E V E N T ☆ 6

STORM looks over your party.

A half inch of water sits on the floor of the pagoda; but those who are too exhausted to stand don't mind the fresh coolness of the water against bruised knees and bloody palms. The lily pads that grew across the village are now slick, wet bandages and gauze-packs against sliced arms and punctured ribs; soothing and healing. Furniture lays scattered, broken, shattered -- but you are mostly whole.

You've survived. The village has survived. And now it flourishes under Harvest's blessings.

But it still leaves many things to be unpacked.

A villager that formed a part of the chain blocking your exit begins to stir on the wet floor, awakening from a deep slumber. ELSIE moves forward to help them up, only for the individual to fall unconscious in her arms again - this time, snoring. Loudly.

The SKY GOD speaks: "Go. The villagers will be waking up soon. Meet me at your ship when you are finished."

He begins to trudge along to the south side of the pagoda until he exits. Your eyes are drawn to the north side, where more villagers begin to sit up from their sleepy stupor, wondering what's happened.

YOUR SHIP has drifted back inward to shore and been beached since being blown out to sea during MOON's tidal surge. You trudge along the sands, climbing up ladders and being carried by your winged or STORM-blessed friends to top deck.

STORM stands at the bow end of your ship, waiting for you to board. When all is secured, fastened, and prepared for sea by your weary hands, STORM puts a hand to the hull of your ship and pushes. All thousands upon thousands of pound of wood, mast, sail, cargo, and passengers begins to grind and slide forward with the ship as he speaks.

"The villagers will have one another, as they figure out what to do next. Your work here is done."

Your ship finally hits loose water underneath, drifting away from the continental island shelf underneath it. STORM watches with satisfaction.

"Now that you have the key, return back to the seat of your conflict. END's pursuit of freedom is not over."

The god takes a deep breath, then blows.

A massive gust of wind that was not a part of the breeze before slams into your sails, pushing them open and wide. The gust accelerates your ship forward, carrying it out to sea and to the direction of Port Heritage. The bells begin to ring. STORM becomes smaller and smaller to your back.

When the island becomes a thin line on the horizon, a lightning bolt hits the shoreline. You can presume STORM is gone as quickly as he came.

The wind remains, however. With the God's blessing carrying you at a considerable pace, you're on your way.

Your way back home.

Though a crossing of the Godsea is never relaxing, your journey toward Port Heritage is unaccosted by corrupted sprays, nor pirates, monsters, or sirens -- nor demons, though you see a few flitting on the far horizon, an eerie reminder of the whirlpool's presence far across the sea.

Here at the end of your voyage, you stand on deck with the rest of your party, eager for the first sight of land. With the salty spray blowing your face, it's strange to recall that many mortals of the world never step foot on a boat to cross these magical waters, not once in their entire lives. The ocean's dangers and mysteries are many, and yet for you, the scale of normalcy has tilted so far toward the absurd that it's difficult to put yourself back in that mindset.

You've confronted griffons and gods, monsters and magic and mayhem. What could surprise you now?

Despite the best efforts of the illustrious chef STANCLIFF DUKES --

(-- who indeed journeyed with you to the Crescent Isles; he said he wanted to stay on the ship, but only did so for an hour or two before the smell of dumplings lured him onto the island. He had his own merry adventure behind your backs, including getting brainwashed, accidentally eating a moonflower, fighting off three moonlings barehanded, running into the jungle, getting attacked by a moonpanther, sneaking back into the village in the dead of night armed with nothing but a hastily-carved club and the intent to rescue the party, and promptly being knocked unconscious when MOON's earthquake hit --)

-- your rations have been running low, and meals have gotten scrawnier over the past few days. Though STAN'S seaweed pancakes are second to none, you're ready for the nostalgic flavors of street vendors' banana curry and octopus skewers. You perk with anticipation when ships begin to dot the horizon, a surefire sign that the voyage is at an end. There's always a stream of traffic going toward Port Heritage, the Godsea's center of commerce.

But as you pass the vessels, something seems...

Off.

Your brow furrows. You examine the ships. They seem strangely... weathered. Their sails are looking thin, and -- this is the greatest surprise -- their anchors are dropped. No ship would anchor outside Heritage Cove, in the middle of the Godsea, not with the safety of the Jade Gates right around the corner. Yet the ships appear more and more, closer together -- merchant and personal vessels alike, milling about in the middle of the ocean, with a confused and almost... helpless air about them.

