore.

“Duerlin!” SarthDarah shouted as she rushed over to the swordsman.

As the light faded, her two companions were revealed to be standing under a dome of thick ice. Eldrin had saved them at the last second. The outside was covered in a mess of red gore, something SarthDarah wasn’t anticipating. The feeling of retching almost overcame her.

“Look out!”

The words registered an instant before the blow of the hammer met her skull. The world twisted sideways and went black for a few moments. Distant shouts and screams echoed in her ears, but the ringing that persisted drowned the words out until they were just static noise.

A spear whizzed by her head just before she collided with the deck. The impact brought sense back to her brain. Now, her eyes wide open, and the world coming back to her, SarthDarah roared. Her battle cry brought a momentary pause in the rush of minotaurs. The flames burst out from her and singed the sails as they fluttered overhead.

She searched the top decks for the largest and most menacing creature among the Minotaur horde. The more she looked the more she realized how much larger this ship was. There had to be several times the crew aboard this ship, it was large enough the three ships they had been on could fit inside of it.

“The bigger they are…” She started musing to herself, then spotted a gleaming silver horned Minotaur in the crowd.

It was pushing past its crew like they were stalks of grass in the way. She watched as it neared, and when it pulled a short curved sword, SarthDarah leaped. She landed just in front of the silver bull. She tsked at him, seeing his maleness now that she was up close.

SarthDarah had never wanted to know what a bull looked like down there. She wasn’t certain if a regular bull and a Minotaur would be comparable, but she was now scarred with the image. He stood nearly twice her height, meaning his waist was perfectly at her eye level.

“You’re disgusting. I think I’ll make BBQ with you.”

She punched out her right fist, fire bursting out like a jet engine. The silver flash of his horns tracked to her left. He had dodged her attack, and the three minotaurs behind him got torched instead. Before SarthDarah could reset her arm to block, his sword found its way to her skin.

The sting of pain in her abdomen caused her to jump back. The wound was shallow, but it had split her robes and dug into the flash. A quick touch and check of her hand showed no blood. The wound felt like a serious gash though, her normal body would be spilling its innards all over the deck at this point.

“Thank me for the vessel later, focus on staying alive now.” Kuru’s voice came through her head.

Right, she had to focus. In the two seconds the fear had interrupted her, the silver horned Minotaur had slipped away into the crowd again. She was surrounded and alone.

Jorn watched as SarthDarah leapt up and into the horde. He and Lavia were holding six minotaurs back. Their big weapons and muscles were barely a match for the bull headed creatures. Each time they got one step forward, the horde would surge and force their weapons back into their chests. Each step forward had been met with harder resistance, but they managed to keep the spot they had all landed open for now.

The stairs that the minotaurs were flooding down to get at them played a huge part in why they could hold back all six at once. Jorn’s greataxe and hammer were great wedges to block the way. Lavia was easily as strong as he was, and her halberd spun back and forth to keep Minotaur hands from grabbing them.

“We won’t hold them much longer!” Jorn yelled back towards Duerlin.

The swordsman was busy dashing from the railing and back to the ice wall that Eldrin had made. He cut at the feet of the enemies he passed. They all hollered out in pain, sweeping large fists at him. None could keep up with the flash of speed Duerlin was capable of.

Eldrin turned to see Jorn and Lavia’s predicament. He had frozen the entire front of the ship so that the cannons couldn’t fire at the ships they had left Kuru and the others on. He had saved the swordsman who couldn’t get a kill on his own. Now here he was, throwing down patches of ice all over the deck to make the terrain difficult for the minotaurs to run across. Did he really have to save the tanks too? Where did SarthDarah go?

Eldrin made the decision to take over for now, seeing no one else capable of leading the group. He needed to see this as a level in a game to be cleared. His mind was always better at seeing the steps he needed to take in a game. This was still a game, he was just living the adventure. They needed to clear the enemies and beat the boss to save the ship.

“Jorn, hold that stair for thirty more seconds, then fall back!”

“What?! Are you nuts! Sarth went that way, we need to push through.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Just do it, and we will! Or stand there and get blasted with the rest of them, your choice.”

Lavia chuckled next to Jorn, her small laughs soon turned into big belly laughs. Her eyes grew bright and her smile was infectious. Jorn was soon laughing at the minotaurs who dared to try and overrun them. It was a hilarious thought that they would intimidate him.

