The White Swan's deck turned into a kicked anthill.

  The helmsman's screams mingled with the deafening sound of warning bells. Civilian passengers were forcibly pushed into the lower hold by the crew, their faces pale as death. In the distance, the black ship The Banshee Coil cut through the waves like a shark smelling blood, approaching at an unnatural speed.

  Across the ocean, on the deck of The Banshee Coil, Captain Draven laughed. His voice was amplified by magic, booming like thunder.

  “Vraaxaks!” the giant Half-Orc shouted, spreading his green hands. The seawater around his black ship began to churn unnaturally. “I have come to take!”

  Vraaxaks did not answer. She did not want to waste energy on talking. Instead, she bent his own knees.

  No spell. No warning. The air on the deck of The White Swan exploded.

  Mira was thrown backward by the shockwave. When she looked up, Vraaxaks was gone. Only a white trail split the air toward The Banshee Coil.

  She didn't fly. She propelled herself like a living cannonball.

  Vraaxaks landed on the main mast of the enemy ship. Her landing was silent. She perched there, the tips of her feet gripping the wood.

  Draven looked up, his grin fading. “You dare set foot on my ship—”

  Vraaxask twirled her staff. The wind responded. Not ordinary wind, but sharp as a blade of vacuum. Without touching anything, an invisible gust sliced through the ropes and sails of The Banshee Coil. The filthy sail collapsed, crushing the crew below.

  “You want to play rough? Fine!” Draven stomped his foot. The seawater on both sides of The Banshee Coil erupted, then froze instantly in the air. Thousands of ice shards the size of human arms formed, floating around Draven.

  The ice shards shot upward, targeting Vraaxask.

  Vraaxask threw herself off the mast. She spun through the air like a drill, the wind wrapping her body into a protective cone that shattered every ice needle into snow dust.

  The tip of Vraaxask's staff met the giant ice axe that Draven had just materialized.

  The collision created a shockwave that cracked the deck of The Banshee Coil. Draven braced for the impact, his green arm muscles bulging like tree trunks.

  “My ship is expensive, White!” Draven growled. He struck Vraaxask in the chest with the back of his ice-coated hand.

  Vraaxask was thrown backward, but she regained her balance in the air by manipulating the flow of wind on her back. She hovered, his staff aimed straight at Draven's heart.

  Wind Style: Compressed Air.

  She released a blast of wind right at the sea surface beside the ship. Draven was swept away by the current, falling into the open sea.

  But the Half-Orc did not sink. As his feet touched the water, the ocean obeyed. Within a hundred-meter radius, the seawater boiled cold, then solidified. The dark blue color turned pale white.

  The sound of freezing was terrifying. In a matter of seconds, an artificial ice island formed in the middle of the sea, separating the two ships. Draven stood in the middle of his created ice island. He grinned, raising his hand. "Come down, Little Bird! Your wings are useless here!"

  Vraaxask dove down. Her feet landed on the slippery ice.

  And the real duel began.

  On top of that ice island, Draven moved swiftly. He swung his ice axe, pulling a giant wave that froze into claws, trying to crush Vraaxask.

  Vraaxask danced. She used Aero-Step, stepping on shards of ice floating in the air. Her staff moved quickly, thrusting and slashing.

  But Draven was clever. He let Vraaxask get close. As Vraaxask’s staff slid toward his neck, Draven didn’t dodge. He let his shoulder get scratched, but his left hand grabbed Vraaxask's "leg."

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Got it!” Ice quickly spread from Draven’s hand, freezing Vraaxask’s marble leg, locking her in place.

  Draven swung his giant axe with both hands. “SMASH!”

  Vraaxask couldn’t dodge. She crossed his staff to block, but Draven’s momentum was too strong.

  That was not the sound of clashing metal. It was the sound of ceramic shattering. Draven's ice axe struck Vraaxask's left shoulder with a sharp impact. White shards flew everywhere. Vraaxask was thrown, tumbling over the rough ice, and came to a stop at the edge of the ice island.

  Draven gave her no chance to breathe. He clasped his hands together. "ETERNAL PRISON!"

  The ice island exploded upward, forming a massive dome that trapped Vraaxask inside. Five-meter-thick walls of ice closed in from all directions, blocking out the sunlight.

  Inside the dark ice dome, Vraaxask stopped moving. The black lines on his marble body glowed brightly. It was not a holy light, but Void light—a darkness that consumed all light.

  She gripped her staff with both hands, aiming it at the dome's ceiling.

  Glaray Point: Piercing Heaven.

