Captain Arrolg’s sword felt not like the Elva or even Greil’s magic when he came up beside Rusk and pointed it in the sea serpent’s direction. Some of the pressure forcing Rusk and Elena toward the portal died down, and Rusk was able to grab hold of Captain Arrolg himself, which served as a better tether for he and Elena than the portion of the ship he’d been holding onto before. Elena did a very good job of increasing her vice grip on Rusk’s arm, but she also somehow shied away from Captain Arrolg simultaneously. It was quite the talent. Rusk wasn’t aware people could bend that way and remain both in one piece and on balance.

“Sea monster,” said Captain Arrolg. Rusk noticed he’d placed himself in the way of Rusk and Elena. A rather heroic move, straight out of the legends and storybooks. “If you killed Iya Tarfell then you and I have business.”

“What do you care who I have or haven’t killed?”

Rusk swallowed the lump in his throat, which went down harder than hard liquor. He called to the Elva, and Elena started twitching. Her chest glowed.

The dead portal broke into Rusk’s awareness, yanking Elena the other way. So Rusk anchored his metaphorical feet and strengthened his magical hold on her. And his physical hold too. He demanded arrows, lots of them, and the Elva Bow, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He imposed his will on the Elva. A command instead of request. The first he’d ever made. Truly. From deep in her chest these things emerged, and Rusk released his grip on Captain Arrolg to grab hold of his Elva weaponry, which came out of the glowing in Elena’s chest while she reeled with an arched back and an open mouth full of shock and surprise. Maybe alarm.

The dead portal screeched in protest, and Elena fell backward unconscious. She hit the deck hard with no one to catch her. Rusk darkly thought it might be better without her in the way, but he did step protectively over her prone form and fire one Elva Arrow into the portal.

He didn’t have time to see that arrow vanish because the sea serpent came hurtling forward at Captain Arrolg, who took a quick step back and jostled Rusk with the momentum accidentally. Quickly, Rusk knocked another Elva Arrow and fired towards the sea serpent’s eye.

It was large enough to be a traditional archery target.

The sea serpent glanced the arrow off its cheek at the very last moment, and its body curled tighter around the ship. Squeezing strong enough for the vessel to creak in protest.

Captain Arrolg cursed like a pirate, raising his glowing green sword. The hilt, now that Rusk was in a position to see, crouching over Elena and at a lower angle than Captain Arrolg himself, was shaped in gold and in the crude, ancient design of a small dragon. Its tongue forked out from the very end of the hilt and Rusk could swear he heard the weapon hiss.

Magic versus magic. One serpent versus another.

Rusk wasn’t sure how much trust he wanted to put in the tiny one though. He hoped with Captain Arrolg’s and his combined efforts they might fend off the sea serpent, but he knew the score. They were severely outclassed. Any moment now the whole sea could decide to do the sea serpent’s bidding and swallow them under the waves. Churning and churning until they ran out of air and sank to the ocean’s depths without Rusk having even reached Sanctuary Island. The only boon seemed to be that the sky wasn’t dark. The sea would get no aid from the air. No storm clouds came to worsen the tides.

“Iya Tarfell was my mentor!” screamed Captain Arrolg as he shifted his stance and slashed at the sea serpent’s incoming angular muzzle.

Seeing an opportunity, Rusk crouched lower and fired another Elva Arrow. This time towards a nostril, which was equally if not more large than the sea serpent’s eye. With any luck the sea serpent would dodge in the direction Rusk wanted it to and either get an eye full of arrow or a snout full of sword.

The sea serpent was old, and did not go the direction Rusk wanted, but that didn’t deter Captain Arrolg. He was old as well, and three steps ahead of both of them. With the swift way he moved even in a tossing and turning ship, Rusk wondered how much experience he had waging wars with the natural elements.

There wasn’t much time to speculate.

Captain Arrolg dashed forward, pierced the sea serpent’s neck, right at the point where the jaw met the jugular, and then returned in a flash to his position in front of Rusk as a green tint started climbing from the point of the blade’s entry into the sea serpent’s neck up the sea serpent’s fine fur. Nothing oozed from the sea serpent, but the discoloration did seem to pain it. It thrashed its head this way and that, making angry hisses that sounded to Rusk’s ears like the current of rivers along beds of pointy rocks.

The dead portal tinted green as well, suddenly visible in Rusk’s peripheral awareness. It was also screeching instead of buzzing, and a half-rotten depiction of Greil composed of flies leaned out of it as if leaning past the threshold of a doorway but only partially.

Elena winced underneath Rusk’s knee. Still unconscious. Probably a blessing, that.

He quickly readjusted, afraid to be crushing her.

The wincing turned to whines.

The sea serpent’s body loosened its coils around the ship. Captain Arrolg took the chance and rushed forward again, but this time he became trapped between the jaws of the great sea serpent, and while Rusk was firing Elva Arrow after Elva Arrow, the mouth of the sea serpent began turning that sickly green as well. Looser and looser the coiling body became, and the crew hadn’t stopped their tinkering all this time, fully ready to drive the ship to safety once the sea serpent released it completely.

They seemed to have complete faith that it would release the vessel, which Rusk wasn’t too sure about. He was trying to figure out if he should make a ditch effort to save Captain Arrolg or pronounce him dead and have that be the end of it. Both options filled Rusk with dread. He held his position as best he could with his stomach in his throat. Heart pounding. Veins burning.

He was gonna die here. He was gonna die, and before he ever became a Hero.

Elena’s breathing became ragged with every Elva Arrow Rusk fired, so when he noticed the correlation he stopped. Of course that left him feeling even more vulnerable, but that was better than killing someone by proxy with a weapon that wasn’t even working. What else could he do? What else? He wracked his brain trying to think of some way out of this mess and came up empty. What could anyone do against a giant angry sea serpent?

Hero or not, this situation was hopeless.

He regretted everything he’d ever done, all at once in a single moment.

And then he got over it.

Because when Elena’s breathing leveled out, she opened her eyes and they were a duller color than before.

“Stay there,” said Rusk, hoping with everything he had their position was safer than he felt it was, that it wouldn’t be compromised. As if the entire rest of the ship wasn’t already compromised. He was lying through his teeth and he knew it, but there was nothing to do but try and keep her calm. Hysterics wouldn’t accomplish anything but make their deaths dishonorable. Or… something to that effect. “Stay down.”

“But the portal.”

“Stay underneath me. I’m working on it.” That wasn’t technically a lie. He was wracking his brain for a solution to both the portal and Greil problem and the problem of the sea serpent. Problem was he was for obvious reasons coming up empty.

Though from the looks of it, Captain Arrolg had made one hell of a dent.

There might be hope yet.

And suddenly, there he was, Captain Arrolg, emerging from the sea serpent’s mouth by way of peeling back its gums with one arm and poking his sword into the inner upper mouth with the other. A sharpshooter provided support from the lookout pole and the ship, Rusk now realized, was firing its cannons at the bulk of the sea serpent. The crew members were all working as one, a violent dance of rope and cannon and gunfire against both serpent and sea.

And they were winning.