Fennec burst from the dark confines of the Wordhoard and slammed into the air. He hung poised for a moment, tongue bloody from the statue’s marble teeth.

Fuck you all, he thought fiercely, all his fear running out of him. He plunged his tongue deep into his statue, felt power coruscate him, felt aglow with it like a dark star. Whirling, he skittered through a fringe of torn rigging, moving up by the shadows of wires, bending reality around him, buckling it and sliding along the fold he had created-up, out over the decrepit ship.

A corps of grim yeomanry rose from the hatch below and spread with expert speed across the deck. Uther Doul came with them, and he stared straight into Fennec’s eyes.

"Fennec," he said, and raised his sword.

Silas Fennec looked down at him, grinned his rage, and answered in a voice that reverberated wrongly, sounding close up to the ear like a threatening whisper. "Uther Doul."

Fennec was poised fifteen feet above the deck, in a corona of warping aether. Reality rippled around him. He hung unclear, his outlines oscillating between states. He moved with a slow and predatory marine grace, blurring in and out of visibility. Blood drooled from his mouth and torn tongue. He turned like a pike in the air, held suspended by the power of his statue’s kiss, staring at the men below him.

They raised their weapons. Fennec shimmered, and bullets passed through where he had been-through bristling air-and spat as they disappeared. He opened his mouth, and gobs of that corrosive spit-puke flew out of him like shrapnel from a shell.

They burst across the deck and into the faces of his attackers, and there was a percussion of shrieks. The men scattered in panic.

Fennec kept his eyes on Doul.

Doul leaped out of the path of the spittle with brutal economy, his face taut, still watching Fennec. Fennec flickered and was lower, was ghosting over the deck crooning his delight, leaving a slick of caustic drool. Any man came close to him and he spat, and they backed off, or died. He tracked Uther Doul.

" Take me, then," whispered Fennec with drunk bravado. His throat was raw with the uncanny spit, but he felt he could do anything, burn a hole in the universe. He felt uncontainable. Doul retreated before the puissant, bristling figure, leaping, moving with terse anger, gritting his teeth against Fennec’s voice, which still muttered up close to his ear. " Come on…"

Then through the light and dark and the heaviness of wood, through the slap of water like little fists around him, the lights of Armada only a few yards away, Fennec heard a voice behind him.

"Siiiiiilassssss."

Like the strike of a monstrous snake.

With his heart spasming Fennec turned, and through agitated space he saw the Brucolac-bestial, glowing, hate cast in bone. Leaping up out of darkness, his vast tongue uncoiled. Hurtling for him.