There was blood in the water. Nora could see it swirling, mixing, diffusing. The crystalline waves churned it up with each rolling pass, but there were no breakers, allowing her to watch the cloud begin its slow journey to the ocean floor, a hundred and eighty six feet below. She wondered if it would disperse well enough, in short enough order, to catch the attention of a predator. She hoped so. The southern Leviathans were the true beasts, churning flukes driving them through the warmer reaches of the Deepwaters, but that didn't mean their Northern varieties were to be disparaged. Accounts held that what the Northern varieties cked in sheer size, they compensated for with aggression, and some authors went so far as to hold that the coastal North was, owing to its more frequent attacks, even more dangerous than the South.

  Bowing her head for a moment, Nora sent Daygon a brief prayer, pleading for an attack.

  When she raised her head once more, it was to the sound of a sharp crack, an enchanted ballistae bolt impacting the side of the hull beneath her feet. It sunk deep into the wood, humming with rapidly building energy.

  Nora tucked her hair to the side and leaned back, watching the resultant splinters cascade skyward in a rising disc.

  Good work on those pieces, she noted. Splinters rgely uniform, none shorter than six inches. Some blunt, but that's an easy problem to solve, once the artificer is made aware of it. I wonder if their loyalty can be bought?

  "Castan, make a note. Port Napor has a disproportionately skilled artificer."

  Her First Lieutenant rolled his eyes and turned to a cabin boy. "Tammin, make a note for the Admiral. Port Napor has a disproportionately skilled artificer."

  "Aye-aye, First 'Tenant!" The boy cried, saluting unnecessarily as he pulled out one of the bnk books he'd been provided for the purpose.

  "Na' salutin' the officers," Nora absentmindedly instructed, stomach pressed against the gunwale as she tried to reach the hole poked in the ship with an outstretched arm. "No great sin today, but ya don't want to give an enemy foc'sal an idea of who to be skewerin'."

  If the boy showed any sign of surprise that Nora had known he'd saluted while her upper body was busied dangling over the gunwale, he didn't show it. The crew that had joined her off the fgship had warned the Spiteful Prick's crew early on that not much passed her by.

  She leaned back over the side and found, to her disgust, that the spray of splinters from the ballistae bolt had churned the water and disturbed the cloud of sinking blood. It ruined her chance of timing the moment of dispersion to arrival of predators. What was the point of such beautiful water, when fools kept tossing shite in the sea?

  She stiffened back up with a sigh, turning her head to survey the battle line.

  The ships of the Tulian Navy had remained in a fine formation throughout the day, sailing easily along the crescent she'd outlined for their siege of the port. Sixteen ships of varying types were slicing through the waters, tacked to the side as they headed into the wind, the lead ship– on which Nora stood– just preparing to make its turn. As they heaved about, ropes were pulled taut, officers shouted orders, and the sails popped as wind abruptly filled them. Timbers groaned as the Spiteful Prick's freshly altered mizzenmast dragged them through the second half of the turn, the tone of the ship's creaking altered, speed slowing. With a shout from the captain, the mainsail was dropped, its broad sheet taking the wind in full from behind, driving them forward with another lurch.

  The port they held under siege was not the best for such a tactic, but seeing as no ships had sailed out to challenge her, she opted to prefer her ships honing their skills. The city of Port Napor was sheltered by a thin barrier isnd, two thin channels allowing access to the teardrop bay that waited beyond. Before the Sporaton conquest of the coastline, it had been one of the smaller citystates along the continent. Successful, but only middlingly so, plying just enough goods to keep its neighbors satisfied that an invasion was worth less than trade. The young King Sporatos had clearly disagreed, and in the thirty years since its conquering, Port Napor had nguished, its profits siphoned off to the capital of its conquerer.

  Watching her ships dance through the waters before it, Nora couldn't bme the king. It was a lovely city to take.

  Nora delighted. This was their seventh hour of the siege, and though her crews were exhausted, the experience gained by so often shifting their sailing methods was paying great dividends. The Spiteful Prick's sailors, already among the most veteran of her fleet, were growing well accustomed to the peculiar assortment of propulsion methods she'd forced upon them.

  When she'd first id her eyes on the otherworldly USS Constitution, its sails had seemed a bewildering tangle of snarled lines and strange pulleys. It lurked ominously off the Sporaton coast at that very moment, its visage no doubt striking bewildered fear into those in Port Napor with a spygss to spot it. As she'd had time to study the vessel herself, on the other hand, the superiority of it had been slowly unveiled, centuries of development picked and teased apart by endless hours of investigation. Its square sails, at first striking her as an incredible vulnerability for they could sail only perpendicur to the wind, were actually supplemented by the teen sails at its fore and aft, themselves tied to swinging poles to better catch the wind.