You're within a few clicks of Port Heritage now. You push your ship faster.

But the city is not what emerges on the horizon.

At first, you think it's a trick of the light. Though it's high noon, it appears like dawn is on the horizon. The fuzzy red line on the curve of the world looks exactly like a rising red sun.

But as you sail closer, the red takes form.

You knew of the Red Dynasty's vastness. Heritigians and Red Dynasty citizens alike are aware that the Red Dynasty's vast empire dwarfs that of any other in the Godsea, spanning many islands and civilizations.

But you've never seen the Red Dynasty's vast forces collected in one place before.

With a single glance, you know at once that the fleet outside the Jade Gates exceeds the population of Port Heritage many times over.

Dizziness overtakes you.

You can't even see the blue of the water. The sea has become a forest of rustling red sails, with the distant roofs of Skygardens peeking above.

You drop your anchor at a distance, joining the cluster of civilian ships locked out from the city. It doesn't appear that the Red Dynasty has breached the port. Instead, the whole ocean seems to sit in a sickening equilibrium. The stillness is unnatural. The air stinks of gunpowder and menace.

Port Heritage is under siege.

The heads of the Red Dynasty spies and loyalists break above the water in Thieves Cove.

"I do not like to swim!" wails MARTY the possum, his Harvest-transformed gills melting away in the salty sea air. "I am going to sink and be back on the boat and I do not want to sink because I will die! I do not wish to die!"

VEZU bursts from the water and takes to the air, twirling mid-flight, water droplets flying off him. "I can fly you back, if you'd like," he coos.

"NO. A DIFFERENT BEING." The possum immediately begins to doggy-paddle in the opposite direction. "Where is KOCHEK! Or HARTLEY the commander! Or any other being that will not carry me like I will be eaten!"

From here, bobbing on the waves, no one would have predicted that the Golden Traitor was far below in its magical air capsule. Gazing down into the fathomless dark, it was suddenly easy to understand how HYLAINE had, for so long, failed to capture her sister.

Of course, MAYTHIAS wasn't on her fabled ship at the moment. What had they overheard her say, as the skulked through the shadows...?

If the Gods permit, I should return with at least one victory against this blighted city...

KOCHEK murmurs, "I wonder if Port Heritage is standing strong, we’ve been down there a uh… a while. I'm pretty sure."

HARTLEY LOCKHART, now free, son of COMMANDER LOCHLUN LOCKHART, squints against the heat of the late afternoon sun. It has no doubt been some time since he's felt its warmth on his broad shoulders. It casts spiderlike shadows on the surface of the water as it beams through his antlers.

"We need to get to High Hall," is all he says --

Though, as the group of Red Dynasty loyalists begin the arduous process of swimming to the docks, a massive wave stirs up from underneath-- an unseen movement in the currents far below, as if moving toward the exit of the Cove, causing a swell of water that propels the party toward the docks.

You choke on seawater and paddle.

Smoke bellows from the Magisterium Library.

The crackling of flame on paper fills the room with the smell of char and barbecue. Armored feet move quickly through the tall aisles where students have spent countless hours studying, researching, sneaking kisses, and avoiding the wrath of MISS CLEMENTINA.

"Almost done! I think I see some more!"

"You've got thirty seconds! HUNARI, how's our exit?"

The party, breathing heavily, smudged with dirt and sweat, skids to a stop in the entranceway door.

For one electric moment, the Red Dynasty soldiers and Port Heritage's protectors are held in a frozen silence.

Then ELSIE opens her mouth.

"HOLD! What in the hell is going on here?!"

A monstrous growl fills the room. EIR's claws skid across the library's slick floor as she rounds the corner, lips pulled back from a row of long, sharp teeth that glint in the firelight. Cold, colorless eyes peer out from pitch black fur, taking only a second to survey the scene, before she flings herself through the air and lands on one of the soldiers with a THUD, pinning him to the ground. With a strangled gasp, the private fumbles fruitlessly for his sword.

RED DYNASTY PRIVATE HANARI straightens her back and shouts above the roar of the blaze: "We are burning any books that would aid in bringing forth The Seventh, Sergeant Major!"

