by Matt Larkin
Her gills began to flap again, letting her breathe.
She looked up to see Kanaloa’s enormous beak descend on the tail of a fleeing Nanaue. The mer was bit in half, his torso resuming human form even as it drifted toward her in a shower of gore.
In desperation, Nyi Rara swam to Kauhuhu’s fallen body, hoping for just a little more mana. She bit down on the corpse’s flesh. She tore chunks of it away, devouring it as quickly as she could stomach. Mana flooded into her arms and ribs until she could feel the bones fuse together. Then, finally, she used her hands to break apart her meal’s ribcage and extract his heart. This she ate in three bites. It was the strongest source of mana and she needed all she could get.
The power was nothing compared to what she’d taken from Pele, but that she saved for slaying this monstrosity.
Finally, blood streaming from her mouth, she looked up at Kanaloa and screamed in fury. A dozen swirling currents surrounded her, breaking off in spears of water as she fired one after another at the god-king. The he‘e roared again, and Nyi Rara used another jet to propel herself away. This monster had caused all the harm that had befallen Sawaiki.
And it was time he paid for those misdeeds. She fed mana into the blood seeping from the gouges Kauhuhu had torn in Kanaloa’s arm. And, holding it firmly in her mind, she yanked her hands backward. Flesh peeled away, splitting from the inside out, spreading down to the tip of that arm. The god-king’s shriek was so mind-rending it actually stalled her attacks and forced her to clutch her ears.
When she looked up again, Kanaloa’s arms surged upward, tearing apart the palace in bestial wrath. Chunks of stone each weighing tons broke free, raining down upon her and the assaulting Nanaue in a hail of destruction. The roar of cracking stone drowned out all other sound. Cephalopodic limbs—she’d taken off half his arm, but he had another seven needing her attention—crushed the throne room, bringing all down in the space of moments.
Nyi Rara flung herself aside with a jet of water, even as a capstone the size of a house crashed down into the space she’d just occupied. More and more debris fell from above. She darted one way, then another, but still a stone from above smacked into her back, driving her downward.
Crushing weight pinned her tail down, drawing out a scream of bubbles from her. A falling column tumbled down toward her. Shrieking, Nyi Rara shoved at the stone holding her in place. It wouldn’t budge.
Then a draconic claw slapped the block away with ease and yanked her out of the way of the collapsing pillar. Mokuhinia yet lived.
Together, they fled the collapsing palace.
Only to come to witness Kanaloa, finally unfurled in all his prodigious bulk, stretching out near to the size of Mu itself. A mesh of limbs filled the sea, crushing buildings in their passage, swatting mer and sharks like insects. Kanaloa’s god-like clamor echoed for miles. To look upon him in such a state was to envision a second Deluge. An apocalypse he could visit upon all Sawaiki.
Two of those arms had snared Piika and sought to rip the Dragon King bodily in half, yanking him in two different directions.
No.
No more.
No more loss, no more death.
She looked to Mokuhinia at her side. “Call your brethren. Pin him down. If you can occupy his arms and hold him still, I have a plan.”
A gift for him. Mana, drawn from Pele. Nyi Rara felt her torso would rip apart for the rage she leveled at Kanaloa now.
Perhaps he felt it, for his obsidian black eyes turned to her. Met her gaze. Perhaps he detected the surge of her ire, of her power, carried toward him on currents of Pō. Perhaps he saw it and thought her a petty mortal, still not yet broken beneath his Will.
Looking into those yes, she felt the pulse of mana within. Not just his power, but that mana tinged with the familiar taste of the Elder Deep. A Chintamani stone inside the god-king’s gullet.
As he gazed upon her, she felt the pressure rise again, the great pearl’s call to her, demanding subservience from her draconic blood. No … never again. Nyi Rara gritted her teeth, summoning jets of water to herself, then she launched herself away, far beyond the edge of Mu, to the surrounding reef.
She saw the Dragon Kings surging down at Kanaloa, seeking to save Piika and follow her last order to them.
