The squid was finished playing with the elf, and its massive head rose above the ship's starboard side and glared down at the ranger with its single eye. Psycho lifted the crossbow and fired at the obvious target. The bolt hit the massive orb but only enraged the monster more. It swung multiple tentacles at the elf, not meaning to grab him but wanting to crush him. Psycho discarded the useless weapon and leaped out of the way as the heavy arms smashed the barrels and crates around him.

He moved toward the center of the deck, away from most of the wreckage and just beneath the raised quarterdeck. He gripped his sword tightly in two hands, wondering how he would take out this monster. It was blinking the speck out of its eye and analyzing the splintered mess its attack had caused, searching for the elf’s body.

To Psycho’s right, shattering glass drew his attention, and he turned to see a cloaked figure crash through a second-story window, tumble through the air, and land gracefully beside him. Esther extended the arm holding the ranger’s cloak as if she expected to find him standing there. “I believe this belongs to you,” she said.

“Legs,” he said as he quickly put the garment on, “I think I love you.”

She smiled at him. “You aren’t so bad yourself. What happened to your shirt?”

Psycho didn’t like the alluring gaze the woman gave him, so he hastily found his dragon armor within the cloak and put it on. Esther was hoping for an answer to her question and searched the deck when her partner didn’t give one. Her eyes found Lilith’s body, dressed in the alluring nightgown, and she began to form a theory but couldn’t dwell on it as she saw the monster pummeling the front of the ship.

“What in the seven seas is that?”

“Lilith’s pet,” Psycho replied, pulling his elemental bow from his cloak. “We aren’t friends.”

Esther shrank back several steps, leaning against the lower wall of the crew quarters. The squid rose in the air, having finished its destructive effort and coming up empty. Its sensitive suckers had felt the shattering glass from Esther’s dramatic entrance to the deck and turned its body toward it. The colossal eye easily found the two characters, its massive beak clacking repeatedly in anticipation of the meal. Psycho didn’t flinch as he pulled an arrow and lined up his shot. The beast used all of its arms to maneuver over the ship, rocking the vessel side to side under its massive weight, but the archer was a rock, steady and unmoving, waiting until the last second to release his shot. It was an acid arrow and flew straight through the monster's dilated pupil.

Now Psycho dove out of the way as the blinded creature’s bulk smashed against the quarterdeck, crushing the wood beneath it. Esther had vacated the position moments before and clutched at the elf’s arm. “Is it dead?”

“I doubt it,” Psycho replied. “But I’m not waiting around to find out.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her port side toward the dock. They stopped short when they reached the railing. During the fight, the rope securing the ship had snapped, and they were now over two hundred feet from the pier. “Can you swim?”

Esther nodded. “Tami taught me, but I’m not swimming in that.” She pointed to the water surrounding the ship.

Psycho had been focused on the distant dock but now looked down to see half a dozen tentacles swarming around the hull. If the creature could sense vibrations through the ship, it could definitely track their swimming. They would never make it to shore. “Then we fight,” the elf said, returning to the squid.

The monster was not dead, nor was it dying. Instead, it had hugged the rear of the ship, venting its anger against the acid throbbing in its brain by crushing the crew quarters. It quickly found out most of the rear decks were on fire and shrieked in pain. It released its death grip and turned toward its elusive prey.

Psycho put another arrow in its eye.

The squid had tentacles reaching from prow to rudder on the ship, and it convulsed its whole body in pain. The deck below the characters’ feet buckled and split, causing them to lose their balance. Above them, the main mast lost its base and crashed toward the front of the ship. The topsails had caught fire at this point and spread it to the bow.

Psycho stabilized himself on one knee as he drew another arrow and tracked the massive head as it wisely retreated to starboard and prepared to sink below deck again. Before it disappeared and right before the ranger was about to fire, the squid released a jet of ink that drenched the pair.

“Ewww,” Esther shrieked, flinging her hands to try to remove the oily substance. “This better not stain!”

“What do you care?” Psycho said as he spat a mouthful of the offensive liquid. “You wear all black anyway.”

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“I wear ebony and onyx,” she said, fruitlessly trying to wipe the ink from her skirt and legs. “This is jet black. They are completely different!”

Psycho didn’t have time to argue as the ship exploded around them. The bulk of the squid had disappeared over the ship's side, but its arms were still present. As the ship split apart and burned, vibrations were everywhere, and the tortured creature couldn’t tell a splintering board from a footstep, so it attacked everything. Tentacles burst through the deck and walls of the ship, causing Psycho and Esther to leap and dodge at a moment’s notice.

Esther had her blades out, as much for balance as anything, and hacked at the arms as they sped past her. The weapons were much better at the job than Psycho’s discarded cutlass had been. The ranger was sure everything he had cut off had grown back once the limbs retreated to the water, but Esther’s cuts left a charred or frostbit edge, and they could feel the massive beast shudder in pain with each strike.

