Smooth sailing... for a little while

Despite all your caution, no groups of angry sailors come knocking on your door overnight. When morning comes, you and the girls move up to the main deck together. No one stops you, or looks at you with murderous intent, or anything like that. Almost like you didn’t commandeer their ship yesterday.

Maybe nobody told them. The thought crosses your mind, but you don’t let it stick. Start thinking like that, and the wolves will close in before you know it.

It really does seem like nobody is treating you any differently, though. Your party arrives on the main deck without incident, your only interactions with members of the crew being the kind of general pleasantries one might say in passing. Everywhere you look, sailors are doing their jobs, and paying you no more attention than they usually would. The spot where you would normally perform your daily exercises is vacant, but it’ll have to stay that way this time. Gone are the days of early morning work-outs: now, you’ve got a ship to run. Witterel welcomes you, albeit with an understandably cold reception, when you arrive at the door to his quarters. His attitude actually eases your nerves a bit: at least someone is treating you with the contempt that mutineers deserve.

The rest of the morning and afternoon consists of you and Lia looking through all of Witterel’s charts and documents, while Blythe follows the newly-minted Puppet Captain Witterel around the ship making sure he’s issuing all the ‘right’ orders. Bizarrely, he never tries any funny business and everything goes according to plan.

…

Until the evening.

You’re sitting down, watching Lia scarf down the gourmet meal meant to have been served to Captain Witterel, when an eruption of screams from outside draws your attention away. Lia moves before you can, crossing the distance from the dining table to the double doors in an instant. She then places one of her cat-like ears against the door, listens to the muffled yelling for a moment, and goes pale from whatever she heard.

“What is it?” You stand up, ready to retrieve your {if@ sword = true}sword{elseif mace = true}mace{elseif spear = true}spear{endif} from the desk in the center of the room if necessary. Lia turns her head in your direction, raises her eyebrows, and delivers a report that you were definitely not expecting to receive.

“The ship’s under attack. By fish people, apparently.”

Mermaids.

Fucking mermaids are attacking. You expected conflict today, but you expected it to come from the crew, not another nautical fantasy trope. At this point, you think as you take up your enchanted {if@ sword = true}sword{elseif mace = true}mace{elseif spear = true}spear{endif}, I guess it’s my own fault for being surprised.

On Lia’s signal, the two of you burst out onto the main deck. The scene is all too familiar, with panicked sailors running and screaming while the few brave ones actually try and fight the invaders. The fish people catch your eye next, and they are far from the ideal, sexy mermaids that some small part of you was hoping to see. These creatures have human torsos, but the rest is an unholy mash up of angler fish and giant crab. Like most mind-bending horrors, it’s as hard to look at them as it is to look away. There are about a dozen merfolk that you can see, all taking up sentry positions around the perimeter of the deck. Around each of these sentries lay the bodies of two or three sailors, bisected cleanly by the creatures’ giant claws. Any sailors brave, or foolish, enough to attack the merfolk meet the same fate: an instant, fatal strike, far beyond anything your basic healing spell could fix.

“This doesn’t look good,” you say. Glancing sideways at Lia, her wide-eyed expression tells you she’s thinking the same thing. Those things are fast enough that even Lia would struggle to dodge their attacks. You could lob fireballs at them, but it might not be effective, plus there are a ton of screaming sailors in the way. How are we going to get through this?

As you wrack your brain for a plan, Blythe appears at your side with Captain Witterel close behind. “By the goddess,” says Witterel, dismayed by the sight before him.

Placing a hand on the elf’s shoulder to grab his attention, you bark an order: “Get your crew back in line and retreat below deck. Hurry, before any more of them get killed!” Your words drain all of the horror out of Witterel’s face, replacing it with level-headed determination. He may not like taking orders from you, but getting his crew to safety is one priority you can both agree on. Without so much as a nod, the elven ship captain breaks away from your party and starts shouting orders to the panicking crew members. Sailors start sprawling down the stairs to the lower decks, clearing the way between you and the abominations now stationed at six foot intervals all the way around the perimeter of the ship.

What the hell are they just standing there for?

As if to answer that question, another, different looking fish person climbs over the starboard railing. This one, unlike all the rest, has human arms and legs to match its torso. The angler fish head is just as grotesque on the newcomer as it is on the crab men, though. The more humanoid merperson steps beyond the perimeter of the ship, closing about half the distance between itself and your party before halting in its tracks. It’s hard to say why it stopped, be it wariness of your brandished weapons or simply that it doesn’t need to get any closer.

“Shit!” Lia cries out from behind you. While you were distracted by the newcomer, another one just like it must have snuck up behind Lia, knocked her knife out of her hand, and grabbed her. The fish person now has your catkin companion held firmly in its beefy, human-like arms and is pulling her back towards the railing. Lia kicks, scratches, and screams, but she can’t break the creature’s hold. You leap into action, scooping up Lia’s knife and jamming it into the fish man’s side. The blow is effective enough for Lia to break free, at which point the other humanoid fish person joins in the fight. They seem hyper-focused on capturing Lia for some reason, so she embraces her role as the decoy and lets you and Blythe make quick work of the merfolk.

Blythe is pulling her sword out of the second dispatched enemy when another scream is heard, this time from across the ship. The eyes of your party turn to the stairs leading down to the lower decks, where another humanoid fish man is dragging someone towards the starboard railing. This time, the hostage being captured isn’t one of your party members, nor is it an officer or a member of the crew.

It’s Alicia.

Your noblewoman cum sex **** is dragged, butt naked, within the range of the crab man sentries before you can do anything to stop it. Then, another humanoid fish person climbs over the railing and places what looks like a jellyfish over the caramel-skinned woman’s screaming face. The jelly squirms its way over her entire head, muffling her screams until she goes quiet. You shoot fireballs at the surrounding merfolk: the two humanoid ones leap back into the sea, but your fire is unable to damage the crab men. With the deadly sentries unaffected, there’s nothing you can do but watch as Alicia stands frozen under the restricting influence of the jellyfish.

Time feels like it stops ticking for a second. Nothing moves, nothing makes a sound — nothing but the beating of your heart, heavy in your chest.

Then, the jellyfish melts, turning into a liquid that spreads over Alicia’s whole body. It fuses with her skin, and that smooth caramel takes on a cerulean hue. Water climbs over the side of the ship in tiny trails, collecting around Alicia’s feet as if gravity were pulling it towards her. It encases her like a second layer of skin, and then lifts her a few inches off the deck. For the first time since her screams were blotted out, you see a glow in her eyes as Alicia floats in the air, held up by the steady current of her watery second skin. You also notice a change in the crab men, who all seem to be prostrating themselves before the woman who is supposedly their hostage. It’s all very strange, until a jet of water lashes out from Alicia and stabs straight through your shoulder.

The sudden pain provides a sort of clarity, oddly enough. Floating before you is a blue woman encased in water. She might still be Alicia, or she might not. Either way, she very clearly has a powerful affinity with the single element which this trial is designed around. That, to you, suggests only one thing.

She’s the Elemental.