The great walls of water collided, just fifty paces ahead, and spray filled the sky, shooting in all directions. Chaotic wind ripped the spray apart, tossing it in strange spirals and directions the laws of nature would never allow. The sea became a churned-up mess of peaks and troughs. Unable to change its path, the galley sped straight into the raging water, the crewmen crying out in fear as the bow lifted nearly to the vertical before slamming into a deep valley and almost tipping over. Chloe fell to the boat’s deck, gripping the gunwales on either side as water crashed over her head, soaking her through. She coughed, tasting salt, then wiped the stinging liquid from her eyes.

But the two waves were gone, and the galley’s tumultuous movement finally began to subside.

‘Onward!’ the captain roared.

Chloe climbed back to her feet. Legs apart, staff in hand, she drew in a deep breath. Eye to eye with the cold stare of the sorceress, she summoned yet another wave, while her opponent simultaneously called forth her own.

The cone-shaped silver device at the top of Chloe’s staff glowed before subsiding. At almost the exact same instant, the matching device on the sorceress’s staff lit up brighter than the most luminous moon, almost blinding.

Drawing up the water around it, pushed forward by a powerful gust, Chloe’s wave grew to the height of the last.

The sorceress’s blue-tinged lips curved in a smile.

The gathering wind released from the woman’s staff was so thick it was visible as streams of pale air. In an instant an opposing wave grew, a wall of water that became taller and taller, rising to a height bigger than Chloe had ever thought possible, nearly twice the height of the galley’s mast. Chloe’s own wave approached, but it was only half the size, and she held her breath as the two waves met head on.

The approaching wave rolled over Chloe’s without pausing.

‘Hold on!’ the captain screamed.

The mountainous wave began to break, towering overhead before smashing down onto the galley. Suddenly air was replaced with water. Wood shattered as splinters went in all directions. Chloe’s vision became filled with white foam as she felt herself plunging deep under the sea, limbs scrabbling and trying to pull her back to the surface while she was tossed back and forth in the currents. From underwater her vision cleared for an instant and she could see planks and swimming men everywhere. But downward force continued to push everything down, deeper and deeper.

Her chest heaved, lungs clawing at her throat and begging her to open her mouth. Pulling at the water with both arms, kicking furiously with her legs, finally she managed to make headway toward the surface. A plank swirled past her head, missing her skull by inches, and she dodged another as she fought the pain in her screaming chest.