Sarth would be fine. She was the badass that seemed to survive everything. His mind was counting all of her ridiculous actions in the short time they had been together. Good thing Lavia had been counting down, she grabbed his shoulder and pulled.

They both leapt backwards just as Eldrin screamed a string of unintelligible words. Three of the minotaurs burst forward, falling the last few stairs due to the sudden lack of resistance. The next three were met with a bright blue light, it flashed out in a ray that encompassed the whole staircase.

All six minotaurs fell silent and motionless as the ice settled over their skin. Within a few seconds of the light shining upon them, the frozen skin rotted away and blew into the wind like scattered ash. The minotaurs at the top of the stairs all hesitated, seeing the insta-death the first handful had succumbed to.

That was until a silver horned Minotaur pushed his way to the front of them all.

“My god.” Lavia seemed to whisper without thinking about what she was saying.

Jorn was suddenly feeling inadequate and a serious desire to hurl his ax at just the right angle to cut it at least in half. The thought was intrusive and he wished that it didn’t have to be a naked Minotaur that he was fighting, but this is what he was faced with. Before he could launch into an attack however, Duerlin came to stand by him.

“This world sucks.” Was all he said before he dashed up the stairs and made a slashing cut with his sword.

The wooden stairs were singed with fire, the strike Duerlin unleashed had been a move enhanced with his sword's fire ability. He now stood at the top of the stairs with a clearing around him. Jorn wasted no time in running up to backup his new friend.

“How many…” Jorn trailed off as he saw the firestorm brewing in the middle of the main deck.

“Why are we here?” Lavia said as she came to stand with them.

“Hey! That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing!” Eldrin called out from below, he was still panting and sweat dripped from his face.

“We are supposed to be clearing the deck while she looks for the Captain.” Duerlin offered.

“How can we do that when she’s soloing everything?” Lavia’s complaining tone was more playful than hurt.

“Well, we can’t help by standing here. Where did the silver horned one go? He was moving so fast that I missed him.” Duerlin was looking around the deck.

Eldrin came up behind them, watching down the stairs as the others scanned the main deck. The four of them stood together for a moment, admiring the battle before them.

“Where did the annoying dwarf go?” Eldrin asked while glancing down over the side rail.

The others all looked around, none of them had seen the bard since he had played the intro melody when they landed.

“Did he get one shotted while none of us were looking?” Duerlin sounded like he was about to start laughing.

Jorn looked down and shook his head, taking a moment of peace for the poor guy. He had made it this far in the survival test, but some classes are just not meant to go into battle. Bard was one of them.

Lavia started to chuckle, the rest of the group looked over to her in confusion. Was the death of another player that funny? The rest of them felt like it was a pretty somber thing.

“He’s a bit more clever than that. He’s good at what he does, and causing chaos is one of those things.” Lavia was still chuckling as she stomped forward to face the enemies now regaining their wits.

Time seemed to be slowed. Each movement was like a simple practice walkthrough. She felt her body react to each incoming intrusion. She saw the minotaurs' weapons and bodies as barely moving targets.

She sent an elbow into the stomach of one, then ducked around it and let her foot swing into a roundhouse kick that sent out a jet of red hot flame into the face of another. She ducked as the spear of a third entered her personal space, he was about to get a full blast of her Napalm Strike. She sent two bursts as fast as she could at him.

The bull was falling, singing skin giving off a cooked meat smell and screams of agony bellowing out. SarthDarah was vaulting over a crate and to her next targets. Her team hadn’t kept up, she hadn’t expected them to. They just needed to hold a spot of retreat. She could clear this threat and keep Miss Kuru safe.

Three bull headed freaks jumped up and tried to pounce on her. She saw all of this in a stretched out timeframe, and smiled as she countered each one. A fist of flame to each, then a sweeping kick that sent them all blasting out and over the side rails of the massive ship. It had been a microsecond, but she had felt like she could sip a cup of tea as she danced in and out of the horde.

This was the epitome of her ambition in seeking out this adventure. The nostalgic feeling SarthDarah got had her suddenly wondering why she felt that way. She was always an adventurer. Kuru had recruited her to join her, this was her life. Why would she feel like she had once longed for this?

