It was midday when land appeared on the horizon. With full sails and favorable wind, the densely wooded island was fast approaching. The captain manned the helm while a full crew manned the sails and the first mate stalked the deck and shouted at anyone who worked too slowly or made a mistake. The goal was simple: to reach the relative safety of the island as quickly as possible. The execution, however, required leveraging the collective expertise of all the experienced sailors aboard.
As the island grew nearer, a slow, flickering flare of red magic flew from the crow’s nest and over the port side of the ship, indicating an enemy had been sighted. The captain snapped his head to his left, quickly locating the large webbed spine that jutted out of the distant waters, surrounded by a cascading wake as it raced the ship.
"Prepare port side cannons!" the captain shouted.
"They're baiting us," Meredith said as she quickly climbed the steps to the quarterdeck.
"We've got plenty of ammunition," the captain replied flatly, "take the helm."
Instinctively, the first mate reached for the wheel. The instant her hand clasped the helm, regret crossed her face. The captain had already tossed aside his hat and dropped his coat, and within a second his foot was on the port side rail.
"Fire at will!" he yelled as he leapt overboard and dived for the water far below.
Meredith took only a moment to swear under her breath before turning her full attention to the task of steering and commanding the ship. The first shots rang out seconds later, cannonballs raced across the sky with blinding speed but splashed down short of their distant target, exploding just below the surface. The shots that followed were aimed higher, and fell close enough that the spiny fin began to weave through the water to dodge the explosions. Another flare shot from the crow's nest, this one flying over the starboard side. Meredith soon spotted the reason why, another fin cutting through the water on the other side of the ship.
With a frustrated slump of her shoulders, she barked an order, "prepare starboard cannons!"
She was new to these waters, but she had studied the map well. Their destination was a sheltered cove on the northern shore of the island, and she angled the ship's approach in anticipation of the maneuver she would have to pull off to enter it at speed.
The port side cannons fired again, and the creature they targeted was cut off by the explosions and forced to veer away from the ship. Seconds later, the creature began to thrash, and its splashing wake was stained red. The fin dipped below the surface before rising again, this time revealing a glimpse at a scaly, serpentine body. Standing atop it was the Shark Titan, gulping down a chunk of bloodied scaly flesh.
Meredith ripped her attention away from the sight to check on the starboard side, and found the other creature was moving in closer -- just as she had hoped.
"Starboard cannons -- standby!" She waited a few long breaths for the creature to venture further into range, and then give the order, "fire!"
Half the cannons fired instantly, the remaining cannons waited for the splashes and quickly adjusted their aim before firing as well. The shots rained down around the creature, exploding in rapid succession on all sides. The creature was shoved back and forth by the shockwaves until one of the final shots struck a lucky hit and exploded against the creature's body. The resulting spray of viscera was unpleasant to witness even at a distance, but the creature's pursuit quickly ended and cheers echoed from the gun deck.
To the port side, the captain was finishing off his target in a thrashing, lopsided battle just beneath the waves. He was quickly falling behind the speeding ship, but Meredith had no concerns about him catching up.
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She spotted the next fins before the flares could even be fired. They were rising out of the water ahead of the ship, two on either side. The island was to their starboard side now, and it was time to swing the ship. Meredith shouted commands to reposition the sails, waiting no longer than necessary before rapidly spinning the wheel. With a sickening lurch and a great number of creaks, the ship angled sharply towards the island and away from the creatures ahead.
Piloting a ship the size of the Gaping Maw was not as simple a task as pointing the bow in the direction you wanted to go, but Meredith was no stranger to sailing -- or to this ship and crew. She timed every command and every adjustment of the wheel so that everything was in place exactly when she needed it, and soon the ship was sailing crookedly towards the quickly approaching mouth of the cove.
She barked orders to raise some of the sails, and placed a hand on a long metal lever beside the wheel. It led to a mechanism tucked beneath the planks of the quarterdeck, which itself was connected to a system of pulleys that ran through the walls of the captain's quarters and deeper down into the lower decks of the ship where it ultimately connected to a mechanism on the mechanical deck.
It was perhaps one of the simplest mechanisms installed on the ship, but it required great strength to activate. With a snarled face and bulging biceps, the first mate cranked the lever backwards. The front ends of planks along the hull just below the waterline began to bulge outwards against the crushing pressure of the quickly passing waters as their back ends depressed into the hull of the ship. When the planks twisted outwards enough to catch the water on their inner flat side, they were abruptly slammed back by the pressure, locking into place and rapidly braking the ship's speed. With deft handling of the wheel and a series of rapid commands to her sailors, the first mate soon had the gaping maw angled towards the cove and sailing true.
Behind the ship, the Shark Titan was racing just below the surface of the water at blistering speed to intercept the newly arrived creatures as they circled around to converge on the ship. He opted not to attack them, however, and instead veered after the ship and followed it towards the mouth of the cove.
The trees of the island were wholly unlike the redwoods of the Great Forest. These appeared equally as old, but were much smaller in size with elaborately twisting and winding branches that intertwined and overlapped with those of their neighbors. The leaves were wide vaguely star-shaped, and combined with the understory foliage to create a dense wall of green that extended to the very edge of the shore on either side of the narrow channel that led to the cove.
Once the ship had fully entered the channel, the Shark Titan erupted into the air riding a constant jet of water that propelled and suspended him above the lake. He raised his outstretched hands to conjure eight pillars of water that erupted out of the lake and soared into the sky. They didn’t merely originate from the surface, but dredged up the deepest waters of the lake and rocketed them into the air at immense speeds. The pillars created a whirlpool-like wake at their base, threatening to suck in anything that veered too close.
The finned creatures rapidly aborted their chase, thoroughly cut off from the cove by the pillars. They carved jagged but ultimately circling paths just out of range of the whirlpools, their frustration and blood thirst evident in their erratic movements. The Shark Titan stopped the jet of water that suspended him and dropped back into the lake, leaving the pillars still active as he swam after his ship.
The crew cheered as they saw their assailants cut off by their captain's magic. The ship had slowed to a manageable pace, and now almost meandered into the sheltered cove wrapped by a ring of dense, wild forest. The captain launched out of the water, propelled high into the air by another jet of water, and landed just behind the helm with a splash and a crunch of planks. Meredith slowly twisted around to glare at him.
The Shark Titan looked down at his feet in confusion, "I thought we strengthened those?"
Before Meredith could respond, a series of three rapid flares erupted from the crow's nest towards the bow of the ship. The captain snarled and stomped forward, bypassing the stairs and leaping off the quarterdeck onto the main deck below. He crossed the length of the deck in seconds with a barreling charge that brought him to the front-most railing of the ship, where he soon spotted the reason for the flares.
Ahead of the ship, standing atop the surface of the water as if it were solid ground, was a woman with skin of brilliant shimmering scales clad in gleaming golden armor. A tri-pointed crown adorned her head, resting just above the spined-fins that connected her long ears to her head. She casually held an enormous golden trident with one hand off to her side, its base resting atop the water beside her feet.
"Captain Clement," her voice echoed effortlessly through the cove, "I request a parley."