A skimmer.
People.
He had just attacked people.
“Shit,” Isaac said.
A sharp semicircle of sand kicked up into the air as theship pulled a hard turn across the face of a dune, trying to dodge the rains offire.Seeing clearly now, Isaac was able to discern multiple sailors rushingalong the deck.Their forms were large and varied, covered in wayward patchesof leather armor, mixed with tails and animal heads and the brief impression ofswords.
All at once, the magical sigil onthe ship’s sail began to glow brighter.Members of the crew were pouring firedirectly onto the fabric, which was absorbed like water and transformeddirectly into momentum.The ship was accelerating.It was still turning inIsaac’s direction.As the vessel completed its hard shift to port, a blackstandard unfurled itself along the foremast, showing a canine skull perchedover crossbones.
They were pirates.
He had attacked apirateship.
For a moment, Isaac could only stare in awe.He had readabout the pirates of this desert, how their ships travelled across sand andgravel as easily as water, using the magical technology to plunder any caravansthat dared to cross the wastes.They were zoanthropes near exclusively, foxesand hyenas and lions, forming a cadre of predator species that were highlyadapted to life in the desert.He had only seen a few of the human-like beastsin his life, though he had read many tales, and the important facts weresalient enough.Most of them stood a head or two taller than humans.Most couldkill him with a single swipe of their claws.Right now, all of them wereyelling and snarling in his direction, raking the air with the edge of theirsabers.
“Fuck,” Isaac said.
Their first cannon salvo knocked him out of his shock.Plumes of smoke burst from the broadside of the ship, and the ground before himerupted in a rushing line.Isaac dove away, feeling the wind of an iron ballscreaming past the spot where his torso had been a second earlier.He scrambledto his feet, spitting out sand.The ship had completed its turn, gaining speedas it sailed down a valley of dunes, and it was now bearing down square in hisdirection, the black pirate standard fluttering in the desert breeze as thecrew poured more fire on the sail.
Isaac ran for his life.
He sprinted to the edge of his dune and jumped off the side,sliding down the slope in a naked, desperate tumble.His worn and dirty clotheswere destroyed even further by the rushing sand, flaying the skin on his handsand legs.Once he reached the bottom, he rolled head over heels, barelymanaging to regain his balance before he was running again.
There was nowhere to go.The only thing around him was sand,sloping off in gentle waves as far as he could see.His feet sank into it withevery step, and he quickly lost any sense of bearing from his map.There wasonly panic and fear.
He heard the cannon shots just in time.He dove again, andtwin explosions of sand launched themselves into the air, mere yards away.Crawling along the sand on his hands and knees, Isaac looked back to see theskimmer crest over the dune like a normal ship would cross a wave, its bowpitching and yawing over the peak of the sand until the whole vessel wassailing clear down the other side, a few wisps of smoke still trailing from theforward cannons.By now, most of the crew were manning their battle positions,pointing their sabers at him with a furious, animal snarl.
Isaac knew he couldn’t run.The ship was much faster.
He had to fight.
He dumped his quiver of scrolls onto the sand and grabbedthe first one he saw.By pure chance, it happened to be the elemental catalystfor fire, the same one he had used only a minute ago.Stumbling back to hisfeet, one arm performing the casting mnemonics, Isaac began to aim the scrollat the ship as it finished descending the dune, bearing down on him faster thanany wyrm had managed before.
There was another salvo, another belch from the forwardcannons.Iron balls screamed above his head.The vessel yawed and pitched.Asthe ship grew closer, the pirates on the prow began to aimtheir crossbows, each of them cursing in a feral language.
Isaac gritted his teeth, concentrating on the flow ofenergy.
All at once, the scroll crossed its catalytic threshold,leaping to life in Isaac’s hand.A comet-sized fireball blew out from his handand smashed directly into the stern of the ship, wrapping half of the top deckin flame and drenching the rest of the vessel with rains of fire.Shouts ofrage turned into screams of fear.The zoanthropes flailed.Above the deck,foxes scrambled up the rigging, trying to escape the tendrils of fire, whilelions seized pails of water and flung them at the flames.Many burned and fell.
Through it all, the ship kept moving, slicing a wide riveracross the sand.Even if the wheel and navigator were now burning to ash, thevessel would still carry its momentum.
It was heading right for him.
Before he could fully regain his strength, Isaac grabbed anotherscroll and attempted to run laterally, hoping to escape the vessel’s path.Thepirates on the bow began to loose their crossbows.Isaac felt a dozen bolts whistle past his head as he kicked his way through theloose sand, creating a graveyard of buried shafts.One missile nearly took himin the shoulder, and he dove to the sand, the bare skin of his hands scorchingupon contact.He scrambled by the sleeves of his robes, barely dodging severalmore bolts.
As the broadside of the ship presented itself, Isaac gotback to his feet, unfurling the last scroll in his possession.
Wind.
This was the same sigil that powered their ship.It was muchsimpler to cast.He felt years of his uncle’s lessons came back to him at once,all the careful study and painful instruction.
He had trained his entire life for this moment.
Isaac pulled out the last dregs of his energy.In one smoothmotion, he cocked his arm, bent his fingers, adopted the proper sigil, andflung himself forward, spewing a massive hurricane from the palm of his hand.An instant later, the left broadside of the pirate vessel exploded in a showerof splinters, rope, and blood.Planks and bodies rained across the sand.Thebilge of the ship immediately shattered open, sinking below the sand.All themagical momentum was arrested in seconds.As the front buried itself deeper,the flaming stern leaped into the air, nearly three tons of wood and sailrising like a bucking horse, the entire vessel ripping in half from theshearing force of its own weight and speed.In seconds, the skimmer was reducedto pieces, several flaming decks tumbling across the sand like the chunks of abee’s hive, nearly a dozen zoanthrope bodies twisting between nets, brokenplanks, and the tumbling blocks of cargo.
As the ship blew apart, Isaac collapsed into the sand,breathing desperately hard.Blackness creeped at the edge of his vision.He hadcast several powerful spells in short succession, and now all he could do wasgasp for air and watch the pieces of the ship roll across the sand.Somewhere,he was amazed that he was still alive.
