Kings Game

Chapter 87 - Storm Chasing

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Three days. Three days was all it took for a single man to wipe out half an armada. The combined forces of the Esmun Republic, the Uhlaran Loyalists, and the outlander nations were nothing compared to a demi-god and his harpoons.

Toran had sat and watched as Tasos's Wrath cut through the night and snuck up on enemy ships. Mentass would toss a handful of harpoons and entire ships would go up in a flash of light. The armada never even had a chance to fight back. The disparity in firepower was overwhelming.

Whenever Mentass began his little firework show, nearby ships would come to aid their conflagrating allies, only to find nobody there. Tasos's Wrath was a silent predator, sneaking between ships under the cover of darkness, its sails furled and its hull covered in dull plates that melded with the waves. So long as clouds covered the moon and stars, Tasos's Wrath was an invisible force, it was the unseen fist of the god himself.

The enemy armada wasn't completely helpless, however. On the third night of Mentass's killing spree, half of the remaining ships made a surge towards the port. Toran had expected Mentass to push forward and cut them off, or to pull the ship out of the water to fly back towards the port city.

Instead, Mentass did nothing. When pressed, he merely shrugged and said, "Protecting the port is the army's job, we're just here to go fishing and run some errands for the gilded ass that pays our wages."

In the dead of night, Toran had watched as over a dozen warships descended on the port city of Stormfall. Many of them got close enough to fire their cannons and send a wave of destruction hurtling towards the port. Ships exploded and ramparts shattered as cannonballs rained down on the city, but the damage was minimal, negligible almost. After the first volley from the attacking armada, the city fired back, unleashing a maelstrom of flaming bolts from both ship and defensive posts.

Within minutes, the attackers were ablaze, their ships sinking as they tried to turn around and flee. In greater numbers, the enemy armada may have been able to do some damage, but after having their numbers thinned by Mentass, they didn't stand a chance.

"There," said Mentass, "See? Nothing to worry about. We'll play with these fools a little more, then we'll get on to our main focus."

"Which is?" asked Toran.

"To deal with Typhoon Kalan."

"Funny, the golden ass didn't say anything about it."

"That's because he never thinks about it. Despite that, it's our primary task whenever we come out here. Keeping that storm from touching our shores is my mission in life, whether the King assigns it to me or not. The storm is currently to the south, which is good for us. It means that it will be a few months before it tries to make landfall again. I'm hoping to go and push it even further south. I don't want to have to deal with that cranky old bastard until this war is well and truly over."

"Are you referring to the King, or the storm?"

"The storm, obviously. I swear that old bastard waits until the absolute worst moment to come knocking on our door. If I'm being honest, I think he's just bored. He wiped out the entire southern coast centuries ago and now he's aiming for us because we're the new game in town, relatively speaking."

"You speak as though Typhoon Kalan has a mind of its own," said Toran.

"He does," said Mentass, and left it at that.

After a night chasing Esmun ships, and a few hours of sleep, Mentass woke the crew with a shout and everyone sprung into action. Toran, moving at a much more subdued pace, pulled himself out of the bunk he'd been assigned and went to munch on some stale bread and sip some crappy coffee. The crew tolerated him well enough, not that he cared, but they didn't engage with him enough that he wouldn't feel lonely. Toran was a stranger on a strange man's ship.