by John Hook
Finally, we were headed into the northern waters. Few ships ventured up here and we were already starting to see the occasional subsurface reef. They were still sparse and spread out, so they presented no real obstacle to navigation. Blaise quickly picked up how the surface flow of water changed when there was a subsurface reef and would call down heading information to Kate. There was a hollowed-out tube of wood on the deck that acted like a megaphone to the captain's cabin for communication.
There wasn’t a lot for me to do, so I kept a watch on the horizon for anything that might be an island. If we had to stop at some point because Kate didn't want to go further, I would ask her to hold our position where she felt safe. I planned to try exploring from the air with the ship as a base to return to. I had never really put my flying or levitating to the test. I had always preferred to have my feet on the ground, both literally and figuratively. However, after the experiment with the Mountain, I had two possibilities. One was simply seeing how far I could fly. The other was trying to see how far I could project my consciousness. I just didn’t know if the latter worked if I couldn’t visualize where I wanted to go.
My reverie was interrupted by a shout from Blaise.
“Kate, you might need to see this.”
Blaise looked at me. He didn't need to say anything. I ran over immediately. Izzy and Kyo joined us. Kate came up from below and we cleared a path so she could be next to Blaise at the rail.
Blaise pointed. “That has been following us for the last ten minutes or so.”
At first I wasn't sure what we were looking at. It appeared to be a wave pattern that was being generated by the wake expanding out from our ship. However, instead of moving away from the ship, it was a swell in the water that moved forward in a straight line that exactly paralleled our course.
“Sea dragon! Right now it's tracking us.”
“I noticed that it started out even with the back of the boat, but has slowly been moving up.” Blaise kept watching as he spoke.
“When it gets just ahead of our bow it will turn and attack.”
“What happens if we turn hard?” Blaise looked at Kate.
“Any change will cause it to break and attack.”
“You called it a dragon. So is this some kind of sea serpent?” I asked.
“I've never seen one but have heard the stories. A large aquatic reptile, like a sea snake. The real danger is that it will coil around boats and crush them. The other danger is what accompanies the serpent.”
“There's something else out there?”
“Sea demons. They school around the dragons to take the spoils of the crushed ships. They also drag humans to the ocean bottom to drown.”
Kate had her knife out. Izzy and Anika took up positions on either side of the deck with arrows threaded. Blaise took command of the harpoon with Kyo standing guard with her sword. I handed my short sword to Kate.
“Here! Watch it, it's very sharp.”
I looked over the side of the boat. Emerging from the water were demons that had slick bulbous bodies like an octopus, but with only four tentacles with suction cups, which they could use to climb. Their heads were unmistakably demon, with the multiple rows of teeth. An arrow split the head of the first one up.
I couldn't dwell on the demons. I turned just in time to see a large serpent rise out of the water. Its girth might have been ten to twelve feet around and it rose up higher than our sails and crashed back down into the water in front of the bow of our ship. It didn't have a roar, just a very loud snake-like hiss. A fleeting memory came to me. At the time I hadn't been myself, having been turned into a proto. However, I killed a large snake in the forest up in the mountains. I managed to do that without my blue power.
I raced over to Blaise and hefted one of the hand harpoons. Blaise was focusing on trying to anticipate where the serpent might come up again with the big harpoon cannon.
“Those are too small to be effective unless the dragon coils the boat.”
“Which we'd actually like to prevent. I'm taking the fight to the snake.” I didn't wait to hear Blaise's reaction as the serpent shot up in the air on the starboard side. I rose up into the air. The serpent changed the direction of its ascent much faster than I had anticipated and coiled around me. I inflated my glamour, making myself a larger target. However, as the serpent coiled around me, I shrank again. It freed me from the coils long enough to let me fly up well above the serpent's head. I then stopped flying or floating and let gravity take over. The serpent stretched up towards me. It raised its head up, mouth gaping, taking away my intended target, the top of its head. It was just going to swallow me. I was thinking I had to break out of the velocity of my fall and try again, but it wasn't clear I had time. Unexpectedly, there was a fleshy explosion just under its head. One of the big harpoons fired by Blaise was lodged in its throat. The serpent hissed in pain, but it lowered its head to view where this new attack had come from. This positioned its head perfectly for me. My harpoon sank through the dragon’s skull and brain. I lost my grip and plunged toward the ship, but I caught myself and managed to get my levitation going again. The serpent crashed into the water, missing the ship.
By the time I landed on deck and got my bearings, the demons were in retreat. The deck was strewn with bodies and many more floated below in the water. Some had been pierced with arrows. Some, mostly on the deck, had their throats cut.
“You didn't leave me much to do.” I picked up a demon torso and tossed it over the side.
“You looked like you had your hands full with your snaky playmate.” Blaise tossed another fallen demon.
“Thanks for the assist. It could have been much harder for a while there.”
“I was afraid I wouldn't get to shoot a harpoon. You know how I hate it when I can't play with the toys.”
