Colorful boulders studded the ground beneath the school. Their angular shapes tugged at Seren's attention, but she was impatient to complete her ritual, there was no time for sightseeing.
The wizard began the final stanza of the ceremony. She would draw the entire school through to her and magically moor them to Green Siren. They wouldn't survive more than a tenday outside their natural environment, but that would be enough.
Like stars coming out one by one after dusk, points of light appeared around the hull. The gleamtail jacks each harbored a tiny jewel-like glow. The constellation of winking gleams wheeled around the ship, hinting at paths to previously unreachable locations in every glimmer.
Seren finished the closing stanza. When the last syllable resonated in the air, her vision of the echo plane faded.
But not quickly enough. The colorful stones on the edge of the shoal sprang up, revealing themselves as creatures, not scenery. Each left a wake in the air from its surprising acceleration. Some had spears, but all had claws and wide, rubbery mouths generous with teeth.
She blinked, and the echo plane was gone. Green Siren and the Sea of Fallen Stars filled her senses. The ship had gained a school of glittering stars as an escort… and something else. A tug on her mind signaled that the protective circle was breached! Seren gulped and tried to call out a warning, but her throat was dry from chanting. Nothing emerged but a hoarse whisper.
Five shapes dropped onto the deck from a barely perceptible discontinuity in the air above Green Siren. The one closest to her was a hulking, blue-skinned humanoid larger than an ogre. It had almost no neck and a massive, fiat head. Wicked swordlike hooks emerged from the back of its balled fists. It uttered a croaking roar in the wizard's face.
Finding her voice, the wizard screamed, u 'Ware the steads!"
She backed up, trying to get a mast between her and the blue-scaled horror. Not for the first time she was reminded that sandals, no matter how stylish, were more liability than asset.
The monster reached across the wide space separating them. Its wrist claws caught on but were not entirely stopped by her protective ward. They raked her stomach and face, and the impact flung her backward. A crewman's hammock strung along the railing broke her trajectory, but her head whipped painfully back. She collapsed to the deck, blood oozing from the scratches.
Seren heard more croaking roars and fearful shouts. She pulled herself upright on the railing.
The great blue slaad hadn't pursued her-instead, it was gutting a crewman who'd been standing too close.
Behind them, four other slaads rampaged across Green Siren.
One was red and nearly as big as the blue. Belying its exceptional size, it moved like a cheetah-bunching up, then bounding forward with flippered feet and claws, covering tens of feet across the deck with each stride. It jumped to the edge of the hold and loosed a croak into the opening so horrid Seren's stomach fluttered. Screams of terror issued from below.
The other three slaads were dull gray and only human sized. One was already chasing a pirate up the rigging, clambering and chuffing like an enraged ape.
"Die, beast!" screamed Captain Thoster, darting suddenly into the fray. He buried his poisonous sword in the breast of one gray slaad.
The slaad shrieked. In a flash of putrid air, it disappeared- only to reappear next to Seren. Blood poured from the wound Thoster had scored. Its electric smell stung her nose.
The wizard cursed the captain and raised her wand. The slaad bled so freely its ichor spattered her face and clothing. But the wound the captain had given it hardly dimmed its fervor. The damned beast eyed her with voracious delight.
She jabbed her wand at it. A pulse of concussive energy thundered from the wand's tip, blasting the slaad in the face. The creature's shriek was lost in the basso echoes and disarray of the broken railing as it was hurled off the ship and into the surrounding sea.
She turned just in time to see another gray muzzle descend upon her, with a wide mouth so large it could encompass her head.
*****
Silky hair slid away from his touch, leaving his fingers tingling. A child's laugh was cut short by a man's death scream.
Raidon startled free from his waking reverie.
Monsters ran amok on Green Siren. Crew jumped overboard to escape the onslaught of vicious teeth and claws.
Only Thoster, bawling orders to his fleeing crew, was putting up any kind of fight. The man engaged a blue- skinned, frog-headed monster, but a red one slipped up behind the captain even as Raidon grasped the tactical situation.
The monk charged the blue beast, leaving behind regrets and sorrows, if only for the moment. He called out, "Thoster, watch your flank!" not only to warn the captain but to draw the attention of the blue creature away from the overwhelmed man.
As he hoped, the massive beast whirled just as Raidon leaped straight upward. He jerked his right elbow up and connected with the monster's lower jaw. The momentum of the leap combined with the elbow strike snapped the creature's head back, shattered several of its teeth, and turned its roar into a bellow of pain. The sword sheathed on Raidon's back twisted, as if to remind the monk of its presence. The movement threw off Raidon's balance. Instead of kicking away from the creature at the top of his leap, his legs found empty air. He fell at the monster's feet, losing just enough time that one of the creature's flailing hands clipped him. A rivulet of his own blood tickled his leg.
Raidon crabbed backward the moment he fell, away from the monster as it tried to stomp him into paste. He would censure Angul later, when time permitted, for twisting in its sheath at such an inopportune moment. He only had to get a few feet away from the creature to make room…
Raidon rolled up on his shoulders. At the very moment he started rolling back, he jackknifed his legs down to the deck, flipping himself back to his feet. He came face to face with the blue. The monk raised his arms and snaked them to either side of the creature's massive head. Its head was too big for him to trap it, so he made do by gripping big handfuls of the creature's puffy throat sac.
He yanked out and down with all his strength.
The monster's fierce bellow warbled into a plaintive whistle. Raidon disengaged as it slapped its hands up to plug the wounds beneath its chin. While it was distracted, he bent one leg into his chest as if compressing a spring, then kicked straight out. The heel of his foot smashed into the creature's knee. The crack of breaking bone ricocheted down the deck.
The beast convulsed and dropped sideways like a felled pine. Planking splintered beneath its weight.
Raidon took a moment to scan the deck as his foe twitched. Thoster remained upright, trading blows with another monster-the red one. He didn't see Seren anywhere, but a shimmering school of gleamtail jacks swam like stars in a life-size astrolabe around the boat. That was encouraging. But he worried at Seren's apparent absence.
A couple of the crew, more doughty than their fellows hiding in the rigging, pulled themselves up from below deck, daggers, axes, and scimitars in hand.
Another slaad leaped down at Raidon, so quickly it didn't seem to occupy any of the space between where it started and ended its charge. A handy trick! Apparently it was tired of chasing crew around the mainmast. This one's skin was gray and its size was equal to the monk's. It locked eyes with Raidon. Something in its gaze sparkled, and it leaped at him.
The world blinked. He found himself hanging unsupported over the open hatch to the hold. Crewmen on the ladder to one side gaped at him.
Unprepared for the fall, he still managed to utilize the first-year lesson of Xiang Temple, a skill monks were taught before nearly any other: how to fall.
Raidon tucked into a spin and slapped onto his back at the hold's bottom, taking the impact of the descent so perfectly that despite falling an incredible distance, he hardly felt a thing.