Daelin easily dodged away from a snarling Gilnean’s wild swing, parting with a precise slash of his cutlass across the man’s face. The trespasser fell away with a primal cry, clawing at his bleeding eyes. He sounded far more beast than human.
More Gilneans leapt onto the Mistracer from the entangled destroyers, but the crazed assault was being rebuffed by the grim calmness of the Kul Tirans. The seasoned sailors formed up into small, ranked groups, with the frontmost of each formation wielding axes and cutlasses to repel the boarders while their comrades in the rear stymied any organized charge with boarding pikes and repeater bows. The simple tactic had fended off orc and troll raiders to great effect, and now against mere humans with none of the bulk or strength to back up their frothing savagery, Daelin felt like any casualty beyond a sprained muscle would be considered a stain on his crew’s prowess.
Yet, forced into a defensive stance, the defenders of the Mistracer could make little headway in freeing their ship from the hooks and nets that trapped it.
It wasn’t the men leaping onto the frigate, who were already being forced overboard or turned into cooling corpses, that worried the lord admiral. The bigger problem was the fact that the Mistracer was now hobbled by two destroyers who had attached themselves by grappling hooks and boarding nets on either side of it.
There weren’t enough cannons in the world to blast the pinning vessels into small enough debris to allow the Mistracer to break out of range from the approaching battleships. And though the boarding parties were severely outmatched, they had to be cleared to allow for all hands on critical stations.
With barely a conscious thought Daelin parried a frenzied strike and kicked the clumsy attacker into a waiting pike. He turned his attention to the tidesages, who were each focused on conjuring a dense fog on a destroyer’s deck to minimize incoming fire and force the boarders to leap in practically blind. The heavy fog also had the benefit of silencing the ships’ cannons, the thick moisture ruining blasting powder and fuses.
Each tidesage was surrounded by a ring of grizzled sailors, wielding heavy shields that could - as painfully experienced in the last war - allow the tidesage to just barely survive a direct strike from a cannonball. It wasn’t a sure thing, and practically everyone in that ring would be dead if the projectile was an explosive shot, but better a slim chance than none, Daelin had learned to appreciate.
With Daelin and the others serving as a barrier to the tidesages, no Gilnean scum was getting close to the two rings for now. The lord admiral threw a glance to his daughter, who stood just some steps behind him. Pride and paternal worry warred within him as she confidently stood her ground and flung arcane spells into the enemy.
She had already blasted away the fog-spewing cauldrons off each ship with arcane bolts, which had the upside of clearing the air enough for better vision and maybe prevent any corruptive effects from overwhelming the crew, but at the price of slowing the destroyers’ speed and dragging the Mistracer with them. Jaina also conjured a brute of a water elemental, who seemed to take primal pleasure in blasting its victims clear from the Mistracer’s deck with powerful torrents of water. It embraced charging Gilneans into its liquid form, and then the clear running water of its body turned into a violent maelstrom that turned red as those that were caught within were torn apart.
While the elemental literally painted the deck red, its summoner provided further aid with more spells. Bolts of blue and violet energies slammed into Gilneans, snapping arms and necks. An orb of similar coruscating colors shot into a destroyer, and the fog smothering it was lit up with a crackling detonation, very briefly silhouetting the broken victims caught in the explosion. It wasn’t the usual traditional wave- or lightning-calling of the tidesages, but it was still brutally effective.
The whole ship rumbled and geysers of seawater and splinters shot up in the spaces between the ships as the Mistracer’s cannons eviscerated its captors. It was the third volley, and as expected, both enemy ships were still dragging themselves across the waves, stubbornly latching on and seemingly content to empty their suicidal crew onto the frigate.
A cry of alert dragged Daelin’s attention to the rear, and he saw the massive, four-decked hulks that were Gilnean battleships slowly pushing through the fog. All six had their jutting prows aimed like spears at the Mistracer, while the remaining destroyers kept to the flanks. The lumbering battleships began to make port turns as one, a clear sign that they wanted to present their broadsides. Even at the long ranges that they were in, a single volley from any single ship could easily cripple the Mistracer just through the sheer amount of cannonballs that were sent its way, and Daelin was staring at six of them.
