"Recommendations?"

Jake watched the mermaids circle and click and whistle to each other, watched them maintain their distance but close the gaps between themselves until escape by simply flying upward would mean passing through a gauntlet of clawed hands and shark teeth.

He thought about the Shadow Step ability and whether he could pull Maureen and the crew through connected shadows to somewhere safer, then dismissed it as impractical—the energy cost would be enormous, and he wasn’t sure the technique could handle that many people simultaneously.

"We fight," he said, because no other option was presenting itself.

"They’re blocking our escape route, which means they want something. Either we give it to them, or we break through by force."

One of the mermaids at the circle’s edge made a different sound—a long, musical note that rose and fell in pitch like a question being asked.

The mermaids didn’t wait any longer.

They attacked the moment their circle tightened enough, launching themselves from the water with powerful tail thrusts that carried them upward toward Windrunner’s deck with clawed hands extended and those shark-toothed mouths opened wide.

The first wave hit the ship from three sides simultaneously, their movements coordinated with the precision of pack hunters who had done this many times before.

And they were fierce in their attack, not giving them an inch.

Jake met the first mermaid with his bare hands, catching her by the wrist as she swiped at his throat and twisting with enough force that bone cracked audibly. He had no problem in overpowering a mermaid; after all, he was the blood of a beast monarch and he was physically stronger than most.

She screamed in that clicking, whistling language, and he threw her back into the water hard enough that the impact sent spray ten feet into the air.

The moment she hit the water, she plunged deep into the water. The amount of force he applied was not much, but if she had been hit on a hard floor, her body would have exploded already.

Two more came from his left, their movements natural and rapid, claws raking toward his chest and face simultaneously.

Jake activated Shadow Step and pulled himself through connected darkness to appear behind them, already moving, his fist catching the nearest mermaid in the back of the skull with enough impact that she went limp instantly.

The second one spun toward him with those predatory eyes tracking his movement, and Jake grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the deck with a force that cracked the wooden planks beneath her body.

[SHADOW SERPENT MANIFESTATION ACTIVATED]

He pulled at the shadows spreading across the deck as the sun began its descent toward evening, feeling them respond with the eager readiness of power that had been waiting to be used.

The darkness pooled and rose and took shape in multiple locations simultaneously—serpent constructs manifesting from shadow-stuff, their forms solid enough to interact with physical matter but fluid enough to move in ways that normal serpents couldn’t.

Five of them appeared in rapid succession, each roughly six feet long with scales of pure black that absorbed light and eyes that glowed with faint green luminescence. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

As soon as they took their physical forms, they launched themselves at the mermaids, trying to climb aboard the ship, moving with autonomous hunting intelligence that Jake didn’t need to consciously direct.

The shadow serpents struck with venomous fangs that carried both physical toxin and necrotic shadow energy, their bites causing paralysis and spreading darkness through mermaid flesh in patterns that looked like infection moving at accelerated speed.

The creatures screamed and thrashed and tried to retreat back into the water, but the shadow serpents followed them down, pursuing targets beneath the surface with the relentless determination of constructs that existed purely to hunt.

More mermaids kept coming.

They surrounded the ship in waves, climbing the hull with clawed hands that found purchase on wood that should have been too smooth to grip, their tails providing leverage as they pulled themselves upward with terrifying speed.

Jake fought them hand-to-hand across the deck, his enhanced strength letting him break bones and tear flesh with strikes that would have injured a normal human, throwing them but leaving his own hands intact.

Captain Nailer and others were busy in their own fights, but they glanced at him once in a while and saw how he was tearing them apart with his bare hands. He wasn’t even hesitating that they were all women. Hitting them with a straight face, they were taken aback by his directness.

He grabbed one mermaid by her long hair and used the momentum of her own attack to swing her into two others climbing over the rail, sending all three crashing back into the water in a tangle of limbs and shrieks.

A shadow serpent took a mermaid off the mast where she’d been climbing toward one of Maureen’s crew, the construct wrapping around her torso and squeezing while its fangs found her shoulder.

She convulsed as the venom spread and fell twenty feet to hit the deck with a wet sound that said she wouldn’t be getting back up.

Maureen Nailer was a revelation.

Jake had known she was Class I and had watched her run combat drills during the flight, but seeing her fight in actual life-or-death combat was different from seeing her perform training exercises.

She moved through the attacking mermaids with a graceful motion that made it look choreographed, her sword—a long, slightly curved blade that looked custom forged—cutting through the air and through flesh with equal ease.

Her style was unique in ways Jake had never seen before, mixing elements that looked like they came from multiple martial traditions blended into something entirely her own. She used the sword in one hand and her free hand for grappling, catching mermaids mid-strike and using their momentum against them while her blade found openings with surgical precision.

She fought three mermaids at once and made it look manageable, her blade taking one across the throat while her boot caught another in the chest hard enough to launch it backward off the ship, and her free hand grabbed the third by its clawed fingers and twisted until something snapped and the creature howled.

Four mermaids tried to overwhelm her through sheer numbers, attacking from different angles simultaneously, and Maureen spun through them like water finding its path through obstacles, her sword leaving red arcs in the air behind its passing.

When she finished the rotation, all four mermaids were down, two dead and two dying, and Maureen was already engaging the next threat without pause.

Her crew fought with professional competence but were clearly outmatched by the sheer numbers coming at them.

The six adventurers held their positions and killed mermaids steadily, working in pairs to cover each other’s blind spots, but they were being pushed back incrementally as the waves kept coming.

Jake manifested more shadow serpents to support the crew, pulling power from his reserves with increasing urgency as the energy cost accumulated.

Eight constructs now, then ten, spreading across the deck and into the water to create additional threats that the mermaids had to account for. The shadow serpents moved independently, hunting targets with the predatory efficiency of creatures designed purely for killing, and their autonomous behavior meant Jake could focus on the close combat happening around him without needing to consciously direct them.

Though they were startled by the strange dark creatures, the crew had to maintain their focus on the mermaids; they fought alongside those creatures.

Jake caught a mermaid by the wrist as she lunged at Maureen’s back, the Class I swordswoman being momentarily occupied with two others attacking from her front. Jake twisted the mermaid’s arm until the joint dislocated with a wet pop and then drove his knee into her ribs hard enough that he felt multiple bones give way.

She dropped and he was already moving toward the next threat, his blood sense tracking incoming attacks faster than his eyes could follow.

The fight lasted twenty minutes of continuous, brutal engagement, where neither side gained a clear advantage.

The mermaids kept coming in waves, but Jake’s shadow serpents and Maureen’s sword work created a meat grinder that killed them faster than their numbers could overwhelm the ship.

The deck was slick with blood—both red from superficial wounds on the crew and the strange blue-green ichor that flowed from mermaid bodies.

The water around Windrunner had turned turbulent with the thrashing of wounded creatures and the movement of shadow serpents hunting beneath the surface. The ship was rocking uncontrollably, making it hard for either side to concentrate.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it ended.

The mermaids still alive retreated with the same coordinated precision they’d used to attack, diving beneath the waves and swimming away from the ship in multiple directions.

They had already lost too many members, and the situation didn’t look any better for them. Even though they were outnumbered by the crew, they couldn’t even kill a single person, and it was all because of Jake and his dark serpents.