by Raymond Cain
Master Elgin handed a wooden sword to each of them and turned toward the red-headed boy. “Gareth, perform the first routine you learned.”
Gareth bowed obediently to Master Elgin and to Flynn. The boy stepped forward and performed left-right-left horizontal slashes that Flynn blocked easily. Gareth quickly stepped back out of reach of a counterattack and resumed a defensive stance. Flynn’s skillful defense boosted his confidence and brought a smile to his dimpled cheeks. Detecting Master Elgin’s disapproving glare out of the corner of his eye, Flynn hid his smile, gritted his teeth, and adopted a serious expression.
Master Elgin turned to Gareth. “Gem up and do it again.”
Gareth removed an aquazite gem from a pouch sewn into his padded armor. He inserted the crystal into a small hollow chamber in the hilt of his wooden sword. The gem glowed blue after Gareth took hold of the hilt.
The boy stepped forward and Flynn prepared himself for the same attack. The attack came faster and harder than it did the previous time and, despite his readiness, he almost lost his grip on his sword when he blocked the first swing. The second swing was even more powerful and he barely managed to hold onto his sword as he parried. When he blocked the third attack, the practice sword was knocked out of his hands. Gareth’s wooden blade struck Flynn on the shoulder. Flynn rubbed his shoulder as his sword lay at his feet.
Master Elgin turned to Gareth. “Drop your sword.”
Gareth obeyed and both wooden swords lay on the floor. The weapons master looked at the two boys. “I want both of you to retrieve your weapons and assume a fighting position as fast as you can. NOW!”
As Flynn reached down, the student’s sword flew up and slapped into the boy’s outstretched palm. The boy was armed and in a fighting stance before Flynn was able to touch his own weapon.
“Have I made my point?” Master Elgin asked.
“No,” Flynn said defiantly. He stood up with his sword and entered one of the fighting stances his dad taught him. It was foolish of him to think he could defeat the second-year student but he would not give up on his dream without a fight.
Master Elgin nodded and gestured for the two of them to battle. The boy moved forward and executed a skillful attack routine. It ended with Flynn off balance and the boy laying his sword across the back of Flynn's legs, sending him to the ground.
Flynn picked himself up off the floor and the pair resumed defensive stances. Flynn studied his opponent for weaknesses and, finding none, he launched a frenzy of attacks. He knew he was outmatched but if just one of his attacks got through, he believed that Master Elgin might let him attend the Citadel. Gareth expertly parried the attacks and countered with a slash that struck Flynn in the stomach. Flynn keeled forward and dropped his sword.
Master Elgin knelt beside him. “You have heart, Arcturus, but you just don’t have what it takes.”
That was it. Anger surged through Flynn like never before. He grabbed the wooden sword, leapt to his feet, and charged the boy. Blinded with fury, he lashed out with a barrage of attacks that put the student on his heels. Flynn did not expect any of his attacks to get through but they were merely a feint for him to get in close. He dropped his sword and tackled the boy to the ground. During their scuffle, Flynn wrestled the student’s sword from his hands, spun it around, and pressed its wooden blade against the boy’s neck.
Master Elgin laughed and slapped Flynn approvingly on the back, inadvertently sending him to the floor once more. “Maybe you do have what it takes. School starts at eight o’clock tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
Flynn grinned from ear-to-ear and picked himself up off the mat. He turned around to head home but Master Elgin spoke again.
“And Flynn,” Master Elgin said, tossing Flynn a silver ring with a miniature picture of the Citadel emblazoned on it. “You earned this.”
Flynn donned the ring and, to his surprise, the Drunken Mermaid was the furthest thought from his mind. His parents would have been proud of the way he fought his way into the Citadel. He left the fortress, marched through the city, and smiled the entire way back home.
“So,” Tasker said when Flynn arrived home. “Was it an acceptance letter?”
