by Logan Jacobs
Of course, our ship would be no threat to the ghost ships, anyways, since objects seemed to float right through them. I watched as one of the strange, dolphin-like fish that populated the ocean waters leapt out of the crystal blue sea and straight through the belly of the second ship. The ghostly white image broke apart for a millisecond as the body of the fish cleaved through it, and it looked like thick fog that separated in the wind, only to come back together again as if nothing at all had happened.
That didn’t bode well for our own cannonballs. I was sure the very real, very solid objects would just fly through the ship and cause as much harm to their bodies as they did to the air.
The ghost ships slid silently across the water as they made their way onward, and I couldn’t help but wonder just what the hell their plan was. They’d appeared and disappeared so many times, I held out a little bit of hope that their movements were simply the product of rambling, aged, long dead beings who had no plans to conquer or battle after all.
But, after all the shit that had happened to me over the last few months, I knew there was no way in hell that was actually true.
My theory was proved correct just a few seconds later, when the center, main ship suddenly began to turn. Previously, they had been on a seemingly random path parallel to our island, but now, they made a ninety degree arc and started to head straight toward me.
“Shit,” I spat as I whipped around and searched for the horn. The ships were far enough out that I knew if we sounded the alarm right then, we could have enough time to prepare.
How the hell we were supposed to prepare to battle a trio of undead ships, though?
I found the horn in the back corner of the watchtower, and I quickly raised it to my lips and blew with all of my might.
As the call of my horn echoed through the dark of the night, the ships made another turn. The path they were on now would lead them just around our island, if they kept on it through morning, but I didn’t trust that anymore.
Every time we’d seen the ghost ships before, they’d appeared and disappeared within minutes. Their mere presence had been enough to cause quite a bit of a stir within me and the few women who knew, but this time, it seemed like they had no plans to disappear again. I might not have had the gift of foresight the way Marella and Jonas did, but my gut instincts were better than most people’s.
And my gut told me that this was it.
It was time for us to fight the ghost ships, just like Marella had seen in her vision.
I watched for a split second more as the pale white moonlight bounced off the dark black ocean water and illuminated the translucent ships. Then I stuck the horn to my lips again and let out another long winded blow. I could already hear the village had begun to come alive in a flurry of terrified activity, and I scrambled off the platform and down the ladder quickly, so I could help to instill some sort of calm in my women. We all needed to keep our heads and remain as sane as possible if we had any hope of defeating these ghost ships.
As I ran, Oshun’s words played over and over in my head, like a broken record had stuck its speakers right into the center of my brain.
The tools the maldungs used to turn them into ghosts were buried down in their old cities, far below the surface of the water. I doubted that meant I had any hope of getting to those tools, and even if I could, there was no telling what they would be, and if they’d be able to help us get rid of these maldungs.
As I rushed toward the village, the very beginning of a plan started to form in my head. It was partially there, scrambled from the heightened stress of the situation and the worried shouts that came from the women in the village, but it had started all the same.
If there was some way to figure out what the tools were, maybe we could recreate them here on land. That would be our saving grace.
“Ben, what is going on?” Theora asked with wide green eyes as I crested the small ridge that led to the village.
The sight before me was one for the books. Deer women and dragonkin women alike had rushed out of their huts at the sound of my horn. Most of the deer women were half asleep, though, with their hair mussed and tangled around their horns and purple bags under their eyes. The dragon women, on the other hand, looked completely alert, with their hands on swords, spears, and bows as they looked around menacingly to see what threat we faced.
“The ghost ships are back,” I told Theora, but I made sure to keep my tone fairly low, so I didn’t start a complete panic before I could fully control the situation. “Help me get everyone into the castle, so we can have a meeting.”
“Yes, Ben.” The deer woman nodded and sped off to corral the village women toward the castle.
“Is it the ships?” Darya demanded as she and Zarya ran up to me.
“They have come back, right?” Zarya added.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “Can you two go up to the guard tower and get eyes on them? Anything changes in their course, one of you comes to tell me, got it?”
“Yes, my king.” The twins nodded simultaneously and rushed back the way I’d just come.
I followed the flowing throng of women as they headed toward the castle, corralled by Theora, and Nerissa stood out on her balcony and overlooked the crowd.
I glanced up, and as our eyes met, I could tell my queen instantly knew exactly what had happened. She pressed her lips together, sucked in a cleansing breath so she could keep calm in front of the rest of the women, and nodded once to me.
This threat was unlike anything we’d ever faced before, but I knew that if we all worked together, we could defeat it.
I brought up the rear of the crowd as everyone flooded into the castle.
“To the meeting hall!” Mira roared out. The jade-haired warrior had dragged a chair into the entryway, and she stood upon it as she repeated her orders over and over again.
“They’re not disappearing this time,” I told her as I walked up and stood beneath the chair.
“I figured,” Mira growled. She eyed the last of the women as they poured from the entryway into the meeting hall before she hopped down from the chair with the grace of a gazelle. Then the warrior turned to me with her hands on her hips, and she pursed her lips. “Are we ever going to go more than two weeks without having to fight off some fuckers of mothers?”
