The hurricane didn't sneak up on them. At this point, basically nothing could. Aethe could see as far across the water as the curvature of the ocean allowed. The spyglass was additive on top of that, letting her get details about what she was looking at that were invisible even to her superior eyes. Nighttime put a bit of a shackle on that scouting power, but not as much as one might have expected.

This hurricane came with flags flying, trumpets blaring, and no attempt at all to hide itself. They saw it on the horizon the moment it was possible to. It wasn't easy to miss something that large. Riv got to work immediately, doing what he could to secure sails, chicken coops, and anything else that might blow overboard. Elisa stowed everything that wasn't immediately necessary to have out in their rune-slab storage, leaving them light in the water until she engineered some kind of perfect, stability-based buoyancy using strapped-down barrels of grain as ballast.

"I thought it would be ships or a giant kraken again." Riv found Marco at the wheel about a half hour before the storm hit. "We were due for something big, but an enormous storm wasn't on my list of guesses."

"It probably should have been. It's honestly weirder that we haven't had this kind of problem more already."

"Even so. I wish there was more I could do to help. You'd think that as strong as I am, I could figure something out."

"I wish so too; I just don't think there is. Until the ship starts to sink or fall apart, though, I think you are better off in the captain's cabin. Do we know what happens to the outboat if the ship sinks?"

"I asked Elisa about that. She doubts it goes away. She said if it did, it would have a major downside compared to just keeping an outboat onboard somehow. That the system wouldn't bait-and-switch that hard."

"Makes sense. Just keep everyone safe in the cabin, and don't worry about me. I do still need you to stake me down, though."

"Are you sure? It's hard to swim with ropes tying you to a sinking boat."

Marco patted his rapier, which was at his side as it almost always was. It was as close to an extension of his body as it could be, and it really was an extension of his class.

"I have this. Missing a stationary rope with it isn't really possible for me anymore. Getting blown overboard by a massive wave is."

"Fair. I'll get on it."

Riv brought a few wooden poles over, as well as a hand drill that had long since joined the complement of ship's tools he used to keep everything in top condition. He drove the poles through the just slightly undersized holes in the deck, then slathered them with some unknown glue compound before heading belowdecks.

Marco heard him doing some work with a hammer down there, and he was confident whatever was happening only made the already pretty secure stakes that much closer to impossible that they'd come out. Riv knew his stuff, and Marco trusted him to know it.

"Okay. That should do it." Riv came back up to the deck and grabbed a thin, supple rope. "I'm tying one of your legs with a few feet of slack. No more than that. You need room to move, and you can't cut these ropes if your hands are tied up. It won't keep you from falling over, but it will keep you from washing overboard."

"Good enough." Marco offered the leg closest to the stake, and Riv tied it off expertly. "Thanks."

"Just don't sink us, captain. And don't drown. Those are my two asks."

The ocean had been choppy before that, but now it was beginning to become something else altogether. The waves were swells, then bigger swells, and soon Marco was glad that Riv had gone to the cabin as soon as he had. He was surprised to see Elisa out a moment after that, stumbling back and forth as she made her way to the wheel.

"One thing I forgot," she said. "Keep your mind on keeping the ship steady. Not going fast, just keeping the ship steady and stable. The rune blocks probably have something for that. And, I guess, keep an eye out for terrors of the deep."

"I always do."

"I mean it, Marco. A storm like this stirs the waters deeper than you'd think. Sometimes it wakes things up. We've never seen that, but it's possible."

"It's in the records?"

"It is. Just keep an eye out and hope for the best."

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A particularly big wave rocked the deck then, reeling Elisa all the way to the ship's rail.

"Get inside, Elisa!" Marco said. "And stay there. Captain's orders."

Kuzia had already been out of the weather and had been for hours. That left just one person out in the open with Marco, but even she jumped down off the bow now and walked steadily to Marco's side.

"I'm your wife," Aethe said.

"You are."

"And I'm dedicated to us. You know that, right?"

"I do. It feels like there's a but coming."

"There is. I don't like to get wet. I don't talk about it a lot but I don't love being rained on. So I love you, but…"

"But you are going inside. That's fine, Aethe. I love you too."

"Take care and don't let us drown."

Marco nodded, they kissed, and then he was alone. It was just him against the storm.

—

The hurricane did not come to The Foolish Endeavor in a gradual way. The first wall of rain hit like a wagon, bashing sheets of water into his face and stinging his eyes even as he clung to the wheel. Lightning forked across the sky, striking so close he felt the crackle of static as the hair on his arms rose.

