”Sometimes the fight comes to you.."  Another overdrawn sigh escaped the tragic Elf’s lips.  It was mixed with a peculiar and bitter laughter.  If only she knew.  Winning against a bully wasn’t victory - it was survival.  While what she said was perfectly reasonable and true, it rang differently her pointed ears.  It was the fights that came to you that mattered.  Whether it is by honor or happenstance, they were the ones that tested your fiber.

The Elf painted a look of mild concern across her face.  The woman was awfully startled.  Then again, the shorter-lived races always seemed to have that air about them.  Nevertheless, this woman in particular seemed to have a particularly apprehensive nature.  All the inquiry and curiosity flooded back.  What had made her so fidgety?  What horrible past haunted her?  She turned attention back to the cloud of flour and the pair entangled there.  It was the polite thing to not stare.  A light and unreadable smile flitted over her features, while deeper thoughts put her eyes at a distance.  She had just brushed aside the questions of this polite and considerate lady.  It was not too late to go chose honesty and friendship.  If she waited much longer, the opportunity would pass.  A glint of a real smile flashed across her lips as her resolve settled.

She listened half-heartedly to Myrnal’s commentary.  There was not an awful lot for her glance from the casual remarks.  The woman was tough, but this had already been established by her brash manner and dark garb.  A tense moment entwined the two women.  Ana’e looked to the stair tumblers with disregard.  She breathed deeply, tasting the abnormal calm that stuck in her throat.  The play going between girl and the wizard could not have fascinated her at all.  She would have been most content to sit in her own cabin, rather than be here in the throng of mayhem.  In her lack of enthusiasm, she nearly forgot the conviction she had sampled moments before.

“I was introduced to battle at an early age,” she said in a hollow tone.  The words were encrypted and ambiguous.  They seemed to be totally real and meaningful against her tongue, but they echoed differently in her ears.  She wetted her lips, solidified her resolve and attempted to elaborate.  “It left a lasting wound.  My foe left more than a physical mark though.”

The stuffiness of her own words overwhelmed her.  She was being perfectly honest and open.  However, she was not encouraging further conversation.  These answers, while offering a glimmer of truth, did not tell a story or expose any of facts of her condition.  “Pick your fights wisely.  Being brave is admirable, but the more honor you amass, the more you have to lose.”

She shook her head and smiled.  She was on a tangent and the more she tried to make sense, the further lost she became in her words.   “I’m sorry,” she said in a tone that implied frank conversation.  “I’m rambling.”  She was good at stating these statements of fact.  “I… You probably want to be going to rest.”  It was the least she could do to provide an escape from this banal conversation.

Night had long since fallen over the waters of the Sailor's Bane, and a thick fog had settled across the ocean's surface, leading the ship's lookout to curse silently to himself as he peered out into the mists with his spyglass. This was relatively normal for the area, and the sailor had years of experience aiding the ship's captain in plotting a clear course through the clouds. It was his talent, he reasoned, or at the very least, it was a skill that he had developed quickly out of necessity for survival. Without a sharp-eyed lookout to aid in navigation, those foolhardy enough to attempt to cross the Sailor's Bane usually met an untimely demise, ships splintered and shattered by a sudden impact with the ubiquitous near-surface coral formations that dotted these waters. The crews of these ships would join those before them in a mass of seaweed-entangled corpses, the aquatic graves of sailors whose remains would be eaten by fish instead of worms.

The ship's lookout was hoping to avoid this fate. He very much hoped to live to be eaten by worms.

Favorable winds had kept the ship on schedule so far, but the voyage was in its infancy. It would take some time to reach their destination in Tarsis. He figured that it was too early to make predictions about the outcome of this trip, but, understandably, he preferred an optimistic outlook. It was a journey that this crew had made many times, and its captain was still sailing the seas. The lookout had been with this particular crew for a comparatively short time, only a few years, but his sailing experience carried far beyond his tenure with this particular vessel. He had parted ways with his old captain just shortly before signing up to crew this new ship. It had been a tearful goodbye for everyone involved, but mostly for the captain in question.

