While the swarm of monstrous bug-people assaulted the city, there was another battle going on in the fog that hung over the midnight sea. The Siempre Dorado Kingdom’s navy had been tipped off that the forces of the evil empire of Darksol were going to make an amphibious invasion alongside the attack of the monsters. To preempt this and to make absolutely certain that no harm could come by sea, the navy had ‘requisitioned’ every single ship in the entire harbor.

Merchant ships, fishing boats and even personal yachts were being manned; everything was being sent to deal with the threat. After all, there were too many marines in the city, all of them having been pulled from dozens of other cities, to say nothing of the number of coastal defenses and anti-pirate patrols. It was a dangerous gambit, to fight Darksol inside such heavy fog and in the middle of the night, but if they waited for both forces to link up there would be no way to win.

…

A single man in the crow’s nest tried desperately to search through the fog but saw nothing save it be the surface-hugging clouds that obscured any kind of natural human vision. He was nearly ready to give up and change shifts when he spotted a light in the gloom. It was a blue-green light, flickering like a beacon in the dark. It was a flame that should not be; unnatural and evil.

“Enemy Ship! Dead Ahead!”

His cries spurred everyone to action and soon the motley fleet of purpose-built military ships and ‘borrowed’ civilian ones began to have their crews ready themselves for combat. The flame in the distance was small, so the ship must be small as well. That was the thought process that guided their thinking. They saw other flames appear, but these too were small and likely belonged only to longships at best. Hardly a challenge! They had been worried over nothing!

Then, the fog in their general area began to lift. It was like the mist was creating an arena for them to fight in. Why these undead mongrels would want their ships to be seen was beyond the reasoning of the Kingdom’s men. That was, until the ships began to emerge into the arena.

This was when the marines realized they had made a terrible mistake. They had misjudged the distance in the fog. The ships that slunk out into view were absolutely massive! They were easily four, no, five times the size of their own, and that was only counting the smaller ones! Worse still, the haunted ships cruised forward propelled by fel magic that filled the sails and made the evil vessels move at ungodly speeds! And their hulls! They looked to be covered in a thin layer of metal!

Still, they outnumbered the undead in terms of ships by a factor of at least five to one! There was no way that they could lose to a bunch of rotting corpses that could barely swing a sword, let alone swim! As the distance was closed, however, the singing that echoed out from the undead-filled ships began to send shivers down the spines of all loyal to the Goddess Lumina.

…

“Alright, you lot! Here is a battle where we can shine; a field of glory where our talents can be shown to all!”

Valka Dracones, the house founder, laughed merrily as she stood on the deck of the ship she had gotten from her master. To her and her kind, the fog that surrounded them was not even there, and she had been eyeing the pathetic assortment of dinghies that lay before her fleet with disdain. What were these people thinking in making a fleet like that? It was a shameful display, and one she would never be caught dead making.

For this battle she was not wearing her normal heavy metal armor, nor was she wielding her massive weapons. Instead she wore an outfit that was lightweight and made of hardened leather and padded cloth. At her sides were a pair of cursed weapons, two cutlasses and holstered alongside them were two prototype revolvers, custom-made for her and finely detailed with engravings.

She scanned the men and women on the decks of the seven main ships and then looked down at the smaller ones that were filled to the brim with fanatical ‘Deep Faith’ cultists. These warriors called themselves ‘The Drowned’ and believed that their purpose was to send as many ‘infidels’ to a watery grave as possible. Of course, ‘infidel’ did not mean those that did not worship the watery tart known as Zalga. Instead it was merely their way of identifying anyone who wasn’t either a neutral in this war or was not an ally. If you were an enemy of the nation, you were an infidel, and if you weren’t then you weren’t. Odd usage of the term, but whatever floated their boat.

Leaping up to the very front of the warship she was on, Valka raised her hands in the air.

“There are the fools who think to resist us! Let them hear our songs as we send them to the deep! They won’t give us any quarter, so none shall be given to them! From the top! And a one, and a two and a three!”

The air thrummed with magic as Valka flexed what little practical magic-casting experience she had. It was time to send these fools a message; one that would see them quaking in their boots! The air began to vibrate as if musical instruments were being played, and soon enough the entire fleet, undead and living, began to sing as one.

“Oh-ho, the blood runs cold!

We take our loot but don’t get old!

Ah-ah-ahah-ha!

Yo-ho oh-ho-oh!

All hail the mighty!

She’s a-rising from the deep!

With tattered sails

and incredible tales

we’ll give you endless sleep!”

…

The horror in the eyes of the marines as they saw the enemy ships charging them with the short shanty acting as their battle cry was visible to any who looked. The terror was great, and some men soon wished they not only had stayed home but also that they had worn their brown trousers this night. Still, for some reason and despite their overwhelming sense of dread, not a single one had a single thought of wanting to flee the battle that was to come.

Instead, there was an entirely different feeling that was filling them. Yes, they felt fear and an ungodly amount of it at that. But what they felt even more than that was something just as primal. It was a hunger for bloodshed, for carnage, for death and destruction, for VIOLENCE! It was something in the air, perhaps the music that echoed out as the undead and crazy people sang, that set them off.

It was as if their normally controlled lizard-brain was unleashed and injected with an absolutely massive amount of adrenaline. Couple that with the seeming lack of the ‘flight’ response, replaced with only the desire to fight to the bitter end and what you got were marines whose whole purpose went from trying to stop an invasion to trying to fight in a gory spectacle and die in a blaze of glory.

…

Little did anyone on the waves that night know, but Valka had a special gift when it came to driving men into a near (and in some cases, total) berserker rage with just a few manipulations of the auditory spectrum. Now, both sides were as eager as the other to raise hell and let the waters be dyed red with blood and gore.

The Kingdom’s marines moved forwards on their assortment of ships while at the same time the completely insane sons-of-bitches that made up ‘The Drowned’ geared themselves up for a sacrifice to their Goddess. The smaller boats moved ahead as the larger ones tried to keep up, and soon the fleets met. No arrows were loosed, no shots were fired, no magical spells were slung, for all that was on the minds of all that were there under the cloudy night sky was the insatiable desire to rend flesh and shatter bone up-close and personal.

The cultists screamed out their prayers and jumped onto the Kingdom’s ships as the marines did the same to their foes. The mindless bloodlust that hung over all colored their eyes red with the hunger for carnage. If nothing was done, the forces of Darksol might end up turning on each other! Thankfully, the cultists were not at this party alone, for not only were the vampires of House Dracones there but there were agents lurking beneath the waves as well.

Agents who knew all too well the power that resided in sound-based enchantments and illusions.

Agents who knew how to use said spells with far more ease and control than the House Founder of House Dracones.

Agents who were preparing to join the fray.