Chapter 4 – Part 7

Boards unraveled from the deck, tearing and curling around the startled half-orc, even as a blue sky slammed into view. Gravity returned, and a salt spray crashed over the side of a ship that displaced a piece of ocean, midday.

Delegado hesitated for a moment, he senses reeling with the return of the world. A moment was all that was necessary.

The moving ship planks snared the half-orc like a fish in a net. He grappled with the mobile wood, but unsuccessfully. They beat at him, raising bruises, bringing a gash over one eye which nearly blinded him with his own blood. His bow was snatched from his hands. Furiously the half-orc fought, trying to free himself.

The Captain suddenly stood, staring into Delegado’s eyes. The swirling colors captivated the half-orc.

The fiend then reached in, and shoved the boards aside. They balked a moment at the fiend’s touch, they slid back into the deck with a slapping sound, and became inert.

The Captain pulled Delegado free. “Now do you believe me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“What the galig just happened?” demanded the half-orc snatching up his bow and whirling about. The ship’s deck was quiet, still, as if it had never attacked him. Blood slid down his face from his scalp wound.

“We were, then we weren’t, now we are again,” the Captain told him, a hoarse urgency in his voice. “I need your help, before he takes control of this section again.”

Delegado didn’t get a chance to ask what the thing meant, because the deck suddenly came to life again. It didn’t peel itself into tentacle-like boards this time, instead it bucked and rolled as if it were the liquid waves that surrounded the ship. Delegado fell, as did the Captain, and the deck jumped and bulged, pushing them to the rails.

The Captain cursed, and managed to flip himself around the moving bulges. He was aided by the fact that the wood that he touched seemed to obey him briefly. He made it to the ship’s wheel, grabbing it with both hands. A nimbus of discordant light began to appear around him.

Delegado let his bow go, hoping he would not lose it. Half-prone on a deck that refused to be flat, he drew his sword and slammed it into the deck point-first, piercing the wood harshly. Desperately the half-orc held on to the hilt as the adamantine blade became his anchor.

Delegado thought for a moment he would be fine, hanging on. Then he heard a horrible sound. Looking up he saw that the light around was a dancing red and black, and that the vessel’s former master was screaming in pain.