Mark was sitting on the floor, surrounded by three Mongols.

  The Mongol commander was in front of him, starting to draw his saber.

  The other two Mongols were behind Mark, and they lifted him off the ground, gripping him firmly by the arms to restrain him.

  He didn’t have a lot of time. He wanted to warn the others—the Mongols could flank them and cut them off from the cannon bay, leaving them in a position where it would be impossible to survive.

  But his [Phantom Presence] was almost exhausted. He doubted he had enough left to even break free from the Mongols' grasp, much less to evade the Mongol commander's slashes.

  He stopped resisting and could feel the Mongol’s grasp loosening ever so slightly.

  “Come on, men, let’s ta…” he started to say.

  Mark tackled to the right, towards the Mongol holding his arm. The Mongol didn’t lose his grasp, but he did take a couple of steps to the right, half stumbling, and Mark pushed harder until they hit the wall.

  The thin wooden separation collapsed, and they fell into the next compartment.

  Mark used [Phantom Presence] to escape from the Mongol holding his left arm. With his now free hand, he drew his dagger and stabbed the Mongol holding his other arm in the middle of the chest. The Mongol wheezed and started to spurt blood from his mouth.

  Mark got up, and his [Traitor’s Premonition] warned him about a slash from the Mongol commander to his back. He sidestepped the hit. Then jumped away to avoid the Mongol lying on the ground from grabbing his leg.

  The Mongol commander moved to cover the door, trying to stop his escape.

  Mark ran to the right again and tackled the next wooden separation, falling into the third compartment. This compartment had two exits, one towards the hallway and the other towards the kitchen. The Mongol commander was starting to cover this exit towards the hallway. Mark ran towards the kitchen, shouting.

  “They broke through! The Mongols are on the lower deck! Retreat! Retreat!”

  He crossed the kitchen fast and exited through the next door, entering the hallway where they had been keeping the Mongol corpses.

  He looked back towards the entrance to the lower deck, the small room where they had been fighting the Mongols, and he shouted again:

  “Retreat! Can you hear me? Retreat!”

  He didn’t want to go back to the fighting room, because then the Mongols might use the kitchen to flank and surround them.

  “Come the fuck back!” he shouted, watching the door to the fighting room. He could hear the fighting behind the door intensifying. The Mongols must have made a harder push down the stairs.

  Mark wanted to help. He desperately wanted to join the others in the fight. The feeling of uselessness was terrible.

  Mark looked back towards the cannon bay: “Somebody come! The Mongols have broken through!”

  If somebody could cover the kitchen, he would be able to go help on the stairs to the lower deck.

  Liam opened the door of the cannon bay.

  “Great!” Mark shouted. “Cover the kitchen, and I’ll go help at the entrance!”

  To his credit, the teenager didn’t ask questions. He simply ran towards the kitchen, and Mark started running towards the fighting room.

  A moment before he could open the door, Harald crashed through it, carrying a Mongol soldier with him.

  The Viking shouted with fury, and when they hit the ground, he grabbed the Mongol’s head and bashed it over and over against the wooden floor until he heard the Mongol’s skull crack open.

  Soon after, Erik Bloodaxe, Bjorn, Arthur, and Gustav retreated from the fighting room, falling back while trying to maintain some order, unable to resist the Mongol onslaught. Gustav had been injured in his leg, and Arthur was helping him walk. Arthur had a couple of injuries on his arms, and a gash open on his right cheek.

  “To the cannon bay!” Erik Bloodaxe shouted, walking backward while still fighting the Mongols. “Everybody retreat to the cannon bay! I’ll hold them back!”

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  “Erik!” Harald shouted.

  The Viking king didn’t answer. He pushed Harald back and walked towards the Mongols.

  “Leave him!” Bjorn shouted, trying to drag Harald back. “He’s going to use it! If we stay here, we'll only get in his way!"

  The first day, when almost everybody had received some Skill, they realized that some of them could activate them in silence, reaching towards something deep within their soul. Others, for whatever reason, felt it easier to activate them by calling them out loud.

  Erik Bloodaxe was in the camp who preferred to voice their Skills. He smiled and murmured:

  “[Berseker]…”

  And he jumped toward the Mongols, wielding his massive axe as if it weighed nothing at all.

  Of all the Skills they had gained after ten days on the ship, Erik Bloodaxe had received one of the best: [Berserker]. For almost twenty seconds, his speed and power reached the superhuman. He was barely a blur, a whirlwind of steel and fury, his massive axe carving through the enemies with brutality.

  For those few seconds, he was more than a man.

  For those few seconds, he became a force of nature.

