[IRP] Return to the Dread Isle

[Val Ritz]

Amidst the swirling foam and shouting crew scrambling up from below, a crackling wave of purplish force ripped outwards from one of the stacks of sodden supplies in a circle. Apollonia lurched up after it, soaked from blue head to toe but holding a steaming black tome in a white-knuckled left hand.

"What'n th' fresh hell--" she began, before taking a spurt of salt water from a buckling timber square in the mouth. A furious, spluttering snarl left her, and the dark magic raged harder against the rising water. Surface. Deck. Away from the leaks. She forced her way toward the stairs up. At the last second, she caught a sound of burbling and splashing that didn't quite mesh with that of the hull sucking in ocean. She bobbed her head back down, and yelped as she caught sight of someone's thrashing hands and feet being swept astern.

"Oh no ye don', no' on my watch," she murmured, and flipped forward a page. her eyes and hands crackled with pitch-black fire, and a tongue of such lashed out like a fishing line from the tip of her quarterstaff. The dark mage jerked her chin up and heaved. The magic, now coiled around the girl's ankle, dragged her through the surging water toward the hatch. "Les' go, up ye get!"