“Captain? Captain can you hear me? You need to heal yourself! Use your replenishing waters spell …”

“Captain, we can’t keep going like this, you need to use your magic!”

“DOMENIC!”

In a terrifying fever dream, I latched onto an insistent voice and gradually realized I was being given instructions and needed to comply. I wasn’t feeling up for doing much of anything, but the promise of healing and feeling even a little better than I did right now was worth trying.

I’d just cast replenishing waters, though, hadn’t I? The darn spell took all of my mana every time I used it. No way I could cast it again. But my basic heal spell wasn’t strong enough to fix the problems I had going on, so replenishing waters it was. It could suck out whatever mana I’d regenerated and I’d have followed instructions.

Mana intensive as it was, the casting was thankfully instant. There was no way I’d manage even a one second casting time. I was surprised to realize that the spell used so much mana I must have been nearly full.

I suddenly felt like I’d fallen from a dry desert, buried in ancient sand, to being dunked in the Atlas Ocean. Shock flooded my system as my eyes snapped open and I bolted upright only to be easily forced down again.

“Yes! Good, now stay calm and relax, just a bit more and this’ll be flushed from your system …”

Ice seemed to crawl up my limbs as burning heat was pulled from my bones, starting with my extremities and working in towards my chest where I’d been stabbed. My breaths came in shorter, shallower gasps. I hadn’t felt this cold in … years, at least. Maybe ever.

The last bit of warmth seemed to be sucked from my chest and my frozen teeth clamped together. I couldn’t even manage to take a breath until someone thumped my chest and seemingly unlocked my lungs. My teeth were chattering.

“Why’s he look so cold now?”

“His blood was practically molten, going back to a normal temperature feels like a shock but he’ll get over it.”

I rubbed my eyes and the hands holding me down released me. I forced myself to sit upright and take stock, feeling far out of my depth.

Gnar was hovering over me, a worried look on his face. Drese was standing a few feet away, a circle of unfamiliar madu and orcs kneeling in a circle around him. They all seemed somewhat listless, but the master life mage checked them over briefly and seemed satisfied.

I tried to stand and found myself as weak as a fish that had been hooked on a line for a week. I settled for hugging my knees and shivered.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice a husky rasp.

“Wyrm fire,” Gnar said, producing the wicked blade that the vampires had put in my chest. “They wanted to make sure you died, all right.”

I gaped at the blade. “That … I survived dragon fire?”

Drese snorted. “A fire wyrm does not a dragon make; count yourself lucky enough for that. If you’d been hit with dragon fire all I could have done would be cutting off the affected limbs or easing your passing.”

I looked at the listless circle with a weary life master standing in the middle. “Just what did you do?”

“While you dove the ship I kept the vampires off of us until they retreated. Then I burned through every mana potion in your bag trying to stabilize you.” My eyes went wide at that … I’d had a substantial stockpile in there after our raids! “When I was still going to run out of mana, I arranged to have volunteers support me. By drawing on the life of others, I was able to keep going long enough to bring you back.”

“Drawing on their life?” I said, looking at the group who was just seeming to get their bearings. “They … shortened their lifespans?”

“Yes, though having a decent Constitution will let them recuperate from how much I used them. We cycled volunteers through the circle.”

I owed every person who stepped up to help me. I owed Drese a lot more, as there had been no replacement for him. He’d gone from an intense battle to an extended healing session without pause. “I owe you my life.”

“Your own healing spell was instrumental in tipping the balance: both when you used it after getting inflicted and when my powers started to flag.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered without you. Thank you, Drese.”

He nodded to me. “Of course, Captain. Now, before you discover it on your own and panic, I have some news to break to you.”

Ah, fishguts. What now?

“You are feeling weak and frail, correct? That is not simply aftereffects of the wyrm fire, I’m afraid. Your Constitution was ravaged by it, and you have lost attributes because of that.”

“What?” I said, immediately bringing up the prompt that verified it:

Severe injuries have damaged your body. You have lost 1 Constitution.

Severe injuries have damaged your body. You have lost 1 Constitution.

For a moment, I was at a loss. Once again I was facing the loss of hard earned attributes. I’d spent my early years hoarding my attributes points from leveling and building up my stats through work and effort only to have the edge I’d cultivated gradually worn down.

I shook myself from my self-pity before it devolved further. This was just one more thing to deal with. I could handle having 20 fewer HP, I needed to lean more on my spells anyway.