  With its square sails furled, the Constitution could tack and jibe against the wind like a dromon, and when the massive sheets of its mainmast were rolled out, it would take from the wind every knot it could, crashing through the waves with a brute force that had Nora's breath growing heavy with untoward excitement. It was as if its designers had seen the ships of her world, the quinqueremes and dromons and junks, with all their advantages and disadvantages, and set themselves to making a ship which had the greatest aspects of them all. Its tightly tied sails were more robust than those of the wooden-sparred junks, a quinquereme's rowers made obsolete by its ornate rigging, while its incredible length let it steal a dromon's teen sails outright, sailing as close to the wind as any vessel could so please.

  When the Constitution's design had been brought before her, the old age of sail had died. Untold centuries of shipbuilding tradition had been suppnted, superseded, and cast aside by the beautiful lines of her hull. If one could make a ship such as her, there was no reason, none at all, to persist in the clumsy foolishness that characterized everything that had come before. Every time Sara had cimed she wished to avoid the revolutionizing of technology across the world, Nora had endeavored to hide her scoff. If the Champion couldn't see the absolute superiority of the Constitution, that was her own fault.

  Nora had already begun the process of altering her ships. In the months before the war had begun, she had curtailed her privateering activities to a measly drizzle, instead spending her time in the shipyard of Tulian. The ships she had captured, many of which she would have considered exempry samples of their type a few short months ago, now seemed short, fat and ugly.

  She'd taken the quinqueremes and ripped off their single masts, moving it forward until the weight was bancing a second added amidst the stern, both carrying sails far rger than any they'd been designed to accommodate. To prevent the lightest breeze from snapping the spires like twigs, she'd gone to no small expense mimicking the ttice of rope that supported the Constitution's masts, distributing the incredible force exerted upon them to the strongest portions of the ship's hull. The junks, too, had their foresails repced with square rigs, while the wooden battens were discarded in favor of a pivoting teen, set in a clever geared mechanism provided by the Champion, allowing their angle to be chosen and locked in with none of the complex ropework usually required. The dromons had required the fewest alterations, already having two teen sails in the fore and aft, meaning she only pced a squaresail on the fore and altered the rear with the aforementioned mechanism.

  The modifications, so unfamiliar to any of the few shipwrights which existed in Tulian, had consumed her efforts for months. She'd given naval engineering lectures on her fgship for days straight, her throat red and raw by the end. Between the work on her prize fleet and the construction of her capital ship, it had been weeks after the war had been decred before her fleet was ready to sail in earnest. This had nearly sent Sara into conniptions, convinced as she was that a maritime assault against Tulian would proceed unopposed while her army huddled down in Fort Midwich, but Nora had been unconcerned.

  The Sporaton Navy hardly deserved the name, after all. It was a collection of conscripted merchant ships and gangpressed crews, the few professional captains of war that existed having no rank greater than their captainancy. Their administrative capacity was utterly devastated as a result. Nora had been certain that they, so cowed by the rumors of her fgship that Sara had helpfully allowed to slip through to their spies, would spend weeks bickering in port. Their politicking would require weeks to resolve, worsened by the necessity of choosing an overall commander for the operation, one whose leadership could be accepted by the others. As a result, she had happily sat with her ships in port, overseeing their final modifications without a care in the world, Sara's acidic anxiety be damned.

  The sight before her was worth infuriating her employer. As the Spiteful Prick sailed back down the line, bouncing over the light chop of a brisk, windy day, Nora passed each of her fleet in turn.

  To the watching eyes of Port Napor, they were alien creatures. Sails arranged like no other, moving at a clip into the wind that should have been impossible for square rigging. Each time they reached the far edge of the bay's waters, encroaching upon the breaking waves that heralded hidden shores and shoals, they would heel about with a speed that seemed to teeter on the edge of capsizing. Always they righted themselves, always they returned to their precise march up and down the mouth of Napor Bay.

  It was not as a naval siege should happen. By every book of strategy, Nora should have anchored her ships at the mouth of the bay, blockading the entrance while her ballistae traded shots with the port's defenses for hours upon end. When the defensive works were silenced, she should have either held her position, choking the life from the port's trade by her mere presence, or if she were confident that her marines could overwhelm the city's troops, sailed to an assault.

  Instead she had her ships endlessly spinning about just beyond the bay, never returning the coastal ballistae's shots, confident that the unprecedented maneuverability of her ships were eating through their stock of enchanted bolts at a prodigious rate. It must have looked like she were mad, having sailed all the way to hostile waters only to stop just on the cusp of achieving anything of note, preferring instead to dazzle the citizens of Port Napor with a grandiose naval parade.

