If hope can be a failing, then what of faith? The path to redemption may be the hardest of all, for there can be no victory without sacrifice, nor forgiveness without pain. And one who would redeem a nation, must keep in mind by day and by night, the fact that he will have to die.

The Story: Deep in a land of heat, passion, and faith, an all consuming war has erupted between those who would take away freedom, and those who would draw their blades in defiance. The companions, a continent away from their homes, have sworn an oath to defeat the Imar before he sets the world ablaze. They have no allies but a fractured and outnumbered resistance. Now, a new wind is stirring the dunes. A demon lord has been revealed, and the only way to overcome one of the Fallen is to face the greatest enemy of all - themselves.

Excerpt from Chapter 5: The Thing about Dragon Sharks

Night in the Keelbiter Reef meant furling all sails and laying anchor. Within this virtual maze of sunken reefs, it would be absolute folly to sail between dusk and dawn. As crazy as Captain Fynn might have been, even he would not challenge the Keelbiter at night.

It had grown late. The Salt Tooth was rocking gently against its anchor rope. One of the crew stood dogwatch as the others hunkered below in their bunks. The captain himself, though, sat upon a sturdy spar, feet dangling contentedly as he smoked his ever-present pipe. Sitting on the quarter deck opposite him, Dain too had fished out his pipe and joined in that age-old diversion. The rest of the company sat close, enjoying the unhindered view of the heavens and the soothing sounds of the swells washing against the hull.

“So you’re saying, captain, that pirates are not criminals?” Ducgus did not like where their discussion was going. “They steal, murder, rape, and plunder. What am I missing?”

“Nay, Elf. Unclog yer ears.” The captain shook his head in disgust. “I nay said they be not criminals; I said that ye shouldn’t think on them as criminals. Not if ye wishes to understand yer adversary.”

“So how should we think on them?” Dain asked.

“A merchants guild, perhaps,” Captain Fynn mused. “Aye, a guild of labor and trade, not unlike what ye find in them Free Cities. Tis all about shares, don’t ye know.”

“They’re still criminals,” Ducgus complained, “without honor or principle.”

“Among the civilized, aye,” the captain held up a stern finger, “but amongst themselves, they have a strict code of brotherhood.” He scratched at his iron beard. “And that loyalty be damn-near unbreakable. Ye best learn that if ye be looking to scrap with them.”

"That's why we brought a Dwarf," Jester smirked while patting Dain's head, "nice and scrappy."

"Heave off," Dain growled, pushing the magus away.

“Well, tomorrow we should reach the island,” Fynn continued, “ye best devise a plan.”

“First we’ll need some reconnaissance,” Dain began, biting back his annoyance. He was going to say more but the captain had fallen absolutely still. His head was cocked slightly, as if listening to something beyond even elven senses. He released a long, low breath of smoke, his teeth as stark as the bone pipe they clenched. The night had turned. A new concern far more immediate and threatening than pirates was nosing about in the nearby darkness.

Ducgus felt it too. Ever so slightly, the ship was turning against the tide.

The others stood there confused, alert only to the fact that something was amiss. Suddenly the ship jolted. Above in the rigging, the sailor yelled. Something big had nudged the Salt Tooth. All looked to Captain Fynn.

“Aye,” he affirmed their worst fears. “Tis be a dragon shark.”

The ship shuddered again. The wakening crew rushed above decks with sabers and falchions drawn.

They all looked over the starboard gunwale. The sea had gone deathly quiet. Company and crew alike scanned through the darkness, afraid to even breathe. Buffy stood braced against the mainmast scowling into the distance. It was Ducgus who saw it first.

A dorsal fin rose from the black waters like a war-axe of impossible size. Perhaps thirty feet beyond that trailed a tremendous swell generated by the creature’s caudal fins. The sheer size of the monster left the companions locked in silent screams. At about fifty yards out the fin submerged below the waters.

“Tell me I just didn’t see that?” Jester howled. “We’re all going to die!”

At the bow, one of the sailors was holding up a lantern over the water. Captain Fynn shouted at the man. “Douse that light quick, you flea-brained, son of a . . .”

At that moment, time froze. The leviathan launched from the water, its armored torso reaching some twenty feet above the waves. It’s conical snout, with a bite nearly twice that of a man’s body, hyper-extended towards the bow of the ship. The sailor, still clutching his oil lantern, loosed an scream of abject horror. As if in slow motion the man was plucked from the gunwale and swallowed whole.

