With that, he strode around the desk, past the two knights, and opened the cabin door. The acrid scent of salt greeted him, and could be tasted in the drizzle of rain. Wind roared. Thunder crashed from below as the canons fired again. Their peals were echoed by the sky when less than a league to the north, lightning skirted the bleak pinnacles of the island to which they sailed. Somewhere within that crown of peaks and gray shroud of clouds loomed Windemere's Keep and Windemere himself.

Several bursts flared in the east as he climbed on deck: Windemere's fleet returning fire. The ocean around Blackthorn's ship erupted in a spatter of gray columns, one geyser near enough that Blackthorn thought he might be able to reach over the railing and touch it. More booms as the ships that followed Blackthorn took aim at the enemy. Moments later, flames and screams burgeoned from one of Windemere's ships. The crew of Blackthorn's own frigate cheered, including Lord Malone, who, along with Sir Simon, joined Blackthorn by the railing. "For Courage!" shouted Malone.

Sir Simon, now standing next to Blackthorn, did not share his colleague's enthusiasm. "'Tis but one ship," he cried above the wind. "And there are more out there."

"Not for long," Blackthorn whispered, and Sir Simon's sharp intake of breath sounded over the next volley of canons.

The waves around the closest enemy ship surged up around her hull, as if forming a giant burial mound, then violently broke apart as they gave birth to a tentacle, its tip nearly twice the width of the ship's mast, and yet still thickening when it rose up and up, higher than the mainmast itself. Blackthorn's heart beat a rapid underscore to the distant cries of terror, and his hand empathetically touched the hilt of his sword while he watched Windemere's sailors vainly hack at the monstrous limb. Their assaults were in vain. Another tentacle sprang from the starboard side of the ship, then another, and another. Lightning flashed, briefly coating the flailing appendages with an oily gleam. When the thunder subdued, they came crashing down, tearing the frigate apart. Men and timber spilled into the sea.

"By the Virtues!" Malone cried, but his expression of petrified awe was not fixated on this particular spectacle. Instead, the Lord of Serpent's Hold gazed southeast as the neck and head of a great leviathan burst forth from the waves, rising as tall as the tentacles, and from the its fanged maw burst a veil of fire, setting the masts and sails of two more of Windemere's fleet aflame. With a screeching roar, the serpent then dove across one of the decks, carving the hull in two, as it sought to attack the frigates beyond.

Lord Malone thrust his fist into the air as lightning forked through the heavens. "Fate is with us!" he called again, triumphantly. "Let our grievances with Windemere be damned! His fleet and ours must unite to survive these beasts. For Courage! For the Serpent!"

As if summoned by Malone's call, the hump of another creature appeared, this one right beneath Blackthorn's own frigate. The ship rocked, forcing the knights to grab the railing. Lord Malone laughed, unsheathed his sword in preparation for battle, but the serpent pressed onward to join its brethren. Malone stared after it, perplexed, as Blackthorn's ship crashed back onto its keel.

Sir Simon backed away from the railing, his cape billowing in the wind. "They attack Windemere's fleet, but not our own," he shouted. Blackthorn pivoted to face the knight errant, who stood with his back to the west, against an entirely new backdrop of destruction. The maelstrom raged, a whirling rupture in the ocean, so wide that it had drawn in a three of Windemere's ships. And by Blackthorn's judgment, the waters should have been towing at his ship as well. So close were they that he could see men drowning within the whirlpool, was even able to catch the eye of one, a young man with a headband and long hair, his shirt long torn from his torso. He raised his left arm imploringly, or perhaps in farewell, then the ocean took him for its own. Yet Blackthorn's frigate sailed on, skirting the edge of the vortex as if it did not exist, propelled forward by the winds and water.