King Tides Curse

by C J Timms

  ‘Ignore it’ Gale muttered, ‘Aint worth our trouble.’ He was reminded of their recent trip to the Salt mines. Then he forgot all that as the last wagon’s contents caught his eye.

  ‘Alright….now we’re talking.’

  Gale woke to the sun breaking through the jungle canopy. No leeches had struck through the night, but Gale had slept little. Alisdair woke back up and immediately began yelling. Alisdair was ropeable.

  ‘Brock who the bloody hell hit me!’ Alisdair yelled. Sand fell from his scalp and floated around him in a field. That was definitely not dandruff. Must be his Ionrealm Script manifesting.

  Brock’s eyes flicked to Gale for a second, then to Yip. His eyes darted away from Yip as soon as they contacted.

  ‘Answer me, Brock, I’m in charge here.’ Alisdair stomped his foot.

  Brock gulped. ‘Noone, you passed out, might have been one of the leeches spells.’

  ‘Yeah or from pushing yourself too hard fighting the night before.’ Yip said.

  Alisdair turned on Yip, then just gave a faint nod. ‘Yes, from pushing myself in the defence.’

  Gale dragged Yip away. ‘What do you think, Did the leeches give up?’

  ‘I think they’re tiring us out and waiting till we’re out in the open. If we push hard though we can make the fracture before night.’ Yip said running calculations in the dirt.

  With the wounded on carts slowing them, however, it was already dusk by the time the city of salt appeared on the horizon. Gale’s muscles screamed at him. All his training with Ironchurch bested by a day of pulling a wagon. He’d been tapping Deep Script to push through, but it was fluctuant, fickle here. The wagons slowed as they moved across the salt flat. Wheels sinking into the ground deeper.

  Onward they pushed, muscles screaming. The city walls loomed closer and closer until they were only fifty metres away. They could make it.

  The salt plane cracked. A fathomless leapt from the quagmire underneath trying to pull down Flint. Bella sent them flying with a burst of wyldflame. All around them cracks opened wide in the salt, fathomless bursting from the ground like moths from cocoons. The fathomless charged towards them, following the marked lines meant to guide the students to safety.

  Now, Gale thought.

  Gale slammed his fist down into the salt plane. He heaved the waterline up from below. A fathomless claw sunk into the ground. A boggy quagmire rose around them. They, stumbled, slowed and gnashed their jaws.

  ‘Bella, Hotaru!’

  The two Wyldlfell twins jumped atop the wagons. Flames poured out onto the Salt plain from the twins, burning up the fathomless. Hotaru collapsed next to Bella, drained. Bella grabbed her hand, and a flicker of Wyld Script danced down her arm, letting Hotaru come back to standing.

  The carts lined up towards the city and the fracture, the wooden carts formed a stable highway through the quagmire. Slats that had been deconstructed from other wagons were thrown to the ground as planks to bridge the gaps. The students hauled the wounded down their makeshift road.

  Gale stepped off his wagon, using his Deep Script to stabilise his footing on the wet muck. Some of the fathomless had survived the blast. He ran forward and threw short nails into the closest, fixing it in place. Swan, Sterling and Titus made similar work of fathomless using large fixation nails they had scavenged from the supply wagons, their boots enchanted by Gale last night.

  The ground shook, and Gale stumbled. A massive crack rent the salt just outside the city walls. A leeches head the size of a school bus broke the surface, then another and another. Nine long blubbery necks thrashed about in their path. A behemoth with a body, the size of an apartment block, broke free from the quagmire. A thick slug-like body with a long thick tail balancing it at the back. It slithered towards them, its sheer mass compensating for the terrain. It’s nine heads stretched out towards the students, jaws wide as it eyed them hungrily.

  ‘Leech-Hydra,’ yelled Hotaru. ‘No-one cut off a head.’ Hotaru sent a fireball at the beast but then fell to her hands and knees. Her Script was drained. Bella put an arm under her sister and started dragging her towards the city.

  Frak, thought Gale, how was he supposed to even injure that thing. His harpoon was like a toothpick to it, he doubted he’d even be able to give it an ingrown toenail. The bulk of the students were in the city, but the last round was still being dragged to safety. Just team Lighthouse was left outside, having been busy fixing the fathomless.

