The majority of the crew, those not already assigned to the tasks of seeing to the daily needs of her precious ship, and making certain that any repairs and maintenance was completed, and that any provisions they lacked were refilled, roared in anticipation as they followed their captain through the gaping hole in the side of the royal palace.

Erm had seen to it that they had all been issued their favorite weapons from stores. First Mate Gern, who had slept like a reef sitting in a chair in the galley the night before because of the special guest lodging in his quarters, and was now as fresh as a Spring Breeze coming off the Great Glass Sea, and now strode along beside his captain. He carried the large gutting spear, a nasty, barbed thing, and had the modified, short handled paired axes at his belt.

Most of the other members of the crew who trailed enthusiastically along behind Captain Erminea Galatea Kleinhoff carried a mix of brutal, heavy spear-like polearms, and the curved short swords, mostly falchions, that the sailors of the Kleinhoff Fleet were issued. Five of the crew carried bows with quivers heavy with arrows. Erm had not wanted to need an archer and not have one to hand, and so ordered five of the best shots in her retinue to carry the bows.

All of her crew wore the uniforms the Crown had issued to her father’s fleet. She didn’t want there to be any confusion on the part of any of the guards and soldiers in the palace as to who was who, and who… well, wasn’t.

They had been able to bully their way past the palace guards who had blocked off the grounds, purely by showing up in force, with matching Kingdom uniforms.

Gern had even “requested” a pair of the palace regulars join them as they made their way in to aid the King and the Guards in “Restoring the Peace.”

For a man who’s voice often sounded like dried sharkshin on brass, he knew when to press people on points of honor and ego.

Five of the Guards stepped forward with smart salutes followed by a choreographed group bow to Erm.

For her part, the petite captain turned smartly and gestured. All five of the guards led the way for her and her crew

Within ten minutes they had entered the palace through one of its fallen walls, and had spoken briefly with guards on the interior who had set up a mini-defensive position at the orders of the woman the King used to intimidate the men who otherwise ran his military. Erm approved.

These soldiers then pointed them along the most likely route that might lead them to where the King was now, supposedly, leading soldiers into battle against “hideous, man-eating monsters!”

Any person she had asked along the way “Why? Why is the king leading this action?” answered most often with platitudes about how amazing their king is. How talented. How brave. How much he cares. “Have you seen him do magic? He’s a powerful Talent!”

Erm didn’t contradict any of what she heard. She didn’t need to waste time arguing with these people. THey believed in him. The idea of standing to argue that “he has an army… he should not be leading a charge…” was just too much for her to both with.

These people were devoted to their King, and that just wasn;t a fight she needed to have. She needed him to live long enough to pay her and her crew for capturing The Silver Cloud, and the Parthique pirate who had been her captain, but was now chained up in Gern’s room.

As they had trooped along the dark hallways inside the castle looking for the King (...or his corpse…) her mind tossed at her from her mental storeroom well stocked with anxieties, she wondered how well her father was doing with the rest of the fleet on escort duty for the merchants of the Rhiadan people.

Erm knew she needed to talk with her father about this. And by “this” she meant all of it. Why had the old man decided to throw in with this upstart king? Why make the Fleet into a leashed dog for one king, when they could just continue to prey on all kings?

Another turn down another long hallway brought them past another collapsed wall. There was a group of soldiers trying to carry an orc on a stretcher to get medical help? Or to the dungeon? Maybe? She didn’t ask.

Erm had heard rumors that the king’s personal chef was an orc. But, the palace had been attacked by what had been described to her as “monsters,” and she had to wonder if the king’s chef had “Gone Troll.” She also wondered if the palace chef was just a huge human, like some of her father’s other captains.

Or even, she supposed, the possibility that the possible orc’s …people? …tribe…? …nation…? …buddies…? had come down from the mountains where they supposedly lived, and had tried to liberate their captive brethren?

The thing was huge. Larger than the hulking human captains her father had as his right hands in the fleet. Its green and blue skin wasn’t anything new to a woman who had spent her life asea, and regularly traded with the likes of the Gorma People, native to the cold, Northern Kingdom of Kjolt, and the other many varieties of scattered merfolk who live on and around the equatorial islands. Both very pretty people, but very different cultures.

Her own people, they called themselves Merrows, were said by some to be related to the Gobhanni people who lived in forests and swampland on every continent of Thach. But, some of those tale-tellers also used terms like “Sea Goblins” to describe her people, and could easily find themselves with blackened eyes and bloodied noses at the very least.

His protruding lower teeth were impressive, too, though she had heard the tales that told of King Myrl’s fearsome chef being both erudite, and an impressively good singer. She wondered how they impacted his speech. …did he drool? Like the hounds she had seen in Selmet? she found herself wondering.