“Of course,” Flynn replied with a grin. “The Citadel accepts everybody. Even me.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was the first day of school and Flynn couldn’t be more excited. He charged through water golems on his way out of the house and splashed through the mermaid fountains on the front lawn. He couldn’t stop fidgeting all the way down The Lift and as he approached the Citadel, an idiotic smile ruined all efforts to appear mature. He felt like a kid cruising along the ocean floor for the first time.
The sentries at the guard towers were the same men stationed there the day before. Flynn attempted to walk past them but they stepped in front of him and put their hands on the hilts of longswords.
“Acceptance letter, sir,” one of the guards demanded in a gravelly voice.
“I don’t have one but Master Elgin said—”
“It’s okay,” the second guardsmen said with a smirk on his face. “I know who you are, Mr. Arcturus. Master Elgin gave orders to allow a boy fitting your description to go inside.”
“Great!” Flynn said and the guards parted to let him through. He walked past them but he paused halfway across the water bridge. “Out of curiosity, what description did Master Elgin give you?”
The second guardsmen retrieved a piece of paper from the guard tower. He cleared his throat and stifled a grin as he read it. “The young sir is a scrawny turd of a boy that looks like he came out of a troll’s backside.”
Both guardsmen were contorting their faces as they tried not to laugh.
Flynn scowled. “Well, at least he called me sir.”
“Actually, he didn’t,” the guard replied, renewing his efforts to maintain composure. “I added that part to be polite.”
The other guardsman snorted but quickly returned to a neutral expression. The two men looked at each other and Flynn could tell they were barely able to contain themselves. They looked like tea kettles about to burst. They held their composure for only a moment longer before all sense of military conduct and professionalism was lost. They burst with laughter. Their faces turned red and tears ran down their cheeks.
Flynn scowled at the guards and headed for the Citadel. He wouldn’t let them sour his mood on that day. He yanked open the Citadel’s main doors and entered. The laughing guardsmen were still audible as he entered the main hall.
Past the main doors there was an assembly of about fifty boys his age. Flynn mingled for a few minutes and the volume of the chatter gradually increased before coming to a full stop when Master Elgin arrived. The weapons master appeared at the back of the room with a more serious-than-usual look on his face. He rested his hands on his sword hilts and the aquazite crystals in their pommels glowed when he touched them. Flynn was envious.
The students opened up a wide path for Master Elgin’s massive frame to walk through. As the man marched through the crowd, he didn’t glare menacingly at the students as usual. He stopped at the double-doors and turned around.
Master Elgin scanned the crowd and spoke in a somber tone. “Listen up, you rotting pieces of squid droppings, I have news.”
The weapons master once again displayed colorful adjectives to show his “affection” to the students, but Flynn could tell the man was in no mood for dealing out insults.
“Tragic news,” Master Elgin continued. “Arther Graymantle, one of this year’s students, has been killed. The young lad was recently accepted into the Sorcery Academy and they found his body near the Giant’s Fingers yesterday. He was crushed. The work of a giant squid, apparently.”
Flynn gasped. He did not know Arthur well but he knew the boy enough to be saddened by the tragedy. The boy was friendly, popular, and admired by his classmates. But what shocked Flynn even more was the fact that Arthur was the one the compass pointed at in the Sorcery Academy. Was it a coinci
dence?
“I fear there may be more bad news,” Master Elgin continued. “Tanner Warkeep left last night to investigate the boy’s death and has not been heard from since. Most of our instructors are out looking for him and we’re beginning to fear the worst for him as well.”
Flynn’s jaw dropped. Tanner was the other person the compass pointed at. It couldn’t be a coincidence that tragedy struck the only two people the compass pointed at.
The hall buzzed with murmurs from other students. Some cried, some looked down in despair, and others speculated about alternative theories behind the deaths. Some guessed merfolk killed Arthur and Tanner, and left behind false clues to hide their involvement. Others blamed the events on various types of sea monsters. Flynn saw each explanation as being equally likely or unlikely.
Master Elgin clapped his hands together, silencing the crowd. “With all our instructors out looking for Tanner, there’ll be no school today. Classes will resume in a couple days. In the meantime, nobody should leave the dome until we get this sorted out. We don’t need more people getting killed or going missing. That will be all. You may all go home now.”
