Heirs of Mana Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  The woman had retained her human form, though her flesh had turned red from the scalding. Pele stood, flung water from her hand, and reignited her fires. Namaka pushed herself onto hands and knees and glared at Pele. Good. Let her see it coming.

  “You have earned this a hundred times over.” Pele stalked over and kicked Namaka in the ribs, sending the other woman into a crumpled heap. Namaka rolled over onto her back, groaning.

  Pele stalked in, hands blazing.

  Namaka twisted her wrist, yanking it toward herself.

  The sound of rushing air offered the only warning Pele had, but it was enough to tell her to fling herself prone. A spear of water launched itself through the air where she had stood and impacted a boulder with enough force to crack it. Pele rolled over, glaring. She was going to burn this bitch.

  The other queen jerked her arms outward and a wave followed them, slamming into Pele, sending her tumbling down the beach and back into the sea.

  The impact dazed her, gave her no time to hold her breath, and she sucked down a mouthful of water. Gasping, spinning underwater, she twisted to see the mermaid—or a shadow of her—swim around her at impossible speeds. Pele scrambled upward, unable to think of anything but air. Something hit her from behind, knocking her out of the water and against a rock. She caught a single breath before plunging back into the ocean.

  And then the mermaid was upon her, shoving her against the same rock, eyes glaring with hatred. “I gave you a chance!” Namaka’s hand closed around Pele’s throat, her strength Otherworldly.

  Pele beat against her arm ineffectively. She felt the heat build behind her eyes, lurking within her rage. She snarled even as her hair caught aflame. The fires spread to her hands and Namaka shrieked.

  The mermaid twisted around and flung Pele upside down. She hurtled through the air, everything whizzing by in a blur for the instant before sand hit her and blasted the air from her lungs.

  By the time Pele gained her feet, dazed and groaning, Namaka had risen from the sea and surrounded herself with swirling waters intersecting in a lattice like a fisherman’s net—one spinning so quickly as to be a near blur. Pele hesitated. No fire she threw would cut through that kind of protection. Which meant mere flame would not be enough in this case. She needed something bigger.

  She smacked her fists to the ground, calling up magma. The whole island shook, splitting apart as sulfuric fumes billowed forth, followed a heartbeat later by dozens of bursts of lava.

  “Stop!” someone shouted behind her. Hi‘iaka, no doubt.

  Pele didn’t spare the girl a glance. She had to end this. Hi‘iaka was one of the people she needed to protect.

  A jet of water shot out at her as she advanced on Namaka. Pele reached out to a volcanic geyser and yanked the lava in front of her, blocking the water. Lava turned to rock and water was vaporized. Without waiting to see Namaka’s next move, Pele summoned more lava, spinning it around her in a ring. She couldn’t quite mimic Namaka’s lattice, but she called up another ring, and another, until she had five hula-like rings encircling her, shielding her from Namaka’s spears of water.

  Namaka still stood with her own net of protection. She whipped her arms forward, sending dual arcs of water from her net streaming at Pele. Pele sent a ring spiraling outward to meet those arcs, the two forces obliterating each other. Pele countered by flinging one of her lava rings at Namaka, who doused it with an arc of her own.

  A tremor split them apart and Pele stumbled, almost toppling backward. “You can’t win! You’re too spent to use the force of your power.”

  Namaka spun, her net transforming into trails of water streaming from both hands like whips that stretched for forty feet each. She jerked her arms around in wide arcs, her water whips crashing into boulder after boulder, destroying each as Pele dashed about, seeking cover.

  Well, damn.

  If Namaka would push her limits that far, perhaps Pele could get her to burn off so much mana the bitch just died from it.

  The sheer force of that much water would cut through Pele’s rings, so she abandoned them, running for her life. She dove to the ground, turning as she did so, and sent an arc of lava cascading toward Namaka. The arc impacted one of the water whips, severing it. Namaka stumbled and fell face forward.

