On the burning, slanting deck, Brother Diaz sees shattered shell and burning oil crash down while fire spreads through the wreckage. Vigga, fighting through smoke and incoming soldiers, keeps demanding weapons, and Brother Diaz scrambles to hand her whatever he can find: a hatchet, a sword, a shield, and finally a heavy axe. Vigga uses each one with brutal efficiency, killing several attackers and shoving Brother Diaz clear just before an armored soldier's blow would have cut him down.

High in the rigging, Alex drags herself onto the crosstrees and can barely breathe from terror and exhaustion. Sunny tells Alex they cannot stay where they are and proposes a desperate escape along the top yard and across to the enemy galley, because the alternatives below are worse. Alex is horrified by the height and the empty space between the ships, but Sunny's calm makes clear that waiting is not a real option.

In the flooding hold, the phrenomancer-controlled Baptiste drives Balthazar backward with a series of dagger attacks. Balthazar throws debris at Baptiste, then grapples with her in the rising water, but Baptiste forces him down and nearly drowns him. In desperation, Balthazar animates the drowned cabin boy and tries to make the corpse pull the control needle from Baptiste's forehead; when that fails, Balthazar accidentally snatches the needle free himself as Baptiste pushes him under. Baptiste immediately collapses, but before Balthazar can recover, he feels a sharp stab in his own forehead, showing that the enemy's control has shifted onto him.

Elsewhere on deck, Jakob duels Constans as smoke thickens and the fire climbs higher through the rigging. Jakob fights cautiously with shield and sword, trying to compensate for pain in his knee and the unstable footing, but Constans proves faster, cleaner, and far more confident. After taking a cut to his sword arm, Jakob recognizes from long experience that Constans is simply the better duelist and that Jakob is unlikely to win.

Brother Diaz then learns how bad their position has become. Vigga has saved him, but she is also carrying an arrow through the shoulder, and more soldiers and arrows are closing in. Brother Diaz pulls the arrow free, and when he realizes that Vigga cannot hold them off in her wounded state, he tells her they may need the wolf despite her warning that the wolf is a devil and a traitor. Vigga tells Brother Diaz to hide, transforms into the Vigga-Wolf, and tears through the nearest soldiers. Believing someone may have killed her monk, the wolf becomes even more enraged, leaps from the damaged ship onto the enemy galley, and charges off in search of vengeance and prey.