Smoke was everywhere, and I had melted into it. 

I dashed to my right under the curtain of smoke when the captain lunged with his cutlass. The blade missed my arm by inches, but still managed a slice through my wool coat sleeve. Storm cut and hacked through any thick gray smoke or dark shadow that lurked nearby. I did my best to keep out of his way.

Clouded from view, I moved like a ghost running from its grave. The instant I stopped on Storm’s right, that skull around his neck belched a sickly, glowing green vapor. The rolling steam poured out the eye sockets, then flowed up over the scrimshaw that writhed in the ghoulish gas. It rose around the captain’s face.

“Very clever, Doctor!” Storm snarled.

He turned in the blink of an eye and lashed out at me. The slash for my face was an alarming blur, almost too fast to follow. I stepped out of reach at the last second. His blade missed my nose by inches. At that moment, I regretted leaving my sword back aboard the Silk Duchess. That was stupid. If I didn’t die, I wouldn’t make that mistake twice. 

The captain pressed his attack with a wild ferocity. I dodged aside, but I couldn’t keep that up forever. What bothered me was that he knew roughly where I was. The smoke should have clouded his senses, but he acted like it didn’t. At least, not entirely. I saw him squint more than once before he tried to skewer me. It was as if he saw me as a faint blur or some suspicious shadow. 

But I had something like a plan. When he tried for another stab at my throat, I went on the attack.

I ducked low, then batted his sword away with my left arm. Before he could recover, I followed up with a hard right fist smashed against his jaw. The captain’s head jerked to the side, eyes crossed from the impact. I rubbed my hand to ease the sting from the punch.

The man stumbled backwards with a grunt and a bloody lip. Sinister steam boiled up around his face from that small skull at his neck. Storm blinked then shook his head before he squinted in my direction. A glare of hot hate followed a second later. It really seemed he could see through the smoke. That was new. I suspected his amulet had something to do with it.

“I’ll gut you and your crew, Doctor, then still get what I’m after! I’ll hang your head and theirs from my ship’s mast!”

I ignored the bait. There were worse things to worry about.

The smoke was almost gone, so I pulled a bit of power from the Etherwave Arcana to blend deeper into the shadows. Fatigue from the Arcana immediately haunted me, but the effect was worth it. Storm glanced around in a sudden panic while the small skull at his neck burned with a bright blaze of green fire.

The moment he turned his back, I let go of the power. It slid away while the enchanted smoke finally evaporated around me. I melted out of the darkness as Storm turned around. He instantly charged the second he locked eyes with me. I side-stepped, then smashed a quick kick into his gut. The pirate doubled over into a violent coughing fit while he dropped his cutlass.

I stepped in close to pound a right hook twice into his jaw before he could recover either air or wits. One punch might have been enough, but two was for good measure. Captain Dryden Storm collapsed to the worn down, weathered floor like an old sack of potatoes. I snatched up his cutlass, then reached for his uncanny amulet around his neck.

The thing burned me the instant I tried to touch it. I jerked back as a forked tongue of green flame leaped out of the eyes sockets, hungry for my fingers. Once I stepped away, the fire slithered back into the skull. To my surprise, Captain Storm wasn’t touched or burned at all. 

That told me there was more to this amulet than I had time to understand. Besides, I needed to get my friends and crew out of these damn ruins alive. So I left the captain and his strange amulet alone. Instead, I turned to help Lysander, Skaldi, and the others. 

But they already had things well in hand. 

Lysander had channeled power from the Etherwave Arcana to shove glistening, ghostly white shields between our crew and the pirates. This gave Skaldi and Durner a chance to grab a pair of heavy end tables, which they used to bash their way into the small mob of pirates. On their heels was the rest of our small group. They cut loose with a volley of pistol fire, then closed in with cutlass and dagger. I drew a deep breath, then raced over to join them.

The pirates didn’t go quiet or easily. But it wasn’t long before the whole nightmare came to a bloody, brutal, but thankfully short end. We lost another of our group, one of the new deck crew, but the pirates had lost more. The survivors had retreated with their dazed captain for the hole they had blasted in the west wall. Storm didn’t yet have his wits back about him, but he looked none too happy about the retreat.

“The fight’s gone out of them,” Lysander cried out. “Make for the ship!”

