Chapter 6

The water in the harbor was cold. Colder than the grave. Colder than the dank underground sewers. Colder than fear. Sari sculled through it with a breaststroke she had practiced during her interminable training – and the words of Master Phenrig seemed distant and no comfort at all.

You never know when you will have to sink or swim, my apprentice. Better you learn now so you can make the choice.

Sinking or swimming. Dying or not dying. It all came down to skill. Her skill. And Sari felt so pathetically unsuited to the tasks she had been put. There was an army of necromancers, an island of orcs, an ancient prophecy, the Corpse Lord himself, and who knows what else danger between her and some hope for a happy ending in this tale – and through it all, she had a few cantrips, her sword skill, and ... Rana.

As if thinking her had summoned her into existence, Rana’s head appeared through the surface that glimmered before her, gesturing to her left. Her head didn’t break the water nor disturb it – for Rana was only semi-present in this plane of reality. Still, Sari had to trust her directions. She swam, her lungs beginning to burn, and came to a small ladder that hung from the side of a wooden dock. She took hold of it, then, with her lips tight and her body trembling with need, she forced herself to slowly, slowly lift her head, and breath gently. The water lapped around her shoulders as she saw that she was near the dock that ran along the edge of Lord Menelag’s ship.

She climbed up the ladder as silently as she could and peeked over the edge, to see two Black Walkers standing guard beside a cargo crane normally used to load the ship. The light was dim – only a quick invocation of her night vision spell let her see anything but vague blobs. One of them was casually frisking the body of a dead man in robes – a wizard by the looks of him, but lowly ranked and without guild insignia.

“Idiot should have just surrendered. Evening constitutional my ass,” the Black Walker said, laughing, as Sari dragged her legs up onto the dock and crouched low. Her sword made a gentle rasp as she drew it from her scabbard.

“Didn’t he know there was a war on?” the other asked, holding the wizard’s staff in his hands. He clenched his palms on it. “What is this stick?”

“Don’t!” His comrade shouted, jerking his head up.

It was a bit too late. The staff glowed with uncontrolled magic and lightning exploded from it in all directions. The Walker who had been holding it was flung backwards and smashed into the side of the crane, while his comrade went skidding off the side of the docks. He hit the water like a stone, and sank beneath the waves almost immediately. Sari hurried forward and drove her sword into the neck seam of the Walker that was trying to get his feet under him. She jerked her blade free, then dragged him down into the shadows.

She lifted her head and saw a bright smear of primary colors – her night vision cantrip’s way of showing that there was a human head peering over the side of the ship. “What in the Nine Dragon’s sweaty scaled balls is going on down there?”

“Idiot touched a magic staff, now he can’t feel his hands. I think it’ll pass!” Sari shouted up, pitching her voice low, and gruff.

“Ech...” the man who had peered over the edge of the railing spat, then stepped away.

Sari shoved the second corpse over the side of the dock with a muffled splash. Rana chuckled.

“You’re pretty good at sounding like a boy,” she said, her voice amused.

Sari glared at her.

“It’s a compliment!” Rana said, hurriedly. “Your voice is normally so ... girly.”

Sari shook her head. She felt around on the crane’s body, an idea forming in her mind. She began to work the crank on the side, grunting with quiet effort as Rana leaned against the side of the slowly rotating pillar, oblivious to its movement.

“Now, how to get on the ship,” she said. “Oh, we could strip naked, seduce one of them. Maybe there are attractive men aboard?”

The crane, completing its movement, brought a heavy crate – suspended on ropes – between the dock and the ship. It would take a few more works of several more parts of the machine to hoist it up, then get it onto the deck, but all Sari needed was the platform. She stepped back, jogged forward, leaped, landed on the crate, then swung herself in through one of the open portholes on the side of the ship, arriving in the forward compartments that looked like they had been configured for storage.

Rana appeared beside her. “Mmm, these are tight quarters for fighting in. I don’t want to see you getting hurt. I have some plans for your body,” she purred.

