by Eric Vall
Within a matter of seconds, I was completely out of air, and when I opened my eyes, all I could see was blackness.
Everything around me continued to swirl, and I fought the urge to fill my lungs as panic set in. The frigid water burned my eyes as I continued to fight against the current, and just as my lungs insisted I pull the water in, a strange sensation bloomed in my chest, and I realized it was fresh air slowly seeping in.
The knowledge that Shoshanne was near eased my terror a measure, and I began to slow my thrashing in the water. I let the current carry me instead, and before long, I felt the soft brush of long hair across my chest. I reached out and pulled Aurora into my arms, and the half-elf immediately latched onto my bicep. I could feel her shaking while we drifted in the darkness, and I stroked her arm to calm her a bit before I reached out once more to find the others.
Cayla jolted when she tumbled into the two of us, and she kicked me hard with the heel of her boot like she wasn’t sure what she’d collided with. The air was knocked right out of my lungs from the force, but Shoshanne refilled them within a few seconds to save me. I grabbed Cayla’s flailing arm in a vice before she could drift away again, and the woman tried to rip herself free like her life depended on it.
Then Aurora pulled on me, and she must have reached out as well, because Cayla suddenly eased her struggling and let the two of us bring her closer.
Her hands felt along my chest to be sure it was me, and then she abruptly grabbed hold of my arm and stayed there.
The temperature of the water had plummeted while we’d drifted around the chamber, and the icy sensation caused the two women to shake even worse.
Then a hand suddenly yanked on one of my legs, and I worked to swim downward despite the numbing of my limbs. Shoshanne caught hold of us and pulled us along the wall, and relief washed through me as I felt the stone suddenly disappear.
I pushed the two women through the opening as quickly as I could, and Shoshanne tried to force me in after them, but I hooked her arm and made sure she was ahead of me.
Just as the air in my lungs began to feel stale, it was slowly replenished with a fresh dose from the Aer Mage, and I focused on the fact that I couldn’t drown with her near rather than how fucking cold it was getting. My muscles stiffened as my back scraped along the ceiling of the hallway, and we swam for so long I started to think we’d somehow taken the wrong path.
The current pushed hard against our efforts, and several minutes passed before the silhouettes of the women glowed ahead of me. The water was gradually illuminated by the light of day, and I kicked harder against the frigid chill until we finally came out of the hallway and into the vaulted chamber of the fortress.
All of us gasped as we broke through the surface, and I quickly spun around to be sure all of my women had made it. They were pale and shaking uncontrollably in the icy water, but they were all accounted for, and they treaded water as we looked wildly around the place.
“What the fuck was that?” I breathed.
“T-tide,” Shoshanne managed through her shivering.
The ocean water must have been eight feet deep throughout the whole chamber, and the halls were completely covered by the swell that rolled and splashed violently around the room.
“I’m … I’m … freezing,” Aurora gasped, and my pulse kicked up a notch as I noticed how blue her lips looked.
Shoshanne quickly swam over as a light breeze drifted past me, and I realized she was working to help the half-elf catch her breath. I joined her and kept Aurora above the current that continued to throw us around, and the chill of her skin caught me off guard. The Ignis Mage was somehow even colder than I was, so I pulled her frigid body against me as I looked for any sign of the exit.
Cayla was swimming along the furthest wall as she scanned as well, and she suddenly stopped and looked around at the stonework.
“This is the one,” she told us, “there were three windows past it, right?”
I quickly nodded my agreement, and Shoshanne and I helped Aurora make it to the exit.
“Keep swimming,” I growled when the half-elf took a deep breath, and I pushed her as far as I could as she dove into the opening.
Shoshanne quickly followed with Cayla close behind, and I took a last glance around the flooded chamber before I dove down as well. My lungs refilled themselves after about a minute, and when we finally came up in the mouth of the cave, the water level was only to our calves.
Aurora let out a stream of furious curses as she stumbled and splashed toward the cove, and she threw out her arms to cast a ring of flames in the air around her.
They seared in a blinding white, and I could feel the heat radiating all throughout the frigid cave. Aurora parted the flames to let us join her beside the pillars, and I wrapped her in my arms from behind while I waited for her limbs stopped trembling.
“I f-f-fucking hate being cold,” she stammered through her chattering teeth.
“It’s rare, I’m sure,” I chuckled. “Are you guys alright?”
Cayla was practically blue all over, but she gave a curt nod. “I’m so sorry for kicking you,” she sighed. “I panicked.”
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “I’d hate to come up against you in the dark, though.”
Cayla smiled as she raised her hands to Aurora’s flames, and beside her, Shoshanne was completely calm while she looked out at the cove.
The healer’s brow was furrowed as she eyed the heavy clouds through the pelting rain, and the waves crashed relentlessly against the rocks and the cliff to throw salty water up as well.
The jetty was completely swallowed up with the rise of the tide, and the abrupt change in weather made the whole cove look like it had moved twenty leagues to the north.
“I wish I was an Aer Mage,” Aurora chuckled.
“Hands down, best element,” I agreed. “That was so fucking cool. Was it hard to keep us all breathing?”