“Thank you again for saving my life,” I said. “I’ll follow up with any health issues after you’ve had a chance to rest.”

“Very well. If you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I will be quite useless to you for some time. Good luck.” Drese moved to a nearby pile of blankets, peeled the blood-spattered topmost blanket off and unceremoniously sprawled onto the rest.

Gnar returned my adventurer’s bag to me. “I’ve seen healers work wonders, but I’ve never seen someone work like he did.”

“I owe him more than I know how to repay,” I said. “But I’ll be looking for ways to do it. Tell me more about what happened.”

“Well, you claimed the ship and sent it down. The vampires followed us for a hundred yards or so, then … well they sensed what was coming and took off.”

“‘What was coming’? Is something coming?”

Gnar heaved a deep breath and crooked a finger for me to follow him to the hatch. We were on the first deck of the ship, where the crew had made their berthing and stored their supplies. It had been the cleanest deck by default, but after our attack left bodies to cool in puddles of blood and voided bowels, it was uncertain which decks of the prison ship were the worst.

Gnar moved to listen at the hatch to the main deck. I didn’t wait for such mundane things as peeking when I could see everything in my Domain.

I had stopped looking through my Domain while being afflicted by wyrm fire, so looking through my sphere again was something of a sensory overload. I was familiar enough with the ship from our scouting to orient myself, but for some reason our ship had much more mass than it should. It took me a moment to comprehend what I was seeing: we were being held by a kraken!

Marching to where Gnar was peeking out, I just avoided slamming the hatch in his face and instead eased it shut – firmly. “Gnar … how long has a kraken been strangling us?”

“Ever since those vamps fled – I figure they did something to the water since there were all sorts of creatures fighting each other. That big thing decided we looked like a fun toy and cuddled up with us.”

“Kraken don’t have a ‘gentle mode’ with ships, how has this un-enchanted ship not been crushed?”

“Oh, the ship was creaking a lot right off the bat but it all stopped after a bit. We were mainly focused on you, dealing with everything else later.”

I thanked Gnar for his contribution in saving my life, and dove into the waiting ship interface to see where our durability was and try and understand what was going on.

Final Internment (Cursed)

Ship Class

Hulk

Captain

Seaborn

Ship Durability

61,050,250/82,000

Ship level

4

Cursed Status:

Containment

Bloodied Meeting Ground

Ship alterations:

Speed

Maneuverability

Handling

Durability

Modifications:

Repairs

Effects

Relationships

…

Containment: this ship was designed to prevent its prisoners from escaping or being rescued; +30% ship durability, improved durability point distribution against unarmed/blunt damage.

Bloodied Meeting Ground: the Captain’s diplomacy with various factions on board has left much to be desired. -2 relationship ranks with non-allied forces.

‘Containment’ was the answer I was looking for. The thing that made kraken such legendary bogeymen was that it didn’t matter if your ship had three times the durability points of its class – kraken would apply their strength in a localized area and overwhelm the durability there. The while ship could be battered broadside against a cliff safely, but when those arms squeezed the middle they cracked. It was the same with how I’d blown holes in the Wind Runner and Raven both: I’d overwhelmed the durability in one spot. The ships still had thousands of durability points left, but they were still done for.

‘Containment’ didn’t just give a durability bonus – I could care less about that, no matter our situation – what saved us was how the durability was distributed throughout the ship. If a boulder from a trebuchet landed smack in the middle of our deck, it wouldn’t punch through the decks like a falling boulder should. Instead, it would zap a bunch of durability points and the normal wooden planks wouldn’t buckle! The cursed effect had essentially gifted my ship with a specialized enchantment for durability!

Of course the second cursed effect made me scratch any thoughts of transforming this vessel into a war vessel. -2 relationship rank? That meant anyone I ran into who would have been ‘friendly’ – which would be a miracle for me – would instead drop to ‘distrust’. The more likely starting point of 'distrust' would be dropped to ‘blind hatred’.

I’d put up with the morale debuff on the Death’s Consort long enough to know I didn’t want anything to do with that.

“We have some time,” I said. “The kraken couldn’t break the ship open, and seems to have stopped trying. Tell me the rest of the story.”

“Well,” Gnar continued. “You kept the ship interior free from the ocean, which kept the prisoners alive and let Drese retreat. We pulled you in behind us and set to healing you. You got better. Besides that; Mirash found the weasel you told him to. They stuck one of their officers in one of the cages of the bilge – his cellmates ratted him out. Seems he was a contingency to keep you from doing what you did while the vampires attacked.”