I was about to pick up another demon and stopped to look. Although the head was the same general shape of the heads of most of the demons, the skin was more like the oily, almost gelatinous textured flesh of the body. It was odd, because they had few bones. I poked with my fingers out of morbid curiosity and found areas of what seemed to be stiff cartilage that gave them more defined forms, but they must have been at a disadvantage out of the water. Their advantage had to be their numbers and destruction by the sea dragon. It was probably why they traveled with it. They must run into well-armed seafarers very often.
“They sure are ugly. Did any of them communicate? Telepathy?”
“None of us heard anything.” Kyo wiped her bloody sword and sheathed it with a flourish.
“Watch it when you are picking them up,” Izzy warned. “The suckers have a mild paralytic agent. I suspect they swarm over victims and bring them down that way.” Izzy was rubbing the back of his leg.
“Firsthand experience, I see.”
“That's how I knew it was mild. It’ll be annoying for a while, but it's not too bad. Biggest problem was not falling down when he swiped me. They would have been all over me then.”
Kate came walking over, smiling, offering me back my short sword. “Thanks for this. I owe you.”
On impulse I found myself saying, “Keep it. You don't owe us anything. If you hadn't been helping us, you wouldn't have been in danger.”
She nodded and put the sword in her belt. Kyo nudged me playfully. “I suppose you expect me to make you another.”
“Of course.”
Saripha came over with her sack of poultices. “Izzy, let me see that leg.”
We finished cleaning off the deck. Kate looked over our handiwork and nodded with satisfaction.
“Let’s get out of here and find ourselves an island.”
15.
We headed north by northeast. The occurrences of subsurface reefs were becoming more frequent and closer together, causing us to slow down. We adjusted the rigging on the sails a number of times and picked our way carefully.
Blaise was the first to spot flashing light in the distance. We thought it might be signs of a storm, b
ut couldn't be sure. It was in the general direction we were headed, but it didn't seem to move. Further, we couldn't see a buildup of clouds. As the sky darkened, turning to night, the flashes became brighter and multicolored. Otherwise, the sky was clear and black with stars everywhere.
“I've heard legends about this too, though not very often. Not many come where we've come.” Kate studied the brilliant flashes in the night.
“What is it?”
“I don't know, Quentin. The stories refer to them as the night fires, though obviously you can see it in the daytime, too.”
“Is it like an aurora?”
Kate shrugged. “I don't think so, but who knows.” Kate stepped away. “Bring up the sails and drop anchor.”
I stepped up to give Kate a hand. Blaise and Anika worked the sails from the other end.
“We're stopping?” Saripha asked.
“Sorry, yes. Too many of those reefs to keep moving in the dark. We can't see them. We'll try to push further in the morning.”
“Try?” Saripha pressed.
Kate wiped her brow. “It's already been dicey and I don't fancy punching a hole in my ship out here. I'm sorry.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“I can try to do some scouting tonight,” I offered, but Saripha didn’t act like she heard me.
Saripha stared into the night. The multicolored lights flashed once more.
“There,” Saripha said quietly but with intensity. “That is where we are going. Somehow, I know it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I'll head over there.”
Saripha put her hand on my shoulder. “No. We'll head over there. I have to be with you.”
“We'll see what we can do in the morning.”
“No, Kate. I must go now. I need you to wait here if you will, but Quentin and I will take the lifeboat.”
“We will?” I was feeling it was a little early to execute Plan B.
“Saripha, even with a smaller boat, these reefs are difficult to navigate in the dark.”
“I'm aware this looks a little crazy, Kate.” Saripha smiled. “However, my intuition is telling me to go and this must be done now.”
“Will we all fit in the smaller boat?” Blaise asked.
“Only Quentin and I will go. Kate needs a crew in case something happens. Wait for us if you can, but do whatever you need to protect yourselves and the ship.”
“I don't like this,” Kyo said. “At least take Izzy for additional protection.”
“We can easily manage with four hands.” Kate added her endorsement.
“Please, Saripha,” Izzy pleaded.
Saripha smiled more brightly. “Very well. But we have to go now.”
The life raft was narrow and sleek. Clearly it wouldn't carry a full crew. The ship could have easily carried more than one, but it didn't have them. The boat was tied up and secured on the aft deck. We unknotted the ropes and then used them to lower the boat into the water. We re-secured the ropes to keep the boat next to our ship. Saripha, Izzy and I lowered ourselves down into the boat. There was a pair of wooden oars. Izzy and I each grabbed one. Saripha took a seat in the back of the boat. There was no rudder. Izzy sat in the middle and I sat in front. I positioned myself to row on one side, Izzy set up to row on the other.
Up on the deck Blaise and Kate untied the lines that secured us as Kyo and Anika watched. We drew the ropes into the floor of the boat. They would allow us to secure the boat whenever we got where we were going.
Kate called down. “We'll hold the boat here as long as we can.”
Saripha called back. “We'll try to get word to you, but do whatever you need to protect yourselves and the ship. And, Kate, thanks for everything.”
