Chapter 4 – Part 2

The Captain winced, trying not to feel the arrows that hadn’t hit him yet, or the ones that already did. Time was unraveling, although no doubt worse for the hybrid archer. The passage of time was always relative to the viewer, and the ultraloth was more central to the Crimson Ship than any other.

Except for the intruder belowdecks, trying to take it over.

Another arrow hit, then didn’t, then did again. This one had no energy discharge at least, just an enchantment that allowed it to bypass the Captain’s damage reduction. He gritted his teeth against the pain. The punch from the hybrid’s bow was significant.

Control of the ship slipped, and another veneer of molecules was stripped away as the Captain’s concentration wavered.

He wasn’t sure what happened, even he did not know the Crimson Ship completely, but he knew it had gone awry. The Crimson Ship could function like a regular sailing vessel, but its main mode of locomotion was actually to move reality around it, to make space fold and end up where it was needed.

One of the drawbacks to being an immortal outsider was that you were a slave to your nature. Uncounted millennia ago, the Captain chose travel on the seas as his nature, rather than the domineering, pain-inflicting, evil ways of so many of his kind, or the stalwart, heroic-cause-bearing ways of the coutal and angels who opposed the fiends. He had never regretted his choice, and he had happily bonded with this artifact.

Only now, he had taken on passengers who had attacked him. This had happened before, and he had dealt with it easily. But these passengers had one of their number who could manipulate magical devices in an uncanny fashion. The Captain had had artificers on the Crimson Ship before, but none as skilled as this. And, in a juxtaposition that could only please the Traveler, these passengers had been picked up from the land of his birth.

So, he had been busy finessing the hag sent as an ambassador, and the passenger who manipulated magic had struck. Then, while he had been trying to re-establish control, the half-orc had made it on deck, and had begun shooting the captain with his own arrows.

Caught by surprise twice, the Captain had lost control of the Crimson Ship, and below, whoever was trying to manipulate the Crimson Ship’s magic, had generated an incredible mishap, a surge in the reality-adjuster.

“Please stop shooting,” gasped the Captain. He grasped the ship’s wheel in one hand, trying to calm the magical surge. The mishap below had thrown the Crimson Ship forward, and too hard. They were out of the timestream, riding above it almost, and if they did not fall back in correctly, they would be scattered to nothingness.

The fiend closed his eyes, and focused, feeling the pull of the magics. Below, the one who had caused all the trouble was now working with him, trying to save the ship from disintegration. The Captain reached out with his mind, trying to show the other how to calm the surge.

But if another arrow hit, he would not be able to guide the other, and they would all be lost.