Stemming the Tide

by Rosie Scott

  My right hand grasped the metacarpal of the wing with such intensity that I heard the bone snap as my left held his neck underwater and strained with the effort against his thrashing. I used my body weight on his sloped back to keep him as still as possible. Targeting the upper arm of the wing, I extended my jaw and lurched forward, chomping down with thousands of pounds of pressure.

  Crrk!

  Cale's bone cracked right over my tongue, loosening the tense burden on my fangs. Delirious reptilian wailing sliced through my ear drums as I clamped down harder and furiously whipped my head from side to side, causing further trauma and tearing flesh. The wing stayed connected, however, and its rapid swelling caused it to take up so much space in my mouth it inhibited my breathing. I let go of the limb and stood once more. Cale trembled in agony and rage in murky swamp water, his wing snapped at an unnatural angle and only held firm by thick leathery flesh. With all my might, I jumped up and landed on the broken wing in a splash. The limb sunk through the water under my weight, ripping through the leather connecting it to his upper back. Silver scales peeled back from underlying flesh and muscle, roughly flaying him. Blood oozed from raw tissue as his panicked cries pierced the night. As Cale scrambled to stand, I grasped the broken wing with both hands and jerked it forward past his head.

  Crack!

  Shards of bone stuck out like splinters from the stubbed end of the mutilated wing as it finally admitted defeat. I tossed the heavy limb over the barricade, and it sunk slowly in ever-darkening waters. The open wound in Cale's right shoulder bled in spurts, splattering over the shallow water and tainting its color. The wyvern-kin's crazed silver eyes gained an edge of desperation for survival; Cale knew as well as I did that even if he transformed back to his normal form, his life magic could not reconnect a mutilated arm. I'd permanently disabled him.

  Despite my narrow focus on carnage, I heard the faint echoes of screamed warnings because they were on Koby's voice. I spun toward the east to see an enclosing pack of rabid pirate beastmen coming to swarm me to aid Cale. The closest, a hyena-kin, already flew toward me in a pounce, its canine jaws prepared to crush my skull. I braced myself for the attack and twisted my head to the side, spreading my own jaws to retaliate.

  The hyena-kin slammed into my chest as its jaws surrounded my upper snout. I fell backwards, plunging into the thorny barricade back first. Sharp pin pricks like hundreds of tiny knives dug into my scales as the barricade collapsed under the weight of two immense beasts. The sciatic nerve misbehaved again, shooting up and down my body until my right leg finally went numb. Without the ability to kick, I had only one option. The hyena-kin planned to crush my skull, but my foresight in twisting my head to meet the angle of its bite meant our jaws overlapped; my upper head was in its open mouth while its lower jaw was in my mouth. Thinking quickly, I crushed my mouth closed before the other shapeshifter could do the same.

  While my lower fangs sliced through flesh and fur of the hyena-kin's chin, my upper fangs mashed through teeth and tongue. A whooping cry escaped its throat in warm bursts over my face as I pulverized its lower mandible in one bite. Only when I felt the bone crack between my jaws did I tear my face to the side, severing it from the hyena-kin's face. The ruffian beastman panicked and backed up a step from my chest, its cleaved tongue bleeding openly from an exposed throat.

  A glimmer of silver arced through the air above the trembling hyena. The curved end of a twin hook pointed toward the beastman's left eye as Neliah stood at its right side; with a hoarse cry of exertion, she jerked the weapon back. The acute point of the hook drilled through the hyena-kin's left eye, swept through the skull, and exploded through the right eye, splattering Neliah's armor with harvested brain matter. The ruffian slumped with death on my stomach. As I spit out the viscera left over from my bite, Neliah lugged the hyena's body off mine by her weapon's grip on its skull. Finally free of its weight, my sciatic nerve stopped its incessant throbbing; though pain still shot up and down my back, the numbness in my leg started to dissipate.

  As I got back to my feet, I scanned my surroundings for Cale. I didn't find him, but I realized Neliah wasn't the only one who came to aid me with fighting off his lackeys. Tumultuous waters far to my right pointed out Jayce's location as she spun in a death roll with a fox-kin. In near shallow waters, Vallen mauled a mammal blood-kin so brutally I could no longer tell its species.

