Purple Haze

Enormous tentacles erupted from the water in an attempt to encircle their ship. Lance launched himself at one with his hands outstretched, running across the water and pummeling it from all sides before moving on to the next.

Shelle blasted a ray of frost at any that came near, and filled the ship's sails with more wind. The elven archer stepped out of her shadow once more, leaping to grab a hold of the rigging beside the lookout. She launched a barrage of arrows at the enemies distantly in front of them, and each was struck out of the sky by a bolt of lightning before they could get too near.

"Lance, take care of the Kraken, and lure it to those behind us. Boathaen, when we get close to those ahead, mold the wooden ships to our benefit. I'll take care of our lightning troubles and the metallic battleships. John, sit in the crow's nest and take care of the enemy snipers. If you can, try not to kill them. Boathaen will assist you until we draw close. We're going to break through their line," Shelle ordered, glancing at each of them while she relayed their instructions.

Lance led around a mass of the kraken tentacles, each surging toward him from a different angle, razor sharp suckers pulsing. He intercepted the first tentacle and grabbed it, pulling it through a gap in the writhing mass and tangling the massive limbs together. He jumped off the knot and landed on the ship with surprising grace, giving his leader a thumbs up. "Leave it to me. I'll catch up when I'm done.”

Two massive yellow eyes and a razor sharp gray beak emerged attached to an oval body thicker than a skyscraper and nearly as tall. Lance pulled a dazzling metal staff covered in runes from within his body and leapt backwards off the ship, slamming his weapon into an eye.

"We'll take care of it," Boathaen assured her, a vine growing out of the deck of the ship and lifting John back up to the crow’s nest. Now instead of a simple cup shape, the lookout had curved wooden fortifications with ample slots to peek out and snipe from.

"I've made it a little safer for you. Try not to die." She patted his shoulder affectionately before climbing up the side and flattening herself to the wooden half-roof.

"Flectere elementa ad voluntatem!" Shelle cried, and the four orbs on her back split rapidly, each orbiting the center. Eventually there were so many spinning so fast that it appeared to be an iridescent ring.

The ground she stood on burnt, frosted, and sparked before she rocketed toward their enemies. A giant cloudy hand attempted to swat her out of the sky, and she put her palms side by side, unleashing a beam of iridescent energy that froze the cloud hand solid then melted it to nothing.

A cloud golem descended from the sky, shrinking slightly as it redistributed its mass to regrow its hand. Three more joined it, all four with the form of hunched, vaguely trollish figures.

Shelle created a wind clone, though it lacked the ring behind her. She floated back to back with it, each holding a hand toward two golems.

The golems unleashed an arc of lightning from every direction, and the two magicians blinded their foes with a bright light before flying aside of their attacks, avoiding the lightning and causing all four golems to hit their allies.

Before two cloud golems could reform from the friendly fire, Shelle and her clone surrounded themselves with bubbles of mana and flew as multicolored blurs, ripping through the golems and discharging their attacks in the very center of their opponents. The destructive wave of mana dispelled the two half-formed cloud golems from the inside out. The remaining two cloud golems joined together to bolster their strength and speed, and Shelle dismissed her wind clone.

Lance, meanwhile, dodged dozens of tentacles, pummeling each with his staff as he passed. He thumbed a rune on one end, then hucked the staff at the beast. It spun end to end like a helicopter blade, and when a tentacle attempted to catch it, a massive section of the squid's body froze solid. It dropped to the water below directly in front of the monster, creating an icy platform on impact.

Lance picked it up with a hand made of metal, running up a tentacle and dragging the staff across the kraken's skin, leaving a trail of frost in his wake. He leapt up directly in front of its eyes, pulling the staff back into his body. He placed his palm on the creature's forehead and his eyes rolled back as he took it all in.

Shelle flew back to the ship, defending it from the attacking cloud golem. It saw what Shelle had done to the others, and attempted to keep moving to avoid the same fate. It flew over the ship expelling razor sharp hail. It stuck in the wood wherever it landed, and would have struck John if not for the wooden fortifications protecting him.

Shelle's back ring glowed brighter and the mana sphere in the middle flared as she extended her hands. "Magicae Carcerem!"

An enormous flaming, frosting net appeared around the joined cloud golem as a similar miniature net disintegrated from her palm. It tightened around the golem, freezing it from the inside out. She crushed her fingers into a firm grip and the net squeezed tighter and tighter until neither it nor golem remained.

She descended back onto the ship, taking the place of a wind clone she had filling the sails and dismissing it with a relieved sigh, back to gaining mana faster than burning it.

John and Boathaen, meanwhile, had begun to open fire on enemy snipers. Though each of his enemies were around his level, they lacked the same equipment and skills. As such, a headshot from his sniper was enough to knock the weaker ones out.

While he was focusing on the people, Boathaen was focusing on the enemy ships. She shot volley after volley toward the enemy, each arrow individually controlled. She sought to tear their sails apart, but her arrows were zapped out of the air before they could do much damage.

Lance dropped to the sea after touching the kraken's mind, and John thought that perhaps his Foreboding vision was going to come true after all, and the kraken was going to go after them again. Instead, Lance breached from the sea as an identical beast, tentacles and all. He wrapped himself around the original his new form was based on, communicating with it in a guttural collection of roars. It hissed in understanding before crashing back into the water and launching itself at the smaller fleet behind them.

Meanwhile, a beam of lightning raced toward them from both enemy battleships ahead. A distant figure stood in the air between them, charging the ships' weapons with endless streams of lightning. The two beams converged halfway toward them resulting in a stronger, single attack.

"Boathaen! Buy me a minute!" Shelle called, stepping away from the sails and leaving a wind clone behind to keep their speed up. She took out five tiny iron rods from a pocket inside her robe and floated them above her palm, rotating the rods in the air and suffusing her magic inside.

Boathaen leapt to the deck below, pulling a rare real arrow from a small quiver pouch at her hip, the arrow enlarged when she placed it in the bow. The master archer drew until she was nearly straining from the effort, then loosed the arrow directly into the stream of lightning.

Much to John's surprise, the arrow pierced the beam of lightning and pushed it back a long way; a deep green energy poured off the elven woman below as she willed her arrow forward.

"Ancestral Arrow Form - Elder tree!" The ship was halfway toward the clash between the arrow and the cannons when Boathaen transformed it, all the green energy she released pouring into the arrow ahead. It exploded into a massive tree, acting as a floating shield for them as the lightning tore through the massive trunk at a rate not much faster than it regrew.

The beams slowly built up intensity as the figure powering them shone brighter and brighter. Lance, now undistracted, swept their ship before racing off toward their new enemies. Shelle still stood rotating the iron bars in her hand. John attempted to shoot the silhouette powering the enemy weapons, but each bullet that got anywhere close was disintegrated.

The enemy ships grew ever closer, and they kept up their breakneck pace despite the tons of wood and steel between them and freedom. Boathaen put up a decent fight, but the double cannons were too much for her wooden defenses to bear.

Just as the beam broke through, one of the five rods in Shelle's grasp grew to the size of a doorknob and attached itself to the front of the ship. The beam of lightning was drawn to it and harmlessly absorbed into it. An electric dome flashed just above John's head, covering the entire ship in its protection.

"The ship should be protected from lightning attacks, as well as anyone on it." Shelle's whisper carried on the wind to all her allies as they neared the enemy. Lance, who had gone silent since engaging the enemy ships, was the only one to reply.