Stemming the Tide

by Rosie Scott

  Scales met slick scales as I landed on Cale's back feet-first, and his body dipped with my weight. An annoyed hiss sputtered through his fangs. With the sharp sound of slapping leather, Cale whipped open his wings and screeched toward the skies, his sudden upright stance sending me rolling down his slick back until I hit the schooner's deck and my lungs expelled their oxygen. A web of purple-hot lightning etched through the tumultuous clouds, lighting up the seas with an excruciatingly bright flash; the glare off Cale's silver scales was so intense in its luminosity that the flashes continued in my vision as I scrambled to stand. Cale flapped his wings once, twice, rising above the deck in preparation of battle. His reptilian silver eyes looked upon those in my crew on the other deck as if he were starving and viewed a sumptuous feast.

  It was then that my gut fell right out of my body with sudden panic. In my thoughtless bloodlust, I'd forgotten to give Koby and the others alteration shields. If Cale were crazy enough to risk killing his own men as collateral damage, he could take out my entire crew with one electrically infused sweep of the barque's deck.

  With claws outstretched and my blood pumping wildly with adrenaline, I leapt at Cale's back. In direct reaction, he ascended further to dodge. The talons meant for his back missed, but the downward flap of his wings put the left one in my reach. My left hand grasped onto the radius of his wing as my right flailed, finally catching on silver leather until my claws tore through its pliable scales. The wyvern-kin screeched in frustration and pain as the egregious tearing of his flesh shattered into the rainstorm. Still, Cale was spastic with energy and adrenaline, made even more intense from his rempka high. As I hung imbalanced from his left wing, he violently took off into the skies.

  I could see nothing. Tiny knives of cold rain pelted my scales and obscured my vision. I heard Koby screaming orders at our crew, but they were muffled and lost to the harassing winds as Cale flew a zigzagged bumpy path through the stormy skies, lopsided because of my body weight hanging from one wing. The loud explosions of cannon fire vibrated through the air as the pirate galleon reinforcements reached the scene and barraged Ajax's cog. It was at that point that there was no doubt in my mind we would lose this battle. A fight I'd willingly walked into became a one for survival rather than glory. Having no other options, I held onto Cale's flapping wing with one hand and ripped through the bottom of its leather with the other.

  Nausea punched my gut as Cale lost his flying balance and tumbled to the seas in a rapid spiral. As his body whipped in a jerky circle, my one-handed grip of his wing released. Stormy skies and angry blue waters filled my vision on repeat before the ocean consumed me.

  Sound muted. Everything gained a tint of blackish-blue like the world itself was bruised. Cale must have carried me high in the skies, for I continued to sink quickly into the depths until I actively combated it, hugging my limbs close and undulating toward the surface. A pillar of rising bubbles caught my attention ahead and to the left; I darted through the waters until the wyvern-kin appeared, his wings folded against his sides as he swam to safety.

  Cale must have heard my approach; his elongated neck twisted until his silver eyes met mine. I reached for his neck in anticipation of trying to snap it underwater. The wyvern-kin ducked beneath my grip and lashed his head out at my left arm. Cale's fangs cracked through scales and pierced flesh at my elbow. A heat wave of pain traveled up the limb to my shoulder, and I jerked back to free myself. It was no use, for his incisors were already embedded so deep their points skidded off bone, leaving a sharp tingling sensation that shot as far as my teeth. Cale held my arm tight and shook his head in a frenzy; after a harsh underwater pop that signaled the dislocation of my elbow joint, a flash of white dizziness overwhelmed my vision from the resulting pain.

  Throb-throb. Throb-throb.

  I floated loosely in dark waters, my body in a temporary state of paralyzation due to self-preservation from agony. The ocean—it felt angry, ominous. My intuition screamed warnings at my brain about an overwhelming sense of danger that I could not locate or explain. For no discernible reason, I felt unwelcome, intruding. Above the surface water, the sounds of an intense chaotic battle continued cracking through the air. Screams. Cannon fire. The screeches of beasts. Cannonballs cracking wood or splashing heavily into the sea. Thunder. The electric fizzle of lightning.

  Lightning.

  I woke myself from my trance by imagining Koby and the others seized by Cale's electricity, killed in one hit that I hadn't thought to prevent. I opened my eyes after having not realized I'd closed them. Oddly, although I still felt a hostile underwater presence, Cale was gone, having reached the surface to wreak havoc on my men.

