Alexa Drey- the Gates of Striker Bay

by Ember Lane

  All eyes turned to me as peace settled again.

  “When did you…” Pog made to ask, but scratched his head instead.

  “Get so fast? I think that was what he was getting at,” Sutech added.

  I replayed the attack in my mind. “Not so fast, just understood where they were coming from.”

  I accepted the raised eyebrows.

  “I’ll take it,” Faulk said. “Let’s get rowing. Drifting here isn’t doing us any good. In fact, we’re getting pushed back out to sea.”

  They all pushed their oars out and began rowing. I paced the deck. We had a system of sorts.

  We struck a pace, the four rowers now anxious to get some distance under our belts, and sped up river, the strange, cube-shaped shore racing by, seemingly devoid of life. Another group of four swordfish tested my senses. They circled the yacht, and I guessed they were waiting for the oars to be drawn in.

  “We have company,” I whispered just loud enough.

  Mezzerain began to pull his oar in.

  I told him no. “Keep rowing; let’s make up some distance.”

  The big man sent me a look but accepted my choice.

  The beasts darted under the yacht’s keel. I watched them, waiting. They sped out, flipping around, aiming for us and coming at us from the four cardinal points of the yacht.

  They had planned it better this time. They would break nearly simultaneously. I faced the stern on instinct, knowing Faulk needed my protection the most.

  It broke. I fired, turned, and fired again, soon facing the bow and just about getting off my shot before the beast took out Pog and Sutech. A smash, a thud, a crack to my shoulder, followed by an unbelievable slicing pain, and I stumbled, kicking out as I fell on my back. I sent a bolt straight up into its gut as it vanished over the gunwale. I gasped. They’d won that round, but I’d still handled them on my own. The others rowed on, barely an inquiry if I was okay. Dusting myself off, I took a gulp from my water bottle.

  This was the way it had to be.

  I reestablished my awareness, reinforcing it, while I attended my shoulder. I’d had worse and was soon up, on patrol, ready for the next attack. The oars dipped in unison, and for a while, tranquility settled.

  I took the time to inspect the river’s strange banks. They tapered away, rising around a hundred feet in the air and hemming us in. If we sank, we were doomed. There looked to be no purchase on the cuboid bank. Even if there was, the rock resembled black glass.

  Charlotte emerged from the cabin, glancing around, then offering a plate of cold fish to each of us. We snacked but only for fuel.

  “How much longer?” Mezzerain asked Billy.

  “Depends,” Billy answered.

  “On what.”

  “On how many times we have to stop and fight.”

  “I don’t see you fighting much,” Mezzerain growled.

  Billy tapped the tiller. “Steering, Big Man, steering.” He winked to drive home his humor.

  It fell on barren ground.

  The nerve-wracking peace blanketed us like a coating of impending doom. We all knew the next attack was coming. It was just a matter of when. I studied my entire awareness, not even trusting the sky, no longer having any faith in Billy’s many omissions.

  It was the corner, the very edge of my perception, that finally signaled trouble, and it came from the riverbank. I sent a focused blast of my awareness at it. I couldn’t call it perception; it just wasn’t that clear. The murky, gray glass reality we were in was just too thick for it.

  Ghostgator

  No further information available

  Once I’d seen one, the others showed themselves. They slipped into the river the way that only gators could. Their ghostly white bodies vanished under the gray water, just a hint of a dozen snouts aiming toward us in a V shape.

  “Incoming,” I said. “A dozen ghostgators.”

  “They won’t be on their own,” Billy called out, and my heart sunk a little more.

  “Oars in,” Sutech commanded.

  No one argued.

  “More,” I said as some swordfish shoals nudged into my awareness.

  “What?” Sutech asked.

  “Three groups of swordfish—three shoals. Two rear, one front,” I replied.

  “Stern and bow,” Billy said, a resigned tone to his voice.

  I fell quiet, ready, studying my enemy, mapping their speed, their position, and their likely impact. The swordfish shoals showed no sign of finesse. They darted toward us like arrows. Then the gators sped up, and I knew they’d all timed their runs perfectly.