…a man who cooks, sings well, and can converse intelligently? If he wasn’t an orc, he might make good husband material… the Admiral would go to war… She laughed at the thought of her father who was often indifferent to anything she did outside of her duties as a captain in her fleet being angry at her choice in lovers and possible mates. The light laughter slipped from her lips before she had realized it, causing the men struggling with the giant improvised litter to glare daggers at Erm. She straightened, and glared back. After a moment, “Gern, detach three of the crew to help those men with their wounded. Not the archers.”

Not three minutes later, she and her remaining men, and the five regulars who had been their escort, had stopped at an intersection to get their bearings as they had been following signs of chaos and destruction through the darkened halls of the palace. Several times, Erm had marveled at the sundered remains of what she suspected might be the monsters that she had heard about.

One of the more recognizable sets of remains had an arm longer than her body, large fingers tipped with talons as long and curved as her matched set of boarding sabers that even now swung on either of her hips as she stalked along the dark halls. The newly risen sun having not quite reached into every window.

It still didn’t rule out the orc/troll theory for Erm, as she had never seen an orc’s nor a troll’s innards. And certainly she was honest enough to admit that she was no judge of what a troll’s brain looked like when painted onto a wall or splashed into a door. None of these humongous corpses had blue or green skin. Most had the complexions of badly bruised Pincar, and some the darker, duskier tones of Ocre peoples.

Supposedly, her own people regularly fought off attacks from creatures that were often called “sea trolls.” But, Erminea had never met one and had been told many times by those who had that “land trolls are nothing like sea trolls” in any case. Sea Trolls, she had also been told, came in as many colors as the fish of the Great Reefs.

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Who was she to judge these monsters? She was certain they were terrifying when not torn to shreds and littering a palace’s halls.

Distantly, the sound of shouting and shrieking could be heard. Looking at Gern, he nodded back at her; he had heard it as well. One of the palace guards then looked to her and said, “Ma’am, that sounds like it’s no more than two chambers over.” He pointed into the darkened passage.

At her signal, her crew began a distance eating lope that sent them into the darker spaces further into the castle.

As they ran, one of the regulars signaled with a raised hand, and as a group they all slowed.

Through a large, heavily carved stone arch, they saw a group of soldiers all lying on the floor by the nearest wall, some bleeding profusely, others either dead or unconscious.

Creeping forward with the Regular and Gern, who motioned for the crew and the rest of the regulars to hold back, they cautiously looked around the edge of the entrance to this new hall. A thing was struggling to stand.

It was at least as big as the wounded orc she had seen earlier, and its skin pulsed and slithered about it as it moved. Erm was immediately repulsed in a way that seeing any of the earlier corpses had not achieved. This thing, living and in motion was worse than seeing maggoty flesh on a living man. It was a mockery of all the precepts one could hold about life.

A bellowing, high pitched howl rang out, and that was when she and Gern both noticed the tall, slender man standing over the supine form of another man.

The Tall, shrieking man was yammering on in Velspean about the King being a Boy, but not being “The Boy King,” and he was furious about it.

It was then that she saw the crown on the head of the man who lay on his back near the raging, cackling fiend. And the very fine mace the man on the ground struggled to hold up between himself and the mad scarecrow. If she hadn’t known it was the king before, the crown certainly gave it away.

Erminea was moving before she realized it, and shouted to Gern, “MOVE! Get that thing! NOW!”

Chaos broke over the tableau like a wave, as her crew and the soldiers charged at the rising monster and the flailing Velpsean man. Her senses keen and her mind racing with the excitement of the impending clash, Erm saw several arrows fly past her to take the perverted beast in the chest. The thin man howled in agony along with the distorted thing, and a silvery glow could be seen emanating up from his shoulders and through his arms as she ran at him, throwing his dark form into stark silhouette as though he held a small rising full moon in his hands before his heart.

It began to howl in pain and misery as Gern with his long spear, and several of the Regulars moved on the debased brute, pinning its limbs.

She thought she had shouted “He’s a mage!” as a warning when the silvery light grew, but it was drowned out by the yells of “RHIADA!” by the charging Regulars, and “For the Gryphon’s Wings!” by her own crew.

Still at a run, she was almost at the flailing madman when she thought she saw him shiver, and his body shuddered and contracted. She had her two beautifully curved boarding cutlasses drawn, and was readying one for a thrust and the other to block or slash as needed, when…

From behind her, light cascaded through the passage, illuminating everything in the warm, buttery yellow glow of the Sun. Erm had no idea from where the light might be coming. She could see everything better. Sharper, with greater clarity than she would otherwise think she could have seen. The light was more than just a comforting lumens.