  My left arm was useless, the forearm hanging loosely from the elbow joint like a broken hinge. My swimming pace was slow because of the injury, but I soon poked my head above the surface. Immediately, I saw Cale zooming toward me from the heavens with a mangled left wing, his jaw open to reveal building crackling electricity in his esophagus.

  I dove back underwater, ignoring the throbbing pain the movement brought to my arm. The underwater world went bright with white-blue light as Cale released his air magic toward the seas where I'd been. With the ocean full of sudden light and color, I could see its hidden secrets. The bodies of drowning men who had been thrown overboard by beast and man alike. Rapidly descending cannonballs, trailed by strings of tiny bubbles that had hid in their imperfections. A gargantuan shadow of unknown origin rising from the depths underneath the shades of multiple ship keels that were either involved in the sea battle or closing in as pirate reinforcements sought to demolish us.

  I'm seeing things.

  Sss!

  Cale's spell was ill-timed. The electricity hit the surface water far too late and spread like a flashy virus, white-blue veins racing across pointy waves until fizzling out. Through the water I could see three shadows in the sky, indicating two flying beasts were battling with Cale. I swam upward and broke through to air.

  Kali and Jaecar had come to help me. The mantis-kin and bat-kin swarmed Cale like pesty overgrown gnats. Had I been able to speak, I would've ordered them to retreat. Though the two made progress by further tearing the flesh of his wing and distracting him to allow me time to get out of the water, they were not built for battle with beasts, only men. Jaecar's blood-kin had no natural weapons save for his fangs, while Kali's limbs were far too limber and reliant on brittle joints to go up against a muscular wyvern-kin.

  Still, against a backdrop of rolling demonic clouds, they fought with a vengeance. As Kali deepened the wound in Cale's left wing with her pinching arms, the wyvern-kin spouted a burst of lightning at Jaecar. The bat-kin narrowly dodged the magic, his dark fur standing on end when coming into contact with its resulting static. A rough tearing sounded from Cale's left wing as Kali succeeded in clamping off a chunk of its flesh.

  Cale whipped his head around to face Kali in the skies, lashing out to bite her narrow neck just below her triangular head. Her folded arms moved jerkily as she struggled in his grasp, but her blood-kin's strength paled in comparison to that of the wyvern. As Jaecar mercilessly attacked the wyvern-kin's mangled wing in a desperate attempt to disable it for good, Cale twisted in the skies, bringing his feet to grip in two places on Kali's lengthy shelled torso. All at once with teeth and limb, he tore Kali's body apart with a mighty jerk.

  My hearing dulled, all noise replaced with a high-pitched ringing as I watched Cale dismember Kali into four pieces with one move. Her eerily-shaped head fell to the seas first, overly large eyes devoid of life. Her neck and arms fell in one segment next, the art of her tattoos covered with blood as it escaped her mutilations freely and dripped down in its descent. The last two parts containing her legs and wings were last to meet the seas. Her blood-kin was so lightweight that her pieces floated. My eyes stuck to the floating parts of a good friend and crew member as a thick heat rose to disconnect my mind from my body in an impending rage. Kali died in her beast form, but all the memories that
suddenly surfaced were of her smile. Her human smile of joy and rapport the day we'd talked openly in the Forks. The one I would never see again.

  “Nooo!” Hassan's hoarse scream was that of a broken man. Silver bolts flew through the sky as he attacked Cale with an urgent need for vengeance. Most of the ammo bounced off the wyvern-kin's scales, but others hit their targets in soft joints and the flesh of wings.

  Hassan's sudden rage fueled my own. I swam to the hull of the barque and clambered up its ornate woodwork with my only working arm, far faster than I had any right to be. Bodies were strewn over the wide quarterdeck between splashes of crimson. Koby and the others removed grappling hooks from the taffrail to free our ship from the clutches of the pirate schooner. Cale's crew was dead, but the crazed captain remained alive, and his reinforcements overwhelmed us. Ajax's mercenary cog was heavily damaged from cannon fire, its hull dented and splintered. Rather than continue to destroy the vessel, the pirates re-evaluated their plan and were positioning one of their galleons beside the cog to board and take it. On the far side of the scene, at least a dozen more ships loomed in the north, ready to squelch us from existence with sheer numbers alone.