  Pele used the opportunity to dash behind another boulder, hopefully out of the Sea Queen’s awareness. She slumped down, panting. She pressed her palms to the ground. A few streams of lava wasn’t enough to give her the advantage here. She needed a river of it, even if it meant calling up another eruption of Kīlauea.

  “Stop it, please!” Hi‘iaka shrieked. Pele had to keep the girl clear of the chaos. She had to finish Namaka before Hi‘iaka got swept up in the elemental forces at play.

  The Earth responded to her call, rumbling first, then splitting apart in a crevice a dozen paces long and half as wide. Lava pooled up from it, pitching down both sides, one of which would pour into the sea. All she’d need to do now was—

  A blade of water slashed over her head, cutting through trees like an enormous axe. Wood splintered and exploded throughout the jungle.

  ‘Aumākua!

  Pele dashed for further cover, ducking and rolling as Namaka spun, another of her water blades racing overhead.

  Snarling, Pele called up a surge of lava and sent it crashing toward Namaka in a rolling wave. The Sea Queen raised her hands, dropping those destructive blades. Instead, the beach exploded in geyser after geyser, catching the lava wave and halting its progress in a curtain of steam and toxic vapors.

  “Stop this!”

  The very air was charged with the power of this fight. It had Pele’s hair standing on end, her skin tingling, her body feeling apt to burst apart at the seams. “Surrender to destiny!” she spat at Namaka.

  The Sea Queen responded by sending a blade of water along the ground in a slashing arc that tore through the beach, flinging sand in its wake. Pele jerked her arms up and raised a wall of lava to block the assault. The water blade impossibly sheared through the lava wall but evaporated before it could continue to slice Pele in half.

  “Stoooop!”

  Pele hesitated a moment, looking to her little sister, and even Namaka faltered. Lightning crackled behind Hi‘iaka’s eyes. It coruscated over her arms and resounded with a clap as deafening as the taniwha’s roar. It swirled around the screaming girl in a vortex that had begun to lift Hi‘iaka off her feet, so bright it stung Pele’s eyes and left blurred images flitting around her vision.

  A maelstrom of lightning that just kept growing and growing.

  Oh … fuck.

  “Hi‘iaka!” Pele shrieked. “Release it! Release it now, you’re not ready for—”

  Bolts of lightning erupted in all directions. They lanced into the jungle, detonating trees. They struck boulders and blew them into shards. Lightning rolled along the ground, dancing over the puddles left by Namaka’s fury. It jumped from one into Namaka herself and sent the Sea Queen hurtling through the air in a smoldering ball.

  The roar of thunder drowned out all other sounds. Galvanic arcs had set the whole jungle ablaze. And, though Pele could no longer hear the girl, her mouth was agape in a scream of pain and terror as she hovered five feet off the ground.

  Shrieking endlessly.

  Fuck.

  Pele scrambled toward her little sister but couldn’t come within a hundred feet. Even that close, the leaping blasts of lightning felt like they’d rip her skin from her bones. The storm raged over the jungle, over the sea, poised to swallow half the island in a galvanic cataclysm.

  Hi‘iaka was going to obliterate Vai‘i.

  And then the lightning erupted upward like a volcano venting a thousand years of pressure.

  A wave of energy flung Pele off her feet and hurled her into a patch of scorched sand.

  She heard nothing save a whine in her ears. Saw nothing save the afterimage burned into her eyes … Her beautiful little sister falling.

  37

  B
reathing hurt. Namaka’s lungs felt charred. Her skin and scales bled from dozens of ruptures, even as she dragged herself back toward the beach. Blinking, Namaka took in devastation as complete as anything they had wrought in Uluka‘a.

  Despite her intention to find a truce with Pele, despite even managing to work together to destroy the taniwha, still her treacherous sister had turned on her. And unleashed this.

  And Hi‘iaka!

  Groaning, Namaka resumed her legs and crawled along the beach to where a form lay motionless. A young girl.

  No.

