Only a bit later, Redd climbed onto the steps of the ruined, warped town and raised his voice above the crowd. Wounded sailors gathered, healing but not quite healed. The square smelled of smoke, sweat, and despair.

"You all saw it. You all felt it. That plinth nearly destroyed us. And it would have ended us if not for Marco and his crew." His voice cracked with exhaustion then, which seemed only to increase its weight with the crowd. "We owe them more than thanks. We owe them our help."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. It was unclear how well this suggestion was being received.

Redd continued on unbothered.

"There are fewer of us now. Captains fell today. That broke apart crews and left ships without masters. We can’t ignore it. We can’t pretend things will just fix themselves. We need something to bind us together again. This is it."

He gestured broadly, calling attention to the wounded captains laid out along the square.

"Where a captain has fallen, their crew must find a new leader. Where a ship has lost too many men, they have to replenish to form a new crew. We can’t waste strength. We can’t cling to pride while Quill laughs at us. While he picks us off while we are weak."

A grizzled sailor raised his hand and shouted.

"And what of the ships with no one left?"

Redd nodded grimly. "We strip them down. Nothing goes to waste. Their parts will reinforce the ones that remain. We won't have as many ships, but those we send out will be stronger." He turned toward Marco, motioning him forward. "We’ll help them. These outsiders they fight Quill, and now so do we. That makes us the same team."

Marco stepped up reluctantly, but the crowd’s eyes locked on him. Redd clapped a bloody hand to his shoulder. "I’ll say it plain. You follow me, you follow them. We’ll give them men, ships, whatever it takes. Because if we don’t, we’re next. All of us."

A murmur of agreement spread wider this time, swelling into voices of approval. Some sailors raised fists; others nodded to one another. The decision had been made.

Marco whispered low to Redd, "You didn’t have to do that."

"Aye, I did," Redd said, his expression fierce. "You needed an army. You didn't think you could get one yet. Neither does Quill. Let's hit him where it hurts."

—

Work began. Crews gathered to bury the fallen, while captains spent time deciding which sailors would be merged with which new crews to maximize the strength of the armada as a whole. Hands clasped and blades touched in solemn recognition of new chains of command. Before long there wasn't an undermanned ship in the entire fleet.

The sound of hammers and saws followed soon after as idle ships were stripped for parts under torchlight, their pieces hauled off to reinforce others. There was a lot of material here, good material harvested in a best-case-scenario method. The docks glowed gold again and again as ships hit upgrade thresholds and turned into different things entirely, the next and more lethal forms of themselves.

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Redd walked the square, overseeing, and offering a word here, a barked order there. Marco’s crew followed in part, lending a hand where they could. Riv helped lift broken spars, Aethe circled looking for idle hands and organized them back into effective work parties, and Elisa pushed herself past exhaustion to tend to the injured until her magic gave out. Even Marco, the least useful of them, was able to add small buffs of strength and motivation here and there. It wasn't much, but it added up to significant progress before long.

By dawn, the town still looked battered but no longer seemed broken. Fewer ships stood in the harbor, but those that remained gleamed with new timber and freshly upgraded rope. The survivor's eyes were steady. They had chosen to live and to fight.

Marco thought that had less to do with his mission than it might have seemed. Yesterday had been a very bad day. Redd was right that these people needed something to rally behind, something to get them back on the seas and to provide them purpose. That was Marco, but only because he happened to be nearby.

He was fine with that. The time of revenge had come, and the retribution navy was ready to sail.

The Foolish Endeavor

cut through the waves, timbers humming with Marco's power. The retribution armada stretched out ahead of them, a wall of hulls and masts that almost glowed in the morning sun. Marco stood at the wheel, watching the fleet fan out across the horizon.

Their ship was placed in the center rear of the formation, cushioned by heavier frigates and destroyers. Marco frowned unhappily at the positioning. Riv stood beside him, equally unhappy.

"It feels wrong," Riv muttered. "We should be at the front. If we’re leading this fight, why are we stuck in the back? I feel like cargo."

Marco nodded. "It feels like hiding."

Elisa joined them, her robe flapping in the wind. She gave them both a patient look.

"It’s not hiding. It’s smart. If anyone is sunk in the first salvos, it won’t be us. If Quill has a trick prepared, the front line will absorb it. We have a role in this fight, but there's also a reason we needed this navy in the first place. We’re too important to risk early on."

Riv scowled but said nothing to argue. If there was someone on board that understood tactics, it was Elisa. Marco kept watching the sails ahead, uneasy but also unwilling to argue further. He swallowed the sense that he was somehow acting like a coward and went back to navigation, careful to keep his place in the overall formation.

A shimmer appeared near the mainmast, and a ghostly projection of Redd appeared. It was the same sort of magic they had once seen from Frisk's ship, an illusion meant to enable ship-to-ship communication coming from a mage that Redd had picked up the night before. It was thought, and Marco agreed, that Redd should act as the actual commander of this fleet. The illusion helped him do that job.

The communication double inclined its head. "She’s right. I argued for this position. You four are the only ones we can count on to stand against Quill’s powers. If we lose you in the first volley, the rest of this is wasted."

Marco sighed. "I don’t like it, but fine. We’ll stay put."

Redd’s shade smiled faintly. "You won’t just stay put. When we reach Quillton, we’ll hit hard, and crews will follow you ashore if they can. But you must accept this: the only team we know for certain can resist Quill is yours. The rest of us will fight to buy you space, so long as the talismans say we can."

The talismans were another unexpected boon. A team of mages had worked all night getting them up and running, using bits and pieces of broken plinth to make them. Supposedly, they'd glow when a person was about to lose themselves to Quill's power. They could then pull back before they became an enemy as well.

Elisa touched Marco’s arm. "That’s what this is all for. Every reforged ship, every sailor who rallied, is the shield. All of it so that we can strike the heart."

Riv exhaled a long breath through his nose, wordlessly conceding the point. Aethe came up the companionway with her bow slung, leaving behind a contingent of shock troops they had been temporarily gifted from the fleet's supply—warrior-types most likely to resist Quill's power.

"The men are ready," she said simply. "Whatever comes, they’ll stand with us."

Marco looked at each of them in turn, taking in Elisa’s calm, Riv’s strength, and Aethe’s quiet resolve. He spared a glance at the shimmering, apparently confident figure of Redd. Beyond them stretched the sea, with Quillton somewhere on its horizon, just becoming visible over the curvature of the region.

He squared his shoulders. "Then we’ll finish this. One way or another."