Stemming the Tide

by Rosie Scott

  Another wail shattered through my head, and I jolted in reaction before closing my eyes and trying to focus on breathing until the panic attack passed. In the crook of my arm, Hilly stirred from a deep sleep.

  “What?” she blurted, her voice heavy with fatigue. “What's happenin'?”

  “Nightmare,” I uttered, the word slipping between two shaky breaths like a whisper. “Sorry.”

  “Mm.” Hilly nestled up closer to me and left a sloppy kiss on my chest. “It's all right, love. Thought I heard screamin', is all.”

  Egregious snoring escaped Hilly's lips within seconds as she fell back into slumber, but her words struck me with a sense of unease. How could she hear screams if they were all in my head?

  I laid deathly still save for my recovering breaths, listening intently for anything out of the ordinary. I heard the creaks of doors opening and closing from other huts, and the soft murmuring of outdoor chatter. The only light shining through the cracks of the hut's mismatched lumber was the soft yellow-orange glow of dying campfires, which illuminated the forms of resting friends and crew members in flickering strips. Some, like Hassan, slept deeply. Others, like Koby, started to stir. The heavy fatigue ingrained in my bones told me that morning was a few hours away yet. It wasn't abnormal for some people to be out and about at this hour; after all, Alderi ex-slaves often preferred the night to the daytime, and it was a common occurrence for mercenaries to leave their shacks at night just to take a piss in the swamps.

  Breaking through my mind's attempts to provide innocent explanations was the alarming screech of a panicked bird of prey. I shot up from the floor and Hilly slipped out of my armpit. Catching herself on the floor with her stubby hands, she cursed and blurted, “Now that was screamin'.”

  Koby jumped up from his bedroll so fast he nearly dragged it with him as he rushed to the door in only slacks. He burst through it as the others in the hut slowly started waking from the chaos. Hilly rolled out of my way as I scrambled to stand and hurried out the door after him.

  The camp appeared deceptively normal. Dying campfires were sporadic glows of fatigued flames and crackling embers on the eastern side, while shadows and a mist of heavy humidity obscured the elevated huts and pathways in the swamps to the west. Mercenaries stumbled out of shacks, some messily dressed and holding weapons at the ready. Others, likely shapeshifters, wore no armor but glanced around for threats in anticipation of transforming.

  As for threats—where were they? The swamp waters were as smooth as glass; nary a ripple was in sight. All the barricades that visibly stuck above water remained untouched. No ships were within view on either side of the island's pinch. No one charged down the eastern hill toward the camp. Disturbed mercenaries scrambled around confused outside, but none of them fought pirate shapeshifters or warriors.

  After another alarmed wail, however, we all looked to the skies.

  Millions of stars spattered across the deep indigo heavens, pulsating for precedence. A shadow in the shape of a large bird-kin blocked out groups of the bright celestial bodies as it zoomed toward our camp from the west. As the beastman flew ever closer, I recognized him as one of the eagle-kins Jayce had been sending on scouting missions. Every few beats of his wings, he cried out in alarm, trying to wake as many of us as he could.

  Like a plague on the sky, a collective looming shadow crawled ever closer behind the flying scout. I didn't understand what it was; no beastman was that large.

  A deep grumbling echoed from the heavens like they prepared a storm, but no clouds collected in preparation. Sizzles and pops of indigestion accompanied the sound. I could see nothing but shadow behind the approaching eagle-kin, but the familiar noise forced me to expect the worst: Cale was here.

  At once, the heavens flashed purple-white. Sinuous arcs of lightning spewed forth between long razor-sharp fangs like beautifully bright yet fatal projectile vomit, accompanied by a high-pitched reptilian squeal of extreme exertion. As the lightning was forced through the sky, its scalding hot yet cool-colored glowing fingers spread and reached for victims, illuminating the shadows behind them. Cale hovered in the night skies, slick leathery wings manipulating the air with a laborious effort. His silver reptilian eyes were full of impassioned energy, evidence of a lethal combination of anger, desperation to reclaim his ill-gotten territory, and the strengthening effects of a potent rempka high. As the lightning erupting from his throat encapsulated the eagle-kin scout and rattled the beastman in a life-sucking seizure, the powerful flashes revealed a swarm of flying pirate shapeshifters that formed the gigantic collective shadow behind their insane captain.