The scrofa woman barely flinches as EIR leaps over her head, and SLAG snarls at her side. She pays no attention as the party starts to try and put out the fires and save books.

"There has been a change in orders," she rumbles. "We were sent to gather evidence of this places crimes again the gods, and for confirmative information on containing the Seventh." Her eyes narrow. "Which is hard to do when you lot are burning it all down."

A Red Dynasty Sergeant narrows his eyes. "When did these orders come in? We’ve been planning this for well over several weeks."

"The order change only came in within the last hour," says ELSIE smoothly. "New developments. The Golden Traitor has shown up on the edges of the fleet. Which means some of the keys might be back in play, and that the admiral may make a move soon. We need to preserve what we can here, to counter anything she might try to pull. You know how dangerous she is."

KESTREL narrows his eyes at the conversation, holding LADY CLEMENTINA like a bazooka. She trembles threateningly in his arms. A bead of sweat trickles down ULRICH'S face, wondering how the hell this story is going to go down in the face of a chihuahua cannon.

A tension-thick silence...

Then AVIVA steps forth.

"We mean no disrespect, Sergeant." Cautiously, AVIVA meets each Dynasty soldier's gaze. "It's just... we've had to act with little time, under assumptions that have been rapidly changing. It is only recently that I have been able to meet with the Red Fist and her cohort, and that I've been able to share what I've learned..."

A deep breath -- and a brilliant lie.

"The books here are enchanted. Cursed. I'm sure you've been around the vaults, and you've felt the magic of this establishment..." AVIVA gestures grandly at the Magisterium Library. "It is a mistake to burn all of the tomes around you. I fear that you will all feel the effects of your actions soon enough…"

The intensity of the blaze burns between everyone in the room, the air wavery with heat. All eyes on AVIVA... and the PRAETOR GENERAL nods.

As one, the Red Dynasty begins to smother the flames.

"COME BACK! JUGGLER!"

The words echo through the dim, gunky darkness.

The Goldhands sprint through the walls of the Guild. TENTACLINO'S slime is literally ankle-deep. Clear, with a salty, mildly fishlike odor. Occasionally there are marks in the slime that are distinctly suckerlike -- if suckers were the size of hors drawn carriages. Here and there, a gold coin glitters, carelessly discarded.

The width of the tunnels is most staggering. You could fit a small ship in here -- and you're aware that Tentaclino used to fit almost too snugly in these passages, stuffed like a sausage in its casing. You've even been privy to several conversations about redoing the drywall, which periodically begins cracking from the pressure within.

Following the sloping, slippery path, you creep through the walls of the Guild itself... toward TENTACLINO'S office.

It's not long before you find yourself pressed to the wall, glancing around the corner to see ORDERMASTER VALOROUS standing in the middle of that resplendent room, with its gold columns, gold floors, plush Persian rugs, racks of scrolls, and fully-stocked deluxe bar.

The man is leaning on TENTACLINO's beautiful polished desk, with the key to TENTACLINO's personal vault in his hand -- but his expression isn't triumphant.

Instead, his eyes are stretched wide as he stares at an array of papers.

"What is..." he's muttering. "What could the meaning of this possibly..."

FELIX and NICO exchanged glances.

Then FELIX steps neatly into the office and brains VALOROUS in the head with a glass jar containing a toad.

"Lofty bastard," FELIX says, as VALOROUS drops like a brick.

NICO's eyes glimmer as he ties the Ordermaster up. "Ta-dah!"

VALOROUS drops like a brick, groaning; NICO wastes no time tying him up.

"What is..." VALOROUS mumbles. "What is the meaning of..."

ZELL fans himself. "You both make assault and attempted kidnapping so….elegant." He withdraws strips of cloth from his pocket and gives them a kiss before stuffing them in VALOROUS'S mouth. "Nothing personal, VALOROUS. Just business."

FELIX is already at TENTACLINO'S desk, scanning the papers VALOROUS had been reading with such consternation.

Then he reads them again.

And again.

"What was he looking at?" NICO calls.

In answer, FELIX passes the papers on, face growing stormy.

"I'm beginning to suspect our beloved Guildmaster may not be returning any time soon."

