The words sank in quickly. The glint of sun off far‑off sails was too steady, too wide, and too purposeful to be anything but a warship heading directly towards them. It had swagger. Marco generally liked swagger but had found it was much worse when the confidence was aimed directly at him. He would have much preferred a worried gait, a sort of cautious approach that showed his opponent had heard about The Foolish Endeavor crew and was reluctant to tie up with them.

This ship was big, bigger than anything he had gone up against before. He was on his own much smaller ship in a flash, placing his hand flat on the wheel and letting his power circulate through the ship. Luckily, the system had not been stingy here. It had eaten every scrap of material available to it, but it had also left him a full tank of gas.

“They are headed straight for us.” Aethe had climbed the rigging and was balanced in the new crossbeams of the split mast, spyglass at her eye. Her hair whipped in the wind, but her voice was steady. “Looks like a galleon, but different. Too many lights running down the side. I think they’re enchanted cannon mounts. At least a dozen.”

“That’s a lot.” Riv hefted his club out of habit before remembering it wasn’t going to matter against that many cannons. He put it back on his belt and reached for the axe instead. “Can we take that head-on?”

“We aren’t taking it head-on.” Marco ran his palm over the wheel. The Foolish Endeavor literally thrummed under him, alive and eager in a way he could feel in the part of him that interacted with the system. It felt almost like it was talking to him, almost like it was telling him that it was fast. “We’re going to see what this new ship can do. Hold tight.”

The ship responded to him like no craft ever should have been able to. With the new sails flaring open and the dome glowing with unspent energy, The Foolish Endeavor

leapt forward into the waves. The water hissed against the prow as the ship forced its way slightly up and partially out of the sea, splitting the water in a furious wake that sent spray higher than the rails.

Aethe shouted from the mast, “They’ve noticed us. They sped up.”

“Good.” Marco’s grin cut hard and sudden. “Let’s do some weird stuff. Elisa, figure out the range on that new weapon.”

"It'll waste power."

"Then waste power. Figure out how far you can hit it from."

She did. The galleon approached in a way that was far from ponderous, a lumbering beast that still somehow moved like a jackrabbit. It was on the slow side compared to the easy, faster-than-expected pace of The Foolish Endeavor, but any dreams Marco had of simply outmaneuvering it while never being in real danger at all evaporated once he saw his opponent’s speed. He'd have the faster ship, but not so devastating an advantage that things wouldn't still be hard.

Elisa sat in the gunner's seat of the big crossbow, which rotated towards the enemy ship with a creak. Lightning lanced from her fingertips as she laid her hands on the firing mechanism and pulled. A huge bolt as long as Riv was tall immediately expelled from it, filling the air with a bassy boom as it flew in a straight, no-arc trajectory towards the enemy ship.

It didn't make it, not nearly. About halfway to the other ship, it exploded midair, showering the local environment with sparks and arcs of electricity for a moment before disappearing completely.

"It has great range. Better than it should," Elisa said. "But it's not infinite."

"Then hold your fire until we get close," Marco said. "I'll keep them at a distance as long as I can."

They held their breath for a minute and a half, which was how long it took to get into range of Elisa's next shot. This one was loaded with fire and slammed into the side of the enemy ship, leaving a big scorch mark around two of the cannon-mount holes high on the sides of the hull. Five seconds later, she fired again. They were closer now, and Marco could see some of the energy from the shots transferring to the wood, starting small fires where the impact had splintered the surface of the hull.

Stolen from NovelBin, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"The power is distance-sensitive!" Elisa yelled. "It won't work its best until we’re much closer."

"Just keep firing!" Marco shouted back. They needed every edge they could get, and a little damage before things got serious would only help. "As often as you can! Pound them!"

The projectile from the Wizard’s Arbalest wasn’t a cannonball. It was a beam, a line of molten energy as thick as a mast, tearing across the waves in a straight lance. It punched into the galleon’s prow again and again, gaining accuracy and power as they got closer. Where at first it had hit the cannon ports on accident, it was now alternating between the few that were at the right angle. Finally, one of the bolts hit so dead on it carried away the cannon it was aimed at, blowing it deep into the guts of the ship as confused yells and screams reported through the now vacant artillery port.

The galleon staggered but did not stop. The hole smoked black against its painted hull, but magic swirled along the edges, patching what it could. Whatever force owned that ship had prepared it for punishment.

