Iris blipped into the air and mounted her broom, launching into flight before she could begin to fall. As she circled the balrog, it became clear it was the same one she had fought before. One of its eyes was now only a bloody, rotting socket, and countless wounds pockmarked its flesh from the magical barrage levied against it by Eli and Hedley during the battle in the crow’s nest. Puncture wounds marked its back and chest where Iris had stabbed it — this confirmed to her that she pierced all the way through the beast’s body, but had missed its heart. In addition, its wings hung limp from its back, leading Iris to believe she must have damaged critical flight muscles with the wound.
Dala stood below the balrog on the incline of the pyramid, twisting her fingers into contorted arrangements as she chanted in an ancient language. Boils began to appear across the balrog’s body, rapidly swelling and popping to spew acid that burned through hair and flesh. The furious beast charged towards her, leaping off the platform and crashing into the incline, crumbling and dislodging bricks as it slid towards her. Its stone leg also began to crumble, losing chunks of its hoof and cracking up the shin. The matron reached out towards her broom — which had tumbled down the incline — and pulled it into her hand with unseen force. An instant later she had taken flight, leaving the balrog to hopelessly swat at her as its condition rapidly worsened.
Anna swooped by the beast and lightly tapped the bicep of one of its outstretched arms. The arm instantly dropped limp and slapped heavily into the balrog’s thigh, flapping as the beast whirled around to swing at the already escaping witch. Iris followed up behind her with passing swipe of her sword that briefly hung on the tough hair and flesh before her speed and force was able to overcome the resistance and draw blood. Though the strike landed on the creature’s neck, it did only superficial damage.
A roar vibrated the air as the balrog’s slide slowed to stop, leaving it now balanced on the accumulation of rubble beneath its feet. The two witches from the tunnel had now stepped out onto the platform where it once stood, maintaining their line of sight as they focused on their respective spells. While Grey maintained her her stone flesh spell, Relena abandoned the vines and cast a new spell. Clouds of gnats, flies and mosquitoes rose up from the surround swamp and swarmed the balrog, attacking its remaining eye and each of the many wounds it now bore.
While the balrog desperately flailed its single working arm to swat at the swarm, Dala swooped past and lightly touched the back of its neck. Though the fires spreading across its hair had now begun to fade, they left patches of hideous crispy flesh in their wake. At the matron’s touch, these wounds and all its others erupted into profuse bleeding that quickly drenched large swaths of its hair in blood.
The balrog snapped its head towards the matron and opened its mouth to roar again, but the witch met the beast’s gaze and uttered a few ancient words. Its eyes became locked to hers as its body froze in place and its head swiveled to follow her as she circled around in front of it.
“Surrender!” she hissed in a booming whisper that lingered on the wind.
The balrog’s jaw gaped open and its shoulders slumped. With a growl and a furious shake of its head, it escaped the trance and leapt towards the matron. Its stone leg slipped as it kicked off, hindering the height and the trajectory of its leap, though it still grew near enough to the flying witch to strike. An outstretched paw caught her on the back, impacting with such force that it spun her several times in the air as it flung her from her broom. The insects scattered as Relena abandoned her spell and once more called upon the vines, this time to catch the falling Dala before she could slam into the structure.
Bricks crumbled beneath the balrog as it landed back on the pyramid, scrambling with both its legs and its singular working arm to rapidly climb towards the platform where Grey and Relena stood. Foam frothed in the corners of its mouth and its remaining eye was wide and wild. Iris was completing a wide overhead arc around the pyramid, and now raced towards the climbing balrog at a downward angle with her great sword outstretched like a javelin in one hand while her other clutched the broom.
“Need your help!” she shouted to Abby.
Her hand bulged away from the hilt of her sword as a window to the void ripped open in her palm and several tentacles squirmed out of it to wrap around the hilt. Iris clenched her grip over the tentacles, adding to the pressure on the hilt. More tentacles came from the bottomless bag on her opposite side, reaching across to wrap around the hilt and further stabilize the blade.
