Chương 23: Chapter 100: Night Moves

The blade glimmered in the lamplight as it was thrust down towards Will's chest. Will's spine cried out in pain as he contorted inside his hidey-hole, barely shifting his body far enough to allow the blade to go past him. The saber's blade turned towards him and he knew the attacker was going to drag it across his chest as he withdrew for another stab to start the fight off with Will wounded.

Will knocked the blade aside with Phantom Hand and stomped on the side of the compartment, sending a ripple through the side of the wall and into the man's feet, forcing him off balance. The shadow-swaddled Climber pulsed with Charge an instant before he disappeared, sucked into the handle of his own saber. Will's eyes widened and he wrenched the emergency latch underneath him, falling straight down into the floor below as the saber exploded with motion, hundreds of saber blades filling Will's sleeping nook.

The floor of Reggie's bedroom rushed up and slammed into Will's back, but Will's Resistance prevented him from getting the wind knocked out of him.

"Reggie, wake up!" Will hissed, scrambling to his feet and lunging over to the Tank's bed before shaking him. The oversized young man' brows were furrowed, and he muttered, his body twitching as he lived through his own personal nightmare. His eyes stayed closed. Will slapped him. Still closed. Shit. Will thought, backing up towards the door as the mass of swirling shadows dropped into Reggie's room with him with a metallic thud before reforming into a humanoid shape.

Okay, Loth and Mason are the most likely to wake up. If Ghoul hadn't taught him the Memory Key, Will was fairly sure he would still be asleep, but Mason and Loth had higher Focus, so they might be able to shrug off the mind control. And who was on watch? Will thought as he sprinted to the door, his opponent hot on his tail. About half the Anna's on staff should still be awake, if they're still alive.

Will was tempted to put a cannonball through his pursuer, but Will knew Alicia's room was across that wall from Reggie's, and her Resistance wasn't high enough for Will to feel confident about filling her room with shrapnel. Clack, clack clack! The sound of the footsteps behind him changed and sped up as they hit the straightaway of the officer's quarters hallway. Will stomped the ground and rolled to the side, tucking himself into the corner.

The ripple in the floor tripped his rapidly gaining pursuer, who tumbled past him, razor-sharp limbs flashing past his face. The shadow-cloaked Climber seemed to had animalistic steel legs jutting from their feet, causing them to run at increased speed. Will jumped up and sent a cannonball at his pursuer as he sprinted the opposite direction, heading for Mason's room. BOOM!

Shimmer shuddered under Will's feet as a cannonball carried the attacker through the hull and out into The Flotilla, depositing him in the ship next door. Crap, Will thought, glancing over his shoulder. That's gonna be an 'incident'. I can tell already. Will wrenched open the door to Mason's room and leapt up on their Nuker's bed, slapping him until his eyes opened.

"wha- wha- WHAT!?" Mason demanded as his eyes flickered open before shoving Will off of him. Mason sat up in bed, blinking blearily as he struggled to process what was happening.

"Attack!" Will said, shoving Mason's kit towards him. Another reason Will preferred to sleep in full kit. Sure it was uncomfortable, but times like this made up for it. Mason's eyes widened for an instant before he flung the covers off and began dressing at lightning speeds, slipping into his boots and snatching his staff off it's rack.

"Everyone's stuck in some kind of dream-lock," Will said, peering out the hallway. Just to make sure I'm not… Will ran through his memory key again, paying close attention to his surroundings for any incongruity that might arise. It was best to never become complacent when it came to mind control.

"There's an unknown number of attackers on board. Could be just the one, but I doubt it." Will turned his gaze left, towards Loth's bedroom, spotting the door hanging partially off its hinges, spilling flickering lamplight mixed with shadow into the hall. In the other direction, June and Alicia's rooms seemed to be open as well. Making a split decision, Will turned right and sprinted towards June and Alicia's rooms. There was no chance that Loth hadn't trapped her room to kill anyone who entered without permission.

If he went left, he would come across Loth cheerfully dressing beside a mangled corpse. If he went right, he might be able to stop their scout and special weapons expert from being murdered in their sleep. Will made it to Alicia's room first, where his ghost butler was struggling against a shadow-cloaked Climber, trying to scratch the man's eyes out as his sword flailed through Stevie's incorporeal form. Good job, Will thought as he pulled his sword out of Phantom Hand and brought it down on the man's skull.