  No, no, no, this was not happening. Not her too …

  Grunting with the effort and leaving a trail of blood behind her, Namaka made her way to Hi‘iaka’s side. The girl’s eyes were closed. Namaka laid her head upon her sister’s chest.

  No heartbeat.

  She had done it. The fear that held back all heirs of Haumea. Hi‘iaka had burned through so much of her mana it had snuffed out her very life.

  Namaka couldn’t make herself rise. Couldn’t do anything save lay there, head on the girl’s chest, moaning.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  She’d come back here to make peace.

  This was not supposed to have happened.

  Namaka looked up at the uncertain footsteps approaching. Pele, leaning on … Kapo? They were together?

  Namaka had tried to rest, to regain her strength, but it would probably be some time before she could manage any real control over the waters again. The mana she had drawn from Milolii was gone forever, and her own had yet to replenish itself. Spending time near the sea would help with that, of course.

  She couldn’t fight the both of them at the moment, nor had she ever truly understood the extent of Kapo’s powers. If they intended to kill her, she might not be able to stop them.

  She pushed herself onto unsteady feet and fixed a glare upon Pele. “Our sister is dead because of your betrayal.”

  “Dead?” Pele’s voice was a squeak, thick with disbelief, eyes wide and seeming as if she was having a hard time seeing.

  Kapo eased herself away from Pele and moved to stand between Namaka and Pele. “Is there not more than enough blame to go around for all you have both done? Can either of you truly believe yourselves not responsible for all this death and destruction?”

  “Dead?” Pele repeated. “She can’t …”

  “You did this,” Namaka snapped.

  “Both of you, stop,” Kapo commanded, jabbing a finger in Hi‘iaka’s direction. “This is what your war has come to. A dead child on a smoldering beach.”

  Namaka winced, shaking her head. Kapo was right. They had ruined Sawaiki nearly as much as they had ruined Uluka‘a. Now that she was, in a sense, Nyi Rara as well as Namaka, she felt an irresistible calling back to her other people. And the mer would always be her people now.

  Maybe there was nothing left to do here.

  Maybe she should flee the surface forever.

  “You cannot fix all that has gone on,” Kapo said. “But there is a small chance you can fix this. You did it before, the two of you, working together.”

  “Did what?” Pele asked.

  “What did Maui seek?”

  Namaka looked up abruptly. “The Waters of Life. There were three springs. One in Uluka‘a, which is gone. One at some unknown location …”

  “And one in Sawaiki,” Pele finished. “He died in Sawaiki seeking the Waters of Life.”

  “One more truce,” Kapo said. “Let the two of you work together and find the spring. Save your little sister before her soul is lost in Pō.”

  Namaka looked to Pele. This woman had taken so very much from her. But Kapo was right. The only time anyone had ever found the Waters of Life before was when the two of them worked together.

  It was a chance they would have to take.

  Maybe their last chance.

  Epilogue

  Lonomakua and Kapo had promised to keep Hi‘iaka’s soul from departing or becoming a lapu, and thus Namaka had carried the girl—she seemed to weigh nothing now—to a house in Puna.

  In the dark, before a small fire, Namaka sat with her dead sister’s head in her lap. She and Pele had lost a sister before, once, and she could not forgive that loss. But this, this was worse.

  Hi‘iaka’s brilliant, innocent vibrance had been snuffed out, and only because the girl wanted peace between her sisters.

  Namaka stroked the girl’s cold cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

  Pele’s kahuna ducked back into the house bearing an armful of candlenut torches which he began to arrange around a mat designed to hold the body. How long would they be able to keep her body from rotting? How long could they keep her soul from drifting off into Pō?

  “Put her here,” Lonomakua said, and Namaka obliged, gently lifting the girl there, and watching as the kahuna prepared his chanting.

  “I was so young when I first met you,” she said, after a moment.

  Lonomakua stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “You and Pele both were.”

  “I’m not talking about Namaka. I’m talking about a young mermaid princess who happened to find a chance meeting with a kahuna, in days before there were kāhuna.” Namaka shook her head. “I didn’t see it sooner, so caught up with everything. I wasn’t looking for it. After all, everyone said you died eight hundred years ago.”

