“The real question is, are they working with the council?” Sirius said as he pulled one hand and one shackle completely off the wall sending bits of stone flying everywhere.

  “Obviously,” Shiv replied before he’d realised what Sirius had just done. Then his expression changed. “Wait…”

  “We aren’t bound,” Amanda said in surprise. She concentrated on melting the steel where it was connected to the wall. The shackles would still be around her wrists but they’d be easier and safer to remove once she could see them. She’d be less likely to burn her skin that way.

  Further down the line, Alice tore his shackles from the wall the same way Sirius had. Thatch shifted into a small furry creature and slipped free. As did Dickie, although Dickie then spent several seconds running around as a rat before he remembered himself and shifted back with a sheepish look on his face.

  There was a crack as the metal around Crick’s wrists shattered when he smacked his shackles against the wall. Pieces of frost-coated metal fell to the dusty stone floor as Crick shook himself free. When he moved his hands out to study them, Amanda could see a waxy looking white ring of skin around his wrists from where the frozen metal had touched him.

  A few moments later Crick made a hissing sound and brought his hands in close as the warmth returned and the frost injury bit him like a flame.

  Sirius freed Sonny. Meanwhile, Shiv was telekinetically trying to pick the locks with a long sharp skinny knife he’d gotten from somewhere.

  “How’s it going Shiv?” Sirius asked once everyone else was free.

  None of them made any movement to help the man so Amanda didn’t either. They knew Shiv better and Amanda didn’t want to offer help if it wasn’t wanted. She could hear amusement in Sirius’s tone. Some of the others were trying not to smirk.

  Shiv gave an annoyed scowl. “I’m getting there.”

  “You want some help?” Sirius asked.

  “Hang on, almost got it.” There was a click and clank and then Shiv was free as well.

  “Easy,” Alice grinned and went to pull open the door to the room.

  The door didn’t budge.

  “Oh,” said Alice. “The door’s bound.”

  Amanda resisted the urge to throw her arms around Sirius. A sideways glance suggested he wanted to do the same. But there were too many eyes and they needed to escape before their captors returned. Instead, she touched the door with her magic.

  “Weakly,” she replied

  “Don’t matter. Binding magic’s always stronger than the magic it seals,” replied Sonny with a sigh.

  “Not always.” Amanda shook her head and continued to probe at it. It would be difficult but it was possible she might be able to break through this binding and then the door was regular wood.

  “If you can burn though binding magic I’ll eat my hat,” Thatch remarked.

  “You don’t own a hat,” Alice told him.

  “What about that one with the raccoon tail.”

  “That’s my hat.”

  “Not it ain’t”

  “Yeah it is.”

  Amanda glanced back at the group. She could see the skepticism in their faces, except for Sirius who looked curious and Shiv who looked suspicious. It was as she was looking at the group that she realised there was someone missing. “Where’s Pierre?” she asked.

  “Here,” came Pierre’s reply from the other side of the door.

  Amanda turned back to the door and was surprised to see Pierre looking back at her through the small barred window at the top.

  “Pierre! How’d you get on that side of the door?” Dickie asked as he scratched his head.

  Pierre grinned. “I managed to avoid capture by running away really fast, and then I followed them here. Give me a sec, I’ll get you all out.”

  He ducked down where they couldn’t see him and a moment later the sound of someone fiddling with the lock could be heard.

  Amanda stood on tiptoes so she could see through the little window but it was still too high so she did a couple of jumps then held herself up by the bars for a few seconds so she could look down. She watched as Pierre worked with two little metal rods at getting the lock open.

  Dickie stuck his head along side her so he could also see. “What’s taking so long he asked.

  “Don’t rush me, this is a delicate art for- ah, fuck!”

  “What happened?” inquired Shiv.

  “Broke the lock. Hang on. I got a back up plan.” He waved a pair of large bolt cutters in front of the little window.

  “Why didn’t you just use those to start with?” Alice inquired.

