Bo and the other Klumpfs had their hands full with the Japes, leaving me and Amphia to go against the ship's long armed navigator. He was holding a seven foot metal pole he ripped off the wall and was charging at me, ready to turn me into a pile of Harlen. He had a crazed look in his bloodshot eyes as he screamed, sprinting at me with the intent to destroy me. If Amphia hadn't shoved me out of the way, he would've run right through me.
Right now, I had no time to focus on attacking back because his attacks were so quick and frequent, and he showed no sign of stopping. His long arms and even longer metal pole cleared so much distance that if I wasn't constantly moving and studying the poles movement to a T, I'd get smacked hard enough to break a hole through the wall.
His attacks were so uncoordinated and reckless, yet so effective and fluent. His stamina was outrageous, letting him fling his arms around like a lunatic for several minutes without worrying about stopping for a moment to breathe. His endurance seemed even more mastered, being able to attack in his pattern without showing signs of slowing down or fatiguing. Even though his arms and legs were fairly thin, they looked like they were mostly muscle under the dirty tan fur.
Another thing that caught me off guard was the fact that he looked like a normal monkey. No mandibles, no piercing yellow eyes, nothing. He stood out like a sore thumb compared to the japes. Maybe he really was the captain, and he was regarded as special for his strength and difference in appearance.
He seemed impossible to bring down as he would just keep going, probably until we gave up and let him whack us to death. I barely had time to think as I was avoiding his attacks, even as they sabotaged his own crew by accidently smacking a few in the head as he passed. I felt myself bump into one of the telescopes and had to duck and roll, so I didn't get hit.
The room was massive, but a big portion of it was dedicated to all the ropes and telescopes running through to work this part of the ship. It made a lot of sense, though. Why be exposed and out in the open while steering your ship when you can be in cover and closer to what was actually moving your ship. In this case, being closer to the legs moving the ship meant better steering and less waste of materials.
Telescopes and mirrors in pipes let you see everywhere around the ship easily, giving you more of an ability to see anything from any angle. The ropes and pulleys would help work stuff around the ship, like steering and stuff like that. To top it all off, at the very end of the room, throughout the massive cluster of pipes and ropes, there was a giant trap door that must've led to whatever was beneath us, carrying the boat, so they could get fed or whatever. I got a good glimpse of it while I was crawling away from the crazed monkey. That's when I got an idea.
It'll be much harder for the navigator to follow me throughout the cluster, so the deeper I'd go, the slower he'd get. Maybe I could trip him up and get him tangled in the ropes and held down by the pipes. After that, I get whatever was down in the basement to stop moving. It was a good plan, and it may be a little hard to pull off, but it was all I had.
Amphia noticed me moving into the cluster of pipes and ropes and immediately knew what I was planning. A smile popped on her face as she followed me. I tried slowly dodging throughout the pipes and ropes, so I didn't get tangled up or draw any unwanted attention, at least until the navigator noticed he was fighting ghosts and air.
Throughout my entire journey, I'd never expect being chased by a monkey to be the scariest experience I go through. His long legs ended up giving him an advantage by letting him leap from pipe to pipe with precision and speed. We weren't even a quarter of the way through the cluster before he slammed down on the pipe right in front of us. The monkey was staring me down, gripping the pipe in his hand hard enough to crunch the metal down. He lifted the pipe over his head and got ready to pummel me, but an arrow shot into his neck.
He slowly turned to see Amphia holding a bow aimed at him.
"Come on, you big baboon! Let's go!"
He bent the pole in half over his knee, letting out a loud metal creak before doing it again and again, until the metal pole was a ball big enough for him to hold in both hands.
"Puny frog become stew."
His vocabulary may not have been very wide, but he still knew how to make four word sentences sound menacing. Even with an arrow in his neck, he seemed more than ready to destroy us, no matter what. But before he could chuck the ball at his froggy victim, the doors to the balcony I had come from banged hardly, once, then twice before busting to pieces.
The entire balcony broke to pieces as the giant gorilla from earlier fell down four floors and landed on a pile of Japes and Klumpfs fighting, making the entire ship shake. A familiar rat and cheesemaker jumped off after him, landing on him as a cushion, making him loudly choke as they did.
"I heard you guys needed water."
Mamble said with a smirk, his gemstone glowing brighter than ever before snapping his fingers and stomping on the gorillas back. His yellow eyes opened wide as he opened his mouth to scream. But noise didn't come out, water did. Mucky green water sprayed out of his mouth with enough force blow away all the Japes in front of him. The water started getting absorbed into the fine wood and began piling up, slowly flooding the floor near the doors, and rapidly coming out way. By the time the navigator looked down at where Amphia was, she was gone, making her way towards the hatch.
The navigator seemed livid, his face turning purple with rage as he screeched so loud, I felt my eardrums pop.
"Destroy frogs! Destroy rat! Destroy it all!"
As the navigator screeched, I ran after Amphia, trying to catch up to her before the crazy monkey did. The front doors to the navigation room blew open, and a few dozen Japes ran in, ready to fight. With water still blowing from his mouth, the gorilla launched up and started beating his chest as he joined the fight. I dared to look back again as I ran and saw the navigator staring me down before leaping from pipe to pipe faster than before. The water began to make its way over to me and was rapidly making it to the end of the room. I reached for my axe and grabbed onto a thick brass pipe while looking over at the mad monkey, making his way towards me.
I felt something flow through the pipe I stood on and the pipe to my left that I held to keep balance. Water was making its way into the telescopes, which gave me another idea. Right as the navigator made his way towards me, I held onto my axe tight and swung it down on the pipe in front of me. Water was starting to splash around, soaking my clothes and getting my face wet. It smelled like the sea but was ice cold, making it both nice and awful at the same time. I hit another pipe, and another, right before he jumped so high, he would have to land near me.