It had to have been from when she was a child. She kicked and punched her way through another group rushing out from a doorway that led under the steering deck. Her mind was pulling double duty, dealing with this intrusive feeling and confusion and the attacks that never seemed to cease.

“Enough!” SarthDarah screamed.

Her aura erupted outward, sending fire spewing in all directions. Minotaurs burned and the ship began to catch fire in a few spots. Somewhere in the soupy mess that made up her current thoughts, SarthDarah realized that the enchantments that kept this vessel from burning were not as strong as the ones Queen had.

With some space to breath, she backed away from the doorway, and leaped up to the steering deck. The two minotaurs who stood there sneered gleefully as she stared them down.

“Finally, time to end this.”

“Mmpphh! Says the stick girl. My clan has survived for generations by selling and using your type to breed our cattle with.”

That left a disturbing image in her mind. She couldn’t let more intrusive thoughts aggravate her now. These two were obviously the ones that were in command here. The one on the left was the one with the silver horns, he had gotten all over this ship easily and faster than she could track. The one that spoke to her was wearing a golden jacket. She could stare them down all she wished, but that wouldn’t move anything along.

SarthDarah wanted to be free, she wanted to give herself the chance to adventure and explore. She needed to get Kuru off of this planet safely. She wanted to protect her new friends. This Minotaur wasn’t about to divert her new life.

Her life? Wasn’t this where she was going all along?

Duerlin swung his sword. Another blocked and heavy blow. His arms were tired and he was barely able to keep up with all of the attacks. They hadn’t seen a battle like this before. All of his previous experience was being overshadowed like he was a kid wearing his dads suit, expecting to go to work for the day.

How had he ever been able to think they could stand a chance? He slew Minotaur after Minotaur, but they kept coming. Jorn was busy tanking out the main line of them. Lavia was hoisting around her halberd like it was a shish kabob skewer, Minotaur bodies split on it and fell to her angry attacks.

Eldrin had gone the other way, damning them for not following his orders. Ice was still coating the port side of the ship. The sleet in the air was flying sideways past them all as they fought on.

In the fog above them, as the clouds darkened and the wind began to rip. Sails were being tugged free. Although carefully tied away by the Minotaur sailors right before interception of their prey; the sails began to one by one rip free. It was not that the minotaurs did a bad job, but when you have a pesky bard running around unnoticed…

SarthDarah stood ready for battle, hearing the screams and battle cries behind her. The two enemies in front of her were more important however. She needed to beat them so that they could get away from this. So that she could get away with Kuru. There was a promise of a more appealing life with her. More?

What else was there?

“You could just surrender. Your underlings are strong for humans. We might have a place for them above cattle!” The one wearing the golden jacket yelled out at the end, just as the one with the silver horns disappeared.

SarthDarah put her arms up to block in reflex. The blow pushed her backwards several feet. She saw the silver horns, they blurred as the blow landed and the Minotaur dashed away again. The shattering feeling in her forearms brought on the first real sense of danger that SarthDarah had felt in this body.

A melodic voice, sounding much like an amplified version of Ironfiddle, was suddenly echoing out all around them. SarthDarah winced at both the pain in her arms, and the loudness of the music. Trumpets and hammers beating on steel joined in to the lute melody. With the cries that seemed ethereal echoing around the ship, the minotaurs paused.

“Where there’s thunder, let there be Lightning!” Ironfiddle’s fiddle appeared in the sky above them.

SarthDarah’s eyes went wide and she swore she was hallucinating, then noticed the crackle of energy that was spiraling down from the lute that was enlarged to look as if it were larger than the main mast. She dove off the steering deck just as the lightning bolt crashed down onto it. The explosion of wood and plasma erupted behind her, and in the briefest of moments she saw herself jumping off that mountain peak again. Rushing into something before knowing all of the details.

“Fuck!” She shouted as she landed hard on her back. The scattering of debris all around her began to pelt her like hail.

Throwing both arms up to block her face, she cried out again in agony. Both arms responded, but they fell limp against her. The pain in trying to lift them was too much. Had that one blow been enough to shatter her arms completely? Was that all there was to it, was this the wall she was about to hit?

“My champion wouldn’t give up that easily.” Kuru’s voice resounded in her head, breaking her scattered train of thought.

“She’s right.”

