Chapter 97: Strategy Meeting

Trying to outmaneuver William Oh is an exercise in futility. He invented the art of strategy thousands of years before he was even born. He has forgotten more about underhanded tactics than he will ever know.

He can read thoughts from actions, discern meaning from absence, and punish ignorance like the smiting of a vengeful god.

• Jason Salazar

Anna gaped as the stormclouds rolled over them far faster than she’d thought possible, the wind whipping and clawing at the furled sails like a feral thing.

“Don’t just stand there, cut the lines!” Reese shouted, the emaciated sailor’s bare feet were thumping across the deck as he wielded a machete with reckless abandon, trying to sever the lines mooring them to the dock, but finding that Loth’s ropes were not made to be easily cut.

“Don’t we have to-“ Anna asked, pointing at the furled sail.

“What!? NO! you’d snap the mast like a twig! We just need to shove away from this dock and turn into the wind!”

He pointed towards the interior of The Flotilla.

“We’re on the edge of The Flotilla and the wind is pushing us into them! Right now our huge bulk is acting like a sail and jamming us into them! We have to minimize our profile and let the wind go past us and push them away from us faster than we’re being pushed into them! Now help me cut these ropes!”

Anna’s knees went wobbly as she realized that there wasn’t anyone there to take the responsibility off of her shoulders. She liked being in charge of the food and washing, it was simple, it served a valuable purpose, and it wouldn’t sink the ship if she made a mistake.

But now Bee and Ria were gone, and Jean with them, all of the versions of her that bore a hard edge were away, as well as the rest of the party. Anna could tell through Hivemind that they weren’t going to make it back before the storm scattered them…It was all down to her.

Okay, you can do this…

Ex Uno Plures

40->0 Charge Remaining.

Anna had become somewhat accustomed to splitting and then reabsorbing copies in order to perform an outsized amount of work before her clones got hungry. This was no different.

Just a lot more at once than I’m used to.

In a few heartbeats, no less than forty copies of Anna emerged from her, each of them accompanied by a visceral popping sound as their bones detached from hers.

It was gross, but at the same time, it felt strangely…good, sending a shiver of release and disgust down her spine as each copy emerged from her skin like a cancerous twin, ecstatic to finally be free.

Each copy had a connection to Anna, an intangible string that connected their minds to hers, just like hers was connected to Jean’s through the Hivemind Ability.

It all traced back to Jean, like the spokes of a wheel, and they all instinctively knew that if Jean was lost, they all would be.

Anna leapt into action, each of them frantically searching for something to cut Loth’s spidersilk mooring ropes as thick as a man’s wrist, until one of the more enterprising copies thought to use the enhanced claws from the gauntlet whose effects Jean passed down to them.

Anna was not a fighter, and it took her a moment to discover the best use of her claws, frantically sawing through the stubborn ropes keeping them attached to the now-wildly rocking dock which was beginning to slam into the side of the ship as the waves grew larger and larger in the staggering winds.

Thankfully leviathan scales were stronger than wood.

“OKAY! NOW-” Reese shouted, turning away from his rope and waving for an instant before he paused, frowning. “Were there always three dozen of you?”

“What now!?” Anna demanded.

“Poles!” Rees said, leaning down and picking up a massive wooden pole some forty feet long that’d been stowed alongside the railing. Reese deftly hooked an ankle on a nearby bit of rigging, keeping his feet even as the ship tilted precipitously, causing most of Anna to lose their balance and nearly fall overboard.

When the waves dropped them back down, slamming them to the ground like a toddler throwing a fit, Reese took his pole and stood on the starboard prow, facing away from the wind.

“Grab the others and help me get our bow turned!” He said as he lowered the pole down between them and the dock that was currently being crushed to splinters between Shimmer and the floating warehouse.

The next wave that tossed them would throw something substantially bigger than a dock at them, and Anna had no idea where the limits of Loth’s shipbuilding talent were.

Best not test them, Anna thought, rushing to grab the other half-dozen or so poles stowed across the deck.

“Over here!” Reese said, motioning them to him. “Bow first!”

Reese hauled back on his pole, but didn’t seem to accomplish anything other than bending it a bit. The man weighed less than she did, and he certainly wasn’t as strong.

“Take mine!” the emaciated sailor said, shifting out of the way as six of her took the pole out of his hand and began hauling back on it, shoving the nose of the ship a few inches away from the dock and the warehouse they were crushing into.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

That gave the other teams of Anna the opportunity to shove their poles down between Shimmer and the obstruction the wind was slamming them against.

In a matter of seconds, the prow of the ship began to slide into the wind.

“WHOOOO!” Reese whooped, his bare feet thumping across the deck at a sprint as he went for the steering wheel, hauling the rudder to the side and turning into the wind as the team of Annas pulled their poles out of the water and set them against the side of the floating warehouse, shoving it away from them, and pushing their nose further into the wind.

“I think it’s working!” Anna shouted as the rest of The Flotilla began drifting away, gradually creating more and more space between them and the others.

“Of course it’s working!” Reese shouted. “WAVE!”

The ship nearly flipped over as an enormous wave caught the prow and lifted it straight up, leaving all of Anna clinging for dear life to anything they could get their hands on for a breathless instant before the swell picked the rest of the ship up and shoved them hundreds of feet in the air in a matter of seconds.

Reese’s shrill cackles were the only thing she could hear over the roar of wind and water.

I think I’m gonna throw up, Anna thought as the wave disappeared from beneath them, dropping them another several hundred feet, vanishing as quickly as it had arrived.

Another six waves later, and Anna had long since lost her lunch.

“It’s easing up!” Reese said, grinning at her from where he kept the rudder stable. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

A pair of massive jaws manifested out of the dark and clamped around Reese, dragging him screaming into the sky.

***Saint Jairus***

“That right there is William Oh,” Jairus said, peering down from his commanding view atop the quarterdeck, where the one-armed boy, his pet kobold and the other members of his Party were conferring.

“Wha?” Joshua gave him a slack-jawed look. “Him?”

“Yes, him. Don’t point and lower your voice. He’s Acuity focused. His whole Party is here, too, which is why I didn’t press the issue earlier. A fight would surely have casualties. Casualties that would make it much more difficult to enact our current mission. The boy is at a disadvantage here, but according to reports, he thrives on disadvantage.”