  “Coming now!” I screamed as the first swordfish broke the surface, then the rest shot out like bullets from a machine gun. I aimed at the two rear shoals, sending a fan of power at them, slicing them, their carcasses peppering us like fat lumps of rock. Three fell dead. Mezzerain decapitated a fourth. Faulk stabbed out at another. I ducked as the others flew over us, turning around but dropping onto my back and sending a fan of magic right above me, catching them as they arced over. I followed their path, pumping my power out. They exploded in a mist of ichor just as the gators began pummeling the yacht.

  I jumped up, slipping on the greasy deck, the swordfish’s flesh little more than oily blubber. All around, the gators snapped, their nightmare jaws filled with sabrelike teeth. Some slipped back away, but others had leaped enough to have purchase, clawed feet raking at the gunwales, hauling their cumbersome bodies onto the deck. I blasted the first straight in the head, hesitating for a millisecond to study its effect. Satisfied at the damage, I went full attack.

  Mezzerain was busy, his sword arm rising and falling like a dwarf’s ale glass, hacking at any snout that dared encroach on his part of the yacht. Opposite him, Faulk stabbed out, clearly scared, clearly nervous. He lacked Mezzerain’s strength, his sword’s reach, and the big man’s prowess. But he kept them at bay, his teeth gritted with proud determination.

  I blasted another before I turned to Pog. The boy didn’t disappoint. He danced around the gators, no sword for my little thief but two knives in his hands. Evading all, he stabbed down, blinding, skewering brain, and hitting all the soft tissues like a true rogue. Sutech, naturally, had barely broken a sweat, but his tally was no less than the others.

  We made short work of the gators. We were a team. Even Faulk remained uninjured. Without need for words, I established my awareness. We cleaned the deck and holstered the oars in the outriggers. I reckoned we were back underway in less than thirty minutes.

  Perhaps we were prepared for Ruse.

  Perhaps we did have a chance.

  We made good time again. Billy even began singing, though his song was tempered with sadness every time he looked over his ruined deck. Of gators, bonefish, and slaughtower swordfish, we were mercifully clear.

  For now.

  “Not long until we land,” Billy hollered, and our dread-filled hearts lightened just a little.

  The faintest of blips registered right on the periphery of my sight. Not under us, nor above, it came from the very extent of my forward sense. A tree was my first conclusion, and as it was encompassed by my roving awareness, that proved to be exactly what it resembled. Its trunk stretched from the riverbed up and out of the surface. As my sphere of understanding caught up with my surface perception, it became clear it was a tree. It grew through the river, its branches ranging around in the thick air above its surface.

  Ranging around?

  It began to walk away from us.

  Walk away?

  “There’s something ahead,” I hissed, now certain it wasn’t a tree at all.

  “How bad?” Sutech asked.

  “Like a tree, except it moves. It’s taken up a position at the river’s narrowest point.” I squeezed my eyes, trying to make it out. My incomplete notification came, and my heart sank. “Rock hydra.”

  “Interesting,” said Billy. “Look again.”

  Rock Hydra

  No further information available

/>   Razor Turtle

  No further information available

  “We have multiple hostiles,” I told them.

  “Oars in,” Sutech ordered.

  “I’m not sure it’s going to help this time,” I told him. “They appear to be blocking our way and waiting for us.”

  Sutech turned, squinting, trying to understand. It was a trap; there was no doubt about that. Nor did there appear a way around it.

  “We power forward until we can all see,” he announced.

  We closed the distance to a hundred feet, and then they pulled the oars in, turning the yacht slightly.

  The tall banks narrowed slightly, enough to mean the hydra could reach all but not enough to squeeze the river’s water to frenzy of white water. The stone hydra’s trunk rose up around ten feet before splitting into eight ranging feelers about twenty feet in length and as thick as Mezzerain’s neck. Crawling all over the feelers, clusters of razor turtles readied themselves to attack.

  “Some form of landing party,” Sutech observed.

  Mezzerain brought out a whetstone. The ring of his blade being sharpened filled me with even more dread.

