Emily and the Duel

"Here, let me help you," Richard said. She felt the leather-encased fingers of his stone hand pull at the knot between her breasts.

The pirates cheered as the hand undid the knot and flicked away the sides of the shirt, exposing Emily's breasts to the salty sea air. Emily wanted to die.

"Come now, stand up and complete the forfeit," Richard said after some minutes had passed with Emily lying motionless on the deck. "Let's get this over with while there's still light enough to see your lovely body."

Eyes shut tight, Emily climbed to her feet and shrugged the shirt off her shoulders, dropping it to the deck. She quickly crossed her arms over her front, but that wasn't enough to stop the pirates from letting out another loud cheer or to suppress the chill of the wind across her bare torso.

The trousers that barely clung to her hips were now the only item of clothing standing between her and total nudity. Of course, she would still have to lose the Stoneshell before the duel was actually finished, but every lost item of clothing was another blow to her confidence. She would need to release her arms so she could use them to fight... with every eye on the ship focused solely on her.

If she lost now, then at least... at least Aria and Talyndra would be okay. She would persuade him not to sell them into slavery. Surely Captain Richard would respect the wishes of... of his wife.

Emily blinked open her eyes. Immediately, she caught the desperate glances of Aria and Talyndra. "Don't give up, Emily!" shouted Talyndra, her arms also folded tightly over her chest, as they had been since she arrived on deck. "It's not over yet!"

Emily glanced from her friends to Richard, who had a detestably smug look on his face. His eyes were glued to her chest, clearly waiting for her arms to drop. Blushing and biting her lip, Emily's first instinct was to cover up more, to somehow maneuver her arms to hide both breasts. But then she had a second thought. A fiery thought.

At the same instant as she dropped her arms, twin columns of flame burst from Emily's chest, connecting directly with Richard. He screamed as the flames licked at him and dropped to the floor, rolling around furiously.

"Round five to Emily Stoneshell Bearer!"

That was more like it.

Richard stood up, smoke rising from his torso. He pulled away the charred remains of his shirt, revealing heavily scarred flesh and a bronze band around his left bicep. "Still want to play, eh?"

"Yes," Emily said, crouching down to pick Richard's stone hand off the deck. "Let's continue."

With a blast of fire, she launched the hand in a high arc which sent it sailing over the edge of the deck.

Richard cursed as he summoned two large stone slabs in front of him. "I rather liked that hand, you know. But I don't need it."

One slab blasted towards Emily and then another. With a burst of fire from her feet, she easily cleared both. Emily smiled with satisfaction as they cleared the deck and landed in the water with two successive loud plops. Throughout the fight, Richard had been violently launching pieces of stone off the ship and into the ocean. His supply, while large, could not be infinite.

Emily wondered for a moment why a man with the power to control stone would become a ship captain. Then she launched herself at him, flaming heel first.

Emily's heel merely grazed Richard's cheek as she shot passed him, but the glancing impact was enough to knock him onto the deck.

"Round six to Emily Stoneshell Bearer!"

Richard pulled off his boots, revealing two large, hairy feet. He and Emily were both down to their trousers, but he still had his belt. Emily's were riding perilously low and she had to maintain a wide stance to keep them from falling.

There was a glint in Richard's eyes as the two surveyed each other, waiting for the other to make a move. Emily deepened her crouch, and Richard circled his forearms rhythmically. Without his shirt, the absence of his hands was painfully obvious, making Emily a little guilty about sending them overboard.

But before she could dwell on that too much, she felt something tighten around her ankles. She glanced down to see a coiling snake of segmented stone drawn tight around her ankles, snapping her legs together. Her trousers lost their tenuous grip on her hips, and she fell on her bare butt.

"Round seven to Captain Stoneheart!"

The cheering from the pirates was deafening. Aria gasped and Talyndra hid her face in her hands. Emily's cheeks burned with shame. The stone snake released its hold and slithered away across the deck. Richard offered her a mocking stump.

Eyes blurry with tears, Emily took the stump in her hand and allowed Richard to pull her to her feet. He forced her forward, out of the trousers that lay pooled beneath her, and let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Just one more round, my dear," he whispered in her ear. "One more round, and we can enjoy each other in another way."