I put my axe away and got out my bow, grabbing one of the arrows from my bag as the monkey landed on the pipe in front of me with his ball of metal, fully ready to crush me. But before he did, the pipe he stood on bent inwards and snapped, dropping him in the water and soaking him. I kept sprinting, trying to make the most of the little time I had.
I was at least halfway across the room when the mad splashing monkey got back up, his yellow and brown teeth grimacing as he eyed me angrily.
The water was rising up higher, hiding the floor under brown water and pipes.
I could feel the water drenching my shins, climbing up my knees as I stopped to look at the navigator. He was leaping from pipe to pipe, his eyes full of rage. There was no way I could take him down, but I could definitely slow him down.
I knocked an arrow onto my bow and pulled the string back, aiming at the orangutan. Just as I let go, he leaped to a rope on his left, swinging to another before grabbing on with his feet and grabbing a pipe beneath him. He started violently tugging at it, splashing away water as he it tugged free. With just a squeeze, he crushed the end of the pipe and twisted it into a fine point. A brass spear.
He pulled his long arms back and quickly chucked it at me, missing by nothing more than an inch, before grabbing two more pipes to shake free. By now, the water was up to my waist, and I could barely see any pipes ahead of me, just ropes. So, without a better plan in mind, I grabbed onto the closest rope and pulled myself up.
Another brass spear whizzed past me, scraping my ear lobe, smashing into the wall. He was deathly accurate. If we weren't both on swinging ropes, I'd be impaled by now. I shouldered my bow and swung myself to a lower hanging rope, stretching from one side of the room to the other. I aligned my feet with the rope and grabbed the ceiling, making myself a big target as he ripped out another brass pipe.
"Come on, you long arm freak! Try and hit me!"
His face got redder by the minute as he crushed himself a new spear and chucked it at me, blind with rage. Just as the point of the spear flew at my stomach, I let go of the ceiling and fell back into a rope behind me as the spear missed my face, narrowly grazing the tip of my nose as it slammed into a wall.
I grabbed the rope and swung to another.
It seemed like the angrier I made him, the less accurate he'd be. If teasing a monkey for the next couple of minutes would get us a step closer to taking down these monkeys, then I'd enjoy every second of it.
I held onto another rope and stood still, making myself a big target.
"My grandma can aim better than you!"
He took the bait, getting even more mad as he continued ripping up pipes and throwing them like spears, narrowly missing each time. The rope he held onto with his feet kept moving back and forth on its pulley, making the high ceiling start to creak. I had another good idea.
The rope he held onto hung from a brass pipe just like mine. The only problem was that it was way too high to get on top of. As I tried making a plan to get high ground, another spear passed me, whizzing by my head as it pierced through a rope, cutting it in half.
That's it!
Without a second to think on whether it was a good idea or not, I knocked an arrow into my bow and aimed it, not at the monkey, but at the rope he was hanging from. As I let go, it flew by, skinning the side of the rope and hitting a drowning Jape. I knocked another and shot again, missing it completely as my rope swayed with the ship like we were at sea.
Something hit the side of the ship, making it sway to the side. I grabbed a rope that presented itself, shouldered my bow, and hopped off. I hung onto that rope for dear life, not wanting to drop into the water below, not just because it would screw up my plan, drench my clothes, and probably make me die from hypothermia, but also because of one terrible thing.
I didn't know how to swim.
Where the Japes and Klumpfs hung from ropes fighting each other, smoke started brewing, clouding up the east side of the ship. That mixed with the aggressive swaying of what felt like a huge bull ramming into the ship made the anxiety of falling into the water and growing much more apparent to me. My legs dangled, and my hands started aching and sweating. I had to get a hold of myself. I tried closing my eyes and breathing, but a brass spear sped past me, scraping my leg and making my concentration worse. Another spear followed it, aimed at my back. My muscled tensed, and I pulled myself up so high my legs wrapped around the rope, letting the spear miss me by inches.
The jungle of ropes was starting to sway more aggressively, tangling with each other, and slamming into the walls from left to right. I tried to get a grip on myself, but the threat of a crazed monkey impaling me, drowning in swamp water or breathing in the coming smoke, all paralyzed me with fear. I shimmered my way over to the pulley attached to the pipe above me. My hands shook so aggressively that I could barely grab onto the top without worrying about falling. Having my back to the water below just made that worse.
Slowly, I pulled myself up. I held onto the pipe like my life depended on it because it kinda did. I steadied myself as I stood up, looking down at the crashing waves under the jungle of ropes, puffy with grey smoke. I took the bow off my shoulder and shakily knocked an arrow, trying to aim it at the rope the monkey hung from. He was searching for another pipe to turn into a spear, the water almost getting high enough for his long arms to touch. As he grabbed a thick pipe bigger than my body and started trying to yank it free, I pulled the bowstring back.
A gasp blew through my lungs as I started swaying on the rickety pipe with nothing to hold me still. Nothing but my own balance. I aimed the tip of the arrow right in between where the monkey hung from. The giant pole they held onto ripped free. He fashioned it into a spear, then looked up at me, ready to knock me into the water below. He pulled his arm back and aimed. It was now or never.
I let go of the bowstring, letting the arrow fly through the air. As it got closer and closer, the monkey began to lunge his arm forward. All he had to do was let go at the perfect time, and I'd be history.
The arrow was a foot away, then half a foot, getting closer and closer.
If the side of the arrows head hit the rope instead of the tip, it would slide right off.
The monkey was less than half of a second away from letting go of his spear, letting it fly at me.
Then, the arrow hit the rope.