Chapter 6 – Part 3

Delegado hid behind the mast as the beam of cold went by. It looked similar to minor frost rays that he’d seen student mages cast at enemies, but this one was thicker, and its very passage sought to stiffen muscles. The Cold Mage had come out of the water blasting spells in a spread, hoping to catch the half-orc.

But Delegado had lived most of his life in wildernesses where the slightest change in sound meant life or death. He’d heard the Cold Mage return, and fired an arrow before dodging.

The Cold Mage had been hurt, but had kept flinging round balls of ice. Unlike the explosive cold balls fired earlier, these were shot at the deck to make little squares of slippery ice. Clearly the Cold Mage was intent on boxing in his prey.

“Screw that,” Delegado muttered, waiting for the whistle he’d used to have an effect. Feather had been sent out earlier to scout around the Crimson Ship, to find something, any reference point. The hawk needed the air after the reality-twisting that they’d all gone through, anyway. Now the bird was about to return.

Time it, Delegado thought. He knew his animal companion. He carefully fit two arrows to the bow and listened.

The Cold Mage let out a startled oath. Delegado jumped around the mast and fired, noting with satisfaction that Feather was trailing water from his talons. The hawk had caught the Cold Mage off guard and distracted him. Delegado’s arrows fired. The Cold Mage’s shield broke one apart, and diverted the path of the other, but the second arrow still scraped a watery shoulder.

The half-orc had been hoping that the Cold Mage would be too distracted to return fire, or that the hobgoblin’s spell concentration would be thrown off. No such luck. A net of ice sprung from the Cold Mage’s outstretched hand, flying quickly towards Delegado.

And it was cut open but a thin line of fire. Snow and water fell harmlessly around Delegado.

“Take me on then!” roared Thomas, charging up the stairs from below. The deck quivered before him, shaking loose any patches of slippery ice that the hobgoblin had cast down. Delegado stared in shock. Thomas was naked, he’d shaved his ehad, he was covered in tiny cuts, and he had fresh bruises all him.

Bruises of a size and shape that Delegado had seen on those who fell before Orphan’s fists.

“What is this?” asked the Cold Mage, sneering. “A puppet?” Delegado then realized that the stormstalk was gone, and in its place were two thin quivering lengths of supple wood, apparently wood from the Crimson Ship itself, connecting Thomas to their vessel. “The Captain many tricks it seems.” He raised his hand and fired a cold ray at Thomas.

The half-dalekyr dodged, hefting his greataxe. “The Captain is not!” snarled Thomas, blood leaking from one eye, while the other one, which was swelled shut, seemed to leak tears. Dried blood also rested underneath Thomas’ nostrils and ears. More blood had traced thin lines down his torso, past scars old and new, and resting into his pubic area. Delegado fired another three arrows at the Cold Mage, trying not to think why the half-daelkyr was in the state he was in. Two arrows got batted aside, but the third sank into the Cold Mage’s thigh.

“I will have this ship!” gasped the Cold Mage, diving off of his pedestal back into the water, presumably to heal.

“The ship is mine!” Thomas growled. He extended a hand, and waves of something rippled the air. Red lines appeared around the Cold Mage, stopping his fall. The Cold Mage growled, and extended his own hands, slapping away the red lines with his own lines of blue. Sparks flew where they touched.

Delegado fired two more arrows, then ducked behind the secondary mast. The Cold Mage howled in pain as he was struck in the torso and then the face. The second arrow shattered the icy nose, and remained half-lodged in the hobgoblin’s skull.

Thomas grunted, and his hand shook. A fingernail fell off, and more of his blood spilled on the deck. The red net was touching the Cold Mage’s skin now, making the hobgoblin snarl with pain. Slowly the Cold Mage was being drawn closer, until he was right by the railing. At this point the blue lines thickened and redoubled themselves.

Delegado fired another arrow, but the flashing energy between the conjured red and blue lines shattered it before it could touch the Cold Mage.

Thomas grabbed his greataxe in both hands and pointed the end at the Cold Mage. “Do I finish him, then?” he asked the half-orc.

“What?” Delegado asked, shocked. “Keeper’s arse, yes!” The half-orc could see the Cold Mage straining. Behind the electrical arcs it was apparent that the hobgoblin was working his way free, planning on dropping back into the water where he could heal, and then return.

“I can tap no more from the Crimson Ship,” laughed Thomas. “Else I undo the repairs below. You can’t shoot him. His magical fields prevent almost any weapon from harming him, stopping most damage. Stopping, stopping, stop, she screamed stop, I wouldn’t.” The half-daelkyr hefted his greataxe. “But this, this was fashioned by my father’s people. It hurts goblinkind. This water-merged wizard, he won’t survive it.”

“Then use it!” snapped the half-orc. Delegado fired two more arrows, but the half-daelkyr’s assessment was correct. They pained the Cold Mage, but they did not kill him. The hobgoblin was even now oozing out of the net of red lines. “Do something!”

“Only if you forgive me,” Thomas sighed. “Only then, yes?”

“What?” Delegado said. “Fine! Forgiven! Kissy-kissy!” The half-orc ran the length of the deck, dodging the few remaining icy patches, to get his sword. Adamantine had a way of cutting through anything.

The wood of the deck suddenly animated, wrapping around Delegado’s ankles, stopping him in place. The half-orc swore, and looked over his shoulder to see Thomas pointing at the entrapping wood. Beyond Thomas was the Cold Mage, now half out of the net of red, magical force.