Rather than drop to the ground, the flailing Climber whipped around and nearly cut off Will's nose an instant after Will's sword clanged off his skull. That's not normal, Will mused. He wasn't strong for a Climber, but he was two and a half times stronger than a normal man should've been, bringing a steel sword down on an unprotected skull. Even if the man's skull were ten times stronger than a normal one, it still should've penetrated enough to stop him cold. He's got some kind of buff.

The cannonball should've gone through his enemy earlier, but Will had just assumed the Climber was reinforcing his body with steel somehow. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. This was some kind of defensive buff, because Will wasn't seeing any armor peeking through the swirling shadows. Not to mention they both have identical shadows concealing their identity, implying an external force is creating them.

Will twisted his foot to the side and pulled the man's wild flailing forward, shifting the ground under him to knock his feet out from under him in an emulation of the takedown that Lord Bakton had done to him so many times. There was a yelp of surprise, and Will took advantage of the momentary distraction to wind up a strong slice up and into the man's trachea.

A lot softer than a skull, Will thought with satisfaction as the sword lodged itself a half-inch into the man's throat before his target leapt back, clapping a hand over his bleeding throat. Dangerous but not lethal.

"Deciever-" He croaked, pointing his blade at Will.

"You-" BOOM! The wall separating June and Alicia's rooms exploded as another shadow-cloaked human was launched through the wall, bringing the smell of burning flesh with him. On the other side of the wall, Mason stood beside June's bed, where a hole in her chest was spurting blood. Even with that lethal wound, the scout's eyes were still closed.

Will shot a Greater healing potion out of Phantom Hand towards Mason as he drove the point of the Shortsword of Perseverance down into the stunned and smoking Climber's back before he could rise. The blade penetrated a fraction of an inch before it came to a complete stop, the pitted blade bending ominously as it refused to go any further. The wounded Climber lunged to his feet swinging wildly with his saber, forcing Will to hastily block.

The shortsword jerked in his hand, slamming up against him as it spread the force over a larger area before Will was catapulted sideways, smashing through Alicia's door and back out into the hall. The burned Climber followed Will through the door, trying not to give him a moment to breathe. Behind him, Will could see the other one raise his saber over Alicia's sleeping form.

Noob and Billy-bob, Will's other summons from the Wand of the Undead Retainer, tried their best to claw the man's eyes out and drag him backwards. The Climber shrugged off their attempts and raised his saber just as the partially cooked climber dominated Will's view. What's behind him? the main deck? Good enough. If he destroyed the mast, that wouldn't be nearly as bad as losing Alicia. Will drew a line between his two opponents and unleashed another cannonball directly into the man's chest.

Thanks to the Dimensional Oyster's upgrade he could carry around three of them, plus minor things like his sword and a handful of consumeables. The cannonball picked up his opponent and carried him into the one looming over Alicia, sending them both through the wall and sailing out into the night, bouncing off the mast. Will glanced to the side and saw Loth sprinting down the hall towards them before he shoved off the wall and sprinted back into Alicia's room, glancing down to ensure she was unharmed.

The noble scion was unharmed and still sound asleep. Will glanced to the side and saw Mason sprinting his direction, Stevie forcing the Greater Healing potion down June's throat while the other two dragged Reggie's unconscious body down the hall towards them.

"Protect them!" Will shouted at the ghost butlers as Loth came around the corner.

"Mason, go with Will, I'll defend them!" Loth said. Who's unaccounted for? Will thought as he leapt through the hole in the wall. Travis, Brianna… are they still on the Church ship? On the main deck below, it was chaos. Anna's copies were fending off at least a dozen Climbers cloaked in shadow. They were fighting with nearly equal strength, but Anna wasn't much of a fighter and her opponents were getting the upper hand more often than not, dropping multiple copies of the Baker to the ground.

Surrounding them were were dozens of gawkers on deck, most of them crew from the ships they'd sunk earlier that night. Among the gawkers were dozens more shadow-cloaked figures, gawking along with the rest of the Climbers, at least until Anna engaged them. Wait. A bolt of realization shot through Will.

"Wait!" he shouted, tackling Anna before she could attack one of the stunned shadow-cloaked onlookers.

"What?" Anna asked.

"But he's-""It's not all of them!" Will shouted. Whoever had created the shadow-covering was applying it to some of the people they'd taken under their wing, intending to use them as camouflage. If Will's crew attacked the people they were hosting without provocation that would be very frowned upon. It was an attack on them and their reputation. BOOM! An explosion rocked Shimmer to the side as Mason unleashed a blast on a swath of shadow-cloaked figures. Damnit!

