Iris appeared in a dark room. Though she could see nothing, she could sense her surroundings well enough to discern the layout. Three of the four walls were flat and seemed to be made of the same thick wooden planks as much of the ship, while the wall opposite the door was angled at 45 degrees, the bottom jutting out to take up much of the room's floor space. It seemed to be made of a smoother material than the other walls, though she couldn't quite place it. Beyond the smooth, angled wall were large crossing bars that formed a cage, the gaps were large enough for a person to swim though and the bars were absurdly thick as if to stop something big and powerful.
In the center of the room was wooden podium, and beside it a tall lever with a locking handle that extended down into the floor. Iris blipped to the podium and gently moved her hands across its surface, finding a series of small stones set into the wood, which she chose not to turn.
Hesitantly, she pulled the lantern from her bottomless bag. Warm orange light bathed the small room, revealing it to be as barren and empty as she had sensed. The smooth, angled wall was glass -- a window looking out into blackness. The bars beyond it were made of a polished metal that gleamed under the lantern light.
She stepped up to the angled window and held her lantern out over it, its flickering light wholly unable to penetrate the darkness. Beyond the glass and cage, there was only water to the edge of her awareness ability's range, but she still sensed something. It was an aura strong enough for an amateur to feel without even looking for it -- a powerful, vicious aura that seethed in the darkness beyond -- and it knew she was there.
A scaly snout slowly came into view, then a second and third on either side of it. The lantern light gleamed off rows of long, dagger-like teeth before soon reflecting off the fierce, predatory eyes of the hydra heads. They were much smaller than the hydra heads Iris had seen at the beach months before, and they loomed silently on the edge of the darkness, looking in at a dumbstruck Iris.
"Hey there, gal," she said nervously, "just-- doing checks."
The hydra didn't react to her words. The trumpet-like tone she had heard before returned, this time louder and clearer. The sound seemed to travel effortlessly through the water, and reverberated loudly through the glass.
The hydra heads twisted away back into the darkness, and Iris caught glimpses of its body and fins as it seemed to whirl around and swim away. A moment later, a dull thud echoed through the bones of the ship. The hydra was ramming the hull.
Panic took hold of Iris as she began to rack her brain for ideas. It crossed her mind that they must be feeding the creature, and that perhaps food would calm it down, but then she considered that a meal might just make it stronger. She tried to reason to herself that surely the ship was reinforced to withstand the creature's best efforts to escape, perhaps the thick cage extended all around the interior of this submerged deck.
The horn sounded again, and the another heavy, dull thud followed. This one was on the opposite side from the last, and Iris felt the floor tip slightly under her feet. A few seconds later, another horn, and another dull, this time back on the other side. The floor tilted slightly more.
"Hey! HEY!" Iris leaned forward and pounded desperately on the glass, "stop that!"
Another horn, and another thud.
She sighed and began to pace, "of course, why would it listen, Iris?"
The next thud rocked the ship enough that Iris staggered back against the podium to catch her balance. With a rapidly escalated problem and not much else to go on, she moved behind the podium and held the lantern out to her side.
"Abby, give me a hand?" she asked.
A tentacle rose up out of the bottomless bag at her waist and grabbed hold of the lantern's handle, holding it near the podium as Iris inspected the controls. The stone dials looked similar to those they had found an ancient temple in the forest, which she recalled her teammates had explained were controls of a large ritual. These dials were much smaller, however, and a series of deep grooves carved into the wood connected them to a larger carved diagram at the top of the podium, from which several grooves extended around the top edge and down the back of the podium and into the floor.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Looking closely, she found small etchings on each of the dials. One appeared to be a crude drawing of a lantern, while the second and third were both three wavy lines that Iris interpreted to mean water. One of the water symbols had a tiny plus sign beside it, while the other had a minus sign.
Cautiously, she twisted the dial with the lantern symbol. Glow stone lanterns in the corners of the room lit up a dim yellow. She twisted it more, and glow stones outside of the room began to light up. As she continued twisting the dial, glow stones along the length of the interior hull sprung to life, and soon a band of faint yellow lights illuminated a ring around the hydra's prison. The collective light was still too weak to penetrate the darkness in the middle of the space, but she caught glimpses of the hydra's form each time it slammed into the side of the hull.
She was distraught to see that the cage did not extend beyond the glass, at least in the areas the glow stones illuminated. The hull appeared to be faring well under the assault, however, with no visible cracks or holes within the glow stones' light -- though they were placed much higher than where the hydra was ramming.
"Come on," she groaned, "there's something I can do. There has to be something."
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In the crow's nest, Eli was jolted forward against the half-wall of the structure and brought precariously close to falling out. A feathery hand grasped him by the collar and pulled him back, then shoved him aside as Hedley took his place and shouldered his staff. He released a powerful streak of white magic that punched through the air down to the main deck far below, where it erupted through the chest of a leaping mermaid.
"Find your legs, kid," Hedley said, pre-emptively leaning into the next tilt as the ship rocked back in the other direction.
Eli fell back against the central pillar of the crow's nest, which was the tip of the main mast. He held his staff tight in one hand while he wrapped the other arm around the broad mast for balance.
"What's causing this?" he shouted.
"No idea," Hedley replied, letting off another blast of magic towards the bow, "not our problem."
The next tilt sent Eli stumbling forward, flailing his arms for balance which he barely regained in time to avoid being flung out of the crow's nest. He spoke after a heaving breath, "it sure feels like our problem."
"Nothing we can do up here," Hedley said between shots, "find your legs, and get back to shooting."
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The first mate was a force to reckon with on the battlefield. From a distance, her path down the main deck almost looked like a casual stroll -- even her frequent ducks and leans to dodge attacks seemed effortless and casual. All the while, her face was stern and stoic, and her twin cutlass swords sliced and stabbed through countless foes even as she surveyed the broader strokes of the battle and shouted orders to her crew.
"Consolidate at the stairwells!" she shouted as she sliced a throat.
She spun and threw a sword through the air, embedding it in a hissing mermaid's throat. In the same spinning motion, she drew a pistol from her waist and put a bullet through the chest plate of another, then used the barrel of the weapon to parry a jab from a trident and cut down the attacker with her remaining sword. She tucked the pistol back into its holster just before the next tilt of the ship brought the previously impaled mermaid stumbling towards her, and with outstretched hand she caught the handle of the sword extending from the mermaid's throat and ripped it free.
The deck was now slick with blood, and her crew was beginning to slip and slide across the rocking ship. The mermaids fared much better in the conditions, the grip of their scaly feet keeping them upright more often than not, and their heightened agility quickly bringing them back to their feet when necessary.
She found herself at the center of the deck, nonchalantly dancing around the main mast towards the stern as she cut her way to the quarterdeck. She watched helplessly as a pirate in her periphery was flung over the starboard railing by the motion of the ship, and glanced up at the swaying masts in concern. She felt each thud that reverberated through the hull, and had no doubt the hydra -- and ultimately the mermaids -- were responsible. Her knowledge of this ship included just how much it would take to capsize it, and though the rocking motion was a long way off, it was increasing with every swing.
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In the waters below the ship, a mermaid carried one of the pirate's unexploded depth charges and swam as fast as she could towards the hull of the ship. At the last possible moment, she angled her body upwards into a flip and released the cannonball. With a twist and strong waves of her body and tail, she rapidly swam away as the cannonball drifted towards the ship and lightly bounced off its hull. A jet stream shot through the water and struck the cannonball, exploding it against the hull.