The noose tongue released my neck and shoulder, unwhipping, uncoiling. I could see teeth again. That was good, because that meant teeth were not around my head. The Pang reared back, its scream no longer muffled, and something swatted it in the head like a fly, sending it tumbling over and rolling in a confusing spray of water. Something bright.

  My staff drew behind me in as though in the hands of a master, spinning to a halt, a pause, then a half turn and driving forward to intercept the Pang's snapping mouth. It caught it in the mouth, rocketing straight forward into that soft palatal meat in the back of the throat. There was a sickening snapping sound, that awful sound of an internal injury that lets you know that you really don't want to know. Jaws closed over it out of reflex. A stream of blood backflowed out between its jagged teeth, one thin thread of green-black, then another, then a gush as as it tilted its head forward and stumbled a step backward. It swiped at the staff, a half-hearted and uncoordinated wave, but my weapon only dissolved into intangible sparks and vanished.

  A series of splash-thunks behind it, and Constitution rose behind it like an avenging shadow. It only partially fought back when she dug her metal fingers into nape and tail, slashing without real vim, and by that point it was over her head, water and Pang-blood running freely over and off of its dangling limbs.

  She hurled it. She had meant to throw it through the port window, but it was a little too big to fit. She succeeded nonetheless.

  The wood burst outward and the creature went through like a burst blister, gurgling as it slid off the side of the Barbaric beneath a rain of splinters and wood shards.

  I found that I was kneeling, my lantern still somehow lit, the staff nowhere to be seen. I took Constitution’s hand, or she took mine, pulling me to my unsteady feet. I was sick right there on the boat, but the shifting deck water washed it away instantly to who knew where. My lantern did go out then.

  Waiting for the pain to kick in, I imagined that I must look horrible, near death, completely mauled. My robe was torn but still hung by some stubborn threads to my shoulder. I did not see any blood. My chest was intact, and a tentative patting with my palm told me my neck was unbroken, my shoulders unharmed. I wasn't even sore. I should have needed a neckbrace at the very least after the damn thing tried to pull my head off and eat me like a cake pop, to say nothing of bandages and gauze.

  Then I saw the blood. It dripped from Constitution's fingertips, a deep and vital red. It outlined the plates of her armor, the late light making it gleam around her dulled protective plates. Her neck smoked with acid burns, and her head lolled queasily with some structural injury.

  "Are you--what you–?" it came out as a whisper.

  She stood there, chestplate heaving. Her breath rasped in a way I did not like. "Are you," she started to say, and it sounded like two voices at the same time, one wheezing and one tired. "Are you...."

  "I'm okay," I said. "You--took the hurt." A stupid thing to say, a dumb way to put it, but you can probably forgive a guy's lack of eloquence when he'd almost been eaten by some frog monster.

  She nodded, the beetle-helm almost not coming back up. The T-shape of her face that was visible through the face guard was smudged crimson. Her lip was busted and dripping.

  "Chris," I said, turning. "Can you...?" Chris was gone.

  "Wh-" she started. She sank down hard on her ass, shaking the deck and causing a rush of water.

  "You need to rest," I said. I wanted to heal her. Wasn't healing sometimes a wisdom thing in the pen and paper games?

  The helmet clattered side to side with a harsh sound of metal scraping, and I realized she was disagreeing with me. "Gotta," she said. She was breathing hard. She tried to point downstairs, but it came out as a thumbs down, which was frankly appropriate.

  I didn't even want to ask her any yes or no questions. She could barely speak, but I could tell that moving her neck for a nod or a negative was a bad idea, and probably making things worse for her injuries.

  My injuries. At least, it should have been mine. Her glowing hand had been a spell, I realized now. I vaguely recalled some tank ability back in the game, redirecting damage. A paladin skill, maybe? But if I'd known how it really worked--the guilt, the reversal, and now the fact that I was going to have to take care of her and get her to safety before this ship sank... well, it might have been smarter to just get eaten. More efficient, anyway.

  "You with me? Constitution?" I waved, snapped in front of her face. It was obnoxious, but it felt like an EMT thing to do, I guess. She was dazed. I was afforded glimpses of blood between the shifting plates of armor, running down the angles as though tracing a paper maze in red pen. Dark red stained the water around her, flowing in the pseudo-tide as the ship rocked.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  "Connie," I said. Her eyes focused. I didn't know if it was me, or just her superhuman sense of gumption.

  A knee rose, and she heaved an iron-plated boot into place in the red water. I offered her a hand, returning the favor, but had she taken it, I'd be in the bloody water alongside her. I was a fraction of her weight. She pushed herself up like hoisting a sunken ship from the depths, a waterfall of murk and blood.

  She was looking better already. Not a lot. Fractionally, really. But she was in control. "Who's Chris?" she asked, but turned to go.