It was like being blessed by kindness and joy. Erminea smiled, as she closed on her opponent.

Then the man’s right ear just fell from the side of his head with a wet sucking noise and a weak stream of blood trailing it as it tumbled past his shoulder to be received by the cold, hard, awaiting floor with barely a sound.

Her left hand cutlass slid smoothly up under his ribcage, and punched through the front of his chest, severing at least one rib just to the left of his breastbone. She felt the tugging as the blade grated and slowed, but was not stopped as it moved through.

Her blade met a little resistance as it moved through his chest from back to front allowing Erm to slide to a halt right behind the man rather than crashing into him. He was almost twice her height, and she was able to note the harsh angle of the thrust she had used. His body stood rigid with the shock of the injury and its fight against encroaching death.

She began to pull her sword from his back, and used the delicately formed, conch shell-like body of her cupped guard to punch into his lower back, aiding her in removing her left cutlass from his now freely bleeding torso.

As she stepped back from him a half step to ready herself to attack again if he needed any further prodding to step through the doors of the Death Goddesses’ Palace, a final arrow zipped over her head with an angry buzz, and sank into his spine at the midpoint of his long neck with a loud CRACK!

The man fell forward onto his knees with another loud CRACK! There was a wheezing voice that said, quietly, “...fuck…” from somewhere on the other side of the crumbling corpse.

And then his flaccid form toppled forward onto the King.

In less than a heartbeat, two of her archers were beside her, bows drawn, and arrows pointed down at the dead mage. Placing the blade of each of her wickedly curved swords on the tip of each of the arrows, she pushed them down.

“He’s gone. Check on the others. Is that beast down?” she asked.

Gern’s voice cut through the confusion. “Aye, Captain. This thing stopped fighting as soon as you killed that diseased gull.”

She prodded him with her boot, and the man was truly dead, but he looked like he had died a week ago, and had still done all of this, she she was leary of taking it as a done job.

A quick word, and several crew came forward to remove the mess of a sorcerer from the body of His Majesty, two of them dragged the remains further down the corridor as the others attended to the king. It was then that Erm saw the unnatural angle of his right leg where it had been broken. Looking closer, the shin and calf of the young man’s right leg looked like it had been savaged, torn at, then had become infected, and was now broken and freely bleeding.

One of her crew, an older woman named Aditi who had been one of the archers said “Is THAT the king? Why has the king been allowed to play around in this abattoir? Doesn’t he have people for this?”

Erminea didn’t know, but looking down at the king, she saw he had the odd mace in one hand, and a working knife, much like the net mending knife she herself carried, in the other. Whatever his reasons for being here, it was clear to her now that he came prepared to end this mage’s life.

She hoped he didn’t mind the aid that she had rendered. Some men, especially royals, got all knicker-bunched when a woman bailed out their sinking boats. Staring at the king's face, she noted Myrl’s features. This being the first time she had actually gotten to see the man, she was surprised that he didn’t look like the petulant, spoiled child she had always imagined whenever she thought of the man this last year.

His hair was dark, with a bit of curl to it. And he had pale skin, a fine jaw, and a nose that had been broken at least once. His eyebrows were dark matched arches set on broad brow ridges over his closed eyes. One eye and the surrounding cheek was starting to swell with a bruise, she saw. He certainly didn’t look like the pampered noble Erm had expected. Put him in reasonable clothes, and he could be any number of young men she sailed with.

…okay…maybe slightly better looking than most of the young men I have sailed with over the years… Her thoughts were interrupted, and she felt a blush of shame at having just stared at the wounded man. rather than helping him.

“Oh, my.” An older man limped up next to Erm, his salt and pepper hair receding high on his forehead, his face bloodied, and cuts all over his body bled onto his white and gold colored robes. “Myrl, what have you done?” He asked the unconscious young man.

He had broad shoulders, and the wide, hard hands of a woodworker, or even those of a blacksmith, but the fine robes of a priest.

He immediately began working to bind the King's wounds and from his position over the king, began ordering others about. Even the members of her crew, even Gern, snapped to attention and set to obeying the orders.

There was a sudden ripping noise in the air, and as if he stepped from the very shadows, a tall man with gray skin and darker gray hair strode into the corridor with murder on his face. He moved steady as wind, and just as gracefully, toward the king.

An elderly woman in fine robes stumbled shakily from that same shadow behind the king’s mentor and advisor.

She looked like she had seen horrors, and this mess was shaking her down to her soul.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my. Arluan keep and protect us all.” Taking in the carnage, she walked slowly over to the raged form of the dead mage, and slowly knelt over him, and started to cry in great heaving sobs.