“None of us has the shipwright skills to build boats. Seashine City had also not yet cleared out the sahuagin prowling the coasts.”
Cedric begins, but Grebs interrupts, holding out a bag of artifacts.
“I own many things, and I’m sure some of them can help!”
Cenvin’s jaw drops at the bag and the thought of the endless valuable artifacts stored within. Looking behind at Durand and Lenny, he wisely holds back.
Cedric produces some items from within. Some of them appear useful for shipbuilding, so I’ll briefly summarize them here:
- Gauntlets of Ogre Power—Made of iron with the uncanny face of an ogre etched into the material. The wielder gains almost superhuman strength comparable to that of an ogre.
- Headband of Intellect—Shiny, dazzling, with a piece of glittering sapphire embedded in the front. Once adorned and attuned to this piece of jewelry, the wearer will gain a boost in intelligence.
- Folding Boat—A wooden box that can expand into a 24-ft ship! Although it can’t fit everyone, this eliminates the need to build one more boat by hand.
- Fable’s Carpentry Kit—With the normal appearance of an ordinary toolkit, this is the prized possession of a passed merchant, now handed down to Grebs. This set of tools magically guides users to create and assemble whatever they wish.
- Instant Fortress—Upon activation of a metal cube, a 30-ft square adamantine tower will materialize. It serves various uses: protection, utility, and housing.
Apart from Greb’s stash of magic items, Durand and Lenny also offer to help via their spellcasting. Naturally, Cedric agreed. With everything sorted out, the caravan makes a sharp detour west, towards Italica’s coast. The party nervously follows Cedric out of the mountains to overlook a small bay, surrounded by silver hills of lifeless rock, sporting a pristine, untouched beach that declines smoothly into the ocean. The merchants are all on horseback, some riding their wagons. Cedric pauses momentarily to let the party catch up.
“How did you know this was here?” Cenvin asks, astounded.
“Like I’ve said, I’ve done this before,” Cedric replies smugly. “But since then, the Sahuagin had been viciously expanding their territory. We may be ambushed during construction.”
“If that happens, how long will we need to hold out for?” Inquires Durand,"
Cedric’s humble eye sags.
“The entire day.”
Lenny trades meaningful glances with the rest of the party and confidently beats his chest. “That is light work, Cedric. I assure you that we will give our lives and do our best.”
“Me too,” Durand states.
They look at Cenvin, who hesitates and nods lightly, “Yeah.”
Kryler and Grebs gallop closer.
“Let us hope no merchants will claim others’ goods after this ordeal,” Kryler grimly remarks.
“On the bright side, after we reach Seashine City, all our problems will be resolved! They have a regularly maintained trade route with Starmetal Valley.” Grebs adds optimistically.
Cenvin gleefully pats Grebs’s shoulder.
“Hey, don’t worry. We’re the main characters; we can’t die. After this, mind if you share some of the… good stuff?”
It takes Grebs a second to realize that Cenvin meant his magic items. He raises his head in a hearty laugh.
“Of course, good sir!”
“Go down! Everyone has a role to play! May you still own your claim!!” Cedric commands.
The wagons are driven right up to the shore, and merchants instantly begin disassembling them. Working as a human assembly chain, the lumber is organized into giant stacks and carried to construct the boat. The folding boat is activated and placed nearby for the builders to copy. Kryler is at the center of it all, using Fable’s Carpentry Kit to work the pieces quickly. At his side are two fellow men, one wearing the Gauntlets of Ogre Power and the other donning the Headband of Intellect. As a trio, they begin speeding through the process.
Also on the shore are Durand and Lenny. By casting Conjure Animals, they have eight harmless fishes swimming along the beach as detectors for approaching sahuagin. Simultaneously, they assist Kryler in building the boat.
Watching from atop the Instant Fortress, Cedric surveys and directs the entire operation. Behind him is Cenvin. Although not a spellcaster, he still tries his best to help Cedric scan the environment for any threats.
The water glints with piercing sunshine and peacefulness. On the far horizon, frothy waves approach the construction.
The boat is 85% completed. A bit more comfortable now that no threats have yet appeared, Cedric lets out a relieving sigh and sits down. Cenvin silently stands alongside him.
Grebs breaks away from the assembly line and cheerfully wipes some sweat off. He looks up and addresses the two on the Instant Fortress:
“This isn’t looking—”
An algae-coated spear pierces his plump body and skewers him against the sands. His blood splatters onto the Instant Fortress and bleeds into the pebbles and gravel, dying them a bright brown. Cenvin turns to the water with pure disbelief.
Evil silhouettes begin crawling onto the shore.