  On the drier ground beside the swamps, Sage was a one-man blockade, fighting pirate reinforcements with such strength and skill that they could not get past him to reach us before they were in pieces. The knight's magnificent greatsword was painted crimson and seasoned with tufts of fur, flecks of scales, and bits of shattered bone. He blocked a lunging hit from a spotted lizard-kin with the flat of the blade as a spider-kin crept up behind him on spindly legs. The lizard-kin prepared for another attack, but Sage also sensed the spider's approach. Holding the greatsword firm with both hands, he spun in a firm calculated circle, slicing the blade through three out of eight spider legs before finishing the rotation with a thrust toward the spotted lizard-kin. The giant blade swept through scales and viscera, clinging through two vertebra and re-emerging out the reptile's back. Sage retrieved his sword from its victim with not so much as a grunt. As the spotted lizard-kin collapsed to the ground with a broken spine, the knight turned to finish the spider-kin. The giant insect had fallen forward, unsupported without all its legs. Sage lifted his greatsword and stabbed through the spider's head until the tip of the blade met the earth.

  Closer to me, Koby's alchemical concoctions aided everyone by injuring or impeding hostile shapeshifters so the others could go for a kill. Sometimes, they killed outright. He threw an acid ball at a hyena-kin; clay shattered on its cranium, spilling the caustic liquid over its face. It fell to the ground in a panic as acid rapidly ate through all biological matter until bubbling diluted gore drained from the white bone of its emptied eye sockets. Koby had since moved on, thrusting his sword between the ribs of a badger-kin after disabling it by throwing blinding powder in its face.

  Hilly and Jaecar watched each other's backs as they fought pirates farther inland, where most regular warriors avoided the chaotic beast battles raging on the harshest land. As Jaecar fought like a tornado of blades and finesse, Hilly pummeled foes with attitude and unkemptness. Jaecar spun in a wide arc, both scimitars ripping across leather armor and exposed flesh of two different pirates. As they stumbled back, bleeding and with ripped gear, Jaecar faced a ruffian who was just nearing the fight. Reaching forward with his left palm and summoning telekinesis, Jaecar abruptly tugged the new contender into his range. The man tripped over his own boots, flustered and off-balance. Jaecar ended his confusion with a quick swipe of a blade across the jugulars before turning to finish off the first two pirates he'd injured.

  Nearby, Hilly swung her tri-headed flail so messily at a ruffian's kneecap that she toppled over her stubby legs at the same time her foe crashed to the earth beside her, screaming and grasping at his shattered joint. Still sitting on the ground, Hilly threw her flail forward at the man's throat repeatedly until it broke through viscera to the internal spine. Though that pirate stopped moving, another one ran up to contend with her before she could stand. Hilly crashed the spiky heads of her flail into the front of his shin as he neared. As the ruffian fell forward to the ground, Hilly scrambled to get on her feet. She promptly hopped up and down on the back of his skull until it caved in before running back over to fight beside Jaecar.

  I took all of this in passively while searching for my main target. Hassan's lifeless body was within my view, compounding the anger and grief and desperation for vengeance into one toxic mix of all-encompassing rage. My whole body throbbed with pain from puncture wounds, blunt force, and neurological mishaps, but my temporary insanity allowed me to ignore it until it was only an echo of an unimportant sensation.

  “Cal.” I turned my head to find Koby's determined gaze within a periwinkle face covered in blood splatter. He nodde
d toward the northern coast like a directive and informed me, “Cale headed for the shore.”

  Yet again, he read me like a book. I rushed out of the shallow water and around the huts to the northern coast. Behind me, I heard quick footsteps as Koby followed.

  The fires from Neliah's earlier meteor spell had all but snuffed out in the time since she cast it. Only a faint orange glow remained in spots over the pirate vessel decks where wreckage still smoldered. Otherwise, once I was free of the shacks along the broken coast, all fell into shadow and starlight. My blood-kin's superior sense of smell picked up on the scent of Cale's blood, finding familiarity in its reptilian half. The mage in me sensed the residual energy in the air born of his panic and realization. His ex-lover Alea had told us, 'Cale lives each day like he will live forever.' Based on the apprehensive energy in the air, tonight was the first time in a while Cale realized he wouldn't. After all, without an arm to inject rempka into, the addict's world was likely crashing down over him. My eyes darted through the knotted treeline of the near swamps, searching for him.