“Great,” Sari said, softly. “Can you check, through that door?” She pointed at the exit to the chamber, her sword in her hands.

Rana sighed, then walked towards the wall, phasing through it as Sari glanced back, then pointed with her finger. Purple fire flared around her palm – and slowly, the magic staff drifted in after her. She held it in her hand, measuring the weight, the heft of it, and tried to figure out what it might do. She cocked her head to the side, reading the runes on the side – then yelped as Rana stepped back in, smirking.

“Two assholes discussing their latest indulgence in rapine and plunder,” she said. “If you were getting any moral quandaries about setting them on fire. What’s that long, thick, heavy staff, throbbing with power?” She asked, her face somehow completely straight. Sari flushed, then glared at the succubus that she was beginning to think would be stuck in her head forever.

“It’s a staff of reflection,” she said. “It takes magic energy into it, then can emit it back out as elemental effects. A handy tool.”

“Wow, you have a staff that only works when people huck fireballs at you,” Rana said, her voice dry. “How incredibly useful. Oh, and of course, it is almost six feet long, so, you know, easily stored in your backpack!”

Sari shook her head, then focused on the staff. She felt the magic woven through it, tweaked the spell there and ... the staff itself collapsed inwards, shrinking down until it filled her palm and nothing else. She hung it from her belt, then started towards the door that Rana had scouted. Rana scowled after her – but then remained silent as the door creaked inwards, revealing the other half of the forward stores. The only problem was that Sari’s stealth, thus far, had largely depended on luck. And luck?

It was fickle.

One of the Black Guard had looked aside from his conversation, his face turning to the door, and his eyes locked on Sari’s. They both froze.

Sari shoved the door inward, pointed at the nearest object in the room – a bucket – and then at the guard. Purple fire flared around the bucket and it flew straight into the man’s head, shattering apart against his skull. He sprawled backwards with a groan, while the other guard drew a flanged mace – the kind that was normally used to batter apart men in plate armor. He snarled and charged straight at Sari, who ducked under his blow, then put the tip of her longsword against his chest and thrust. They had both been armored in cloth and some light leather, which wasn’t enough to turn her blade. He twisted aside at the last second, so the point only opened him to his ribs, rather than impaled him. He stumbled backwards, clutching at his chest, gasping, trying to cry out.

Sari stepped in and pummeled him with the hilt. The wet crunch of steel meeting skull made her wince, but she ignored the sick lurch in her stomach as the man sprawled on the ground, twitching and thrashing, then laying still. She noticed, on his belt ... was a key. Plucking it with some telekinesis, she turned to the door out of here. Rana crooned in her ear. “Ohh, it’s not nice to go through other people’s things. Birds of a feather are we?” She asked, as Sari slid the key into the lock on the door, opened it, and peeked in. There was a narrow corridor, leading past the cabins and quarters for the passengers aboard ship. The faint scent of embalming fluid and the sound of conversation came from one of the rooms. Sari stepped towards it, as Rana casually moved through walls, then called around the corner.

“We have some necromancers in here!”

Sari peeked around the doorframe, ready to jerk her head back, but the necromancers were both studiously bent over a corpse they had flayed open. The figure was too small to be a human, too large to be a child – that and the green skin was enough for Sari to place the poor bugger as a goblin.

“As you can see, the internal organs are not so different, but compressed and shifted about,” one of the Necromancers was saying – the other looked less ravaged by the void magic that their kind of spellcasting called upon. An apprentice and a teacher. “It takes but minor alterations in our spellcasting to raise such a being as a zombie. Now, begin to list for me appropriate places for void energy to be stored in this creature.”

“Uh ... the shoulder ... the vertebrae before the spinal bend...”

Sari considered closing the door and slipping past the two of them. But the ship had be cleared. She licked her lips, then stepped into the room, moving with glacial slowness. Her foot set on the floor as it rocked beneath her – the gentle lapping of the boat registering to her attuned senses. The two necromancers had their backs to her, and weren’t wearing armor. She just had to hew them both down as quickly as she could.