Still, despite the baleful fog pushing at their sails, the battleships were still too large and ungainly to make the turn instantly. Gilnean naval doctrine focused more on fitting as many cannons on each battleship as possible, inevitably making them slower and less agile than their Kul Tiran counterparts, at the upside of outright obliterating most things they were allowed to fire their cannons at. This approach allowed the Gilnean fleet to easily fend off the Horde’s raids, or serve as heavy supporting fire to an Alliance naval group that had the right balance of nimble harassers to support it.
Out here, it simply meant that Daelin had a minute or so to come up with something before the weather turned into a horizontal storm of cannonfire…
“Father,” Jaina suddenly spoke up beside him, and he looked over his shoulder to see his daughter following his gaze to the approaching enemy. “I have an idea on how to stop them from firing…” The grim determination on Jaina faltered as she then fixed a nervous look on him. “But…promise not to be mad?”
“I don’t think any genuine attempt at saving us warrants any reprimand,” he quickly replied with a modicum of formality.
Jaina nodded, and then went to the railings to shoot a single bolt of energy into the waves, which Daelin saw detonated into a kaleidoscope of colors. Even with the fighting going on around them, the lord admiral remained confused towards his daughter’s nervousness.
At least until new cries of alert sounded from below deck and slimy, brightly colored fingers appeared by the foot of the railings Jaina stood by.
Daelin was not the only one caught staring as murlocs quickly clambered up to stand around his daughter, their oversized eyes staring placidly at her. Each had tridents or blades of surprisingly decent quality, showing no signs of the usual pitting, chipping or rust. Clearly restraining her embarrassment, Jaina pointed at the stunned fighters and gurgled something that almost sounded like an order.
“Grarlgharlh!”
Immediately a group of murlocs charged into the fray, lunging straight for the stunned Gilneans with uncanny ferocity.
“They’re on our side,” Jaina meekly said, and Daelin snapped out of his dumbstruck staring to regather his wits.
“Right…right. The murlocs are with us!” His bellow snapped the Kul Tirans back to the present. “Cleanse the Gilneans from our decks! For Kul Tiras!”
The fighting resumed, but with the wholly unexpected reinforcements, the stalemate was broken and momentum was clearly shifted over to the favor of the Mistracers’ crew. Daelin gave the renewed fighting a brief, stupefied look, before turning back to Jaina whose arms were already moving to cast a new spell as murlocs began to fill the quarter deck. Some seemed to be carrying bulky backpacks.
“They transferred from beneath the caravel’s hull,” Jaina explained with a thin, apologetic smile. “I wanted to introduce them when we reached home, present their utility…”
“It’s…alright…” was all Daelin managed to say as his daughter created a tear in reality. Daelin could only make out wooden boards on the other end of the portal before Jaina gurgled something and the murlocs rushed through it, screaming their ear-gnawing warcry before the cacophony was cut out as the portal abruptly closed once they all vacated the deck.
It took a while before Daelin figured out where she sent the fishmen. Only when the rightmost Gilnean battleship suddenly lit up from a fireball at its waterline did the lord admiral draw out his spyglass to find small, shiny figures crawling and leaping away from the vessel that now sported fatal punctures to its hull.
It took a few seconds before the ship next to the already sinking battleship suffered a similar explosion. Daelin felt relief wash over him as the other battleships aborted their portside turns rather than risk running into their sinking comrades.
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“That should buy us some time,” the lord admiral sighed aloud, beaming a proud smile at his daughter, murlocs or not. “Thank you, Jaina.”
Jaina managed a meek smile before father and daughter broke away from their moment to return to the violence around them. Or rather, what remained of it. The ambush of a dozen or so murlocs on the Mistracer had shifted enough momentum that saw the deck carpeted mostly with dead Gilneans.
The tide of battle had turned so much that several Kul Tiran groups broke from their formation to begin cutting away at the ropes and nettings entangling the frigate to the destroyers while their comrades herded the remaining invaders away.
For their part, the murlocs harried the Gilneans to spoil their rabid attacks. The smaller-sized fishmen dove in from around Kul Tiran formations or hiding spots behind masts and corpses to land opportunistic strikes. A quartet of Gilneans were forced to the edge of the main deck by pikes, and for all their snarling defiance, the murlocs hanging off the side of the Mistracer yanked at their ankles to trip them, pulling two overboard while the other pair were made off-balance enough for the Kul Tiran crew to dive in with cutlasses and pikes stabbing. Another group of Gilneans fell prey to nets before the murlocs descended on them in a flurry of stabbing.