  “Attack!” Koby screamed hoarsely beside me, rushing back indoors to grab his gear and prepare for battle.

  Cale closed his jaws, yet he remained visible, for the electricity crawling over the eagle-kin still sparked and glowed with a homicidal frenzy. The beastman tumbled out of the sky, trailing smoke and scorched floating feathers. His body crashed into the swamps with a fizzle, the remaining tendrils of air magic clinging to the surface water and crawling across in a search for more victims before they finally dissipated.

  It seemed Alea's intel about Cale was right. For as crazy and lost to drugs as he was, the pirate was surprisingly intelligent. By ambushing us in the middle of the night with a swarm of flying beastmen, he ensured we were ill-prepared. None of the work we'd completed with the barricades could help us against flying beasts. The huts were so tiny few of us could transform indoors, and by forcing us to transform outdoors it gave him and his lackeys a chance to kill us in mid-metamorphosis by assaulting from the skies. Every tactic we'd used against his defenders two battles ago was now being used against us.

  Alerted by Koby's shout, Cale's ravenous eyes zoned in on where I stood, half-dressed and defenseless at the door of a shack filled with people I cared about. I didn't have time to transform because his damned ambush had worked. As the wyvern-kin flapped his wings rapidly to gain momentum and then swooped toward me, then, I had few options.

  Absort la mana de spula.

  If I couldn't fight him now, I would protect Koby and my crew with my life. As Cale hurtled toward me, I rapidly sidestepped aside the hut, trying to lure him away from my friends and keep his focus on me. I built two alteration spells in my hands, but I kept only one visible to him. When I cast the magic shield that meant to absorb offensive magic, Cale noticed the vibrating translucent energy force surround me with a zwip. He couldn't use magic against me; he had to rely on brute force.

  Clear of the hut, I continued backing swiftly toward the northern coast of the island, building a hidden spell behind my back with one hand and goading Cale with a crude gesture in the other. My heart pounded against my ribs until they rattled as he spread his giant wings to soar and swooped so low to grab me with his talons that the air whistled with his speed and proximity to the ground.

  “Come on, you son of a bitch!” I yelled, my gravelly voice echoing off the nearby huts. Like the familiar sound was a trigger for Cale to act, he thrust his feet forward, claws spread wide and ready to maul. Once I could differentiate his earrings from his scales, I acted.

  I dodged to the side. As Cale twisted in mid-air in reaction, I thrust my right arm toward his body, releasing the hidden second spell. Emerald energy hit the wyvern-kin just beneath the left wing before spreading over his scales, stiffening muscles in its wake. Paralyzed, Cale hit the rich earth with a thud that cast violent vibrations into the northeastern camp. His flying momentum convinced his still body to tumble and roll toward the shore, leaving a ragged strip of ruined soil from his crash landing.

  In my peripheral vision, Koby and the others finally exited the hut, armored and equipped for battle. Though Koby's anxious eyes darted around and found me and Cale near the northern shore, he and the others immediately contended with Cale's crew of flying beasts that swarmed all exiting mercenaries.

  It was time to be on equal ground with this bastard. I rushed toward the coast, casting the water-breathin
g spell on myself moments before I jumped in the ocean. My body sunk into the cold abyss, temporarily safe from the grasp of flying shapeshifters.

  Tranferra sel ti kin a blud.

  Unintentionally, my body jerked into a fetal position from agony as my spine lengthened with a series of muted bony pops. When the spinal cord burst through the flesh above my pelvic bone and ripped my pants down the center of their seat, the resulting wave of blood kissed my face with warmth. Pin pricks tingled up and down the entirety of my right leg as rapidly building muscle in my hips and glutes pinched my sciatic nerve. All transformations had the ability to go wrong as magic reformed muscle, bone, and tendon; that this one did in particular enraged me. I wanted Cale dead once and for all, and that had proved difficult enough the last two times we'd faced off. I didn't need more hurdles to overcome.

  As I shook with trauma during my transformation, I fueled myself for a homicidal fury, using the horrifically bad luck of pinching a nerve as a prologue to a stampede of negative thoughts. The bloated corpses of Alderi paddy workers crossed my mind; I thought of my brothers escaping the underground and making a living for themselves just to die to pirates with more greed than sense. They had survived slavery, rape, beatings, and the highest odds in the world of succumbing to addiction or suicide. They were finally happy and free. Cale and his men had stormed through just to take some of these men hostage or murder them and leave their bodies to rot and degrade in the paddies that granted them livelihood. Like our underground sisters, these pirates had given our brothers no respect, no dignity.