I nodded. It wasn’t a very sound strategy, but it had almost worked. The question was, what would they have done if I had attacked during the day? What alternative to the vampires did they have?

“I set the lads to stand by on each deck and keep everyone pacified, they’re keeping their heads on a swivel. I figured you could deal with them when you got back on your feet.”

“No,” I said and explained the cursed effect Bloodied Meeting Ground. “How did you manage to find volunteers to work with Drese?”

“All the orcs below volunteered when they saw us,” Gnar said proudly. “Some of the others did to, but most of the ‘volunteers’ were convinced when we explained that if you died, we were stuck in this ship at the bottom of the ocean.”

I winced. “Well … I appreciate their practicality. I don’t want to push it though – the more interaction I have with those who don’t see themselves as allied with me, the worse our future relationship will be. Please have your team make sure the Hali and the man I encountered in the third deck are brought up here and cared for. Distribute water and hardtack to the rest, as much as they want – the ship will support it. That’ll have to do. Most of the prisoners in here would be neutral to me and I’m not going to ruin that if I can help it. We deal with the kraken first.”

“Sure,” Gnar said, more than happy to skip the civil patrol work and have a fight. “So how do you get rid of a kraken?”

“Most people use equipped armadas for ones as big as this.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Right. Well we’ve got the most important part: that’s a ship that can withstand it. The next pieces are things like large, scissor-like arms designed to be able to cut tentacles; enchanted or alchemical weapons, preferably ones that can deal with a wet environment; stamina potions for all involved …”

“Captain,” Gnar interrupted. “I know you’re just airing your thoughts, but none of us have seen anything like this, much less fought one. It’d sure be nice to have even the barest outline of a plan we could pull off with what we have.”

“Relax, I’m getting my bearings and there’s a reason this ship with no artillery at all is still considered a threat-level four! So here’s a plan A for getting out of here, and a plan B for harvesting XP …”

Several hours later the Final Internment broke the surface and bobbed up and down on the large swells. We’d fought our way to the surface despite the kraken’s resistance, but the beast had stubbornly clung to us for the ride. I’d maintained a hope that it would sense we weren’t worth it and find easier prey.

“That was a total failure,” Gnar said, peeking through a hatch at the tentacles still gripping us.

“I prefer ‘learning experience.’” I replied.

“Still nothing in your range?”

“I can’t sense the Roc’s Eye in my Domain, but I can point to where Travis and the others are.”

The team that had sabotaged the other ship had made their way back to Travis, presumably in the no-longer-cursed Roc’s Eye. I imagined Travis was trying to wrangle the orcs into seamanship duties as my summoned constructs expired. I could tell where all my crew were, and Gnar had the ability to tell whether his team was alive, so we’d both had an idea of their status already. They could also sense the Final Internment, in fact having a 24 hour timer to get to it.

“They’re coming this way, at least?”

“Yes. So long as they get within my Domain we can communicate.”

That was the crux of it; they had to sail towards the ship carrying a kraken. They didn’t have much choice, but I’d bet Travis had some choice words on the matter.

We were coming up on the early morning hours, and stuck a flag out the hatch with a glow stone for illumination and waited.

It took some time, but eventually I sensed the Roc’s Eye nudging into my Domain, all hands on board fixing their eyes on us. Travis was at the helm and he had indeed roped some orcs into helping him, though none of them dropped their armor or weapons.

“Here goes,” I said, lifting a hooded glow stone lantern and slipping out the hatch furthest from the kraken arms in stealth.

Kraken had amazing dexterity and tactile sensation, this one had explored the whole exterior of ship with its arms and probably felt every splinter. They did not have eyes everywhere, and so long as this one didn’t notice or care about any vibrations from my steps, I should be able to sneak around the whole deck. Naturally that would be monumentally stupid without reason, so I stood right next to the hatch to do my signaling.

I lifted the hood from the lantern and waved it, watching in my Domain and with my eyes as Travis got his own glow stone to reply.

In abbreviated language I explained the plan, but when signaling one letter at a time it took too long before Travis couldn’t see my glow stone in the dawn’s light and I had to switch to flags. Thank the stars I had him over there, as none of the orcs would know our signals.

Mental note: add signaling to the language lessons everyone was already working on.

