Victoria had spent much of the battle as she spent most battles, lingering out of view and out of reach of the combatants as she covertly and strategically applied positive and negative effects with her summoned tarot cards. Her spectral form aided in this endeavor significantly, allowing her to escalate from her usual strategy of staying in one place to instead quickly and quietly navigate the battlefield and apply effects where they were most needed.
As the crew conceded the main deck to the mermaids and retreated to defend the chokepoints on the stairwells to the gun deck, Victoria stayed above and harassed the attackers with negative effects and distractions. They fired jets of water and even threw tridents at her whenever she was seen, but they were no risk to her spectral form. Accompanying her harassment campaign were Eli and Hedley, who fired a continuous barrage of magic bolts at the mermaids on the deck from the crow’s nest.
When the mermaids began climbing the main mast towards the crow's nest, Victoria adjusted her strategy to run interference and delay their climb. Her powers worked well in the vertical battlefield of the masts and sails, allowing her to hide behind sails and pass through them to surprise the climbing assailants. Though her spectral form had little in the way of effective attacks, she quickly devised a strategy that involved flying towards an enemy, shifting into her physical form to tackle the enemy off the ropes, and shift back to her spectral form to avoid falling herself.
The strategy was effective, but it became harder and harder for the snipers in the crow's nest to support her efforts as the mermaids used the sails and important rigging as cover for their climb. Though she consistently slowed their ascent, the mermaids were growing closer to the crow's nest.
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The gun deck was a bloody scene. Piles of bodies both mermaid and pirate clogged the stairwells. The mermaids shifted their approach from pushing down the stairs to climbing back over the side of the ship and attempting to enter through the gun ports. The gunners still operated cannons as fast as they could even as the assault was underway and countless pirates crowded their deck, though they were beginning to worry about the amount of ammunition they were using.
Few noticed when Iris appeared, and the frantic scurrying and shouting continued around her as Titus clenched a fist and clasped his other hand over top it. Bright, crackling white light began to shine between his fingers and wrap around his fist as he raised his hands over his head and slammed them down on Iris's chest.
The impact itself was traumatic and damaging, but that was his intent. Her heart rate was slowing, the blood was barely moving through her body and her lungs were barely expanding at all. The massive jolt of magic and blunt physical force was harmful to her body in the short term, but it triggered the response he was hoping for. Her heart increased speed and she began gasping for air again, both critical functions for distributing his healing magic throughout her body. If she was stable -- if he had more time -- he could have done things the softer way, but without it, he simply gritted his teeth and raised his hands for another hit.
Behind him, the first mate had seen Iris appear and connected the dots on her own. She shouted orders to the crew, "I need ten sailors to the lower decks! Mermaids have breached the hull!"
Loose cannonballs rolled across the deck as the ship tilted far to one side, followed by boots stomping down the stairs.
Victoria phased through the hull of the ship and drifted up to the first mate, speaking in the echoing overlapping voices of her spectral form, "mermaids are climbing the masts, they'll reach the crow's nest soon."
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The first mate growled in frustration, "how concentrated are they on the stairs?"
"Not very," Victoria replied, "they're split between the stairwells, the gun ports, and climbing towards the crow's nest."
The first mate nodded and shouted across the gun deck, "Luo! We're taking back the main deck!"
The quartermaster withdrew his saber from the body of a mermaid who had been attempting to climb through a gun port, "aye!" despite his affirmative response, he turned away to drive his sword through another mermaid.
“You,” the first mate said to Victoria, “support the sailors on the lower decks, find out what the mermaids are doing down there.”
Victoria nodded and dropped through the floor.
With his last target dispatched, the quartermaster joined the first mate in rallying pirates for the counter assault. Though clearing the bodies from the stairs was a difficult task for the upstairs attackers, from beneath it was a relatively quick process. Pirates grabbed hold of limbs and pulled them down the stairs, dragging the bodies across the deck and away from the stairs. This further crowded the gun deck, and made the operation of a few cannons immediately on either side of the corpses much more difficult, but it quickly cleared the path upwards.
Quartermaster Luo led the charge up the starboard stairwell, while First Mate Meredith led the port side. The pirates yelled, growled and cheered as they stormed up the stairs and quickly overwhelmed the thinned forces in their path. An unfortunately timed tilt of the ship slammed them against the walls of the stairwell and momentarily halted their assault, but they quickly recovered and continued their ascent.
Mermaids who had just begun their climb up the masts -- or who had started over again after being knocked away into the water by Victoria -- quickly abandoned their efforts to join the fight for the main deck, while other mermaids diverted their attention from the gun ports to climb back over the railings. Even as the mermaids converged once more, it was clear their numbers were finally fading, with fewer and fewer reinforcements coming from the water.
"This is it boys!" Luo shouted with a wicked grin, "they're on the back foot!"
Cheers and shouts echoed in response even as the fight continued. Soon they had established a small perimeter around the base of the quarterdeck, and pirates were spilling out of the stairwells onto the main deck.
"With me!" the first mate shouted, "we're taking back the helm!"
A large contingent of the pirate forces split off to fight their way up the stairs to the quarterdeck. The first mate quickly cut a path to the helm, where her crew surrounded her to form a perimeter. Within minutes, the mermaids had been push back over the railings and the quarterdeck was secured.
The first mate looked up the masts, spotting the distant mermaids climbing like ants. They were close to the crow's nest now.
"Luo!" she shouted, "I need hands working the sails!"
"Aye!" Luo shouted.
Soon pirates were dispersing across the main deck. The rocking of the ship was slow, but it was wide, and with the peak of each tilt pirates slipped and slid across the deck. The first mate swore to herself, hoping the pirates she had sent to the lower decks would be able to do something about it if her own plan didn't work.
The ship had drifted in the choppy waters, twisting slightly so that the bow of the ship faced slightly towards the channel out of the cove. Through the channel and out in the lake, she could see moonlit glinting off distant waves abruptly rising, and the occasional flash of a strange, bouncing light that sometimes crested out of the water. She glanced up again towards the crow's nest, the flag was flapping viciously in the wind.
She diverted her eyes back to the deck, where she saw the crew taking their places amongst the ropes and ties, awaiting her command. She timed her orders with the sway of the ship, ordering sails dropped and turned to catch the strong winds. Creaks and groans rumbled throughout the ship as the force of the winds fought against the swaying motion of the ship. The strain on the masts was severe, but she was confident in the ship's construction. For the first time since the rocking had begun, the peak of the next tilt was less than the one prior.
She continued barking rapid orders across the deck, spinning the wheel quickly as sails swung away from the wind. Forward momentum was inevitable with wind catching the sails even briefly, but she captured it as rotation to further counteract the rocking and angle the ship towards the channel.