Sari took another step.

Lifted her sword.

The master necromancer turned to get an item behind him – and exclaimed in shock as he saw Sari. His apprentice turned – and Sari’s blade caught him in the throat. Blood spurted as the apprentice’s chances at ever making journeyman, let alone master, covered the wall. Sari wrenched her sword, felt it catch on bone, and lifted her eyes to see the master necromancer twisting his fingers and shoving them. Purple fire slammed into her and flung her backwards with a crash. Her back slammed into the wall and she slumped to her knees, wheezing.

“You living bitch!” The necromancer screamed, wild eyed and manic over the wrapping he had thrown over his mouth to either hide some scars or to protect him from the smells of his trade. He placed his palms together, then thrust them out at her.

A bolt of fire shot at Sari’s head.

She whipped the staff off her belt. It grew as she swung it – and the fireball and the staff met with a flash of light. When the light faded, her staff was glowing with eldrich energies, as if every bit of the flame it had absorbed was now shining beneath the wood and metal. The necromancer jerked backwards, then fumbled for a weapon, any weapon. He came up with a hook, the kind of curved meat hook one used on hanging bodies. Sari stood and thrust with her staff, pointing it – and jabbed the man in the chest hard enough that she heard a rib crack. The necromancer grunted, then drew in breath, about to scream again. Louder this time.

Sari twisted the staff.

The magic within was tuned to the First, Second, Third and Fourth dragons – the dragons of the elements, as some called them. Whatever it absorbed, it could only emit in those modes.

The necromancer made a pained gurgle and the scarf slid away from his mouth, revealing the stone spike jutting from it, curved like a scythe. Sari jerked it free with a tearing, ripping sound and twirled her staff, then set it down, the top of it now glistening with a gore studded stone blade, manifested from thin air. The magic didn’t last very long, the stone began to crumble almost immediately.

“ ... okay, maybe the staff has a point,” Rana said.

Sari considered it, then unstrapped her sword, and set it down next to the door.

The next few chambers were of similar note – but none of them were particularly difficult. Sari’s arms ached with the tension of it all, and her staff had been bloodied twice more by silent, brutal blows to the backs of heads and the sides of necks. Through it all, she was keeping the mental map of the ship in her head. She was almost to a set of ladders that would lead from the cargo areas to the gundecks. Then from the gundecks, she’d make it to the top, and from there, the ship would be cleared. She didn’t know when or if anyone on the top of the ship would notice the dead below – she figured she only had a limited amount of time.

She came to the ladder in question and started up, handhold after handhold, and then...

“Oooh, now that’s interesting,” Rana purred as she stood at the top of the ladder, her head stuck through a wall. Sari shot her a look, her brow furrowing, then compared where she was to her mental map.

“This chamber looks like it was once the gun captain’s, but it has been turned over to another purpose,” Rana murmured, her voice a quiet purr. Sari bit her lip, peeked around the corner and saw the low ceilinged, dark chamber that was the gundecks. The cannons loomed heavy and large in their firing ports, and several Black Walkers were sitting at the guns, aiming them towards the shore. Waiting for the attack that had already come. Sari shuffled along the wall, moving very quietly, until she was at the door leading into the gun captain’s quarters. She turned and opened it – then blinked in shock.

The chamber had been done in reds and golds, upholstered with silk plundered from only the Dragons might know. There was a large bed in the center of it, and lounging on the bed was a gobliness. Her breasts were full and heavy – small by direct comparison to human breasts, but significant on her frame. Her lips were midnight black and her eyes were warm, rich amber orbs without irises. Her ears were long and pointed and bedazzled with many tiny golden rings. She looked bored and anxious all at once, with a collar around her throat.

Sari froze.

The gobliness froze.

