Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

A second flare got El close enough to the Wirockian ship to see it practically crawling with hangnails. The little bastards were literally climbing out of the water to scale the outside of the hull, before pulling themselves over the railing to slash at whatever was close enough. On the deck, that meant Laze, along with Tas, Macer, and most of their soldiers. Unfortunately, it also meant a lot of unprepared sailors.

Nidina and Dayne were each still working their sides of the ship, darting back and forth to trim down the exposed hangnails as they clung to the side of the ship. But, for every two they cut down, three more seemed to breach the surface of the water.

Just how many of these damn things are there?

With her third flare, El arrived at the ship, picked a pocket thick with nothing but hangnails, then flipped into the air to slam into the deck of the ship with a whoosh of blue flame exploding around her. The impact cracked the wood beneath her feet and even rocked the entire ship—Might've overdone that one…—but it also knocked a dozen of the ugly monsters clear over the railing. Those that didn't go over had their faces frozen off by the hungry coldfire, and El dashed towards them while twinned swords ignited in her hands.

"What in the Blaze happened?" El asked into her communicator as she cut the first hangnail down. Distracted by the pain of not having a face, it didn't even get its claws up before El's sword separated its head from its shoulders. A flick of her wrist took the arm off the monster next to her, then a small burst from her wings flipped her up and over the falling bodies. Two cuts as she spun over the next group had the monsters staggering into each other and throwing the whole mess into chaos looking for her.

"They came out of nowhere," Nidina started.

"Out of the sea," Dayne clarified.

"Whatever! It was just a few at first, then… this! I can see the water below me practically churning with more waiting to get up. It's never going to end at this rate," Nidina said.

El's feet landed on the deck again, and she dropped into From Sunrise to Sunset, one blade to each side. A pool of blood—and at least one body—lay on the deck nearby, but beyond that, the closest people were Laze and the group of soldiers, near the ship's wheel.

Where are all the other sailors?

Many of them had clambered up the rigging—Tas and his troops doing a good job picking off any hangnails looking to follow—but that still only accounted for half the people she'd seen before leaving the ship.

"Casualties?" she asked.

Head snapping around at the sound of her voice, the hangnail in front of her turned just in time to take a sword through the chest, just below the neck. Unfortunately, it wasn't the only one near her, and finger-claws came at her from all angles. A parry to her right, a twist and duck, the spark of blue flame from her frost armor, a low sweep of her left sword, then a flare of her wings directly behind her, and El spun out of the group. She'd taken a few light hits and dealt a few heavy ones in return.

"They're taking anything they can over the side," Laze answered. "Back into the water."

"Why are they trying to drown people when they can just cut them up?" Nidina asked.

"For the same reason we found those two forts empty," El said, parrying two more sets of claws, one from each side.

"And what's that reason?" Nidina replied.

"No idea!" El kicked out to her right, flaring the heel of her boot at the same time it connected with the hangnail's chest. The little beast shot backwards, a boot-sized chunk missing from its flesh, which freed up the sword El had been using to keep its claws at bay. A quick pivot got her leg back under her, then a twist of her waist got her into position to jerk her sword across and under the upraised claws of the monster on her left.

The thing's severed legs dropped to the deck, while El used the pressure of its claws on her other sword to hurl the top half off the ship. However, even as those two fell, more swarmed in to take their places. It really was never-ending.

"We've got to do something to cut them off," El said.

"Open to ideas," Nidina replied.

"I've got one," Laze said. "Though I don't know if it'll work…"

"Less worrying, more speaking," El said, quick-stepping back as four hangnails riding on each others' shoulders came slashing at her. Parry, parry, parry, she was forced to focus entirely on defense until one of the bottom monsters stumbled over another hangnail corpse. As soon as the strange group of monsters lost their balance, El charged back in, batting aside wild claw swings to tear at the wet flesh with her swords. Cutting down the two on the bottom in short order—and only taking one sparking hit on her shoulder in the process—the top ones hit the deck back-first. Then they each took a blue flaming sword through the chest.

"Nidina and Dayne need to come back onto the deck to help protect the sailors," Laze started.

"That'll just give more hangnails the chance to get on board," Nidina quickly countered.

"Let her finish," El instructed, combining her two swords into a flaming axe. Then she just started chopping.