  Escaping this battle was nigh impossible, but right now I did not fear death. I turned when I reached the middle of the quarterdeck and crouched in a trembling power stance with my eyes on Cale as he wavered in the sky with one mangled wing, still fighting off Jaecar's angry persistent assaults.

  I didn't fear death. Not yet. With Kali's demise repeating itself in my head, I refused to fear death until I brought its cold touch upon someone who deserved it more. I lost any fragment of sanity I'd managed to hold onto; my mind floated above my body, giving it permission to go berserk with rage.

  I charged forward, ravenous for blood. Cold rains sliced down my scales. Winds howled by my ears. Movement and sound sought to distract me, but my homicidal gaze lingered on target. In a fluid motion, I vaulted up onto the taffrail, using the momentum of my charge and the strength of my haunches to launch off the ship at Cale.

  The wyvern-kin turned his attention away from Jaecar as I sprung toward him with only one good arm. I spread my jaw; my shimmering razor-sharp fangs reflected back to me from Cale's reptilian silver eyes. We crashed in mid-air, my webbed hand gripping his throat. Caught off balance, Cale ducked forward and plunged to the seas, his elongated neck unable to support the weight of my muscular body.

  Against a backdrop of blurred skies and wooden vessels, I focused only on the wyvern-kin's shiny silver head. It was narrower than mine. As we tumbled toward the ocean together, I tilted my head and snapped forward, clamping my jaws on either side of his scaled snout.

  Pssh!

  Two overgrown lizards crashed once more into the seas, this time in a deadly gnashing embrace. The smooth whipping echoes of a tense underwater struggle accompanied our mutual mauling. As his wings desperately tried to make movement in water, Cale kicked his feet at my torso, his talons dislodging silver-blue scales and exposing strings of torn bleeding muscle. Intending to crush his skull, I clamped down with full force on his snout. The wyvern-kin's skeleton was evidently stronger than that of a man's. A muted crack kissed my ears after the slight shifting of his lower mandible as it broke, but it did not crumble. I twisted my bite, tearing fangs through scales and underlying tissues.

  Cale jerked back from me, kicking off my torso with his feet. Trailing blood, he folded his wings to his sides and darted for the surface. I gave chase, but my ruined arm inhibited my pace. Cale burst through the water and into the air, sweeping out his wings and flapping them to take off rapidly; a spattering of water and blood flew off him from his brisk motion, sprinkling over the seas.

  Lightning seized the skies with a lavender-blue glow; veins of electricity split into branches, seeking to conquer every inch of the heavens. Once more, the ocean was luminous with the storm's residual light. Great movement drew my gaze to the depths. My heart plummeted to boil in the acid of my gut as I realized my eyes did not deceive me.

  Underneath the shadows of battling ship keels, dark glimmering tentacles of tremendous proportions reached out of the ocean's void, racing toward the surface water as if summoned by our petty spat. The water tickled my scales with a tremor as the seas shook like the beast was so legendary its movement persuaded the tectonic plates of the earth to shift. A chill ran down my spine as I became acutely aware that the sea creature we faced was the same one responsible for the annihilation of navies and the trading stranglehold south of Nahara. Rumors claimed it left few survivors. Rumors claimed this beast had migrated from the waters south of the beastlands, a place dominated by creatures designed by the gods themselves, monstrosities so large and deadly they destroyed well-equipped armies and brought a country to ruin.

  Here the rumor was before me, each tentacle gigantic enough to curl around a dwarven galleon like it was merely a toy. As it rose from the depths, I should have rushed to the surface to flee and save my ship and crew. I should have fled or moved or acted at all. Instead, I did nothing. For the rumor itself was before me, and I could do nothing but stare in absolute awe.

  For our battle had awakened the beast.

  Twenty

  Across a horizon of riled seas swarmed fourteen ships, all but two equipped with black flags. Ajax's cog had survived cannon fire, but considering its now anemic crew, would not outlast a boarding battle. Evidently, I was the only one who knew something rose from the depths, and without a voice I could warn no one. Reinforcing pirate vessels continued fanning out to surround us as Ajax and Koby screamed orders for defensive maneuvers. All were oblivious to the larger threat.

  A deep vibrating groan shook through the sea and its conquering vessels, so strong it rattled ships and rippled their sails. Pirate and mercenary alike stopped what they were doing in confusion and sudden high alert. Other than the pouring rain, all went eerily quiet.

