Page 35 of Morfran, Dark Lord Reformed

Ah, him and his ex-wife. Well, he’d abandoned his power to live the life of a goat farmer. Which meant Ravana was the culprit. But how did she know where they were? There couldn’t possibly be a tracking spell on him. That was one of the reasons he’d ditched his magic—Ravana couldn’t use hers to track him. There was always the possibility of spies, or perhaps one of her men who’d spotted them leaving off the coast and had used some form of divination to tell her.

It was all making Morfran’s head hurt, and he just wanted to lie down and eat those pirate biscuits that were a little bit flaky but still tasty. Instead, he had to face the possibility of his own death.

Oh, and the deaths of all his crewmates and other ships following them, but he didn’t really care about them.

Yet Benjamin was also on the line.

The wind had picked up, and now the ship was starting to creak and turn, the sails jerking in the gusts. Elena was trying to fight it, as were her sailors. The one in the crow’s nest lowered his spyglass and screamed, “There’s something inside it!”

Storm clouds poured across the sky like gravy spilled over a countertop. The ship was tilting to one side so hard barrels were rolling across the deck and hitting the railing. Some were launched over. One man puked. The vomit landed on another man, which provided just enough force to knock him over the railing, too. He hit the whirlpool with a fat splash, probably half-relieved to wash the vomit off, probably half-horrified that he’d been flung overboard.

That was when Morfran saw it—the bubblegum-pink tentacle emerging out of the water, circling around the bobbing head of the man in the water. His arms flailed as he screamed, “Help me!” The tentacle latched around him like a fat, gooey arm. Then he vanished beneath the swirling black waters. Only a lone boot rose back up.

Morfran frowned. “Did anyone else see that, or…?”

Brim was pasty white. His eyes were decidedly not sparkling. “Bernard,” he murmured quietly. “I can’t swim.”

“What? Not even the doggy paddle?”

“I sink like a boulder in water.”

“Could you at least stay above water with the help of one of those colored noodles? Or a pair of water wings?” He flapped his arms like a chicken. Brim shook his head. Morfran huffed. “At least tell me you haven’t eaten anything in the past half hour.”

Brim’s face sagged as he held up half a ham sandwich. Well. That was too bad. Out of all the peasants he’d met, Brim was one of the more tolerable ones.

Elena jerked Morfran towards her furious face by his collar. Her expression was mildly terrifying. “This is your ex’s doing. You’re going to find a way to stop it.”

“I don’t even know what it is yet.”

Morfran was soon to swallow his words. Right after he spoke, the ship careened nearly onto its side as it entered the enormous whirlpool, which swirled in a massive circle at least as large as a sizable cow pasture. Morfran and Elena grabbed hold of the steering wheel to keep from spilling into the lake. Brim had grabbed hold of a stair post, wrapping his legs around it like a clingy toddler on a parent’s leg.

Down, down, down the whirlpool was taking them, and only when they were reaching the eye of it, and when Morfran was seriously wondering just how deep the lake went, did a massive, starlike shape bolt into the sky, spraying water down onto them like a sponge being wrung out.

They all looked up.

“It’s a bird!” one man shouted.

“No, a shooting star!” another said, to which he received bewildered glowers from his crewmates.

Morfran tilted his head, hair whipping into his eyes. It did indeed look somewhat like a star…although it seemed like they were staring at the bottom of it. And if it’d propelled itself out of the water like a spinning top, then…

“It’s a flying squid.” He sighed and looked straight ahead at nothing. Yes, this was Ravana’s doing.

“A Giant Flying Quid-Stealing Squid.” Elena was still wrestling with the steering wheel. Her tricorn hat was long gone, her red-brown hair sopping wet against her head. “Folklore says it thirsts for gold. It can smell it from miles away.” She grimaced at this.

“Let me guess,” Morfran complained. “You have gold on this ship. You didn’t pay an ounce of your taxes to me, did you?”

“I was an evil pirate back then, you two-tongued snake,” she snapped. “Did you expect me to pay taxes?”

“It would’ve saved our butts here now. And I could’ve used it to buy a yacht.”

“That’s criminal, you cretin.”

“I was a wicked leader,” Morfran defended. “That’s how you’re supposed to spend taxes.”

The Giant Flying Quid-Stealing Squid was falling back out of the sky now. Its shadow fell over the ship like a vulture hovering over a carcass.

“Brace for impact!” Elena shouted out to her crew, all of whom were death-gripping various bits of posts and ropes and railing to keep from falling overboard. Brim was still hugging the stair post, spouting off swear words and how he was going to take up swimming lessons if he ever survived this.