Jonas watched as the large pirate ships slowly made their way towards them. Whether they didn’t know of the situation or looked to blast them with cannons when they got close enough, he did not know. But, he did recognize that they should probably be blasted off the face of the earth...err...water.

“Hue?”

“Yes, master?”

“Stop giggling. It's creepy.”

The husky man had been interchanging between giggling and cackling like a madman even since Jonas asked him for advice. The weird man frightened him to the core, something about a joker and a bat, but he couldn’t get a better picture for the life of him.

Jonas rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Are you sure we should send only seven ships to face off with the fifteen coming towards us? Isn’t that playing it to close for comfort? We only have a limited number of ships, losing any would be quite detrimental, I think.”

“Don’t worry, young master. This one has designed these ships himself. They are made to take those terrible odds and turn them into favorable outcomes every time. And we have the advantage of surprise with us. Nothing should go wrong,” Huemara said, waving his hands around theatrically.

“I know you’ve said this a few times already, but how can you be so sure they don’t know about what happened already?”

“Ms.Medulis has been scyring the surroundings for a while now. Every lone bird has been shot down, every messenger sent, whether by sea or land has been eliminated. She is quite the skilled mage, this one believes. Only that idiot can match her versatility,” Huemara nodded his head to the sleeping figure near them.

The man was sleeping upright, leaning on the main flagpole. How someone sleeps that much even in a situation as difficult as theirs, Jonas would never know. But, everyone seems to have a sort of grudging respect for the guy, so he would make sure he didn’t underestimate him.

And somehow, the mage was always sleeping around him. Whether that was in the strategy meeting or right in front of his door. Yep, Jonas found him sleeping right next to the door, snoring like nothing was wrong with the world. He wondered if the ‘idiot from Petrous’ saw him, he’d expect them to make a fuss out of it.

“If he is so strong, why can’t he just take them out? Or is it all just an act,” Jonas wanted to see if the snoring beauty queen was actually in fact snoozing.

The man coughed, then turned around like he was laying on a bed leaving Jonas flabbergasted. The mages audacity irked Jonas to no end.

Huemara laughed. “Young master, we are about to engage.”

Jonas turned around and watched as his ships slowed down before getting into two tight formations. One with four ships, and the other with the three remaining ones. They prepared two charges one after the other.

The pirates sent low flares trying to identify who was in front of them to no avail. They even sent a ship forward to get into close enough to holler at each his men. They never got a single reply.

Without warning, his ships began to accelerate. A metallic sheen seemed to cover its front, something that wasn’t there before the charge. By the time they made it to the first ship-which was still trying to contact them-they were going much faster than any normal ships of that size should normally be going without extremely strong winds.

Only when they absolutely obliterated the single pirate ship, did the others think that an enemy was in front of them. By then, it was too late. Having gained enough momentum and taking the lack of preparation of the pirates, his seven tore through the fifteen before them. Taking wide turns to charge again and again.

The pirates tried to fire their cannons, but they made sure to stop them beforehand. They wanted to get this done without the pirates on the harbor finding out or even suspecting anything. A quick battle without any use of cannons.

Everything happened quicker than Jonas expected. He thought this would be a drawn out clash with his men-outnumbered as they are-boarding the enemy vessels. He didn’t expect them to act like a cavalry charge instead of the norm.

He looked back at the beaming Huemara his face filled with questions. But all he got was the man slapping his stomach like he had a satisfying lunch. By the time he turned back to the skirmish, it was already over. Grabbing a few men, including a few who wore more gems than the others, the archers and crossbowmen picked off the remaining pirates that hadn’t died during the charges.

Why those men painted themselves as super shiny targets, Jonas wouldn’t ever know. It just made it too easy to capture or kill them off in battle. As for the rest of the pirates, well they were all killed.

Some even tried diving deeper into the water, but for some reason, no matter how long they waited those men never rose back up. That was until body parts began to rise up to the surface where the ruins of the pirate ships remained. They must have met a disaster worse than what they would have gotten if they stayed above water.

Jonas made a note to never go swimming anywhere around this area. Whatever called these waters home was extremely vicious, killing a large number of men within a matter of minutes. If it wasn’t for the ruins of the ships, almost all the pirates would have been sent to a watery death.

But, as he thought of that, he remembered something quite important to him.

“Hue?” he asked.

“Yes,” the man still sounded giddy.

“Shouldn’t we have taken the ships for future use instead of turning them into useless scrap?”

He never got a response.

By the time he turned around, Huemara wasn’t there anymore.

“Someone let the men know to salvage anything of worth from the ships before they sink to far into the water! What are pirates without treasure?!” Jonas fumed as the men around him scrambled to get his order done.