“In our dreams,” I chuckled as I looped an arm around her shoulders, and the two of us followed everyone else into the meeting hall.
The hall was alive with the buzz of worried murmurs and sideways glances as all of the women who weren’t already aware of the situation milled about. Tension was palpable in the air. The mere fact that I’d blown the horn so late into the night and roused everyone from sleep was enough to tip them off that something was very wrong.
“Are the orcs back?” Brenna asked as Mira and I walked toward the front of the room. The brunette’s upper lip trembled slightly, but other than that, she stood straight and tall, ready to fight off the enemy if it came to that.
“No, the orcs aren’t back,” I told her.
The crowd split apart as I made my way through, with Mira just a step behind me. Nerissa, Jemma, and Ainsley were already at the front of the room, and they were clearly in the midst of a nearly silent conversation.
“We need to tell them,” I murmured as I joined the huddle.
“Of course.” Nerissa nodded. “But what do we tell them? Unfortunately, Draco Rex, we still do not know how to defeat this enemy.”
“Daddy?” a small voice said at my side, and I looked over to see Marella. Not too far from her were Talise, Sela, Arrick, and the twins, and they all looked on nervously. All except for Sela. Her eyes were calm as she looked around the room.
“Yes?” I asked my daughter.
“My vision is coming true, isn’t it?” she questioned.
Her voice was a little louder than she had intended, though, and Hali heard.
“What vision?” the redheaded cook asked.
Those two little words drew the atten
tion of every single other woman in the room, and silence fell.
“We have a new enemy,” I responded as I raised my voice. Then I straightened and shifted so I stood in the center and could address every woman equally.
“A new enemy?” Careen wondered with a furrowed brow as she bounced our daughter Oshuna on her hip. “The orcs are not attacking?”
“No, it’s not the orcs,” I assured them all quickly. “It’s something else. Has anyone ever heard of a maldung?”
Hali’s sea grass green eyes popped open wide, and she glanced from myself to her little niece. I could tell from her expression that the red-haired woman knew what I was referring to, but most of the other dragon women didn’t seem to know.
The deer women, of course, just shook their heads, with their big eyes open wide as they all shriveled back.
“I-It’s an old legend,” Hali stammered. “I thought there was no truth to it.”
“If only,” I chuckled dryly before I turned to address the crowd again. “For anyone who doesn’t know, maldungs are ghost ships. There are three of them, and the crew is made of men from the civilization before this one, back when all of the islands were one piece of land. The men are conspirators and conquerors, much like the orcs. The gods punished them long ago, but it seems they’ve forgotten what it was like to be killed for their evil deeds, and they have decided to come back as wayward spirits. Right now, I don’t think they’ve decided to do anything yet. They haven’t tried to attack, or made any move to make me think they have that in mind. But we know from the old stories that they’re immensely dangerous, and since we all have the blessing of still being living beings, they are going to be hard to fight off in their ghost forms. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible. We’ve done the impossible before, right, ladies?”
“We have,” Theora spoke up from the back of the room. “Ben has always shown us there is nothing we cannot do. This is simply another thing we must all conquer.”
“How can we conquer a spirit, though?” Sarayah asked as she wrung her hands.
It was a fair question, but I absolutely refused to tell them I did not know the answer yet.
“We fight them just like we’ve fought everything else, if it comes to that,” I replied. “We don’t know their intentions yet, but I’ve seen them before, and each time, they disappeared pretty damn quickly. This time, for some reason, it looks like they’ve decided to stick around. Which means we need to prepare ourselves for whatever they might do next. I want everyone to get as many weapons and supplies as you can. Until those things disappear again, we are all going to hunker down in the castle, together. Darya and Zarya are watching the ships as we speak, and if anything changes, we’ll know about it. But until that point, I want everyone to prepare as if we are going into battle in the morning. Got it?”
The women nodded and murmured their agreement, and then they set off to go and get the supplies I’d ordered.
As the meeting hall emptied out and the rest of the castle filled up, I turned back to my women.
Dear one, Nixie and I are here, George said as he and the slimmer pink dragon entered the nearly empty meeting hall.
“Hello, dear friend.” I smiled at him. “Do you have any ideas?”
Sea glass is the strongest element that I know of, my dragon replied. If anything can cut through a ghostly ship, it would be that. I believe you are on the best path.
“Have you been able to figure out what Oshun spoke of, and how we might get there?” I asked him hopefully.
I am afraid not, Draco Rex, George sighed.
“Marella, do you think you can try to have another vision?” Mira turned to the little girl hopefully.
Unfortunately, that is not how it works, Nixie replied in our minds.
Even so, Marella squeezed her pretty eyes shut as hard as she could, and she screwed up her entire face as she attempted to get some sort of vision out of her incredible brain.
Nothing came to her, though, and she slowly opened her eyes and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” she murmured.
