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Salt and Blood - Chapter 78
🕑 Added 2024-11-19 22:06:39 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 77 | Table of Contents | Chapter 79 >>
1.78 - Toughest Opponent Yet
Often there’s not much you can do except close your eyes and think of home…
-Excerpt from ‘Silversea Saga’ by Norris Howell
Rose clutched her ears with blood-soaked hands. The explosion had shattered one of her eardrums and a stray plank had almost taken her head off. By pure chance a wave had knocked her off her feet and saved her from decapitation.
Her vision slowly returned but there was a white film covering everything, a remnant of the blinding explosion. Looking down, she sighed in relief when she saw she was still standing, but the moment she did she stumbled.
Trying to right herself was a monumental task. She eventually grasped onto a railing to stay upright. Lifting a hand to her face, covered in blood, she grimaced. Rose suspected her burst eardrum was the culprit.
Given that she could barely stand, how was she supposed to fight? Once she was finally able to hear the crashing waves and feel the salty spray on her face, she took stock of her surroundings.
The invading navy men were even worse off than her for the most part, with plenty struggling to stay afloat in the ocean and other missing limbs. In fact, being at the top of the mast had saved her from a similar fate.
The mast had broken, but deposited her on the poop deck along with a few unfortunate boarders. One had his legs crushed under the crow’s nest and was weakly struggling to crawl out. Rose took out Sunsplitter and helped free him from his struggle.
The explosion wasn’t all bad. A whorl hovered in her vision, awaiting her attention.
Skill up!
Endurance 10 > 11
At the very least, it might be lessening the agony in her head. Tearing off a strip of fabric from her shirt, Rose wrapped it tightly around her head. She was already feeling faint from the explosion, excessive blood loss would be the final nail in her coffin.
There goes another ship… At this point I should just call myself a ship thief instead of a pirate. Liberty had been a damn fine ship, too. Its loss would sting.
Strangely, the explosion hadn’t originated from the powder stores. If it had, there would be a lot more fire and a lot less ship to go around. However, Liberty had split into three pieces, one of which she was standing on. Another was just a tiny fragment with a few of the navy men crowded together, while the final piece was up ahead.
She saw Felix on his feet, covered in wounds but still valiantly holding his own against a couple of the attackers. Despite her own wounds, Rose began walking towards him.
She wasn’t sure how much her skills could carry her in this state, but she would do her best to reach him so they could at least go down fighting together. That’s what best friends were for, after all.
Her first few steps were slow and awkward as she tried to get used to her lacking sense of balance. A few steps in, Rose thought she’d found her stride when suddenly her leg gave out beneath her and she fell face first against the deck.
After struggling back to her feet she continued. The problem with a burst eardrum was that there wasn’t a set amount of balance she’d lost, but rather a strange fluctuating mismatch between where her brain knew the ground was and where her foot actually went.
Eventually she managed to find her balance. Whenever she felt her world tilting to the side, she simply reached out to grab the nearest railing or splintered plank for support.
She soon realised the problem with her goal of reaching Felix. In her current state she would never be able to make the leap between the two floating halves of the ship.
As she was pondering the issue, Felix continued to fight. She watched as he killed one of the invaders and immediately pivoted to the next.
Considering how squeamish he was, she was proud. However, she could tell he was starting to flag. If she wasn’t able to help him out soon, he would eventually slip up.
The solution struck her like lightning. Why would she try to jump the gap when she had a much better tool? After all, Rose was a fisher at heart…
She reached for her rod, her hand closing around the familiar wood. Even a single touch brought her some comfort. It had been that way since childhood, a reminder of her father. However, since receiving the minor blessing from Sylack that feeling was even more potent.
Right as she was going to pull it from her back, she felt an arcane pulse. An ominous sensation washed over her and Rose stumbled backwards.
A spear pierced the spot she’d been standing in, the shaft still quivering from the impact. A moment later, a woman fell from the sky. She floated like a feather and delicately touched down on the end of the spear, gazing imperiously at Rose from above with icy blue eyes.
“Where do you think you’re going, pirate bitch?” she sneered, hopping off the spear and wrenching it from the deck. A few splinters flew at Rose and she held up her arms to block.