The rain of debris had stopped, the creaking of the ship and the roar of the wind were barely audible to her. She needed to focus. If she had survived, then surely the two minotaurs had. It had been a good strike, and the images had been an amazing bluff; but it wasn’t enough to kill something that strong.

They stood atop a pile of bodies. In the end it only took about a dozen minotaurs to make a sizable pile. Jorn had started setting them against the door next leading below decks. It had taken a while, but as they started to work more as a team; the three of them began to make a dent in the onslaught.

Lavia was a durable tank that rivaled Jorn. They had started making sport about who could stop the biggest attacks. Yelling out about having held back rushing bulls the whole time. Jorn wasn’t about to let anyone beat him, and Lavia seemed about as aggressive when it came to competition.

“Don’t you two ever get tired?” Duerlin called out, he was kneeling atop the pile behind the two giants.

Jorn hurled one of the spears he had picked up from a dead sailor. He chuckled as it landed in the shoulder of the next Minotaur climbing the pile at them. They had slowed down their assault since they got up here, but they were still trying. Eventually they would run out of weapons to hurl.

“Nah, my generator puts out nearly forty points more than my consumption. All my skills are passive, well except the really big ones. But I only use those when I absolutely have to.” Lavia’s voice got sullen when she spoke about using her big skills.

“Let’s get over this wall, we need to catch up with Sarth.” Jorn was already almost head level with the top of it.

“What’s up there?”

“I dunno, probably more bull heads to squash. Oh, and our friend.” Jorn seemed to enjoy going fist to fist with the minotaurs.

Lavia nodded at him, then put her hands together to offer Jorn a boost up. He stepped up and onto her offered hands, then let her toss him up before he reached up to grab the railing. He vaulted over and landed with his ax swinging downward in front of him.

“ERUPTION!!” He shouted, unleashing an earth shattering skill. (Literally)

The ship broke in two.

For the second time in a matter of seconds, SarthDarah was covered in a shower of ship debris. Somehow, both had been friendly fire. Somehow, she survived both major skills the others had used, barely. This time she lay there waiting, when the shower of splinters was over, she felt it.

“Seriously Jorn?” She shouted, seeing the man on the other side of the massive fissure.

She was laying on her back, looking at him upside down. The two parts of the ship were falling together though, slowly. With a spin and a kick, she righted herself and stood.

“What? I had to do something, they were about to attack you.”

Who? SarthDarah looked about, then up, at the two Minotaur standing at the edge of the railing she had just leapt from. So far up, why did everything seem so far away all of the sudden? She had a sinking feeling in her gut, then realized it was the ship itself starting to sink.

“We gotta end this, now!”

“Right behind ya Sarth!”

She leapt up, flame bursting forth to clear her way. Jorn hurled himself across the gap just as Duerlin made it to the top of the wall.

“What happened?” He shouted as Jorn leapt up to start climbing the wall. “There are stairs!”

“No time to explain, big bads top floor, go!” The big man continued to climb.

Duerlin ran for the stairs, Lavia was already pulling herself up. Her eyes went wide at the destruction. She looked up at SarthDarah as the fire began to burn upwards.

“Go, I’ll hold the landing.” She was looking down at the remaining Minotaur sailors they had left below.

Several raging minotaurs now all had ominous glowing red eyes. They were rushing to the stairs and several of them were pulling the pile of bodies away from the lower deck doors. No doubt in an effort to get back up and to save those remaining below from the water now rushing in.

SarthDarah was throwing punches and kicks as fast as she could. Sacrificing power for speed, then adding Napalm to the blasts kept the Minotaur dancing backwards and in circles. Each time she thought she cornered him, he would jump or slide out away from her again.

Ironfiddle, sweating and propping his large body up on his lute, watched as SarthDarah’s barrage harassed the silver horned minotaur. He tried to stand, but the effort of using so much illusion and then pooling the brewing storm's energy at the top of the main mast had drained his own energy reserves. His capacitor had burned out when he tripled the output in his Lightning strike ability.

He couldn’t do anything as the second Minotaur, the one wearing the golden jacket, stepped up behind SarthDarah from a shadow. He had disappeared and the monk’s focus had been solely on driving the silver horned Minotaur into a corner. The ship rocked, falling forward and lurching as it collided with the other side.

Ironfiddle blinked as he felt his body sliding, then it went numb and cold. Ice was spreading around him, holding him in place. The iceberg that grew out of the severed part of the ship was protruding dozens of feet into the sky. The whole ship was covered in a frosty white blanket.

