They were late to the party. When the shadow of the merchant ship surfaced on the horizon, amidst the ring of sharks, the red in the waves had already waned. The wreckage of the warships blazed on the waters and the shattered ships of wood sank under the mayhem. Yet the bloodbath persisted with the few remaining, and Stormfalcon’s emergence paused their hostility.

  “And we become the common enemy by being last to the event,” Kidd uttered as they halted their warship and hovered out of the protective cover. The reverse thrust frothed the ocean and broke the ripples, and Nyte backed off on Ewan’s command, his Astylinds staying behind for security. Victory or defeat, Stormfalcon couldn’t risk the outcome that covered the waters in front of them, not until the optimum parts hugged its core modules.

  “No one welcomed you here,” a burly man with tall tressed beard growled from afar, steaming from his baked-red skin, lugging a cudgel dripping with flesh and brain matter—the database titled him Parth Russel, the only man who meddled in the chaos alone.

  “Call me rude then,” Ewan said, and the four took their position around him. Lance spearheaded the formation, his scythe buzzing for blood; Kidd complemented his brash offense with his agility, unsheathing his dagger; Ewan held the middle as the main spellcaster and the conductor; and Nana and Stefan manned the back for timely supports. The lack of experience manifested in their clumsy positioning though, and it elicited giggles from a woman on the other side.

  “Bitch, you’re not leaving alive here today,” Kidd said, grinding his teeth as his knuckles whitened on the dagger’s grip. “Not this time.”

  “Ewan Ayres, regardless of what happened before, we can still be called old acquaintances. What do you say, want to join hands?” the bald man said as the database named him Orson Mave, the head of their team—who’d invited Ewan and Nana before. “We’ll split the info fifty-fifty, then we can share what we got for a price.”

  “Yeah, why not,” Ewan said.

  The highest level on the field recorded a ‘Second Surge’, from Parth with the cudgel, while the rest settled at an average of ‘First Surge’; Ewan’s side fell to the bottom against the competition with ‘Zeroth Surge’ or parallel across the team. And when the conflict resumed, the impromptu agreement split the waters into two—Parth and another team went for Orson, their Astylinds barreling against each other with coeval roars, and the last team faced Ewan, the barrage of fireballs hurtling in before their malice made its way.

  Ewan triggered his staff’s etched spell for his side’s defense as Lance culled the fireballs down, a torrent of water rising from Morinfair to smother the rest—Nana made her move, her glowing Runecube hovering before her.

  Elemental Cloak!

  Their affinities fashioned the cloaks for them, the elements granting their defense their characters. Nana donned an ocean-blue, Kidd fluttered a charcoal-black, Lance rocked a blood-red, while Stefan hugged an unseeming ashen-gray.

  A Fire Snake slammed into Lance’s shield and the defensive cloak, a counterblast of fire slithering back, and Kidd matched a burning man as the flickering dark and the raging fire clashed. A Water Bear and a Wind Swan protected the last two men on their team while they assisted their front line with support spells from afar—one healed while the other bade his time.

  Nana hauled streams of water from Morinfair, crushing and remaking it into compressed water, and launched the hefty bolts at the Fireborn. Kidd flickered away from the incoming storm of fire, slicing the stray cinders, and the bolts from behind rammed into the burning man, choking his storm, and engulfing him in the soaring steam.

  Stefan raised his lantern and echoed a droning hum, muddling the Fire Snake’s intent, gouging an open space before Lance for him to breathe from the rapid onslaught. The fire flickered in his lantern, and as his voice undulated, the snake writhed in pain and rampaged.

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  “Stefan…l-lower it down.” Lance struggled to breathe the words out, groaning and holding his head, his shield trembling—Stefan’s lack of practice with the target spell contained him into its range too.

  “My bad,” Stefan muttered, and pulled his spell back, halting the agony for the snake too.

  “Can you imbeciles really do it?” a man from Orson’s team yelled, fishes of light swimming around him—the databased had him as Quinn, the conflict between them had happened because of him.

  “Mind your own business,” Ewan said, finishing the last strokes of his spell, pushing the staff out as his overcoat danced with the bloodied wind.

  Ice Daggers!

  A few floated around him when the spell churned them out while the rest of the dozens zoomed out for the two battlefields, supporting Kidd and Lance with an eye out on Nana and Stefan for any sign of danger.

  Stigma: Negative!

  Bloodstars!

  The head-sized orbs of blood fashioned around the battlefield, dripping red as they drifted about, scant in number but each crash of the two yielded a third, and the increment checked the enemies.

  The Fireborn thrashed them away, defending against Kidd’s edges, howling with each punch, while the Fire Snake creeped around them and attacked Lance again. Even at its peak numbers, the spell wasn’t enough for stronger targets, so Ewan moved for a counter.

  Frostweb!

  Phantasm!

  And the mystic doubled the blood orbs on the field, blending the illusion with the reality, the cobweb of ice aiding its mirage. The two enemies stumbled with the false and truth, the frosty filaments snarling their advance, their attacks phasing through the faux and the real hammering them from behind, and Kidd and Lance finally got ahead, dominating the battle.

  When his spells gave his vanguards an advantage, Ewan aimed for the back support. But before he prepared his next spell circuit, a salvo of steaming water needles rained from the cloud and shredded the icy cobweb and the blood orbs, false or true alike, and the scale tipped to their side again.

  Ewan squinted at the man at the back—Onyx Vaine—who rested his hand after the cast, meeting his heterochromatic glance before the Wind Swan covered him and glared back. The back and forth of the spells had already expressed its pattern—if Ewan scarfed their meat, they would gnaw his bones, neither side could get a decisive victory. “We’re retreating.”

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