As Flynn followed the crowd outside the fortress, an idea occurred to him; he could use the compass to find Tanner. It would be risky to disobey Master Elgin’s orders and venture outside of Seahaven, but Flynn was the only one with a tool that could track down the weapons instructor. He didn’t know if Tanner was still alive, or if the compass would still be pointing toward him if he was, but it would be irresponsible of Flynn if he didn’t at least try to find the man.
Flynn headed to the dock and checked over his shoulder to ensure he wasn’t being watched. All the ships along the piers floated motionless in the water. Ordinarily, the vessels bobbed on the surface due to all the traffic but on that day, the water was calm. It appeared that Master Elgin’s warning against leaving the city was being taken seriously.
His ship was parked at the end of one of the piers and Flynn rushed toward it. There were scratches on the hull—souvenirs from past excursions to the mine—and the crystal windows glimmered when his aquazite ring came near. The hatch popped open and after one final glance to ensure nobody was watching, he plopped down on the pilot’s chair. After securing himself with kelp seatbelts, he spun the steering globe forward and submerged the ship. The surface of the water rose up over the craft and a gentle push on the acceleration levers sent him soaring over the dense vegetation below the docking area.
Spiky sea urchins, colorful anemone, and various flowering marine plants writhed in his wake. Pushing the acceleration levers up to three-quarter speed moved his ship fast enough to shake the leaves off flowers and send seashells flying.
The vessel passed between twin guard towers and he sailed over the farms surrounding Seahaven. He flipped his ship sideways to pass through a group of leatherback turtles, leveled off, and was soon cruising over the trees of a seagrape farm. In time, the light from Seahaven’s dome disappeared in the distance behind him.
Flynn pushed the ship up to full speed. The large propellers hummed and the increase in power made the crystal within the hull and its inner workings glow brighter. His ever-present smile broadened as his speed increased and aquatic life whipped past his windows.
Thousands of small, sleek fish parted in front of Flynn. The creatures headed for mounds of coral with many different shapes and colors. Leafy sections glowed purple, rounded sections glowed orange, and fan-shaped branches were greenish-blue. The fish probed and nibbled the coral and Flynn gave them a wide berth to avoid disturbing them.
Coral was always a high-traffic area for fish and Flynn had to do some fancy flying to avoid them. It took some fancy maneuvering to slip between a group of long-snouted seahorses and a school of spiny parrotfish. The vessel was only a few feet above the ground and he passed over dozens of small eyes staring up at him from the soil. He suspected the creatures were toadfish that had buried themselves in the sand, leaving only their eyes exposed.
Spotting a kelp forest nearby, Flynn dropped down to look for clues. The “trees” were fifty-foot-tall towers of algae covered in leaf-like fronds. Air-filled bladders attached to the fronds allowed the enormous plants to stand up vertically from the ocean floor. Flynn zig-zagged between the trees, his wings cutting close enough to clip bladders from their fronds. The plant-like pillars swayed in his wake and the bladders he released floated into the dark, menacing waters above.
Flynn emerged from the kelp forest and entered a cloud of plankton so thick that the glow blinded him. The organisms bounced off the hull, creating a sound like falling sand. The tiny creatures were unavoidable and the ship slowed as many of them got chewed up in the propellers. After passing through the plankton, the afterimage of their glow remained in his vision despite his efforts to blink it away.
A cluster of indicator coral confirmed that Flynn was headed in the right direction and the Giant’s Fingers soon came into view. Blue pinpoints of light in the distance revealed many vessels and men in breathing helms scouring the area for Tanner. He banked left toward the Safe Zone boundary and did not see any ships in the unpatrolled waters beyond its perimeter.
Flynn kept his left hand on the steering globe and he clutched the aquazite compass in his right hand. The crystal arrow pointed at someone outside the Safe Zone and he wondered if Tanner was over there. Hammerhead sharks, giant squids, stingrays, and barracuda lurked outside the miles-wide barrier and he let out an exasperated sigh at the thought of joining them.