Two butchered teenagers lie on the floor of the Red Oak Inn.

The cold corpses of NICK PLEASANT and IVES trickle their last lifeblood through the floorboards -- stains that will not easily come out. Student's choked sobs of fear and grief are muffled beyond the walls of the inn. Red Dynasty refugees press themselves against the far wall, less windows be broken or torches be thrown.

SILVANUS draws a blood circle upon the back of his palm.

The teens, tiny and thin in death, their necks crooked and their bodies curled around their blade wounds, seem like nothing more than broken dolls.

Until they begin to glow.

Two ghosts slowly shake themselves free of the bodies -- gently, like cobwebs being shrugged away. The souls of NICK and IVES look around blearily, and immediately reach fumblingly for each others' hands. Their grasps pass through.

EIRENE grits her teeth, eyes stinging. SILVANUS looks at the floor.

NICK's shimmering white eyes land on them, dazed. "Eirene...?"

It takes IVES longer to speak -- perhaps her soul is too rattled from the trauma of both death and resurrection. But when she does part her lips, her sentence sends a chilld down the spine:

"Wh...where's the Admiral?"

After a deep breath, EIRENE manages, "She isn't here."

"Was she with you?" SIL murmurs.

IVES shudders. "She wasn't with us, she was... we were..."

When NICK interrupts, his voice is strangely lofty, smooth -- a far cry from the brash boy you met at the Naval Academy. "We were supposed to meet her. She... she needed us."

"Did she tell you why she needed you?" EIRENE asks. "Was anyone else with you?"

"The Headmistress. She said the Admiral needed us. Needed blood devouts. The siege..."

A muscle flexes in EIRENE's jaw. She casts a glance at EREBUS, who has been looking pale ever since investigating the spot where the slain students were found. "Only one of them?"

EREBUS exhales. "Do you remember anything else involving the headmistress? Perhaps something she said or did? Anything at all can help us. We just want to piece together as much as we can so we can help you both." A long, painful pause. "…I was trained as a Naval wizard. It’s alright for you to tell me anything. Okay? "

The ghost of the boy that once was NICK PLEASANT turns its head, locking eyes with EREBUS.

"I wasn't just a Naval wizard," he says softly. "I was a blood mage. I was a protector of Port Heritage. I was supposed to help. The Headmistress asked me here. She -- she needed me. I can't be dead."

"I can't be dead," echoes IVES in a gravelly whisper.

"I am the last of the origianls."

"I am the last of the originals."

"The last of the ones who knew what happened. The last of the ones who were there when we discovered Blood Sigils. The last of the ones who KNOW. I cannot be dead -- I cannot -- I cannot be --"

IVES's voice joins with his. The ghostly tones soar and plummet in tone, childish, then ancient, then rapid, then slow, the overlapping sibilants almost like hissing.

And the ground quakes.

It hits like a typhoon. An explosion. A single blast, so strong that the windows shatter out of the Inn. So strong that you all tumble to your knees, feeling gashes open in your skin against the rough ground.

It came from the direction of the harbor.

You turn your heads toward the docks.

Toward the Dancing Spray.

Toward Heritage Cove.

Toward the Jade Gates.

And the screaming begins.

In the reflection of a thousand Dynasty sails, the Admiral of Gold is ruby red.

Perhaps the oldest tortoise-person or wereparrot in Port Heritage can remember the last time that LORD TENTACLINO left the walls of the Goldhands' Guild. Even then, he was a behemoth. But that was generations ago.

Cephalopods don't stop growing.

His tentacles are as thick as towers. His suckers, large as skippers.

The glorious dragons of the Jade Gates, with their shimmering green eyes, slowly disappear into the slithering grip of a dozen oceanic arms, wrapping between the spines of their back, around their carved, scaly bodies, and even between their marble jaws.

There is a moment of silence. Surely all of Port Heritage is watching in suspended horror and awe. What's about to happen -- it can't be true. Can't possibly.

And with one flex of unimaginable muscle, the tentacles flex --

And the Jade Gates are ripped apart.

Massive pieces of marble crash into the harbor.

Dragging himself up onto the docks of Port Heritage, HARTLEY LOCKHART barely yells "Cover!" before the waves hit. KOCHEK is thrown against the wall of a pub; BLATHNAID finds herself, terrifyingly, washed under the docks, desperately paddling back to the surface for breath.

