The first step is the easy part – loosening the manacle. You just need to hit the lock with enough force, which means turning a large object into a fast-moving projectile. This will take wind and time ether.
The wind ether means that rocks are unsuitable, but luckily this part of the shoreline is home to a species of rather large clams. So you grab one and direct it towards the manacle. The speed shouldn’t hurt the creature – their shells are quite durable, much to the chagrin of the local gulls.
As you expected, this creates a breach, which is enough for the ghastwhale’s own strength to do the rest. One manacle now hangs free, linked by a chain to the other. But this next part will be trickier.
A whale is large enough that you can actually cast on individual body parts, including internal organs, with greater ease than a smaller animal. But it’s still somewhat tricky. What you settle on doing is speeding up its lungs, so that it consumes air faster. This means it soon feels the need to come up for air, and when whales come up for air, they do so rather dramatically.
The ghastwhale leaps out, and as it does, the chain goes flying and the broken manacle approaches you…
But it falls short by a considerable distance. That’s not even because of anything you did wrong, the ghastwhale just doesn’t have the strength to jump higher.
On its own, anyway. You’re suddenly aware of the young shipwhales jumping up beneath it and pushing it nearly a meter higher. The chain passes right through you.
You feel agony beyond any you’ve ever felt in your physical body, but it seems the demon got caught in it too. Its grip on you loosens very suddenly, so suddenly that it takes you a moment to realize you need to run.
So you do. But you’re still getting dragged towards the ship. Luckily, it seems the Storyteller has been busy, because suddenly a larger wave of water rises in front of the Golem. You feel the force pulling on you weaken, and you flee faster.
Are you clear? the Storyteller suddenly asks. You realize this is about giving you a safe means to answer as much as it is about knowing when to stop.
You don’t reply until you’re over the shore.
I should be now, you send back.
And then you watch. You watch as the ether in your lure and in the demon get pulled away somewhere… and then vanish, beyond your capacity to observe.
You then feel your senses start to weaken. You’ve put a lot of strain on yourself. You can’t hold together…
Everything is a blur for a while, and then it isn’t. When you regain your senses, you see the familiar structures of a ship all around you.
It is done, the Storyteller says, sounding exhausted. I am amazed we made it through that. And yet, I fear the worst of this night is yet to come.
“Well, that’s a relief. If you couldn’t do it, I would have had to talk to the captain,” a woman’s voice says. “And you know she doesn’t like it when I have to talk magic with her. Not to mention explaining your presence.”
It takes you a while to grasp what’s going on.
We’re on the Golem, you send to the Storyteller. The aura is dealt with, then?
So it seems, comes the reply. I did not have time to see how, as stabilizing your etherform took priority. I was not able to do much myself, but fortunately the Golem has some tools to aid this. So I simply had to keep you from completely falling apart.
“That’s enough small talk,” says the woman. “With the emergency dealt with, we need to shift focus to our other problem.”
Our rudder is haunted!