  Heavy, wheezing breaths called my attention to an indent in the muddy coast ahead. Around the nearest outstretch of brush, Cale walked at an awkward lopsided gait toward the ocean like the quiet abandoned vessels on the water could save him. He was cast in shadow and still trailing blood from his right shoulder, though clotting had slowed its leaking pace. As if affected by delirium from exertion, pain, and drug withdrawals, the wyvern-kin twitched and flinched sporadically, but his reptilian eyes stayed on the anchored ships, full of desperate need.

  I realized, then, that Cale's addiction drove him. He relied so much on rempka to grant him extra strength and protection against pain for his transformations that now that I mortally wounded him, he could think of nothing but his next high. He didn't transform back to a Celd and close his gaping wound with life magic. He didn't even think about how he was going to get back to his stash of rempka without wings to carry him to the ship's deck. Any sense of reason fled his mind, and only the illogic of addiction filled its place.

  There was never a better time to kill him.

  I rampaged for the injured wyvern on all fours, my hands and feet barely leaving impressions in the soppy coastline before leaping through the air once more. Cale only noticed me once I saw the reflection of myself in his good right eye, and by that time it was too late.

  I leapt onto his right side, and due to his missing wing, he was immediately unbalanced. We tumbled to the ground together, skidding through soft mud. I snapped at his throat, my teeth clacking together when he dodged the hit with surprising tenacity. Whether his last-second desperation came from his need to survive or get high, I didn't know. But by misjudging him to be an easy kill, I opened myself up for injuries. Cale retaliated by biting my right shoulder and clamping down.

  Crack!

  Splashes of bright colors overwhelmed my vision as my clavicle snapped under the pressure, sending shock waves of white-hot agony through my arm and shoulder. I grasped and tugged at his face to pull him off me, but he maintained his hold and jerked his head from side to side, further tearing my scales and muscles apart until a spitting panicked hiss escaped my lips. It was futile; his grip was too tight. Then, Hassan's silver bolt winked at me in the starlight from Cale's punctured left eye. Reaching over his face with my left arm, I grasped the bolt, tugged it out, and stabbed it through the slit of his pupil.

  Cale screeched and bucked, throwing me back. I landed on my back and tail, soft mud lodging in the small puncture wounds between my scales from the barricade earlier. Noises assaulted my ears from two separate directions. From one side, Cale thrashed around on the ground until he stood drunkenly amid a pained rage; on the other side, quickening boot steps squished through mud as Koby rushed up to face him.

  I rolled over to my hands and knees to get back into the fight. Cale lurched his bloodied head forward to bite, but Koby dodged to the side. His left hand dug into a pouch at his waist and reemerged with a handful of powder that he promptly threw in Cale's face. The powder went to work burning the wyvern-kin's eyes and inviting itself into his mouth and nostrils to interrupt his respiratory system. Koby waited until Cale's good eye watered and he hacked with sickness to thrust his sword in his chest where Hassan's last bolt glimmered over the heart.

  Black metal broke through a set of silver scales and the underlying flesh, but it didn't quite dig through to the organ beneath. Koby jerked the sword back to try again. Despite his labored breathing, Cale curled his neck back, finding Koby's location through one tear-stricken eye as he prepared a spell in his esophagus.

  As building electricity rumbled in Cale's gut, panic seized mine. For Koby did not have an alteration shield, and tragedy had already struck once tonight with someone who had.

  Resist a mana.

  I darted forward, a protective webbed hand thrusting the spell at my best friend.

  Zwip. The swirling reject magic guard bubbled around Koby just as an outburst of sizzling electricity spewed from Cale's lips. The veins of magic chipped at Koby's shield before darting out for me and becoming absorbed in my own guard's protections. I paid it no mind; my main concern was protecting Koby from the same death Hassan had suffered. With a closed fist, I punched Cale straight in the face with such brutal force his head jerked to the right, interrupting his aim. Veins of lightning flew off to the side of Koby's location and instead spewed into the air and crawled over mud, searching for victims but coming up short. With his spell hindered, Cale closed his mouth and instead snapped again at me.