  Flashes of Fraco's corpse came to mind again, fresh from visiting me in my sleep. The utter horror I'd recently felt from the inability to escape the underground in my nightmares only added weight to my current temperamental mood. The next time I cried out into the water, the wail gained an angry and mournful edge.

  My rib cage expanded, followed by a throbbing feverish heat as my organs grew to follow suit. My mind went blank with white flashes as I fought off unconsciousness induced by agony. Between every one, I saw static images of Kali. Her beaming smile. Her looks of respect for me. Her mutilated parts floating in the seas.

  Fully transformed, I burst out of the ocean in an explosion of rage, water, and foam, a sputtering hiss escaping my bared fangs and shattering off the surface water. During the time of my metamorphosis, all-out war had engulfed the island. Cale's swarm of flying pirate shapeshifters had descended upon the natives, who responded by transforming or fighting back with weapons. Arrows and bolts flew into the heavens, some missing their targets and others piercing bodies and wings. Allied warriors defended the vulnerable bodies of still-changing beastmen. Pirate shapeshifters swooped low to maul natives or carry them off into the night just to drop them from high heights so gravity could fatally break their fall. Only minutes into this battle, bodies sprinkled over moist earth in pools of blood.

  Ignoring the rest of the chaos, I focused only on vengeance. Cale jerked to life once more as my earlier paralyze spell released him from its grasp. An annoyed reptilian screech escaped his snout in a burst. He spun to face me as I barreled toward him from the coast, seawater flinging off slick silver-blue scales. As I leapt at him with my arms spread and talons gleaming, he lurched back and whipped out his wings, bracing himself for impact.

  I collided into the wyvern-kin, the extreme momentum of my charge sending us tumbling to the ground together in a blur of flailing limbs and gnashing teeth. As I clawed at his lower neck, I kicked rapidly at the smooth scales of his torso, tearing off flecks of silver that seasoned the earth with a sparkle. Arcing his elongated neck over my back, Cale chomped down on my upper tail; his fangs didn't break through to muscle, but they dented and cracked my natural armor. The immense pressure shot a tortuous ripple up my spine until it seared my brain. I stiffened with the neural agony before reacting with an outburst of defensive adrenaline and biting the side of his throat.

  Wyvern scales cracked under the convincing of my fangs, but as I clamped down with all my might to crush his throat with my jaw pressure, Cale jerked out of my bite. The silver scales of his neck were scraped and broken, and blood oozed between them like a crimson outline from an underlying puncture wound. When I snapped my head forward to try again, he dodged the hit by rolling over beneath me to get to his feet. Off-balance, I fell to the dirt. I scrambled to stand just as the wyvern-kin's wings whipped out to the side with the harsh snapping of leather. Cale took off into the skies in a blur; I tried hopping up and grabbing his foot as he passed, but he curled his toes just out of my grip.

  At first, I followed the wyvern-kin to the coast, expecting him to circle back and come back to fight me. Instead, Cale was a blur of shadow against the starry skies as he flew off to the west like he retreated. He screeched in a series of alarmed bursts, the egregious wail muffling with his lengthening distance. The sounds weren't words, of course, but the animalistic instinct within me recognized them as a signal.

  A signal for what?

  I couldn't waste time standing here to find out. I pivoted and hurried back to the campsite, eager to aid the others.

  So far, my friends were holding their own. Vallen, Jayce, and Cyrene had transformed, the fur or scales beneath their eyes marked with the war paint that indicated they were natives of the wildlands. Neither Vallen nor Jayce had any luck fighting the pirates, however; they couldn't reach the flying beasts, and they posed so large of a threat to the brigands that they weren't yet targeted.

  Thanks to her swiftness and finesse, blood already covered Cyrene's feline face, and she hunted for more victims. The jaguar-kin bounded across the camp in a blur of fur and darkened spots and launched herself at a hawk-kin in mid-flight. Her fuzzy toes spread, revealing curved claws that gleamed in the near firelight. In a late reaction, the hawk-kin arced back toward the sky, momentarily forgetting its plan of attacking a mercenary in mid-transformation. Cyrene's right giant paw hit the bird nonetheless; the hawk-kin tumbled to the earth, squawking in terror. It fluttered its wings against the ground, stirring up whirlwinds of dust and loose feathers as it tried to take off once more into the air.

