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The man doubles over as if in pain, lines begin forming on his face as he starts to gasp. Raising his knife in one hand, he holds his middle with his other as he lurches toward James in an attempt to kill him.

“Leech by a hundred,” James says.

The sphere flashes brightly as the man drops to the floor of the hold and begins writhing. Moaning, he looks to James as his fingers lose their grip on the knife and it flops to the deck when his arm twitches. Shortly after that, he lies still.

“Leech by zero,” he says and the sphere, now the size of a golf ball, stops its pulsing and becomes still. An amber glow comes from it, similar to crystals which contain stored magic.

“Is he dead?” asks the older girl.

He glances over to them and sees all the girls staring at him and the dead man with naked fear in their eyes. Nudging the man’s body with his foot, he nods, “I think so.”

“What did you do?” she asks.

James waves away the question as he takes his foot and snags the dead man’s body with his heel. Dragging him a little closer, he reaches out with his hands and pulls the dead body next to him.

Searching the dead man’s clothes, he finds a set of keys and as luck would have it, one fits the locks of his manacles. He removes first his wrist restraints, then his feet. Glancing up to the open hatch, he fears that someone up there had heard the man’s death. But when no one comes to investigate, he reaches over and picks up the glowing sphere, putting it in his pocket. Taking the rest of his things, he places the slug belt once more around his hip and then gets up, making his way over to the girls in the cage.

“Shhh!” he says, putting a finger to his lips. “We must be quiet.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” one of the other girls asks.

Turning the key in the lock, he says, “I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on being on board a ship.” Opening the door, he lets them out and has them move as far from the hatch as possible. They find a spot behind some barrels of tar to hide.

“Stay there and don’t come out for anything,” he tells them.

The girls just nod, fear on their faces.

Turning back to the hatch, he moves until he’s once more by the cage. Unsure what to do, he stands there in indecision as he ponders his next course of action. His mind still fuzzy from the drug, it’s hard for him to think properly.

He takes out the sphere and absentmindedly rolls it in his hand. When he had originally made the sphere he had only imbued it with a few simple commands. Leech was the first one, which would draw power from whoever it was near thereby infusing it with power for the other commands.

It was intended to use magic in circumstances when he was unable to, such as now. He only put one offensive spell in it and had he known that he was going to be aboard a ship, he never would have used that one.

Staggering slightly from the effects of the drug coursing through his system, he begins moving toward the stairs leading to the hatch. Suddenly from above, the light coming through the hatch is blocked as a guard begins descending down the stairs.

James halts his forward movement and begins backing up as the man stops abruptly on the stairs when he sees him there. The guard does a quick scan and takes in the scene: James no longer in manacles, the cage empty with the door open and the dead body lying on the floor.

The guard begins hollering up the stairs as he draws his sword. As the guard continues down the stairs, more guards come through the hatch.

Holding the sphere before him, he calls forth the lone offensive spell by saying, “Incinerate!”

The sphere pulses and he can almost feel the magic flow out of it toward the approaching guard. The guard’s clothes, hair and it seems his very skin ignites in a fireball. Screams of pain erupt out of the inferno as the man stumbles around until finally coming to rest on the deck. The nauseating odor of burnt hair and flesh permeates the hold. Within the sphere, the glow has been greatly reduced.

James looks to the other guards who have paused on the stairs after seeing the fate of