The kraken didn’t bother me at all, besides making my heart race a little when it flexed its arms to test the ship again. I was careful to not even shift my feet, but analyzed it while I had it in sight.

Name

Kraken

Level

46

Health

44,850

Mana

700

Stamina

38,600

If it wasn’t wartime, this fellow would have merited an extermination mission. As it was I was sure there was a bounty on it, since creatures didn’t get that big without sinking at least a few ships.

The biggest thing I’d ever hunted before was a whale with about 42,000 HP. That had been exhausting, but not nearly as dangerous a monster as this. 45,000 HP was going to be a nightmare to whittle down. Thankfully we had a plan.

It was odd being the only one on board with experience that even remotely qualified me to do this. Nevertheless, I was thankful for having a team of professional warriors. Seamen and fishermen might have professional abilities to give them an edge or unique abilities to do incredible damage, but this wasn’t really a fishing or hunting trip. It was a battlefield. The kraken would attack and each of its arms would be a force to be countered.

I finished going through my upgrades list: there were some ship improvements that we needed to have, and it wasn’t the speed or mobility aspects I normally focused on.

The prisoners were all squished into the spaces where they’d be out of the way if our fighters needed to retreat to a lower deck. They couldn’t be happy about it, but the food and water had helped most and we promised better conditions as soon as there wasn’t a monster trying to crush us. I caught Hali’s eyes once or twice, but besides a wan smile we didn’t have time for anything,

All too soon, I was looking at Gnar, a recently wakened but emergency-backline-healer-only Drese, and the teams of warriors assigned to different hatches.

It was time to begin.

I gave the order, and a pair of orcs with the highest strength popped out of a hatch and threw the repurposed anchor chain across the wrapped kraken arms to the waiting orcs at another hatch, who secured it. The kraken reacted, but it first sent out probing tentacles to grab the orcs. They taught it why it should be more careful reaching for warriors with empowered strikes that gouged and sheared the tips of the questing tentacles.

Or at least they taught it that it needed to be more aggressive, as both warriors were quickly forced to duck an angry swing that would have knocked them into the ocean. With war cries, the other teams popped out of different hatches to attack and split the kraken’s focus.

The hunt was on.

The kraken had eight arms. Two of those it had kept below the water line, two were ‘lounging’ coiled around masts, and four were wrapped around the ship, squeezing. The chain we’d first deployed had been coiled so that rather than a single chain with a potential weak link, the kraken had to break through six. In addition, we’d twisted weapons and old tools into the chain like barbs.

Of the four arms the chain covered, two wriggled free. That left two caught. They weren’t incapacitated, but the kraken was stuck to us.

That was a risky move, but one we felt worth taking. Often, missions to kill kraken ended when enough arms had been removed and the creature fled. That wasn’t foolproof, since a kraken with two arms could still crush a ship, but they typically died from the environment or other predation before that happened. We didn’t want to let the kraken flee, if we were going to fight it we wanted to harvest it for all the XP it was worth.

The goal was to cut off its arms – except for the ones tying it to us – and then we could attack the vulnerable body with impunity.

I was still feeling weak, so my contribution was primarily in a support and caster role. I would pop out of a hatch to cast a cone of frost at the closest arms I could. The spell didn’t slow the entire massive creature, but it did slow the affected arms a bit in addition to the ice damage. I also cast courage on the orcs, and occasionally pulled someone out of danger, but that was the extent of my spellcasting. Spread among 20 orcs, that was more than enough to spread my mana thin.

Besides that I was a stamina potion dispensary. The professional warriors burned through their stamina more often than not in their special attacks. I rarely used stamina potions, and freely distributed or stockpiled them when we captured them.

I didn’t do much healing. A wild kraken arm could send someone flying, but that was the best case. If the kraken grabbed you, it was presumed there was nothing to be done. They all played a dangerous game, where they dodged or died. They were very good at avoiding the strikes, but we had hours of this battle to go through.

After nearly an hour of attacks, an orc had a critical hit that severed the last third of a fleshy arm, and the kraken screeched below the ship with a magnitude that made the ship vibrate and the ocean around us dance. We’d pissed it off. It retracted every arm it could in the same manner that a brawler wound up for a haymaker.

“Everyone inside!” I shouted, already behind several orcs shouting the same message to each other. They abandoned the main deck and dashed below, battening down the hatches. I watched with my Domain and shouted “brace!” as the 130 foot long arms smashed down on the ship.

