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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spyscribe" data-source="post: 2787511" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the One-Hundred Seventy-FourthIn which: someone gets bushwhacked.Aboard The Tranquil Shore,  Captain Maklim—his long, brown coat blowing in the breeze—surveys his crew.  So far, it’s business as usual.  Zokath, his first mate, a tall, sober, dark-complexioned woman with the stiff bearing of a true soldier of Dar Thane is beside him, both of her cutlasses out and ready.  Her husband Welk is at the wheel, laughing maniacally at the expressions of shock aboard the Errand.  Keykel and her crossbow are well hidden near the forecastle, and Jor is secure in the crow’s nest with a clear shot at anything that might think to move on the Ebisite ship.Yep.  It’s time to give these sun baked, beard-wearing bastards a little piece of payback.Or perhaps not.“Don’t like this, sir,” Zokath is shaking her head.  “Can’t see the others.  Ragya should have the whole crew snarled in the rigging by now.”Maklim has to allow as she has a point.  He draws his sword from its sheath.  “Looks like this one might be interesting.”###Beneath the water, Reyu swims over to the rapidly sinking Anvil.  She catches his cloak in her beak drags him with her, swimming for all she is worth. She can see the girl, Ragya cast shield on herself and grab Sakeem’s cloak.  Sakkeem casts fly, and the two begin rocketing upwards through the water.  Reyu is out of sight before she can see what Sister Aurelia has planned.She takes Anvil, not directly to the surface, but under The Fool’s Errand.  Reyu is not sure what is going on above, but she is certain there is trouble.And she is in the mood to be right in the middle of it.###At the aftdeck, Elsuki shouts to the crew, who swarms into action.  “Pirates!  To arms!  To arms!”He is in mid-cry when Maklem and Zokuth swing across the gap between the two vessels and plant themselves right in front of him.“Don’t suppose you’d care to up and surrender now, would you?” Maklem asks pleasantly.Elsuki glowers and swings his cutlass at Zokuth by way of response.  She easily steps out of the way, and clucks her tongue.“The Captain made you fair offer,” she chides him.  “You might want to consider it.”Elsuki lets out a roar of rage and prepares to attack again.“Captain!  No!”  Yasmine vaults over the rail of the aftcastle, putting herself between Elsuki and the two invaders.  As she lands, a crossbow bolt comes out of nowhere and buries itself deep in her side.  A cry goes up from the crew: “Sniper!” “Watch yourselves!”Yasmine holds her ground.  Blood pours out of the wound in her side, but she squares her stance and makes clear that any wishing to harm the Captain will have to do it over her corpse.Unfortuantely for her, Maklem and Zokuth have no problem with that.###The rain of arrows from the other ship is unabated.  Another sailor takes a lethal strike, this time through the eye, while a third lies bleeding on the deck, cut down as he tried to defend his captain.Worst of all, the arrows are punctuated by crossbow bolts.  A second sniper is striking like a cobra from somewhere aboard The Tranquil Shore.  The bolts don’t come often, but cause horrific damage when they do.On the forecastle of the Errand, Thatch scans the other ship, looking for at least one source of the deadly arrows.  He spots a huge man in the crow’s nest of the aft mast, armed with the largest longbow Thatch has ever seen.Thatch starts to run.  The gap between the two ships isn’t wide, and he bets he can make the jump across.  They want a fight, he’ll bring it to them.  However, he barely takes two steps when the red-haired pilot of the other ship grabs a line and swings himself over to the forecastle of the Errand, not ten feet away from where Thatch stands.He laughs at Thatch’s surprise.  “Guess who’s coming to dinner!”###Lira finds partial cover behind the stairs leading to the forecastle and casts shield on herself, while Kiara, up in the rigging embeds two arrows in the wood of the crow’s nest, just missing the archer there.Another sailor drops like a stone, crossbow bolt protruding from his neck.  Kiara searches frantically for the other archer.  Where are those crossbow bolts coming from?###Zokuth’s swords swirl around her like a whirlwind.  A sailor falls before her, then, almost as an afterthought, she slices across Yasmine’s neck.  Yasmine crumples to the ground, clutching her throat and gasping before sinking into unconsciousness.Zokuth puts a slash down Elsuki’s arm, just to show she can.  “Want to reconsider the Captain’s offer?”Maklim steps up after her and puts a symmetrical, deeper, slash on Elsuki’s other arm.  “Think about it.  I make it a point never to argue with a pretty lady holding two swords.”Annika has stood by the door to the captain’s cabin through this entire exchange, fortunately ignored by all the people with the swords.  Privately, given that five out of their crew of twelve are dead or dying, she’s not sure surrender would be a terrible idea.Bodies litter the deck:  pierced, slashed, and in the case of Yasmine, nearly decapitated.  Lira is pinned down, Thatch has his hands full, Anvil and Reyu are nowhere to be seen—And then, a dripping-wet grizzly bear comes climbing over the ship’s railing.  It bares its teeth as it surveys the scene, black eyes finally settling on Maklim and Zokuth.  The two pirates look back, just a little unnerved by this turn of events.The bear roars.</blockquote>

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