“The only good little girl deep inside me,” the witch said, “is the one I ate for breakfast.”
“Noted.” I lifted the hissing sketchpad. Colors flashed with all the brilliance of a Care Bear Stare, which blasted the witch square in the face. Butterflies flooded from the page, choking her, and she released me to swat at them. Two golden vipers sprang off the paper, scales a liquid shimmer as they struck like lightning. One latched onto an upper lip, the other a lower.
Gorfina howled. My serpents dropped to the floor, winding around my ankles and slithering up my legs until each coiled around a forearm. Their heads collapsed flat to the backs of my hands, stained-glass hoods spread—awaiting orders. I stared in awe. “Dak was right. Summoners rock.”
Gorfina screamed something that sounded like “wombat way whizz fat” and—after a moment’s translation—I realized it was “You won’t get away with that!” I eased backward. Her lips had swollen to the size and color of bicycle tire tubes, cracking open to ooze globs of tarry fluid. She hissed something about ibuprofen. No—“immune to poison.” Made sense for a witch.
I tapped one of my snakes’ stained-glass hoods and grinned. “That’s not venom. It’s holy water.”
Gorfina’s eyes shot wide and she leveled her wand at her own mouth, blubbering some kind of spell likely meant to purge the substance melting her lips.
It was then I learned the importance of pronunciation in Magaran spellcasting. Instead of curing her, the wand erupted in a gout of thunder and blew the witch’s head to pieces. Something the consistency of potato salad hit my chest so hard I staggered back. Once again, no blood—not a drop. Just gray matter, bone, and flesh.
Gorfina’s body thumped to the floor in my doorway and Elsie eased into view behind her, frowning at me. “Did you just kill that witch?”
“I… think she did the heavy lifting, actually.”
“Nice snakes.”
“Yeah, get a load of these pythons.” I flexed.
“Ooh! My hero. I have to go upstairs and cut stuff. How ’bout you hunker down here?”
Tempting. But the Akarri were out-magicked without me. I tucked my sketchpad under one arm. “Go on ahead. I’ll lock up behind you,” I lied. When Elsie disappeared through the weather-deck hatch, I followed into the corridor. Once above deck, I figured I could beg forgiveness for joining the fray.
A howl of pain—from witch or Akarri, I couldn’t tell—stopped me in my tracks. The shrill sound wilted my fortitude and I had the insane urge to dive beneath my bed. What the hell am I doing? It’s a war zone up there. I can’t even play paintball without getting shot in the head.
For longer than I should have, I stood there gulping for air and trying to slow my erratic heartbeat. I had no training. I wasn’t a soldier. I was a liability, I told myself. It was probably safer for the Akarri if I hid. Would be doing them a favor.
I glanced at the snakes on my arms. Except Dak was right. Odds are high I’ll run into Dracon. He’s fought battles, probably thousands of them. So I learn how to do this or I’m probably dead either way. I glanced at the deck hatch. Just get up there and hide behind stuff. Summon sketches and keep your head down. I screwed up my courage and took one step forward, then another, accelerating until I burst through the hatch onto the weather deck.
Elsie slammed into my back and threw me flat to the boards. A bolt of magic careened over our heads and turned a barrel into a pile of worms. “Are you crazy!” she screamed into my ear.
“That’d explain so much,” I said, staring at the wriggling heap in front of us.
Elsie dragged me behind a stack of crates where Tammagan crouched. She leaned out and fired from her bow. I realized we were toward the front of the ship and the Akarri had corralled three witches into one spot. Tammagan glared at me. When she noticed Elsie’s breastplate and the three bone claws, she lifted an incredulous eyebrow. Then she shook her head. “Lucky bitch.”
Elsie’s grin was roughly one thousand watts. “The gods must love me.”
Tammagan just smiled, fired another shaft over the boxes, and said, “They must, to stop arrows with such small targets.” She nodded over at me. “What’s the tourist doing here?”
“Wizard,” I said. “Remember?” I glanced around. “Where’s Ronin?”