  But of course that was not her purpose, and she suspected any in the port with a modicum of sailing talent recognized it. The clues were there.

  For one, this was slightly less than half her fleet. If any of the nobility had speaking crystals connected to pairs in Port Agrith, they would know that the bulk of her forces were busying themselves with a simir dispy there, even rger in scale. Sailing and turning and sailing again, a dizzying dance.

  One fleet may have a madwoman at its head. Two? Even the most optimistic noble would know it unlikely. They had to know she had a pn, even if they couldn't fathom it.

  Second among the clues were flying proudly from the mainmasts of her ships. Dozens of signal fgs, standardized in the international parnce, all sixteen ships festooned with as many repetitions of the message as could fit on their masts. They had been raised the moment she'd begun her blockade, and they had not once been pulled down since. Every time the crescent line of her ships passed within range of the naked eye, the people within Port Napor were being subjected to the same message.

  "Where are you? Fight. Where are you? Fight. Where are you? Fight. Where are you? Fight. Where are you? Fight. Where are you? Fight."

  On and on and on it went, the rgest of her ships sometimes flying two dozen sets of the signals all on their own. Though a more complex message may have been possible, she was using the simpler, more commonly known fg nguage. She expected thousands of the citizens of Port Napor would be capable of reading it, and with so many witnesses, there would be no stopping the message from spreading. The same fgs were being flown many miles to the south, at Port Agrith.

  Unlike their southern neighbors, however, the citizens of Napor were subjected to a third confounding blow.

  It loomed on the horizon, just in sight, its masts towering high above the seam of sea and sky. Arriving at the head of the fleet, it had dropped anchor and furled its sails, sending its sisters off to approach alone. It, unlike its diminutive escorts, remained a silent monolith, a dot on the horizon.

  The Tulian Navy fgship.

  Her fgship.

  The Waverake.

  Its two hundred foot mainmast was twice the height of the greatest Sporaton ship's length. Its sails, when unfurled, could have draped a city block in deep shadow. Its hull was a hundred and eighty feet in length at the waterline, stretching another hundred feet from the furthest tips of its uppermost deck. That hull was painted a deep bck, save for a shining white stripe running the length of its lower deck, which was itself higher than the gunwale of most every ship. It was a behemoth, one ying in motionless wait, and like the ships it had arrived with, it was festooned with signal fgs.

  Its message, however, was even simpler.

  "Fight."

  "Fight."

  "Fight."

  The symbol of challenge, a red diamond on a pale white, ran across every free surface of the ship. The fgs rippled up and down the masts, tangling with the fgs that drooped from the rigging, others fluttering from where they had been pinned to the hull, still more dangling loosely from the portholes, tips dipping in the waves as the ship rocked. Hundreds of the fgs were present, more than her entire fleet would ever require, more than likely any fleet would ever be capable of flying.

  Nora did not intend to begin her legacy subtly.

  The TNS Waverake sat just at the horizon line from the perspective of the port, a lingering threat that faded in and out of sight as the silhouettes of her fleet slid by. At such a range its size might be hard to judge, and she imagined many in the port would cim it was simply a smaller, closer vessel. She also knew the veteran sailors amongst them would know better.

  "Marking the eighth hour, Admiral," Castan said, impcably nodding to the drooping time candles. He, like all her officers, was dressed in a neat-pressed uniform, having selected it for the way its bck fit complimented his dark fur. She approved of the choice, not for how it looked on him, but for how neatly it suited her own crisp style.

  "Time to sunset?"

  "Six hours or so."

  Nora hummed. She hadn't expected the Sporaton Navy to answer her call in the course of a day, naturally. She heavily suspected they were anchored considerably farther north, out of range of a surprise attack from her own forces. In turn, that meant they would be several day's sailing from Port Napor.

  This excursion was not an attempt to bring them to battle. It was a threat, one intended to force them from their safe harbor and sail south, lest she run rampant up and down their abandoned coastline. As confident as she was that she would overwhelm them when battle was finally met, she wasn't interested in allowing them to do so on their own terms. She was too impatient, too eager for the fight.

  "Pass the word, Castan. Two rotations, then begin the assault. No need to deviate from our pns."

  "Aye-aye, Admiral," Castan said, nodding sharply. He moved away from the gunwale, moving to the stern, retrieving a speaking trumpet as he went.

  The ships of her line were in tight enough formation for orders to be hollered from ship to ship, as was once common practice, before Admiral Sinti's fg methods spread. She did not expect Port Napor to somehow have decoded her signal fgs, but with the ships as close as they were, there was no point in taking the risk.

