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"Hook," Eric shouted, and a grappling hook shot from his palm towards the enormous ship in the sky. It laced around the edge, hooking on something that tightened the chain in his hand. Eric grabbed Lucia and Draco with his other arm, then commanded Lilly, "Watch after Elas." Returning his attention to the ship, Eric shouted, "Retract!" and the chain started coming back into his palm to pull him higher up into the ship. He swung gayly through the air with Lucia and Draco in his arm, approaching the ship at breakneck speed. Once they were pulled up to the side, Eric tossed Lucia and Draco over the side, then pulled himself up.

The deck was classic style, with cannons placed at strategic positions around the side and a raised aft and bow section. There was a door leading deeper into the ship and a square in the center that could be removed for transporting cannons and large groups of barrels around the ship. The space above was a confusing mess of tangled ropes and pulleys tied between the three masts. There was a large wheel at the rear of the ship on the raised aft to steer the ship, and someone was casually turning it side to side.

"Aye, what be ye doin' on my ship?" he spoke like a true pirate. The guy was a decaying body with a ragged trigon hat and ripped up captain's jacket that went down to his leather boots.

"We're here to stop this ship," Eric declared, summoning the spiked chains and hammer. "Are you the wave boss?"

"Argh," shouted the captain, "I don't know what you're on about, but I be the captain of this here vessel!" The captain pulled out a long sword that was absurdly curved at the end in a similar fashion to a machete.

"Iron Maiden," Eric shouted, and spiked chains shout out of his fingers with the blast of a shotgun. They wrapped around the decaying captain, then the spikes grew to pierce in all directions like a sea urchin. The captain went down, and Eric recieved a little message with a decent experience and money bonus. "Well that was easy," Eric remarked, then an enormous roar shook the entire ship. The wooden floorboards lifted up as though they were alive, and they began connecting one at a time.

Eric found himself faced with a series of wooden boards and ropes that were moving on their own. Draco and Lucia were behind him, swords raised as the ship came to life. There was a roar once again, shaking the ship before the ropes and planks started attacking the group. Eric swung his hammer and chains wildly back and forth to deflect and destroy any oncoming appendages. Lucia was behind him hacking and slashing to cut the floorboards into woodchips with accuracy and speed. Draco was spewing a firey jet of flame across the area in front of him, setting fire to the deck in front of him.

"Damnit," Eric shouted, "it wasn't the captain! The ship is the wave boss!" Eric heard the cannons firing with enormous socks to the deck itself, and Eric thought about the people below. His blood began to boil, his heart started beating with the force of a carpet bombing, and his mind raced with what to do. 'I guess I could try that,' Eric thought, and then something changed in his movements.

"Chains of Wrath," Eric shouted out, and a bright light appeared in his hands. What appeared was a massive group of chains large enough for a single link to be grasped around the metal. It had spikes, was on fire, secreted a mysterious green liquid that dissolved the floorboards, it was large, heavy, had a spiked wrecking ball on the end, and looked deadlier than a man armed to the teeth. Eric swung the chains at the center mast and obliterated the entire middle of the deck. He laughed angrily, and then began to rampage mindlessly around the deck, destroying everything unlucky enough to get in his way.

The chain whipped past Draco, pulverizing the front mast and making it fall over onto Lucia. She dodged quickly, cutting up the floorboards in her way before shouting back, "Watch your chains!" She didn't get a response, instead she saw Eric pound away at the floorboards and falling inside of the ship. He disappeared with a glorious smile on his face, revelling in the destruction he was causing as he dug deeper into the bowels of the ship. There was laughter that sounded exactly like the Tazmanian devil's.

"Is it just me," Draco said while deflecting some ropes, "or was that not Eric?"

"He said 'Chains of Wrath', maybe he's gone kill-crazy," Lucia brainstormed while slicing through the violent floorboards. There was another roar before the ship lurched to the side, tipping Draco and Lucia as the flames of Draco's dragon breath set the deck ablaze. The ship slowly descended, giving the two demi-humans a feeling of weightlessness as they fell with the ship. It rolled a little and they could see that the ground was slowly approaching, with the city directly underneath them.

