Lost Legends | Episode 4 - Octopus Incursion Part 2

We find our heroes on the docks, where they find The Sandpiper was not difficult to identify. While every other vessel in the harbor looked worn, but functional, the Sandpiper looked wrong. Its sails were tattered in a way that had nothing to do with weather. A low, colorless mist clung to it, and at its heart, just barely visible, that mist was tinted purple. People walking the docks gave it a wide berth without seeming entirely conscious of doing so.

An elderly woman passing by with a basket of crabs confirmed that it had sailed in the previous night. She had known the owner — a man named Jim Boatsman — and said the ship used to be perfectly ordinary. It had come back something else entirely.

The upper deck was quiet, patrolled by two tall, armored lizard-folk speaking in a language none of the four legends understood, and one shambling undead that moved in aimless circles near the mast. The group attempted something approaching stealth. What followed was a combination of distraction, shoved lizard-folk splashing into the harbor, entangled doors, and Morub being briefly launched off a conveyor belt — but they cleared the deck.

Below, the ship's hull was dark, damp, and smelled catastrophically of rot. More lizard-folk waited, along with another rising undead sailor. They fought through them, taking wounds, pushing deeper into the vessel, until at last they reached the captain's cabin.

In a rocking chair, surrounded by wreckage and purple mist, sat a small, elderly halfling woman who seemed entirely unbothered by the chaos that had apparently just occurred outside her door. She greeted them pleasantly, admired their stature, and suggested they might be just the sort of strong, capable people she'd been looking for.

The offer she made was familiar. She spoke of freedom — of sailing from story to story, of being bound to no one, of a life beyond Flutterwing's library. She alluded to knowing Carabossa, referring to her with casual, unsettling familiarity. When pressed for her name, she declined. When pressed for her destination, she described it as somewhere new, somewhere adventurous, somewhere that was not here.

The group, with no real discussion, refused her.

As they moved to leave, the woman rose from her chair — and kept rising. The back wall of the cabin exploded outward in a shockwave of purple energy. The ship's rear collapsed into open air. Where the elderly halfling had stood, something ancient and wretched now towered: a sea hag, her form half-rotted, seaweed tangled through her, eyes burning with an unnatural light. The rats that had been scurrying through the ship revealed themselves to be additional threats. Lizard-folk shambled back into the space. The battle began in earnest.

It was a grinding, ugly fight. Hríd fell unconscious near the end, the hag's claws driving him to the deck. But in the moment the hag gloated — chains raised, the others struggling around her — Belial struck. The blow was final. She collapsed, uttering one last rasp - into the depths with you! - and dissolved.

With her death, the ship began to come apart. The purple haze evaporated. The wood groaned, split, and began sliding beneath the water. They scrambled off the sinking vessel, tumbling onto the docks or hauling each other clear as the Sandpiper broke apart and disappeared beneath the surface.

They stood on the shore, battered and quiet. The harbor around them felt ordinary again. The air was just salt and fish and the distant sound of waves.

When the world of the book faded around them — narrowing to white, dissolving at the edges — they found themselves back in the theater, standing around the recipe book which now lay on the floor, wet and slightly steaming, but no longer radiating that oppressive feeling.

They returned the book to its shelf. Flutterwing was still nowhere to be found.

Going through the cookbook, Morub noticed something: an illustration tucked between recipes — a star-shaped fracture in the sky, and a ghostly ship sailing through it. The same shape Carabosa had used to vanish the last time they had faced her. And reading the surrounding text, they found that the cookbook had changed. It now told the story of a coastal town visited by a terrible pirate queen, who was defeated by four mysterious heroes. The story had been written around what they had just done.

The sea hag, it seemed, had not been a simple mercenary. She had spoken of Carabossa as an auntie, a sister, an employer — whatever title suited the moment. She had been waiting in that book, gathering a crew of lizard-folk and undead, seeking a vessel powerful enough to carry her between worlds. Now the ship was gone, and she along with it.

But Carabossa was still out there. And Flutterwing was still missing.

They checked their pocket dimensions. Everything was as they had left it. No disturbances, no purple smoke, no new visitors.

Then, in the silence of the theater, a faint crack split the air above them. Drifting down through the still space came a small envelope, sealed with a wax stamp marked with feathers. They opened it cautiously.

Inside, in hasty, scratching handwriting, were five words:

Help me. Books. Second floor.

Our heroes looked at each other. Then they looked at the walls of the library — and noticed, for the first time, a door none of them could quite remember seeing before. It sat slightly to one side of the main shelves, perfectly ordinary in appearance, and yet distinctly out of place. When they opened it, they found a staircase leading upward into the dark.

They had never been to the second floor before.