Shoshanne smiled back at us. “Not at all,” she shrugged, “I know you all so well that it’s pretty easy to sense what you need. I just sent little bursts of my magic to each of you in turn.”
I grinned. “Don’t make me say it … ”
“I’m an angel,” the healer said with a little smirk. “I know.”
“Agreed,” Cayla purred and left a kiss on Shoshanne’s cheek.
A giant swell suddenly rose up past our knees again, and the chill of the water caused my limbs to throb in pain.
We braced ourselves against the spray that shot up from the waves, and Shosanne shook her head.
“The ocean’s strange here,” the healer pointed out. “It doesn’t change so quickly near my island.”
“Really?” I asked as I loosened my hold on Aurora.
“Figures,” the half-elf mumbled. “Everything in Nalnora tries to kill us. Why should the ocean make an exception?”
I chuckled and laid a kiss in her blue hair. “Come on, let’s get up to the cliff,” I suggested. “And remember how much you loved the place only an hour ago?”
Aurora couldn’t help but nod as we splashed out into the cove and headed for the path along the cliff face, but I doubled back when I caught sight of my weapons half drowned in salty water.
“Shit,” I cursed, and I quickly pulled a broad table up from the slate of rock beneath the waves. Then I lifted all of the weapons and metal onto the surface before I joined the women at the base of the path.
“What are you waiting for?” I hollered as another wave crashed against us, but when Shoshanne swayed to the side, I saw the cascade of mud sliding down the edge of the cliff, and I furrowed my brow as I considered the drop we were about risk.
“Go slowly,” I ordered, “I’ll try and fix it as we go.”
The women carefully began the long climb up the path, and I summoned my Terra Magic to force the mud to stop pouring past our feet. It was surprisingly difficult to fight against the force of the water, but I managed to keep the path solid enough for us to make our way upwar
d.
The raindrops fell so hard they stung as they pelted my skin, and as I squinted through the water and salt dripping down my face, I could see the shoulders of the women beginning to turn bright red from the battering of the water. We finally made it to the edge of the cliff, though, and I let out the breath I’d been holding when the last of my women climbed up to the safety of the grass.
Cayla and Shoshanne caught my arms to pull me up behind them, and Aurora immediately lit a fire for us all.
I almost laughed at the expression on her face as the rain doused it within two seconds.
“Damn rain,” the Ignis Mage hissed to the waft of smoke, and a ring of flames seared itself in the grass so brightly that sparks flew out of her fingertips.
Aurora’s fire held out this time, and she gave a smug little smirk as she dropped down in the wet grass beside it.
I chuckled and was about to pull a wall up for us when I realized I couldn’t get the mud to cooperate, so I shifted my palms toward the jungle behind us and summoned every boulder I could find.
Then I formed a solid wall that arched over us and the fire to provide some shelter from the rain, and when I finally dropped down, the women quickly curled around me for more heat.
The chill of the water seemed to have seeped right through to my bones, but after we sat together beside the fire for a while, the rain slowly let up, and my limbs began to thaw.
Cayla sighed and nestled her cheek against my shoulder, and we watched the clouds dissipate to reveal the setting sun.
Within ten minutes, everything had miraculously settled again, and the waves rolled heavily beneath a blistering red sky while the air warmed once more.
“We should probably sleep up here tonight,” Aurora yawned, and I eyed the flooded cove below.
“You couldn’t pay me to sleep in those caves,” Cayla assured her. “I’m not drowning in my sleep.”
I nodded my agreement and turned my gaze toward the amber glow of the sun. It was already sinking halfway beneath the horizon, and a glint of iridescence caught my eye.
“There they are,” I muttered, and the three women sat up to get a glimpse as well.
The pod of sea dragons dipped and rose amongst the waves with ease, and I grinned when the frontmost dragon dove down deep as they neared the cove.
When it rose again, the dragon let out a long and haunting call, and as the others dove and rose to answer, Aurora let out a sigh.
“I petted one of them today,” she said as she laid out on her belly and propped her head in her hands.
“Seriously?” I asked as I opened my eyes wide. “They’re huge.”
The half-elf nodded. “They’re even bigger up close, but they’re sweet.”
Cayla chuckled. “Don’t glaze over the important part … ”
Aurora glanced back and rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she sighed. “Also, they’re incredibly violent when they’re in predator mode, but they were very sweet with us, so … ”
The half-elf shrugged, and I raised my brows as I looked at the princess.
Cayla smirked. “Deya says nothing in these waters hunts them,” she added. “They’re the most vicious creature in this part of the ocean. The elves in the north have legends about whole fleets being swallowed up by a single pod.”
I narrowed my eyes on Aurora’s back.
“I can’t imagine how they behave like that for Deya,” Shoshanne added. “Their fangs are bigger than my whole arm.”
“You fucking petted one?” I demanded of the half-elf, and she smiled innocently as she crawled over to curl up with the rest of us.
“I was careful,” she yawned.
I shook my head and looked back toward the pod in the cove while the three women settled against my chest for the night. The dragons had finished singing and were rolling around in the waves, and as the sky faded to a soft purple, they slowly turned to head back out to the sea.
