Dream Storm Sea

by A. E. Marling

  In its fearless stupidity, it opened its jaws. Water sluiced inward, with vortexes of bubbles twirling to either side. Hiresha had anticipated it and Attracted herself backward to her gem to counter the suction. She hauled on her fang projectiles with equal force.

  Three seconds until the kraken could grab me.

  Hiresha bounced against the monstrous forehead. Neither its rocky face nor fish eyes could register surprise. Its mouth started closing.

  Hiresha’s fingers fluttered in front of the gap between its jaws. She yanked her hand away, and seven of her ivory daggers tore past, inside the fish, like harpoons hurled into its mouth. The slatted jaws fit together and closed them in.

  Two seconds left.

  The great platehead tossed its head. Its mouth popped open leaking a red cloud. Hiresha ran along its back, Attracting the fangs within it deeper.

  One second.

  Hiresha sprinted off the end of the great platehead’s tail. The fangs burst out behind her. Either the magical armor only defended from one direction, or the giant was already close to dead. Its long hulk listed downward. Blood trailed it like incense smoke, and the sharks took a new kind of interest.

  A thrill of accomplishment made her next breath taste less grimy, but she could take no great pleasure in mangling the innards of a dumb beast. She braced herself for the true test of wills, when tentacles wrapped around her.

  None came. The kraken jetted by the obvious target. As it sped into the distance its arms folded behind it like a spiral steeple.

  Hiresha could only assume the Murderfish had guessed her plan. It suspected something.

  The enchantress returned to the boat. Emesea spat out sea spray to shout.

  “Saw that great platehead leap to gobble you. Wish it could’ve been me.”

  “I wished it could’ve been you, too.” Hiresha said. “But I thank you for the battle tactic. Appearing helpless brought instant results.”

  Hiresha pointed to a patch of surf now brown with blood.

  “Some women gain all their power through meekness,” Tethiel said. “I did not expect it of you.”

  Tethiel reached around her waist. His touch grazed over the hole cut in her dress by the fish’s jaws, and waves of heat and chill rippled through her.

  The enchantress removed his hand and Attracted the edges of the fabric closed. “I cannot pursue the Murderfish. Its caution thwarts any direct attack. If I’m to defeat it with one jewel, I must deceive it.”

  “A grand feint.” Emesea let go of the paddles to clap her hands together and rub them.

  “Yes, I must appear more helpless than a princess in a scribe’s accounting office,” Hiresha said. “And I already know how it’s to be done.”

  Tethiel lofted a black crescent of an eyebrow.

  “Recall the tale of the spellsword and the Murderfish? He speared it near the heart. When the kraken grabs me, I’ll sense the enchanted spearhead. I’ll tear it through the kraken’s vitals.”

  Tethiel asked, “You are certain the spear tip remains inside?”

  “It was thus in the story and my dream.” Hiresha believed Intuition was trying to help by seeding hints into the other facet. “And the Murderfish has the same horrific web scar in this facet. The serrated spear that made such a wound would snare itself in the kraken’s tissues.”

  “I’ll be sorry if you kill the beauty,” Emesea said. “She was a good friend. Won’t be a better way out for her than dying to the strongest warrior enchantress in the lands.”

  Hiresha leapt ahead of the boat, towing it over a wave. Her magic pulled The Roost from the path of a converging thunderstorm and essence tempest. With the sky clear the moon would light the sea to Hiresha’s satisfaction. She did not wish the kraken to lose them.

  Hiresha soared among the sky skates. The mantas flew in a cloud formation. They glided in peaceful poise, their fins spread aloft, dipping down at the corners. The skates trailed lines of distortion through the air, and Hiresha found she could leap off these beams of haze. It felt like springing from fabric held taut.

  A sense clung to her that in another place, another facet, the stormy seas did not seem so inviting. Here, she delighted in them, and she would collect flood magic for the storm dragons with abandon.

  The enchantress wished she could have flown over the top of the dream storm. Even with Skyheart looking as small as an octopus below, the tempest spanned higher with a vapor of green. Hiresha’s height gave her a unique vantage of the storm. A river of emerald light branched like a delta. Power fumed from the currents, its color mixing upward with that of the sky to teal, to turquoise, to aquamarine.