  Cyrene pounced the hawk-kin, grabbing it on either side of its elongated body and clenching her toes, claws sinking into avian meat. The two beastmen wrestled on the ground together; while the bird focused on escape, the cat focused on the kill. Holding the hawk-kin with two immensely strong giant front paws, Cyrene curled her body and rapidly kicked her back claws at her victim's exposed stomach. Tufts of feathers loosened and floated out in a circle around the duo, followed by sprays of blood and flecks of torn inner organs. Cyrene leapt up from the scene, broken feathers sticking to her blood-soaked fur. The hawk-kin twitched with neurological failure as its inner viscera slowly slopped out of its open body cavity.

  Near the hut, Koby and our other crew members stuck together, not wanting to become easy victims for snatching from the skies. Jaecar had fulfilled the promise he made to Hassan in Killick long ago by staying in elven form so he could support our crew with protections. Though he dual-wielded his scimitars, he had already given the others alteration shields to protect against Cale's magic and any other pirates who might have access to elements or offensive spells while in blood-kin form.

  A hostile beetle-kin noticed Jaecar's battle support and zoned in on him. Like most pirate beastmen here, this shapeshifter's blood-kin appeared to be Naharan in species, for the insect looked hardy enough to thrive in the deserts. At three feet wide and six feet long, the giant beetle-kin was a titan of heavy armor, sharp points, and clamping mandibles. Its thick black exoskeleton shone from slickness with a variety of underlying pearlescent colors: deep emerald, royal blue, and even dark purple. It zoomed through the air like a flying wrecking ball, spreading its mandibles while imaging Jaecar's head between them.

  Jaecar noticed the looming insect. Rather than retreat, he walked forward to face it, sheathing his left scimitar to reveal a building paralyze spell in his dark palm. The beetle-kin's mandibl
es twitched with excitement for decapitation as Jaecar lifted his hand and released the spell. Sparkling green energy crawled over the beetle-kin's hard exoskeleton before sinking in its spiracles like a magical virus. The insect stilled in mid-flight and flew forward uncontrollably just as Jaecar dropped to a squat to avoid its failing trajectory. The beetle-kin crashed straight into the front exterior wall of our hut like an enraged battering ram. The primitive wall burst into splinters and wood dust. The pirate beastman came to an abrupt stop in the broken building as the roof collapsed inward, covering its exoskeleton in structural debris.

  Jaecar rushed toward the wreckage, his biceps bulging as he lifted rubble to get to his foe. Once the beetle-kin's glossy black head and mandibles reappeared through pieces of broken lumber, Jaecar grabbed the second scimitar from his belt. Without any hesitation, he stabbed both blades downward through the break of its natural armor just between its head and pronotum.

  Crack!

  A spray of clear hemolymph erupted from the break in exoskeleton, splattering Jaecar across the face as he thrust the blades deeper until the beetle-kin's head tilted forward with the lack of shell support. With a cry of adrenaline, he jerked both scimitars out to the sides, cracking steel through natural armor until the head toppled off the torso, releasing a horrifying mix of insect and humanoid organs in a rush of clear blood. Jaecar wiped off his face and jumped off the rubble, hurrying to paralyze another enemy shapeshifter who swooped in from the heavens.

  Nearby, Hassan gagged from the heavy stench of the gasses that escaped the beetle-kin's broken corpse, but he didn't allow it to affect his focus. His exacting green eyes followed an eagle-kin as it flew over the camp, searching for easily snatched prey. Its scaled golden feet were already marred with the blood of mercenaries; a strip of torn human scalp flesh dangled from one toe, still trailing a tuft of blonde hair.

  As the eagle-kin stopped its flapping and soared smoothly, Hassan calculated its pace and direction and aimed his arbalest just feet before the shapeshifter's location. He pulled the trigger. The silver bolt launched from its groove, twinkling wickedly in its curved flight. Oblivious, the eagle-kin flew right into its path as Hassan anticipated. The bird's head jerked to the right as the silver bolt gleamed from a punctured left eye. The shapeshifter tumbled to the earth, landing in the center of a dying campfire amidst a cloud of disturbed sparkling embers.