The dragon shark, still thrusting itself above the water, regarded the humans with a dark, lifeless eye. The thrashings of its titan body washed the ship with spray. Then just as suddenly as it had appeared, it slipped back into the dark embrace of the ocean.

The company was stunned. On their voyage across the Sea of Gold, they had all seen sharks; this creature though was almost beyond their imagination. In addition to its impossible size, its back was armored from tail to snout. Each of its hundreds of teeth were the size of daggers, and its mouth seemed darker than the deepest pit Dain had ever stumbled into.

"Hellsfire and ashes!" Dain swore, "that damn thing could chew up a giant in a single bite." Looming above him, Buffy swallowed hard.

The vessel shook again, this time more violently. Everyone grabbed for a piece of the ship.
“This is not fair,” Jester cried out. “I don’t want to be eaten. I’m too funny to die!”

“Hold yer tongue!” Captain Fynn commanded. “It be drawn to sound.”

Jester clamped his mouth closed.

Several minutes passed. “Is it gone?” Dain whispered at last.

Captain Fynn was studying the water. “Nay,” he said softly. “It still be here.”

As if in response to Dain’s query, the Salt Tooth began to move forward. The anchor rope creaked against the bow, tilting the ship down and forward.

“The damn thing’s pulling us,” Ducgus said amazed.

“Pulling us where?” Dain asked apprehensively.

“Wherever it is, it won’t be good,” Jester promised.

The Salt Tooth cut against the tide, pulled like a child’s toy for what seemed like several long minutes. Finally the Salt Tooth came to a rest. Nobody so much as breathed. The deck rocked again; inconceivably the bow was being pulled into the sea. Bodies went sprawling everywhere. Somebody fell overboard. The bow suddenly righted. A gut wrenching scream was cut horribly short.

“Bloody hell!” Dain screamed as he pulled himself up. “Jester, can you hit it?”

“I can’t even see the damned thing,” the magus responded. “Maybe if we ask it nicely to stand still?”

Dain grabbed for his axe, hefting the blade in the moonlight. The others joined him. “A hell of a place to die,” Jester managed a lopsided grin.

Ducgus’s eyes hardened as he peered back into the ocean. “You’re not going to like this,” he warned. Buffy growled in response.

The Salt Tooth was struck amidships with a force like a thunderbolt. Wood splintered and cracked. With an unearthly moan, the mainmast toppled back against the mizenmast, uprooting it as well. The ship continued to shake; it was being driven sideways. Suddenly, there was another jolt as the Salt Tooth collided with a reef.

Wreckage splashed everywhere. The ship was torn apart from all directions and every last one of them was thrown into the white-frothed water.

Dain was tossed around a maelstrom of foam, seawater, wreckage, and terror. His head broke surface several times, offering him precious moments of breath before pulling him under once again. He fought desperately to maintain consciousness, struggling against the screaming and violence hovering on the edge of his awareness. In some detached portion of his mind, Dain watched horrified as a nightmarish face advanced through the bubbles and foam beneath him. Devil eyes and a fiendish open-mouth smile stained with blood and shreds of flesh sought him through the surging wreckage. Impossibly large jaws extended to swallow him whole.

Suddenly there was an explosion of bubbles and a sudden swell yanked him sideways; he was then slammed against something hard and cutting. What little air remained in his lungs exploded from his airway. There was blood in the seawater around him – his own. All of a sudden, a strong arm grabbed him by his hair and pulled him from the sea.

After several sweet breaths of air, Dain forced open his eyes. He was lying upon a coral reef, the object into which he had just collided. He craned his head upwards into the face of the giant towering over him. Beyond, he could make out Ducgus, Captain Fynn and Jester. The air sizzled angrily as the magus released a heavy bolt of lightning into the night.

Dain struggled to rise to his feet. The others looked as bad-off as he. Disheveled and bloodied, they appeared to be in a quasi-state of shock. Of the crewmen, there was no sign. The companions were standing on the top of an exposed reef, no more than forty feet in diameter. The sea had grown calm once more. The half-moon cast a dim light across the salty air and the stars seemed to have grown cold and distant since the attack, as if they had removed themselves to a safer altitude. The five survivors stood side-by-side in the eerie quiet, shivering in the warm topical night. Seawater and blood dripped unnoticed upon the hard coral beneath their feet. Several long minutes passed without incident; heartbeats calmed and breathing slowed.

Dain turned to the captain. Like the others, his gaze was sweeping the ocean in all directions. “I’m sorry, captain.”

