Born a Monster

When planning a fight against shapechangers, be certain they haven’t already infiltrated. My first indication that something was wrong was the screaming. Three bodies were already on deck, two of them with their throats slashed.

All of them had black bands around their left arms.

Actually, where HAD they gotten that much clothing? No, focus, fighting now.

“They’re still wet!” the bosun was screaming. “Go for the ones still soaking wet!”

Others were still coming over the railing, so I moved to fight those. Well, Lungpiercer was going to have a story after today.

There were only two of them, but one of them had a few levels of Monk or some other kick-type class. She WANTED to kick my shield, and with the aid of her partner, she rapidly had me against the railing.

While I fought to defend myself from those two, some brute grabbed me from behind and idly chucked me into the ocean. They only needed one hand.

Boarding the vessel, they let out a seal-like bark.

.....

Huh, the noise carried real well underwater.

There is a medical maneuver used on drowning victims, to force water clear of the lungs. Some bastard swam up behind me and applied it. Turns out it’s pretty good for forcing air out of the lungs, too.

Lungpiercer may still be telling its story to the fishes; I’m pretty sure that’s when I let go. Not that I was drowning, but the maneuver is like a double-fisted punch to the gut.

For me, the rest of the battle was grappling, with an occasional trident or bident or spear thrust at me. Whatever they made their leathers from, it was sturdy.

Then, like magic, they were gone. I had a knife I’d gotten from one of them, and the water around me was tinted like some surrealist painting. There were no enemies unable to move on their own, and a good deal of that blood was mine.

But... DAMN. I had held my own. My first underwater battle against creatures native to the ocean. I may have been hurt...

[You have 8/40 health remaining.]

... but I was ALIVE, and had no serious wounds.

Ignoring the curious sharks that were already circling, I made my way back to the ship. Someone had cut away the side netting, and I found myself too tired to climb. I waited for someone to see me and lower a rope.

I came up to a semicircle of weapons.

“How do we know you’re who you look like?” one of the wielders asked.

I coughed up water, one hand raised to ask for the coughing to subside, and my lungs to settle back into breathing air.

“Oscar.” I said. “I told Oscar things they can’t possibly know.”

“Well, that’s nice. Oscar’s dead.”

I sighed. “Seawater, part of the ocean that bears life, hear me and grant my request! You know me, for I am Rhishisikk shaman and spawn of the ocean. Please, rejoin the bulk of the ocean, be clear of this deck. Move Water! Move All Water!”

Just a hint? Don’t do that on a cog’s deck. It used up all my mana, both river and ocean, and took enough of my fatigue meter to knock me out.

#

There is a sailor’s trick to wake the unconscious. You hold open their eyelid and splash just a little bit of alcohol into their eyes.

I can attest that it works. And, don’t do it on anyone with magical power. If I’d been able to fuel that curse, he’d have died a very unpleasant death.

“Well, now. We come to an important question.” Constance said.

I whimpered in pain. True, I’d been tortured before, and I had all kinds of stuff to help me deal with things like my eyes telling me they were on fire. I will point out that rain doesn’t normally hurt, either, but nobody walks around town expecting to have a pail of water upturned on their head.

“I’ll interpret that as, please ask, Captaine Constance. What jobs can you actually do on a vessel?”

Turns out, quite a few of them. Oscar and the captain weren’t the only fatalities that day. You’d think that a crew of sixty people, the deaths of seven isn’t all that harsh. Sure, it’s a decimation, but how hard is it to cover those positions, really?

It was near impossible. There were cut ropes to deal with, and blood nearly everywhere on deck, and little bits of flesh like severed ears and ... all right, fine. It was a battlefield, with the normal bits of detritus one expects there.

We buried our dead and theirs at sea, and the sharks and other fish seemed to enjoy their meals.

There was no time to watch that, though. Rigging needed to be fixed before the sails could be adjusted, and blood needed to be swabbed up before it soaked too deeply into the timbers. The current was trying to push us north, and the wind to the west.

We labored as though failure meant being stranded with nothing to eat but each other. Because yes, if we lost sight of the Isles, that was very much what it might come to.

There was a calm patch, where I was outside the hull, affixing blocks of wood to the outside where selkies with wood drills had made holes in our hulls. Hammers were not meant for underwater use, and more than a few nails joined Lungpiercer on the bottom of the ocean.

The rest of the time, there seemed to be no end of tasks to be done, and no shortage of people to trip over me, or strike me with elbow or knee, or even step on me. The crew that had seemed so lazy before was literally working to save their own lives.

“How are you at Sea Witchery?” Constance asked. “Can you bend the tide around us, help us make progress south?”

“I can try.” I said. “The process requires...”

“Don’t tell me. Just get to the bow and do what you can.”

Remember what I said about leaving some things to the professionals with the actual class abilities to perform them well? Under my guidance, the ship would jerk as the tide either was or wasn’t on it, and it would try to spin when the tide hit the starboard side harder than the port.

And, I may have said, constantly tapping the environment for mana is exhausting, and more so when you’re not holding onto any of it. It’s like forcing that energy through yourself, and the forces needed to divert even a minor ocean current are far more than the mortal body was intended for.

On the plus side, we made it to port. My meridians, those apertures through which one takes or expels mana, were in bad shape; my aura had bits of Water running rampant throughout it, and I had discovered that you could, in fact, have too much water in your body.

I was quivering, and twitching, and HAPPY.

[You have 0/4 Water (Ocean) mana. 31/60 XP to next level.]

I had discovered how to increase my mana pools. It would take time, and labor; I’d almost crippled myself doing it, but I had a process.

“You’re off duty.” The captain told me. “Do whatever you need to do in order to recover. We’ve got at least three days just to replace supplies and make simple repairs.”

“Aye, captain.”

“Oh, and for the record? That’s some of the absolute worst sea-witchery my guts have ever had to tolerate. The crew needs you to become better, and fast.”

“Gaining levels in new classes isn’t that easy.” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good man.”

It wasn’t a lot.

[Class: Sea Witch, 19/100 XP to first level, 81 development points to unlock. You have 6 development points.]

What?

[Challenge/Trial Award. Combat Cultivation Method. Mystic Research Cultivation Method.]

[Your System does not track development point awards. Unlock of this functionality costs sixty development points. Focus on this message to unlock.]

What the hell...

[System Error. You cannot purchase this functionality more than once.]

Enough other stuff was broken; I had no clue...

Except I did. The system reset. The one that had to happen because portions of my brain had been physically removed.

And, I presume, eaten.

[System Error, you have no social classes.]

[Truthspeaker, level 1. 112/300 XP to level 2.]

[Industrialist, level 1. 101/300 XP to level 2.]

Ugh.

Okay. It wasn’t something like the [Bleeding] condition, I had time to get this fixed.

I just had no clue HOW to get it fixed. Or at least, not yet.

Okay, and there weren’t any abilities I could unlock under Water Adept or Shaman that would help.

When the abilities stopped scrolling past my vision, I remembered that I needed to add a command to put the output into a System list.

Once I had, it made for interesting reading.