  Nora waited with her metallic heel clicking repeatedly against the deck. She had been content to practice maneuvers when that had been her fleet's only purpose, but now that the assault was upcoming, her impatience was getting the best of her. She briefly toyed with the idea of changing her order to begin the assault after only one rotation of the formation, but bit the command back. Best to ensure the crews were as prepared as they could ever be.

  As the Spiteful Prick rejoined the circling blockade at the rear of the line, Castan returned to her side, having finished transmitting the order. Together they moved to the port gunwale, standing shoulder to shoulder, ostensibly in conference as they observed Port Napor. Noting their lowered voices, the rest of the crew gave them space, knowing better than to intrude upon an Admiral's private discussion.

  Nora was thankful for their discretion, because this was the only aspect of her command which she did not wish to be known.

  "The city beyond the docks is dense," Castan murmured, "with streets wide enough to fit perhaps ten troops abreast. There is no sign of Guard or Militia at the moment, but there are many warehouses in which they could be sheltering."

  "Are there any docks without a warehouse nearby?" Nora asked, speaking just as quietly.

  "No ma'am. An organized port, I'd say. Each pier has an associated storeroom."

  "Yet more reason to keep our course, aye?"

  "Aye, I'd say so, ma'am."

  Nora nodded, satisfied. Of all the boons she'd finagled from the fae, her eyesight had come with the greatest cost. Though she could see to the ocean horizon with nary a squint, when even the slightest bump of nd parted the distance, she was lost as a babe.

  She stared hard at the port, trying vainly to fight through the eldritch fog which obscured her vision. It was no use. Fifty feet from where nd began, her sight ended.

  It wasn't as if she couldn't see the nd. There was nothing wrong with her eyes. Her ailment sat in her mind, not her body, preventing her from comprehending what she saw. She saw color, structures, and patterns, but there was nothing at all to be garnered from the sight. It was a meaningful jumble, whatever capacity her mind required to process the sight neatly excised.

  Thus, Castan's expnations. Though she'd maintain the appearance otherwise, her First Lieutenant would be in nominal command of the fleet from the moment the nd assault began. She would be blind and deaf, stuck on her ship, trusting the training she'd given to her subordinates.

  Thankfully, she'd ensured herself to have considerably skilled subordinates. The cnking footsteps of a Carrion sergeant heralded Ignite's approach, halting just beyond range of overhearing their conversation.

  "Permission to join you, Admiral?"

  "Permission granted," Nora replied, waving him forward. Ignite thumped up next to her, a hand on the pommel of his shortsword as he, too, stared at Port Napor.

  "A difficult fight," he noted pinly, words devoid of anything which might give away his emotions.

  Nora only nodded in response. Though the city cked the defensive walls of Tulian, if the defenders of Port Napor were worth their payroll, they would keep their troops hidden until Nora's fleet was too close to alter their nding course.

  She did not envy Ignite his task, but the former Carrion sergeant was doubtlessly the only commander she could have chosen for the assault. When his partner's betrayal had been revealed, his sentimentality resulting in perhaps the only spy in Tulian which Sara had not accounted for, his spirit had shattered. Perhaps the only thing which had kept him from taking a bde to his own heart was the debt he felt to the Champion, who had earned his loyalty by preventing him from meeting a simir fate all those months ago. Still, he had refused a command outright, and command of the T.N.S. Waverake's marines in particur. Nora had managed to convince him to compromise, accepting his old role as a marine sergeant on a common ship in the fleet, the Spiteful Prick.

  That she hadn't informed him the Spiteful Prick was captained by her second-in-command, Captain B'Leary, and would serve as her reserve fgship in situations such as these? Perhaps not the most honest practice, but effective. Even in the depths of his depression, Sergeant Ignite's honor would not allow unnecessary casualties to come to his troops by foisting the burden of command to someone less competent.

  "Having observed the city for some time now, have ye any objections to our pns?" Nora asked the oil-skinned marine.

  "Only those I voiced from the beginning," Ignite replied, gncing behind himself, towards the horizon. "To keep the fgship in reserve is a risk."

  "To give the enemy knowledge of her before the fleets meet is a greater one," Nora replied, as she had before. "Beyond such a worry, ye find yourself satisfied?"

  A sigh. "As one can be, when going into battle." Ignite's words, as they had been for weeks, were devoid of passion. Nora was concerned, and wish she had Sara nearby to evaluate him. His Skills were unquestioned, his experience long since earned, but for all a headstrong commander may be a danger, an apathetic one was worse.

  Nothing to be done for it in the moment, though. The sacking of Port Napor had been set into motion.

