Page 27 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Two mistakes, I thought grimly and shoved my elbow back into somebody I couldn’t see because he’d latched onto me too tight. But he let go at that, and not because I’d hit his solar plexus, where I’d been aiming. I’d forgotten: the fey were typically at least a foot taller than most humans, meaning that his stomach wasn’t where my blow had landed.

He gasped and let me go; I spun and ducked under another guard’s reaching arms and was then confronted by four more beyond him. The only good thing was that they didn’t have swords out. The bad was that, with fey strength and agility, they didn’t need them.

But they weren’t the only menace in town, as demonstrated when I was snatched backward off the balcony by what looked like a giant, purple octopus’ leg.

Maybe because it was a giant, purple octopus’ leg, I realized in shock, as the creature it was attached to waved me around in the air, giving me a skewed view of the dining hall. And of a bunch of equally surprised fey staring up at us. And of the guards diving off the stairs after me.

I didn’t see anything else as the creature shoved me under the waves and tried to drown me.

It did a pretty good job, even when I grabbed a knife off a now-submerged table and shoved it into its leg. I’d hoped the pain would cause it to let me go, but instead, it just made it mad. And so did the guards’ actions, who, weirdly enough, seemed to be on my side.

I saw them when I ended up back in the air briefly, sucking in oxygen and noticing that they’d pulled swords, a couple of spears, and an honest-to-God trident from somewhere and were trying to skewer my attacker. Or maybe they were trying to skewer me, but I didn’t think so. Because one of them threw the trident straight into one of the creature’s giant eyeballs, only for the beast to start flailing furiously in a storm of massive suckered legs, one of which sent the guard sailing across the hall.

It then turned and headed out to sea with its prize, I guessed to eat me in private.

I finally got a good look at it and didn’t enjoy it any more than I had the whale. It was less like an octopus and more like Cthulhu, being almost as tall as the dining hall’s expansive ceiling and having way more than the standard eight legs. There must have been fifty under there, along with a ruff of smaller ones around its neck, which could telescope out to many times their length.

I saw one of the “little” kind stretch to sock a fey who was readying a spell a third of the way across the ballroom while another took a trident from an attacker and tried to skewer him with it. But it couldn’t penetrate his armor, resulting in the beast settling for smacking him over the head. All while fighting a dozen other battles, because yeah. Each of those arms probably had its own brain.

At least, that was how Earth octopi worked, and it looked like Big Daddy was no different. The larger legs had heft, and the smaller had range, and each likely had its own crazed little brain bent on destruction. Meaning that we weren’t fighting a single adversary but a whole platoon.

Not surprisingly, the beast was winning.

Nimue’s guards and Silver Hair’s posse found themselves on the same side, battling for their lives, which wasn't going well based on how many were being tossed around. And I wasn’t doing any better. The mini-mind concentrating on me was flushing dark aubergine in annoyance at the fact that I stubbornly kept breathing.

But dragonscale doesn’t crush easily, no matter how much the beast tried. So the creature jerked, making the arm holding me whip around hard enough almost to snap my neck. But allowing me to see—

“Alphonse?” I yelled, catching sight of the dark figure who had just grabbed one of the massive arms despite looking ridiculously small next to his enormous adversary.

But master-level vamps don’t care what size you are. Master-level vamps just put a hurting on whatever was pissing them off. And Alphonse was no exception.

Guess he really did join our side, I thought, as he and the behemoth fought it out.

It was a little hard to tell what was going on because of all the water and people being flung about and because the guards trying to heal the ward had only managed to get part of it back up. The ocean was still pouring in through a sizeable gap, and the screaming, shouting, and cursing hadn’t diminished. The fey didn’t seem any less horrified at the party crasher than I was, and they sure weren’t volunteering to help battle it, being too busy trampling each other while fighting their way to the exits.

That kind of thing sped up even more when Pritkin joined the fight. I couldn’t see him from this angle, but I knew the feel of his magic as well as my own and felt a smile break over my face. Alphonse could seemingly keep the beast from escaping but couldn’t do much else.

Pritkin could.

As demonstrated when a line of spell fire sliced through the huge arm holding me and sent me plunging into the sea.

I wasn’t free, as the tentacle refused to let me go despite not being attached to its host anymore. But I heaved and struggled and managed to pull myself partway out of its grip, enough to break the churned-up surface of the water, gasping and trying to see what was going on. Only to find that I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Bright red rings had appeared all over the great creature’s skin, the color of freshly spilled blood. I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t look good. And then I knew it wasn’t when the beast spurted an oily, black substance everywhere, clouding the water and fountaining through the air like a fire hose.

People screamed and dove, and a line of black ooze hit Silver-Hair, melting his pretty get-up instantly and stopping only when it hit dragonscale. But while his entourage were cursing and backing the hell up as fast as their heavy armor would let them, he stood his ground. And unlike the other overdressed popinjays I’d seen tonight, he seemed to have a spine because he snarled, pulled a spear off his back, and lunged for the beast.

He’d been trying to gut me a moment ago, but I was glad to have him on board. Because Alphonse had just gone sailing, having been whip-cracked halfway across the room by the tentacle he’d been fighting. And the guards had backed off, probably realizing that they were just getting in the way.

Or maybe they were waiting for reinforcements. Because maybe ten of them were still in action, and they didn’t seem to think that was enough. Which it wasn’t for tackling Behemoth up there, but they could have freed me!

Only nobody seemed interested in freeing me.

Quite the contrary, I realized as a spear sliced through the air and missed my head by inches. I stared around, wondering how bad someone’s aim had to be to miss the writhing mountain of flesh up there with legs bigger than ancient oaks and suckers the size of the guards’ shields. And then two other spears and a spell came whizzing past, the latter bouncing off my armor, and I caught a clue.

But I still didn’t see the culprits, and who could in all this? Water was being thrown around everywhere, grand sprays of it, like the ocean hitting a seawall in a hurricane. The ink was hitting the water and sizzling like fire, only this kind didn’t go out. It did leave puddles of acid-like fury, however, floating around and eating anything or anyone unlucky enough to get in their path.

Which could be anyone since those thousand damned tentacles were churning things up like the swells in a mighty gale. I was bobbing up and down helplessly and couldn’t half see. Like who was trying to kill me in the middle of all this!

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