  Mark watched the Viking king cut in two a Mongol, his axe barely slowing, as if there had been no resistance. He kicked a terrified Mongol in the chest—immediately cracking something within the soldier. The now dead Mongol shot away from him, throwing three other Mongols to the ground. And the Viking king slashed down on them, killing them with a couple of swings of the axe before continuing to attack the rest.

  Mark helped Arthur carry Gustav. Liam, who had been watching over the kitchen, retreated with them.

  They entered the cannon bay, keeping the door open for Erik Bloodaxe. The Viking king used the last moments of his Skill to move towards the door, escaping from the destruction he left behind.

  But one of the Mongols had enough presence of mind to use his bow, aiming towards the Viking king. They were just about to close the door behind him when the arrow struck the king with immense force, hurling him back a few feet before he crashed to the ground.

  “Erik!” Bjorn shouted, reaching for his king.

  “Emily, come help!” Harald shouted, pushing the door closed.

  Just before the door closed, Mark looked towards the Mongols. The Viking king had taken a real toll; they no longer outnumbered the Gamers by so much.

  And the Gamers and Vikings were ready for a long siege. All the food and water were hidden with them in the cannon bay. The Mongols would run out of water soon.

  They could make it.

  They might actually survive the battle.

  The Mongols started pounding on the door, ramming and pushing it to try to break in.

  “Hold it!” Arthur shouted, while pushing against the door. “Everybody help hold it!”

  Then he lowered his voice a little and added:

  “Liam, get Tobias. Let’s fire the cannon and finish this right now!”

  They had the cannon ready, aiming toward the door. Packed with shrapnel, shot at point-blank range, it was going to destroy the Mongols.

  Arthur kept his shoulder pressed against the door, and he smiled at Mark. It was the same smile he used after they committed some crazy crime, and they somehow managed to get away with the money.

  “Can you believe this might…” Arthur started to say.

  Mark’s [Traitor’s Premonition] blared in alarm. The Mongols were going to break through the door. Something was going to crash them.

  He looked through the cracks of the door, and he saw some strange silvery glimmer. He could hear something… Were those the hoofbeats of a galloping horse?

  “Everybody out!” Mark shouted, dragging Arthur and Gustav with him.

  The Mongol commander broke through the door, mounted on a massive horse. The stallion had to be the result of some sort of Skill, because it seemed to be made of some silvery, translucent substance.

  Once in the cannon bay, the horse reared up, magnificent, while the Mongol commander struck down with his saber anybody within his reach. Mark, still on the ground, retreated while facing the animal. It had a translucent feel, but it was completely solid: when the hooves landed on the planks of wood, they struck with a force that sent vibrations through the floor. The horse even seemed to have some sort of sentience, for it looked scared in the cramped, noisy cannon bay.

  A Viking named Sigvar tried to dismount the Mongol commander, but the commander thrust his saber through the Viking’s throat, killing him immediately.

  Liam approached one of the cannons they had put facing the door, trying to ignite it. But the Mongol commander slashed him down, from chest to belly, opening him up.

  The teenager fell down like a dead weight.

  “No!” Mark shouted. He felt Arthur dragging him away from the Mongol commander and its stallion.

  Mark saw Tobias slumped against the wall, already dead and drenched in blood. His vacant eyes stared into nothingness, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. The Mongol commander must have gotten to him when he breached the cannon bay.

  “No…” Mark muttered, feeling hopelessness starting to settle into his soul. He followed Arthur deeper into the cannon bay. At the far end, in the deepest part of the ship, there was a small storage room where they had planned to make their last stand if everything went wrong.

  Mark resisted going into the storage room. He had tears in his eyes. He looked towards the Mongol commander, who was trying to calm his phantom horse, which was bucking around wildly, the commander having to cover his head to avoid hitting it against the roof, making it hard for the rest of the Mongols to enter the cannon bay.

  “That motherfucker killed Tobias...”

  Emily looked at him, her terror mixed with confusion. A teary-eyed Harald had dragged Liam into the storage room, and she was trying to minimize as much as possible the injury with the few scraps of her mana she still had. The injured Erik Bloodaxe was also there, lying on the floor in a half-unconscious daze—the arrow protruding from the back of his shoulder.

  “What?” Emily asked. “But I saw him running away from the horse!”

  “What?”

  Mark looked toward Tobias. The Gamer was still lying on the ground, a few feet away from the Mongols. Covered in blood he must have taken from somebody else, because he was apparently uninjured, he pushed himself up slightly, looking with determination towards one of the cannons, still aimed at point-blank range towards the entrance to the cannon bay, where most of the Mongols were waiting, wary of their commander’s horse, which seemed on the verge of going wild.

  Holy fuck… Mark thought.

  Tobias pulled his arm back and then thrust it forward, as if throwing a baseball towards the ignition port of the cannon.

  “[FIREBALL]!”

  The cannon shot through the Mongols, ripping them apart.

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