Then the Red Dynasty loyalists join with the rest of the docks district in standing in frozen, slack-jawed horror as TENTACLINO disappears beneath the water...

And the fleet -- headed by COMMANDER LOCHLUN'S vessel -- raises their anchors in unison.

The silence only lasts for one more moment before a grizzled sailor whispers beneath his breath. It's so low that it can barely be heard -- but in the utter silence in the wake of the Jade Gates' destruction, it rings out like a shot:

"Run."

Then the screams begin.

Magical alarms are screaming in the Magisterium.

The Red Dynasty soldiers in the library look up, dazed. Books have fallen from the shelves; everyone lays on the floor in heaps, slowly picking themselves up after the impact somewhere far below in the city.

"What is this?" shouts the PRAETOR GENERAL, hand moving slowly towards their sword. "A trick?"

LADY CLEMENTINA is trembling more heavily than you've ever seen her. Her wet, orblike eyes seem like they could pop from her skull at any moment.

"The Headmaster!" she barks in her wavery old voice. "The Headmaster! At once!"

There's a sickness in the air, far beyond the acrid smell of burnt paper. Somehow, the heat seems to drain from the room, replaced by a nauseating cold pit in your stomach.

You run.

Students are stumbling, screaming, all in the same direction: the front gates, where ISAK is embroiled in bitter argument with the other head magi.

"The safest place to remain is here!" he shouts -- he must shout, for the horns of war are blasting from the ships below. Cannons fire from both directions: the Navy ships pressed against the docks, and the flood of Red Dynasty pouring in. Cannonballs smash into the lower levels of the city in explosions of fire and dust.

"Are you mad?" another magi is screaming. "Skygardens is the only hope now! Use your eyes, ISAK, look!"

Indeed, from its high vantage point, every quaking person in the quad can see the Port Heritage citizens pouring into the streets like ants from an anthill, racing in one dirextion: up.

"What about the artifacts? The Prism?" yells another mage. "We cannot simply abandon--"

BARK!

MISS CLEMENTINA'S voice blasts through the air, hitting the mage square in the chest, flinging him across the square.

"The students are all that matters now!" she howls. "The children!"

ISAK stares for a long minute -- then squeezes his eyes shut. Without reopening, he yells:

"Open the gates!"

"I cannot be dead, I cannot be dead, I cannot be--"

NICK and IVES'S wailing voices join the cacophony in the heart of the city.

The streets around the Red Oak, so silent only minutes before, bristle shoulder-to-shoulder with mobbing people, streaming north toward Skygardens.

From the windows of the Red Oak, you can glance fractured glimpses of the harbor over the rooftops.

The sinking Navy ships.

The Red Dynasty laying anchor.

The clanging of steel and firing of pistols, carried on a sea breeze over the upper tiers of the city like a waft of death.

Even the Red Dynasty refugees are wide-eyed and speechless. Somehow, this room, in this cozy inn -- this symbol of hope and home -- is dead silent, despite the war outside.

Until finally, LANDORE, still proudly wearing his ceremonial Red Dynasty garb, whispers:

"You should run."

Admiral?

Admiral, please!

Pick up!

PICK UP!

The phone in ASH'S hands continues to ring, unanswered,

its hip-hop hold music drowned by the night.

Choked with the smoke of the burning city, High Hall stands in eerie silence.

On one side: COMMANDER LOCHLUN LOCHART, his men butchered at his feet.

On another: ADMIRAL HYLAINE KARENIUS, GENERALS AZZURRA and LUDOVICA, and HEAD INVENTOR AKOLLO.

On yet another: MAYTHAS and a crowd of god-cursed misfits.

The horns of war begin to blow.

Everyone's heads whip to look over the edge of the floating island, to the cloud-cloaked city below. The Navy's ships in the harbor are all smoldering, the last of them slowly disappearing beneath the water. Red Dynasty flags are already raising in the Rattles and the Temple district.

LOCHLUN turns, his mighty antlers cast long shadows along the floor. "It's over. I am the new Commander of this city, and I order you --"

HYLAINE strikes before he's finished speaking.

The Admiral's sword bites deep into the tendon of his shoulder. In a continuous motion, she wrenches it out with a splatter of blood and swings again.