  “Well, I was trying to be stealthy,” Pierre replied.

  Shiv crossed his arms and sighed loudly. “None of us is being stealthy.”

  Amanda caught a smile on Sirius’s face. He’d probably said the least of all of them so far. He was stealthy. She smiled at him and waited patiently for Pierre to get the door open.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  There was silence for all of a second before Dickie asked aloud, “Do you think they raided our ship?”

  Shiv rolled his eyes. “I’m pretty sure they were the ones who tried to raid us yes.”

  “Not the other night,” Dickie replied. “I mean, while we been in here. I hope if they did they didn’t take the wine.”

  “I thought you didn’t like the wine?” said Thatch.

  “I don’t. The rum’s better.”

  Shiv made a disgusted face.

  “But the wine gets you drunk faster,” Dickie continued prompting all in the room to suddenly sprout shared looks of confusion.

  “That makes no sense,” Alice replied loudly.

  They were saved from any more conversation that might draw someone to check on them by the cell door springing open. A self-satisfied Pierre stood on the other side.

  “Come on.” Sirius swept through the door, barely waiting for the others to follow. They all scrambled after him.

  “Where to?” Shiv asked. He followed close on Amanda’s heels.

  “Back to the ship first,” Sirius replied. “Then I’ll go see the council.”

  Shiv blew a raspberry. “You still think they had nothing to do with this.”

  “There’s too much secrecy…” Sirius trailed off as he reached a junction. There were four corridors to choose from not counting their own and none of them but Pierre had any idea which way to go.

  Sirius look at Pierre.

  “Err…” Pierre frowned as he looked from one tunnel to the next. “You know I wasn’t really thinking about the going back part.”

  There was some grumbling from the rest of the crew, a few eye rolls, and then Thatch shifted into a bloodhound and led the way off down a tunnel to the right.

  They hadn’t gone very far before shouts echoed down the tunnel behind them. That got everyone running.

  “Hey, I know the way from here!’ Pierre cried suddenly as they reached a section he was familiar with. He overtook Thatch and carried on at a speed none of them had any hopes of keeping up with.

  “Oi, wait for the rest of us!” cried Dickie.

  Sirius rounded a sharp bend and Amanda followed suit only to find him stopped right after the corner. They all ran into one another.

  “What the hell!” Shiv cried. “Why’d you stop?”

  Sirius stepped aside to reveal…

  “Mathias!” chorused everyone together.

  Behind Mathias, were Benny, Bruce, and a dog that was a poor excuse for a bloodhound. The brown, wire-haired beast looked more like a scraggly masupial than any pure-bred sniffer dog. The fur was too long, the snout too short, and the ears too pointy. Bob-bee either hadn’t seen many pictures of bloodhounds or his memory was faulty. Truth was, by the look of that thing, she wasn’t convinced he’d seen many dogs in general.

  “What are you doing here?” Alice asked.

  “We tracked you here,” Mathias replied.

  “Well, technically we tracked Sirius here,” added Benny.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Bruce asked.

  “Well, obviously we found him first,” Shiv replied with an exasperated sigh.

  They might have continued talking if not for the shouts and heavy footsteps that could soon be heard coming their way.

  “Shit! They’re on our tail, let’s go!” Shiv reminded them.

  “Shouldn’t we stay and fight?” remarked Crick as they ran. “We outnumber them now.”

  “We don’t know what their powers are,” Shiv replied.

  “And we know they won’t play by the rules of the sea,” added Sirius.

  “We know they have fire,” Thatch argued.

  “And that makes you want to fight them?” Pierre asked.

  “We have fire too,” Alice pointed to Amanda.

  “They’re not vampires so they probably don’t have super speed,” Thatch added.

  The group slowed as they reached an open area about the size of a basketball court. In the middle of the room was a fountain. A mischievous looking stone baby with some unnatural adornments was standing in the centre and had been made to look like he was answering the call of nature, his constant stream filling the pool that surrounded him.

