"Oi! You're some of the mages, right? Can ya give me a hand with this?"

Ling jumped and looked around. Sure enough, a woman from Hayes' crew was standing there with one hand on her hip and the other held up in front of her, covered in... something. Not oil, it was a solid. Black-grey colour, a stark contrast to the tanned skin of her forearm. Residual shadow essence from the storm. Must have pierced the hull somewhere. Ling approached her. "Um, yes, let me see that... hmm." She prodded the hand and fingers in several places. Nothing changed. "How did this happen?"

"Blasted spike of black magic punched clean through the ship a deck below. Then it exploded, and while there was no more harm done, it turned a full section pitch-black. Can't see or hear anything through it, and ya can't touch it without getting covered in this gunk. Can ya do anything about it, miss? Need to clear it out before something else tears the hole even bigger."

Ling nodded, though she was slightly uneasy about the task. She wasn't the best manipulator of shadow magic, but she couldn't really back down from it. "Lead the way."

Sure enough, one floor below, the hallway was blocked off by a plain wall of opaque, black-grey shadow essence. Ling raised her eyebrows. "Interesting that a single 'spike' can do that. Now, I'm gonna need you to be a little patient with me on this one. I'm no Shadow specialist, but I'll do what I can." She stepped past the skysailor and raised her hands, holding them out an inch or so from the wall of magic. She tried to focus on nothing but the wall, willing it to disperse. It shimmered, rippling from where her hands would have touched it, but settled back into place and held steady. She tried again, scrunching up her face in concentration. This time the ripples were stronger, but still very small compared to the full size of the wall.

"Blast it. You sure this is something you can handle, miss Ling?"

The alchemist stepped back a pace, drawing one of the vials of blue potion from her belt. "If this booster vial isn't enough, we might be stuck with it until a proper Nightshade can attend to it. Best keep back." She uncorked the vial, held it up briefly to examine it, and drank it in one. She paused briefly, waiting for its effects to take hold. [i]One... two... three...[/i]

Then her senses opened up, and she felt a surge of power. Shifting shapes emerged in the shadowy wall. Interlinking lines like a massive, twisted spiderweb ran all over the surface. The whole block of essence was still shifting, wild, untamed. Half a dozen lines converged on a single point in the wall. Ling stretched out a hand to reach it, and the lines began to splinter off in her vision and form more tiny connections.

"Aha. Here's the weak point. If I try to dispel it from here..." Ling brought her other hand to bear, trying the dispersal spell again. The ripples were stronger, running across the full surface of the wall. But it wasn't quite enough. So Ling pushed her glasses up her nose and tried a fourth time, clenching her teeth and shutting out everything else to focus.

The essence wasn't co-operating. It was wild magic, resisting Ling's efforts to bend it to her will. She felt it push back. And when it did, some of the splinters that she could see running through the wall turned... solid, was the best way to describe it. Chunks of the wall fell out, like glass shards breaking free from a window. Ling pushed harder, trying to outmatch its resistance. If she hadn't had the booster potion, she would never have been able to do it. But under her forced dispersal of the magic binding the essence together, the wall was slowly but surely giving way.

Behind Ling, the skysailor backed up to a doorway, uncertain of what was happening. More shards popped out of the wall, clattering to the floor. Ling changed her tactic. Instead of focusing on the splinters, she began taking hold of the space between each line and yanking it away, pulling it down piece by piece. After a few minutes of this, Ling felt the potion's bolstering power begin to fade, but she pressed on. Eventually, after she tore out one particularly large piece, the wall collapsed entirely, leaving shards of shadowy essence scattered throughout the hallway and a clear path to the rest of the deck.

And a large tear in the side of the ship, from where the spike had punched through. Cautiously, and breathing audibly harder than usual, Ling began gathering up the shards and tossing them out the hole. No sense in leaving them on board... although she wished she'd gotten her alchemical gloves out of her pack.