  ‘How do we injure something that big.’ Gale yelled.

  ‘Same approach as always, punch it in the face.’ Titus yelled back. ‘Shotgun.’

  Titus ran towards the beast, his thongs slapping against the salt flat. He charged, glory in his eyes, flannie streaming behind him.

  ‘Damn bogan,’ yelled Swan, running after him. Sterling and Gale rushed in.

  The Hydra’s eyes were drawn to the knight in trackpants that was Titus Mangrove. Perhaps drawn to the bright light glowing off Titus’s Canuteian tattoos. The wounded Canuteian monks on the wagon entering the city had their tattoos flare, then the light streamed off them towards Titus.

  Eight heads snapped down towards Titus. A murky blur appeared in the air before the first of the heads. Yip threw a cloud of powder into its eyes, and the Leech-hydra reared back. Yip murky stepped to the next head, landing atop it and stabbing into it with a dagger.

  Titus bellowed, and white light flowed from his markings. He launched himself upwards, conjuring a glowing rope behind him. ‘Poor form Yip, I called shotgun.’

  Titus threw the glowing rope, now weighted like a grappling hook, around the Hydra’s first neck. Titus swung through the air, up and over the beast using the tightening noose like a fulcrum. He hurled the other end of the rope down towards the ground.

  Swan slid around the beast and jammed a large fixation nail into its soft underside. Swan grabbed the rope Titus had thrown down and drove a fixation nail through it. A head snapped down at her and Sterling leapt in the way. He threw short nails in its face, pushing it back while Swan fixed the rope to the ground.

  Titus swung through the air, casting grappling hooks of light between the necks, heads snapping at him, getting in its own way. Yip’s swift strikes were keeping it off balance. Titus kept tying up head and throwing them down to Swan and Sterling. The fourth rope was fixed in place by Sterling, then Gale nailed a fifth into the ground. Gale looked back to see most of the wounded had escaped through the fracture.

  A drop of rain hit Gale, he reached up to wipe it off. His hand came away red. In the sky, red clouds rolled in, the ground began to bleed from the cracks in the salt plain. Gale turned, slithering across the salt flat was a swarm of leeches. They fell from the clouds. They rose from the silt. A black tide. Part of Gale felt the need to hunt them down, wipe them out.

  ‘Frak, time to go!’ Yelled the sensible part of him.

  Swan and Sterling broke off from the Hydra which strained against its bonds. Yip murky stepped onto an oblivious Titus and dropped them both off at the city gates. The Lighthouse team raced into the salt city, running for the fracture home.

  Crack.

  The Leech-hydra slammed through the city walls, scattering walls and houses. It surged towards them, energy ropes broken. Gale dashed for the fracture, the Leech Hydra crushing through the city behind him. The others dived through the crack, Yip, Sterling, Swan and Titus. Gale leapt through the fracture and rolled onto the Ionhome dessert.

  ‘Do it, pin the fracture,’ he said. Two komodo’s held massive nails on their shoulders, two others slammed a war hammer into the fixation-nails, locking the gate closed with crisscrossed metal bars.

  The fracture crackled around the edges started to fade from view. Then it shuddered, a massive black maw rammed up against the straining fixation nails. A visceral need to hunt flared in Gale, and he stepped forward, ramming his harpoon into its mouth. The beast twisted away from the fracture, Gale gave a savage grin.

  The advance parties on the other side could
get back themselves, they had trained fracturesmiths with them, Sawbones who can open a reality fracture just about anywhere. All that study ain’t for nothing.

  Gale’s chest clamped down, and he collapsed to the desert floor. Giltynan stood over him with a horrified expression.

  ‘What…happened.’ Giltynan asked.

  Gale tried to answer, his chest like a vice.

  Brock from Laurels spoke up, ‘We were attacked…Gale…’

  ‘Gale lost our supplies,’ Alisdair cut him off. ‘I was forced to make a strategic retreat.’

  Brock stared daggers at Alisdair. Yip summoned his crossbow,

  ‘You’re breaking rule number one Alisdair,’ Titus said. Swan and Sterling readied their weapons.

  ‘That isn’t true, Alisdair fucked up.’ Croaked out Hotaru.

  Giltynan held out a hand, ‘Silence, I am talking to your commanding officer. Now Alisdair, tell me what happened.’

