The System Seas

“It's a boundary!” she yelled forward. “"They've stopped us somehow.”

Riv leaned over the rail, jaw set. “They’ve sealed themselves off.”

"Yes, but look at the city walls." Aethe pointed. "They stopped collapsing. Whatever that ship was using on them is getting used on us now."

Aethe didn’t look at the ship once during their approach. She was entirely focused on the shore.

“It wasn't a bombardment,” she said. “The wall was acting like it was being pulled down.”

"Some sort of force barrier, or something?" Elisa shot more fire at the wall, uselessly. "We've seen weirder things, but it doesn't matter. It can only have so much power, right? We have to overpower it.”

Marco kept his hands on the wheel, pouring in more power. Nothing happened. Worse, the enemy power seemed to be increasing its grip on the ship. From the mid-deck, the front mast started to groan and bend ever so slightly away from the enemy ship.

"They are trying to break us apart," Marco said. The ship was complaining under his feet. For now, things were holding. He wasn't sure how long that would be true. "We have to break loose. Riv, are you ready?"

"I can be. I hate to use it this early, though."

"Wait," Jane said. "What are we talking about? I might be able to help."

"Riv has a skill where he sacrifices strength. Not that much different than your buffing skill. Marco can channel it through the ship to break loose from restrictions. It doesn't make us faster. It just makes us harder to slow down."

"Well don't activate it yet!" Jane walked to Riv and put her hand on his shoulder. A golden glow connected them before Jane shuddered and sat on the ground. "Now. Do it. It will be better."

It was. Riv's strength was his highest stat, and now it was pumped so high even the ship seemed surprised by the influx of power. If Marco had hoped breaking free of the enemy power would be a clean process, he was disappointed. The mast that was bending before now started to crackle and crack, while boards in the deck and hull started to bow and break under the strain.

"She's not going to take it!" Riv shouted. "The ship is breaking apart!"

Marco felt the same thing, but there was nothing he could do about it.

"Too late! Either we break through, or we don't! I'm giving it everything!"

Whatever dregs of power Marco could dig up were dumped into the ship. The battery was drained, Marco was emptied, and a split second before he felt the ship would have failed absolutely, they broke loose. A loud crack rang through the air a second later, not from The Foolish Endeavor but from the enemy ship. White canvas fluttered as the ship's sole mast broke near the deck, falling forward and crushing the captain's wheel under its weight.

"Elisa," Marco croaked, drained. "Screw them up."

She was only too happy to oblige. Firebolt after firebolt slammed into the ship, mercilessly abandoning any thought of status effects or fancy tactics in favor of pure destruction. As Aethe entered her bow range, crew members began to get picked off, blocked from retreating belowdecks by her preferential hunting of cowards.

It didn't take much. Whatever effect they had broken out of with that one big burst of strength, it wasn't something that could tolerate that sort of treatment. Maybe it was something where it should have been worn down or where the enemy ship might have otherwise run out of energy to keep the repulsion going. Breaking it outright in a single strike had broken the spine of the enemy ship with it, and within a minute of the combined fury of Aethe and Elisa, neither of which had liked being kept out of range any more than Marco had. The ship cracked and foundered, sinking to the bottom with little fanfare.

"Well that sucked," Jane said. "I mean, it really sucked. You just take the power out of him in one big push, don't you? Nothing gentle about it."

"It felt different?" Riv was lying on the deck next to her, having apparently donated every single scrap of his strength to the process of breaking free. "Than your normal donations, I mean."

"It felt like someone ripping out a handful of hair," she said. "Did it even make a difference?"

Marco had felt the whole process go down, felt the power coursing through the ship, and felt the enemy's hold give way. He knew they had barely survived that surge, but he also knew they would have never broken through without it. When the barrier broke, he was far beyond the power that he and Riv could reach together.

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"Oh yes," he said. "You did well. At minimum, you are about to eat the biggest dinner you have ever heard of."

—

The Foolish Endeavor limped back to the docks with groaning timbers and a battered crew. The ship's repairs were constant, but they weren't fast. Without Riv to help them along and with empty stores of magical power to run the runeblocks, there was only so fast it could put itself back together. For once, the fact that Marco had taken down an enemy ship was no help at all. The system was finally, after more than a few warnings, withholding any more prizes.