The Minotaur in the golden jacket was frozen still, his arm still in the middle of thrusting a small sword into SarthDarah. She was still punching away at the Minotaur in front of her, the aura of flame around her enough to let her feet clear the deck of the snow covering. When she kicked up, the fire trailed ice crystals that were rapidly turning to water, then steam. It gave her Napalm Strike an iridescent rainbow effect.

The silver horned Minotaur himself was starting to show an aura, having had to dodge and circle for so long. His wasn’t as bright as SarthDarah’s, but it allowed him to keep moving freely in the effect of Flash Freeze.

Even as Duerlin rushed up the stairs, he too felt as the ship tilted, then froze suddenly as he began to slide. Jorn had finally crested the railing, and was just peeking his head above it when the ship shifted his center of gravity. He hung at an angle between the two halves of the ship, frozen solid in the ice. Lavia was pinned beneath the now collapsed ship parts, encased in ice and below the water surface.

Eldrin knew they wouldn’t listen to him. He tried, but he knew it from the start. That fool was about to get herself killed, the rest were eagerly following along. He wasn’t about to go down with the ship. The giant buffoon had sliced the ship in half, and then they all let the leader of the minotaurs slip into the shadows before having a plan of attack.

She never learned.

He had just stopped the ship from taking them all to the bottom of the sea, and frozen the big bad. Now all that was left was to let Sarth finish the secondary boss and slay his rightful bounty. Then they could get back to the real world. Kuru had promised him that if he won the game, he could go back home.

He dropped out of the forming rain clouds. The skies above them were whipping up fast, soon there would be a storm. Now, there would be dead Minotaur.

Her arms ached, the pain dulled as sleet began to cool and sizzle as it fell against her. Her form was getting sharper again, and she was almost able to land a solid blow. The silver haired Minotaur said nothing as he danced backwards, parrying everything that came close to hitting him. The flames didn’t seem to aggravate the Minotaur, that fact aggravated SarthDarah even farther.

“Glacial Wrath!”

SarthDarah looked up, watching the streak of blue turn to silver. She didn’t even have time to think on what it could be, the silver streak exploded into a chilling wave.

“Gah!” SarthDarah shouted as she was blown back by the force of the blast.

Eldrin stood atop the ice shards that speared upwards from the deck. The encasing ice made it hard to tell where the ship was, and what angle it might be at. SarthDarah took long labored breaths, she could feel the generator inside her humming along, an artificial heart pumping life and energy into her body.

She kicked it into overdrive, feeling herself become lightened and overcome with energy once again. This time she just wanted to get rid of the ice and the idiot creating it. Kuru would have to find a replacement for him, she wouldn’t be able to work with someone like that.

“Searing Temple!” The name came to her as easy as the move itself was to use.

She simply let her mind calm, the hum of the generator whined into hyperactivity, and she unleashed the extra energy in a burst of heat radiating outwards from her core. It was as satisfying as getting a jet of cool air to the face in the middle of a sweltering day. While she still burned hot enough to melt the ice around her, she was way less frustrated than she was moments ago.

“Watch it!” Eldrin screamed as he dove over the side of the railing to avoid being scorched by the wave of heat.

The Minotaur had backed off, leaving her to her moment of calm. The ice holding the ship in place suddenly creaked, then cracked apart as it was thinning. Her heat wave had melted through the majority of it, leaving the rest of it brittle and rapidly melting. Eldrin no longer giving it mana meant that they had only a few minutes at most before the ship would start sinking again.

As Duerlin and Jorn began to move from their ice prisons, they looked around in concern. SarthDarah didn’t have time for their confusion, they needed to get out of here. She grabbed Ironfiddle as he stumbled by on the deck, then pointed back to where Kuru was watching from the pirates ship.

“Go!”

The dwarf nodded vigorously, then pulled a small crystal from his pocket.

“Here, never needed it anyway, wouldn’t have fit my build.”

SarthDarah looked at the small diamond, then slid it into a space on her left hand, just behind the ring finger. Her sense of nature tripled, and the smell of the sea and coming storm spoke volumes to her. Something else was coming, the Captain was still down there, waiting. There was something else too, calling from the depths.

What had that upgrade been?