The first waves of the hurricane proper were just as dramatic. From the first, The Foolish Endeavor shuddered and groaned pressure of them, but not so much that Marco was very worried, for now. The ship was well put together, tight at every joint, and well maintained. So long as the ship wasn't in danger of capsizing, he wasn't immensely worried about the waves as an isolated force.

The winds were more of a concern. Marco had expected wind, but nothing like he was getting. It came in blasts so strong that he felt it would have ripped the masts clean out of the ship if they had any sail to catch. Each gust shifted direction like a circling boxer looking for vulnerabilities, turning the ship this way and that, disregarding the instructions he had given the rudder through sheer force.

Marco fought the wheel, muscles burning as he corrected the ship's angle with sheer muscle and rudder. Even so, he was sideways to the wind just as often as he was pointed into it, fighting an unending battle to keep ahead of an ever-growing force.

It got worse and worse, even just in the early parts of what promised to be hours and hours of knock-down, drag-out fighting with a storm. Ocean spray drenched him again and again. Brine filled his mouth and nose until he could hardly breathe. The wind blocked out any sound besides itself, leaving him as isolated as if he were twenty feet under the surface of the water.

There were still comforts. He thought of Riv’s ropes and silently thanked the Sturdy for his excellent work. More than once a wave had broken directly across the deck, sweeping Marco’s legs out from under him. Only the tether biting into his ankle kept him from vanishing into the sea. He pulled himself back up each time, regaining his grip on the wheel and pouring his magic into the ship once more.

That magic, he was convinced, was all that had saved them so far. The storm was unreasonably powerful, throwing the ship around like a lion playing with a housecat. The runes flared power under his feet, steadying the ship, keeping it upright, and fighting the storm harder than Marco could have ever done by itself.

Marco was exhausted within minutes, but there was no choice but to keep going. The wind and the waves wiped out his sense of time. There was no day or night anymore, only flashes of white lightning and the howl of the wind. Minutes became hours. At some point, it could have been hours or days since the storm had started. He was sure some crew member knew the difference, but nobody could come out to tell him.

It was just him. As much as the crew might have wanted to be there, he was alone.

Then, when he was almost worn out to a degree he wouldn't have recovered from, it all stopped. There was still plenty of storm to be seen in all directions, but not where he was. Above him, the stars shone as if nothing had happened at all. The storm was still there, but he had reached the eye.

The world went eerily still. The waves smoothed. For a few moments Marco just stared, chest heaving, trembling from exhaustion. Then his friends were on him. Elisa got there first, her hands glowing green with the deepest, most powerful healing she could supply. It hit him with all the force of a long, calm nap, bringing him from a punch-drunk stupor back to full alertness in a moment.

"Is that different? That was more than just being healed," Marco asked.

"I've been working on using it to restore stamina, like rest does," Elisa said. "The whole storm. You can work out some interesting things in ten hours."

"Ten hours?" Marco shook his head. "I would not have guessed that."

Riv and Aethe were to him next, filling him with food and water, forcing him to sit and eat and drink while there was still time to rest. They nearly force-fed him, getting a good three meals worth of calories down him in the densest, most compact form available to them. He let them. There was still a lot of storm to get through, and he was only going to gain so much from a short break.

He resigned himself to being massaged back into fighting form by a supportive crew, laying back and taking deep breaths as food, stats, and magic did their best to bring him back to top condition. He had almost regained his hope of making it, supplementing that by staring down at calm waves that hardly fought the ship at all. For a moment, he felt fine.

Then he saw movement.

Shapes rose in the water beyond the calm, colossal things. The water started to swell in as huge things disturbed from the deeps churned below the boat, visible despite their depth. Then, slowly, they stilled. One by one, the colossal shapes jerked in place, struggled, and then died. There were terrible, unknown things below the waves, and those were concerning enough. But there were things hunting them. Or thing. That felt even worse to think about.

Marco gritted his teeth, wishing whatever was down there would find enough prey to keep it occupied until the winds could carry him out of the eye. He watched the last few of the titans fall, then spent a sickening moment before whatever was down there decided to take interest in the ship at the surface. A fathom away, he could finally see it, a wrong-moving thing that darted through the water like lightning, jumping from point to point, carving an uneven path to the surface.

"Everyone. On guard," he said. "It's coming. And I'm not… I'm not sure it's something we want to fight."