Flynn shook his head in dismay. “Tanner, why couldn’t you just stay inside the Safe Zone?”
Chapter Sixteen
Flynn drifted a few swimming strides inside the edge of the Safe Zone boundary and pondered what to do next. The compass was a mystery to him and he thought hard about risking his life to follow the direction indicated by the device. Part of him wanted to hand the compass over to the men on patrol below, each of whom were skilled warriors from the Citadel, and let them use it to find Tanner. But if he did, he’d never see it again. It was a gift of sorts from his mother and he could not bear the thought of losing it. He was also curious why she had it, how it worked, and why it pointed at certain people. If he kept it, perhaps he could learn more about his parents and what happened to them.
Flynn decided to see where the compass would take him and he skimmed along the ocean floor until he reached the tunnel that led across the boundary. As he approached the concealed entrance, his mother’s pendant flared. The tunnel doors swung open and he dove his ship inside. The stone doors scraped against each other as they closed behind him.
Small sharks and eels swam in the tunnel, but they presented little threat. He navigated between the rocky obstacles—there were fewer now after the colossal squid smashed away many of them—and soon exited the tunnel into the dangerous waters outside the Safe Zone. A combination of anxiety and excitement filled him as he regarded the giant sharks, squids, and crawling creatures, all of which could destroy his ship.
Wary of being seen, Flynn kept his ship as low to the ground as possible. His wake churned up a dust cloud as he slipped between rocky outcroppings, giant mushrooms, and spine-covered plants. A pair of great white sharks swam toward him with their jaws open wide but he spun the globe and soared over them. A backward glance revealed only the white lines of bubbles trailing behind his propellers. The sharks seemed to have lost interest.
Once he was outside the range of prying eyes, he looked again at the compass. It pointed in roughly the same direction as the strange wooden vessel he saw earlier. A group of jellyfish descended into his path and he cruised around them to avoid getting their tendrils stuck in his propellers.
Ahead of him, a small, one-seater vessel lay in the dirt and the compass pointed directly at it. Most of the hull was constructed from chitin. Flynn guessed it was the same ship the compass pointed at earlier.
The chitin ship’s front end was crushed. The damage looked consistent with an attack from a giant squid but
something did not seem right to Flynn. Judging by the ship’s lightweight hull and sleek shape, it should have been able to easily outrun a squid in open water.
The pilot was still inside the vessel and he was leaning forward against the steering globe. The man appeared dead until he pushed himself up and lay back in the pilot’s chair. Flynn brought his vessel to a stop in the grainy soil beside the wreck, giving rise to a cloud of slow-falling dust. He popped open the hatch and dove into the cold water, heedless of a group of sharks and barracudas circling above.
Despite the protection his swimming boots provided, the water outside the Safe Zone felt cold. Flynn wasn’t sure if the chill was from the temperature of the water, or the abundance of dangerous creatures swimming in it. He shrugged the notion away and kicked his way to the broken ship. Its cracked windows partially obscured his view of the person inside.
The craft’s locking mechanism was crushed but Flynn managed to pull the hatch open. Bubbles poured out of the cockpit as he opened it and, as suspected, Tanner was the pilot. The enchantment that prevented seawater from entering the craft was weakened, and the ship’s interior was filling. The weapons master’s forehead was bleeding, perhaps the result of hitting his head during a collision. Tanner’s leather armor had slash marks in it and his hands were pressed over his stomach, trying to stem the flow of blood from an abdominal wound. Flynn had no idea what happened to the man, but he could see the injuries weren’t caused by a giant squid.
“What happened to you?”
Tanner looked up at him with distant, empty eyes. He removed a pin from his armor and handed it to Flynn. “I can’t be found with this.” The weapons master’s words were strained and blood oozed from his lips as he spoke.
“My mother wore that same pin.”
“Your father, too,” Tanner said, another trickle of blood spilling out of his mouth as he spoke.
The weapons master looked as though he was about to say more but he coughed violently, spraying blood everywhere. He leaned forward, groaning in pain.