They exchanged one more glance, then ran as if chased by Syroa herself, each bumping past the other, stumbling over each other’s feet in their immeasurable hurry to save themselves. A ray of light, beaming through an ever thickening cloud of smoke was their only guide to freedom while Finn pleaded with the fire to not give into its ravenous hunger.
For the moment, it obeyed, but he knew it wouldn’t last forever. One moment of faltered attention and the frozen landscape of fiery snakes would shoot out across the hull to ignite the other half of the ship. Stumbling through the dark and smoke, Finn made his way to the faint exit, and while the flames parted as he passed, they closed just as quickly behind him. When he reached the deck, coughing and wheezing, he let go of his stranglehold on the element and let it reign freely. He’d scarcely clambered over the nearest bannister when a low rumble rocked the ship and-
-The heat blasted him overboard, fragments of splintered wood rained down into the water with him, piercing the cool surface like angry daggers. By some miracle, he wasn’t hit and resurfaced moments later, gasping for air, clutching his painfully ringing ears. He tried to turn around, flailed his arm, dipped below the waves for a second, re-emerged, then stared at his handiwork.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. The once proud ship was rented apart, and the smokeless two halves were tilted sideways like a bit of dry bread snapped in twain. Steam hissed angrily above the corpse of the ship, drowning out the noise of desperate sailors: those who hadn’t been so lucky to have been killed instantly but had instead been flung into the water like ragdolls, only to find themselves swimming in a pool of their own blood, and without legs or half their face blown off.
Finn swallowed hard, clenched his jaw, and turned back around. He didn’t want to look at it any longer than necessary, nor did he want to try his luck with the poor sods that were clutching their faces, screaming for help that wouldn’t come. Desperate men could be driven to desperate acts, and those that knew they’d die there and then might be inclined to take another soul down with them.
Shaking like a reed he was the last to reach the shore safely, judging by the many familiar faces he saw gathered there. But his eyes soon found the culprit of it all, the one responsible for the biggest fuckup in the history of fuckups. Tired though he was, he didn’t collapse onto the safe bosom of the shore like Peleus. He merely fell to his knees, and kneaded the sand between clenched, whitehot fists, wishing there’d been a loose rock on the shore he could throw at that blithering idiot-
There were about a thousand ugly things he wanted to say to Oberan, and then repeat them to Patrick, first and foremost of which was the fact that both men had seemed all too happy to sacrifice him for their selfish needs.
In the end, he merely stood up, sent a foul glare in their direction and crushed the sand between his fingers before he stormed off into the dunes.
“Cunts,” he muttered under his breath.
Far too polite, baby brother, he heard Zipper answer in his mind.
Lores
Leadership: Voluntarily scouting ahead.
Stealth: Boarding a ship undetected.
Tactics: How to knock out two guards unseen.
Defiance: The Wind cautions you of danger.
Defiance: Taming fire.
Swimming: swimming away from a sinking ship.