The deck thundered like we were a skipped rock being thrown across the surf. The beast didn’t settle with a single strike, either. It continued to pound on the deck of the ship like a toddler on a drum, straining to crack us open the way it knew wooden ships should.

This was why kraken-fighting equipment was normally necessary. Few ships could take this kind of punishment. For 15 minutes it raged, burning through a significant chunk of stamina – though it had a very deep well to draw from. Finally it relaxed, letting its arms drape over the Final Internment like it leaning on the ship for support.

I glanced at my ship interface.

Ship Durability

34,250/82,000

Sheesh, some tantrum! Even with this ship’s emphasis on durability and shrugging off wounds, we’d taken a beating. To comfort myself, I checked the function on my ship interface where I could replace durability points with XP. Jones had fixed up the Death’s Consort for me that way, but I never took enough damage to my ships before to warrant it. Now, I set the limit of 15,000 durability points before I’d repair the ship incrementally.

Between my ships’ cursed status and my XP reserve, the Final Internment wasn’t getting cracked open. The question was how expensive it was going to be, and whether I’d make enough XP from killing the kraken to cover my costs.

When the kraken stopped shifting its arms and started to recover its stamina, Gnar nodded to me.

“Again!”

The orcs burst from the hatches simultaneously, unleashing devastating cuts on the same spots. The kraken’s arms swarmed into action again, and the dance resumed.

“32,000 HP!” Gnar called after a heavy hit.

“32,000 HP!” I called back. For a minute, I was just a seaman hunting monsters again.

A pair of orcs jumped down a hatch, landing on each other and not getting the hatch closed in time. A tentacle dove in after them, seeking entry into the space that we’d denied it so far. It began questing along the wood, searching for anyone to grab but only got 10 feet of its length inside the hatch when we triggered the defensive trap installed on the overhead by the hatch. Light flashed as a burst of radiance fried the arm. The tentacle was quickly jerked back, but everything above the burnt section was now limp.

I scurried over to replace the spent trap with another. With the trap’s composition and my limited skill levels, we couldn’t stage multiple around a hatch for redundancies – one going off would destroy the others. So, the hatch was closed up until I made the fix and created a trigger easily – but manually – activated. Orcs were jumping through these hatches more than the kraken, it wouldn’t do to fry them.

At the three hour mark, we lost two orcs.

It happened suddenly – the pair was focused on the arm in front of them and lost awareness of the others. The arm another team was engaging suddenly diverted and my two fighters were suddenly gone.

We almost lost a third who activated rage upon losing his friends. Rage made a person strong, but it cost you a lot of awareness. This game was all about not missing a dodge, because you couldn’t afford to be grabbed. Thankfully, Gnar was at hand and used some war leader trick to knock his man out of rage before punting him below deck to cool off.

“26,000 – Don’t lose your focus!” Gnar roared out the numbers to me in human, but his reprimand came out in orcish.

The kraken tried different tricks after the loss of another arm. It tried smashing its massive body into the keel from below, taking a bite out with its maw, rolling the ship over. Most things we weathered inside the ship, letting it wear out its stamina reserves. The time it tried to roll the ship, I fought it directly with my profession. I controlled the magical aspects of my ship control, and unwanted pitch was involved in that. It gave up before the ship was overturned – which would have been an inconvenience, but not ruinous.

Finally, after 6 hours, we had it worn down to half its HP. More importantly, we had trimmed its arms – it had five left, only two of which were completely whole.

This was where we arranged for a change. I submerged the ship to a depth of over a hundred feet. Travis and the orcs standing by on the Roc’s Eye had been waiting for this, and sailed overhead. They began dumping crates of supplies over the side, aiming them to land on the deck of the Final Internment. It was a gamble: the supplies could miss us, and we had no guarantee the kraken wouldn’t smash them beyond recovery before we could get them. They weren’t doing us any good on the cutter though. It was worth it.

With most of the stuff thrown over in an instant, several orcs jumped the side and anchored themselves to fall quickly with their arms full of the last crates of weapons. They set themselves adrift with well-practiced timing, hitting the deck hard but not bone-shatter hard. We had a handful of fresh troops.

One of the kraken’s hale arms swatted at an orc and the intrepid fellow shoved his crate of supplies at the arm before dodging to the side – improved swimming skills coming into play. The tentacle crushed the crate and its goods.

