Garban saw Dorvo jumping. He saw him falling. He watched as his apprentice splashed into the water, and he cursed. Just what was that fool lad doing now?

The tentacles were lashing out all around him, and Garban’s hammer was starting to feel sluggish and heavy in his hands. The weapon was little use against a foe such as this, and more and more the adventurer was having to rely on the magic of his fellow passengers to deal with this monster. It was the height of professional embarrassment.

He smashed one tentacle against the deck, and then he took a hand off his hammer shaft and held out his palm. Gathering his Ice Magic, Garban manifested a frozen blade, wrapped his fingers around the chill hilt, and slashed through the tentacle with it. Thus severed, the remainder of the limb retreated back into the water.

But it wasn’t enough. There were a myriad other tentacles all about. Looking around teh ferry, Garban could see some of the long limbs wrapping themselves around the sides of the boat. He and the other passengers were focused so much on protecting themselves that they hadn’t even noticed that the very vessel they were all standing on was under attack itself.

And worse: that wasn’t the only problem. Dorvo had yet to emerge from the water.

Garban’s blood ran as cold as his knife when he realized it. The lad was probably deep down there, wrapped in the tentacles of whatever this creature was, drowning and dying and fading away. Dorvo was quite possibly dead already, and Garban had failed to protect him.

Fear and anger warred within him, and then a strange calm settled over the dwarf. He would not allow this lad to die. Garban had taken an oath—he’d sworn to protect Dorvo Goldcrest, to keep him alive. And Garban was not a dwarf who forsook his oaths.

Running forward, Garban prepared to leap off the ferry. His Earth Magic was useless out here on the water, but his Ice Magic was a different matter altogether. He extended that magic outward, over the roiling surface, and the brackish water where river met bay hardened into a series of icy platforms, leading to that mass of churning bubbles tat signified the source of these tentacles.

Garban jumped. He skipped from one chunk of ice to the next, running out across the water to reach the beast. A tentacle slapped at him, struck the ice just before his foot could reach it, and the dwarf plummeted below.

Submerged as he was, Garban found himself unable to fight back as more tentacles wrapped themselves around him. He could feel himself being dragged downward. In trying to rescue Dorvo, the dwarf had merely doomed himself as well.

No.

No, he still had one more trick up his sleeve.

Gathering and focusing his willpower, Garban extended his mind to the amulet with the violet gem. He pulled from the latent Time Magic that the trinket housed, and he rewound the course of his recent events.

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

In an instant, Garban was back topside, skipping across the ice. He extended his Ice Magic once more, creating new platforms to run across, and soon he was leaping past the lashing tentacles, above the bubbling center.

He dropped his frozen knife, blasted it with more Ice Magic. The blade grew. It extended and merged with the surface of the water, becoming a massive spike that was pointed directly downward at the center of the tentacle mass, where the creature’s body must be. Garban slammed his hammer into the top of that spike and drove the whole structure downward with as much force as he could.

The effect on the tentacles was immediate and obvious. They all whipped about, this way and that, following no plan and seeking no prey, simply spasming their death throes as whatever it was down there in the water died. But Garban was not done yet. He fell into the water himself, and extended more of his Ice Magic down below the mass, wrapping coils of frozen water around the creature, and then he pulled it upward.

A miniature iceberg emerged from beneath the bay, carrying both Garban and a massive creature of tentacles and scales and mucus entangled in the ice. The spike had been driven directly into the beast’s head, through one of its myriad red and bulbous eyes, and its long slug-like body was half-trapped in the frozen water.

The creature’s tentacles gave out a few final twitches before going limp. The sea monster, whatever it was, was dead.

Gasping for breath, Garban stood and, after some difficulty, found his balance on the ice. He could hear cheers from the ferry, and all his muscles strained as he walked across the frost, fighting exhaustion with each step.

He found Dorvo not that far away. The lad was still and pale, his lips a dark blue. Garban fell upon him, rolled him onto his back, and began pumping his chest with his hands. The lad would not die here. He would not!

The dwarf blew his breath into Dorvo’s mouth, pumped his chest some more. The las sputtered, a bit of water coming up from between those discolored lips, but then he moved no more. Garban tried to calm his racing heart, tried to focus on the mechanical acts of chest compressions and the breathing.

So concentrated on his task was he that he didn’t even notice the passengers who had climbed from the ferry onto the iceberg behind him. He just kept pumping and breathing, hoping beyond hope that he might save the lad.

“Allow me,” said a girl with gray skin as she knelt down beside him. Garban blinked in surprise, wondering where she had come from. She was well-muscled and tall, with a round and somewhat squat face full of sharpened teeth. A half-orc, from the looks of it. “I have the Life Domain.”

Garban could only nod—he was far too tired to speak—and move aside as the half-orc woman placed her hands on Dorvo’s chest and closed her eyes. Golden light extended frim the tips of her fingers and sank into the lad’s chest, settling over him like a blanket before fading through his clothes and skin.

One second passed.

Two.

Then Dorvo shuddered violently and began hacking up water. His eyes flew open and he shook and rolled about, and continued to cough until his throat was empty of the bay.

Garban smiled. The lad was alive. He was alright. Garban hadn’t failed after all.

And then the dwarf’s vision tunneled, his sight darkened, and he fell over and passed out.