  “I think we could take them,” Dickie added.

  Shiv looked to Sirius. Sirius surveyed the group. He started to turn back to face their oncoming enemy. For a moment his gaze fixed on Amanda and he hesitated but she flashed him a confident smile. His expression formed into a look of decisiveness and he started giving instructions on where people should stand.

  “Catch them by surprise while they’re focused on us,” he said to the two men he’d sent to stand to the side of the tunnel’s opening. Then he drew his sword. The rest of them followed suit. Amanda touched the air with her magic. She didn’t make a flame yet but she readied one.

  They got the better of the first two men who rounded the corner but those that followed soon caught on and the room erupted into battle.

  A fireball went flying. Not one Amanda had created. But she quickly grabbed it with her own magic and snuffed it out.

  More followed. The first of those she snuffed out as well but when they started setting the crew’s clothes and hair on fire, that was when she started sending the fire back toward the enemy.

  Thatch had been wrong. Some of these ones were vampires and they moved at a speed that kept Pierre more than busy dodging blows and protecting his crew mates.

  They were still the same group who had imprisoned them though, they’d just gained a few more members. Amanda recognised some of the ones who had been whispering in the cell previously.

  Some of them carried swords and they fought steel against steel. Shiv cut one down with a dagger a third of the length of his opponent.

  A few had guns but after the first few bullets were dodged thanks to naught but luck and poor aiming on the part of the enemy, Benny decided to solve that problem. With a click of his fingers, Benny soon had a small pile of guns at his feet. This quickly made him a magnet for fireballs.

  Amanda did all she could to keep him safe.

  Suddenly the gravity in the room seemed to flip and everyone went flying in one direction, along with the water in the fountain pool. All except for Bruce who looking wide-eyed stood with his hands up apologising. “Oops, sorry, sorry,” he repeated a few times until his pants caught fire and he yelped as Amanda focused to putting the flames out.

  She then found herself yanked down by someone just in time to miss a sword flying over her head. Sirius pulled her roughly across the floor but out of harms way.

  “Get the girl!” one of their opponents cried.

  Shiv sent the yeller flying across the room and would have been encased in fire if Amanda hadn’t been expecting the attack. She reached out with her magic as if with intent to set the entire room alight. Instead, she found it allowed her to quickly catch any flame they created before it could really get going.

  But as her defense improved, so did their awareness of the situation and their coordination. It turned out a lot more than one of them were firestarters. Suddenly she found she was having trouble keeping up.

  She knew Sirius was next to her because every now and again he’d grab her and pull her back. They seemed to be retreating across the room.

  “Sirius, there’s too many,” she complained. She could barely focus on standing. Everything she had went into countering every flame they lit. If it lasted for much longer she was going to pass out. This was far harder than creating one giant flame to distract a dragon or fly a ship. This was like playing wack-a-mole. Eventually she was going to miss one.

  She wasn’t sure what was happening in the rest of the battle but the room suddenly went cold and wet. That collided with a blur of partial flames to form a contrasting mix of chaos that would have been impossible to follow and still keep one’s head. No way was anyone in control of this battle anymore.

  Some were doing better than others but the group was starting to fracture. No longer facing off as two teams, the enemy was managing to separate them.

  “Retreat to the ship,” Sirius cried, but he didn’t stop fighting, not immediately. “In groups on my command!”

  Out of the corner of her eye Amanda could see him move, a blur of black, and every now and again he pulled her one way or the other. Like a sentry he kept watch over his men and every now and again he shouted a command. “Shiv, help Sonny! Mathias, get the one in the corner! Bruce, run, left corridor go! Bob-bee, follow him. Alice, on your left!”

  One by one Sirius guided them out as the stronger fighters held their ground until finally, “Everyone out!”

  “Ah shit!” came Shiv’s voice.

  “Go! We’ll meet you back at the ship,” Sirius yelled. Then to Amanda he said, “Burn as many as you can!”