Iris blipped to the gun deck — orders were barked across the deck as pirates were in a frantic but organized rush throughout the deck. She stayed clear of the main walk ways where cannonballs and powder were passed one-to-another down a chain of pirates and handed to cannoneers to be loaded. When she spotted Cameron loading a cannon with powder from one of his pouches, she blipped over to him.
“What’s happening?”
“Not now, Iris,” he said without taking his eyes off his works, “you’re not ready for—”
“I am so sick of hearing that!” she snapped, “how many times do I have to prove myself to you people?”
Cameron stopped and shot her a fierce glare that reminded of her Eli, “every hero rank on this ship should be cowering in the dark right now. What’s coming is really, really bad.”
Her demeanor shifted from indignant to concerned, but she wasn’t sure what to say.
“The only people braving the main deck right now are the captain and his officers, everyone down here—” he motioned across the gun deck, “we’d die in seconds up there. The best thing you can do is find the rest of the party and get somewhere safe.” His glare lingered for only a moment before he returned to work.
Iris stood speechless for a moment, but soon found herself in the way of a pirate rushing up with a cannonball. A blip brought her to a clear spot she could stand out of the way, where she began frantically scanning her surroundings for her party members.
Thunderous roars overlapped each other from outside the ship, and Iris felt fear growing in her chest. It was held back by the Fearless Resolve feat which reduced her fear response, but not wholly eliminated. The pirates around her grew more panicked in their movements, and more than a few tripped or dropped what they were carrying.
A huge, hairy fist punched through a cannon port further down the deck, crushing the chest of a pirate and flinging him across the deck and into a support beam that splintered from the impact. The arm reached several feet through the port as the hairy body of the beast on the other side blocked out the sky. Its fist opened into a thick, three-fingered paw that swung around and grasped a pirate around the torso an instant before slamming him into the floor with a grotesque splat.
Fleeing pirates were shoved aside by Dorragth, who screamed a battle cry as he brought down a crudely shaped marble great-axe into the flesh of the arm. The blade caught in only the first inch of hair and skin for an instant before the head of the axe exploded downwards and shot thick chunks of shrapnel out the bottom side of the arm. Autumn — clad in a full body suit of black marble armor — appeared from behind Dorragth and repeated the move, and though the effects were much lesser, a spike of marble still erupted from the balrog’s arm.
The arm retracted from the cannon port, but another soon replaced it. The fist hit Dorragth’s crossed arms, but pushed them into his chest and flung him across the deck. A blind swing from the balrog’s arm caught Autumn in the chest and sent her flying backwards, she landed on her back and slid several feet across the deck towards Iris. The ship rocked and shuttered as more balrogs crashed into the hull and began reaching into the gun deck, and the first cannons finally fired.
A blip brought Iris to a crouch over Autumn. The marble across her chest was shattered and falling away, but the only otherwise visible flesh beneath the suit of armor were her eyes — which were wide and full of shock.
“Fuck,” she wheezed, her voice muffled by the marble face plate, “that hit hard.”
“We need to go,” Iris said hurriedly, “this isn’t our fight.”
Autumn choked a laugh, “coming from you— I believe it,” fear abruptly filled Autumn’s eyes, “I don’t think I can move.”
Iris grimaced, “get ready.”
“For wha-”
Iris blipped Autumn through the deck to the crew quarters directly below. She had never blipped a person before, and it drained her mana to critical levels. The headache struck instantly, and the burning veins came a second later. Were she not already crouching, she would have collapsed.
Smoke was filling the deck as cannon after cannon fired off. Screams, shouts and roars filled the momentary gaps between blasts. All bets seemed off as far as powers on the ship were concerned, and eruptions of magic were flashing various colors across the deck. Some pirates imbued their weapons with elements, one pirate grew to nearly twice her original size and attempted to wrestle against a balrog’s arm, while another flashed down the length of the deck at impossible speed trailed by lingering tendrils of green energy that reached out and wrapped around the balrogs’ arms and constricted around their flesh.
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Something exploded and a shower of large splinters flew towards Iris. There was no time or mana for her to blip away. A flurry of tentacles erupted from her bag and whipped around like a writhing shield, intercepting most of the splinters — each of which embedded themselves deeply in her purple flesh. A few made it through the defense and stabbed into Iris like daggers, but none hit critical areas.
“Almost— there—” she grunted.
