Then Marina rushed to him, holding an arrow she drained her blood on. She was shaking if a lightning bolt stuck her. Her face was lit with great reluctance. Her mouth muttered two words, which Vaeludar didn’t know what Marina say. Suddenly, Marina swung the arrow she was carrying into Vaeludar’s left ear and right ear, going in one ear and out the other.
Vaeludar could feel the Siren’s blood stinging his ears like a thousand beestings. He couldn’t feel pain but he could feel the blood melting his brain like an arrow piercing straight threw a weak skull. The blood was actually trying to bring Vaeludar’s hearing back to normal. The distorted sounds he was hearing were now the sounds of regular talking people. The headache he had was gone in seconds like a fly flying away from a human’s view.
With his strength back and the headache gone, he wiped off the siren blood from his ears. He got back to his feet and looked at Marina.
“Can you forgive me?” she asked.
“No need to,” he answered as he widen out his wings. “Apparently, this Banshee shows someone’s lovable nightmare, not the worst nightmare. We both will have to find it and kill it.”
Suddenly, the boat had crashed into a boulder. It thundered the boat to a halt. Rocks emerged from the water. Vaeludar knew they were now stuck. Suddenly, rocks beneath the water rose, surrounding the boat.
“Ok, maybe one of us should stay on the boat and the other one go,” Vaeludar corrected himself.
While the Vaeludar and Marina were the only ones truly awake from the fog’s power of hallucination, the others were dozed off like sleepwalkers. Vaeludar pulled out the sword and jumped to a leaning Flavius and Naìra. He looked overboard, too.
There were swimming fish with hunger and anger in their eyes. Fish rounded as an oval, eyes colored as blood, small fins, with scales of a rainbow and very small snouts with small teeth for biting.
Piranhas!
“Marina, we have some piranhas overboard! Would you do the honors of getting rid of these underwater stowaways?”
“My pleasure,” said Marina, smiling. Marina jumped and dived into the crowd of piranhas. Marina found herself not being attacked by the toothy fish; they were swimming right beside her.
Vaeludar knew since Marina was a creature of the sea and one who could sing underwater, she would be able to lure them away with her singing voice just like her kin did to men before they went extinct.
I hope she takes care of our underwater problems with teeth, thought Vaeludar. He ran towards the front of the boat and struck the rocks in their way, with his sword in hand.
The rocks spilt in half in one slash and suddenly rise twice the height every time Vaeludar cut one in half. If had cut them more, it would mean the rocks would rise even higher. It was as if he was fighting a hydra: cut one head of and two more would grow. The boat was stuck.
He looked to see his companions still in their trances and totally and didn’t have a grip of reality. The boat wasn’t slowing and moved into the pointy rocks.
“Enough!” shouted Vaeludar, flying into the sky. He soared a higher than the rocks. He blew out orange fire on the sides of the boat and the rocks.
Heated moisture penetrated the fog and dimmed it down. The water surface suddenly waved franticly like the ocean during a hurricane. The boat was lifted and floated away. Vaeludar flew down and landed in the boat. He saw Marina jumping back on as he landed.
Vaeludar saw everyone looking scarred or amazed in their daydreams of hallucinating. Vaeludar felt such agitation everyone was in a different trance instead of having their eyes set in reality.
Then long cloudy images formed into monsters appeared before Marina’s and Vaeludar’s eyes. They began to whip the boat with their hallucinating arms like an octopus’s tentacles. This made everyone scream in horror.
Waves have pounded the boat down the river. The boat swerved over the wavering water if it was caught in the high winds of a hurricane storm.
“What did you do?” she yelled.
“Released this boat from rocks,” Vaeludar yelled back.
The boat started to flow with the strong tiding water carrying through trenches and ruined buildings. Vaeludar quickly strapped ropes around his dozing comrades in hopes they won’t fall overboard. Marina herself strapped herself in tight with one of the ropes. Vaeludar himself held onto the mast where his foster sister was.
After riding a strong wave, the boat had slowed. Floating softly again, the boat resumed its way. Clouds in the shapes of Chimeras, Cyclopes, Harpies, and Manticores took positions of terrifying looks, making the crew think they were real.
“Arh, Cyclopes” grunted Wonomi and Monico.
“Harpies!” yelled Flavius.
Everyone was terrified by the fake images of evil creatures.
However, Galvin was still sleeping while everyone was scared out of their wits. Naìra was crying in great fear. Flavius his sword out, pointing it had every object. Wonomi and Monico cradled together. And Flarefur snuggled to himself like a frightened cat.
Vaeludar unstrapped his comrades from the ropes and strode to the front of the boat. He, with his hybrid eyes, saw deeper into the fog. This time he could see further without a fight from the fog. He could see they had more miles to go until they could reach land. “We are still far away from our destination,” he said, calmly.
“At this pace, we may make it with us two al… ive… Vaeludar! WATCH OUT!” yelled Marina, pointing her hand at the starboard side of the boat.
Vaeludar looked