Daelin blinked as he watched yet another Gilnean’s ferocity losing to a murloc’s more primal cunning, as the latter ran circles around the former before diving between the sailor’s legs to bury its blade up the man’s groin.
Another blink as the lord admiral turned his head, and he saw two murlocs literally biting the legs off a Gilnean to the wide-eyed horror of Kul Tiran sailors. Their legless victim was contemptuously pushed overboard after that, and the two fishmen hurried to pounce on a fresh prey who were already being surrounded by their kin…
“You’ve brought…interesting help, Jaina.”
“The murlocs were supposed to make for peaceful neighbors,” Jaina started sheepishly. “But I suppose now I can prove that they can be competent and useful…allies?”
Daelin held back an urge to sigh, sharing a glance with the tidesages who were winding down their spells as the last ropes of the boarding hooks were being cut free, and the confusion on them - and the equally flabbergasted looks of the grizzled warriors who’d fought through ogres and dragonfire - was something the lord admiral’s mind was too tired to appreciate. Then Daelin caught sight of a murloc running past him, or rather the short sword it waved wildly in the air.
“Those aren’t scavenged weapons…”
“Kyle…thought that it’d make for better…um, presentation, if the murlocs marched onto shore with…cleaner weapons.”
Daelin’s disbelief somehow found new heights as he turned back to his daughter. “He armed the murlocs?”
Jaina shrugged weakly. “Only these ones…”
The lord admiral blinked again.
Right.
Kyle, the king of Alterac.
The crazy mage-king of Alterac.
The crazy mage-king that had convinced Daelin’s intelligent and bright-eyed girl to domesticate murlocs, and smuggle them over to Kul Tiras as a presentation.
Soft booms followed shortly by the swift fly-bys of several dozen cannonballs reminded everyone on the Mistracer that friendly reinforcements were nearby. A good portion of the barrage fell predictably short due to the obscuring fog, but more than enough made it past the extreme ranges to pummel two destroyers seeking to cover the battleships’ disarray, punching holes near their waterlines.
Daelin looked out to the Gilnean fleet, seeing how their battleships rolled as they realigned their prows towards the Mistracer again. One of them was moving far less decisively though…
The ship closest to the two sunken crafts seemed to be more sluggish. Daelin brought out his spyglass again, and realized he shouldn’t be so surprised seeing murlocs clambering up the battleship’s hull. The bright greens, reds and blues of the fishmen slipped through the firing ports, probably to wreak havoc.
A tremor shook the deck, and Daelin’s focus returned to his immediate surroundings to find the broken carcasses of the destroyers finally falling away from the Mistracer. The deck was devoid of any standing Gilnean sailors, and a quick damage report informed him that the frigate had suffered only light damage so far.
“The Kul Tiran navy comes to aid us,” one tidesage said. “Should we make full speed to distance ourselves from the Gilneans, lord admiral?”
It only took Daelin a second’s thought before shaking his head. “No. They’ve proven to be capable of catching up to us. I want the Mistracer turning around.” The lord admiral found himself snarling his orders out as the full realization of what had just happened finally settled on him. “They might be faster than us, now let’s see if they can keep up with us on a chase. Prepare for harrying maneuvers. Treat the enemy fleet as oversized troll wave riders.”
The tidesages immediately began casting their spells to fill the Mistracer’s sails, officers barked out orders even as they were bandaged, and the crew quickly went below decks to stow their weapons and man the gun decks.
Jaina opened a portal again, this time for the murlocs she sent over to come pouring in. With a cursory glance, Daelin noted that the fishmen suffered some casualties, and they actually carried their wounded back. His thoughts on their assistance could wait for later though. Presently, he turned to his daughter, whose blue eyes matched his steely resolve.
“Do you have any further-” The lord admiral caught himself from saying ‘tricks’ at the last moment. “-spells that would help us, Jaina?”
She nodded, and it hurt Daelin to see such a grim frown on his little girl’s face. “I have some options, father.” She shouldn’t be in the midst of all this bloodshed.
“Good. Good, we’ll be striking at the edges of the Gilnean’s fleet. If you have anything that could-”
The lord admiral paused as he saw Jaina suddenly stiffen and grasp at the jewel hanging off her neck that had begun to glow. He held back his instinctive disdain for the arcane as he saw his daughter’s eyes take on a soft glow, and the moment passed with Jaina letting out a soft sigh.
