Chapter Sixty

I had been sure I’d scared the remaining barbarians off, so their newfound courage for a heroic last stand was an unwelcome development.

Fourteen orks were quickly whipping their remaining slaves into three ranks in front of the cabins, some twenty metres from us. Eight men formed the first line, holding weird-looking billhooked spears, at least three metres long. The second line of eight men behind them had a variety of shorter polearms. They weren’t a huge problem from my point of view, not even with nine of the orks behind them, brandishing their obscenely large melee weapons; with tentacles more than twice as long as their spears I easily outclassed them in terms of reach. The best they could do was to present themselves as snacks. But, there was a problem, because why wouldn’t there be one? Archers. Seven humans, two elves and four orks sporting bows. Seeing the many stacks of arrows they had dragged up from somewhere, they weren’t going to run out of ammunition any time soon, even if they fired at us every five seconds.

I glared at them as much as I could glare without eyes. Things had been going well so far. For me, not for the crew. By my estimate I needed around 5700 EXP to reach Level 35, and the twenty humans, two elves, eight orks had given me over 1800 EXP within minutes of my arrival to the quarterdeck. That wasn’t a bad result — who knew mass-murdering a whole ship would be so delicious? What to do now? What to do?

Tomas and Ferin both looked at Krissy, tense and ready to bolt back to the hatch. That would be a sensible thing to do. The masts were still there between us and our foes, not to mention a number of boxes and barrels, so trying to get behind cover was also a reasonable option. Our mobility was an issue, though; Krissy had a sprained ankle, so running, jumping, ducking and even simple, unassisted walking was not something she could do.

The ork with the tricorn hat bellowed an order before either me or Krissy had time to decide how to react to the threat. That ork was the largest of the green wankers, so probably the captain of the ship. The archers immediately aimed and loosed. Thirteen arrows cut through the air. It took a second for the projectiles to reach us, but that second was enough for me to pour all my remaining Mana out and re-form Krissy’s Mana-Armour. And since Tomas and Ferin were standing shoulder to shoulder with her, holding her, I managed to extend the protection to them as well.

The archers were pretty good shots, unfortunately; eleven of the arrows hit us. My three companions flinched as the inivisble armour flared for a second, the arrows tearing out chunks of Mana, then clattering onto the floor harmlessly.

And with that, I was almost out of Mana. I mean, I had spent 36 MP on a tentacle-hug. I did not regret it at all, it was worth it. However, with ten tentacles at my disposal, my Essence collection was fast, about 15 EP per minute, and my pools were nearly full. I pulled 60 EP from the primary and another 20 EP from the secondary pools, converting it into into 40 MP, filling my Mana-Pool up to capacity. I renewed the Mana-Armour around Krissy and her helpers before the last of the arrows fell to the floor, just as the archers prepared the second volley. I wasn’t yet sure how much the extended armour would cost me per minute, but I guessed it to be around 10 to 12 MP per minute — I could keep it up for at least four minutes. That didn’t seem like a long time, but it should be enough to come up with a half-decent plan for a counterattack. Or a retreat. Either way, we needed to move.

The new volley came a few seconds later. They bounced off my Mana-Armour. Ork Captain barked an order. The archers stopped pulling on the bowstrings, and the third volley was canceled.

Ork-Captain was smarter than he looked. Which wasn’t hard since orks didn’t have that genius look to begin with, plus the guy’s undersized tri-corn hat did not help his image. He realized he couldn’t kill or hurt us with arrows, so he decided not to waste their stockpile of flying sticks, at least for now. It didn’t look like they were going to charge at us either. On the other hand, we couldn’t hurt them from where we were, and with Krissy’s injury it was impossible to take the fight to them without depleting my Mana-Pool and losing Mana-Armour. We had quickly arrived at an impasse. I deactivated Mana-Armour, and let my pools re-fill — I could bring it back up if I saw the archers getting ready to shoot again.

I plunged a few of my tentacles through the floorboard, hoping a few live rowers would be in my reach. If I could possess at least one, I could just frogmarch him along the rowers’ deck and position him right under our adversaries, and have bit of nom-nom.

I had done too good a job eating the slaves, and the living ones were way out of reach, so that wasn’t an option. The upside to that was that I wouldn’t have to start working on excuses for why I was leaving Krissy again, right after I’d promised not to.

‘Kevin!’ Krissy whispered, not taking her eyes off the enemy and their captain.

‘Yes?’ I asked cautiously, hoping she wasn’t going to have another go at me.

‘What’s the plan?’ she grumbled at me.