Will reeled Mason in with Phantom Hand to stop another blast before he lunged over and grabbed his staff, wrenching his attention back to Will.

"Only the ones who attack us!" he said, gesturing to the onlookers.

"They're civilian camouflage!" Mason's gaze flickered across the deck, taking in the shadowed figures mixed in with the unaffected ones, all watching Will's party in horror. Mason's eyes widened in sudden realization. As Will was speaking, a shadowed Climber slipped out from behind another shadowed onlooker and thrust a saber towards him. Will didn't know if it was one of the attackers, or if it was one of the graneshian civilians they'd brought on board defending themselves from William Oh's mad rampage.

Since Will couldn't tell which his attacker was, Will went easy on him, stomping the floor out from under his foot and hitting him in the face with a cannonball… gently. Will retrieved the cannonball and flung it at one of the shadows hacking at a downed Anna, knocking the climber overboard. Will took a deep breath.

"Listen up!" Will shouted at the top of his lungs.

"There are intruders on board! They have made some of you look like them! If you are not one of them, go back to your room and wait! If you are one of them, stay and be disposed of!" The non-shadowed Climbers side-eyed the shadowed Climbers among them suspiciously, but in the end, they acquiesced, filing downstairs, leaving the deck empty save for the swath of burnt Climbers Mason had hit with Conflagration.

"Get them some help," Will said to Anna. He didn't know which of them might be the attackers, but he knew that doing anything less than everything he could to prevent losing people under his protection would blow up in his face. The baker nodded, her many injured copies dragging themselves to their feet, their wounds fading away in seconds as they began rounding up the wounded and searching for potions and healers. There were a few among those aboard the ship.

"The attackers used the noncombatants as camouflage to escape." Mason muttered, his hand clasped over his stomach. True, they had either joined the other shadowed civilians when they filed downstairs, or they had abandoned ship as soon as their camouflage dissipated.

"What've you go there?" Will asked, pointing at Mason.

"Just a light stabbing." Mason said.

"It's barely bleeding. Stings like a bitch, though. Not worth a healing potion." Light stabbing? Will thought, brow cocked. He was unsure if anything that could penetrate Mason's shields could be considered light.

"Show me." Will said, peering down.

"See?" Mason asked, lifting his hand. Indeed, he wasn't bleeding very much at all. The wound had the narrow shape of a stab, but the wound only had maybe a teaspoon of blood soaked into the skin and fabric around it. Will wasn't sure, but in the lamplight, the wound seemed to glimmer with a faint shine. I guess there is such a thing as a light stabbing, Will thought.

"Make sure it's not cursed or poisoned as soon as you can," Will muttered before turning back the way they'd come.

"Loth!" Will shouted, waving up at the Kobold through the hole in the quarterdeck above them.

"What!?" Loth asked, poking her head out.

"Where are the other two!?" Will asked.

"As soon as they spotted Anna, I figured they might identify her Class and ordered Jean to abandon ship!" Loth replied.

"Travis on the other hand…" the hive-wielding saboteur gave a shrug. Damnit Travis. Travis Oilton Travis put away the last of his food and headed for his cabin for the night. It was a shared cabin, since there wasn't nearly enough space to give refugees their own room. Travis didn't' mind it as much as he had when he first set out Climbing. You take what you can get, and sometimes a blanket is it, so bunk-beds seemed kingly by comparison.

There should be at least half a dozen young men sleeping in their bunks by the time he arrived. Which was why he was taken aback when he arrived to an empty cabin. Empty, save one person, a grey-bearded man whose hide had been tanned for decades by salt, wind and sun. Sain Jairus.

"Good evening, Travis Oilton." The saint said, his hands folded in his lap.

"I'm not-""Before you make a fool of yourself:" the Saint said, raising a hand.

"My Focus is one hundred and eighty. Your little 'forget me' trick isn't going to work on me. Everyone else on board, maybe, but not me." Above them, the sound of shouting began to rise as battle was joined on the deck. It sounded like their Tangled were fighting the crew of the floating church. Saint Jairus glanced up without any hint of surprise, then back down at Travis.

"I'd like to ask you a question."

"Is it how fast I can run?" Travis asked, backing towards the door.

"Because I can run pretty fast." Saint Jairus shook his head without coming any closer.

"Did you ever get your revenge against the Wyrd family for destroying yours?" Travis halted in place.