This one, LOCHLUN catches.

Their swords collide with a deafening clang as he deflects her blow. Sparks shower their feet -- LOCHLUN's heavy boots and HYLAINE's bare fur -- as they engage in a whirlwind dance across the cobblestones.

This is not Navy sparring. This is not even two soldiers on a battlefield.

This is the dance of two warriors aiming for death.

LOCHLUN began with a disadvantage; off balance, he stumbles as HYLAINE drives him back. But his sword is longer and heavier than hers. She tries to shove forward, to get inside his defenses. He deflects. In a clever twist of the sword, he nearly disarms the Admiral. She leaps backward to adjust.

Not far enough.

That massive broadsword carves into her hip. She cries out as blood sprays the ground. Her leg crumples almost immediately. LOCHLUN whirls his sword for a beheading blow.

HYLAINE rolls to the left. His weapon clashes against the ground.

The muscles in her good leg surge. They propel her, off balance, to her feet.

LOCHLUN'S head starts to turn.

And Admiral HYLAINE KARENIUS swings her sword straight through LOCHLUN's throat.

Skin and muscle gives way. Blood sprays the floor. The Commander drops, heavy and wet --

Just as HARTLEY LOCKHART appears at the top of the marble steps, halting so quickly that it's as if the gods themselves stopped him in his path, his mouth falling open with a cry of inhuman anguish.

The clanging of a sword drowns out the cries, screams, and arguments atop High Hall. HYLAINE's sword digs into the stone ground, her body trembling with effort as she pulls herself to her full height, her ruined hip bleeding freely.

The remainder of the LOCKHART family huddles over LOCHLUN's corpse. HARTLEY looks around wildly, making eye contact with ELSIE. He tries to push ZURIE into her arms. "Sergeant -- take her --"

"Nothing is over."

HYLAINE's voice is guttural, snakelike, as her eyes flash. Through bloody teeth, she grits out, "What you hear are the dying screams of my people. End this -- or face me."

One of the shark twins, either General LUDOVICA, steps forth with a sharklike, pointed smile. AZZURRA does not move, observing coolly. "We can do much worse," the General coos, tracing the hilt of the sword at her belt.

Cannons explode in the city below, and even though HYLAINE's body flinches with each blast as if it were a physical blow, her eyes don't budge from HARTLEY.

"DO THE RIGHT THING, COMMANDER!" she bellows. "You may not be the Priest Ruler -- you may not govern the Dynasty -- but here, you are its judge and jury! End this violence! If you have ever cherished the gods above, if at the very least, you don't want your blood and that of your sister splattered with your father's, CALL OFF THE--"

HYLAINE does not get to say "siege."

From behind, AZZURRA draws her knife and sinks it into LUDOVICA's shoulder.

The carcharus women scream -- in unison, as blood also begins to pour from AZZURRA's apparently woundless shoulder.

"General?" HYLAINE cries.

"Sister!" LUDOVICA howls as blood gushes through her fingers clasped over her wound. "What is the meaning of this?"

There's an unholy fire behind the shark woman's eyes as her grin splits even wider, full of jagged teeth. "You may have forgotten the waters we were born in -- the Red waters," she hisses, apparently heedless of her mirrored bleeding wound, "but I have not!"

LUDOVICA draws her massive sword with a shing!, shifting to stand between her twin and her wounded Admiral. Laughter begins to pour from her.

"You foolish turncoat," the General says. "Are you willing to kill yourself in order to get through me?"

But as LUDOVICA speaks... something strange begins. A vibration echoing deep up through the ground, rattling in your legs.

The ground beneath your feet begins to tremble.

And tentacles -- shifting in color from red and murky black -- rise up around High Hall.

Even HYLAINE is speechless in awe of the sheer size of the beast. Her grip on her sword loosens, nearly allowing it to clatter to the ground.

TENTACLINO'S massive eye crinkles in a malicious smile.

"My generous lords and ladies," the kraken purrs. "How I apologize for my tardiness to your eminent gathering. I apologize -- I had a little soiree of my own that required my urgent attendance. Not to mention a touch of.... muscle."

"You monstrous viper," HYLAINE hisses. "I always knew you lusted after power, that you chafed at my restrictions -- all this for taxes, you villain? There are fucking lives at stake!"

