It was as if the storm had been waiting for its master to arrive. The wind kicked up, howling across the ship and carrying with it the pelting rain. Lightning cracked, throwing flashes of light across the ship.

The pirate captain caught her stare, and a wicked smile sliced across his face at the same time that a particularly bright streak of lightning flashed. He was so large, potentially seven feet of a body honed for murder. His shadow swallowed the line of the ship before him as he took two more steps forward.

If the night had not already spoken of death, it did now.

"Shall the games end now, Nightwrath?" His voice rumbled across the ship, and all movement stopped, as if his words bent them all to his will.

Even Garman, so far gone in his lysian form, stilled beside Lorica.

"Wolfbane." Lorica spat, as if his name on her tongue tasted foul. "I see you decided not to wait."

Stopping in the center of the ship, Wolfbane laughed through his cruel smile. "Oh, you mean for whatever plan you have concocted to rob me of my treasures? No, little spirit. This was only me testing if your band of misfits was truly as threatening as the seas claim. And I must say, I'm disappointed. Though." He raised a brow as he turned a full circle. "I see you sent my friend away. Foolish, if you ask me. He's one of your most powerful allies."

Two were missing, both powerful, but he had to mean Caspian. A surge of protectiveness shocked Ash. She saw that demolished, broken state of Capsian. A state that existed only because of the man now standing upon the ship with the comfort of one who belonged upon it.

Lorica's face revealed nothing. Lowering her blade from where it kept Yuru at bay, she approached Wolfbane. When the animalistic man went to strike, Wolfbane's single hand raise brought him to a harsh stop.

"Is there something you'd like, little spirit?" Wolfbane sneered.

Lorica stopped with less than five feet between them. With the storm distorting the light, Ash couldn't make out her expression, but something in the atmosphere shifted. The storm crackling across the sky wasn't the only one brewing anymore.

"Draw your blade." Lorica's voice cut through both storms, as clear and as sharp as if neither existed.

Wolfbane chortled as he did just that. "The hate in your eyes is delicious."

"This is enough. The blood of both our people stains the wood of my ship. I have heard much of your reputation, so I'm sure you wish to avoid losing any more of your collection. So, fight me." She lifted her sword between them. "Let us be the deciders."

"As you wish." Wolfbane bowed, treating his wolf pelt like an elegant gape. He performed the act far too gracefully for his size, and something about that unsettled Ash, leaving an uneasy feeling deep within her stomach. "But should your people interfere, they'll be the bearers of my wrath."

Instead of voicing her agreement, Lorica snapped, "Stay back. Heleen, keep close to Garman."

The red-headed pirate flinched at the sudden order, but then she nodded and sidled closer to the tensed lysian.

Ash's insides twisted tighter and tighter as the two pirate captains circled each other. The Wolfbane pirates shouted and jeered while the Nightwraths watched on with somber masks of terrified desperation.

She found Willow across the deck, huddled up to Haylan as they both tried to avoid the fire-wielding pirate. Ash wished she could summon her friends to her side, both for their safety and so she could question Willow. Lorica had proven to be collected and controlled. Those characteristics didn't line up with this decision. The exhaustion showed in every creased line on her face, whereas Wolfbane had only arrived. Where was the strategy here?

As if someone had given a call to begin, both captains sprang at each other simultaneously. The dread threatened to close around her neck like a noose. From the first exchange of blows, she knew something was wrong.

Even to her untrained eye, the difference was clear. Wolfbane's attacks flowed, his stances shifting gracefully to accommodate his parries and strikes. Lorica descended upon him like a storm. One furious attack followed the other, seeking whatever piece of flesh it could find.

It would be enough to overwhelm most, but what was the howling wind against a mountainous stone wall?

A deep, resounding chuckle echoed from Wolfbane's chest. "Such viciousness. One would think you're taking this fight personally, Nightwrath."

"You've killed my people!" Lorica snapped. Thunder shook the world as she lunged forward, as if the wrath within those words rent the world in two.

Wolfbane twisted out of her path and struck out with a kick. It collided with Lorica's ribs, but instead of going down, she followed the force's momentum, sliding backwards on the water-slick wood while lashing out with her sword.

He reached for his cheek, and when he brought his hand in front of him, darkness smudged his fingers. The rain quickly washed it away. Blood. Lorica had drawn it first.

Yet the pressure had yet to release from Ash's chest. The Wolfbane pirates' cries grew louder, as if the blood of their captain stoked the fire within them.

"Does this little bit of my blood make the frightened rabbit feel any better? Last I checked"—he shot forward, and his sword locked with Lorica's—"he wished to spill it himself. Or is that just it? Did you not wish for him to have even more blood on his hands?"

Instead of answering, Lorica kicked his knee. He fumbled sideways, and her blade met him, driving straight into his shoulder. A rumble of thunder harmonized with his boisterous laughter.

