A wave, fully as tall as any sea giant Skyreach had ever heard of in any tale, whipped across the deck. The elven warrior lost her footing for a moment. Only her tight grip on the rigging kept her from being swept overboard.

Her hand burning like she was holding live coals, Skyreach pulled herself back to her feet. Out across the sea, the pirate ship drew even with them. White foam broke across the vessel's prow. Lightning split the sky, igniting the metallic scale and cut glass encrusted visage of the Eye of the Deep that had been worked into the prow. The beholder-kin lived only at great depths in the sea. The artist who had rendered the reproduction had worked masterfully, making the obscene round body as large as a man, including the ten eye-stalks, the great, staring, central eye above a slash filled with razor-sharp teeth.

Then the terrible sight was extinguished as the quick burst of illumination from the lightning disappeared. Skyreach tightened the grip on her long sword. Squinting against the drumming rain that came as hard as barbed darts, the elven warrior estimated the distance separating the two ships to be less than twenty paces.

The pirate vessel closed, coming up alongside Chalice of the Crowns.

"Milady, I am here." Verys came to an uncertain stop at the railing beside Skyreach. Thin and nervous, the old man looked bedraggled in his sopping clothes. Still, he carried his signal flags at his side.

"Is your group in place?" Skyreach asked.

"Yes, milady." Verys had marched as a boy with her greatgrandfather, quickly rising to captain of one of Faimcir Glitterwing's signal corps.

Skyreach didn't insult the man by looking around for his group. If Verys said they were there, then they were there. She watched the pirate ship cutting through the crashing waves of the sea. The prow of the other vessel cleared the water and hung for a moment, like it had suddenly taken wing from the gusting winds. Then it slapped back down, almost burying the prow under the sea. Chalice of the Crowns behaved in the same manner.