Riv’s shovel finally clanged against something harder than dirt after hours of digging. He ditched the shovel, crouched lower into the hole, and brushed dirt away with his hand until the top of a stone pillar revealed itself. It was smooth, almost polished, and black in a way only the temple-related rock ever was.

Marco jumped down into the hole and knelt beside his quartermaster. A prickle ran across his skin.

“This is it,” he said quietly. “Do it.”

"Dig it up?"

"No. Destroy it." Marco moved out of the way, clambering out of the hole and Riv's backswing range. "You don't need to dig it up for that."

“Gladly.”

Riv tossed the shovel out of the hole, letting it clang to a stop as he pulled his club out, took a few practice swings, and then brought the head down hard on the stone.

It shattered, held together in its current shape only by the cradling soil around it as cracks split the whole thing into hundreds of pieces.

"What'd you do?" Youff came trotting up moments later, beelining to Marco, the crew, and their latest hole. "Something changed."

"Are you sure you felt that?" Marco asked. "I mean, you must have, but everything feels the same to me."

"I've lived here my whole life. Trust me, something changed."

"For the better or the worse?" Aethe asked. "Because I don't think we'll be able to change it back."

Youff paused for a second before he responded. "I just felt different. Definitely not worse. Maybe a little better? If anything, I'd say I just feel a little more confident now. More secure."

"Well, for what it's worth, Quill has one less claw in this island now." Marco checked with his temple-sense and couldn't feel any of the buzzing resonance he had felt before. "And I think that's it. We are going to go find more of these, we think. I should warn you it's possible Quill will send someone to check on what happened. It might not be safe."

"Oh, don't worry about us." Youff smiled. "I'm not that strong off this island, but me and my people have what we need to defend ourselves in our own home. We'll be fine. Come on. I'll stock you all up before you head on your way."

An hour later and with a freshly filled hold, they were back on the ocean. Elisa had taken that time to update her maps as well as she could, and had a pretty good idea of where they should be headed next. There were a series of small islands around that she thought would be good spots to test. It would be a few hours at most before they got to each one.

"Keep your eyes peeled," Marco said. "We don't know how many more tricks Quill has up his sleeve, but he could have guarded these things in more ways than we can possibly imagine. Be ready. Be ready for anything."

They could have gotten ready for anything, Marco thought, at least to an extent. What all of them failed to prepare for was the one defense none of them had guessed at. When they got to the next island, they took the outboat to the shore, hopped off, and found the plinth within minutes. The island being deserted, Quill had set it out of sight from the sea but had gone to none of the pains to hide it he had with the lumberyard plinth.

And while they had tried their best to mentally prepare for anything, what they found was nothing. The plinth was completely unguarded, taking a single hit from Riv to shatter into splinters and offering no resistance at all.

"Lame." Riv sulked. "I thought we'd get to fight a wraith or something."

"You wanted that?" Aethe's face twisted in confusion. "Why?"

"Because then Marco could have gotten ghost powers. We could have had a ghost ship," Riv said back. “Imagine us riding in a ghost ship as we swoop in on Quill. That would we fun.”

"I don't want a ghost ship!" Elisa yelled. "Marco, no killing ghosts, from now on."

"Re-killing." Marco said. "They already died once."

"You know what I mean, and it's banned now. End of story."

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Marco reluctantly agreed to the restrictions as they loaded back onto the ship and set sail for the next plinth, then the next. They were both unguarded. Each offered them a slight increase in resistance to Quill, though it was impossible to know what slight meant in such an odd context.

The next island was different. It had guards. Lots of them.

"That's ten ships," Elisa said. "Ten pirate ships. The bad kind. It's a unified force, like Stead's armada."

The ten ships were moored in the middle of a small bay, far enough not to bump into each other, if only just. On the shore, a sizeable settlement had been slapped up out of logs, island plant leaves, and bits of rope. Marco used the spyglass to take a look at all the ships, finding that each and every one of them was worth far less than The Foolish Endeavor.