  Accompanying an eruption of foam and disturbed seawater was an explosion so deafening it dulled my hearing. The tip of a slippery black tentacle burst out of the water, shooting toward the blanket of storm clouds as the near sea level dipped with the massive limb's sudden absence. The abrupt shift in water level violently tugged vessels sideways; men and supplies alike tumbled to the seas through railings. No one screamed yet; the scene was bizarrely quiet as everyone experienced the same sense of awe that had disabled me.

  Like the tentacle itself had sentience, its tip curled when it reached halfway to the heavens. The seas trembled as the monstrosity ripped its tentacle back, targeting a pirate galleon with its makeshift hook. With a howling whistle, the appendage plummeted toward the ocean, grasping the galleon and pulling it underwater.

  The water level abruptly rose; vessels and fallen men and cargo swayed in the violent aftermath, at the mercy of the legendary beast. With the tentacle and one ship missing, everyone panicked. Terrified screams fought for precedence in the air.

  A sinuous vein of lightning raced across the sky; as if in reaction, the tentacle burst from the seas, still grasping the stolen galleon. Water poured from the once-submerged vessel like a waterfall, spotted with broken cargo and flailing bodies. Pirates hung from the railings of the sideways vessel as it rose to the heavens, one mast broken and swinging like a pendulum. Vertigo overcame me as I watched the tentacle rise ever further until rolling clouds obscured the tip's black shine. One pirate lost his grip; after a near minute of hurtling from the sky to the sea, a red mist erupted from his abdomen from severe internal rupturing upon impact. The others somehow managed to hold on to the galleon in the clouds, but their screams were so full of genuine fear it gave me chills.

  The heavens rumbled, summoning another bout of lightning. Like the monster partnered with the skies, veins of scalding white-hot energy raced from multiple points to strike the hovering galleon, encapsulating it with a volatile glow until smoke rose from charred wood and men. The electric cirri spread out and split to continue their search for flesh, but once they traveled to the glimmerin
g flesh of the tentacle, they sizzled out like they hit surface water. Frying pirates fell like rain from the skies, leaving trails of smoke. The world darkened once more as the lightning retreated, and the tentacle unfurled. The great dwarven galleon plummeted to the seas, trailing shards of wood and ribbons of torn black sails. Wooden confetti blew up like a raging cloud around the vessel as it hit the ocean, crumbling into little more than dust.

  The ocean's level rose and fell as two tentacles burst out of the water at once, one carrying a pirate schooner halfway to the clouds on its tip before the vessel teeter-tottered off the side and plunged toward the seas alongside falling bodies.

  “Cal!” Koby's shriek was so frightened and desperate that it broke my observant trance. He'd evidently told the crew to flee eastward, for the barque slowly sailed through the violent unnatural waves that resulted from rapidly fluctuating water levels. Not far behind our ship was Ajax's heavily damaged cog. For now, I couldn't tell if the other mercenary captain simply tried to flee the attack or if he followed us.

  “Cal!” Koby rushed to the barque's right railing, having left someone else in charge of the wheel. “Get on the ship!”

  I felt dumbfounded with an overwhelming mixture of emotions. My rage hadn't yet subsided; my need for vengeance against Cale was unsatisfied, but I could not find the wyvern-kin in the sky, and his schooner rocked on the chaotic waves with no living crew. Awe and bafflement drew my eye to the colossal sea creature that continued tossing ships around like mere playthings. Wherever Cale was, I couldn't risk going after him now with an injured arm and this monstrosity between us. Perhaps it was my astonishment at the beast's dramatic entrance that calmed my rage enough to think logically, for I listened to Koby's desperate requests and swam for the barque as it passed.

  Our crew was eerily quiet as we sailed east for Killick, save for Hassan whose labored heavy breathing indicated he was always between a sob and a panic attack after witnessing Kali's death. The others handled the adjustment of sails with few words, just focusing on the task at hand so we could escape the danger zone altogether. I stood at the back of the ship, watching the continuing calamity. The seas were discolored with blood and sprinkled with spilled cargo, broken vessels, and bodies that sunk and bobbed with the tide. While Ajax's vessel and ours fled eastward, a few pirate ships had turned course and fled northeast. The rest were caught up in the chaos. A pirate xebec swirled violently in a whirlpool, caught between two flailing tentacles. One appendage had a galleon in its grasp, curling and rolling it as the ship spun in mid-air, spitting out cargo and crew.