"El will get back in the air, then do what she did down in the tunnel," Laze said.

El hacked clean through two hangnails with one swing while she considered what Laze could mean. "The waterfall?" she asked.

"Kind of. I was more thinking the giant block of ice," Laze said.

"You want me to freeze the sea?" El asked, only a little exasperated at her friend's expectations.

"Not the whole thing, El," Laze said flatly. "Just the area right along the sides of the boat. Not too close either—sorry, the ship—so we can still move. If you can encase these monsters in that ice, though, it should give us the time to clear off the deck. And, maybe if you do enough damage, they won't chase us."

"Well, I don't have any better ideas," El said. "Let's do it."

"Can you? Freeze the sea, I mean?" Nidina asked.

"Going to find out, aren't we," El replied. "Dayne, Nidina, get up here and keep these people safe." With that, El flared her wings, washing out the group of hangnails that'd converged to try and bury her, then shot up into the air. Dayne's and Nidina's red wings were already flashing up over the side of the ship to take her place on the deck, and the two Firestorm cut into the monsters with focused precision.

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Since it didn't really matter where El started, she cut to the right side of the ship—There's probably some sailing term for ship sides…—and ignited a bow in her hands. Back went her arm, gathering her Spark into a growing arrow, building and building its power. Blue flames churned and roiled as the arrow grew, licks of it whipping out and lowering the temperature all around her. The air swirled around El as the presence of her expanding arrow played havoc with the wind currents, and within five beats of her pounding heart, it was easily as long as she was tall.

A quick look at the ship showed Nidina and Dayne whirling like flaming sawblades across the main deck. All around them, hangnails swarmed and slashed, their claws lighting sparks across the Firestorm's flame armor. With more room to maneuver than in the tight mushroom tunnels, the pair made expert use of their wings and mobility to reduce the hits they took, but there were simply too many to completely avoid everything without taking to the sky. Doing that, though, would give the hangnails a straight path up the masts to the surviving sailors.

Near the ship's wheel, Tas, Macer, and three of their soldiers held the two sets of stairs leading up to the higher platform, while Laze single-handedly defended the other three sides. With a warmaul clenched in her hands, the woman dashed around batting aside any hangnail that made the deck. Thanks to being made of solid flame instead of metal, and with the added strength of her flame armor, the weapon was a fiery blur as it punted one creature and then the next back into the sea.

Laze took more than a few clawed slashes in exchange for ignoring her own personal defense, though.

Which means I should stop watching and get to the next part!

With the arrow now bigger than El and raging like a flaming tornado in her hands, it was time for the more difficult part. Gathering her will and focus, El mentally gripped the essence of the arrow and squeezed. Where before the flames had resisted her push, like they wanted to stay wild and free, this arrow snapped into a bright blue plasma so quickly, it literally popped. It all happened so easily, El almost lost her grip and released the massive spear of brutal coldfire, but managed to hold on at the last second.

Practice makes perfect?

Arrow now solidified and ready, El turned her attention to the bubbling sea beside the boat. Dozens of hangnails were already crawling up the side of the ship, but she'd worry about those later—by the looks of things, there were hundreds more in the water all around.

Here goes.

Picking a spot just off to the side of the ship, El released her grip on the arrow, the explosive recoil jerking her straight up despite her wings straining to hold her in place. Howling like a blue, fiery demon, the plasma arrow struck the surface of the sea about a quarter of the ship's length from the back, and about thirty feet out.

Then all hell broke loose.

Unlike when she struck solid objects with her coldfire, the water didn't dissolve or vanish as its bonds shattered. Instead, the arrow maintained its shape as it plunged deeper into the sea, flash-freezing everything around it so quickly, the explosive expansion turned the surface of the sea into a field of razor-sharp icicles. Spears practically launched out of the water as waves experienced split-second and significant growth, rushing out in all directions.

The ship, thirty feet away, got buffeted sideways as ice-spikes as wide as El's arms slammed into its side, and the sea itself kicked in the direction. Up went the bow as the ship on a newborn wave from the expanding ice so tall, El's eyes widened at the barnacle-covered hull. At the same time, the back end—closer to the origin of the ice—skirted to the side, and only the captain's fast hands on the wheel seemed to keep the ship from tipping over.

