Book 2: Chapter 48: Patch 8.0: The Final Round

The fired bolt flies straight toward the serpent! It looks like it’s going to be a direct hit up until the final moment when it goes just barely over it, instead splashing down into the water right behind it.

A miss.

Yet, Fenrir sees a smile on Serra’s lips as she immediately starts reeling the shot in.

Fenrir thought that she missed, but he realizes that the shot landed exactly where she wanted it to.

Immediately reeling it in pulls the barbed hooks into the serpent’s side, getting snagged on its lengthy body, without severely injuring it. There is a higher chance for it to escape this way as the hook isn’t embedded inside of it like it was planned to be, but this does far less harm to it.

“And here I was trying to tell you what to do,” Fenrir says as he pats Serra on the top of her oversized hat.

“Told you I can do it,” Serra says while reeling the serpent in.

“I have a feeling that this was supposed to be the hardest part, but it’s probably going to end up being the easiest seeing as how we’ve got two crews full of pricks waiting for us.”

“We can do it.”

“You’re on a roll, so I’ll take your word for it.”

Fenrir looks overboard at the serpent being slowly but surely reeled in. The hook looks like it may slip free, tearing through what little skin it is stuck in, at any moment. He wants to tell Serra to take it slow and careful, but she’s been proving herself capable of getting the job done without him micromanaging her, so he places his faith in her. Plus, having faith in his girlfriend is part of his duty as a boyfriend.

“Tabs!” Fenrir shouts. “Get the net ready!”

“On it!” Tabitha shouts back before ordering Bonekraka to help her with the large, weighted net.

“Olly! Get it on our starboard side once it’s close!” Fenrir orders. He doesn’t get a response, but he knows that Oleander won’t mess it up.

The closer that the serpent gets, the more features Fenrir can make out.

It has a couple of small horns sticking up and back from the top of its head, a spiky spine reaching from its neck all the way to the tip of its tail, and its scales are light blue in color with occasional black markings that form a hexagonal pattern. He also takes note of the massive fangs that it bares at him once it’s close.

That eel they caught was one thing, but this serpent is in a category of its own. It is far larger and more intimidating in every single aspect despite just looking like a bigger and differently-colored version of those eels from the second round. While the eels were just scary looking fish, this serpent is a monster.

All Fenrir has to do now is give the order to throw the net and capture the serpent. Once captured, he’ll be able to try and communicate with it somehow to see if getting to work with it is a possibility. Even if he is not able to get the serpent to help him in taking out the other crews, he’ll still have the serpent which is required to win in the first place.

However, just as he parts his lips to shout for them to throw the net, he feels something.

He feels the serpent’s feelings in the same way that he can feel Nell’s. Despite feeling both of them at once, he is able to separate them and tell whose feelings belong to whom. In addition to being able to feel the serpent’s emotions, he can tell that he is exchanging these emotions between all three of them. Nell is able to feel the serpent’s emotions through Fenrir, and the serpent can feel Nell’s emotions through him.

“Don’t throw it,” Fenrir orders as the serpent sails alongside The Shoebill. It was thrashing around before and trying to break free from the hook, but now it willingly sails by their side.

“What happen?” Bonekraka asks. Everybody else looks curious as well.

“I don’t really know how to explain it, but it feels really weird. It’s like… we’re connected. Olly was right,” Fenrir explains. He then climbs up onto the side of the ship and dives into the water! While everybody rushes over to watch and see what he’s doing, he swims underneath the serpent to get to its other side.

“My boyfriend isn’t just a bastard, but an idiot,” Cassiel says. Serra gives her a few comforting pats on the back.

Fenrir unhooks their hook from the serpent’s side and swims back to the ship where a rope is waiting for him.

After climbing the rope to get back on deck, Fenrir shakes to fling water out from his ears and tail onto everybody nearby. Cassiel is the primary victim of his dog-like shaking.

“What’s wrong?” Fenrir asks her when he sees how upset she looks.

“I smell like wet dog now, you bastard!” Cassiel shouts.

Fenrir notices Serra holding in a laugh. The subtle smile she’s holding back is one that Fenrir has learned the meaning of. She has completely corrupted what Cassiel just said and is resisting telling a joke.

He returns his attention to the serpent. Going by the fact that it isn’t running away and is instead keeping pace with The Shoebill, he assumes that it can tell what his plans are just by reading his feelings. And, by reading its feelings, he can tell that it wants him to get rid of the device keeping it from diving.

“Be right back again,” Fenrir says before diving back into the water.

After cutting the floatation device free from the serpent, he climbs back on and shakes the water off once more. This time, Cassiel hides behind Serra by crouching down and taking off Serra’s hat to use as a bonus shield.

Serra has no problem taking all of Fenrir’s water all over her.

“It’s still with us,” Tabitha says, looking overboard. “This sort of dumb, crazy, stupid luck – ya really are them, aren’t ya?” she asks, looking at Fenrir now.

“Yeah, but keep it secret, alright? Don’t want everybody learning about it,” Fenrir answers.

“That reminds me!” Cassiel cuts in and grabs onto Fenrir’s shoulders. “You know her – you knew the Lightning Witch of the High Seas! You knew her before that! What was she doing working under somebody like you?!”

“You don’t have to yell so loud, I’m right here,” Fenrir says while being shaken around.

Cassiel’s face turns red when she realizes that she’s letting her inner fangirl come out around others. She tries to subtly take her hands off of his shoulders and pretend like none of that just happened, and the aura she’s giving off tells everybody to pretend they saw nothing.

“I’ll talk to you about it next time you can’t sleep because of a scary movie, alr—” Fenrir is cut off by her hand over his mouth this time.

However, her action is interrupted by him licking her hand.

Fenrir has learned that an unexpected lick has the same squeak-inducing effect as a poke to the side.

“Anyways, I think it’s willing to help us as long as we let it go free afterward,” Fenrir explains.

“Ya sure we can trust it?” Tabitha asks.

“Neither of us were sure we could trust each other when we first met, so I don’t see why we can’t give it a chance as well.”

Serra stands on the tips of her toes to look over and down at the serpent. One of its yellow, serpentine eyes looks back up at her. “We can trust her,” Serra says.

“It’s a her?” Fenrir asks. “How can you tell?”

“She has pretty eyes.”

“Guys can have pretty eyes, too, I mean, look at Corwin. He’s got some of the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen on a guy, but knowing Olly, there’s no way there’s anything but a dick down there.”

Everybody looks at Corwin’s eyes, causing the blonde man to blush and nervously look away.

“She’s still a girl,” Serra says.

“We’ll go with that,” Fenrir says.

He still can’t believe that this is actually working, and going by the serpent’s feelings, it feels as if she can hardly believe this is going to happen herself. Nell’s curious feelings can be felt by them both. He’ll have to tell her all about what’s happening after he rescues her. For now, all he can do is let both Nell and the serpent feel how grateful he is to both of them. He is grateful to Nell for giving him this gift making all of this possible, and grateful to the serpent for placing her faith in him and going along with his plan.

The only downside is that, without proper communication, they cannot go over the finer details of the plan. All Fenrir and the serpent can communicate is that they are both willing to work together to take out the other crews.

But that’s all they really need.

Fenrir looks back toward the city. “Alright, it’s two versus two now, and we've got a free serpent on our side. Let's show them how the Divine - how the Soaring Wolves gets it done."