Nyi Rara winced, stretching her hands out before her. Her mana poured out of her in a flood, seeping into the surrounding waters. Not mere jets from her hands, but a coil to engulf her entire body. A condensed maelstrom formed up into an inverted vortex like a spear point. Screaming, she allowed the current to claim her. To fling her forward into in a spiraling surge that seemed to engulf all the sea in her passing.
Faster than she had ever moved. The ocean roared about her ears. Everything spun round and round. All her focus narrowed to that Chintamani stone in the distance. It was a mile, perhaps, but it passed in a blinding, deafening, maddening instant that threatened to tear her to pieces.
All four Dragon Kings now lay enmeshed with those cephalopodic limbs, caught, pinned, or struggling in a colossal contest that obliterated buildings with each writhing twist, each shift of the battle.
And then the maelstrom’s spearpoint burst into Kanaloa’s exposed head. She was screaming, drawing the ocean in her wake, coursing through the hole she ripped in the god-king.
A blur of sundered flesh. Waters scraping the beak, exploding through the digestive tract, ripping through brains. She caught the flaming pearl and burst back out the other side in a trail of ink and blood that stretched out for another half mile.
Panting, Nyi Rara twisted around to see the Dragon Kings breaking free from the limbs that had held them. Turning upon the sputtering, broken form of the god-king as convulsions wracked it. Its limbs continued to flail, as if unable to accept the breaking of their owner.
For a pathetic moment that stretched on and on, Kanaloa flopped around, refusing to die.
But as draconic jaws gnawed through his arms, Piika’s own maw closed on his head, further ripping the creature to pieces.
It was … over.
Nyi Rara clutched the precious pearl to her chest.
Over, save … that Maui had told her to feast upon Kanaloa’s hearts. Nyi Rara set her jaw and swam in toward the macabre spectacle.
53
The ravages of death had seized Pele. The convulsive agony of drowning had not ended with the expiration of her body, but rather, she felt herself caught in that moment over and over. With each passing instant, her throat and lungs burned, even as her soul flitted along the umbral wasteland where the sea ought to have been.
Finding herself physically shunted into Pō proved infinitely more terrifying than simply using the Sight to spy across the Veil. Where her extraordinary sense allowed her to glimpse an intimation of shadows dancing at the fringes of reality, the effect here was magnified many times over. Color had utterly bled out save for the coldness of distorted indigo, swirled up into the gray-on-black landscape.
An ever-present chill wracked her, quite apart from the icy cold of the waters in her lungs. And a susurrus of whispers and moans carried on a breeze that seemed to circle from all directions. The torments of every soul lost at sea … at least those not yet pulled down into oblivion.
And oblivion surely beckoned. With every step, the landscape seemed to lap at her heels while a force she could not see continually seemed to pull her ever deeper into shadow. It was, no doubt, the call of what Lonomakua had termed the Astral Roil.
Fury held her tethered to the Mortal Realm. That alone kept her from being dragged off, pulled perhaps down into Manua’s court or destroyed utterly.
The landscape here grew truly alien, warped not only by the distortion of Pō, but rising and falling in the incomprehensible way of the seabed. Edifices rose up, perhaps coral in the Mortal Realm, and nearby, chasms of seeming limitless depths, forcing her to skirt them for what seemed miles. Hints of life on the far side of the Veil flickered, shades flitting in and out of her awareness. Fish, their essen
ces barely noticeable, and stronger auras—mer, no doubt.
Not knowing why, she plodded onward, compelled forward without a hint of reason to her steps. Much as she tried to cling to purpose, it was as if that flitted from her mind. Driven by it, perhaps, by the unending torment of her dying over and over.
The absolute torture of it.
Small wonder those ghosts who lingered, unsent by kāhuna, tended toward transformation into lapu, consumed and warped by rage. It bubbled in her, too, until all she saw was Namaka’s betrayal of her. All she felt was a pain deeper than the physical agony, abrading her soul.
That realization brought her to a stop.
Gulping down etheric air she could not breathe in a vain attempt to displace the water drowning her. Crackling flames sparked along her fingertips. Sputtering candles that failed to drive the shadows back by more than a half foot.