Then she murmured. “Come in,” she said, her voice husky, her tongue darting along her black painted lips. Sari stepped in, closing the door to muffle any noise within. “You’re not a Black Walker.”

“I’m Sari. Are you ... were you one of Menelag’s?” Sari asked.

“Aye, one of his healers,” she said, sighing. “My name is Tanzi and the Necromancers have a rather good set of slave collars.” She rubbed her finger along it. “if I’m not fucking and sucking every one of their minions that comes in here ... then ... well, it’s not exactly fun.” She sighed, softly as Sari shook her head.

“Don’t worry, I have Charlotte – once the boat’s secure, we can get that off you!” Sari said, kneeling next to the bed. Tanzi bit her lip.

“There’s just ... one tiny problem...” She said, sounding more resigned than anything else.

“What?” Sari asked.

“Well. I have to fuck and suck every single one of the Necromancer’s minions that come into this room. They come in here, they cum in me...” She sighed, then rolled her head back, her eyes closing. Sari tried to not let her eyes dip down. Those dark green breasts were just barely contained by a scarlet robe that was as sheer and luxurious as it was too small for her.

“I’m sorry,” Sari said, quietly.

“No, you’re not getting it. Their orders were quite ... specific,” Tanzi said. “If you came in here and did not cum in me, then you’re not one of their minions. And thus, my other order kicks on – in which case I am to ring a bell, raise high hell, and bring every single Black Walker on this ship down onto your head.”

“Oh,” Sari said, her eyes widening. “I can try and remove the ... no, nevermind.” She looked at the collar, leaning in close. “That’s way too complex for me alone, we’d need at least three mages working in tandem to...” She blinked as Tanzi took hold of her hand, squeezing it.

“Darling,” she said, quietly. “Sari. Listen to what I am saying. Every one of their minions who comes in here cums in me. If I meet someone who is not a minion, I have to raise holy hell. So.” She watched Sari, who blinked at her in confusion. Rana, meanwhile, was biting down on her hand to keep from giggling overwhelmingly. “So!” Tanzi tugged Sari’s hand down – so that her palm pressed against her full breast. “ ... so!”

“Oh.” Sari said, her eyes wide. “Oh.”

“And I thought clerics never got a hint,” Tanzi murmured, her voice a husky croon.

“I...” Sari looked over at Rana, who grinned at her.

“I’ll keep watch,” she said, then sat her rump down on the air, so that she could leer down at both of them.

“That’s not-” Sari hissed – but Tanzi was already taking her head in her warm palms, turning her to face her. They leaned forward and their mouths pressed together, Sari’s body reacting with the instinctive burn of her adrenaline high. Her girldick throbbed in her leggings as Tanzi’s warm, eager tongue thrust into her mouth, caressing against her tongue with slow eagerness. The gobliness’ hands darted around back to cup and squeeze Sari’s ass, and Sari drew back, whispering. “W-Whoa.”

“The ... collar is ... really good,” Tanzi panted, and pink light glimmered on the collar – runes of the Eight and Ninth dragon, winding together. Lordship and Life itself, merging to create...

“I’m so hot. I’m. Ah. I’m so hot.” Tanzi panted, her hips bucking as she ground herself against Sari, her gown bunching around her thighs, her voice becoming high and desperate, a needy whine as she arched her spine, her nipples jutting out against her sheer outfit. Sari leaned back, panting softly. Her eyes glittered and she felt the flames of lust licking along her back as Tanzi squirmed, wriggled, then forced her dress above her head, revealing her cushy tummy, her round thighs, her delicious emerald green breasts and her dark green-black nipples. Before she could get the dress past her head, Sari leaned forward and pinned her arms above her, so that her eyes were covered, her arms trapped. “M-Mew!”

Sari flexed her fingers, holding the girl tighter. Purple flames flickered and her own leggings shoved down, spectral hands pushing and tugging – freeing her throbbing girldick. She ground it against the gobliness, who let out a shocked squeak.