TIME Night, the boat assault begins LOCATION The wharf, then the waters off Chuza harbour
BACKGROUND:
A hostage vessel, the Sunset Ray, sat under Vessentaag control somewhere off the Chuza wharf – Volok’s daughter believed to be among the passengers. Brin had made the priority clear: whatever happened next, the Vessentaag couldn’t be handed a batch of martyrs. Options were on the table – familiars, underwater approach, a closer pass by fishing boat, and a passenger manifest Volok had promised within the hour.
WHAT HAPPENED
The Dranathess mages sent their familiars out first, coming back with an overhead view of the ship and its awnings – useful, but not enough. Hawke asked about night vision, and the Dranathess obliged with Dark Vision for the whole team. Volok sent a fishing boat out for a closer look; through Samm’s telescope they picked out a guard rotation on the fore and aft castles, though whatever was happening under the awnings stayed hidden. The weather might help – low fog was forecast for the night. Invisibility wasn’t available, and neither was any long-range sleep effect. Rhabbatt offered something more practical: a set of experimental skimmers, built for exactly this kind of quiet approach.
Volok’s note had arrived at the same moment as Brin’s, confirming the hostage-taking. The ship’s manifest, once it came through, listed ten crew and a dozen passengers – Volok’s daughter Oksana among them, barely out of her teens and booked through to Tol Kerria, alongside Captain Ottaki, the New Imperial Lands (NIL) ambassador Anatoli, and a Chuza diplomat named Karsden.
Volok’s marines closed on the Sunset Ray to open talks. It didn’t go well. A hooded figure dragged one of the sailors onto a gangplank in full view of the approaching boat and opened his throat with a single sweep of a scimitar before the body even hit the water – a practiced motion, the kind used at public executions in Shasta and Drusul, quick enough to look almost merciful. Then the fishing boat itself was smashed to pieces by something unseen in the water; only one crewman made it clear, swimming for the nearest friendly hull. Volok took the news harder than the moment alone seemed to explain. “I think my lassie’s on that boat,” was all he’d say. The survivor came up with a message from the Vessentaag leader – one vessel could hold at 300 feet to observe, no closer.
Raven asked for a couple of thunderstones before they rested up and boarded the military ship holding at the agreed distance. In the humid, fog-thick evening, the Dranathess cast Dark Vision over the team and conjured the skimmers. Black hooded cloaks, paddles, and they set out across the water. Crowe’s plan: potions of invisibility and spider climb to take the stern castle alone, then a silk rope down for Hawke and Raven to follow.
The crossing wasn’t quiet, exactly – it was tense. Raven found herself close enough to a shark’s dorsal fin to hold perfectly still and let it pass within inches before it sank back into the depths. Hawke picked up an unwelcome passenger of his own – a zombie, clawing up out of the water – and put it back under with a combination of baton and paddle. A second shark gave him the same courtesy the first had given Raven, passing him by unmolested.
By the time he caught up with Crowe and Raven in the shadow of the stern, the hardest part – getting there at all – was done.