  Hiresha hurled seven of her diamonds into the river. Spinning around and snapping her arm outward, she launched her paragon into the heart of the storm’s delta. The pyramid-cut jewel whirred through the wind.

  The gems looked like shooting stars of green. Enchantments Attracted the wild magic. The energy funneled after the diamonds leaving holes of clear blue.

  It is working. The enchantress back-flipped with excitement.

  Hiresha descended level with her diamonds then yanked them toward her. The gems gathered even more of the tempest in their new paths. Pinpoints of blue trailed avalanches of ghostly power.

  An exhilaration of fear filled Hiresha with a pounding chill. Skyheart had warned that so much wild magic would sunder Hiresha’s consciousness, and she believed it only too well. She fled ahead of her jewels.

  Skyheart launched herself out of the water, her pigmentation the brightest yellow Hiresha had ever seen. “Lady of Gems, you are a storm of wonder.”

  She signaled back. “I feel like I’m dragging great plateheads by their tails.”

  The kraken water-wheeled her arms. “Keep pulling. The seamount is straight ahead.”

  Earlier, the kraken had shown Hiresha an underwater peak. There they had found the dragons, coiled around the slope and dozing. Their breaths fluttered kelp. The underwater forests swayed uphill. Corals bloomed at the summit with colors of topaz, and they formed a wall around a caldera bowl.

  “Fill this with wild magic.” Skyheart circled around the seamount. Fish zipped from her in bright streaks and silver shoals. The kraken turned upside down and spread her tentacles like an opening flower. “Store a dream storm here. The dragons will bathe in power and spawn the hurricane.”

  “This was once a volcano.” Hiresha had a swooning sensation that she had seen this place before. She had no memory of when. “Won’t it be dangerous to store wild magic here?”

  Skyheart slithered down the peak. Skin between tentacles rippled, and with a tall-armed stride the kraken looked like a woman walking under a cloak. “It’s cold. Feel it. There’s no fire in this sea mountain.”

  Hiresha searched for steam vents that were not there. Not one rock was stained by sulfur. Far from reassuring her, a feeling of wrongness simmered. Is this a dream? The enchantress wondered if her mind had crafted this place out of a mountain she had once seen.

  The feelings of falseness returned later when Hiresha towed the wild magic. The dragons had woken up, and they chased each other around the seamount. Their circling warped the sea. The surface bent inward, water spiraling into a whirlpool. A pit of air descended to the summit, exposing the caldera.

  The enchantress leaped over the vortex of water and dragons. She released her hold on her jewels, and they blazed down into the summit’s indentation of coral. The wild magic gathered. The top of the seamount shone so green that the afterimage remained in Hiresha’s eyes for five seconds.

  The paragon diamond shot back up the funnel, a spinning pyramid that Hiresha caught. She ran along the side of the whirlpool. The flow of water increased her speed, and she flung herself toward the dream storm. Tension heated her insides to the point that each breath of sea breeze was a relief. She did not know if her anxiousness came from worries about the seamount or hopefulness for her task.

  This time she sprang off the back of a sea skate. Its yellow tail whip
ped with a barb, but Hiresha was already looping upward. Wild magic thickened in a haze around her, but she Repulsed it. Even a whiff might break my dream inversion.

  She tossed nine diamonds and Attracted them back like a net. The essence tempest collapsed, curtains of power torn away by the gems. Hiresha hauled what looked like comets.

  When she passed the kraken, her eyespots bounced off each other in eagerness. “I’ll stop them from following to the seamount.”

  The “them” were the schools of fish that had noticed the dream storm diminish. Dolphins leaped after Hiresha. Sardines migrated in reflective rivers. Gulls flocked. Shrimp swarmed. Tuna bolted. Whales paddled, and a great platehead tailed.

  Skyheart swam in front of them all, and her hide flashed in dazing patterns. Even a kraken could not keep so many fish back for long. Hiresha knew she would have to hurry. Her latest catch of wild magic crackled its way down the whirlpool. The concentrated power in the summit was the breathtaking hue of green sapphires, the color so enriched that it bordered on black.