Idly, the lookout wondered if his old captain had used the one bullet his former crew generously bequeathed to him when he tendered his resignation.

The fog was breaking up ahead, and the lookout adjusted his spyglass to get a clearer view. It was a rarity for the mists to grant sailors traversing the area a reprieve, but it occurred from time to time, and as the ship's mast passed out of the cloud behind it, shaking off the aquiform ghosts hovering over the waters, the lookout was treated to a beautiful view of the night sky. He knew that the shimmering stars would only be in view briefly, and he hoped that the ship's navigator was noting their positions while he still had an opportunity to do so.

The lookout leaned forward against the railing of the crow's nest and lowered his spyglass for a moment, taking in the majesty of the stars with the naked eye. He was permitted brief distractions for his own enjoyment on occasion. If the fog was allowed to have a break now and again, so was he, he figured. In a few hours, he'd have an opportunity to get some much-needed sleep when another crew member relieved him of his duties. Even though he was forced to be awake now, in the middle of the night, the lookout felt that he was getting the better end of the deal. The stars were proof.

Something stirred ahead in the water, counter to the natural movement of the ocean's waves. Raising his spyglass, the lookout cursed softly. He had allowed himself to become distracted. The breaking of the waves and the eddies on the ocean were usually indicative of coral, and it was careless of him to assume that the disappearance of the fog meant that danger had taken a leave of absence as well. What hazard had he overlooked?

The disruptions of the water's surface seemed to be far enough out of the ship's course that it was unlikely that there was anything that could cause damage. If it was a reef, the shallow spots were too far to port for it to matter. The lookout could rest easy in the knowledge that the captain would need to make no adjustments at the helm. It was unnecessary for him to shout any warnings, as the ship would simply pass right by the threat without need for correction of the ship's course, and the last thing he needed to do was worry anyone who might be enjoying the clarity of the night sky.

Wait, thought the lookout. The disturbance had vanished. Or had it? Whatever it was that had been near the water's surface to distort its flow was no longer there. Perhaps the ship had simply passed it by during his momentary lapse in concentration, No, he realized, the ship's speed was insufficient to have already passed by the hazard. It was likely that whatever had been creating the disturbance before had simply moved. Coral, the lookout was certain, did not move. He had never seen coral move before in his life.

It was at this point that the lookout was suddenly certain that coral must be able to move, somehow. After all, if coral lacked any means of mobility, why was it everywhere? It didn't seem like a plant, and he had never heard of coral seeds. He resolved to figure this mystery out at a later time, possibly by asking some scholar at the next port.

Suddenly, the ship jolted to the starboard side, rolling over toward its z-axis in three-dimensional space. S#^t!, thought the lookout, the coral must've snuck up underneath us!

Nearly pitched out of the crow's nest by the sudden impact, the lookout lost his grip on his spyglass, dropping it onto the deck as he frantically grabbed at the railing to avoid suffering a similar fate. The instrument plummeted rapidly, smashing into myriad irreconcilable pieces as the lens struck an improperly-secured deck cannon that had slid forward and slammed against the deck railing. Sailors below shouted and raced to the deck, frantically grasping at riggings and trying to prevent further damage as the ship swung back into an upright position. What the hell had they hit? And why hadn't the lookout spotted it?

"All hands on deck!" roared orders from the bridge. The lookout, distressed by the loss of his spyglass, frantically swung his head back and forth, hoping that the absence of fog would permit him to see whatever the ship had struck.

Luckily for the lookout, the enormous tentacle that reared up before him was quite visible without his spyglass.

