"Hold on!" Iakhovas warned. "With all your might, hold on or you'll be forever lost and even I won't be able to protect you!"

Still gaining speed, Tarjana flew into the portal.

"They've raised their sails again," Jherek said as he watched the crews aboard Maelstrom and the other pirate vessels work their rigging with all due speed.

The sailcloth spread along the yardarms, then belled out, greedily catching the wind. Azla gave the order for her own crew to run the sails up. Rigging whined and creaked overhead as they hurried to follow her orders.

"They're doing something else, too," she said. "Can you make out what it is?"

Jherek strained to see through the spyglass, riding out the rise and fall of Black Champion's deck. He spotted the coarse leather tarps the crew was spreading out across the decks.

"Tarps?" Azla repeated, pushing herself to the railing and hanging onto the rigging above. "What in the Nine Hells would they do that for?"

"Look!" Sabyna called from below. She pointed. "Something's happening to the volcano."

Jherek turned his attention to the smoldering tower of rock behind Maelstrom. Thicker and darker smoke, filled with fiery debris that could be seen even at the distance they were at, belched from the Ship of the Gods.

"It's going to blow," Azla stated quietly, and Jherek didn't doubt that for a moment.

T'Kalah, royal guard of Ring Kromes who ruled Aleaxtis, the kingdom of We Who Eat beneath the Alamber Sea, stalked his quarry with a patience born of relish for the kill.

He stood just over nine feet in height and was built broad and strong, a warrior who was feared by his own people as well as the surface dwellers. His scales held a deep emerald green so dark it was almost black. Legend said that was once the color of all sahuagin before they'd been trapped in the Alamber Sea and put in such close proximity to the sea elves of Seros. Those same sea elves were reputed to have been different colors in ages past, but they had passed on their skin changes through the malenti and their proximity to the warriors of Aleaxtis.

Despite his size, T'Kalah slid quietly through the kelp lining the ledges where he'd spotted the sea elf only moments before. He'd been quietly occupying a cave in the area that overlooked Vahaxtyl, the sahuagin capital of Aleaxtis, dreaming of the day when he would be king.

Of course, that wasn't going to happen unless opportunity manifested itself. Still, it was a good ambition, and one that he'd pursued. After all, he'd waited and watched, made blood challenges as they became possible, and killed his way into a position as captain of the royal guard of King Kromes.

Success or failure had been the driving force in his life, the thing that had driven him to live in the hatcheries when so many of his brothers and sisters had been out to eat him. Yet sitting in the cave, thinking of that day, had ignited the black rage that often consumed him because he didn't think of patience as a virtue.

The amputated stub of his lower left arm served to remind him that patience was sometimes best given some degree of heed. But then, he still had three more arms. He'd been marked from birth as a four-arm to follow stronger currents than most of his people could fin. Since losing the arm, he'd worked to make the other three even stronger.

Thank Sekolah's uncaring grace that the sea elf had wandered into the area to provide him some distraction. T'Kalah undulated through the water, gliding through the kelp. From the changes in pressure along his lateral lines, he knew exactly where the sea elf was. The sahuagin royal guard closed the distance, knowing from the lack of movement that the elf had come to a stop. Whether because he'd seen T'Kalah or just wanted to observe the city wasn't clear.

T'Kalah parted the kelp with two of his hands while holding a trident in his third. He spotted the sea elf ahead of him, hunkered down behind a ridge of rock and sparse growths of gold-and-brown striped tiger coral. He was blue all over, with only a few white patches. T'Kalah guessed that the elf was there trying for one of the shipwrecks in the area that had been left by his people.

The sea elves often tried to raid the shipwrecks in the area controlled by We Who Eat. King Kromes had even taken to seeking out magic items himself, identified by the priestesses, and hoarded them as further temptation to the sea elves and surface dwellers alike. T'Kalah knew for certain that the number of magic items stored at the palace was considerable.

Spreading his fingers and toes so the webbing would better catch the water, T'Kalah swam for the sea elf.

Something must have given away his approach because the elf tried to turn and bring up a bone knife. "Black Claws!" the elf said, calling the big warrior by the name the surface world knew him by.

T'Kalah showed the elf no mercy, placing the trident before him and shoving it into the sea elf s chest. It was a quicker death than T'Kalah had intended. He would have preferred to make the elf beg for a time, taste the salt of his tears mixed in with the ocean before he'd ever tasted his victim's blood. Still, he held the elf at the end of the trident and shook him viciously until his death was apparent.

Climbing to the top of the rocks overlooking Vahaxtyl, T'Kalah shoved the end of the trident into a crack so that it supported the elf s corpse. He sat on a rock beside the dead man, popped his claws, and cut chunks from his unexpected feast.

T'Kalah shoved the gobbets of flesh into his mouth and swallowed them nearly whole. The blood scent in the water would draw other predators soon. Though the sharks knew better than to bother him, it was the little fish with all their darting around that annoyed him most. No matter how quickly he tried to eat a meal, they were always there scrounging for whatever they could get. He ate the soft parts first, knowing the little fish would go for those first as well.

His lateral lines picked up the changes in pressure even though he didn't immediately recognize what it was. He did know it came from the direction of Vahaxtyl.

The city was built on a shelf of rock it shared with the volcano the surface dwellers called the Ship of the Gods. His people called it Cliitaan, Cursed Fire. Besides the changes in pressure, his delicate olfactory senses also picked up the stench of sulfur. Scents spread quickly in the water much as sound did. As he watched, a red glow seemed to center midway up the Ship of the Gods. It grew rapidly, turning redder.

T'Kalah watched, mesmerized, wondering if Sekolah had started a new current-one that would change his life.

Laaqueel lost her footing when Tarjana's prow slammed into the left side of the opening at the bottom of the Lake of Steam. Though the ship itself wasn't hurt by the collision, she was lifted from the deck and tossed into the current that hurled her toward the stern.

All around her, filling the tunnel the mudship plunged through, molten lava glowed orange-yellow. The heat crisped fish that had been unlucky enough to be sucked in after them. Her senses were moving so quickly that even while she was turning in the vicious current herself she could see the flesh peeling back from the fish while they still lived, baring the skeletons beneath.

Just as she thought she was lost forever and about to share a similar fate as the fish, a strong grip wrapped around her left ankle.

"I've got you, my priestess." Straining, the effort pulling horribly on Laaqueel's ligaments and muscles, Iakhovas drew her beside him. He kept her curled protectively in his arms when he returned her to the deck. "Are you well?"