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A burst of mana translated to a burst of speed, rocketing her towards the rabid balrog. The impact felt like hitting a stone wall, flinging her forward from her broom to slam into its hairy body as the tip of her blade momentarily stuck in its flesh. The combined force of all her and Abby’s strength with the speed of her attack was enough to soon drive the blade through the flesh, piercing through its lower neck and burrowing downwards into its chest.
All was still for an instant, and then the balrog began to fall backwards away from the pyramid. Its back crashed hard into the stone bricks, and it began to slide down like a heavy sled as Iris climbed to her feet on top of its chest, still clinging to the hilt of her buried sword with outstretched tentacles from her palm. At the base of the pyramid were densely packed trunks and roots awaiting a gnarly impact, and her eyes shot up to find a suitable place to blip. When she found a place, the tentacles withdrew from the hilt and slurped back into the void an instant before she disappeared.
______
As the stars sparkled over a swamp bathed in darkness, a beacon of light hung high above. Entangled in vines and moss — some natural, others conjured — and half resting on a crooked and twisted branch of an enormous tree was the Gaping Maw. Light spilled out from various holes in its upper hull and bobbed from the lanterns carried by working crew on its deck.
The rearmost mast had collapsed entirely after having snapped a few dozen feet above the deck. The damage to the mast was far beyond what could be repaired in the current circumstance, and the only efforts dedicated to it were spent on removing its debris. The ship would have no choice but to fly without it.
Between the quarterdeck and the first mast, a large patch of the deck had transformed into a hideous visage of twisted, curling planks soaked in now long-dried blood. Though work had begun on cutting through and removing the warped planks, they still tightly grasped the skeletal remains of a balrog.
“We finally have a report on the wings, captain,” Meredith said as she approached the Shark Titan.
He was standing at the stern with hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out across the swamp, “how fucked are we?”
“Well, not badly, it turns out. The wings were retracted in time and bore no damage from the crash. They did sustain some damage from the initial battle, but none that we can’t fix.”
The captain released long held tension with a tired breath, “that was nearly the end of this quest.”
“We would have figured something out,” Meredith stepped up beside him, “you would have chained the hydra and ridden it out of this swamp if you had to.”
The captain chuckled, “aye, I would have.”
“Plus,” Meredith preemptively smirked, “we could have asked the elves for help.”
The captain scoffed, “I’d rather us all die in this swamp!”
“Even me?”
The captain made a dismissive sound and averted his gaze, “how’s Luo?”
“Miserable— still bruised all over. The healer says he’ll be bedridden for a week at least.”
“Damn fool,” the captain grumbled, “that ability is gonna kill him one day.”A strange, faintly purple light floating out of the swamp and towards the ship caught the captain’s attention, “what’s that?”
“That’s the one that turns into a ghost. She’s been out in the swamp looking for the wizard that fell overboard. There’s not much she can offer to help with repairs, so I’ve allowed it.”
“The one with the hat?” the captain asked with surprised disappointment, “I liked that one.”
Meredith shrugged, “I thought she was annoying.”
Below deck, Victoria drifted through the hull of the ship and into the crew quarters, where she found her party sitting on upturned buckets in a silent circle. Eli shot to his feet at her arrival.
“Anything?” he asked desperately.
Victoria’s feet lightly touched down on the planks as she shifted back to her physical form with a gentle, somber shake of her head, “it’s a big swamp. I need to rest tonight, but I’ll go out again in the morning.”
“I’ll join you with Glimmer,” Eli said.
Victoria shook her head again, “it wouldn’t help, you could fly right over her and not see a glimpse through the canopy.”
“What happens if we don’t find her?” Autumn asked with fear in her voice.
Eli exchanged glances with Victoria and Titus, and silence lingered.
“We could stay behind and keep trying,” Titus suggested halfheartedly, “but then we’ll all be lost in the swamp. Not sure how much good that would do.”
“I don’t imagine the captain takes kindly to deserters, either” Victoria said.
Spirits were heavy, and voices were low. Each word they spoke carried with it dread and worry. Eli returned to his seat and put his head in his hands.
“She’s smart, and can move quickly,” Eli finally said, “we have a few more days before the ship is in any state to sail again. Either we’ll find her, or she’ll find us.”
The others nodded in agreement, if for no other reason than to reassure themselves.