If rage alone could hold her soul steady, then that would become her focal point. The crux of her existence. There was, after all, a kind of peace that came with surrendering to the inevitable. One could be absolved of one’s choices if all was fate.
A warped bird’s shriek mingled with the wailing wind. A further discordance, as if even animals faced damnation in death. Despite herself, Pele found a perverse grin spreading over her face. The knowledge that she alone was not suffering such agony offered inexplicable comfort, even as that very comfort sparked a hint of guilt within her breast. She shouldn’t have relished the torment of anyone, much less an animal … but how long was she to drown before she wanted something, anything, to share her plight?
Sputtering flames tinged with violet light spread along her arms, and she slumped to her knees.
Burn.
Let creation burn alongside her.
Another screech, this time drawing her gaze up to the crackling, shifting firmament where an owl circled overhead. The bird descended in a slow arc before alighting on a rocky rise ahead of her. The owl’s gaze held her own, paralyzing Pele.
She was … she was so close to … becoming … something that could endure this state.
That gaze pulled her deeper.
Deeper.
Until she knew. Pu‘u-hele lurked behind those eyes. The ‘aumakua that Pele herself had redeemed from eternity as a lapu.
She blinked, and it was her sister down there, a plaintive smile on her face. Imploring. Reaching a hand toward Pele, as she had done once before, in the Place of Darkness. Still, it seemed, the girl could not speak, and still she moved to help. And in her eyes, Pele saw the price of that help.
She would have to surrender her wrath.
The one thing holding her essence together. Giving it up might mean her dissolution. Perhaps that was what Pu‘u-hele offered. Guidance, the way ‘aumākua guided their descendants into deeper depths of Pō, where they could no longer trouble the living.
“She betrayed me!” Pele spat at her little sister. “Namaka betrayed me!”
Pu‘u-hele said nothing, of course. Just remained there, hand outstretched.
“Without this fury, what am I?” Pele demanded.
Slowly, her sister’s hand lowered, as if accepting that Pele had chosen rage over going quietly into the darkness. If she could do nothing else, she would remain here and find a way to haunt Namaka. To burn all she loved in repayment for her treachery.
That was purpose.
Purpose enough to hold her essence together. To keep her from fading away.
Purpose … inimical to all Lonomakua had ever tried to teach her.
Anger is poison, he’d said, over and over.
Pele shuddered. Pu‘u-hele had once more resumed the aspect of an owl, and moved to take flight. This was it … the final choice. Become some flame-touched lapu, or let it all go …
“Wait,” Pele croaked, lunging for the owl.
Pu‘u-hele’s wings hurled her aloft. Then her talons closed upon Pele’s wrists. A sudden vertigo seized Pele as they hurtled upward, on and on, rising beyond the insubstantial sea and into actual sky.
The crackling firmament seemed too close, as if they drew near to the edge of reality, where existence lacked finished form, blurring in a miasma of color and storm. On and on the owl flew.
There seemed little sense of time here, but at last, Pele recognized Vai‘i as Pu‘u-hele flew over the largest of the Sawaikian islands. As she closed in on the shadowy mirror of Kīlauea. Above the crater, the owl released her, and Pele fell, pitching into bubbling lava.
Like the sea, she’d imagined it would have no substance in this reality. But as she hit the surface, it embraced her with luscious warmth. She sank beneath the lava, and her chest heaved. The water in her lungs retched upward, finally clearing them, such that when her head breached the surface she could actually breathe.
Far below, she could feel the thrum of familiar mana, the core of the volcano offering connection all the way down to the World of Fire, whence came her powers. Rather than descend, she looked skyward, to where Pu‘u-hele flew in circles around the crater, as if still looking down on her.
That was the choice her sister offered her now, then. Not to descend into the shadowy nether of the Astral Roil, but to embrace what she had been all along. To become something like Moho, except bound to this mountain. Something between Fire spirit and ‘aumakua?
To save Pele, as she had once tried so hard to save Pu‘u-hele.
It was … perhaps better than she deserved.