“Keep at it,” Psycho instructed. “I’m going to see if I can’t get a few more shots at its face.” The ranger left the capable woman to her job and ran toward the loading doors to the hold below. He slipped several times on the slick ink and feared the oily substance was likely flammable. So far, the fire was at the front and back of the ship, with the ink in the middle. That wouldn’t last.

Several gaping holes greeted him as he shoved a heavy cage aside so he could jump down. He landed in knee-deep water, as cracks in the lower walls allowed the ocean inside. Several port holes lined the bulkhead higher up. If the water rose that high, the ship would sink in seconds. As it was, Psycho guessed they only had a few minutes. They wouldn't last long in the water if they needed to abandon ship while the squid was still alive.

Psycho nocked an arrow on his bow and kept his eyes on the starboard portholes. The bulk of the squid's body pressed against the ship, threatening to crush it even further, and the ranger held his shot. He wanted the eye or mouth. Shooting it in the body would only alert the animal to his presence below deck. Let it fight the stinging blades of Esther for now. She was draining its health in the process. His eyes scanned the five windows before him, ready to fire through any of them. He couldn’t activate his Aim ability since it required focusing on one target for a full round, but he was only twenty feet away, so Point Blank was in full effect.

The muted yellow of the creature’s beak flashed at one porthole and then receded to the left. Psycho trained on the next window in line and released his shot as the open mouth came into view. The beast shrieked in pain again, but it wasn’t as potent as his previous shots and not that much worse than what Esther was dealing out above. The stupid creature wondered how the ship had stabbed it, so it maneuvered its injured eye to the offending spot on the hull.

Psycho pulled one of his treasured mithril arrows and activated his Aim ability on the specific porthole. As soon as the two beings made eye contact, the ranger fired, and the squid wrenched the ship nearly in two from the pain. The cracks in the lower level opened wider, and water poured in. The elf guessed he had a minute at most and didn’t want to be caught below deck when the ship went over. However, he hesitated when he saw how the squid oriented itself. He wasn’t an expert in marine biology, but he had a guess of what was coming next and pulled a fire arrow to prepare.

The base of several thick tentacles flashed by the open window before a horrible sphincter filled the porthole. Psycho drew back, waited for the puckered hole to open slightly, and fired. He didn’t activate any of his abilities. He didn’t need to.

Not only was the squid’s ink flammable. It was explosive. The flaming arrow entered the beast's ink sac before it could squeeze its muscles. The detonation almost flipped the ship over, rocking it hard toward the port side, dumping most of the loose cargo overboard, including Esther. Psycho dropped to the floor of the hold, letting the now waist-deep water cover him as flames exploded into the ship, ripping the starboard wall away as if it had never been there.

The ship rocked back to starboard and found that the side of the hull was completely missing. Water rushed into the hold, and the bottom of the ship was instantly underwater. Psycho felt the vessel's weight above him, but the wood’s buoyancy prevented it from sinking like a stone. He swam straight down, through the gaping hole, around the keel, and up to the surface. Dead squid pieces floated all around him as he searched for a bit of broken wood to hold on to. As the ship slowly sank behind him, the silence of the night that had been shattered for the past fifteen minutes returned, and the sound of frantic splashing was easy to pick out.

“I thought you could swim,” Psycho said as he maneuvered alongside Esther. She wasn’t drowning but clutched to a narrow board and thrashed her legs as if she were undergoing a shark attack.

“I can,” she replied, calming down with the elf nearby. “But I usually enter the water by walking in from a beach, not through the air by an exploding squid. Plus, I’m usually wearing less. This armor is heavy.”

“Then take it off,” he offered.

“No,” she replied, “I’m hoping the water washes the ink off.”

The elf laughed. “Well, it’s over now. You did good, Legs.”

Esther smiled. “Thanks. It was nice to fight something that didn’t want to sleep with me for a change.”

He laughed again. “Yes, seducing the squid wouldn’t have worked as well as it did against . . .” Psycho stopped before finishing.

Esther looked at him. “Wait, what did you say?”

Psycho looked forward and tried to swim away from her. She caught up to him. “As it did against Lilith?” she completed for him. “You seduced Lilith to beat her? Oh, wait till Draya hears this.”

“I shot her with a crossbow,” Psycho said evenly, not making eye contact.

“Of course you did,” Esther laughed. “Straight through her broken heart. And I suppose the squid took your shirt off.”

“Like you didn’t seduce Potiphar before you killed him,” the elf snapped.

“Of course I did,” she replied. “But I do that to everyone. You, on the other hand. . .”

“I hope the ink doesn’t come out,” Psycho said.

She laughed. “I’m sure Gromphy will be able to fix it.” She paused. “I’m sure he can also craft a voluptuous love doll dressed in seaweed if you want.”

The elf fumed and raced to shore.