  On the return, she hopped over the Pharaoh’s Wisdom barge. Emesea ran along the railing and shouted. She pointed her axe at the sun.

  “Stop! The Winged Fire will leave us. The sky will blacken forever.”

  The last time she said the world would burn. Now eternal night? The conflicting prophecies did not concern Hiresha as much as the sight of Tethiel leaning over the side of the barge. His ill-shaven face looked up at her blankly.

  It struck Hiresha as wrong that Tethiel should take no joy in her accomplishment. She knew they were on better terms in the red facet, and if she could choose, she would prefer the other aspect to be real.

  Without warning, she fell. Her jewels slipped from her control, breaking their orbits. They would plunge into the sea and be lost.

  The moment of helplessness passed. Most unpleasant, whatever it was. She jumped between the wakes of sky skates. Her nerves still rang from alarm, but she controlled all her diamonds.

  The essence tempest had shrunk to a single stream of light. Its channel curled as Hiresha snared it with enchantments. The last of the dream storm rolled after her. She passed sky skates and birds flying to the new center of power.

  What am I doing? Disbelief chimed through her, and a wrinkle ran over her vision. I’m collecting flood magic for my kraken friend. How likely is that?

  A more pressing worry was Emesea. She had steered the barge to the edge of the spinning dragons. The warrior climbed the mast and shouted something.

  Hiresha found she cared for none of it. She could no longer believe it was real. This has been nothing but improbability. And this seamount is a falsehood conjured by the Jeweled Feaster.

  Hiresha’s mind darkened. Her vision constricted.

  No longer did she glide downward in a calculated arc. She plummeted toward a collision. She had lost her powers, lost hold of her gems. Her arms flailed. She screamed.

  Emesea leaned from the mast. “Grab my hand!”

  Hiresha reached. Their hands whooshed past each other. The enchantress tumbled feet over head in a flapping of blue skirt.

  She heard Emesea shouting to Tethiel. “Steer the ship. I’m going after her.”

  The sea struck Hiresha with the force of a rock slide. Her ribs snapped, two pops of pain. Her breath exploded from her lips, and she skipped off the surface. She beat her arms against the current.

  Scales slid beneath, shimmering like abalone shells—a dragon—a warning that she had landed in the whirlpool. The waters circling the base of the funnel were tinted emerald. The reservoir of magic throbbed in a dark brilliance, and Hiresha’s heart pulsed in time to it.

  She stopped struggling. What does it matter, if this is a dream? Let the shock of the wild magic wake me. Then I’ll begin a new cycle of dream inversion.

  Sky skates spun into view with their placid mouths on their undersides. Beyond them, diamonds dragged an insanity of dream storm. They flared their way downward toward the whirlpool.

  An acid terror scoured Hiresha. I don’t have time to begin another dream inversion. She sensed she would need her powers the moment she woke. Images of a great platehead and a kraken flashed with searing red light through her mind.

  The enchantress kicked. She tried to catch the tail of a dragon. It sped past, did not seem to notice her. The strangeness of being overlooked only deepened her sense of the known world slipping away. The whirlpool steepened into a wall of water sweeping her downward.

  Giving up on her strength, Hiresha focused her mind. This was a dream, and enchantresses ruled dreams. But I’m not lucid. I’ve lost control, and this has turned into a nightmare.

  Coral gashed her hands, and she clung to it by reflex. She had caught the rim of the caldera. Magic frothed and surged below her toes, and she was caught between that and her falling diamonds. She glimpsed them between the blasts of water in her eyes.

  She pushed her will out to her gems, to Lighten them, to make them float away. Nothing. It felt as if the Jeweled Feaster clawed Hiresha’s skull, forcing her face lower, to drown her in green madness. I refused to be a Feaster. Is this her revenge?

  Sea urchins and starfish clung to the coral, but Hiresha’s grip was failing. The deluge stopped her from breathing. Her world faded to white. Water pried her fingers free, one hand swinging loose.

  That hand was caught by Emesea.

  Water sluiced over the warrior in sideways rapids. She held a rope. She guided Hiresha’s arm to it.

  A paragon’s blessing on you. Hiresha’s shout went unheard.