Lorica may have donned the name of a terrifying spirit, but Wolfbane stepped out of people's nightmares. How could anyone find being stabbed so hilarious?

"This is all your loathing has to offer?" His free hand darted out and grasped Lorica's sword hilt before driving his own sword down.

Lorica released a strangled cry as the metal sank into her thigh. Then, as if lightning struck her, she spasmed. Her spine went rigid for a moment before curling back at a sharp angle. She opened her mouth in a silent scream.

Ash covered her lips before a scream of her own could escape. She needed to move, to get to Lorica, to help, but horror at the situation held her in place.

That wasn't the case for Rork, a Nightwrath who assisted Trella in repairs. Releasing a roar, he charged forward. Wolfbane shoved Lorica down to the deck and met Rork. Before the Nightwrath pirate could attack, Wolfbane stepped too close, grasped a fistful of his long hair, then yanked his neck back. Rork barely managed a grunt before Wolfbane produced a dagger from beneath his cloak and plunged the blade all the way to the hilt through his eye.

If Rork made a sound, the raging storm drowned it out. His body collapsed to the ground.

Shouts rose from all the Nightwrath pirates as they surged forward, but Lorica stilled them with a desperate, heart-wrenching, "No! No closer!" She held her hand out toward a section of the group, as if they needed more than just her voice. Heleen, Ash realized numbly, kept brushing trembling hands through Garman's fur. She didn't know the other woman's power, but it must have been the only holding the lysian back.

"So, it's true then, exactly as that Scion said." A sick glee lit Wolfbane's face as he stared down at Lorica. A few others realized what he meant before her, but Ash's gasps joined theirs when she saw the pirate captain.

It had been easy to miss amongst the chaos before, but in the moment of calm, nobody could miss the symbols across her face. The russet lines stood out on her dark skin, forming loose lines with branching arms that formed semi-circles. On the center of her forehead, two of those lines reached for each other, nearly touching but stopping abruptly as if a barrier stood between them.

Lorica was a Scion.

And she was an Unwoven.

This didn't make any sense. Lorica had described the Unwoven as husks, draining themselves of their own being bit by bit. There hadn't been pity or hesitance in her voice, nothing to imply she thought that the Unwoven could be anything more than those husks.

Once again, a night of death led by Wolfbane pirates ripped at the safety she found in another.

No, this was Lorica. She was the woman who searched for those hurt by her own kind. She offered them peace away from everything while she bore the weight of searching for a way to save them. She protected her crew and, based on the anguish clearer on her face than the Scion marks, cherished them and mourned their loss.

A strange moment passed in which Ash imagined Roan and Lorica side-by-side. Both Unwoven Scions, wronged by the false gods, searching for a way to set things right, but where Roan strode a path of destruction, Lorica paved a way of salvation.

Ash's initial shock and panic morphed on their way to her chest. An ache settled heavy there instead, and tears joined the water trekking down her cheeks.

"A sword made of lunisium," Lorica huffed. "Thanks for the gift." She wrenched it from her leg, and though her face contorted, she didn't make a sound as she stood. Wolfbane's sword acted as a cane as she leveled her own sword at him.

Wolfbane scoffed. "Pathetic." He didn't bother with his dagger. Stepping forward, he shoved the sword out of his path and smashed a fist into her face.

Ash's stomach fell through the ship deck as Lorica went down again. But like every moment since this started, she didn't have time to process anything.

"Garman!" Heleen shrieked at the same time the lysian threw his head back and howled.

He barreled past the people in his way, Nightwrath or Wolfbane pirate, and leaped to crouch over Lorica. He snarled. Both his crimson eyes and the streaks through his fur glowed, giving him the appearance of a beast on fire.

The Wolfbane pirates shifted, the sneers taking on a more aggressive light as they faced their enemies again, but their captain snapped his fingers, drawing their attention back. "No, let them watch. Let them see how hopeless it all really is."

Ash clasped her ring finger as if she could draw enough strength from it to make everything stop, or perhaps at least wrangle the magic skittering beneath her skin. She had to be able to do something with it, right? Not unleash it, though. The illusions would affect everyone around. Still, the temptation to do it anyway remained. The terror had nearly numbed her body, but it kept finding new crevices to dig its claws in.

Garman was a monster. Human soul within or not, he had the body of the Terror so frightening that it was used by the true nightwraths, and now he even emitted the wrath of one. How could things be hopeless?

Yet when Wolfbane threw his dagger to the side, its clattering thud echoed like a death sentence.

"Come, feared Terror of the night," Wolfbane snarled, just as bestial as the lysian before him. "Let's see which of us is the true monster here!"

"Garman—" Lorica started, but Garman threw himself back onto his hind legs and released a spine-tingling battle roar. He crashed back down on all-fours and launched forward in a lunge.