  Perhaps twenty minutes since she'd sent out the order, her ships came into the second repetition of their wheeling route. As the lead ship, the Spiteful Prick waited until the rearmost ship returned to the line, leaving them for a brief few moments in an unbroken line.

  With the rear ship slotted into pce, Captain B'Leary looked to Nora, a wicked grin rising up his seaworn face. She nodded at him, matching his grin with a smirk of her own.

  A whistle flew to his lips without hesitation, sending a shrill note echoing out over the waves.

  The Spiteful Prick's crew leapt into motion as their captain threw the wheel to the left, abandoning the path they'd sailed since sunrise. The crew, though soaked in sweat after so long spent heaving lines to and fro, took to the work with a single-minded fervor.

  The Spiteful Prick hove sharply into the waves, its aft sail slowly filling with the wind as its prow was dragged through the waves, ending its ponderous journey with a shudder of the ship's rudder. Behind them, all sixteen ships worked their way through a simir turn, each captain ending with their ships pointed directly towards the Port.

  Nora's lips twitched.

  Bells began to ring in the city shortly, their clear tones carrying over the waves to wash over the fleet. What few civilians Nora could see lining the shoreline began a panicked flight, shoving and pushing through their fellows as they rushed away into what shelter could be found amongst the city. Their number, which had soared as word of her fleet's strange maneuvers no doubt spread, were great enough to resemble a riot. Thankfully for them, Nora had begun her turn from several miles out, and they would be well clear before she arrived.

  Turning away from the blurred sight of the port, Nora directed her attention towards the fleet's line. Now in a rough line abreast, the variety of her fleet became a considerable fw. The sleekest and fastest ships were pulling ahead of their sisters, bulging the line outward, while the slower sorts were still hauling up every yard of sail they had, scrabbling for every knot of speed.

  One great irritation with this formation was the way her ships, when they were properly in line, blocked sight of their sisters. She could not see more than three or four at any one time, leaving her blind to how the entire group was handling.

  Scowling, she shifted her walking stick into her left hand, waving for Castan's attention.

  "Take care of this for me, would ye?" Nora asked, reaching down to her left boot. With a practiced jerk and prying of wraps, the prosthetic came loose, thumping sideways onto the deck.

  "Aye... aye, ma'am?" Castan replied, muzzle scrunched up in confusion. "May I ask why you can't take care of your leg yourself?"

  Nora was already moving away. With the wind buffeting the Spiteful Prick directly starboard, the ship was tilting heavily, the gunwale seeming almost eager to brush the tips of waves off Nora's left. Many of the crew had to lean hard into the angle so as to not lose their footing, but not Nora. She walked even with the wooden deck, walking stick tapping lightly as she moved towards the rigging. With a grunt and a firm grip, she took hold of the ropes, pulling herself up.

  As she began her ascent to the crow's nest, she heard Castan muttering profanities. Her lips twitched a bit further.

  The authorities of Port Napor were no fools, she saw. No doubt the King had ensured them that despite the war, there was no need to prepare for an invading force. They'd been caught unawares, hardly expecting a single pirate, much less sixteen ships packed with a hundred marines each. As she made her way up the wildly seesawing ropes, she caught a better and better view of the desperate defenses they had thrown together in the hours since her arrival.

  What ships had been in port when she'd arrived had been shed to either side of each wooden pier, their rigging cut and thrown across the docks to make them as difficult to extract as possible. They hadn't enough ships to protect ever pier from her ships, but their improvisation was impressive. The unches and life boats from the shed ships had been offloaded and dragged over to the piers, pced upside down, so that anyone who sailed a ship to the unoccupied piers would have to stumble over their jumbled mass to disembark. It was not a perfect defense; the harbor was unwalled, and Nora could easily beach her ships along the adjacent shore and unload her troops there, or first board the docked ships, then move to the docks. Clever enough, though, for the time they had.

  As her ships continued to gain speed in their charge, she heard a whistle of wind rush past her. She gnced towards the right just in time to see a ballistae bolt crash into the sea, glowing briefly beneath the waves for several seconds before detonating, throwing a spray of water into the air. She wondered if the bolt had been aimed for her, or was simply poor luck.

  It hardly mattered. She kept climbing.

  The archers in the crow's nest were so focused on scanning the shoreline that her hand suddenly appearing on the railing nearly sent them leaping to their deaths, sailor's curses bellowed to the deck below. She gave them a grunt of acknowledgement she scrambled in, and if they took exception to the presence of an Admiral among their number, she couldn't see it.

  Up at the top of the ship's mast, the roll of the ship was far greater. Each wave sent her lurching twenty feet in either direction, a thrilling motion that required her to keep a hand on the railing, lest she be thrown free.

