The Fleet ship, a merchant’s galley, made its way to the southern peninsula. The crew was small, only the barest amount of crew that the galley could possibly need. This was due to the addition of a small squad of eight Nightscale Tritons, clad in their black leather armor, and polishing and sharpening their serpent-bone glaives. While these Tritons coil swim quickly, a ship is much more preferable than a forced march through the ocean. There was a scrube aboard as well, dressed similarly to the navigator, and aiding the ship’s own navigator with sending the ship swiftly, the small flock of albatrosses resting on the arms of the mast.
It was a few days until the ship anchored a few miles off the shore of the Peninsula. Wordlessly, the tritons slipped under the waves, and slithered through the waves in the dead of night. When they slunk onto the shore, they were shocked to see what stood before them.
The fortress that was once the defense of the south stood tall, but much differently than what the pride of the south had stood tall. It looked torn and ruined, a cracked and crumbling thing. Inhuman, yet human-looking… things loped across the walls, bearing small bows. Bat ears poked out of kettle helms, and the sounds of a coarse language consisting of yips, barks, and growls could be heard. In the moonlight, the banners could be seen. They looked like house banners of the noble families in Bastion, but it was much different to any house. A bright purple banner flowed from each of the walls, and the flag atop the fortress. At the heart of each of these was a horizontal crescent pointed downwards.
The lord looked on at the eight figures at the coast, approaching the wretches that were cutting the earth, digging a foreboding trench to the sea with crude shovels and picks. The Lord of Nocturne turned his head to a figure dressed in resplendent silk and said, [Agha, take gaunts and your finest men. Ensure that these… interlopers… are never seen again] the dervish nodded his head, and departed.
It was pitch dark when the dervishes descended onto the deck, the Tritons had returned and given their report, and the scribe was drafting his letter to the regatta to the Seat when the alarm cry was yelled, then cut short. Dervishes danced and the gaunts plucked theur quarry from the decks.
The attack was not unexpected, but the silence that preceded it was. The forces of the ship had little time to react when the gaunts descended, bearing their silken assassins. The sailors fired their hand crossbows to little effect against the faceless winged monstrosities. They were at once cut down by the dervishes. The Tritons charged the dervishes, attemptint to defend the scribe’s cabin, managing to fend them off, and make a space for a scribe with one of his albatrosses to reach a dinghy. Three of the tritons were plucked away by gaunts as they pressed forward, and three more were cut down, the dervishes dancing around the blades of the glaives of the merfolk.
That left three men and one albatross in the dinghy, each of them cut in some fashion. Even the scribe was sporting a long gash in his arm, yet he still strove to pen his letter. The gaunts were coming, and as the Tritons prepared to battle their foes, the scribe clutched an amulet that hung around his neck, and his blood burned as he slipped the letter into the pack of the albatross. The bird began to fade into the night, and as the sounds of feathered wings could be heard, no bird was seen. The scribe fell forward after that, into the water as a dervish and gaunts descended on the tritons, who were loathe to retreat.
By daylight, all that was left was an empty ship with bloodied planks.