Using the strangeness of his hand-like paws, he curled his claws into Wolfbane's shoulders as he tackled him to the ground. Wolfbane was unnervingly large, but Garman's lysian form was larger. Still, Wolfbane held the Terror off him by the neck. Ash couldn't tell whose snarl was more savage as Garman tried to force himself down enough to bite into Wolfbane's face.

Garman's fangs drew an inch closer, and something Ash had feared gone sparked within her: hope. Wolfbane had bitten off more than he could chew in his arrogance. No matter what he'd said, he couldn't handle an enraged lysian.

As if he could hear her, Wolfbane smiled wickedly. "I let you try, beast!" Wolfbane removed one of his hands from holding Garman back, but before Garman could break the guard of a single arm, Wolfbane swung his fist into Garman's face.

It shouldn't have been enough. It was a single punch against a Terror, yet Garman recoiled like he'd been stabbed. Shaking his head, he scurried back. Once he blinked a few times, the snarl was back in full force, but it was too late.

Wolfbane, already back on his feet, delivered an uppercut to Garman's jaw. The lysian continued to back away, disoriented, and the pirate captain followed, raining blow upon blow down on him. Wolfbane had the bulk to topple some of the strongest men, but that didn't explain this. Something else had to be at play—

Lightning flashed, reflecting on black-tinted metal. Wolfbane's lunisium sword. If he'd make that something to most hurt magical beings, why not other metal he carried? Or, more specifically, wore.

Ash could only watch as Wolfbane drove his bejeweled fist into Garman's underside.

Garman yipped like he was nothing more than a kicked dog. Wolfbane followed as Garman curled in on himself. At some point, he'd drawn out something metal, and as he wrapped his arms around Garman's neck, he pressed that something up against the lysian.

In what was somehow the most heartbreaking moment of the night, Garman yipped and yowled as he tried to escape so desperately that he didn't even attack, only thrashed. Wolfbane held tight and whispered things to Garman too quiet to be heard over everything else.

It became easier for Wolfbane as something impossible happened. Everything about Garman shrunk: his fur, his limbs, his snout, his very body. The fur vanished first, revealing the shifting bones beneath Garman's skin. Ash might have felt ill if this wasn't the sickest she'd ever been.

Wolfbane snapped what he'd been holding onto Garman's neck. A lunisium collar. When Wolfbane let go, Garman slammed into the deck, unconscious.

Despite the deluge, the ship never felt so silent.

A sob from someone broke it first. Ash didn't know who it came from. She could only stare at the fallen bodies of Lorica and Garman. Her captain at least retained consciousness, but the devastation of her expression was worse than a slack face.

"You know the targets!" Wolfbane's shout shattered the momentary stillness. "Gather them, and if you killed any of them, I'll fling you off the edge of that sky island."

The Wolfbane pirates went about grabbing seemingly random pirates. The fire-summoner took Willow hostage and herded Haylan. Yuru held his blade at Lorica's back to guide her, while Dalmat tossed Garman over his shoulder.

Except for a few expletives and shoves, the Nightwrath pirates didn't fight back. Their defeat drenched them in a way the rain never could.

Heavy steps approached her. Ash had her sword raised before she saw who it was. When she did, her arms trembled, but she kept the sword firmly in front of her.

Wolfbane smirked. "The false Dreamwoven. The unchosen twin. Roan's little pawn."

Ash gritted her teeth. He was painfully casual as he walked up to her, completely unarmed. She needed to attack. To fight. To do anything besides stand there. He was the greatest enemy, the one who could take down a lysian with his bare hands. Without him, they could defeat his pirates.

She clung to that desperate belief, but no matter how close she crushed it to her heart, her body wouldn't move.

The tears blurred her vision as both rage and despair ripped her apart.

She barely even noticed when Wolfbane moved her sword aside and stepped right in front of her. He pinched her chin between his fingers and forced her to lift her head.

Despite everything within her pleading for retreat, she forced her glare to remain in place.

The smell of blood and death swallowed her as he leaned closer to her. He remained there, less than half a foot separating them. His sick smile grew as her tremors worsened, as if her fear intoxicated him.

"You shall be a pawn one more time," he said. "I have a message, and you're going to deliver it for me."

*****

So, yeah... Things did not go well for them 😬 Wolfbane is, like, inhumanly strong. Speaking of inhuman, did anyone suspect the Lorica thing? Little good it did her here, though 😅 Just made her more vulnerable to the lunisium. So, who's ready to find out where a couple others were during all that? XD

Let me know your thoughts on the chapter down below, and if you enjoyed it, don't forget to vote and comment! I also have a discord open to anyone who wants to join, and we have a section there to discuss the book :D Let me know if you want to join!