I wasn’t all out of options. Tomas was uninjured, and I already had one of my tenties ready to plunge into his soul. That was the plan. I just wasn’t sure if I was brave enough to present it to Krissy.

‘Well, I have a plan, but I’d have to leave you for little bit. Again.’ I said, even more cautiously.

Krissy, as if she was reading my mind, glanced at the Tomas, then scowled. The ranger shuddered. Everyone was a bloody mind-reader around here.

‘Are you trying to piss me off? You’re my familiar,’ she hissed through gritted teeth.

‘But … you’re injured,’ I argued.

I withdrew my tentacle from the ranger’s soul. I didn’t think I could win this argument even if her life depended on it. Which it did. My married friends had been right: there was nothing more dangerous than a woman who had made up her mind about something. I sighed inwardly and wanted to inform her that my plan involved someone going over to the enemy at a fast pace, when Ork Captain barreled forward, roaring and pushing his comrades aside, disrupting the ranks of his own men.

***

One minute passed, and I was still just gawking at Ork Captain, who had come quite close to us, having left the relative safety of his troops behind. I wasn’t an expert on orkish behaviour, language and facial expression, but I had a feeling he was angry.

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An old memory flashed through my mind. The restaurant. A customer with her four-year-old boy who, for whatever reason, was unhappy and decided to throw a tantrum between two tables, stomping on the floor, screaming, grabbing and smashing cutlery on the floor, much to his mother's embarrassment. This time there was no mother around, and the child was incredibly large, green and ugly. Instead of spoons and forks, his huge cutlass-like blade ended up on the floor. Then he grabbed some navigational equipment and smashed it down. Then he picked up an ork-sized book, probably the captain’s log, or maybe maps or navigational charts, and that ended up bouncing away on the floor, too. After some time, Ork Captain finally ran out of things he could grab, and he threw his tricorn hat, then kicked it so hard it went overboard to be lost at sea forever. I realized then that the second minute of this performance had just passed. To my astonishment, the green guy pulled another tricorn hat from somewhere, a back pocket on his trousers maybe, and slammed it on his bald, green head.

‘Uhm … so …’ I started to say, but suddenly couldn’t find the words.

‘Yeah,’ Krissy agreed.

Tomas and Ferin were staring at the spectacle, mesmerized and horrified in equal measure, judging by the looks on their faces.

‘Are you curious what he’s saying? I’m curious what he’s saying,’ I said.

Because I was curious what he was saying. This didn’t look like a taunt, or a surrender, or a trick, or a diversion — his troops stood still, looking just as gobsmacked by the captains’s behaviour as we were. I mean, he was having a bad day, mostly due to an evil spirit eating the majority of his crew, so maybe he just had it up here and lost his mind.

‘I won’t lie …’ said Krissy, then looked at her two helpers. ‘… I’m a little intrigued.’

Tomas inhaled sharply, Ferin started shaking her head. They knew what this meant.

We started inching forward, the two elves setting a pace so slow that Krissy probably could have limped or hopped on her good leg faster than them. But we made progress.

Ork Captain noticed our approach. By now his head was taking on a reddish hue, veins popping on his forehead no doubt. But he stopped screaming like a madman and straightened himself, looking directly at Krissy. He didn’t move, though, he didn’t even pick up his weapon from the floor. I wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad sign.

Finally, after a very long and painful minute and a half — painful mostly for Krissy — we stopped about five metres from the towering creature. He was well withing my range, and I had one of my danger-noodles ready with a thread to connect him to my group chat. If I had to strike and gobble up his soul, I was prepared for that, too.

Ork Captain didn’t move a muscle though — he was glaring at us, panting and huffing as if he had just ran a Marathon. He was really worked up, but he didn’t do anything. I activated Mana-Armour anyway, just in case. The barely visible blue flash of the magical shield was enough to trigger another round of loud bellowing and stomping from Ork Captain.

I stuck a tentacle into his green soul. I connected the thread to the node I thought was his communication node, and lo and behold, his thoughts started to echo in our mind. Loudly.

‘… ya fuggen ganks got no honour! Ya’r worse than the fuggen shitgang-shamans! This is my ship! Fight me like a man! No cripples! No cheatin’! No invisible-gankshit-spirit-bastards! Fair and square, ya hear me? Fair and square!’

Honour? Really? I wasn’t an expert on the topic, but when one side was pillaging for slaves, the other eating souls, I didn’t think honour played a role at all. The fact that Ork Captain was spouting such nonsense got on my nerves instantly.

Activating Mana-Glove, I reached out with a tentacle and coiled it around the largest, heaviest-looking object I could find. The suspected captain’s log. Or navigational chart. It didn’t matter.