  Gale felt the tightness in his chest peak. He’d gotten them back safe, his teammates were strong. Darkness closed in over his vision, but he could have sworn he saw a tiny figure jump from Sterling’s back. The tiny figure tucked and rolled onto the ground and dart away. It had a sword the size of a toothpick, a black cloak and two daggers.

  A tiny soldier made entirely of metal.

  Gale - The Heretics

  ‘The night sky erupted in light, and nine metals fell from the heavens.’

  The Lost book of King Canute.

  He’d been too weak.

  He was a reef-blighted, frakking wizard, and he was still too weak. He’d been trained by Ironchurch, he'd conned his way into university, Gale was a horror from the Deep, and he was still too weak.

  He rolled over in bed, thoughts racing. An aching creak filled the Lighthouse, the timber restless, shifting against the old nails that fixed it in place. Creaking like old bones stretched too far.

  Exhausted, sleep still escaped him. Thoughts of the failed mission filled his head. The Blood Knight was out there, and he’d failed to break the curse on Ironchurch. He had nowhere near enough money to pay rent, Alisdair had sold them down the river and blamed their mission failure on Gale. Even if they got through that, the Splinterpoint Gate exam loomed.

  Gale pulled his blankets off and headed for the kitchen. He put the kettle on to boil to make a cuppa. Boiled water at least, was within his means.

  Shackleton was curled up in a makeshift hammock in the corner that strained at the seams. Shackleton was now four feet tall and sixty kilos. Their debt had doubled since the return from the mission. Alisdair, that frak-head, had managed to blame them for the loss of the cargo. Noone had been willing to contradict the Police Chief’s son’s report.

  Alisdair was receiving a commendation. They were going to present him with a frakking medal. Giltynan was singing his praises for bringing the first years back without any fatalities. The seriously injured were well on the way to recovery.

  The Lighthouse had scraped through a pass for surviving the hunt. They’d passed the exam, but the full charge of the lost cargo had been added to their debt. Titus, like a bulldozer of cheerfulness, hadn’t minded too much. Titus had run roughshod over everyone complaints. He’d exclaimed how things could be worse and that all their mates had survived. He’d just busied himself making Shackleton’s hammock.

  The kettle reached boiling point, and Gale pulled it off the stove. Ah well, at least he’d done some good, would’ve been nice to get paid for it. ‘Paid in experience,’ Giltynan kept saying.

  Getting paid would be a nice experience.

  Gale sipped his Aussie breakfast tea, one hundred bags for four dollars. He settled into a chair and let the calmness of midnight fill the room. He inhaled the tea fumes, then breathed deeply out.

  A faint song caught his ears. No words, no ethereal voices, it was more like a toe-tapping Irish jig. Gale cocked his head and sat the tea down. There was a reason it was a hundred bags for four dollars.

  Gale threw on his coat and left the Lighthouse, searching for the song. He hugged his jacket close, the temperamental bite of Autumn’s chill had truly hit. Gale carried a lantern o break the dark, the stars above covered by clouds. He followed the swinging beat across the island, past the ionic labs, the smithy. He strode under the looming tower of the black library with its orbiting constellations.

  The wild beat drew him down towards the blowhole. In a few hours he’d be back here for Blush’s private tutoring. He’d been struggling out of bed at 4am so he could learn. He’d thought she’d been making him stronger. Maybe he was just a fool. Maybe she sucked at teaching.

  The blowhole yawned wide before him, the swell coming in hard. The waves crashed up and down like the pulse from someones beating heart. The seas were big today, rougher then he’d ever seen them. Stirred by a storm in the depths.

  The jig was coming from within the blowhole.

  He remembered the symbol from the ruins. The nine swords surrounding the wave. Pointing in at the wave, as if to contain it. That symbol in the chamber of the blowhole. What did it mean? The wave, was it related to the King Tide?

  The jig swelled in his ears, and now a ghostly voice joined it. ‘Sing brave my love, and bold my love, the strong consume the meek. We look after those who help themselves, down in Devil’s Reef.’

  He needed answers, he needed to grow. He was getting nowhere by being weak by following everyone's rules. By looking after others before himself. What was it they taught in plane crashes? Put on your own oxygen mask first.