She frowned. “That’s rude,” she replied, taking Sunsplitter from her inventory and gripping the crystal handles. “Mother said to never use that word, even on those you despise…”
The woman started cackling, flashing a gap between her front teeth. “How quaint. The pirate scum still listens to her mummy…” she jeered, taking a step toward Rose.
Rose grit her teeth. This would be a tough fight. She was in no state to be taking on opponents as powerful as this.
The fact she’d felt the ripple of arcane energy before the woman’s spear struck meant she had an arcane core. This was one of Saff’s officers.
“Maybe if you listened to your parents you wouldn’t have grown up to be such a despicable woman,” Rose retorted. She rarely fell for such taunts, but insulting her mother was a hard line.
Sparing a glance towards Felix, she saw him struggling. The more of the navy soldiers who recovered from the blast, the more surged towards him. He had the high ground thanks to the sinking ship, but would soon be overwhelmed.
Rose had no choice but to defeat this bi—nasty woman—as quickly as she could. Hopefully she’d be up to the task.
“A pirate has no right to call an honourable Lieutenant of the Minenblum Royal Navy despicable!” she cried, her steps quickening. “Death is the only fitting end for the lot of you,” she roared, planting her foot and thrusting at Rose with the spear.
A blue shimmer coated the tip of the spear as it exploded towards her and Rose felt the familiar tingle of arcane energy. Two can play at that game.
Surges of tidal energy cycled through her body as the iron grip she usually held on her core drop. She’d had success reinforcing a single part of her body during her last battle, so the first thing she did was send a large chunk of the energy to her ear.
Rose had no clue if it would work the way she needed it to, but it was worth a try. Trying to fight while her balance was completely kaput was an exercise doomed to failure.
Suddenly her ear began to burn like a thousand mosquitoes had bitten her in the same spot. She resisted the urge to clutch it as the spear bore down on her. Despite the pain, Rose grinned at her foe.
Skill up!
Arcane Attunement 8 > 9
No longer did she wobble with every slight movement of the ship. It wasn’t a perfect fix and she could feel how fast it was draining her core, but it would be enough to deal with this woman. Hopefully.
With her balance somewhat restored, Rose directed the rest of the energy towards her blades. She wondered if the twin cutlasses would change it to match their affinity or if that was beyond her current level of skill.
When a faint blue shimmer covered the sharp edges she had her answer. She knew that turning your own tidal energy towards a particular attunement was possible—even during this battle she’d seen some of the more powerful foes do it.
However, she would need a lot more practice to achieve the same feat herself. For now, she was content with the small boost the arcane energy gave her weapon. It was then the woman’s spear struck her blades, sending tremors down her forearms from the force.
Instead of stopping, the energy around the spear’s tip started to rotate faster and faster, drilling against Sunsplitter. Rose had to continually increase the force she exerted to hold out against the attack.
However, the woman seemed to have much better control of her energy than Rose. The coating over her cutlasses was irregular and as the spear’s drilling became too fast to keep up with, the strike broke through her guard.
The twin cutlasses flew to the side, though she kept her grip on them. The spear’s tip flew towards her chest, but Rose managed to slash at the shaft with her right hand and knock the weapon off course.
Instead of a fatal thrust that pierced her heart, the weapon drilled through her shoulder and carved a large chunk of flesh from Rose. She cried out in pain and dropped her left cutlass, stumbling backwards.
The woman immediately whipped the spear up and around before slashing down towards her face. Rose parried with her remaining blade, then attempted a counterattack.
She’d tried to strike out with her other weapon, realising too late that she’d not only dropped the second cutlass but that she could barely move the arm. In fact, she could barely feel anything on that arm, save for the flood of blood that streaked down it.
That mistake cost her everything. As she stepped forward, the woman’s face contorted into an evil grin and she stomped down on Rose’s knee. It broke with a crunch and she fell to the deck.
The spear flashed in the light of the sun as her opponent raised it for a killing blow. Rose spared a final glance at Felix, offering a silent apology for letting him down.
Rose felt an itchy tingle as the woman pushed all of her energy into a single strike, the tip of the spear coated in a jagged film of arcane energy. It hummed as it fell towards her and Rose closed her eyes. Her final thought was of her mother’s grilled fish and potatoes.
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