The System Seas

The enemy captain saw him coming and pulled a huge scimitar from his belt, bellowing in rage. Aethe peppered the man with arrows throughout the motion, but none of them appeared to do anything at all. Marco landed on the ground just in front of him, firing his pistol at the man’s face as he stabbed downward. There wasn’t much of a chance any of those attacks would do anything, but they forced the man to defend. Once landed, he jumped back and made space, poking his sword forward on several different trajectories.

The captain was up to the challenge, blocking each of them with deft movements. It was all he was up for, though. All the control of the fight was in Marco’s hands, and he used it to slowly turn the man’s back towards the ship, keeping his attention off the danger until it was too late.

It was something Marco and Aethe had talked about one late night in the captain’s cabin. If he could turn a target’s back and hold them still, she could overdrive a shot to hell and back, using what she called a big, dumb, slow arrow she had bought hundreds of from some trader on the open ocean. It would be the kind of thing anyone half decent could dodge, even with her skills behind it. But if that person was distracted, it would hit like a sledgehammer.

It did. Impressive to the last, the captain kept on his feet as the arrow speared through him, but was unable to do so much as lift his sword as Marco stabbed through his throat. It was easy not to feel bad for him, considering what he did to those settlements. He didn’t know a lot about Frisk, but the man wasn’t a liar. If he said the bad guy had done that particular bad thing, he had. As the light drained out of the man’s eyes, Marco didn’t have to stand there and consider if he deserved it. He needed to get back to his ship instead.

“Jump!” Riv said. “I got you.”

Marco leapt without a second thought, pleased to see Riv actually had brought the ship around under the rail of the now depopulated ship. There might have been a few crew members scattered in the pirate ship, but nowhere near what they’d need to put out all the fires, let alone to make the ship dangerous again. Leaving that craft to soak up the fleet’s regeneration powers, he guided the now weak Riv to the side and grabbed the wheel just as the rest of the fleet started to enter firing range.

From then on, there weren’t any well-thought-out plans. With the fleet’s heavy hitter out of commission, The Foolish Endeavor could give as good as it got. Better, actually. Elisa was starting to mix elements in ways Marco hadn’t seen before, and the bolts were hitting harder, as well. Aethe was killing crewmen left and right, and Marco was avoiding the vast majority of enemy fire either by dodging or by mobilizing the ship’s runes into defensive formations that blocked much of the stray fire.

The Foolish Endeavor had never looked worse. The deck was shattered in several parts, and the only thing holding it together was Marco’s new powers of consumption. Every bit of damage he was doing to the enemy ships was repairing his own, including the burning ship in the distance. They should have been sunk in the first thirty seconds, but now they were minutes into the battle and still afloat.

Marco was amazed by how much the skill did, really. Most enhancements he had seen in his path had been minor at first. This was a capstone skill, though, and apparently that made a difference. His ship’s endurance was incredible now, even getting blasted apart by an entire fleet firing their guns at once.

The only problem was that as well as they were doing, they needed to do better. Marco steered the ship between two other crafts that were coming nearby each other to block his way, planning on boarding him with two ships worth of troops at once. If they did, they would have been over. It was taking every bit of Marco’s endurance to buy every minute of time. They ended up getting through just in time before carving hard to the left to avoid taking blasts from both ships at once.

Riv had abandoned the deck to flee below decks and work the pumps, keeping them dry and afloat enough to maneuver. His voice boomed up the staircase from there, out of breath and upset.

“Marco! It’s not working. We’re still taking on water. What do we do?”

“Keep repairing things, Riv! We have to hold out.”

“Do we?” Elisa fired the arbalest once again, looking drained as she struggled to load up another bolt. “We could run. I can’t do damage fast enough, Marco, and it’s getting worse. I’m out of magic, or will be soon. This isn’t working, Marco. What’s going to change?”

“That.” Marco pointed. “That’s the change we need.”

While Marco and his team had bought time, Frisk had been busy. The ship still didn’t look intact by any means, but all the worst of the damage had been patched. He was now entering his ship’s own very respectable cannon range, and the first group of booms from his battery of cannons had a noticeable effect on the enemy fleet. Some of them turned to face the new threat, not so much to attack it as to get the narrow side of their boats pointed into the attack. They had tasted those cannons before and apparently learned fear from them.

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“Yeah! Get them!” Elisa yelled, pumping one last anemic bolt out of the arbalest before going limp. It hit the one ship that had looked like it might still be attacking The Foolish Endeavor, leaving a scorch mark on the hull and not much more. “Marco, do you see that?”

“I do,” Marco said. “Not much damage. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out.”

“No, I mean, look. It didn’t regenerate!”

It was true. The scorch mark was unchanged, which meant somewhere a regeneration ship had run out of magic. That became much more obvious as the first volley from Frisk’s ship finally made it to them, hitting two ships at once. Robbed of their magic toughness, neither ship had what it took to stand up to the shot. They broke apart and began to sink as another volley flew, then another, then another. The four members of the crew cheer, weak and exhausted, as Frisk cleared the field completely. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NoveI★Fire.net