The Quacken, just in case you were wondering, dear reader, was the unfunny punchline to “What do you get if you cross twenty wizards, ten mages, copious amounts of booze, a rubber duck (freshly liberated from the student dorms at the academy.) An eldritch growth spell, a cursed life spell, and a hold my beer moment.”

Sadly it seemed that it had happened, and unsurprisingly nobody was laughing.

The biggest problem that you faced The Quacken was that it deemed everything else afloat as a personal affront. Well the biggest problem besides The Quacken itself, and its many, many tentacled, fanged beak, and rather harpoon proof skin. (Hey what did you expect when it was originally made of rubber?)

The offensively yellow, and terribly antagonistic creature usually favoured hunting around the ruins of the old academy. (The reason for it being the old academy, and ruins probably had something to do with them thinking that creating things like The Quacken was a good idea.) But lately it had started spreading its metaphorical wings somewhat, resulting in occasional clashes with any flotilla that dared to leave the harbour. Of course when faced with such an eccentric abomination, the result was said flotilla being well and truly...... ducked.

They had sent out mages in an attempt to counter it multiple times, but it was tough to sink a creature literally made of something specifically designed not to sink. That left them with limited possible options for how to handle things. It wasn’t like they could deal with it in the manner with which most rubber ducks are dealt with. (For starters it would take a hell of a long time for it to grow all gross and mildewy, and secondly there wasn’t a parent in the world big enough to encounter said twenty foot tall, tentacled, and bitey, mouldy rubber duck, and throw it out in disgust. This put them in something of a dilemma. How exactly were they supposed to deal with it?

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The Don was awake, and because he was awake, he was hangry. Usually when somebody wakes up after a long rest they grab a snack, and feel better. But everything up here was so much smaller, and all that was left in that tiny walnut brain of his was the need to feed. Primal hunger filled up every crevice of his being, and that Orca he grabbed earlier barely touched the sides.

To make matters worse the only things even close to his size nearby were those hollow floaty things, and they were hardly worth attacking, not for the amount of meat in them. Of course that didn’t stop The Don from doing it, just meant he wasted more energy, making him hungrier, and by extension angrier. This was what most people would consider to be bad news, and with good reason. Still those floaty things all seemed to come from the same direction, so he followed his instincts and started to swim lazily off in that direction.

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Mibbet pondered the idea of The Quacken for a moment, her mind rebelling at the ridiculousness. As a frog she had a rare and unique perspective on the issue of ducks. Because there are not many people realise it, but Ducks are omnivorous, and thus when times are lean, will not turn their beaks up at spawn, tadpoles, or even fully grown frogs. The thought of one at the apex of an aquatic ecosystem filled Mibbet with dread, even more so with the realisation it was about twenty feet, and the tentacles would apparently withdraw into the rubbery shell when threatened. (Though what the hell threatened The Quacken she really did not wish to think about.)

So the locals basically lived next to a giant undrinkable pond, occupied by a giant doom-duck, and a gargantuan crusher carp with extra nitey bits, and they did this VOLUNTARILY? Not for the first time in her life Mibbet pondered that humans, as a species were pretty much the embodiment of ridiculousness.

“Who even animates a giant rubber duck?” Asked Errol, aghast, “whoever it was must have been absolutely quackers.”

Elvira was rather helpful at that moment, and saved Mibbet the effort, by giving Errol a disdainful glare in pun-ishment.

“OK so let me see if I’ve got this right, you want me to fight, not one, but TWO giant monsters that have taken down what probably amounts to a third of your total fleet. You want me to do this while afloat in a vessel they can destroy in the blink of an eye. Furthermore the place you want me to do this is right next to the territory of a very irate deity. Who has for the past few weeks been chucking round fleets globally like a kid at bathtime?”

“That’s sort of it yeah, we.... uh... have recruited a few crewmen of considerable skill to help you out, but we can’t face this alone.”

Mibbet and Rosalind, not for the first time in this journey, pondered the possibility of retreat, resignation, or abdication. Anything to avoid the responsibility that would inevitably fall to them. Rosalind doubted her father would accept a letter of resignation, and the only divorcee she would technically be eligible to marry was divorced for a good reason. (King Heinrich had long ago figured out that divorce was expensive, politically inadvisable, and really got most of the temples representatives backs up. While assassination tended to lead back to him, with aforementioned ramifications in tow. To counter this he had founded the church of the sacred Guiloutine, which had a rather more direct method of severing relations. This had resulted in wives filing for divorce with no contest because the alternatives were the ol’ chop chop. Or staying married to ol’ Heinrich, which was arguably an even worse fate.)

So while it would get her the scandal she needed to justify her abdication, it really didn’t seem to her like a fair swap. That only left her with one possible answer here, and it was going to suck, (assuming she survived.)

“OK I’m in," Mibbet said with a groan.