… Which happened to be some of Jorgagu’s more unstable creations. Every arm – not just the one afflicted – suddenly recoiled. The one that had crushed the crate unfurled; clouds of blood from exsanguinating weapons turning into a thick gray fluid, several feet of the limb suddenly losing color as energies pulled the life straight from the flesh. That one, self-inflicted wound drained more HP than any single orc’s best technique.

As the kraken realized what had happened to it, it boiled with rage. We all scurried down the hatches like rats, well-seasoned at it by this point, but we weren’t the targets. The kraken had determined that the thing that hurt it had come from the ship passing above, and that it was that ship’s turn to pay.

It rolled itself over, the mass of its body leaving the underside of the ship. It strained its pinned arms against the chains holding it back, the wood and metal groaning as durability points dropped. If not for the ‘containment’ effect, there was no way our hold on it would have lasted. As it was, the deeply-embedded barbs and spears cut open flesh as the kraken tried to rip itself free. It didn’t manage to do that but by unrolling itself and striking out with its longest arms, it hit the Roc’s Eye.

Just a few feet short of being able to grab the ship and pull it down, the arm instead smacked the keel, cracking it while lifting the ship and sending it splashing to the port side. A few orcs lost their footing and fell overboard, and my heart clenched as I saw the kraken strain at them only to sigh in relief as it couldn’t. I’d started pulling it deeper – away from the Roc’s Eye – as soon as I saw what was happening.

I saw Travis run. I couldn’t blame him, he’d want distance. Besides, he’d done his part. More supplies had survived the tri than we’d expected, and we hadn’t lost any of our reinforcements. Travis could take the day off, as far as I was concerned.

When it couldn’t catch the cutter, the kraken returned its attention to us. Its anger lasted for nearly twenty minutes this time, and it targeted the hatches that we’d continuously popped out of and retreated to. No way a set of normal hinges could withstand even a single strike like that, but the kraken may as well have been poking the ocean floor. I was obliged to spend XP to keep a buffer of durability points, but at long last the kraken was running on the dregs of its stamina. I doubted the thing had ever exerted itself this much in its life.

It still had its body floating above us, so instead of resuming our hack and slash approach, Gnar ordered the orc with the best archery skills to take his best shot with a special arrow Jorgagu had made.

Festering arrow: this arrow has had its deathly energy forcibly converted into miasmic energy. Inflicts 10 damage (escalating).

Escalating damage meant that it inflicted a damage over time effect, but that it could spread and grow. The more it spread, the more times it would inflict ’10 damage’ each cycle. The initial damage might not be much, but it could ramp up into something truly spectacular.

That wasn’t to say it continually inflicted increasing damage, there was an endpoint. I had been extremely excited about it when Jorgagu showed me, thinking it meant I could hit anyone and they would be dead in time. That wasn’t quite the case, as the ‘infection’ of the arrow needed to spread. If it was suppressed, the effect died. There were also certain abilities or healing powers that could cleanse it.

Hopefully, a kraken didn’t have any of those abilities and this would take its pound of flesh.

The archer was as good as Gnar expected – not that the kraken was a small target. The arrow lodged itself in the flesh next to the kraken’s maw. The beast didn’t even flinch, just sent its tentacles after the orc as he ducked back in the hatch.

We thought it was a dud and began picking through the next one to try when the kraken shuddered. We all exchanged savage grins.

I narrated for the others what was happening as I saw it through my Domain. The flesh by the kraken’s maw developed sores and pustules. They seemed to pulse, and suddenly the area grew. They pulsed again, and the sores weren’t just weeping wounds, they were visibly rotten flesh.

It shivered as the arrow found a firm hold in its flesh, causing half its mouth and a large portion of its body to rot away before the escalating damage seemed to terminate. Then it just floated there.

And floated there.

“Yes, Gnar, it’s still not moving.”

“Aargh, we can’t let it recuperate. Time to open up the hatch again.”

“Hold up,” I said. “Something’s not quite right.”

Gnar held up a fist to his men. “Battle master?”

I looked at the kraken through my Domain until I realized what it was that was bugging me.

“It just has its arms coiled, but the way it’s turned … it has one of its eyes aimed at the deck. It could be watching.”

“We’ll have to have a care, but we can’t let it be.”

I slowly nodded, and Gnar made sure the archer was ready to shoot and someone else was ready to throw the hatch closed again.