  A simple stab. A thin black ray—as wide as a needle—shot out from the tip of the spear. The ray pierced the ice. Pierced the sky. Pierced the clouds above it.

  A moment of silence.

  Then, the molecular structure of the ice dome... was erased. There was no explosion of fire. The giant dome shattered into fine snow dust, collapsing because its integrity was destroyed by absolute wind pressure.

  Draven's ice island was shattered into pieces, returning to the churning seawater. Draven was thrown by the vacuum shockwave, his body hitting the hull of The Banshee Coil hard. He vomited blood, one arm hanging limply.

  Vraaxask hovered above the water, gasping. Her left shoulder was destroyed.

  ***

  Meanwhile, the sky above them split with sonic explosions and the ocean froze into islands of death due to the duel of the Captains, a different kind of hell unfolded on the water's surface.

  For the crew of The White Swan, the Vraaxask fight there was a natural disaster. But the battle right in front of their noses was a pressing matter of life and death.

  The sound of iron striking wood rang out in rapid succession like machine-gun fire.

  Not cannonballs. They were grappling hooks—rusty iron hooks hurled from the deck of The Banshee Coil. The hooks, connected to thick chains, sank deep into The White Swan’s rails, tearing through expensive varnished wood, and locked the two ships in a deadly embrace.

  "They're pulling us!" shouted the White Swan Helmsman, his voice cracking with panic. "Cut the chains! For God’s sake, cut the chains!"

  But it was too late. The crane on The Banshee Coil whirred with an earsplitting scream. The elegant trading ship was being dragged forcibly toward the scarred black ship. The distance closed. Five meters. Three meters.

  Then, the wave came.

  Not a wave of water, but a wave of flesh and iron.

  "ATTACK!"

  A ferocious war cry erupted from the deck of The Banshee Coil. Dozens of pirate crew members—a mix of tattooed humans, whip-wielding Sisilkka, spear-bearing sea Goblins, and lowly Orcs wearing shark-skin armor—leapt across the narrow gap between the two ships.

  They landed on the clean deck of The White Swan with a heavy thud. Chaos erupted instantly.

  The White Swan’s crew were merchant sailors. They were armed, yes—short swords (cutlasses) and defensive spears—but they were not killers. The first clash was a one-sided massacre.

  A Swan young sailor tried to fend off the onslaught with a spear, but a large-bodied pirate caught the spear with his bare hands, yanked it, and drove a rusty axe into the sailor's shoulder. Red blood spurted, staining the wooden floor that had been polished just that morning.

  Mira, still near the main mast, felt the world slow down.

  The clanging of metal, screams of pain, and the smell of burning gunpowder assaulted her newly sharp senses. Above her head, a rain of ice shards fell as a result of the battle between Draven and Xraavask, injuring friends and foes alike without distinction.

  "Don't just stand there!" Kars shoved Mira's back hard, snapping her out of shock. That man, somehow, had already brought a staff and spun it quickly. An invisible kinetic shockwave exploded from the tip of the staff, throwing the two Goblins who had just landed nearby back into the sea.

  “Don’t use your star magic, grab that bow and find a high spot!” Kars commanded, deflecting a flying dagger with his staff. “You’re useless in this barbaric fight. Get up to the Ratlines! Be a shooter from above!”

  Mira nodded. She grabbed the rope net beside the main mast and began to climb.

  She moved quickly, ignoring the increasingly violent rocking of the ship caused by the frozen waves created by Draven. Her hands and feet worked automatically, the muscle memory from climbing giant pine trees in the Jangberg forest that Kars once taught her taking over. No, it was the memory of climbing trees when she was a child with her siblings.

  Mira reached the first lookout platform, about ten meters above the deck.

  The view from here was horrifying. The deck of The White Swan had turned into a slaughterhouse. The pirates were pushing the merchant ship's crew back toward the poop deck. They were outnumbered and outmatched in ferocity.

  Mira took a deep breath, holding in the cold air that stung her lungs. She nocked an arrow to her bow.

  She wasn't aiming carelessly. She was looking for a Node. Not a magic Node, but a command Node.

  Her sharp eyes, enhanced by the thin stream of Intian flowing into her retinas, scanned the crowd. There. Near the bow railing, a burly man with a red bandana was shouting orders. He wasn't attacking; he was coordinating the assault. He pointed toward the cargo hold, instructing his men to break in.

  Target locked.

  Mira pulled the bowstring back to her cheek. Her back muscles tensed. She did not use light magic. She used Agnilith Pressure, a basic technique passed down through Agnilith blood. She channeled a bit of Intian into her arm and arrow, just to increase the flight speed and penetration.

  Release.