With some worry, Daelin noted her nervousness returning. “What is it, Jaina?” he asked gently.
Jaina slowly formed her words. “Uh… Kyle… King Kyle of Alterac formally asks if the lord admiral of Kul Tiras would…require assistance.”
That infuriating mage-king again.
Irrational rage was doused by more practical concerns at the enemy across the waves that were reforming their ranks. Daelin had no doubt that the Mistracer and the reinforcing Kul Tiran fleet would win the day, but the commander in him knew also that with how unreasonably dogged the Gilneans were being, and with the eldritch fog and tide knows what else aiding him, the price for victory would likely be very bloody…
With heavy reluctance, and trying not to slump his shoulders, Lord Admiral Daelin Proudmoore addressed his daughter with courtly formality. “Inform King Kyle that Kul Tiras gratefully accepts any assistance that could be rendered…”
Jaina nodded, and her eyes glowed again for a few seconds, her lips twitching with clear annoyance. Before he could ask her about it, she spoke up again, annoyance clear in her tone. “Kyle asks that we be ready to seize prisoners.”
So soon? Before Daelin could seek more details, he followed Jaina’s gaze up to the heavens, and spotted metallic glints diving down from the clouds. At such a vast distance, he vaguely guessed that the dartlike things were maybe almost the size of a grown dragon.
Preempting him reaching for his spyglass, Jaina let out a soft sigh before her hands weaved about to conjure a scrying portal. With a closer look, Daelin could now pick out the details of the airborne things more clearly. There were eight of them. They were sleek, though blunt-headed things, clearly artificial craft made of gold and some sort of blue gems or glass. Short wings somehow gave them flight as fires blasted out from their backs presumably to propel them.
The eight foreign constructs dove down in a tight formation, and then blue-white sparks erupted from their ‘shoulders’ where wings met hull. A flurry of light rained down on their target, a Gilnean destroyer at the edge of the formation, and under such a storm its masts and sails were shredded. There was a billowing explosion as the fog-spewing cauldron was also torn apart, while Gilnean sailors burst into red mist under the unnatural hailstorm.
A couple of large projectiles were unleashed from the leading dart-craft, similar in shape to a dwarven mortar shell but propelled by its own means judging from the stream of light emitted from each missile. The missiles shot straight down into the destroyer’s deck, and the whole ship broke apart from the violent explosions that ensued.
“Tidemother…” a nearby officer muttered as they unabashedly spectated along with Daelin.
The eight gilded craft then adjusted their approach to strafe through the entire Gilnean fleet. Masts exploded like trees struck by lightning, men were turned into bursts of fine mist that hung in the air, and main decks became pockmarked with holes. More missiles followed after the storm of blue fire, lancing deep into destroyers and battleships alike before the ensuing detonations ripped the stricken victims into chunks of smoldering kindling. Not a single Gilnean vessel escaped the attack, and the fog about them quickly began to dissipate.
The flying things shot up into the heavens to disappear into the clouds, and just like that the whole battle was over. With just one pass, a fleet of a dozen ships were turned into small islands of smoldering flotsam.
Daelin couldn’t help but stare with disbelief. It was over in an instant, faster and more devastating than a Horde’s dragon raid. He’d heard of what had happened in Stromgarde, but this was violence applied in a totally different manner. He was absently aware that the rest of the crew above deck (and probably those by the firing ports below) were staring as well. Compared to what they just saw, the arrival of the murlocs seemed positively mundane.
Jaina’s exasperated voice brought the lord admiral out of his stupefied stare. “Uh… Kyle offers his apologies for not intervening sooner, he was busy with the orcs…”
Daelin stared dumbly at his daughter for a moment, interrupted by an officer coming up to them both.
“Uh…orders, lord admiral?”
He glanced at the anxious and uncertain man, and then glanced out to the wreckage bobbing on the waves, and then finally settled his gaze on his mildly embarrassed daughter.
“Abort the harrying maneuvers… Let’s…let’s see if there are any prisoners worth taking onboard.”
Recovering his authority as best he could, Daelin pushed past the officer and began bellowing the orders himself to snap his crew from their own dumbstruck gazing. He pointedly pushed the murlocs’ presence out of his mind, and he tried not to fixate on the gem resting on the base of his daughter’s neck, and what its involvement with the mage-king’s sudden intervention might implicate.