  Emesea shoved the enchantress upward. Hiresha climbed the rope, arched her back to take a breath, then spluttered when the funnel turned green. Diamonds whizzed past. She looked down, sensing the worst.

  A gem had struck Emesea. The stream of its magic slammed the warrior into the caldera. A stocky arm flailed. A coiled tattoo flashed, and the tide of power swallowed her.

  “A dragon deserves her armor,” Hiresha said to Emesea.

  The enchantress lifted her hands, and a coat levitated between them of abalone shells. The enchantress’s magic had broken them into scales that slid over each other as Emesea slipped it over her head. The fit was perfect.

  “Light enough to swim in.” The warrior rapped the armor with a knuckle. It made a clattering sound.

  “And strong as enchanted bronze,” Hiresha said. “I can’t imagine why no one has thought of snail-shell armor before.”

  “How did you?” Emesea took a few practice swings with her axe.

  “A dream,” Hiresha said.

  She had crafted it while waiting for the Murderfish to return. They had sailed from the murky waters where Hiresha’s fangs had slain the great platehead. The boat drifted above an atoll littered with abalone. The night’s stars had all but gone. A thunderstorm loomed black. The light of an essence tempest stood out in a sky greying from nearing dawn.

  “By my bleeding liver!” Emesea ducked under the feather sail. She half-swung her axe and pretended to cut off Tethiel’s head. “This feels good enough the kill ten men in, then ride just as many.”

  Hiresha frowned. “You’re only to use it against sea monsters.”

  “My heart, this armor is most wounding.” Tethiel’s spindly fang fingers clicked over the abalone scales. They were all brown and drab. “You made it inside out.”

  “The shells are rough on the outside,” Hiresha said. “I couldn’t very well have my armor chafing off skin.”

  “Permit me to correct the situation.” With a sweep of Tethiel’s hand, the scales appeared to flip over. Redness from the dream storm rippled over the pearly surface.

  The armor reminded Hiresha of a suit of opals. She loved that she had created something with Tethiel, but she would not let his flippancy go uncontested. “I am certain the next toothy leviathan lured to us by the Murderfish will be too overawed by beauty to attack.”

  “In frivolous matters, beauty is of the utmost importance,” Tethiel said. “In practical matters,
beauty is of the utmost importance.”

  “In matters of severe impertinence….”

  The enchantress spotted something in the sea coming toward their boat. Not a great platehead, or any manner of behemoth, it looked like a swarm of silver crickets leaping over the water. Fear itched its way in icy rivulets down her back.

  “That shoal is taking a winding path this way.” Hiresha pointed. The throng reflected the moonlight like shimmering coins then dove back into the sea.

  Beyond the incoming swarm, the crimson streams of an essence tempest wormed into the thunderstorm. The cloud lit from within as if it burned. The black storm had resembled a tower with a sweeping balcony; now it bulged with red tumors, and cloudbanks tore in wounds of light.

  “They never bothered me before.” Emesea nodded at the swarm. It ate away at the distance between them.

  “That’s a relief,” Tethiel said.

  “…When I was a dragon with a full suit of scales. We’re going to be minced.”

  “Mincing never ends well,” he said.

  Hiresha squinted. “They are small fish?”

  “Like this is a small sword.” Emesea flipped her obsidian knife. “Big enough.”

  The school of fish whirred in and out of the water, leaping, plunging. They sounded like rain. They were too many to kill with the enchantress’s stolen crocodile teeth. Hiresha closed her hand over her red diamond, changing the magic to that of implosion.

  “You might’ve even heard of ‘em,” Emesea said. “A little hunting school called the Fanged Typhoon.”

  Over a thousand fish gushed toward the boat. Tails the shape of scimitars sliced through the water. Their lower jaws thrust out with an underbite of sharp teeth. Their fins buzzed like insect wings. Their eyes were specks.

  Ahead of them, tentacles flickered in and out of sight, glowing, leading them on, vanishing inches ahead of the legion of jaws. Hiresha felt the Murderfish pass under the boat.

  The enchantress dashed onto the water and hurled her jewel. The Fanged Typhoon parted around the diamond. A tunnel of silver scales opened. Clever, Hiresha thought. She Attracted the diamond backward to the rear of the shoal. Not clever enough.