  "Some... weird guy," I said. "Talkative."

  She glanced back, a turn that must have caused her some pain. Was she simply rebuilding? I was incredibly concerned about her pushing herself after what seemed to be a near-death attack. I'd never seen anyone just walk something like that off. Then again, I'd never seen anything like that ever, outside of a few accidental clicks on videos that shouldn't have still been circulating on social and hadn’t yet gotten the attention of human or automated moderators.

  "Long hair?" she asked.

  "Yeah, actually," I said. Constitution paused at the top of what I'm going to call a stairwell, but tighter to conserve space in that nautical extreme. Black water splashed down cheap and broken steps into blacker halls without the benefit of the side of the ship's exposure to ambient light. "How'd you know? He said he knew Wisdom."

  A tremor that could have been a shiver or a sarcastic chuckle ran through her, clacking plates together. She eyed me, trying to figure something out.

  "Where is Strength?" I asked. "What the hell was that frog thing?" I shook my head. "What are we even doing here?"

  "Saving Arthrem," she said flatly. “Saving them.”

  "How? We teleported here or something. Are we going to blip them all back to the... the floating tower thing?"

  She shook her head. "I'll swim each one ot shore if I must." Through the T-slit, I could see a hard look in her eyes. I think she would have done it, or tried.

  "You'll sink like a rock in all that."

  "We'll figure something out," she said. "Or I'll die trying."

  "What good does that do anyone?" I burst. I couldn't help it. My voice was an octave higher. I was watching the picture of selflessness, and she was determined to throw her life away. Well, I didn't want mine to go with it. And if we're being honest, something no narrator owes his reader, I felt like I owed her. She'd saved my life twice already.

  "All we can do for him, we must."

  I knew who she meant, and I opted to shut my mouth.

  We descended further into the waterlogged bowels of the ship. But really, I should call it something else, because it was more like a fresh cadaver than a ship. Waterlogged and and bloated, coming to pieces before our eyes, the light failed to reach the holds that Constitution and I splashed deeper We waded through chambers with no light but my own, empty but for water, bobbing lifesavers, and the detritus of a ruined voyage.

  We edged along tilted flooring in the least-submerged ends of the room, calling out and listening for voices. All that came back to us was the rush of water, the far-off misery of people's voices always in another hold, always through another bulkhead. Sometimes the shriek-croak of the froggish monsters could be heard, muffled behind a wall or a ceiling and often followed by dull screams and muddled banging.

  No, it wouldn't do at all to call this a ship. It was a nightmare.

  Following the sounds, we found ourselves on a lower deck whose function I do not know. Chill wind and colder light cast in, and my lantern dulled, responding perhaps to necessity.

  We stood before the great fissure, the rent where the ship had been messily broken in half.

  If the dying ship had been a mess, this was pure superstructural gore. It looked like the pictures of the big earthquake from San Francisco in the 80s: bent scaffolding, burst wooden frames and supports, exposed metal bars, just an endless texture of wreckage continuing far above where I could see, and pooling in the water. The far wall was not the far wall, it was a mismatched deck tilted and sinking. "Our" half was lined with long red wood, perhaps a ballroom. The far one was storage, crates and pallets tied down, some loose and spilling into the sea. I could see the ship's innards, scattered and frayed, the structure between the spaces that passengers were meant to experience, soggy and crumbling.

  Two Pangs with their backs to us snarled at a group of people. Two white-shirted crew members tried to fend them off with broken pieces of furniture, a barstool and what might have been been a table leg. The others backed nearer to the rift, where the planks terminated violently and the exposed skeleton of the ship made for tenuous space on which to make a last stand. Across the rift were others of what I am going to label civilians: men, women and children waving at us, screaming and pointing at the two beasts.

  Constitution was already running uphill before I could get the first syllable of "Shouldn't we try to help them" out of my mouth. She tackled the first, and the second turned just in time for a nasty struck in the ribs by might staff of light.

  My lantern blazed, and told me that these were a level 3 and level 4 Pang, respectively.

  The difference showed. It was hard to see Connie's Pang closely while she was wrestling with it, but mine was noticeably larger, with added bulk in its limbs and a saggier, froggier belly. Its tail was fully formed, with a ridge of thick ridges trailing down from spine to tail tip. And was I mistaken, or was there a third row of teeth in the hissing mouth?

  Its claws bared, it leaped for me but was intercepted by the staff. It tangled with the weapon, trying to slash it out of the air, and rearing back when stung by its spinning haft.

  Why was my weapon doing the fighting for me? It felt as far from the nature of my barbarian as possible to be a passive observer to a fight.

  "What do I do?" I shouted to Con. My staff was holding off the bigger Pang, but for how long?