  “Can’t you just blast it from here?” Pog asked, the obvious solution never far away from him.

  Just as I was about to answer, my awareness went wild. Shoals of swordfish approached from behind us. Numerous gators slid out of the banks on either side and behind. All sped toward us, herding us toward the hydra. “We’re surrounded,” I told Sutech.

  He pointed toward the hydra. “Give them what they want. Row! We may as well face our doom.”

  We rowed. We rowed for dear life, straight to the biggest threat we’d faced so far.

  I sent a ranging strike toward the hydra, a tester. It hit, scorching the thing’s white trunk. The strange beast recoiled but then appeared to pulse and grow a little more as if my attack was an affront to it. That riled me. I gave it my full force, burning, drilling a focused bolt right into its trunk.

  But I didn’t wait to see what had happened. I whipped around just as some swordfish flew at us. I blasted all around, one after the other without so much as a blink. The gators came; they tried to claw their way aboard. Sutech ordered the oars in, and we started our defense in earnest.

  The force of their attacks slowly pushed us into the hydra’s embrace.

  “Switch with me and Pog,” Sutech screamed at Mezzerain. “You’ll be better suited attacking the hydra. Faulk can deal with the turtles.”

  It made sense.

  Pog and Sutech soon hacked away at the back. Pog was like a blur, spinning, somersaulting, kneeling, standing, and bending. His knives struck home with clinical efficiency. Sutech was all economy. Each thrust hit home. Each slice decapitated. He wasted nothing. I picked off what I could. Walking the yacht, blasting the gators as they tried to clamber aboard, scything down the swordfish as they tried to decapitate us.

  “We’re in range,” Mezzerain screamed from the bow.

  “Help them instead!” Sutech ordered me.

  The hydra loomed. Its first tentacle lowered like a drawbridge, feeling out the deck like the thing was blind. Mezzerain hacked away at it, severing its end. I sent another magic bolt at its trunk, hoping beyond hope to sever it, but the white bone just absorbed it, no more than a charred scar to show for my efforts. I switched to bullets, leaving the tentacles for Mezzerain, and I began picking off the razor turtles one by one.

  Another tentacle reached out, slapping down hard on the deck and threatening to upend the boat. The razor turtles streamed aboard, their sharp flippers carving great rents in Billy’s yacht. It was all too much for him, and he burst forward, screaming in anger and then began trying to upend them as they boarded, only to let their flippers range around like deadly knives, making us dance away from them until Faulk plunged his short sword into their exposed bellies.

  “That’s it, Faulk! Take the turtles. I’ll work the tentacles,” Mezzerain cried.

  I began firing furiously, clearing as many turtles as I could to give Faulk a hand, but both him and Mezzerain obscured my aim, stifled my ability to bring my magic to bear against the ranging Hydra too. More tentacles thumped down. More turtles boarded us. It was hopeless. The breadth of the attack was just too narrow.

  Spying an opening, I darted between Faulk and Mezzerain, jumping from the very ends of the bow and clambering up one tentacle, kicking out, blasting the turtles as I bounded up. Firing severing slices of mixed power into the tentacles, my magic sunk deeper, penetrating the softer skin where I’d had no luck on its bony trunk. One ranged above me trying to curl in and get to me. I sent a dozen bullets across its breadth, peppering it in a severing line and elated when each shot went straight through it, and it fell limp and lifeless.

  I knew I could beat it now.

  Would I get the time?

  At the stern, Sutech and Pog were falling back, the sheer ferocity of the gators and swordfish proving too much. I sent a slice of power over them, clearing a few and giving them some breathing space. Faulk went down, clumped on the head by a ranging limb. Two of the tentacles picked Mezzerain up, flinging him around like a rag doll before casting him away along the yacht’s deck.

  We were losing.

  Badly.

  I tried severing a tentacle at its base but gave up in moments. It was futile. It would take too long. The battle would be lost.

  Searching for options, I scrambled up the trunk, reaching its top and staring down into its gaping, fang-coated maw, finally understanding how it fed, and in doing so, recognizing our ultimate fate.