Gigantic, sucker-lined arms burst from the surface of the water, slamming down against the ship's deck and holding it fast. The huge creature grappling the vessel, still hiding its main body below the crest of the waters, wrapped itself around the top deck, the mast, and the prow, squeezing the ship as though it intended to choke the life out of the transport. It was then that the lookout realized what he was seeing. The creature assaulting the ship couldn't possibly be real, or so he had thought in the past. But yet, here it was, embracing the ship and presumably intending to rip the vessel apart. The lookout stammered momentarily, leaning against the railing of the crow's nest, and shouted a warning that he knew was, at this point, entirely worthless.

"KRAKEN!"

In the galley, before Ana'e had a chance to respond to Myrnal, their conversation came to an abrupt end when the ship rolled drunkenly, tilting the whole galley. Myrnal and a few other canny sailors had quick enough hands that they saved their rum from joining the avalanche of flatware sliding from tables onto the floor.

The ship righted itself and the cry for all hands on deck went out in the resultant stunned silence. A few sailors tossed back the last of their rum and stood to get back to their posts. Then, echoing through the space of the lower decks, came the thunderous BOOM of an impact. The sailors looked more annoyed than afraid, their concern manifesting in grumbles of annoyance at being denied an evening of drunken relaxation.

Then came the word that cracked the veneer of jaded irritation. Kraken. They didn't even bother to hide the beginnings of fear in their eyes. There was nothing they could do about this, nothing. Myrnal saw it, and she knew other passengers had as well. These were sailors, not warriors. Even then... what could warriors do about this? There was no place to hide for Myrnal to gain the advantage on this creature, and no place to run if she failed.

Her eyes locked with Ana'e's. This woman was wounded, seemingly had trouble walking and even conversing without exhausting herself. If Myrnal didn't do something... this woman would die. Badly.

"Ana'e," Myrnal began. What could she tell her? Stay here? Here wasn't safe. Up on deck wasn't safe. Nowhere was safe. "Grab a lifeboat if you can." She reached under her tunic to the belt she wore. As her hand slipped under, the bottom edge of the shirt lifted to reveal the half-dozen daggers she'd been concealing. If Ana'e didn't know what sort of woman Myrnal was, she had a better idea now. Myrnal's hand found the daggers that seldom left her, but her fingers dropped away immediately. Better luck at range.

"I don't know what I can do about this but..." She reached down into her backpack and pulled her crossbow. Slinging the bag over her shoulder for easy access to her supply of bolts, Myrnal headed for the door. She passed Hakaril to follow Somnia up the stairs to find the ship in the implacable grip of the most horrendous mollusk Myrnal had ever seen.

Anyone on this ship has ever seen, Myrnal noted distantly. If they'd seen it before I don't think they'd have survived.

The thought formed itself before Myrnal even knew what it meant. They were going to die. The job for Minshara had nearly gotten her killed half a dozen times, but it wasn't until the trip home that Myrnal would finally be finished. Anticlimactic. An annoyance.

And no one would ever know what had happened to them.

Putting her back against the wall of the quarter deck, Myrnal did the only thing she could for now. Hoping to keep the roiling, thrashing tentacles away from the lifeboats, she began firing shot after shot into the kraken's thick, rubbery hide.

In the chaos Myrnal had edged closer to the edge, near one of the lifeboats as passengers were scrambling to get into it. A few sailors were hacking away at the ropes holding it above the surface of the sea as Myrnal fired her crossbow at any tentacles that came near. Eventually it began to avoid the area and her job became a little easier.

These few who leave early are probably the only ones with a chance, she thought. But what happens to them after that? In the middle of the sea, where can they go?

It didn't take long before Myrnal began to run low on ammunition. She didn't have infinite bolts, but she was beginning to suspect that this creature had infinite appendages. As it began to shy away from this unexpectedly-prickly section of the deck, Myrnal had a moment to look up and appraise the rest of the people on deck.

Blood had been smeared across the wooden planks, and where there weren't bodies there were the criss-crossing dark trails left by bleeding crew and passengers as they were dragged by the tentacles from one part of the deck to another. She heard behind her the high creaking noises of the lifeboat being lowered into the water. If they escaped it would be at least partly due to Myrnal's efforts, and that knowledge quieted some of her fear.