Emily ran from him to the farthest corner of the deck. She stood as far from Richard and the leering audience as she could get, facing away. Once again, she was naked. Only the Stoneshell stood between her and total powerlessness and defeat. This was it. Whatever happened next, she could not fall again.

Gathering up all her strength, Emily turned to face Richard. It took everything she had to position herself in a low crouch, fists raised and ready to fire. The pirates cheered again and Emily tried to ignore them.

While her back was turned, Richard had been assembling something out of stone. A crude humanoid statue made of many stones of different shapes and sizes. now staggered towards Emily, its paw-like hands flailing in front of it.

A blast of fire took the thing's head off, but it kept advancing.

"Good call!" shouted Richard. "That was an unnecessary detail. It will be much faster now."

And indeed, the thing was gaining on Emily with surprising speed. She blasted two more jets of fire at it, but both missed. Leaping out of its way at the last moment, Emily stumbled across the deck, just barely keeping her footing.

The thing turned around and came back towards her. At the same time, Richard advanced from the other end of the deck, his eyes wide as saucers, taking in every detail of Emily's naked body. Strands of hair stood up from her head and fell in her face, and she was covered in sweat. Bruises marked spots on her arms and back where she had fallen on the deck in previous rounds.

Before either the statue or Richard reached her, another blast of flame from the soles of Emily's feet propelled her into the air. Richard cried out in surprise as he collided with his rock golem, splitting it apart. He lost his balance and fell on the deck.

"Round eight to Emily Stoneshell Bearer!" came the distant voice of Gideon, reaching Emily's ears from far below. She had flown high above the ship, and for just a moment, she looked out at the expanse of sea around her in wonder. In the distance, she could see the outline of a shore.

Her journey in Thessolan had given her so many incredible, unbelievable experiences, and exposed her to so many things and people she had never even dreamed of. Mild-mannered Emily was becoming a powerful mage. She just wished the exposure didn't have to be quite so literal all the time.

When she returned to the deck of the ship, Richard had already discarded his belt and was gathering up what remained of his stone. Seeming to have exhausted his more creative attacks, he settled for lobbing giant hunks of rock directly at Emily's head. These she deflected with blasts of fire or managed to sidestep. She had been fighting for a long time now and felt her coming exhaustion. But the stakes, so keenly felt in the wind that whipped across her bare skin, kept her senses razor-sharp.

Richard was depleting his stone stockade very quickly now. With every intercepting blast of fire, Emily made sure to knock another slab into the ocean. If she could just keep this up for a little longer, and not fall again, she could win!

As Richard ran for another pile of stones, she sent fire blasts at his feet. He yelped in pain, slipped, and fell over.

"Round nine to Emily Stoneshell Bearer!"

Wincing in pain as he regained his footing, Richard scowled at Emily. "A dirty trick, firing at a man's feet while his back is turned. But I understand. Your lust for me is clearly uncontrollable. And I am only too happy to comply." With this, Richard forced his trousers down and let them fall at his feet. Underneath, he wore a loose pair of drawers.

"Underwear!" Emily exclaimed. "No fair!"

"Please, my lady, contain yourself. You will have all the time in the world to appreciate my gifts right... after... this!"

An enormous slab of stone thumped into Emily's back. She gasped and fell forward, landing face-first on the deck.

"Round ten to Captain Stoneheart!"

The world swam before Emily's eyes. The pain in her back faded in the light of her sudden defeat. Already naked, her final humiliation would be to remove the Stoneshell, rendering her utterly helpless.

Richard knelt and stroked her cheek with a smooth wrist stump. "Rise, my betrothed."

Slowly, Emily got to her feet. She tried to ignore the feeling of the many eyes across her bare and battered frame and to suppress the aches and pains that were now coming to the fore with the ebbing of her adrenaline. The only mercy was that the sun had fully set, giving her the cover of darkness. The wind whipped up, stronger now than ever, making her shiver. Loose strands of hair fluttered in front of her eyes, obscuring the face of the man who was now to be her husband. Casting her eyes down, Emily reached for the chain of the Stoneshell necklace.

The wind was strong, but only a few strands of hair blew in Emily's face. Something pulled at the back of her head--it was her hair tie! Hope surged in Emily's chest, and she let the chain of her necklace fall back on her neck. She brought her hands up to the black elastic band, the only possession she'd brought with her from Earth. Smiling through tears, she pulled it away and let her hair fly free.