“I mean it,’ Thomas said. “This axe of my father’s people, the daelkyr that you hate, the half of me, all of me, that you hate. Hate it so much, despite our halves. Forgive me and I use it. Refuse, and I let you both go, yes, both of you fight each other. We die.” Thomas’ visible eye was glowing with some inner light, something was happening. His face was twitching oddly, sagging a bit, half-paralyzed.

And there was something on the half-daelkyr’s privates that was an encrusted fluid, but it was not blood.

Delegado swallowed the sinking thought that threatened to overwhelm his conscious mind. Forgive him or die, said the half-orc’s survival mechanisms.

“I forgive you,” Delegado forced himself to say. “But you will never tell me what you did. I can only forgive you in ignorance.”

“I’ll take that,” Thomas said, making an odd, half-paralyzed smile. He then turned and howled himself into a primal rage, hefting his greataxe above his head in both hands as he charged the Cold Mage.

The wood wrapped around Delegado’s ankles melted back into a normal deck. The Cold Mage burst the red lines around his body away, and they melted into nothingness. The Captain lifted his head weakly.

And, howling with rage and self-hatred, the man called Thomas leaped into the air over the railing, the trailing lengths of wood attached to his neck snapping off as he cleared it. His greataxe swung with the force of his charge, and he buried it into the body of the watery hobgoblin. Both shrieked in pain. Both had their voices cut off suddenly.

Both limply hit the ocean below, but the hobgoblin’s body was in two separate pieces.

Delegado grabbed his sword, then ran back to the railing and watched the ocean.

Nothing. Just waves.

The half-orc fitted arrows to his bow and looked around, expecting the Cold Mage to return, expecting Thomas to come crawling up the side of the ship.

Nothing.

“It is over,” coughed the fiend. Delegado spun around, sighting an arrow on the Captain’s chest.

“Don’t move,” the half-orc said.

“I am trying not to,” grunted the Captain. “I am in a great deal of pain. But I do have control of my ship again. Your friend Thomas is gone, as is the Cold Mage.

Delegado stood there, trying to think. Feather flew down, landing on the half-orc’s shoulder.

“Thomas is dead?” the half-orc asked.

“He was dying when he came above decks,” the Captain said. “But yes, he’s dead.”

“And the hobgoblin?”

“The hobgoblin was a wizard who wanted immortality, but didn’t want to be undead,” coughed the Captain. “About three centuries ago he stole some magic from the gnomes of Zilargo and merged himself with elemental powers of water and cold. Unfortunately for him the process that he used involved a certain undersea portal to Risia which he could never travel more than a hundred leagues from.”

“And how do you know all that?” the half-orc asked skeptically.

“Because I took him there,” the fiend said. “Look, I am not dangerous to you. I am a creature of travel. I am a prisoner of my own nature, like all fiends, but by nature is not an evil one. I have my path and I am content with it.”

“Why’d you mind-f’test me then?” asked Delegado.

“Oh, you would have come on board without fighting me?” the Captain asked, bemused. “I was rescuing you from my admitted kinfolk, and you would have trusted me? I needed distance, I hurried you below. Didn’t think you break free of the conditioning. You’re a rare fellow, son of Tharashk.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Delegado said, his mind racing. “Is the Cold Mage dead?”

“I certainly hope so. But if he is not we should be out of his range before he can recover.” The Captain stood slowly, rubbing his back. “Do you have to point that at me?”

Delegado frowned, then lowered the weapon. “Where are we and where are we going?”

“Some three hundred miles west of the mouth of Crescent Bay,” the Captain told him. “We are now headed east, towards the Tharashk outpost at Blood Crescent. And before you ask, no I am not double-crossing you, I normally an go wherever I wish with my ship, but the Demon Wastes still has a hold on me, to an extent, and I am very worn out from the mental battle for control with your late friend the half-daelkyr. He nearly killed us all, playing with the magicks that bind this ship.”

Footsteps on the deck. “I take it that he was trying to manipulate it, and he pushed us through time,” said Iron Orphan, coming to stand beside Delegado. At this the half-orc returned arrow to quiver and bow to shoulder. Orphan’s mind was too strong for the Captain’s mind tricks. Or at least the half-orc hoped so.

“Very good,” the captain replied. “Did you know that or did your headband tell you?”

“I don’t see why I have to answer that,” the warforged responded. “And you can quit trying to read my mind. You won’t get in.”

“Habit,” the Captain shrugged, lifting his hands and then lowering them. “You are an interesting creature, I desired to know more of you. Is the changeling asleep?”

“What happened to Ois?” Delegado demanded. The rush of adrenalin had faded, and his stomach began to twist. He turned to Orphan, fear and anger in his voice. “What happened to Ois?”

“The stormstalk got loose and paralyzed her,” Orphan said. “She managed to restore me and I killed it. I ran topside to find you fighting the Cold Mage. You sent me below, and I found Thomas assaulting her. I pulled Thomas off of her, and I cleansed her and wrapped her in blankets as best I could.”

The encrusted fluid. The insistence on forgiveness. The man’s nudity. The blood. “Assaulted her how,” Delegado asked, his voice seeming to come from far away.

“Sleep now,” the Captain said. Something soft covered Delegado’s mind, and he was lost into unconsciousness.