At least it'll be a good death. A death like this might help balance out some of the death and suffering she'd caused--or felt she'd caused--in her life. It certainly wouldn't be enough to redeem her entirely, but it was better than she had any right to expect. Better to go this way.

Then she saw Hakaril on the stairs, and remembered. Could she really be thankful for a death that took a friend with her?

It wasn't worth it. In the grand scheme of things her redemption was probably worth nothing it all. Certainly not worth suffering for people who'd been good to her. She fitted one of her last few bolts into her crossbow and made a dash for the stairway. The ship tilted drunkenly as she ran, and of their own accord her feet slid and re-balanced. One leg shot out to the side, pulling her down into a crouch so low she had to balance herself with her fingertips against the deck.

He's worn out, but I can get him to one of the lifeboats. See where Somnia is, and maybe that elf, too. As she rose again to continue forward, she dodged a flying chunk of the mast as it fell. Nothing to do but try.

When she reached the mouth of the stairwell, the ship tilted again and she skidded back into the wall of the quarterdeck where she'd stood earlier. Her back hit the hardwood and she used the moment of stability to fire off one of her last precious bolts to drive back one of the kraken's searching greedy tentacles. It bought them time, but little else.

"Hakaril!" she shouted. "Get to a damn boat!"

Myrnal's primary concern at this point seemed to be that Hakaril survive. Fair enough, he figured. Survival was pretty high on his own list of priorities. It looked like Somnia was going to do a lot more good in this fight than he was, and if it weren't for the swordswoman's intervention he'd be cephalopod feed. If he thanked her now, she'd be too busy fighting to acknowledge it, so gratitude would have to wait.

The mage knew that spell-slinging was out of the question. The barest attempt at summoning up magical power had left him gasping and retching. His body simply wasn't up to the task.

It was one of the first things Gunnir students were taught, actually, how to recognize when they'd overstepped their bounds. It wasn't an important lesson in the sense that every mage would learn on his own, sooner or later, what it felt like to overchannel. The purpose of the lesson was to make sure that the first time that it happened the mage wasn't doing anything dangerous. Hakaril recalled the exercise rather well; frankly, it had hurt, and pain was frequently memorable. But it wasn't the pain, specifically, that had lead Hakaril to decide that pushing himself was an exercise best reserved for true emergencies. It was the gripping nausea, the overwhelming feeling that his insides were tying themselves into sheepshanks to prepare for a rapid escape from his body via the nearest available orifice. It was like the crescendo of illness one feels right before vomiting without the relief that followed after the purge. Simply put, it was terrible.

There was a very real chance that he might be able to manage a spell, maybe even two, but it would completely obliterate his chances of survival if his allies failed to finish off the kraken. At that point, he would be lucky if he lost consciousness. At least then he wouldn't have to suffer while he was being shoved into the kraken's maw.

The lifeboats were sounding like a pretty good idea.

He called out to Myrnal. "You had better come with me, you hear that? Get Somnia, too, grab whoever you can! I'd prefer to die where they can actually erect a monument or something!"

It was a glittering silver, a shimmering hint of light that changed the girl's awareness from a daze the seemed like an eternity. 

What just happened...

Somnia's eyes opened, stinging for a brief moment before feeling cool and smooth.  Her nostrils felt full, and the darkness in front of her felt as if she was wrapped in a blanket of dreams.  Sinking slowly past her, twinkling amongst a small warp of bubbles, the feathered steel hilt of her blade traced past reality.  Looking up only briefly, the matter at hand came back to mind.  Her mouth opened wide, bursting forth a wall of bubbles and white fizz as she hugged the blade against her chest.  The girl's ponytail whipped and slithered against her back, her legs kicking and swaying as she came towards the water's surface.  Breathing was the least of her troubles.  Getting back to land wasn't at all a worry.  The boat didn't bother her a single bit.  Now, she was in the kraken's domain.