She was changing, she knew, and sooner or later, she’d descend the depths of the volcano and enter the Spirit Realm. Learn the true nature of Fire. Perhaps it was pyromantic insight, but she knew he would come, though, and thus she waited at the crater’s lip.
She watched as Lonomakua climbed the slope, seeming more worn down than she had ever seen him. Seeming … finally something resembling his ancient age, beaten down by the passing of eras while he endured, deathless and alone.
He came to rest on the summit nearby to her, and his aspect snapped into sharper relief as he must have embraced the Sight. And, unbelievably, an unshed tear seemed to glisten in one of his crystal blue eyes. “I … I’m sorry, Pele. I should have stopped you.”
Oh. Because he had known this would happen if she went.
Looking into the flames in the crater, she had seen what had transpired. Seen Namaka feast upon her flesh, then break free from Kanaloa’s hold over her mind. Seen her sister slay the god-king and forever change the Worldsea. None of it left her much pleased, but then, perhaps it had been inevitable, or at least necessary.
And Lonomakua had known. He had faltered, not sent her to her mission when he should have, because he could not bear it when the moment came. It was his moment of weakness, but here he found himself believing his failing had been not trying harder to hold her back from that destiny.
Namaka had always been meant to kill her. Altering that fate might have meant the loss of the world itself to Kanaloa’s machinations. The knowledge was a bitter salve, true, but it offered some measure of comfort.
She wished she could reach out and touch Lonomakua. One using the Sight theoretically opened themselves to contact from beyond the Veil, but Pele simply lacked the knowledge or strength to reach him.
For now.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I never did.”
Lonomakua scoffed. “Even knowing I orchestrated this decades ago? Knowing I used you to defeat my enemy.”
“What I know … is that my father loved me. That he would have spared me the rigors of life or the calling of fate, if he could have done so. It’s enough to hold on to the shreds of my mind and to try to knit back together my wounded soul.” She hesitated. “You stole primal Fire from down there.” She cocked her head back at the volcano in case her meaning was unclear. “How can I not want to see it for myself?” She chuckled. “Oh, how I idolized you, begging you for mo‘olelo about the Firebringer over and over, never imagining he walked by my side.”
“Pele …”
She rose
, offering him a smile. “I want Hi‘iaka to know I am here. That I persist here, and that I will find a way to see her again when she has finished her training with Kapo. I may not be able to leave this mountain now, but I will see her, and she me.”
Lonomakua returned her smile, his still tinged with sadness. “She will know. Everyone knows, Pele. Kīlauea announced your return with sputters of lava and plumes of smoke that have not ceased since. This place has its own spirit now, and the people know you will keep it for them for all of time.”
Yes.
She was home.
54
On the shores beyond Puna, Kamapua‘a sat, tide lapping his feet. He’d lost his outrigger helping Pele, but Naia had provided another, so he could have set out for Kau already. Shit, he needed to make it across the whole damn Worldsea to Kahiki and find Lono.
Maybe the god could help with his condition.
Maybe that would even stop the Boar God from completely taking over Kama’s body.
Instead, he found himself sitting in her kingdom. He’d gone up the mountain and felt her there, as if she wasn’t really gone. Caught himself wondering if she could hear him when he bid her ‘aloha’ for the last time.
It had taken a long swim to reach the islands, and longer still to get back to this village. But he had to come. He had to.
The kahuna, Lonomakua, drew near, his scent announcing him long before his stroll carried him to Kama’s side. The tall man settled down beside Kama, saying nothing, just watching the Worldsea at his side.
He’d been the one to tell Kama that Pele had returned to Kīlauea in death. The Boar God had grumbled in his gut at the idea of more spirits, never fond of other denizens of Pō. Kama didn’t care, though, and had climbed all the way to the summit in the hopes of catching even a glimpse of his wife.
Maybe she couldn’t show herself, or maybe she chose not to, after all he had inflicted upon her.
He’d realized then that some part of him had still indulged in a fantasy, thinking they bred a race of children who would become the future kings and queens of this land. But she was gone, and he was still just a shit.