  An idea came to me.

  Gathering my magics, bringing them to my core, I equipped my helmet and dove in.

  Darkness immediately enveloped me, but my new armor worked like a charm, impervious to the thing’s fangs. I closed my eyes the moment the hydra’s acidic bile stung them. Whether I’d stunned it by my action, or whether it was pondering its next move, it soon made its mind up. With one immense peristaltic motion, it drew me farther down, swallowing me whole like a rattlesnake consuming a gopher. I waited, holding my breath, acting dead, but gathering my power all the while.

  I sensed excitement. My manas understood my plan. Hell, it wasn’t a devious one. I had to wait. It had to swallow me farther down. But it didn’t, it just held me there like I was cocooned. Time was running out. I was insulated from the devastation outside but knew their time was desperate.

  Just as I was about to give up, to explode my magic there and then and take the consequences, it gulped me down another two swallows. I was sure now, positive I was below the water level. I triggered my blast, sending my mana out evenly, letting it radiate from my core.

  The trunk exploded, the river muffling my fallout. Water swirled around me, spinning me in a hellish vortex. I opened my eyes but couldn’t see anything. The current grabbed hold of me. Forcing myself upward, I broke the surface, immediately facing the snapping jaws of a ghostgator.

  Equipping my black knight's dagger, I followed Pog’s example, stabbing out at its eyes. It grappled me and pulled me closer and bear-hugging me. We spun endlessly as it tried to drown me, then it flipped its rear, pushing its front down and plunging into the depths of the river. I stabbed and stabbed for all I was worth, having faith in Pog’s method. I tried magic, but this time the gray water blunted it. Just as I was giving up hope, the gator stopped fighting, letting me go, and floating off like some ghostly apparition, ichor spilling from its eyes in ethereal trails as it faded from sight.

  I swam for the surface, its dull ripple so inviting. The shadow of a keel told me the yacht still floated. I powered toward it, a stray swordfish coming my way, but I dispatched it easily, almost flippantly.

  Reaching the gunwale, I clamped my hand over it, but my strength failed me. A shadow fell over me. A hand clasped my wrist, and Mezzerain hauled me up onto the flesh-strewn deck. Sutech lent me a nod. Pog tossed a dead gator back. Faulk picked up an oar.

  “Let’s go,” he said.
/>
  Sutech grinned at him. The warlord had a thousand cuts on his angular face. His sleeve was ripped from shoulder to elbow, yet it was his blade he cleaned. He sheathed it and stood, bending to pick up his oar. “Good words, Trapmaster, wise words indeed. Man the oars, everyone. We’ve all had enough of this river.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Nexus Fault

  Billy had been little use during the fights, if anything a hindrance, but he navigated his way to his secret cove with unerring accuracy, much to our relief. To me, to all, there was no break to be seen in the strange, geometric bank, just endless cubes stacked up. We headed straight toward the bank, and it was only a slight eddying, almost imperceptible gray, foamy swirls that gave the game away. The cove was a crack, a parting between the straight lines, only about double the size of the yacht’s width. We squeezed in, the first sign that Billy had been here before soon apparent when he tied the battered yacht to a large brass ring secured to the rock. He hopped off, prowling up and down the top of a block beside us. It was the strangest of docks, in the oddest of lands.

  “We need to add a yacht to our agreement,” he told Pog then stabbed a finger out as if to drive his point home.

  “Why? It still floats.” Pog skipped onto the walkway, pretending to assess the boat but covering his mouth the whole time to hide his humor.

  Billy clenched his fists. “Look at it. If Faulk’s heavy-handed blasphemy wasn’t enough, look at the rents and divots the monsters left. It’s irreparable, ruined, I tell you.”

  Pog strolled up and down with him, mimicking his every move. “You knew the dangers, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you provided the equipment?”

  Billy stopped in his tracks, regarding young Pog with a good measure of suspicion. “Just what are you getting at?”

  “The equipment barely made it. It was you that put our lives in danger by providing a substandard yacht. If anything, we should have come in the tall ship we originally intended. I think it is you that owe us some recompense.”