  The man hesitated a moment before resuming his work with Hi‘iaka’s body. “I did.”

  “No,” Namaka said, shaking her head. “No, Firebringer, you are here. And now, you’re going to help us finish what you started so long ago. You’re going to help us find the Waters of Life.”

  When he looked to her at last, with those crystal blue eyes, Namaka could not say whether hope or fear lurked behind them. Pain, certainly, of that she had no doubt. The weight of ages pressing down upon someone.

  And a sudden, inescapable instinct that now screamed in her mind, telling her she was missing something.

  But she was going to find it.

  Much as Nyi Rara wished to begin the hunt for the Waters of Life immediately, she could not do so without first checking in on Mu.

  At last the city came into view, but she had not crossed into it before a merman darted out from the reef and grabbed her, pulling her back into a crevice.

  Ake looked her over, face grave. “I thought you had been lost.”

  Nyi Rara frowned. “Maybe I was. I guess I found myself now.”

  The merman shook his head, not bothering to hide his perplexed look. “The he‘e have taken the city. I’m only here with a small scout force, watching them.”

  Taken the city … “Where is the queen?”

  “Escaped just before Kanaloa sacked the palace.”

  “Kanaloa?” The god-king of the he‘e. He was truly here. The thought opened a terrible pit in Nyi Rara’s stomach. The direct spawn of the Elder Deep had moved against them.

  Unable to resist the sudden urge, she stuck her head out of the reef and peered at the palace. Despite the darkness, now she saw what she had missed before—octopus arms peeking out of the windows, the entrances, but arms far larger than those of the he‘e. It was impossible to judge their true size when seeing mere glimpses of them. But Nyi Rara had to guess this he‘e god-king must be near as large as the taniwha itself had been. Maybe larger.

  This too, the Urchin had tried to show her.

  The dragon had been a mere distraction, meant to draw her away while the he‘e took the palace, took the entire city. The taniwha had done its work well, and it had cost her more than she could measure.

  And now Kanaloa, god of magic, lord of he‘e, controlled the Urchin and all the power and knowledge it represented.

  This creature had brought all of this down on her. It had betrayed the alliance with Mu and slaughtered her mer brothers and sisters. It had defiled a royal palace that had stood for more than four thousand years. And it had sent a taniwha among the people of Sawaiki as nothing but a gambit, a ploy.

  But
if this creature had intended to kill her with the dragon, it had failed.

  Nyi Rara turned back to Ake. “This battle is lost, Ake. It’s time we start planning for the war.”

  Author’s Note

  When my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I began to conceive of a fairytale about princesses blessed or cursed with extraordinary power. This idea eventually merged with my conceptions of a Polynesian-based setting within the Eschaton Cycle, and a world inundated by endless ocean.

  I visited Hawaii for research and instantly fell in love with the place and the energy that permeated it. This soon led me to begin a charming but simple series following various princesses on their adventures across the archipelago. The first book I published as The Seventh Princess in 2015, and two sequels shortly thereafter. The stories had many aspects I loved, though I can admit they were more problematic than many of my other works, in terms of tonal consistency and portrayal. Perhaps as a result of my original inspiration, the stories read like tales that wanted to be YA, but as that is not my genre, failed to fit into that mold and thus existed in a nebulous no-man’s land without a genre.

  In 2016, I began the process of rebooting my publishing career, coinciding with the vast expanding and rewriting of The Apples of Idunn. This eventually led me to realize I wished to give the same treatment to all my early work. I removed the princess books from sale and began making notes on how to expand them, improve them, and—crucially—make sure that they, as stories within the Eschaton Cycle, had a tone consistent with that universe.

  I also used the time to dig much deeper into the inspirations I’d chosen, which eventually led me to disregard a primary plot line from the original (namely a stand-in for Captain James Cook) and instead focus on an earlier period for inspiration. That is, the coming of the second wave of Polynesian settlers.