? CHARACTER STATUS ?
Name: Paola Juderías
Race: T’shal’ara (Fallen Star)
Class: Harbinger of Chaos
Tier: Jade
Level: 30
Unused Skill Points: 2
? ATTRIBUTES ?
Durability: 62
Strength: 42
Agility: 66
Intelligence: 40
Wisdom: 72
? LIFE STATS ?
Health (HP): 340 / 340
Stamina: 218 / 218
Mana: 200 / 200
? TRAITS ?
Fallen Star
T’shal’ara Bloodline
Nudist (Bonus SP while active)
Harbinger of Chaos
Rabbit’s Foot
Paola closed the menu mentally.
She hadn’t meant to check it. Not really. It had just… popped up. Reflex, more than habit. Two weeks since she’d last looked, back when she and Ayla had sparred until both of them were bruised, laughing, and half-feral with adrenaline. That had been fun.
This was not sparring.
This was pirates.
Actual, real-life pirates.
In the sky.
Paola grinned, claws sliding free with a soft, eager sound.
The Wandering Star shuddered as something slammed into its starboard side. Not hard enough to breach. Hard enough to announce intent. Roric’s ship answered with a deep, irritated groan, sails tightening as the crew snapped into motion with practiced efficiency.
Three ships had come out of the clouds. Sleek, aggressive things with hooked prows and cut sails, drifting in formation like wolves that thought they’d found a fat, slow deer. Cargo ship, they’d assumed. Easy pickings.
Oh boy.
They hadn’t counted on a deck full of monsters.
Ayla was already moving, boots skidding on wet planks as she vaulted up onto the rail. Fire bloomed along one arm, ice crystallizing along the other, heat and cold warping the air around her. She didn’t shout orders. She didn’t need to. She was a line in the storm, and everyone knew where to stand around her.
Yasmin whooped as she launched skyward, glass wings snapping open. “I CALL THE LEFT ONE!” she yelled, already glowing with unstable light. An explosion detonated midair moments later, not random, not sloppy—precise enough to shear a mast without touching the hull beneath it.
Yucca rose more quietly, wings unfolding like cut crystal. The air around her shimmered as panes of glass formed and reformed at her command, angling incoming fire away from the deck, redirecting momentum with cold, surgical grace.
Paola didn’t wait.
She vanished.
Shadow Pounce folded space like a blink cut out of reality, and she reappeared behind the first pirate who’d landed on deck. Her claws went through leather and bone in one smooth motion, Chaos Strike flaring—lightning this time—disrupting his muscles mid-scream. He never finished falling before she was gone again.
Another blink. Another angle.
She appeared above a second pirate, feet hitting his shoulders as she kicked off, daggers flashing as she passed. Fire rippled across the blade edge on contact, not enough to burn, just enough to panic. He stumbled back, screaming, and Ayla’s ice took his legs out from under him.
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Paola landed lightly, already moving, Predator’s Sense humming as the battlefield mapped itself in her head. Wind shifts. Weight. Fear. She felt where she was needed before she saw it.
The crew held their own.
Bram was a wall, exactly as advertised, hammering back boarders with a length of reinforced spar, every movement fueled by furious care. Lucien swung from rigging to rigging, blade flashing, laughing like the fight was a dance he’d been waiting for all week. Fira shouted delighted commentary as she rerouted power through the sails, while Mira lounged at the helm, half-lidded and utterly unbothered, adjusting course just enough to ruin the pirates’ angles.
Which meant Paola and her team were free to be devastating.
She blinked again, appearing in the middle of a cluster of pirates trying to regroup. Ice burst under her feet as Yucca sealed off their retreat. Paola slashed low, claws raking through armor with bone-on-metal screech, poison flaring this time, movements sharp and intimate. She was everywhere and nowhere, never staying long enough for the fight to settle.
Below deck, Selene, Evan, and Poca stayed where they were needed.
Selene was a shadow among shadows, guarding choke points, void swallowing anything that slipped too far below. Evan stood awkwardly but solidly among the crew who couldn’t fight, scythe resting across his shoulders, presence alone enough to steady shaking hands. Poca moved constantly, threads of puppetry and healing weaving through the lower decks, quiet and relentless, keeping people alive who would never know how close they’d come to dying.