The tentacles grabbed a nearby barrel of cannonballs and heaved them into the air, swinging it into a nearby balrog fist that was slamming its way across the deck in the direction of Iris. The attack did only superficial damage, but it caused the arm to recoil away and bought crucial seconds for Iris.
A few cannons down from Iris, the hull was ripped open. Air rushed in for a second before the gap was clogged by the body of a balrog. It was vaguely human-shaped but with absurdly muscled proportions and covered in thick brown hair. Its head looked like a skull with black horns. That was all Iris could see before a pulse of mana aches caused her to squeeze her eyes closed and drop her head to weather the pain.
The intruding balrog wreaked havoc on the gun deck, hunching down and tearing away debris to fit into the ship as it lashed out at pirates with its three-fingered paws. Cameron began steering the most recent cannon he had loaded to face the balrog, but the cannons weren’t built to turn and he lacked the strength to maneuver it quickly. Dorragth shoved him aside, lit the fuse, and hoisted the cannon from the deck. He held it under an arm wrapped around it while the other supported it from underneath.
The cannon fired, a blast of smoke and fire erupted from the barrel and flooded the deck as a cannonball trailing streaks of crackling orange energy punched into the chest of the balrog. Ribs cracked and flesh deformed, but the cannonball buried itself only half-way into the beast’s chest — then it began to glow, and crackling orange energy spread across the balrog’s body, and it appeared momentarily stunned.
Dorragth charged forward and completed a full spin before launching the cannon forward with all of his strength. The huge chunk of metal slammed into the balrog and pushed it backwards towards the opening it had entered through as the cannon bounced off and crashed into the floor. From her cover behind a nearby beam, Misty called down vines from the barrel planters on the deck above. They quickly worked their way down the exterior hull and into the gun deck, where they wrapped around the stunned balrog’s limbs and pulled it the rest of the way out of the ship.
Iris felt enough mana for a blip, and braced herself for the incoming pain. She hit the floor of the crew quarters hard — there hadn’t been enough mana to blip the full distance to avoid appearing in the air. Her skull felt like it might split, and her neck and chest like there was a fire beneath her flesh.
Victoria appeared beside her, shifting back to her physical form to kneel beside Iris and place a hand to her neck, “she’s alive!”
“Get her here!” Titus shouted from across the deck.
Victoria moved to lift Iris, but was waved off by a tentacle and negative otherworldly tones from the bottomless bag.
“I’m okay—” Iris croaked, “just— mana sickness.”
Victoria relayed the information to Titus, who refocused his attention on the more severely wounded pirates he was treating on the open floor of the deck by the stairwells. Victoria shifted back to her ghostly form and floated off but returned a few moments later to check on Iris, who was now sitting upright and clutching her head.
“You good?” Victoria asked.
“Yeah,” Iris groaned, “I just need a few minutes. How’s Autumn?”
“Fucked up, but alive. I’ve got work to do, find better cover somewhere when you can.”
Victoria didn’t wait for a reply before gliding off towards Titus. The healer directed her to a pair of patients, over whom she quickly conjured floating cards to assist with their healing before shooting upwards through the ceiling.
After a few more minutes of recovery, Iris staggered over to Titus as he was kneeling over an unconscious patient. The last of her mana was returning, though the aches would linger. Large chunks of hull still stuck out of her shoulder and thigh, but she was ignoring those. Autumn was resting nearby, the armor around her torso was removed and her chest was rising and falling slowly with unsteady breaths. Iris didn’t want to interrupt a healer at work, but needed to know about the rest of her friends.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
Titus briefly glanced up at her, “pull those out,” he pointed to the shrapnel in her thigh before placing both hands on his patient’s chest and pushing down with a burst of force as crackling white energy traveled from his palms deep into the patient’s torso.
Iris did as he ordered, grimacing as she ripped out the shrapnel.
“No time for the easy way,” he said curtly, pointing a hand at her and firing a blast of white magic that thumped into her chest and staggered her backwards.
She grunted, but didn’t complain. The open wounds stung harshly as they closed, leaving only holes and blood stains in her robes.
“Where are the others?” she repeated.
“Killup’s in the Galley, Adan’s helping wounded down the stairs.”
“And Eli?”
Titus looked up at her with knowing concern, and Iris realized the only place Eli would be at this time of day.
“Vic’s already on it—” Titus began, but Iris was already gone.