  ‘Take massive action,’ Gale muttered touching the Tony Robbins book in his coat. He stripped the coat off and then down to his dacks. ‘Sink or swim.’

  Gale dived into the blowhole. He cracked into a cunjevoi on the way down, and a swarm of hornet like drops followed him. He crushed them with his Script.

  Damn, that was satisfying.

  He hit the water, it knocked the air from him. His oxygen escaped in bubbles of precious air. The crushing cold grabbed him like a fist and squeezed, wringing the air out of him. It hurled him against the cave wall, stunning his diaphragm. The tide was strong, too strong. It was a tempest compared to the last time. It threw him to the bottom, smacking his head against the stone. He couldn’t see the light, everything was dark. He couldn’t see the way up.

  Stunned, lacking oxygen, his Deep Script flickering like a traitorous bitch, he breathed in. Water flooded his lungs, cold shocked his system. His Deep Script calmed.

  He breathed out.

  Then in again.

  Deep Script flickered around his mouth, the water rushed in and out of him, exhaled in dark blue plumes. It was easier then it had been in the salt mines. He summoned a hydrolens. The cavern was lit by the luminescence of the cunjevoi’s, a rainbow glow in the hydro-light. He tapped the tidal flow and pushed off towards the back cavern.

  The rock carving still had the nine weapons facing the wave and the word ‘Heretics’ scrawled beneath it. The word Heretics glowed with hydrolight. Traces of Deep Script flickered across it. Gale held out a hand and touched the wave. He felt his Script flare, and blue light erupted around the circle. The blue light rushed out into the shape of an archway centred around the word Heretics.

  His hand passed through the wall. He fell forwards into a tunnel. The water could not pass through, and a widening stone passage swept ahead. The water in his lungs came belching upwards onto the dry stone. His Script flickered, and he filled his lungs with stale air, smelling of rock and earth.

  The jig rose in volume, ‘Sing soft my love, sing soft my love and let the angels weep…the rocks are soft, and the shore is calm, under the Devil’s keep.’

  He shook his head and followed the sound down the passage. He shook his head, he had no idea what that song was and why he was the only one who ever seemed to hear it. He had thought it heralded misfortune but perhaps it just heralded…change.

  Stalactites and stalagmites protruded from the rock like the teeth of some abyssal beast at corridor's
end. There was a gap that a person could just wriggle through. He grasped the stones and pulled himself through, scraping against the rock until he broke through into a large room.

  He emerged into a cavern roughly ten metres wide. The floor was rough shell, probably the island-turtle’s shell. The walls were covered with faintly glowing light-coral that reminded Gale of the reefwall. The phosphorescent coral lit a spacious room that was divided into five clear work areas.

  The room must have faced out of one of the cliffs because moonlight and a breeze came in through a small concealed window. Six workbenches lay against the walls, each allotted their own pie slice of the room. A great mural was painted above each of the desks. The colours of the mural were interwoven with the lightcoral.

  The first desk Gale was a hastily assembled Ikea looking piece in a messy workspace. The space was filled with scraps of notes and stacks of books. Clumsily arranged piles fought for a semblance of order. Lazy or just scatterbrained? The name ‘Blunder’ was carved into the desk. The mural above the desk showed a king pushing back the waves with his bare hands. Behind him a throne had been planted into the beach, power rolling off it in waves.

  The second desk was a sturdy mahogany with neatly arranged stacks of paper. A nameplate on the desk read ‘Grimace’. The paper fell apart to the touch, crumbling in his hands. The mural above it showed a landscape horribly distorted by cavernous mouths emerging from cracks in reality. Like massive worms tunnelling through reality. The worms mouths poured forth water into a strange foreign land, from the sky, from a mountain and from atop a volcano. Nine gaping mouths.

  Atop one of the mouths stood a blood-red figure, from a gate that dripped red. The Blood Knight? The land in the mural had strange coral-like reef structures and vast mounds of insectoid creatures of scurrying amongst them. Grey clad humanoids fled from the oncoming waves into foreign aircraft and portals.

  The third desk was made of simple wood, covered with old post-it notes and reminders. The name Flux was written in multiple points around the desk. The mural halted, almost blank, with just a faint impression of blue fog on the wall. Penumbra? He thought.