Screams of surprise echoed from the rigging along the masts as sailors hung on for dear life. Yet, somehow, none fell, while the slippery hangnails almost entirely lost their footing. Buoyed by their wings, the Firestorm fared the best, not even losing a step and driving their weapons into one exposed enemy after another. Tas and his soldiers didn't manage quite so well, one of them sliding on the slick wood to go tumbling into the railing. A hard bang of his hip into the wood, and then he was over.

No!

A quick hand and a flash of fiery wings, and the man hung dazed over the side—Laze had made it in time.

For the hangnails that'd been climbing the sides of the ship, things were even worse. Most of the ones on the right had been speared straight through the backs, their bodies hanging bloody and twitching from the briar patch of floating ice almost a hundred feet in diameter. The ones under the water weren't doing any better, the bobbing ice showing multiple bodies frozen within. And, while those on the left side had avoided the icy conclusion, the sudden motion and crush against the waves had washed that side of the hull clean of monsters. For now.

"Uh, ready for me to do the other side?" El asked, her voice hitching as she watched the captain cursing up a storm. Honestly, it was a good thing Laze's communication magic couldn't transmit other's words, because El was pretty sure none of them were nice.

"They're still coming?" Laze asked, hoisting the soldier back up over the side before flattening a hangnail head with her maul.

"Not yet, but they will be soon," El said. The water on that side of the ship was already bubbling as the things beneath frenzied to resume their attack.

"Do it."

"You're sure?"

"The captain is saying just don't smash us sideways into the other iceberg you just created," Laze said.

"Bet her choice of words was a bit more colorful," El said, but swooped to the other side of the ship and began channeling her next arrow.

"You have no idea. I should be taking notes," Laze responded.

"Better than cursing the Pyre's flaming nutsack?" El asked absently, her attention on reforging her growing fiery arrow into a growing plasma arrow.

"It was one time, and it sounded… better… in my… head," Laze answered, obviously busy smashing hangnails while she talked.

"Can you two talk less? It's distracting," Nidina cut in.

"I find it soothing, like white noise," Dayne replied in his usual even tone.

"Not sure which of those should offend me more," El grumbled. "Hold on to something, incoming," she warned, then held her shot a second longer. After giving just enough time to everybody to brace, she let loose.

The arrow again kicked her straight back up into the air, then tore into the surface of the sea just as the first hangnails began climbing out along the hull of the ship. Since she'd aimed more than twice as far from the ship as last time, the immediate eruption of icy spears was significantly less pronounced against the ship. The hangnails closest to the surface, on the other hand, burst out of the water on the ends of sharp spikes, while the iceberg instantly grew to almost a hundred feet.

As before, the sudden displacement of water sent the ship reeling, but the captain seemed to be ready for it this time. She'd somehow gotten the ship's prow around to breach the rising wave instead of getting carried away by it. A huge deluge of ice-cold water cleansed the lower deck in an instant, the two Firestorm darting above to stay clear of it. Hangnail blood and bodies slammed into railings or went clear overboard, the sailors in the rigging now hooting in delight like the whole thing was an amusement park ride.

After the second large wave, the ship clapped back down on the surface of the water, sending up smaller waves of its own from the impact, and then bobbed before evening out. Sail full of wind the whole time, and with aftershock-like waves coming from the icebergs' creation, the ship cruised out from between the two solid blocks floating in the water.

"Few hangnails left alive on deck. Clean those up." El drew back and released a normal blue-flame arrow with those words, slamming it into—and through—a monster getting to its feet.

"On it," Dayne said as he and Nidina dove back down to the piled bodies and began systematically carving through them. Grisly work, but necessary.

"We in the clear?" Laze asked. She leaned against one of the railings on the upper deck, flaming maul still in one hand and small bodies strewn about her.

El looked at the carnage behind the ship. "Seems like it. If any are following, it's not many. We should keep our eyes open just in case we…" she trailed off, the distant echo of gunfire reaching her ears. What…?

She turned back to look at the distant Pilish ship just in time to see some kind of massive serpent with glittering sapphire scales and fins like wide wings burst from the water and land on the warship's deck.

A seawyrm.

El couldn't help but stare. The thing had to be fifty feet long if it looked that big from a mile away.

And the Pilish soldiers were trying to fend it off with pistols… because she'd destroyed all their bigger guns.

Burn it.