The Fifth Sorceress

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The once-proud war galleon was named the Resolve, and she listed drunkenly in the nighttime sea, her seams slowly failing while she tried to hold back the brackish ocean that pressed relentlessly against her sides. Her ship’s wheel tied off on each side and her sails belayed, she rolled awkwardly at the mercy of the elements. The crew had tried to keep the ship’s lanterns lit, but the squalls of rain kept extinguishing them, finally forcing a surrender to larger torches both fore and aft. The firelight cast oddly shifting shadows upon her gently rolling hulk, revealing areas of scorched and destroyed deck and railing.

The old wizard in the rain-soaked gray robe was named Wigg, and he looked with tired eyes down the length of the galleon from his stand in the stern as lightning occasionally scratched across the cloudy, starless sky. Three of the galleon’s masts lay broken at impossible angles upon the rain-soaked deck, intertwined with frayed, seared rigging that snaked randomly about in the wind as if it had a life of its own. He watched with sadness as even the saltwater spray coming over the gunwales had no effect upon the blood that had dried there.

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