improvised club.
Nyrotha took instant advantage of the creature's distraction, making a deep cut across the creature's stomach. The monster staggered and ichor spurted. It dropped the coxswain. It returned its full attention to the first mate, forgetting its 'mother's' command. For the first time, Anusha thought the pirates might just defeat the creature from the sea. If the sea witch was dealt with, anyhow.
The water witch continued to back away from Anusha, her haggard eyes darting this way and that, squinting. She held her hands out in a warding gesture. She screamed out into the fog, 'Sisters, I am assailed by a ghost! Gather near, that we may banish it to the Shadowfell from which it strays!'
It wasn't the first time Anusha had been mistaken for an empty spirit. Too bad the witch couldn't see her new armored splendor. Then she'd know she faced more than a wandering apparition. Then again, when the hag looked at Roger, he'd flopped dead.
'Sisters! Return! I am beset!'
Anusha followed the retreating witch step for step. Yet she continued to hold her swing. She just couldn't bring herself to strike down the hag. Anusha intellectually knew the woman was a monster, something that would kill and eat her… but now that she was at the cusp, she couldn't follow through. If she struck down the hag, would it be an assassination? Would the hag scream and die, kicking? She lowered her sword, indecision growing into anguish.
Instead of striking, Anusha said, 'If you promise to leave the ship and depart forever, I won't hurt you?' Irresolution made her ultimatum a question.
The wandering eye of the water witch tracked Anusha's words. The witch muttered, 'Gethshemeth can do worse than kill me. Look into my eyes, and I'll show you!'
Anusha's gaze unthinkingly darted to the witch's.
The hag's red eyes flashed the color of fresh-spilled blood. Anusha recognized death itself in that bloody gaze. It grasped her.
A wave of nausea visually distorted her dream form, sending cracks and shivers through her. Hopes, memories, and hates dropped from her like dead leaves from a tree in winter.
Wake! she commanded herself. Wake up, wake up!
She did not wake up. The sea hag's blazing eye held her rooted in place… or was it Japheth's drug? He'd told her only to use it when she had a long time to sleep. She wouldn't escape this peril so easily. Her choice was to kill or die.
With dream armor unraveling like funerary linens, Anusha raised her shivering, splintering dream blade and plunged it into the sea hag's stomach. Real blood spurted from the wound.
The witch's scream possessed a keening, yearning quality that nearly made Anusha pull back. But she persevered. She held her wavering sword so it transfixed the creature from the sea, willing it real and as sharp as a razor for this moment. She plunged the blade deeper, concentrating on its keen solidity.
The witch's final, sorrowful plea for her sisters' aid trilled out into the fog. Then the hag collapsed and lay without movement or breath. In death she had the guise of a sleeping grandmother, placid and hardly a threat to anyone. Blood trickled from her wound, red as any human's.
The only response the sea hag's entreaty elicited was the appearance of a swarm of darting bats, which rotated and swirled across the Green Siren from stem to stern. Even as the mist around the ship began to break up, the investigating bats twirled back out over the sea, toward the tower island.
'The Green Siren weathered the fog,' reported Japheth, his breath still coming in gasps between his sentences in the fight's aftermath. 'I knew I saw three hags! The one that didn't attack us tried to scuttle the ship.'
'What? What about my ship?'
The warlock continued, 'Your crew beat the hag.' His eyes remained closed as his servitor bats relayed the image of the wrinkled form crumpled along the ship's railing, and something dark and large stroking away from the ship toward open water. 'A… sea troll? Nyrotha drove some sort of sea monster back into the water. Good thing you left him aboard.'
'An accident,' mused Captain Thoster. 'The lout was so drunk on grog I couldn't wake him.'
Japheth's winged servants swarmed through the open balcony window and into his bottomless cloak.
Seren, her voice ragged from too many spells, commented, 'Nice shawl you got there, Japheth.'
He simply nodded. The woman didn't need to know his cloak's provenance.
Seren stood near Thoster. Not far away, Nogah leaned against a wall, and the two surviving crew members watched the entrance. The unmoving forms of defeated kuo-toa littered the floor and choked the stairs beyond. Among them lay the charred and still smoldering sea witches who were finally downed with Seren's last impressive spell volley.
'We persevered,' said Nogah in her gurgling way.
Seren whirled, pointed an accusing finger. 'Because of you, we've gained the enmity of a great kraken! We did not agree to your ludicrous scheme, but already it sends servitors to eliminate us. I say we kill you now, and show this Gethshemeth we're not its foes.' The woman looked to the pirate captain for support.
Thoster put a hand on the war wizard's shoulder, 'Seren, mayhap we'll do exactly that, but let's talk a bit first, eh?' Japheth noticed that, despite the man's solicitous air, the hand not on Seren's shoulder rested on the pommel of his venomous sword.
Seren huffed, visibly battling her desire to launch a particularly nasty attack on the whip from her armamentarium of spells. Finally, she spat, 'So talk.'
Captain Thoster nodded and said, 'First, I want to know what sub-breed of kuo-toa we just faced? I've never seen their like before now.'
The whip gave a slow nod, her eyes large compared to those of the many dead creatures lying around them. She said, 'Gethshemeth's doing, using the Dreamheart. It has corrupted their forms. It is a potential I sensed in the Dreamheart, but not one I ever called upon.'
The captain frowned, seemed about to ask something else, then thought better of it. Instead he grinned and said, 'Consider, all of you. This unprovoked attack is a message. Gethshemeth revealed its hand, so to speak. The great kraken's afraid! It tried to scare us off, make us let fear drive us the direction Seren suggests we take. It hopes well run with sails at full mast from Nogah. Well, here's how I see it: the great beast must think we have some chance of succeeding to go to such trouble!'
'Rubbish,' replied Seren. 'You're seriously suggesting we engage something so powerful, so prescient, that it knew when and where to attack us even before we agreed to oppose it?'
Nogah intruded, 'Gethshemeth knew we gathered against it, likely through its study of the Dreamheart. But Thoster is correct. The great kraken knows I held the stone far longer than itself. It knows I have the greater mastery of its power. The closer I draw to it, the more influence I can exert over it and Gethshemeth too. Get me close enough, soon enough, and I can snatch it back! I've prepared for nothing else these last several months.'
'If you're so proficient with this rock, how'd the kraken steal it from you in the first place?' Seren countered.
'It caught me by surprise. The possibility that something might attempt to take the artifact from me had not entered my calculations. But, as I explained, I've been making preparations. Next time I'm close enough, Gethshemeth will rue the moment it stole my birthright!' Greenish spittle flecked the kuo-toa's wide lips.
'Mmmm, yes,' mused Thoster, his zeal of a moment earlier fading somewhat. He looked at Japheth. 'What do you think?'
Japheth thought it possible Nogah was slightly insane. But he suspected insanity was a common condition among kuo-toa, something they had learned to deal with. The warlock answered, 'Both of you are correct. Gethshemeth rightly worries about anything that would oppose it. But how much does it need to worry, really? Its abilities can't be discounted; a great kraken could easily destroy us.'
'Right!' said Seren.
'However, despite its already considerable power,' continued Japheth, 'Nogah explained the relic Gethshemeth stole could amplify its strength, magnify it so much it could threaten more than the denizens of the Sea of Fallen Stars. I would not like that to happen, if I could stop it.'