We were too focused on the main body. We’d forgotten that we’d trapped a pair of arms on the deck nearby.

When the hatch opened, the tip of one of the pinned tentacles thrust into the opening. We couldn’t close it. Someone activated the defensive trap, and it fried the tip of the tentacle in time for someone else to shear it off with an axe. It was too late, it wasn’t the only one anymore. Two more thrust through the hatch. One tried pulling up, ripping the hole larger but failing. The others thrashed about, not trying to find a single person to grab but trying to bludgeon everyone.

The orcs threw out offensive and defensive techniques like they had seconds to burn through their entire reserves, pulling back to the second deck we’d cleared for just this eventuality.

The problem? There were churning arms between me and that opening.

I found myself backed into the same corner where I’d woken up from the fever hours earlier and my eyes fell on the wicked blade that had delivered the wyrm fire. I hadn’t analyzed it, but figuring it would be worth hitting the kraken with I grabbed it.

Gnar activated his stone-skin right before being smashed into the bulkhead. His axe cleaved the offending arm, resulting in him getting the kraken’s attention. The arm stopped smashing for long enough to lunge around Gnar, wrapping around his middle. It would either squeeze the life out of him or drag him through the cramped hatch and stuff what was left of him in its mouth.

I bolted forward, skidded under a wreathing appendage, and implanted the full length of the wicked blade in the arm holding Gnar.

The arm spasmed and let go of Gnar before freezing again, like it wasn’t sure what exactly had happened but knew it didn’t like it. Like how a man looks at a deep cut he just received and knows that blood is about to spurt from the clean edges of flesh.

Then all the arms withdrew, and the kraken curled its arms under itself.

“Close that hatch!” Gnar bellowed before turning to me. “What did you do?”

“I hit it with the knife the vampires got me with. Did you analyze it?”

“It must be residual wyrm fire!” Gnar said in glee. “The underside of the barbs were coated with it. I bet this sea creature doesn’t know what to do with fire in its blood!”

That seemed to be true. The kraken tried to flee, but it was still stuck fast. It instead cowered under the hull

“It’s not attacking, it’s just hiding.”

“It still has four arms, right?” Gnar asked.

“No, just the three mostly functional arms. The festering seems to have removed its control over one, it’s floating limp. It hit us here with all it had.”

“Two of those are the ones we have holding it down?” Gnar clarified.

“Yes.”

“Then after we heal from any crippling injuries it’s time to go out! We circle wide, attack it from the far side. It can only attack us with the one arm, we can cut it to size and have the thing at our mercy in an hour!”

I saw approving nods, largely from the fresh orcs who wanted a piece of the pie, and agreed with Gnar. We decided it wouldn’t serve any purpose to have me stay behind, but I was reminded that I was a priority support caster.

I healed the broken bones among the orcs and Drese healed the more complicated internal injuries. The madu needed a break, and I promised him a full day of sleep and at least a week of no healing after this.

We darted out of different spots and swam away from the ship with our best speed, but the kraken didn’t react. Analyze showed that it had about 14,000 HP left, and it seemed miserable. It wasn’t actively losing any more, so the wyrm fire wasn’t running rampant through its system like I’d hoped, but it wasn’t happy.

We circled around and sent ranged attacks on the kraken. It lashed out as we’d expect a wounded beast to do, and I had to use Remote Operations to keep it from dragging the whole hulk towards us. Whenever I had an opening I hit the arm with a cone of frost to slow it down for the orcs to unleash their abilities on. We cut the arm down bit by bit. Soon we were trimming the remains of the other stubby arms, and had access to its body.

It unleashed a screech that stunned nearly everyone and caused sonic damage to boot. It thrashed like it was trying to hit us with its body while we were immobile and pulp us with its sheer mass. Because of our methodical removal of its limbs and pinning it down, it was unable to claim any casualties with its desperate attack.

The last 10,000 HP was the longest execution I ever had the misfortune of watching, as orcs thrust critical hits into the kraken that could only thrash and occasionally screech. With only some hard work and few repairable injuries, the orcs were soon arguing over who had the right to the finishing blow.

I ended the argument by giving the honor to Gnar. He’d more than earned it. With a finishing blow, we all received the XP reward for our contribution to slaying the sea monster, and my crew all got the second bonus of having completed the quest I’d generated with my leadership skill for doing the same thing.

I could only glance over my own tally and chuckle ruefully as I led the way back to the ship. I’d about broken even.