"W-what?!" Richard stammered. "Y-you--that's--damnation!"

Aria and Talyndra cheered from somewhere behind Emily. Heartened, but keenly aware that she now truly had only one thing left to remove, Emily shot a fireball at Richard. The process had become automatic, like a reflex.

Still raging and spluttering, Richard only just managed to dive out of the way of Emily's projectile, landing hard on the deck.

"Round eleven to Emily Stoneshell Bearer!"

Richard grimaced as he pulled himself back up to his feet. Tendrils of smoke rose from the side of his beard, where Emily's fireball had grazed it. Smiling toothily at his opponent, he unceremoniously dropped his drawers and kicked them to one side. "Now we're even," he said, flexing his left bicep beneath the bronze band.

Emily hadn't noticed it before but saw now that the band had faint images carved into it with thin lines. They looked like mountains. It was strange that Richard would remove his drawers before removing this odd piece of jewelry--perhaps he wanted to shock and distract her. Or perhaps, when telling the story of his powers' manifestation, he had left out one key detail.

A small piece of stone sailed past Emily's ear, reminding her that now was no time to get lost in thought. She summoned up another fireball, which Richard deftly dodged, before propelling another stone at her. This was the last stone on deck, but Richard appeared to realize this fact, quickly pulling it back to himself when it missed Emily the first time.

The two combatants circled the deck in wide-legged crouches, keeping each other in view, alert for the slightest sign of an attack. Richard's body was covered in cuts and bruises, and Emily could feel that she had a few of her own. Both were tired and breathing heavily, and both were one round from losing it all. The duel would be over soon. Emily mostly avoided looking down at Richard's crotch, while Richard allowed his eyes to roam hungrily over what he believed would soon be his prize.

The thought of waking up next to Richard's smug face was unbearable. The thought of him deriving more power from intimacy with the Stoneshell Bearer was worse still. But she was tired. Emily knew she had one shot left in her before her energy was depleted. It would need to count.

The soreness in her body, her exposure to the elements, the jeers and taunts and leering eyes of the watching pirates, Richard's unconcealed lust, and the rage at all the evil people who had done her wrong, at Elara and Trilato and Richard, the pure anger and frustration of her lack of control over the visibility of her own body, Emily channeled it all into the Stoneshell, feeding the fire, the heat, her vision tinting red, then white, then a deep blue.

Stone and fire shot across the deck in the same instant, colliding spectacularly. The stone was the size of Emily's head, a smooth sphere of packed granite. The ball of flame was a deep blue.

Emily readied herself to dodge, but the stone never reached her. As the blue fire went out, a light dust of ash fell to the ship's deck. The audience gasped.

"What?!" Richard screamed, frantically moving the stumps of his arms to summon another stone. But there were no more stones on the deck. They had all been shot overboard or turned to ash.

Emily met Richard's panicked gaze, smiling to herself. The terror in his eyes gave her renewed energy, enough to lob a small fireball at him. Richard jumped back, dodging it, but another soon followed. He was on the back foot, chased by Emily's fireballs, still glancing around frantically for any stone he could find. Sensing his desperation, Emily placed a protective hand in front of the Stoneshell, though the heat emanating from its surface prevented her from touching it.

Just then, Richard's eyes seemed to fix on something behind her, and that old confidence returned to his expression. "A most unladylike posture," he said to Emily, staring directly between her wide-splayed legs. "Here, let me find you something to cover up with." Richard's stumps turned in complicated swirls, then made a beckoning motion.

Caught off-guard and blushing, Emily placed her free hand over her crotch. There was a scream from behind her, and she twisted her head around just in time to see a mass of rock flying right at her. But this was different from the granite she had warded off before--this was white marble.

The marble slab collided with Emily, then wrapped itself around her. But for the stability of her unladylike stance, it would have knocked her over. The marble wrapped around her body, pushing her arms against it and covering everything from her thighs to her neck. The Stoneshell felt warm to her touch but did not burn her palm. Loud complaints and sighs of disappointment erupted from the watching pirates.

The marble had of course come from Aria, who stood, shell-shocked, next to Talyndra. Richard had separated the gown from her body and used it to trap Emily, leaving her as a nude marble statue. Aria appeared too surprised to even think of covering up, and a few appreciative pirate glances turned towards her.