Tammagan pointed straight up. Oh. He soared overhead among the cloud of flying eels. The albino beasts were each the size of three refrigerators stacked end to end, churning through the sky as if underwater. How I suddenly pined for witches who were misunderstood and played Quidditch on brooms.
A few witches rode their eels and dueled with Ronin, who was astride one with his sword planted into its skull, twisting the blade one way or the other to steer the beast’s head. Wherever its head went, its body followed.
“Those freaks downed our lightning cannons,” Tammagan said. Both cannons lay slumped and inoperative. “Ripped out the pneumatics—they can’t be aimed anymore. Ronin’s covering the skies. He’s dropped two, but we’ve still got these three pinned down above deck. Can’t seem to kill them. What about the ones downstairs?”
“Dead,” Elsie said.
“How?”
Elsie thumbed at me. I managed a little wave.
Tammagan’s jaw dropped. She shook it off. “You’re not serious.”
“A lot of trauma to the head seems to do the trick,” I said. “Both those witches died when their heads got blown up.”
Something screeched above. An eel swooped and we all three dove for cover at once. Tammagan and Elsie landed expertly behind the winch-and-pulley once used to reel me to the deck; I belly-flopped behind a measly spool of rope. The eel thundered into our crates, reducing them to a hail of splinters and thudding into the deck with force enough to bow the boards and jounce me into the air. The creature set its milky gaze on me.
A blur of white T-boned that eel into the ship’s mast. Ronin had driven his own eel directly into the one attacking us, folding it around the mast with a wet crunch; both eels lay stone dead.
Ronin never slowed, hurtling from the back of the eel he’d crashed and sprinting straight up the mast. He snatched a rope from the air and sliced a counterweight with his sword. A pulley squealed. He zoomed into the air, released the rope, and snapped his cloak wide, coasting a dozen yards before alighting onto the back of a third eel. He drove his sword through the ribcage of its rider, tossed her off, and I lost sight of the display as Ronin’s new eel dipped below the horizon of the weather deck. Like he’s playing Grand Theft Hogwarts.
I hunkered behind a dead eel and peeked overtop. The three witches on deck were up to something. They plucked arrows from their flesh and lined up, hugging shoulder to shoulder and pressing their cheeks together like three girls crowding a selfie. They cast with their wands simultaneously and tendrils of smoke circled their ankles. As the smoke worked higher, their three bodies melded into one. Sinews stitched together, organs surged from body to body, limbs broke, bent into unnatural angles, and were reabsorbed into its new corpus, which rose ten feet into the air like some fleshy Devastator made of hags.
The thing had broad shoulders and a hunched spine, its arms a tangle of unidentifiable muscles. One arm was longer than the other, and it had no head—just three side-by-side witch faces staring out of its hulking chest.
Tammagan drew her sword and advanced alongside Elsie. Three Akarri approached from the other side, cornering it.
The thing snarled and charged Tammagan at breakneck speed, accelerating as it went. Tammagan flicked to one side, hacking through a leg. The beast stumbled and smashed into the ship’s rail.
It flipped to face the Akarri and three feminine arms shot out. The witches’ right arms and faces were the only parts not melded into the hulking monster. Those errant limbs each clutched a wand and poked from the creature’s shoulder, rib, and thigh.
It leveled its wands on Tammagan and at once all three mouths spoke the same incantation: “All may be ever gone!” The wands fired black streamers.
Elsie skidded to a halt beside Tammagan and their mirrored swords flashed. Two magical streamers deflected into the night.
The third struck Elsie. I watched it happen. It struck her naked torso, between steel bikini top and chain skirt, precisely where I’d botched her defenses. Elsie stood there a moment, frowned, then grinned—as if to say, “Is that all?” But her next breath came ragged and short. Redness spread across her abdomen. She fell to her knees, wheezing for air.
Oh God.
I needed to act. But what the hell was I supposed to do? You’re the wizard. Figure it out! I had to kill the monster first, I realized, and without quite knowing what to do when I got there, I ran straight for it.
Three horrible faces glared at me. Their three wands centered on my chest.
