[Myself and Dak are on the trail of the Black Mirror and have been watching at the Waterdeep docks. Now that it is leaving, we follow from above. Me as a Giant Owl with Dak on my back.]
DAY 569 (23rd Eleint) (September) cont ...
By one o'clock in the afternoon we had been following the Black Mirror for a couple of hours. Once out as sea it had turned south. There was activity on the deck, and not just the standard sailory stuff, but we had no idea what they were up to. After ten minutes it started going a lot faster, then ten minutes after that it vanished.
I'd forgotten about my Goggles of See Invisibility, so we turned back to the coast and landed. Here I handed over my goggles to Dak and we took off again. Dak was able to locate the ship with the goggles and we continued to follow them.
Faster than the wind, propelled by magic, the ship continued and we followed it until dusk. We attacked in the evening twilight. I landed on the deck and turned into a man. Together with Dak I stood on the deserted ship, waiting to see what happened next. The air was fairly buzzing with magic and there were illuminated runes on the planking of the deck.
Suddenly a voice below shouted, 'Now!' and we were surrounded by a multi-coloured magical wall. Within the wall all magic drained away and the runes winked out. Dak seemed puzzled, looking over all his magical items that were now doing nothing. He then jumped at the barrier, but quickly jumped back in pain, smoldering from fire damage.
We looked up, the wall was thirty feet high, which was not as high as the central mast which was also within the circle. As some of the pirates appeared on the deck Dak started to climb up the mast.
'Get down from there, you,' said one of them with a hint of smugness in his voice.
Well, whatever plan these fellows had come up with had not factored in the amazing bounciness of my friend Dak. With a mighty salmon leap he flew from the top beam of the mast and plummeted down to the other side of the barrier, leaving a large divot in the deck and scattering the pirates.
He'd escaped the trap! Seeing it as a sound idea I too started climbing. Pirates levelled crossbows at me, but they could not shoot through the barrier. Dak charged at one of them and cut him into three neat chunks with mighty sweeps of his falchion.
With little of Dak's finesse I leapt from the upper beams and turned into a hawk and flew off as fast as I could, with crossbow bolts whizzing past my feathery retreat. I banked left and wheeled around the ship, watching as Dak stepped on a rune that then exploded. He recovered from that then threw himself over the side and hung onto the rail, attempting to navigate around the outside of the magical wall.
I could see Dak being hit from blows aimed down by the pirates. He seemed confused, half trying to defend himself and half trying to move along the outside of the ship and failing at both.
I should add that even as I describe the scene thus you must remember that the ship was all the while trying to remain invisible, but with its magic fighting against anti-magic of the barrier causing the vessel to flicker, shudder and glitter in the sunset.
Still, with all Dak's wild displays I could locate the ship easily enough and I summoned a Giant Squid. This proved the perfect beast for attacking a ship, and again the pirates scattered as its ten tentacles started flailing around on the deck and in through the cabin windows. Next at the other end of the ship I summoned a megaraptor and positioned it on the forward hatch to prevent more pirates from coming up from below.
After I'd done all that I located Dak, he was onboard again and breaking down the captain's cabin door with his falchion. We had been the hunters, then the hunted, and now we were the hunters again!
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