"This is going to be bad," said Draco, grabbing one of the ropes attached to the mast before the impact began. The massive flying ship, now filled with more holes than a fifty pound block of swiss cheese, rammed into the ground at full force, kicking up a wave of dirt and debris as it fell onto the city. Entire houses were wiped out under the moving weight of the ship as it luckily slid across the cround leaving a crater large enough to turn into a pond. Eric and Lucia were holding on for dear life as the ship crashed, and when it ended they were still bracing themselves.

The sound of silence was back, giving Lucia and Draco enough of a warning that everything was over. They looked around the deck of the ship, an eerie sensation as the light of the moon was the only illumination. Lucia and Draco looked at each other, then they began to laugh with the jovial feeling of having survived. The sky seemed fresh and new, the fissure now closed since the wave boss was defeated. The post-'life threatening situation'-high was stronger than most aphrodisiacs, though it was always better not to enter life threatening situations. Draco and Lucia went over to the side closest to the ground and stepped off the side.

The devestation was like nothing they had ever seen, entire houses gone while others were standing on their last legs. Draco and Lucia walked around the front to see something that terrified them more than the previous fight. The bow of the ship had an enormous monster face, with three eyes on each side and a distended jaw holding row after row of jagged teeth. It was monstorous, and made all the more poinoient when the other adventurers ran to the scene where Lucia and Draco stood.

"Holy hell," shouted somebody, "you two were on that thing!" There were lots of similar phrases as people congratulated them on surviving the monster. After a few minutes, Emily came forward and slapped them each on the back, thanking them before looking around.

"Where's Eric?" Emily asked, and as if in response to her question, the monster ship slowly began to fade into black smoke as all demons do once defeated. There was a rousing cheer from the adventurers in the moonlight as the monster slowly dissipated. Once it was gone and the black smoke was clear, a figure stood in the crater with a white message in front of him. He walked slowly out of the crater, his massive size leaping easily to the lip of the crater as he navigated the notices that popped up in front of him.

"Looks like I got a special item," Eric said nonchalantly, working through his menus. "Seems like a jacket of some kind."

"Eric," said Emily apprehensively, "were you..., inside of that monster?"

"Probably," said Eric plainly, still navigating through his inventory. He pressed on something, then a bright flash sorrounded his entire body. It was a totally black trench coat large enough to fit Eric comfortably, hiding his face just enough to make him seem more mysterious. "Oh, there's a hat, too!" A brief flash later and Eric was wearing a trigon hat just like the captain had been wearing. It was a black get-up that could easily scare most people, but there was something else. "Wearing this gives me a bonus to survival. Apparently I won't suffer from scurvy. What's scurvy?"

"It's a vitamin C deficiency," said Emily, "but wait, you just said that you were inside of that monster! You don't see anything wrong with that?"

"I got out," said Eric, "it's not like it ate me."

"Why do you do such dangerous things," Emily shouted angrily. "Do you have a death wish or something?!"

"You could say that," said Eric, turning to Lucia and Draco. "Sorry about almost hitting you guys, but the downside to using 'Chains of Wrath' is that it's hard to control myself. I just get so angry."

"Just don't use it when anybody's around," Draco chastised.

"Yeah, it's too strong to use when people are around," agreed Lucia, her hips cocked to the side.

"We should probably tell people that the wave is over," said Eric, scratching the back of his head underneath his hat. "Then we've got to get to rebuilding, but there's no forest really nearby. Wood's gonna be hard to come by, especially if there isn't a loggin mill."

"What are you talking about?" Emily asked as though Eric was crazy.

"I destroyed these people's houses," Eric said, "so I need to help them rebuild."

"That's not your problem," Emily said. "You saved their lives, that should be more than enough."

"Emily, they didn't ask for this fight any more than we did," said Eric wisely. "They will not see it from our point-of-view that we saved their lives. They will hold us responsible unless we do something about it."

"I'll help too," said Tyler, appearing from the crowd. "I've left people behind before with the bill, it's about time I take responsibility."

"I'll join in," said John, "just to help these people out a little."

"I could probably use my scythe to cut through a few trees for the lumber," said Todd, joining the others in a coalition to aide the downtrodden.

"My group could probably give us some needed manpower," Benny offered his party of fifty members.

"Let's start tomorrow," Tyler added, "everyone probably needs some sleep.

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