  I dodged the hit before thrusting my left hand toward his throat with a prepared telekinesis spell. The magic tilted him back until he fell to the mud once more, squirming as he struggled to right himself with his extensive injuries.

  “Paralyze him, Cal,” Koby suggested hoarsely behind me, his voice echoing like he was far from me.

  But I didn't want to paralyze Cale before killing him. After seeing him murder two good friends of mine, I wanted to hear his screams.

  I straddled Cale's slender torso, stomping on his expanded left wing until I heard the crack of its metacarpal bone. The wyvern-kin only wheezed with the injury like he no longer had the energy for anything else. With the edges of my vision tainted red, I zoned in on the bleeding wound over his heart that Hassan had started and Koby deepened. Digging claws and fingers deep into torn muscle, I grabbed both scaly flaps of the wound and tugged my arms apart.

  Cale jolted in severe anguish, lying his head back on the mud and letting loose a hellish wail. It only fueled me as I ripped the wound open until chipped silver scales flaked down his hyperventilating chest and a mass of throbbing internal muscle waited before me like a slab of high-quality meat. My lust for ultimate carnage directed my attention to the muscle stretching between his avian-esque fused clavicle. Like a rabid animal, I clawed and tore through bleeding tissue as Cale's struggles slowed beneath me, only stopping once the glistening flesh of two weakening internal organs revealed themselves. I knew little about anatomy, but from Koby harvesting creature parts for alchemy, I knew enough. The shuddering and expanding creamish-pink organ was likely one of Cale's lungs; the pumping maroonish-pink organ that nestled in a mess of stringy veins and arteries was his heart.

  I aimed for his heart.

  Intense body heat encased my clawed hands as I grabbed the organ and heaved, its struggling pumps massaging my palms. Two sets of reptilian cries shattered through the skies, one born of rage and the other of torment. After the snapping of multiple arteries, Cale's blood spurted out of the wound like a geyser and bathed me in crimson. My screams grew hoarser and stronger as my muscles shook with the effort of the savage kill. Though Cale cried out, I could no longer hear him.

  Crrk!

  The heart ceased its struggle and tore out of Cale's chest, trailing severed vessels. I fell back from my efforts, holding a crushed heart that was an even mix of man and reptile. Although his body was limp and broken, Cale's last cries echoed throug
h the near swamps and over the ocean water until they finally ceased altogether, never to be recreated.

  I heaved with adrenaline. As rage subsided, agony became my very existence. It stemmed from all of my untended wounds, both physical and mental. But as I held Cale's heart in my hands and stared at his body that I had torn apart after three years of his having the upper hand, ambition consumed me. For in the camp far behind us, all sounds of battle had ceased, proving our victory. And soft warmth hit my back from the east, where the sun rose with the promises of another day and kissed the ocean with a pinkish glow. Earlier, I made a promise to kill Cale before the sunrise, and despite my mental and physical anguishes, I had followed through. For the first time in my life, I acknowledged success and believed my crazy goals of summoning an ancient beast and dismantling a gang of pirates weren't so crazy after all.

  Koby walked up to stand beside me. “We did it, Cal,” he said, his voice carrying a mixture of pride, disbelief, and motivation. “We stemmed the tide.”

  I said nothing because I couldn't. Proving he read me so well, Koby went on to say what I was thinking.

  “Now, all that's left is to rouse the storm.”

  *

  The camp was so beaten and bloodied it was as if the gods had mercilessly pummeled it from the heavens. Under a brightening morning sky, Koby and I walked slowly around mutilated bodies of man and beast, fallen gear, and piles of wreckage. As we trekked inland to the center of the broken battlefield, gathered friends and mercenaries alike glanced up at our arrival.

  We made for a sorry sight, for we were both drenched in blood. I was nude with a myriad of injuries after transforming back near Cale's corpse; my broken collarbone had since swelled, and I dangled my right arm limply by my side to avoid as much resulting pain as possible. In my other hand, I held the heart of a pirate.