The seawater bobbles with an unholy brooding as the first of the sahuagin bursts from the now-inky waters, their webbed claws slashing through the surf like blades. Eyes that glow with unadulterated bloodlust penetrate the chilling air, reflecting the cold hunger of creatures born in the depths. Their scaly, slimy bodies, smeared with tribal marks and depictions of the Higher Power, move forward in terrifying lockstep, the very breeze wavering with their throaty, animalistic war cries. Barbed spears and jagged coral-adorned claws reflect the sharp sunlight, still damp with the salty remains of their previous meal. Sand turns accursed and damp beneath their clawed feet as they drag ashore, driven by a frenzy at the sight of their first kill. Their gills pulse with hunger, relishing the scent of the fresh body in the winds, and their jagged teeth click and grind, yearning to cause hurt, misery, and nightmares. With a cacophonous shriek, they charge forward, a tidal wave of death, focused on butchering any moving thing that comes into their sight. Although not an Otherworld species, their terrifying features belong under the eternal cursed sea of the sky.
Durand and Lenny are gravely astonished that the sahuagin did not kill their scouting fishes. Weapons drawn, they charge forth towards the advancing sahuagin.
“I’ve checked,” Durand tells Lenny, “that sahuagin aren’t very strong. They have a challenge level of ?.”
“But how many are there?” Lenny gloomily responds.
He strikes at the first sahuagin and lands a clean wound. Sheathes Rikki and draws his quarterstaff. Enchants with Shillelagh.
Durand follows up with a series of quick jabs and slashes, cutting down the sahuagin like a chef with tofu. Seeing that the other sahuagin are not yet close, he puts down a sneaky Spike Growth. The thorns and vines are camouflaged amongst the sand. Lenny conjures an unstable shard of Ice Knife and flings it towards the closest group of sahuagin. It then explodes in an icy eruption, knocking down two.
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More sahuagin surface. Their merciless eyes trained on the dead body of Grebs behind the two adventurers, and they began chanting a metallic war cry. Lenny and Durand feel shivers go down their spines before they are joined by Cenvin. He unloads a volley into the ranks.
Meanwhile, the merchants are immobilized with fear. Cedric rushes over and kicks Kryler into motion.
“They’re risking their lives to protect us! If you don’t want to become one of the casualties, build! Build, goddamnit!”
“Do you think they can kill them all?”
Cedric turns back. “What?”
“Can they survive?” Kryler’s voice drips with distraught.
Cedric furrows his brow suspiciously. “You don’t talk like your usual self.”
His eyes widen as Kryler’s hands drop a piece of wood. Shaking and vibrating uncontrollably like it has a mind, he can do nothing but watch as his hands pick up a knife from the carpentry kit. He gives Cedric one last terrified look. With a splurt, his hands plunge the knife into his own throat, and he gurgles and coughs as he begins to choke. Cedric stumbles back and collapses on the floor in horror.
Back to the shore, an unnaturally large sahuagin with four arms emerges. Towering over his fellow kin, wielding a razor-sharp trident in one hand and holding a knife in the other. The four-armed sahuagin commander: a baron. The water around them boils in anticipation of the inevitable slaughter that is about to take place.
At the sight of it, Cenvin bends over and holds his head, shrieking painfully. After a significant internal struggle, he regains stability.
“It felt like something tried to take over my head,” he fearfully says.
“HUMANS!” The sahuagin baron bellows. “Let us make this easy. Obey my command and die!”
Breathing in, it chokes on a block of solidified air. He directs his gaze to a shivering Durand, hands outstretched as he works his ability. The baron’s jaw cracks down, shattering the solidifying enchantment on the air and breaking his concentration.
It laughs ruthlessly. “No cheesing. No avoiding. No living. Sahuagin, CHARGE!”
The soldiers pick up their pace. The baron’s words seem to have a special effect on them. With his Leadership, their blood-filled pupils lock onto the adventurers.
“The baron must be Gifted, seeing that he uses something similar to mind control,” Durand observes. “Me and Lenny can easily clear the horde. Cenvin, you go for the boss. Oorah!”
They spring into motion with Durand leading the charge. Cenvin looks at Durand’s back disdainfully, “Wrong battle cry. This isn’t airsoft.”
Durand draws and shoots an arrow into the air, and with Conjure Barrage, he peppers a large group of sahuagin with lethal barbs. The survivors snarl and charge, triggering the previously placed Spike Growth. The sahuagin bawls and falls dead. He then halts other advancing sahuagin by freezing water around their legs, causing them to trip on each other and splash in the water.
Lenny produces three light orbs of death and sends them flying into sahuagin. A few try to knock the orbs away, but they obstinately phase through their weapons like incorporeal mist. They explode in a glimmering flash of brilliant radiance, immediately killing the target, injuring the ones nearby, and temporarily blinding sahuagin further away. He then wields his enchanted quarterstaff and advances towards the disrupted sahuagin.
The baron rapidly regains vision to see Cenvin’s Shimmerim being shoved up its face. Given a nanosecond, it shoves to the right, sustaining a gnarly streak on its cheek. The rapier’s tip quivers in the air as if to savor the drops of monstrous blood. The baron looks down to see Cenvin relatively far away.
“‘Impossible, there’s no chance he’s within five feet of me,’” Cenvin taunts. “That’s what you’re thinking, right? Well, what’s logic in DnD?”
Shimmerim, drawing from Cenvin’s space-time properties of his ability, seems to teleport itself directly to the target’s position. Reaching from ten feet away, it lands blows on the baron without worrying about it being at melee range.