  Emerging from the fae-touched haze, the port militia moved forward. The bulk were clearly ill-trained, locals who were earmarked for defense of the city, but not all. For each throng of disordered conscripts, there was a core of armored, stern-faced troops. The House Guards, the professional hirelings of the city's nobility, forced now not to defend against the underhanded machinations of rival politicians, but a foreign power.

  The dots of armor herded the wider militia onward, guiding them towards chosen positions now that Nora's course was known. It was not hard to decipher their reasoning.

  Now that they had entered the bay, Nora could gleam a feel that maps couldn't replicate. The gently curving bay was in part carved by boring hands, turning the centermost portion of the port into a cobble-id wall, from which wooden piers jutted some hundred feet. An organized harbor, if smaller than any self-respecting Carrion equivalent, with the bulk of its trade clearly plied at its very heart, where the pin wooden fronts of warehouses just loomed into Nora's sight. There was where the rgest ships had been shed to protect the docks, and so too did the rgest clusters of militia gather, protecting the noble manors Castan cimed were pinly visible some several hundred feet beyond.

  Nora shook her head, feeling a bit of pity. It was a damn inspired defense, a clever leveraging of all the resources whoever-was-in-charge had at their disposal.

  She hoped they wouldn't hang the poor bastard when it failed.

  Still pulling down more sail even as they entered the harbor proper, the ships of Nora's fleet bounced merrily over the waves, their Captains knowing well how to pull knots from every gust. The distance between ship and docks shrunk by the moment, drawing them closer.

  A half mile.

  Nora's ships plowed on. She thought she saw the first murmurings of confusion among some of the House Guards, but it could have just as easily been her imagination.

  A quarter mile.

  Nora's sails were full to bursting, a fortuitous shift swinging the wind around to their stern, shoving them forward until spray was bursting against the iron-capped rams of her fleet. Rams that were pointed straight for the docks that had been so blocked, and the stone wall behind them.

  Two hundred yards.

  It was no longer her imagination; militia and Guard alike began to shirk from the docks, calling out to one another, searching for orders, finding only simir confusion from their fellows. Nora's lips twitched higher.

  At a hundred yards her ships hit their greatest stride. They bounced and tore through the waves, the crash of each impact being met by a growing cry. A wordless holler was repeated, almost apelike in its mindlessness, her crews crying out their challenge. That hadn't been part of her pn, but Nora joined in without a moment's hesitation, throwing her own rendition from the crow's nest.

  The Spiteful Prick was at the gleaming tip of the formation's spear, the first to reach her target, and Nora felt her gut clench, her skin hiss with runes, and her weight leave as she summoned a single wave beneath her prow, sending her ram high, high into the air, water holding her hulking mass there for a single, glittering moment–

  And then she fell, dropping onto the flimsy dock.

  Nora's nails dug trenches in the crow's nest, her head thrown back while eleven ears drank in the sound of a crack nearly as violent as her own ecstatic ughter.

  The dock shattered.

  A storm of shrapnel was thrown as a ram built to cleave holes in warships met mere rows of flimsy pnks, ripping through them with wild abandon. The Spiteful Prick had such a head on her that its arrival in Port Napor's docks produced its own snappy drumroll, dozens of boards chewed into flotsam with every passing second.

  To her right and left she heard simir crashes sounding as her fleet struck home, and it drove her ughter further, raising in pitch. The militia began to lurch into motion as some order or another was finally passed, but it was too little, too te, and tears formed at the corners of her eyes.

  Ye saved yerself from a nding on the docks, she acknowledged of her unseen opponent, but ye didn't think to save the docks themselves, did ye?

  The Spiteful Prick's haphazard path through the dock had her ram tangling constantly with the ropes and rigging that had tied down the adjacent ships, having a merry time dragging and snapping them as they went. Her speed began to ail, even the momentum of hundreds of sailors and a hundred foot of ship not enough to rip its way through the entire length, but that was no problem. Though it surely would've seemed to take hours to any watching the dispy from ashore, it was a matter of moments until the Spiteful Prick ground to a halt, water pping with dull thumps at her hull.

  And at the two hulls to either side of her.

  A second cry went up from her crews, this one loudest from the marines, and she liked to imagine it was met by a simir cry of dismay as the House Guards realized what was happening.

  The utterly unoccupied, completely abandoned vessels were more tempting to her than a barmaid's lifted skirt and demurely fluttered eyeshes, though they had her mouth watering just the same. Under Ignite's command a contingent of glittering troops thumped their way to the ship's prow, brandishing anti-boarding pikes, while the rest of their comrades poured over the sides of the Spiteful Prick, taking up their own positions at the front of the prow. Sailors followed behind them, sharp fingers and sharper axes slicing through the mooring lines.