‘Facebook Attack!’ I yelled as I slammed the wood-bound book in his face. ‘You’ve been unfriended!’

Ork Captain fell back and landed on his backside, blackish blood squirting from his flattened nose.

Tomas and Ferin gasped. Krissy snorted. My Tentacle Horror instinct hissed at me for not eating him. The barbarian lines behind the captain stirred, the spearmen lifting their weapons, the archers reaching for arrows. At least we were closer now — we could take the two or three volleys they could manage before we reached them. Krissy tensed and was ready to move or limp forward, but before we could do so, Ork Captain jumped to his feet, thundering some choice words.

‘Ya fuggen gank-ass whoreson shit-spirit! Stay the hell outta my ship, ya fugger! I’m Orkuz Graal! This. Is. My. Ship.’

The ork was incredibly loud. Not just his voice, but his thoughts as well, flooding my communication node, asserting a vulgar supremacy over all other thoughts that might be traveling through. The fellow didn’t seem to know what restraint meant.

‘I say we kill him,’ I suggested.

The captain stopped yelling at us immediately, tilted his head to the side, and started smacking his jagged pointy ear on the up side, just like you’d try to get water to leave the ear on the down-side, after a bath or dip in a pool. So he somehow heard me over his own thought-voice, didn’t he?

‘Yeah, it seems like the thing to do,’ agreed Krissy without batting an eye.

I reached out with a tentacle, not nearly as excited as my Tentacle Horror instinct — mushrooms still weren’t my favourites. I’d have to have some spirit-toothpaste after, and I eyed a couple of the human spearmen. They would do.

No! Dimal’s thought-scream rang in our heads before I could snatch myself a bland, mushroom flavoured snack. Weren’t you listening? He said the ship is his. He’s the captain. He’s the one we need to interrogate. He knows things.

‘Oh, hell, I completely forgot you can all hear us,’ I grumbled.

I’m not sure we can do that. Krissy sent her thoughts through the voice-chat. He seems to want to fight to the death.

Oh come on! Dimal groaned. Your familiar is the scariest thing I’ve ever … not seen. Scare the fucker into surrender.

I think he can hear us, too. Krissy commented.

‘Nah, he’s too loud for his own good,’ I said.

The captain — Orkuz Graal … or Growl … or maybe it was one word like Orkuzgraal, I wasn’t sure — was vehemently trying to get the voices out of his head, now hitting his bald scalp with his tricorn hat, yelling obscenities. I doubted he could properly hear or understand our conversation, and even if he did, he didn’t look like he would care.

‘Still, how are we going to scare him into surrender?’ Krissy whispered.

‘How about …’ I started to say as an idea formed in my mind ‘… some shock’n’awe?’

‘Like what?’ scoffed Krissy. ‘Another of that “facebook-attack”? It was weird, not shocking or awing.’

‘Oh no, not that,’ I said, grinning on the inside.

‘What then?’ she demanded.

I recalled my previous experiences of lifting objects using Mana, or dragging Krissy to bed, throwing blankets over her, or chopping down trees or masts. I also spent a second to reminisce about the more memorable moments in superhero movies and cartoons. Oh, Storm from the X-Men, hovering in the air, surrounded by lightning, striking fear into the hearts of her enemies … what a sight.

I did some calculations.

The transfer or energy and all that physics stuff between the spiritual and the material was … weird. But it worked, and I had a good grasp of what I could do, even without fully understanding any underlying principles. Mana did what it did, and that’s all I needed to know.

I would need to fully coat only two of my tenties with the stuff, and I could execute my plan for the measly price of … 20 Mana per minute, give or take. Plus 5 MP per minute if I wanted to keep Mana Armour active, which I did. Yep. This would work.

I refilled my Mana Pool to max at 44 MP, leaving me with 30 EP between my two Essence pools, filling up at a good pace already. I had roughly three minutes to convince the mutant gym-shrek that it was in his best interest to surrender.

I sent mana to coat the tips of four tenties, then I placed them on the floor like the extending legs of truck-mounted cranes. I positioned my body right at Krissy’s back, then coated the entire length of two tentacles with Mana. I coiled them around Krissy like a Kraken grabbing a ship to pull it down, but not yet touching her body.

‘Alright, this is going to be cold,’ I warned her.

She shuddered as I tightened my grip over her legs and torso right up to her armpits.

‘What are you doing?’ she whisper-hissed at me.

I got her mask out of Jack’s Room and put it on her face before the ork could see the less than menacing, befuddled expression on her face.

‘We are going to show this guy how scary we can be.’ I giggled, and I lifted Krissy off the deck’s floor.