My valor flickered like a candle flame in a breeze, but before it could gutter, I remembered my snakes. I made a tossing gesture with my right arm. A golden cobra sprang from my hand and sank cruel fangs into one of the monster’s wrists. Its arm turned black. The limb shriveled, split along veiny seams, and fell to the deck like a rotted banana.
The witch-beast howled and stomped hard on the snake still attached to the severed arm, shattering it into glittering gold fragments.
“Get back!” shouted Tammagan. She seized my shoulder and tossed me behind her just as the beast recovered and fired again from its two remaining wands. Tammagan’s entire body lurched to one side and she spun her blade in a desperate arc that deflected both beams, one near the hilt and the other the tip.
More Akarri joined her and between them, they forced the monster back. Two fought the wands while the others danced in and out of range of its mammoth fists, slicing and chopping at constantly regenerating flesh.
I had one snake left, and it wouldn’t be enough. I looked furtively across the deck for something to end the beast.
My eye caught the anchor rod’s casting turret—it was built into the foremost part of the deck, where the bowsprit normally went. Its pneumatics looked intact. An idea flared to life in my brain.
While Tammagan distracted the monster I sprinted for the castor. It was moored deep into the ship’s skeleton, a ball-shaped turret with the castor gun pointed outward. I dropped into the turret, reminiscent of the gunnery chair on the Millennium Falcon. The controls were freakishly similar to an enlarged version of an Xbox controller with similarly located joysticks and triggers. I love my world, I thought, smiling.
After a moment of testing, I got the hang of swiveling the turret and swung it all the way around, bringing the guns to bear above deck. Steam hissed from exhausts up top. I stared down iron sights at the end of the barrel, which was fed by a rack filled with a half-dozen anchor rods.
I depressed the right-side trigger.
A huge metal harpoon propelled by magic hummed across the deck. It thudded into the shoulder of the witch-beast, running it through. The left-side trigger activated the rod’s anchor chain—a violet ribbon of energy connecting the turret to the rod stuck into the creature.
It howled. I had it hooked on the barb. Manipulating one of the joysticks shortened the anchor chain, dragging the monster closer. I used the turret to lift it into the air, spin it over the side of the ship, and suspend it over the rocks far below.
I adjusted the length of the anchor chain until it was directly in front of the barrel of a disabled lightning cannon. We can’t aim them. But presumably they still fire.
Indeed, realization flashed in Tammagan’s eyes and she vaulted into the cannon turret.
A blast of white set the world aflame, burning away every shadow. A beam of spiraling lightning broke the sky in half. Thunder washed across the deck. The bolt struck home. For a brief moment I saw a silhouette of the witch-beast wreathed in blue, but when the lightning passed through, only my blackened anchor rod, firefly motes of ash, and a rain of bones remained.
I exhaled, wiping sweaty hands on my breeches, and stood from the turret. Elsie! I hopped to the deck and sprinted to where she lay. Tammagan beat me there and held her. A moment later, Ronin alighted on the deck and strode toward me. “I told you: the bunk or pain. You must like pain.”
“Hold on!” I shouted, dumping my backpack on the deck and scrabbling for the computer stone.
Ronin just folded his arms, as if to say, All right, wizard. Do wizard things.
I activated the gyroscope. It spun and my stone lifted into its center. Punching the button for Dak repeatedly, I looked Elsie over. The rash had spread from her abdomen to her face. She was in Tammagan’s lap, lurching every time she sucked in a needle of oxygen. Her face was swollen beyond recognition.
“She can’t breathe,” Tammagan shouted. “Someone get a medic!”
My hands shook. The computer kept ringing and Dak didn’t pick up.
“Well?” Tammagan hissed at me. “Fucking do something!”
“I’m thinking,” I said. I didn’t even know what spell Elsie was hit with. That was why I needed Dak.
Finally, the program clicked and I heard his voice without seeing him. “Audio only,” Dak said. “I’m working.” He still sounded pissed.
“Dak, please,” I gasped. “Don’t hang up.”
He must have registered the distress in my voice. “Are you okay?”
“No. Jesus, she’s messed up bad.” Hives boiled across Elsie’s body. “The witches were using magic and I don’t know what they hit her with. Their incantations were strange and I didn’t understand the connection between the words and the spells. But it was English. If I know what they cast, maybe we’ll know how to fix Elsie.”