We watched them until their fins disappeared beneath the surface, and just before I drifted off, I pulled the wall around us and softened the stone at my back.
Despite the stiffness of my limbs, I woke feeling more rested than I had in days, and the memory of Nemris drifted somewhere in the back of my mind. I couldn’t remember whether I’d dreamed of her last night, but above me, the light of day glowed in a soft peach that reminded me of her mural.
My women were warm and deep in sleep around me, and part of me wanted to lounge there between them all day.
Still, my veins sparked eagerly to get to work, and the metal in the cove seemed to be calling my name.
I wanted to have a full bazooka formed and ready for testing by the next day, and without knowing how the hell I was going to manage it, I knew I should get a head start on the day.
Cayla sighed as I carefully unwound her arm from me, and her eyes parted as she smiled sleepily. “Where are you sneaking off to?”
“I’ll be in the cove,” I told her, but her eyes had already fallen shut again, and she gave me a lazy nod before she curled around Shoshanne.
I left a small opening in the side of the hut once I’d slipped out into the early morning, and I eyed the horizon as I stretched my aching muscles back to life. The sky was crystal clear in every direction, and the breeze off the water was already beginning to warm. My shirt was apparently washed away with the storm, but the fresh air across my stitches was infinitely better than the fabric had been anyway.
The pelting rain untied a few of the ties Shoshanne had made, but it looked like the dagger wound was healing up alright, so I secured my belt and checked my holster before I headed for the path.
The mud had mostly solidified overnight, and the sun peeked out above the water as I made my way down to the cove. Everything glittered in the morning light as if the pelting waves had never been there, and I took a moment to watch the little green guys splash happily in their tidal pools.
They seemed more energetic at this time of day, and a couple even snapped hungrily at my reflection.
I grinned and shook my head as the rising sun warmed my skin, and then I turned to the table with my stock still piled on top of it.
“Looking good,” I mused as I eyed the wealth of metal, and I took a long stretch before I clapped my hands together and decided where to begin.
The designs of the various rocket launchers on Earth had changed many times over the years to make them more effective at longer ranges, but for our purposes, I didn’t need anything nearly so elaborate.
The first bazooka had a range of about three-hundred and sixty feet give or take, and that was more than enough for the jungle warfare Dragir and I were about to enter into.
We knew the Master’s army would travel on foot, and as long as we were prepared to attack just outside of their next target, this firing range would serve us well in decimating waves of soldiers all at once.
So, I decided to keep things as simple as possible in the design, especially since I had no paper for working out sketches this time. Considering the issues I’d already anticipated with the project though, this was the least of my concerns.
I’d grown more uneasy about building the bazooka for several reasons, and without talking it over more with Dragir, I couldn’t even be sure I should carry on with the project.
When I first came up with the idea, I’d hoped Dragir and I could collaborate on the effort since he’d agreed it was a decent plan, and I was still holding out for this. He was guarded about using rune magic at every turn, but Dragir wasn’t an idiot, and he knew what we were up against, too.
Unfortunately, if I couldn’t get him to change his tune, the idea would likely end up being a wash. In the middle of the jungle, I had no way of creating the explosive elements for the rocket, but then there was also the issue of electricity which would be needed for the trigger assembly.
I honestly had no idea to what extent rune magic could be applied, but if Dragir could help me fill in any of the gaps with his own abilities, then the bazookas could possibly com
e to fruition. They’d just be rigged with a combination of mechanics and magical elements.
Hopefully.
I decided I’d try and get the body assembled for now, and when the time came for it, I’d have to convince Dragir to hear me out.
The original M1 bazooka from World War II would be the easiest to assemble, and it was the launcher I knew the most about given my adopted father’s obsession with World War II memorabilia. I’d even held one at a convention once, and I based a lot of my design on my memory of this.
I knew the original model had used wood for the shoulder stock and hand grips, but mine would be an all steel design, of course. I was also much younger when I saw one, so I needed to account for this when I searched my mind for the dimensions, and I sat down between the tidal pools to think back for a minute.
The pipe in my mind seemed about seventy inches long, but I scaled this down a bit to account for how small I’d been in comparison.
In the end, I decided on a fifty-five-inch pipe for the chamber of the bazooka, and I returned to the table to dig out a chunk of steel while I had the entire image fresh in my head.
First, I carefully formed a tube and elongated it to fifty-five inches. I made the diameter just shy of two and a half inches since I knew this was roughly the size of the M6 rockets they’d used in this model, and I left the steel thick enough to withstand the heat of the blast.
I balanced the finished tube on my shoulder to get more measurements down, but pain immediately jolted through my arm, and the pipe clanged to the ground.
“Godsdamnit.” I took a steadying breath as my stitches flared from the weight of the pipe I’d just dropped on them.
Luckily, the framing design was a simple one, so forming the bazooka from a left-handed mount while rigging it for right-handed use wasn’t too much of an issue.
I propped the pipe on my left shoulder instead as I eyed the placement of the hand grips and the shoulder stock next. I knew the back blast would cause flames to shoot out the breach end, so first I balanced the pipe to allow enough distance to keep from scalding any of us during use.