The gunshot still echoing in his ears, Jayson was standing, hands shaking, arms instinctively in front of his face to protect himself. He turned over his hands and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d gotten lucky again - he had lowered his hands in time for the bullet to hit one of the amulets. The amulet was glowing, the bullet’s energy now locked inside it. Not that that would be enough to get him out of this fix.

The melian hadn't realised Jayson had deflected the bullet. She was looking at her pistol curiously, wondering if it had misfired or jammed. She smacked it a few times with the heel of her hand.

Jayson was breathing heavily, mind racing. This crazy melian had tried to kill him. And she was surely going to try again.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait” said Jayson, breathlessly, hands outstretched. The melian paused in the middle of raising her gun again, and looked at him.

“Maybe I do know something,” he lied. Treasure? Jayson didn't have any ideas what she was talking about. But at least pretending he did could buy him some time.

“Go on,” said the melian, lowering the pistol.

“But first, I wanted to say congratulations for, you know, everything,” he said, and started clapping his hands together loudly. She watched him with a confused look on her face. Jayson kept clapping despite the increasingly awkward silence.

“Stop that. An’ speak,” she said, obviously losing her patience.

“What?” said Jayson, clapping a little faster and louder. Now I just have to avoid being shot, he thought.

“I said,” she began, raising her gun to point at his head once again. “Stop this charade an’ tell me what tha know.”

Jayson stopped clapping abruptly. He could only hope that this was energy enough.

“Sorry about this!” he said.

Jayson dropped his left hand behind him, and launched himself at the melian, hand outstretched. His coat billowed behind him as he flew towards her. She fired the gun. He saw the bullet explode from the barrel of the pistol. It whizzed past his cheek, barely grazing him. Lucky again.

His fingers were splayed, revealing the black device that sat in the middle of his palm aimed directly at her chest. The melian watched the simple glyph in its centre light up in blue lines, and her eyes widened in surprise.

Instinctively, she arched backwards beneath his hand. There was a sharp crack as he unleashed the stored force from the amulet. A huge gust of wind blasted over her arched body, followed by Jayson himself.

Jayson landed, rolled and managed to stop himself before he fell off the edge of the sail. He watched as the melian, regaining her composure, stowed her pistol in a belt, then took two cutlasses in hand, falling into a two sword stance. She seemed angry.

Jayson sprang up to his feet and started clapping again, running in a curve away from her and into a small patch of white cloud that had begun to drift over the sail. She followed his trajectory with narrowed eyes as he ran into the cloud.

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As the cloud rolled past, it was difficult to see more than a couple of feet around him. Jayson watched his feet to make sure he didn’t step off the edge of the sail, curving left slightly as he ran. On instinct, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. That instant, the melian lunged out of the cloud, swinging both swords down where he would have been, but striking nothing but empty air. He watched as she followed her momentum through and cartwheeled on her free hands back into the cloud.

He gulped. If he hadn’t stopped on instinct, he’d have been sliced to pieces. He realised she had been tracking his movements by the sound of his claps.

Jayson stood still a moment, holding his breath. Internally he was panicking. How in the Queen’s name was he supposed to hold his own against this mad pirate? TreArkh was a world full of warriors who were closer to monsters with their incredible strength, speed, and skill. Jayson simply wasn’t prepared for a fight like this - even the weakest TreArkhians were far beyond him in terms of combat ability.

The clouds drifted by, around him and through him, revealing the sailcloth again, the golden floor of a white-walled room. He tried to remain calm and concentrate on staying alive. He remained motionless, breathing slow deep breaths, crouching close to the sail, his ears attentive for the slightest hint of noise. The most important thing was not to die.

The cloud passed by, and he braced himself to defend against a sword attack, but, strangely, the melian was nowhere to be seen. He was alone on the top of the sail. He looked around and frowned. A strange dark ripple in the sail was quickly approaching him, a diagonal wave cutting across the cloth.

“What the-”

Too late, Jayson realised it was the edge of the sail approaching him like a breaking wave. It swept under his feet, flipping him upside down, and suddenly he was falling.

Jayson reached out, trying to grab onto something, anything, to stop his descent. But he landed quickly on something soft and springy. He stood up to look at what he had landed on, confused. More sailcloth? What kind of sail was this exactly? He looked up to see the sail above him twisting, the edge he had fallen off still rippling along the cloth.

He spotted movement from the corner of his eye, and saw, too late again, the melian coming at him with both swords trailing behind her leaving spirals of cloud in their wake. He brought his hands up in front of him as if that could stop the blow. The melian brought her swords together like a pair of scissors, ready to cleave him in two.

Something pulled Jayson backwards, the speed folding him in half from the waist. The air was squeezed out of his lungs. He watched bugeyed as the melian’s swords scythed through the air where his stomach had been a moment before.

“Hurk,” he said, as he was pulled backwards and upwards, then dangled in the air.

The melian was talking to someone else now, yelling off the side of the sail. Jayson twisted his head around to see the pincer drone that was holding him aloft.

“Help,” said Jayson, to no one in particular. The drone slowly began to lower him past the edge of the sail and around towards the ship’s deck below. His eyes widened as he took in the figure below. On the deck, an enormous bronze giant with a drill for a hand was standing, staring up at him through the caged glass window of a spherical metal helmet.

Jayson was dropped unceremoniously onto the pale wooden deck. He jumped up, catching his breath, and staggered into something like a fighting stance.

The metal giant lumbered towards him with heavy clanking steps. It looked down at him with a metallic creak, the enormous drill hand uncomfortably close, and paused in position for a second, letting out a loud whistle of air. The front of the giant folded open with a whine and a hiss of steam, and a much much smaller figure limped out holding a crutch in one hand. A koble.

“You can relax, primal,” said the koble, hobbling a little closer to him.. “I just want to talk to you. No more fighting.” She occasionally tapped her crutch against the deck as if punctuating her words.

“Oh, that’s great news,” said Jayson, dropping his hands. “I’m really ...” he was still breathing heavily, heart pumping loudly in his ears, “... really not very good at it.”

He looked around to see the melian had landed on the deck and was watching from nearby, all four arms folded.

“Shall we call it a draw?” huffed Jayson. She snarled at him, clearly disappointed that their battle had been interrupted.

“Come with me,” said the koble.