It took a moment for the words to register. “Aye, them boys be with me but a short while, but sound lads they were. We were lucky, sitting on the quarter deck. Tis the stern that hit the coral; threw us nearly onto the reef. Them lads up front weren’t so fortunate.” He wiped his ancient eyes. “Tis a hard thing to lose ship and crew.”

With an iron hand, he pointed across the water. There, barely on the edge of vision, a dark shape broke the surface. Its monstrous form cut effortlessly through the swells. Then, with a swish of its mighty tail, the dragon shark submerged, leaving only a powerful breaker to mark its passing.

“What do we do now?” Ducgus asked.

“We wait,” Captain Fynn replied. “We wait.”

Morning was a peculiar thing. Eastward beyond a trackless horizon, the sun had risen across the lands of the Faithful, and as if in afterthought, cast its rays upon the infidel ocean. The company stood as they had for the last six hours, upon a tiny patch of exposed reef far from land and safety. The ocean was flat. Of the dragon shark, they had seen no sign since the attack.

As the sun continued to climb over head, the company became painfully aware of a growing danger. The tide was rising. Ever so slowly, the diameter of their refuge was shrinking.

“Aye,” Fynn confirmed their thoughts, “within an hour, this reef will be underwater.” He had somehow managed to dry his tobacco and relight his pipe. “In the end, the ocean claims all her sons.”

“That’s not fair,” Jester grumbled. “I’m an orphan.”

“There,” Buffy pointed into the lightening water. “Our boat.” The others followed his finger into the sea. Sure enough, resting against the reef about sixty feet under was the Salt Tooth, or what was left of her.

“I knew she rested close,” Captain Fynn smiled. His eyes grew shrewd. “If only I could reach her cabin.”

“What’s down there?” Ducgus asked.

“An trick or two,” he started but then shook his head sadly. “Yet tis might as well be a barrel of sour ale for all the good it’ll do us. We’ll not be reaching that cabin.”

“It doesn’t look too deep.”

“It not be the depth; I could dive that in leg irons if need be,” Fynn looked at the others squarely before continuing, “but the moment ye venture into that water shall be yer last.”

“You think its still out there,” Dain mused. “We haven’t seen sign of it for hours, and surely there must be bigger fish out there.”

“It still be there, Dwarf. You can bet yer life on that.”

Dain looked to the Elf. “Ducgus, hand Buffy your cloak.”

“Why.”

“Let’s conduct a little experiment. I need something with human scent on it.”

“Use your own cloak.”

“Mine’s sixty feet underwater,” Dain grumped. “Do you want to help, or do you want to wait until we’re under water?”

“All right,” Ducgus removed his cloak and handed it to the Giant.

“Good. Now Buffy, soak it first, then when I say, toss the cloak way out there.” Dain turned to the magus. “You think you could do something to make it, like splash or something?”

Jester laughed heartily at the suggestion. “Careful, Dain. Your sneaky side is showing.” He patted the Dwarf on the top of the head. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”

“Okay,” Dain nodded. “Buffy, throw it.”

The giant reached back and tossed the sodden cloak in a high graceful arc. It hit the water perhaps a hundred paces out. At the same time, Jester invoked an incantation. As the cloak spread out upon the surface, the water about it began to churn and splash.

“One decoy at your service.”

“Now, we wait and . . .” The Dwarf was cut short.

The ocean exploded as the dragon shark leaped fully from the water; its sixty foot, fifty-thousand pound body completely cleared the surface. While mid-air, the behemoth twisted so its armored back came crashing down upon the swirling garment. Sea water rained down a hundred paces in all directions, and the swell that followed nearly swept the company off their precarious perch.

“Bloody hellsfire!” Jester managed for them all.

Buffy agreed. “Me no like.”

“It's not going away until we’re all eaten,” Ducgus stated matter-of-factly.

Captain Fynn nodded sagely. “The thing about dragon sharks, tis they be patient.”

The statement jogged Dain’s thoughts. “Captain, is there anything a dragon shark fears?”

Fynn squinted over his pipe. “Aye,” he scratched at his iron bristles. “Thar be one thing a dragon shark fears.”

“Well,” Dain prompted.

“That be another dragon shark.”

“Great,” Jester threw up his hands. “So now we need another dragon shark. What are the odds on that?”

“Well,” Ducgus said thoughtfully, “it is mating season.”

“There is that,” Dain agreed.

“Yeah,” Jester jumped back in, “but with our luck, this one’s homely.”

Within the hour, the sea had risen to the level of their boots. If the companions could have been seen from a distance, they would have appeared to be standing on water; only they couldn't, which meant a gruesome end was upon them all.