  Nora's ughter grew as the militia surged desperately forward, trying to reach the vessels that were being boarded before their very eyes. The Sporaton ships had been anchored ready to depart, as was usual for ships at port, and their sterns were too far from the seawall for the troops to reach. All they could do was wail uselessly at Ignite's pike wall, the man himself helping to shove them back with all the ease and uncaring boredom of a parent fending off their toddler's shin-beating tantrum.

  She spun a cackling pirouette in the crow's nest, taking in the progress of her fleet. As she'd already known would be the case, the same story repeated: empty vessels boarded, militia charges repulsed, glorious cheers flying freely from the lips of her navy.

  It was a matter of minutes before her crews, trained to exacting perfection under her hawkish attention, had the Sporaton ships shed to the Spiteful Prick's hull. Boarding axes were exchanged for oars, which sprouted like beautiful spring flowers from either side of the commandeered vessels. Now tied together, the improvised barge began to drag itself away from the docks, oars churning the seabed into a muddy mess. Marines jogged around the ships with cutsses and axes, searching for anything tying them in pce. With every snap of a line or crack of a severed board the Spiteful Prick lurched just a little bit further, disentangling itself from its self-made mire.

  Bows finally began to twang from within the militia, some even sporting oil-soaked rags, but it was far too te. Every fming projectile was answered by the far-greater whipcrack of a Tulian longbow, the Spiteful Prick's rigging coming alive as the hunters she'd poached plied their expert trade.

  With a final jolt the Spiteful Prick and her two prizes broke free, the oars properly biting into the sea. Slowly at first, then with growing speed, they began to retreat from the harbor wall. Perhaps realizing the hopelessness of their situation, the militia's shots began to taper off, none particurly interested in tossing their arrows into the sea.

  As the Spiteful Prick continued to pick up speed, Nora caught the briefest glimpses of even more heavily armored troops hustling down the street, escorting some glowing, robed individual in their center. Clearly the nobility had kept what mages and Irregurs they had in reserve, protecting their own manors– which, to be fair, would normally have been the ultimate target of such a raid.

  Nora just so happened to not be "normal." She had it on good authority.

  They arrived too te. Nora waved politely at a nce of fire which roared out into the open air, magefire sputtering into nothingness a dozen yards from the Spiteful Prick's prow. Another immediately followed it, even rger in diameter, but no greater in range. It was aimed directly for Nora this time, the clever man having recognized her gold epaulets as those of an admiral, and yet it fell just as pathetically short. The sight of the mage responsible staggering under the weight of his own exertion set her off into ughter once more.

  Simir stories repeated themselves along the harbor line, her ships slipping free with their prizes hugged to either side, barely a speck of damage on them. The defensive ballistae were the only things that inflicted wounds, but it had been sparse and widely distributed, her fleet's speed on the charge too great to allow for accurate aim. As she watched one bolt nd among the waters off the Spiteful Prick's port, she saw it was a mundane form, sinking pinly into the sea without detonating.

  She scoffed, gripping the crow's nest railing. She was still in easy sight of the militia, which now included the teeth-gnashing mages and Irregurs, and she wasn't one to part without a show. Knowing she was being watched, she raised her hand in a formal wave, then tipped herself forward over the side.

  First her face smashed into the wood of the crow's nest, tearing a gash along her cheek, then the top of her head smmed into the uppermost rope of the rigging, sending her cartwheeling sideways. She felt an elbow get caught with a loud crack and an ankle pop violently out of its socket, and then she lost track of things as she tumbled down the fifty feet or so to the deck before nding shoulder first, on her left side, body broken.

  Though the agony bzed bright, it wasn't brighter than her desire to get back on her feet. She got her walking stick beneath her with her left hand, fumbling at her waist with her right, finding her canteen. She took a few long gulps of the bitter draught as she stood, making her way forward.

  Castan will call me mad again, she thought. Really, I think the rest of 'em are mad for not realizing how helpful potions are. What's a little pain, when you can be putting on a show?

  Her body was nearly finished reknitting as she reached the ship's prow, stepping up it and walking out onto the iron pting. There were a number of wooden splinters left there, which she dutifully kicked aside, so some poor sailor wouldn't have to clean them off ter. Most didn't have her bance.

  Eventually she stepped up onto the Spiteful Prick's figurehead, a buxom woman holding a sword between her teeth– yet another sign her sailors had no taste– and wrapped her legs around the bronze woman's shoulders, resting her chin atop her head. So resting there, she stared at the mage which had tried to kill her, a self-satisfied smirk serving to enrage the man even further. As the Spiteful Prick began its turn out of port, unshing itself from its prizes so they could be properly taken in tow, she waved fondly at the man, little more than a wiggling of her fingers as she swung around.