The water broods with unyielding disaster.
“Neat trick,” the baron purrs, a fresh bleeding wound now in its torso, chest, and leg. It points a barnacle-decorated finger at Cenvin.
The water erupts, a dam breaking under an unrestrained tsunami, eldritch enchantments weaving through the very molecules of a liquid to bend it to the baron’s wishes.
A massive wave hurls forward and blasts at breakneck speed towards Cenvin. He braces and tanks the roaring water without sustaining damage. Behind him, not seeing the wave, Durand gets caught off-guard and gets slammed against the shore. The air gets knocked out of him and replaced with seawater.
“Durand!” Cenvin calls in a panic.
Behind, the baron looms menacingly, the trident situated directly above him.
“Watch the battle, idiot.”
His trident buries itself in Cenvin’s shoulder, drawing an agonizing, feral scream. Cenvin slams Shimmerim against its arm, but it won’t budge like a rock. The arm turns the trident, cracking and enlarging the hole. He blinks, and the baron finds itself pushing its trident down into ordinary sand.
“Where did you go, weakling?”
A voice rings from behind.
“The question is, where’d you going to go?”
Shimmerim stabs through the baron’s chest from behind. A black portal opens under its feet, and it falls through, and down into stasis in Cenvin’s pocket dimension.
He ecstatically thinks: That’s right, Assert. I just took down a CR 5 monster with something you thought I couldn’t use. I’ve finally proven you wrong. I’m not a disappointment! I’m not a weakling! Oh, I wish your dead body could see this right now, see my triumph in all its glory!
Lenny smashes a sahuagin’s skull and looks up to see the baron’s terrified head disappear.
“The pocket dimension,” He says with wondrous joy and pride, “You’re finally using it! No more coma?”
Cenvin confidently nods, “So far, so good! The Starmetal is working magic.” He winces. “But the sahuagin sure did a number on me. My shoulder might be broken.”
“Come over, let me heal you,” Lenny calls.
They meet up and touch. Cenvin’s shoulder covers up the wound as if nothing happened.
“Dungeons and Dragons logic,” Lenny smiles. “It’s never as bad as it appears to be.”
I am doing well as a support! With healing and my teammates, I feel unstoppable! It’s safe to say that Diem has underestimated our capabilities! Finally, for once, I am part of a team! We are battling together, synchronized to perfection, effective as machines!
Nearby, Durand shouts for help. He is bleeding. The smell of fresh blood, drawn from Durand’s damage from the wave, puts the sahuagin into a sadistic frenzy. They envelop Durand’s position like trapping prey. Lenny surges forward to help. At the same time, a sahuagin crawls into the shallow water and ambushes Cenvin from behind. They collapse, wrestling to the death, while Lenny swings at the closest sahuagin surrounding Durand.
Durand grins, “My turn!”
He is a tornado of steel, cutting through the envelopment. Spinning like a Beyblade, he forces through the circle. However, this action triggers many opportunity attacks from behind. Bites and spearheads bury themselves in Durand’s back. He stumbles through the knee-deep water onto the shore, coughing blood.
Meanwhile, Lenny’s scenario is just as terrible. As a consequence of dashing into the fray without thinking strategically, he finds himself face-to-face with six sahuagin. Without a multi-attack and horde breaker, he is unable to dish out effective AOE damage. Even Glow is inefficient, as the sahuagin are tactically spread out so that they will not be hit simultaneously. He tries to whack one with his quarterstaff, but the sahuagin simply blocks. They then retaliate with barbaric intensity. Soon, Lenny is sprawled on the wet sand, on the verge of consciousness as a sahuagin lands a final jab with its bloody spear.
“NO!”
Trudging through the blood-filled water, Cenvin pops the sahuagin soldiers into his pocket dimension. He falls to his knees beside Lenny, who has become unconscious.
“We are done here!” Cedric shouts. “Set sail! Cenvin, get your friends and get on!”
“Understood!”
He stores them in his pocket dimension and jumps through a portal. Popping out onboard the humble rowboat, he spits them out onto the deck. Cedric’s face is crimson with sweat, screaming orders to the merchants.
“Push and row! Push and row! Get past the sahuagin and we will be safe!”
They do just that. Nearby, the folding boat matches their pace. As the boats ride gracefully over the waves, the sahuagin furiously stomp and cry behind them. A few swims underwater, seemingly defeated.
“Sit down, Cenvin, and rest,” Cedric kindly commands as he attempts Medicine checks on Durand and Lenny to stabilize their grievous condition. Cenvin obeys. “You deserve it, and who knows what will happen next.”
His face pales.
“Next, they will come after us… they will ride… they will ride on sharks… sharks are faster than rowing!”
Cenvin is stunned by realization.
“Damnit!”
They leap up and peer over the side rails. As expected, blurry, dark silhouettes trail behind under the unwelcoming sea, speedily catching up to the boats. Cedric turns to Cenvin and they silently share a meaningful but hopeless exchange.