"That's not good!" Riv yelled. "Can we do anything about that?"

“They’ll heal. But they can’t heal faster than we can hit. It will build up,” Aethe called back.

"We should be getting into their cannon range soon," Marco said. "Elisa, any use in staying back?"

"No." She fired another shot off, hitting the bigger ship harder than ever. "Get as close as you can. Circle."

"All right." Marco changed angle slightly, giving Elisa a better firing angle and making sure they'd avoid a head-on collision that they couldn't win. It wasn’t even about ship quality. It was just about mass. The bigger ship has four to five planks for every single one of theirs. "Make those shots count."

From that moment on, chaos reigned. The first volley from the other ship was light but accurate, as only a few of the cannons could strike at them. Elisa returned fire, bathing the inside of the ship in a bath of lightning that stopped them from answering with their own cannons for a few seconds. When they finally did, the ship had turned, and they were now doing their best to weather a full broadside.

They survived because of speed. As soon as the cannons fired, Aethe gave a warning yell that allowed Marco enough time to pour his own power into moving the ship along. It was the first time he had truly tried to maneuver the ship quickly, and the first time in a while he had thought about the ship's overpowered, mysterious-wood rudder.

Before, the ship had not been the equal of what the rudder could do. It simply couldn't keep up with how much water the rudder could catch or how sharp a turn the rudder had wanted the ship to make. As a result, Marco was realizing, the rudder had barely accepted his magical power. The power had influenced it, sure, but not in any out-of-the-ordinary way. The rudder had made the ship turn better, and empowering it had added a little more to that.

Now, he felt his power accumulate in the rudder like it was actively sucking it in, converting all of it to maneuverability at a rate he could hardly believe. The ship swerved through the water like he was drawing its path with a pen, almost unlimited in what it could do as he weaved back and forth in unpredictable, rhythmless ways.

It was good that he did, because even with all that, they were still getting pounded. The attacks from the galleon were enhanced every bit as much as their own cannon was, taken as a group at least. They slammed into the deck with several times the weight and power they should have had, slamming through rails and pounding holes in the deck.

"Going closer!" Marco yelled. "Let's see if they can hit us at point-blank range."

As they finally swerved to the closest spacing Marco could manage, Elisa pumped out her first truly powerful shots, the bolts that did the most of any she had fired so far. It was immediately clear that the Arbalest loved close range. Each bolt from it now hit with the sound of a falling mountain, rumbling and echoing through the enemy ship as they pierced clean through the hull and spread mayhem inside the ship.

Riv, now cannonless, was doing his best to help. His best, however, was getting into their barrel of special cannonballs and chucking them overhand at the enemy ship. It was a good enough idea if it worked, but it didn't. The cannonballs he threw just clinked off, harming the enemy ship not at all while still taking him out of cover.

"They need magic to fire!" Elisa bellowed. "Throwing them won't work."

"What if I threw the whole barrel? Just onto the deck?"

"What would that do?"

"You could shoot them!"

Marco looked back to Elisa to learn why that wouldn't work, gazing all the way through a storm of Aethe's crew-eliminating sniper fire to the cannon at the back of the enemy ship. Instead of the formation of a witty retort, he instead saw her mouth working noiselessly, helping her work through her shock.

"Yes!" she finally squeaked. "Please do that!"

The distraction of all this had its costs. The side of the ship they were on had the better part of eight functional cannons left, seven of which successfully made contact with The Foolish Endeavor at that moment. Marco looked on as the forward mast was shattered nearly in half, the aft rail was torn mostly off, and the deck took damage at several points. They had been making good progress on hurting the bigger ship with the Arbalest, but this had shifted the balance from unlikely to impossible in terms of them winning the fight with artillery alone.

"When it hits, we jump over," Marco said. "Use that leap power we got. It's our only chance."

Riv took two spinning steps before letting the barrel loose. Some sharp-eyed ship's archers saw it coming and took potshots at the barrel, but that only served to break it open midair and better scatter the cannonballs over the deck. With one last shot, Elisa drove a bolt into the air and joined her friends seconds before it hit.

"Ready?" Marco asked. "I'll clear the deck. You three go below and take down the cannoneers before they sink my ship. Got it?"

"You can't…"

"I can, Aethe. Remember I've grown a lot, recently. Just let me do this."