“Easy, easy,” Dak said. “Will you calm your tits if I figure this out?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me what the, uh, witches said.”
I repeated their incantations from memory, noting especially which had made Elsie sick: All may be ever gone. “What does it mean?”
“Magic words have to sound arcane,” Dak said. “Rowling lifted from Latin. Spellcasters in DC Comics just use backwards spelling for their incantations.”
“This is all in English,” I said.
“But you’re right, it means something.” I could hear Dak scribbling on paper. “Here we go. They’re anagrams.”
“What?”
“Rearranged letters. Hang on. Solving an easy one. Yeah. You said she launched claws after saying, ‘Lo! War rains.’ Assuming it’s the R-A-I-N spelling, that’s an anagram of ‘arrow nails.’ And I think the one about ‘tots in urns’ was just ‘turn into spiders.’ Not sure about the last one.”
“Dak—I need to know what they hit her with. The healing stones are particular to the ailment. Is it poison? Disease? A curse?” My heart seized when I realized I couldn’t even make a healing stone without the right kanji. I glanced at an Akarri. “Go to my bunk and bring me the book that says ‘dictionary.’ Now.” She rushed below deck.
“Relax,” Dak said, his voice so nonchalant I wanted to punch him.
I fisted my hands into my pockets and bit down on a curse.
“What are her symptoms?” he asked.
“Are you going to solve it or what?”
“Need a clue. Symptoms?”
I glanced at her. “Swollen. Hives. She can’t breathe. Oh God, her lips are blue. Hurry!”
“Yeesh, cheese it up a little more why don’t you?”
Tammagan snarled. “Whoever you are, I’ll kill you for that. My soldier’s life hangs in the balance!”
“You found new women to game with?” Dak asked. “No wonder you won’t invite me.”
“Dak!”
“I got it. It’s ‘a bee venom allergy.’”
I felt stupid. “She’s in anaphylaxis.”
“Yep. Got any magic epinephrine lying around?”
“No.” And the Akarri wasn’t back with my dictionary.
Elsie’s body convulsed and Tammagan looked at me with horror. “I—I think she’s almost had it.”
I stood and ran my hands through my
hair. “Think, think, think.” Staring at Elsie didn’t help, so I scanned the deck. Something clicked: when I’d poisoned Gorfina with holy water, she’d tried using her wand to cure it. That was it.
I leaped for the patch of deck where the witch-beast’s arm had melted and dug through black slime, pulling out the dripping branch wand. Unwinding the golden serpent from my arm, I tapped its nose with the wand. “Purify this,” I said.
The snake bit one end of the wand and coiled its gleaming body around and around until it wrapped the wand base to tip. The whole thing flashed through with light, and the metallic serpent was fused to an ivory-colored wand instead of a crooked wooden one. The head of the wand was now a petrified serpent’s head with stained-glass hood spread.
I turned to my sketchpad and wrote a word, mentally rearranging letters.
“What are you doing?” Dak asked over the floating computer stone.
“Magic.” I jabbed the purified wand into Elsie’s midsection where the black magic had struck her. “Eep! Pin.”
Energy crackled through her. The rash faded outward from the wand’s point of contact. Her entire body arched and she inhaled in one gloriously long pull. Once she’d collapsed back to the deck, her breathing came in ragged gasps.
Dak chuckled. “EpiPen. Nice. See, this is why you need me. For riddles. Also, I’m good at anagrams, so I’d be a kickass sorcerer with your setting’s new magic system.”
An incredible weight lifted from my shoulders. Every drop of battle readiness pounding through my heart remained, but the steely tension knotting my muscles had fled. I was lightheaded and when I stood, the energy set me to pacing a tight circle, my limbs trembling.
“You there?” Dak asked. “Seriously, I think it’s time for you to cast ‘summon best friend.’ ”
“I can’t,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“This ‘you can’t play because in-game reasons’ shit is getting old. Very old.”
The Accidental God (A Pygmalion Fail Book 1) Page 10