  A final bolt of fire roared out of his hands, this time comically too short, and this final effort had the man dropping unconscious. Hardly the smartest move he could've chosen.

  Castan's voice calling out from behind pulled Nora back to herself, casting a look over her shoulder.

  "Captain B'Leary passes the word that the prizes are in near perfect condition, ma'am, and asks for you to confirm the second stage of the pn."

  Nora waved dismissively. "'Course! What, does he think we'll get to sell 'em back or something? Steady course, Castan."

  "Aye-aye, ma'am," Castan replied, utterly unsurprised.

  Nora couldn't bme B'Leary for his hesitance to carry through this next part, but she was damn sure. Yes, she'd appeared as if from nowhere on the Sporaton coastline, blockading two of their ports within minutes of one another despite a distance of nearly fifty miles between the fleets. Yes, she'd waltzed into their harbor without a care in the world, so brazen in her gait that none had known her pn until she was already hauling her prizes in tow. And yes, were she to be categorized as a pirate, it would've been the single greatest single-day acquisition of ships in history.

  But she'd only blockaded the ports of Napor and Agrith for a single day, and that was nothing worth recording in the history books. And that irked her.

  As her fleet left the harbor, it split into two groups. Both forces disconnected their prizes from their hulls, taking them in tow, and made for the thin slots between the mainnd and isnd which sheltered Napor Bay from the worst of the sea's storms. The entrances to the bay were thin and shallow, one of the reasons that the port had never seen greater success even before Sporaton mismanagement, and that would serve her quite well. As they reached the inlets, her two forces slowed, then stopped, dropping anchors.

  No doubt those watching in Port Napor were even more baffled than they had been before, but when they saw her sailors hopping off their prizes, smoke billowing from within the ships they abandoned, things began clearing up.

  Nora recovered her sailors while whistling a jaunty tune from her perch atop the ram, watching the ships begin to founder. Thirty-two of merchant vessels, two for every one of her ships, began glow with fmes.

  And then they began to sink.

  To the tune of an old song she only half-remembered, Nora watched the two entrances fill with the fming hulks of ships. The holes the fmes ate in their holds left them sinking, sinking, and then sunk, hitting the seabed with a muffled rumble that threw up clouds of mud. The spires of their masts just barely poked from the waves, a stockade line of ashy wood. Only when she was satisfied that all her sailors had been recovered and received word that simir efforts in Port Agrith had succeeded did she order her ships to set sail, heading south to rejoin their sisters.

  Nora herself blockading two Sporaton ports for a day may have been interesting, she supposed. A twofold raid may have even warranted a mention in some dusty tome. But stealing their ships, setting them abze before their helpless eyes, and closing the bay for weeks, months, until mages could be brought to clear the mess?

  Oh, she'd have a chapter in the textbooks for this.

  Nora finally slid back down the ram, nding on the deck with a small wobble, her walking stick making up for her missing leg. Castan greeted her, holding out the metal prosthetic, which she took with a wordless grunt of thanks.

  "Think they'll come out to py now?" She asked her First Lieutenant.

  He sniffed, whiskers twitching. "If they do not, they are even greater fools than you already take them for."

  "Perfect," she hummed, tching her prosthetic in pce. The reassuring coolness of metal against her knee had her sighing in relief, stretching as she turned her gaze north.

  "I hope they bring those cultists Sara's so mad for," she thought aloud.

  "I hope they do not," Castan pinly replied. "Ships and mages I know, things you have trained me for. None of your lessons have yet discussed foul magics and ancient rituals."

  "Well, we'll see who the gods favor more," Nora said.

  Castan gnced her way, an eyebrow raised. There was still a little bit of cerulean smoke drifting from her eyes, from when she'd summoned the wave beneath the Spiteful Prick's prow.

  Nora ignored him. There was no evidence that she was favored by the gods, no matter what Sara cimed. Her Skills had cosmetic simirities to those of a Champion, yes, and she had Advanced as rapidly as one these st few months, but there were too many open questions.

  Her css, for once. Six months ago, when the strangeness had begun, it had read "Chosen of the Wayid One." That had smacked to her of a fae lord, or perhaps some demonspawn, the detritus of a deal which had been wiped from her mind. She'd been content to ignore it.

  But when she'd awoken in the dead of night, having fallen asleep for the first time since boarding a ship, and been presented with a css change–

  Chosen of the Chained One

  Well. It was safe to say she was very interested in anyone ciming to know things about the gods that no one else did.