When Aria had first offered Emily her gown, this is not quite how Emily expected it would happen. She looked back at Richard, who was advancing towards her. "I just couldn't stand to have my betrothed suffer such indignities any longer," he said. "I'm sure you feel much better now."

Now face-to-face with Emily, Richard removed a chunk of the marble gown's neckline so that the hand grasping the Stoneshell was visible. Sweating with exertion, he formed the chunk into a crude hand and brought it onto the stump of his right arm before reaching out to pry Emily's fingers from her pendant. "Let's spare both our dignities and finish this."

Emily looked resolutely into Richard's eyes. "Let's." Then she kneed him in the crotch.

Richard grunted, eyes filling with tears, and promptly fell on his side.

The pirates gasped in unison. For a long time, no one dared to speak, and the only sounds were Richard's pained whimpers. Then, finally, a high, musical, and triumphant female voice declared, "Round twelve to Emily Stoneshell Bearer! Emily is the winner!"

Aria and Talyndra rushed forward to Emily's sides, embracing her over the marble gown, both heedless of their states of undress.

Richard staggered to his feet, still massaging his crotch. He looked at the three women with an expression of pure hatred and raised both stumps.

Emily felt the marble gown squeeze her ribcage and cried out in alarm. Richard was trying to kill her!

Talyndra met her eyes and instantly knew what was happening. Her green skin turning red with rage, she cried out, "Cheat!" and fell upon Richard. Within seconds, she had removed the bronze band from his upper arm and held it triumphantly aloft, bringing Richard down with a second knee to his crotch. Aria stepped in to hold him down, clearly relishing the newfound freedom in her arms.

The pressure on Emily's ribcage instantly released. So did the entirety of the marble gown. As Emily watched, the gown fell away from her body and magnetically returned to Aria, wrapping itself around her in its original configuration. Once again, the statue was clothed, and the girl from Earth, naked.

Aria breathed a sigh of relief, but exchanged a sympathetic glance with Emily. "I understand some small part of how you must often feel, now."

Two pirates lifted Richard from the deck, naked and defeated, the source of his powers removed. He scowled at the three women as he was dragged below deck, presumably to take their place in the prison room.

First mate Gideon presented Emily with Richard's pirate hat, placing it on her head and bowing before her, his eyes closed. "Per the terms of the duel, my crew and I are now yours to command, Captain Emily. Richard will be held in confinement."

Emily smiled adjusted the hat, which was a bit big for her, and looked out at her new crew, who stared intently back at her. Remembering her nudity, she blushed and covered herself with her arms. "My first command is for you all to go below deck while Talyndra and I get dressed!"

The crew beat a hasty retreat, and Emily, Aria, and Talyndra were left standing in the middle of the deck. Suddenly hit by the exertion of the duel, Emily collapsed into her companions' arms.

"Does it hurt?" Aria asked, rubbing Emily's back.

"Yes," Emily whimpered, feeling every ache and bruise. "But it was worth it."

After a long, quiet, and tight group hug, the three women separated, and Emily and Talyndra gathered up the discarded clothes from the deck. Talyndra put on what had been Emily's outfit, and Emily put on Captain Richard's clothes, to go with her new hat. His shirt had been too badly burned to be of much use, and the drawers were too gross to think about, but Emily was able to wrap herself comfortably in his jacket, which provided a welcome respite from the wind, and to wear his trousers with the legs slightly rolled up.

For her part, Talyndra looked relieved to finally have something to wear, but a little uncomfortable in human clothes, scratching herself every so often. "This'll do for now, but I'm finding a goldapple tree as soon as we get to shore," she said.

Emily hugged herself in the loose-fitting captain's outfit, sighing with contentment. Then, remembering something, she scanned the deck for a small black circle. There it was! Emily scooped up her faithful hair tie and placed it back on her wrist with a satisfying elastic snap. She gave it a small kiss, thanking it for helping her win the duel and captaincy of the pirate ship.

The pirate crew was permitted to return to the deck, and Gideon reported that Richard had been safely restrained in the ship's prison. Emily took up residence in the captain's cabin, and two more cabins were cleared for Aria and Talyndra, though Aria insisted she didn't need one, not needing food or sleep. A course was set for the port nearest to Lirethel, and Emily and her companions retired for the night.