"How is that possible?" Marco said. "These are nice ships. Big ships. They have to carry tons of crew."

"Could the spyglass be wrong?"

"It never has before." The spyglass was never exact, really, but it had never been very far off. When it indicated a ship was strong, it was, in some way or another. The only time they hadn't really felt that was when they sunk enemy ships without dealing with their crews, having been a bad match for whatever the enemies were up to.

"I think I know," Riv said. "It takes the crew into account, right?"

"Right. Their equipment, anyway."

"Then it's easy. They aren't on the ships." He pointed at the settlement. "They are all ashore."

"You have no way of knowing that!" Elisa said. "They could be belowdecks, or…"

"That's the beauty of the thing." Riv beamed and started guiding Elisa towards the Wizard's Arbalest. "Either they are on shore, or they suck. The only question is, are you sure they are bad guys."

"Those markings are… well, they aren't nice," Elisa said. "It's basically code for something like if you sail back the way we came, there might be people who managed to tread water that you can take prisoner. Something like that."

"Oh." Marco's grin grew to match Riv's. "Then let's get to work. Fire at the boats, then the island."

"For how long?"

"Until you get tired, I guess?" Marco shrugged the happy shrug of a man with only good options to choose from. "We can figure out what to do after that."

Elisa started pumping bolt after bolt out of the Wizard’s Arbalest. The whole island jumped into action like a kicked anthill after the first, rowing boats out towards the ships as fast as they could. Elisa was up to that challenge, too, destroying several before the remaining rowers took them back to the relative safety of shore. The ten ships were sunk before ten minutes had passed, powerless to resist without the beneficial buffs their captains gave them. With what power she had left and after a short discussion with Marco, Elisa started bombarding the shore itself, alternating between fire and shock to get whatever benefits either could offer.

The nicer thing, something they hadn't thought about when they initiated the attack, was that the entire enemy camp was near the bay, essentially at the bottom of a steepish hill. Once the ships were down, Marco brought The Foolish Endeavor as close as he could to shore without beaching it, which gave Elisa near pinpoint accuracy on all her shots to any part of the island she could see.

The pirates held out for a surprisingly long time. The entire beach was scorched black by the time the last ship's notification came in.

"That's all of them," Marco said. "All the captains, anyway. And if there's anyone left on that beach, they aren't happy."

"So we'll just go ashore, then?"

"No. Let's learn from their mistakes," Marco said. "I think I saw a place we can dock without being seen. Let's be careful."

It took about thirty minutes to get their feet on the island while being especially safe, but Marco thought it was worth it. Once there, they moved slowly and searched thoroughly, finding the remains of pirates but none living. The plinth took a little longer, since the entire beach was now scorched to match it in hue. They found it eventually, though it took some back-and-forth along the sand to finally zero in on it with Marco's power.

"Guys?" Marco said. "If Quill didn't know already, it seems like he is going to know about this real soon. He'll be pulling out all the stops."

"The stops?" Riv laughed. "Let him."

"I'm serious, Riv. He knows we are dismantling his network. He has to respond to this," Marco said.

"I get it, Marco. I'm saying, let him. If he even still can." Riv waved out at the burning wreckage of ten ships in the harbor. "Those were his. The people who chased us right into the whirlpool were his. Everything he's sent after us, we've sunk, including that monster of a ship that attacked the lumber island. He can send more if he wants. We'll sink those too."

"Maybe. Unless Quill comes himself."

"Trust me," Riv said. “I doubt Quill even has a ship. If he does, he doesn't know how to use it. He's been to two islands. He didn't even leave to get Thatch's temple, and that would have been easy. If he has much left, he's using it to guard the island by now. It's as simple as that.”

"How do you know?"

"Because he's a coward, Marco. He might be strong. I'm not saying he's not. He's still going to be trouble. But he's trouble we can handle. He could have fought us when we first landed but he wanted to play it safe by sending us on all the different missions. He could have taken us when we were wandering around his island but he chose to instead give us another mission before sending the ships after us. Now, he's stuck in his own little kingdom. We have time."