LORD TENTACLINO tut-tuts. The sonic force of it causes the dust to tremble underfoot.

"Life is taxes, you stupid brat," he says, in that same mellifluous, noble tone. "And speaking of -- I have a few dues of my own to pay."

Eerily graceful for its massive size, an unspeakably tentacle descends from above, to dextrously place a crystal vial into HARTLEY LOCKART's cupped hands.

A vial of blood.

"Surely you know what to do from here, don't you, Commander?" TENTACLINO prods. "That is your title now. Commander. Do you intend to sit and molder... or take your command?"

HARTLEY LOCKHART looks up.

The man looks like death. Like a cornered rat, ready to bite. Bedraggled and filthy from weeks away from the sun, hair bedraggled and oily, eyes sunken deep into his skull, yet wide open, as if against their own wills.

He looks into the faces of his friends, family, enemies, and lover.

And he only hesitates for a millisecond before raising his fist, and smashing the vial to the ground.

What happens next occurs quickly.

Efficiently.

It's a chemical reaction, at heart, really. Cause and effect. Do and die.

The moment that the vial of blood is reduced to a glittering dust of glass, a shiver runs down AZZURRA's spine in a visible tremor. She raises her dagger once more. LUDOVICA lifts her sword.

The loyal sister is not fast enough. Her twin's dagger plunges into the softness of her belly. LUDOVICA drops to her knees, clutching the wound. AZZURRA does not.

Blood pouring from her hip, her face pale as a sheet, fear flashes in HYLAINE's eyes -- but as always, with the Admiral, it's tempered by determination. Nerves of pure steel. She raises her sword in anticipation, forcing herself to remain upright by the power of sheer will.

And AZZURRA, General of Port Heritage's Navy, Headmistress of the Naval Academy, lifts her pistol,

points it between HYLAINE'S eyes,

and squeezes.

The gunshot isn't even louder than the cannons below.

That's what you'll remember.

It should have been deafening. It should have rang out across the entire Godsea.

Instead, the gunpowder fills the air. The muzzle flashes. The bullet is introduced to HYLAINE'S brilliant brain.

ADMIRAL KARENIUS's body drops to the ground not far from where GENERAL LOCKHART's lies.

MAYTHIAS is screaming. That's what drowns out the next gunshot: AZZURRA pulling the trigger again, sending a second bullet through HYLAINE's prone body.

Standard Navy protocol for a potential Harvest regeneration threat, of course.

TENTACLINO'S laughter fills the air like that of a god's. His enormous tentacle raises into the air and slams into the ground, separating the party from HYLAINE's corpse, cutting off the horrible image of her brutalized form. Rubble flies in all directions.

Meanwhile, his other tentacles curl around the plaza, like a demented hug, as high and impenetrable as walls. There is only one gap -- the entranceway to the marble stairs leading down into Skygardens --

But you hear the pounding of armored boots even before the platoon of Red Dynasty soldiers pour through the gap and come to a halt, staring in horror and disbelief at the gorey scene.

AZZURRA lifts a boot and kicks her twin in the shoulder. Still alive, LUDOVICA tips to the ground, her high, animalesque whimpers of pain drowned beneath TENTACLINO's mirth.

"What's the order, boss?" AZZURRA ask, turning to HARTLEY. Her face is lit by a manic bloodlust. The soldiers stand frozen, awaiting the word.

Moving with the slowness of a much older man, HARTLEY LOCKHART hooks his fingers beneath his father's helmet.

It slides over his own antlers as a perfect fit -- and his voice trembles with a vortex of rage and contempt the likes of which you've never heard before.

"I want soldiers at every major road, square, and corner.

Every citizen is to stay in their homes.

Every ship in the Dragon’s fleet is to be burned and sunk.

Every Naval armory, barrack, office, and the Admiral’s home is to be searched for whereabouts of the Keys."

And as the man's eyes land upon you, he spits out with a new level of venom:

"And unless they have been personally pardoned by me, every individual in this plaza -- every single rebel in this lot of traitors aiding in the Admiral’s campaign is to be found, arrested, and executed by order of my command.

Now make peace with your gods, before my Dynasty sends you to them."

The Siege of Port Heritage

has ended.