The Death tornado sucked Talon in and formed a protective shield around her, carrying her safely up through the howling hurricane. I hurled my spirit back into the harpy and observed the scene from her eyes. I stayed with her until I finally saw blue sky around me. Now that Talon had broken through the clouds and was above the storm, I destroyed the Death tornado. It disintegrated in a flurry of dissolving black threads that melted in a mere second into the calm, icy air. I let Talon take the reins, flying in a straight and steady line above the hurricane.
Talon now safe, I yanked my spirit fully back into myself, preparing for my own battle against Elandriel’s hurricane. I held the Dragon Sword aloft, gripping it in both hands, and closed my eyes. On my wrist was my mini crossbow, imbued with the magic of the Tree God.
A bolt of lightning crashed into the ocean mere yards from the ship, breaking my concentration. The ship lurched violently to the side, flung with such brutal force that it almost capsized. For a few moments, the deck turned almost vertical, and I was hurled through the air. I only just managed to stab the Dragon Sword into the deck as I fell, using it like an ice pick. Seeing Rami-Xayon falling with a scream toward the hungry ocean below, I lashed out with the chain end of the kusarigama. Her hand only just caught the chain before she would have been swallowed up by a massive wave.
“I don’t know if I can do it, Vance!” Rami-Xayon screamed over the shrieking wind, swinging on the end of the kusarigama chain like a pendulum weight. “I can’t concentrate hard enough with this hurricane raging like this!”
“You have to!” I yelled back. I clenched my jaw and contracted my muscles, using all my strength to swing her across to a section of rigging, onto which she could grab and hold tight. “Without the air from that reversed tornado, we’ll all drown!”
Another bolt of lightning smashed into the ocean next to us. A clap of thunder boomed so loudly that my head felt as if it had been split in half and left a shrill whine ringing in my ears. Whatever powers of weather control the Warlock of Yeng had possessed, Elandriel seemed to have not only mastered but doubled in potency.
“Hold tight!” I yelled to Rami-Xayon. “I’ll come to you.”
The ship pitched and lurched again, but this time I used the motion of the heaving deck to my advantage. I rolled down the steep slope of the deck, coming out of the roll with a spinning leap. I landed on the rigging and extended a hand to Rami-Xayon. Just as her fingers curled around mine a massive wave crashed over the deck, and if we hadn’t been holding onto the rigging, we would both have been swept overboard.
“Get to the main mast!” I yelled. “I’ll hold you safe there. You have to get that tornado conjured up. We’re running out of time!”
As if the ship itself was trying to emphasize this point, the timbers groaned ominously beneath us, and the mast began to bend. The warship was strong and well-built, but this vicious super-hurricane was pushing it to its limits. I didn’t think the vessel could take much more of this without being smashed to splinters, but I couldn’t get my kraken to drag it underwater until Rami-Xayon’s reverse tornado was sucking air in.
A huge wave launched the entire ship into the air, and for a few terrifying seconds, we were airborne. Then the ship came down with a booming crash and a mighty splash onto the slope of the back of the wave, only barely holding fast. The impact jarred us so hard that Rami-Xayon was flung out of the rigging. She hit the deck hard and rolled limply like a ragdoll, knocked unconscious. From somewhere deep below the decks came the dreaded sound of wood cracking and splintering.
One more incident like this would obliterate the ship.
“Shit,” I muttered. “This is not good!”
I dived off the rigging, somersaulted in mid-air, and landed on the deck. With the ship heaving and rolling, I picked up the unconscious Wind Goddess and used the chain of my kusarigama to lash us both to the mast. Then, gripping the kusarigama in one hand and the Dragon Sword in the other, I called up the powers of Death and Tree magic to fortify the ship. Tornado or not, I was going to send us under the waves. If I didn’t, the ship would be destroyed and we’d end up at the bottom of the ocean anyway.
“Rami-Xayon, wake up!” I roared into her ear as I brought up the glowing images of the skull and the tree. “Wake up, dammit, wake up!”
Her head lolled limply on her shoulders, and she showed no signs of any sort of response; she was still completely out cold. I growled out a wordless curse. The plan had seemed simple enough, but Elandriel’s hurricane had come on far faster and far more furiously than I’d anticipated. Now, he was on the verge of crushing me, but if I was going to end up meeting my end in the ocean depths, it was going to be on my terms, not his.
I pointed the Dragon Sword defiantly at the raging storm. “We’re going under, ready or not.”
Drawing on the brute strength of my tens of thousands of undead minions, I poured fortifying power into the creaking timbers of the warship. In the same way that I’d strengthened shields, armor, and weapons, the deck started to turn from rough, dull brown to shiny black. A smell wafted through the
