Water poured into the hold.

Tress stared at the crashing waves in shock, her mind trying to wrap itself around what had just happened. The explosion had been sudden, coming just after her brother had shouted a warning. The shockwaves of it had knocked her off her feet, and she’d found herself on the floor in a rain of splintered wood.

And then had come the water.

On minute, the hold was as dry as a ship’s hold could be. The next, water was everywhere, covering the deck and flooding the ship. Tress climbed uneasily to her feet, head swimming and body dripping with ocean water. She saw Hil’sari, the mask of shadows now gone from her face, grinning at her. Without a word, the elf dove into the torrent of water and vanished.

“Tress!”

She turned around and saw her brother reaching for her. Tress reached out for him just as the ship lurched and a wave of seawater slammed into her back.

Everything went black. Something impacted Tress directly in the face (the deck?) and she dimly realized that she was flipping over. A hand grabbed her by the shin, pulled, and she was suddenly out of the water, coughing and sputtering and blinking the salt from her eyes. Seahawk shoved her toward Truss and raised her hands to the oncoming flood.

The water slowed its advance. Seahawk pushed, and the waves backed away from her, back out of the hold and back into the sea. But it wasn’t enough. One woman, no matter how powerful she might be with Water Magic, could not hold back the full force of the ocean.

The flood pushed back. It pushed forward. Puddles at Tress’ feet were growing, rising, becoming deeper. Seahawk was shaking, and it was impossible for Tress to tell how much of the water on the woman’s body came from sweat and how much came from ocean spray.

Truss helped his sister to her feet.

“We need to go,” Tress told him.

“But Seahawk—”

“She’s Water Domain,” Tress told him. “She’ll be fine. But we won’t be! We need to get out of here!”

The wood all around them groaned. The ship lurched violently once more, and the siblings had to grab ahold of each other to keep from falling over.

“Seahawk!” Truss shouted. The waves crashed over their companion, and she vanished in the flood.

“We have to—!” Tress tried to shout, but the water reached them before she could finish. Again, she found herself tumbling through the sea as it filled the hold. She clung to her brother, gripped him as tightly as she could.

I won’t let go. I won’t let go. If we die, we die together. If we survive, we survive together. I won’t let go.

A murky shape shot through the water in front of her, and for a terrible moment Tress was seized with the mad certainty that Hil’sari had come swimming back to finish them off. But then the water around them changed. It calmed for a moment, before pushing the siblings back out into the air.

Tress coughed up the seawater she’d swallowed, and she saw Seahawk emerging from the flood, hands held out once more, using her magic to push the water away. The woman was clearly straining herself, her jaw set in effort. And it wasn’t enough. The water just kept coming. The best that she could do was to slow it down.

This was it. This was the end. The Menelen was going to sink, and Tress and Truss and Seahawk would all drown within it.

But just as Tress have up hope, something strange happened. The water started to recede. At first, she thought that surely her eyes must be playing tricks on her, but no: the flood was being pushed back, returning to the ocean.

Before she could puzzle out how Seahawk was doing this, Tress saw the answer. Sailors were running down the stairs, into the hold, and a number of them were throwing their hands out toward the water, pushing it back with their Water Magic. Behind them, walking down the stairs, was Captain Klempt.

“That’s it!” Klempt shouted as he strode through the throng of sailors. “Push it back! Get that water back into the sea where it belongs!”

He passed Seahawk and paused, taking a moment to pat her shoulder. “Thank you,” he told her. “My men will take it from here.”

The big woman nodded, then slumped to her knees, breathing heavily. Captain Klempt followed the retreating water, and he raised his hands up as he did so.

The ship groaned all around them, but this time there was a distinctly different tenor to the sound. The wood around the breach was shifting beneath the water, growing and warping itself. Captain Klempt held his hands out to it, focusing, extending the Flora Magic through the dead trees, expanding the wood and shrinking the hole to patch it.

“Flora and Life,” Truss breathed beside his sister. “He’s using two domains at once, breathing life into the wood so he can grow it out.”

“That’s… wow.” All Tress could do was watch as Captain Klempt closed the breach that Hil’sari had blown into the ship’s hull, his men using their Water Magic to keep the sea at bay. Soon enough, the ship was whole once more.

“The assassin?” the captain asked, turning around and regarding the siblings.

“She had an explosive,” Truss explained. “Blew a hole in the ship and… went out to sea.”

“She’ll be dead then,” said the captain.

“Unless she gets lucky,” Tress heard herself mutter, then she shuddered. “I think I could use some dry clothes, and then a very long nap.”

“Aye,” said Captain Klempt. “We’ll see that you get those. Rest up, adventurers. You’ve earned it.”

Tress couldn’t agree more.