I brought up my glowing tattoos to give us some light for navigation. I saw the multicolored lights flash in the sky again, which gave me a bearing. At first I thought the reefs were reflecting that light in the sky, but I noticed an icy blue glow in the reefs next to us long after the glow in the sky had faded. Neither was it exactly a reflection of my blue glow. My glow did reflect in the water, but as I stared at the glowing sections of reef next to us I realized it was just that. They were glowing. It was like a bioluminescence from inside the reef.
“We going to just sit here or should we start paddling?” Izzy prodded.
“Hang on a minute. I have an idea.”
“Uh oh.”
“No, really, I think I have a good idea.”
“We get back on the ship and wait for morning?”
“Well, maybe not that good an idea.”
“Does it involve getting magical creatures pissed at us?”
“No, probably not that good, either.”
“You want me to keep guessing?”
“Shush. I need to focus.”
I closed my eyes and turned inward. I wasn't sure of the source of the bioluminescence. It was faint and I didn't know if that was because it was answering my glow or because that was all it could do. I reached out with my energy to find some kind of energy, any kind of energy, resident to the reefs. The danger, of course, was that I didn't know what the source might be. However, I found a faint energy that seemed to be deep within the reefs and I let my energy merge with it. I tuned my energy with that energy and then I slowly amplified it. I heard audible gasps behind me and I opened my eyes.
All of the reefs around us were glowing white and blue. The path through them was clear. It was also obvious that only a small boat like we were in could pass through the channels. The ship would never have made it.
“Hey, that really was a good idea,” Izzy noted.
“Unless it attracts something undesirable.”
“There is that.”
“I think we need to begin rowing. That way.”
I pointed to where another energy burst broke over the sky.
We still had to proceed with some caution as we weaved through the reefs. Too much speed and we might hit a reef when we needed to make a turn. Also, every so often I would have to do the going-inward thing again as we approached the boundaries of the reefs I had made glow. As with most things in nature, they would also balance back out and so the glow behind us in reefs we had passed would fade.
Saripha seemed to be slipping in and out of a trance state. At first I thought she was sleeping, but every so often her eyes would pop open and she would give us a slight change in course. I presumed she was doing some out of body exploration similar to what I had proposed to do from the ship. At first I wondered why we hadn't just done that together from the ship. However, I realized that scouting wasn't the point. She needed to actually be there when we found what we were looking for. How long had Guido been imprisoned now suffering unimaginable torture? We had no idea if the spell had him asleep or just immobilized. She had been so patient for so long. She needed action.
I understood. It reminded me that soon the sword would be finished and I would have a decision to make. I needed to check on the Mountain again when I had a chance.
There were fish in these reefs and although they were unpleasant they weren't large. They had bony armor on their faces, horns and needle-like teeth. They appeared to feed by ramming the reef with their horns and then filtering the debris through their needle-like teeth. If you were in the water, they could do some damage, but they mostly didn't attack the boat. Izzy drove a few of them off by poking at them with an arrow.
Once we were careless in a particularly narrow channel and punched a hole in the boat. It wasn’t a large hole, although water started filling the boat. I used one of the more trivial applications of my power—altering local molecular structure—to increase minerals and impurities in the water to form a plug in the boat. We then bailed what water had gotten in the bottom of the boat with our hands. Well, most of it. We were pretty wet already and it no longer seemed all that important to get every last drop out.
I had been most worried about the glowing reefs attracting the water demons, but apparently they really did travel more
in open waters. We certainly didn't encounter any, which was good because we probably would have had a hard time if they came in numbers.
Finally, we arrived at what we had presumed was our destination and it wasn't encouraging. There were actually two islands, one larger and one smaller. Directly over the large island it looked like the sky had been broken. There was no other way to describe it. I knew right away this was the place referred to as where the sky had shattered. It was where the Angels had come from, the Idiri. Through that hole was their hostile universe, though all we could see was a purple blackness that was so deep you could actually tell the difference between it and the dark sky surrounding it. And no stars appeared in that tear. The fracture itself was outlined in a thin line of yellow-white energy. The multicolored flashes came from bolts of bright light that would emanate from the edges of the tear, shafts of pure and probably destructive energy that shot down, sometimes hitting one of the islands, sometimes hitting the ocean. When it hit the ocean, the energy just dissipated across the water. I had no idea what would happen if you were in the water when it hit. When it hit the land it just seemed to be absorbed, but neither island offered much hope that it wasn't destructive. We could see more of the large island than the small island because it had a ghostly illumination from the tear in the sky. It seemed to be unyielding scorched earth with craters and no vegetation.
I turned to Saripha. Her eyes were like steel.
“They are here. Somewhere.”
I could tell she was trying to convince herself as much as me. I looked at Izzy. He shrugged.
“Time for some reconnaissance, I think.”
Izzy was right. This was Saripha's show. She was convinced her intuition led us to Adaxa. We had to try to see why. I was just worried because I wasn't sure Saripha could handle one more dead end. It was strange to think about that. Saripha had always been the center and strength of our group. However, our feelings were what liberated us in this world. That no matter what happened, powers or no powers, we remained human in this world. That included staying aware of our deepest emotions.