We barely made it past the blast hole before a soul-splitting scream from the swamp stopped us dead still. 

Outside the ruin, a swarm of books bearing claws dropped off the roof like an avalanche of knives. The nearest pirate shrieked while he fell backwards into the swamp water, covered in a snapping blanket of crabs. His companions swatted desperately in all directions in an attempt to save their own skin. It was a losing battle that was difficult to watch. Fatigue from calling on the Etherwave Arcana to enhance the smoke clouded my thoughts, so instinct tried to take the wheel. I stepped toward the dying pirates. 

Skaldi’s grip on my left arm was like an iron vice. 

“Doctor, no! They’re dead already,” he growled. “What the crabs won’t get, their venom will. You know that.”

“But…” I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Yes, of course.”

Skaldi nodded and released my arm. “After all, we’ve got our own problems.”

The short blacksmith jerked his head toward the library’s double doors we had barricaded. At least, the ones we thought we had barricaded.

I looked over in time to see the last of the unstable barricade fall apart. Time seemed to slow to crawl while the tall library double doors creaked open with a menacing moan. They parted just wide enough that a person could step through to the library, or a mob of thesaurus crabs could spill out into the hallway. Unfortunately, it was the latter. 

A putrid wave of teeth, claws, and hungry death rushed out at us. I reached down to my belt for another vial to hopefully slow them down. There was only an empty belt loop. 

“Hells! I’m out of elixir. Run for the outside!”

We raced down the hall with crabs hot on our heels. A good third of the murderous mob split off to rush out the blast hole for the pirates, but the rest were eager for us. Once we reached the ruin’s entrance, a roar of anger, like a mad bear, exploded behind us. I spun around, cutlass at the ready. 

Back the way we came, Captain Storm was in the hallway, slowly headed in our direction. His skull amulet burned like a sickly green signal lantern while he grabbed crab after crab to tear them apart with his bare hands. Raw fury tinted by a hint of bloodlust shone in his eyes. For each crab he killed, two more took their place to race onto the captain and bite down hard. The man was filthy with bite wounds in seconds. 

Storm smashed the a crab against a nearby wall, then stabbed a bloody finger in my direction with a savage snarl.

“You still have my book, Doctor. Mark my words, I’ll have it and your head!”

I glanced past the ruin’s shattered front doors to a brown sandy clearing dotted with green, feather-topped clumps of pampas grass. The landing party survivors had gathered there, battered, bloody, but alive and whole. Not a single pirate or crab was in sight. That just left myself and the pirates inside the ruins. I turned and locked with Captain Storm.

Anger seethed beneath his sinister, steel-gray eyes, boiling like a hot pot of soup while he methodically attacked the crabs. But there was something else, too. A dark predatory presence I could almost feel. It looked back out at the world, as if waiting for the right moment to strike. That wouldn’t be today.

“Captain! Catch!”

I hurled the cutlass down the hallway. Captain Storm caught it easily in mid-air despite the crabs that desperately worked to tear him apart.

“Godspeed,” I said, then ran out of the ruins.

Once I joined the others, I looked back. Captain Storm was right where I left him, fighting a desperate battle against the small swarm of thesaurus crabs. Between wicked slashes at the beasts during the middle of his fighting retreat, he shot a look of hellish rage at me. Crabs clung to him from boot to shoulder while they chewed through to the man beneath the clothes. Throughout his fight, Storm never screamed or made a sound outside the occasional grunt, then crunch when he severed a crab with his cutlass.

I let go of a shaky breath to steady my nerves. It didn’t entirely work.

“Lysander? My friend, please tell me you’ve a path away from here,” I asked quickly.

The navigator tilted his head a little to the right, then brushed a hand lightly over the feathery flowers of the pampas grass. He squinted at nothing in front of him, then frowned. In the past, he’d often told me it was like he could hear the rocks and trees whispering a bargain to him in exchange for suggestions. He glanced over at me a second later with a nod.

“I’ve got it.”

He gestured to a faint path nearby that wound lazily through the jungle. It wasn’t much more than a memory of a game trail.

“That way, follow me,” he said, then trotted down the path.

The others hurried after him. Skaldi stopped next to me and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I’ll be glad when we’re back aboard the Duchess.”

“Won’t we all?” I agreed with a dark tone.

The last of the pirate screams thankfully died away by the time we lost sight of the ruins.