“Do not be, dear girl,” Nerissa replied, and she hugged Marella to her side. “We will figure this out.”
“I’m going to go check in on the weapons stores and make sure everyone has got one,” I told the group of women. “You guys stay here for the moment.”
“Ben, what should we do in the meantime?” Ainsley asked as she chewed on her lower lip.
“Get ready to fight the undead,” I replied seriously.
The next few hours passed in what felt to me like minutes, and it seemed like I stepped over every single inch of the palace floors at least twice as I ran around. The deer women had gathered in groups and practiced their skills with the spears as the night began to fade into day, and I made sure every single woman had at least two weapons..
By dawn, we were as ready as we could possibly be, and I knew it. Without any sort of real idea about what we would head into, the most we could do was prepare ourselves the way we’d prepared for every fight before. Every time the orcs had attacked the dragonkin women, or before the battles the deer women had waged against the orcs and the wargs, we’d prepared much like this.
Honestly, I would have given almost anything to have an orc ship headed straight toward us right now instead of the ancient maldungs. At least with the orcs, we all knew exactly what we would get. I never had to worry about the fight, because I knew we’d defeat them no matter what.
As the hours passed, I sent Ainsley and the children into the very back room of the castle, the safe room that was nearly impenetrable. Well, it was impenetrable by living people, that is. Marella and Arrick protested and attempted to claim they could fight because they’d trained with us, but I knew better. They were still far too young, and there was no way in hell I’d risk my precious kids. Ainsley tried to protest, too, but she knew it wasn’t just her life in danger if she went out and fought the maldungs. It was our unborn child’s, as well, and Ainsley was too smart and caring to be willing to risk her baby, so she quickly listened to reason.
I had just started to do my fourth pass around the castle to check and see if anyone needed my help when Zarya ran up to me. Her pounding footsteps echoed through the hallway, and everyone fell silent as they watched her approach, but then they quickly picked right back up with their training.
If the warrior had bad news, they wanted to be ready.
“They have turned toward our island, Draco Rex,” Zarya whispered into my ear when she reached me. “I believe you should come and see.”
My heart pounded as I followed her down the hall and out of the palace. The village was like a strange ghost town as we sprinted through it, but I hardly paused to take much note of it.
I scrambled up the watchtower first, with Zarya hot on my heels. Darya was still seated up there, and her eyes were laser focused on the ocean. The sun had just started to peak its bright orange rays over the horizon, and it backlit the ghost ships with a light that made them seem even more translucent than before.
But there was absolutely no mistaking the fact that their trajectory had changed. They were now on a direct path toward our island, and by my estimate, they were less than an hour away.
That was, of course, if ghost ships moved at the same speed living ships did.
“How long have they been like this?” I demanded.
“About fifteen minutes,” Darya replied. “It does not appear they have plans to change course. Do you think they mean to attack us?”
“I’m sure as hell not taking any chances,” I growled as I wrapped my hand around the hilt of my sword just to make sure it was still in its scabbard, and I kept my eye on the three ghost ships.
As I watched, two of the ghost ships pulled to a stop. It was hard to see with the light that had started to come in from the sun, but it looked like they had simply stopped, right there in the middle of the ocean. They hadn’t dropped an anchor, and their sails were still u
nfurled. The sails, though, had been puffed out as they caught the wind to propel them forward, but all of a sudden, it was as if the already thin and see through material turned into wispy pieces of fog. They no longer caught any air, and the two ships just stopped.
The middle one, though, was the largest, and it continued on its path toward us. Thanks to the dragon vision I possessed, I was actually able to start to get a really good picture of what kind of creatures populated the ship.
And they looked monstrous.
Hunched over, squat figures were on the deck, and they looked sort of like prehistoric versions of the orcs, with two giant, tusklike fangs that protruded up from their bottom lips, as well as tentacle-like appendages below their two muscular arms.
But that wasn’t the most horrifying part about them by a long shot.
The things looked half rotted.
Despite the fact that they were ghostly white and I could see the backdrop of the ocean through their figures, I could tell there were places where huge chunks of flesh had rotted off and left gaping holes that dripped with decaying skin. Some of them were even missing limbs or parts of their faces.
This really was fucking Pirates of the Caribbean now.
The sight itself made my stomach turn, and I wrinkled my nose in disgust. I’d thought it had been bad when I’d smelled the nasty breath of the orcs, but that was nothing compared to the sight before me.
As the main ship grew nearer, I hopped down from the watchtower, through the gate, and stood out on the beach with my hands on my hips, directly in the path of the oncoming vessel. When it was just far enough out that it would have been time for a ship to drop anchor and for all of the crew to row ashore, I drew my sword from its scabbard and held it aloft. Part of me hoped the shiny sea glass would scare the shit out of the newcomers, but the other part of me just wanted the blade out in case I needed to stab something.
The maldung vessel closed in on me, and for a brief moment, I was sure it would sail right over me. But, as I readied myself to try to fight off the ship, it froze right before it hit the beach.