The girl's head cracked the crest of the water just enough for her nose to seek air, twisting her body against the torn sea's surface before she dared take a breath.  Though she sand again from the weight of her blade, Somnia laid back enough to thrust herself on her back, sucking in another breath before going down once again.  She would look for feet, swimming close against the water's surface, and whens he found feet, she would protect them from lashing tentacles.

Several minutes after Myrnal had emptied her body of saltwater, she simply laid on her stomach staring into the water. She watched the ends of her hair as they hung down into the sea, but even when her eyes adjusted to the dim starlight Myrnal couldn't see very far into the water. Earlier in the evening Myrnal had been staring out at this same water and now her nose was only inches from its surface. It wasn't encouraging.

The ninja readjusted her grip on the wood, and the shifting of her hands caused it to jerk off balance, nearly dumping her back into the water. Her fingernails dug into the wood painfully as leaned down to rest her forehead on its edge. What was she supposed to do now? What the hell could possibly be left?

Myrnal was afraid to look up and survey the damage around her. The screaming hadn't quieted down much, so she knew that there were still people alive. She just wasn't sure she was ready to look over and see nothing but black roiling water littered with splintered wood and the bodies of hapless passengers. In the end she'd been able to do so little, and she had no idea what had happened to Hakaril. Somnia and presumably Ana'e had come of their own volition, but Hakaril had only been here because of Myrnal.

She'd brought him here. Had she gotten him killed? Soaked to the skin, Myrnal began to shiver. She'd survived. So what? Why? Why did she always live to see the people who cared about her get hurt? One by one they all seemed to fall, leaving her behind to watch and remember. This always happened, and Myrnal never knew what worth she had or crime she'd committed that meant she would always be the one left behind. She was just one person, one small dark form on a large black sea. Why was she the one lingering?

Pressing her forehead against the cold, damp skin of her hands, she squeezed her eyes shut against the telltale heat of tears. She couldn't cry, not here. She didn't deserve it. Leave that to mothers who'd lost children, lovers who'd lost their beloved, sailors and warriors losing comrades even still.

Myrnal had lost nothing and no one that couldn't be blamed on her in the end. Who could say, perhaps she would die out here yet. She didn't know where she was, where any of them were. It would not be a surprise to Myrnal if her body had joined her mind, lost in the confused and foggy horse latitudes of a lonely darkened sea.

Carefully Myrnal released one hand and pushed herself over onto her side. Lifting her head, she turned her eyes back to the cluttered span of sea that had been their ship. She'd drifted some distance away from it, and most of the debris was behind her by now. Screaming. Why couldn't they stop screaming? What were they trying to do, to whom were they crying out for aid? This was the Sailor's Bane. No one would find them here. By the time anyone thought to look for survivors, every one of them would be dead.

Faelyn, Myrnal thought numbly. I know why I'm here. But what have they done?

So many people were going to die here, and no one could save them. Myrnal had done all she could, hadn't she? If that were true, wouldn't she have died along with the sailors who'd tried to help their passengers? Wouldn't she be sinking toward the fathomless depths of this sea now if she'd really done her best?

We're all going to die. Some of us sooner, some of us later. Some of us already.

It was as Myrnal drifted deeper into this numbing despair that she caught sight of something that didn't fit. Her unseeing gaze swept over the desolation, no longer distinguishing details. It took a while for her to register that she'd seen something. Something that mattered, though she couldn't remember what it was or why it was important.

With the dumb attentiveness of a woman with nothing better to do in the world than pick out meaningless details of her surroundings before she died, Myrnal brought her eyes back over.

Blue.

Wait.

Y'know, that's the same color a-- "Wh--" Myrnal began, her throat raw from seawater. She coughed down into her free hand and looked up again. So he did find a boat, she thought, amazed.

Suddenly she had a purpose. Something very very important to do, more important than anything else in the universe. She bent her whole mind and will on finding just one thing and she finally reached out and grabbed a jagged fist-sized chunk of wood once it drifted close enough.