Above, the pirates broke.
They didn’t break all at once, though.
They fractured.
Paola reappeared at the edge of the deck as a pair of boarders rushed her, blades raised, confidence lagging just a heartbeat behind momentum. She let them commit. Let their weight come forward.
Then she was gone.
She snapped back into existence behind the first, claws punching through the gap under his ribs. Chaos flared—ice this time—locking his joints mid-breath. She used his body as a pivot, kicking off his chest to launch herself at the second. He barely managed to turn before she slammed into him shoulder-first, shieldless but no less brutal, driving him into the rail hard enough to rattle the runes etched into the brass.
He swung wildly.
Paola ducked, close enough to smell fear and cheap oil, and carved upward. Bone met flesh. Lightning crackled. He dropped.
A heavier shape loomed behind her.
This one didn’t rush. Broad, armored, carrying a cleaver-sized blade that had seen real use. He grinned through a broken mouth. “Thought you were fast,” he growled.
Paola smiled back.
The fight was short, but it wasn’t easy. He caught her once, blade grazing her side, sparks of chaos flaring as her durability absorbed the worst of it. She felt the hit register, felt the pressure spike. Adrenaline sang in her veins even without the skill unlocked yet.
She teleported twice in rapid succession, chaining Shadow Pounce so fast it made the air snap. First strike glanced off his shoulder. Second opened his thigh. Third—fire—burned through his guard as she slipped inside his reach and drove both claws in under his breastplate.
He fell hard.
Across the deck, Ayla was holding her own with brutal efficiency. Fire surged to force pirates back, ice snapping out to pin feet and lock joints. She moved like a wall that could advance, methodical and relentless, finishing one opponent with a frost-bound slam and turning immediately to intercept another.
Above them, Yasmin was pure mayhem.
She tore through the air between ships, red-glass wings cutting tight arcs as arrows screamed past where she’d been a moment before. She laughed as she flew, eyes alight, hands already glowing.
“Boom Blossom!” she shouted, diving straight into the enemy ship’s deck.
The explosion was short-range and controlled—more force than fire—but it blew a cluster of pirates off their feet and shattered planks beneath them. Yasmin rebounded midair, spinning, another detonation flaring beneath her boots as she kicked off a mast and rocketed sideways.
She didn’t stay still long enough to be aimed at.
She weaved through rigging, explosions popping like thunderclaps wherever she passed. A railing vanished. A ballista tore loose. One pirate tried to tackle her mid-flight and was rewarded with a point-blank blast that sent him tumbling into open sky.
The ship groaned.
Badly.
Cracks spread along its hull as Yasmin zipped past again, dropping another Boom Blossom near the engine housing. Smoke poured out, the pitch of the ship tilting dangerously.
Nearby, Yucca hovered just above the Wandering Star’s deck, teeth clenched as she raised pane after pane of reinforced glass. Arrows shattered against them, shards raining down harmlessly.
“I am not designed for structural repairs,” she snapped, wings flicking irritably. “And your clean-up crew is not here, Yasmin. Do not make this worse.”
“I am literally under attack!” Yasmin yelled back, detonating another explosion. “This is restrained!”
“You have a distorted definition of restrained!”
Back on deck, Paola and Ayla finished it.
The last pirates hesitated, seeing one ship spiraling, another already pulling away. Paola blinked into their midst, claws flashing, chaos rippling through their ranks. Ayla followed like a closing door, ice sealing escape routes, fire forcing surrender—or flight.
The remaining two ships didn’t wait to see which it would be.
They broke formation and fled, sails snapping as they vanished back into the cloud layer they’d come from.
Silence fell in their wake, broken only by the creak of wood and the distant sound of something very large falling very far away.
Paola stood amid the aftermath, chest rising and falling, blood cooling on her skin. She glanced skyward, where Yasmin hovered triumphantly.
“Still restrained?” Paola called.
Yasmin grinned. “Extremely.”