Myrnal wrapped her fingers around it, holding it too tightly in her desperation and watching blood run down her unfeeling palm. That's going to hurt tomorrow, she thought, for once conceding a small hope that she'd still be around when day broke.

Balancing carefully, she rested for a few more seconds and laid her head back down on the wood. She needed to be sure of her aim, or she'd have to wait until something else came near. Worse, she might have to try and swim. In Myrnal's condition she knew this was impossible. Just the day before she'd been walking with a cane.

Her body tensed as she prepared to make the minute adjustments that would allow her to accomplish this and stay afloat. She pulled wet hair away from her face to keep it out of her eyes. She took one deep breath, pulled her arm back, and chucked the piece of wood at Hakaril.

Every movement, every swish and churn of water that looked to be darker than the rest looked like a threat.  It felt like the beast was around her the whole time, yet nowhere in sight.  It couldn't be gone, could it?  Something like that would probably have no interest in eating such small morsels like herself, but not all animals were good animals.  It was in her panic stricken, battle infuriated state that she managed to grit her teeth enough to hurt.  What was she doing, swimming around in search of something that could suck her underneath at any moment?  Sinking a bit more, drowning in her own stupidity, Somnia's better sense slowly grabbed her attention back to the sensible world.

What was I thinking...

Somnia drifted in thought as she kicked her legs, bouncing back to the surface while hugging her blade.  Her fear of the kraken never existed, but the fury that she felt in that moment was a sensation that had never come over her.  The thoughts of protecting someone were only there to justify another urge, a burning sensation that felt as if her veins had grown out of her fingertips and rooted within her blade.  It was an insatiable urge to kill the kraken, whether she fell in battle or not.  That never happened.  Her fist and shoulder felt sore, but the sore feeling was enough to make her start giggling.  What worries she had, the confusing emotions that almost threw her life away at the bottom of the seas washed away as her hand lay lazily against her face.  She was silly, careless, reckless, overly shy, and an overall mess of an existence. 

But it made her smile.

"Why did I do that?" Somnia mumbled to herself, rolling over to tread herself somewhere safe.  Luckily, her blind thrill for the hunt hadn't sent her astray.  The girl was still with enough space to catch herself a few bits of wreckage that would have otherwise whacked straight into her wave streaming forehead.  There were boats...in some direction, but she couldn't make out much save for those that were already rowing too far away for her to catch up.  She felt a bit nervous as more and more of them looked to be getting out of reach, kicking her feet harder and taking more breaths as her blade felt heavier by the passing moments. 

There's more people out there...they must be still around.  I can find one if I just keep looking.

The girl assured herself, her warming smile slowly changing into a paranoid smirk, Somnia's eyes looking about with a true glimpse of the frantic spirit that built up within her.  The boats really were leaving, and some of them in quite a hurry.  Her even strokes became faster, more desperate thrusts as she weaved above and below the slapping waves from the burden of her blade.  Throwing breath to the wind, Somnia rushed through the ocean harder and harder, keeping her blade with only one hand.  The girl's heart felt as if it was clutched in a net, her stomach tightened and a sinking suspicion of doom tingling within her mind.  Her head rose quickly from beneath the waters to gasp for air, searching for a boat from above while trying to keep the shrinking wreckage behind her in view.

Thunk

Was it getting closer?  Was it going further away?  Something made a sound quite different from the colliding planks and kegs strewn throughout the water.  A boat look close enough to reach, but too far for her to catch in her desperate state.  Nothing would stop Somnia as she struggled towards the boat, trying to keep a caring eye for where the thunk came from.  At the worst possible moment, whether from her own stress or the salt water, the girl's vision blurred as if a fog had devoured her amongst an unforgiving swell of blue.  It didn't matter what else could have been around her, no matter if she had to lose her arms to geth there, Somnia was determined to make it to the boat as soon as possible.  As the boat became closer, bigger, softer in her stinging view masked by a haze, curtains of darkness dreadfully lowered as Somnia's eyes closed.