"I'm not sure if they can take us, though," Cleo said. "We're already dead."
I shook my head. "The pirate ship was full of people already dead before Nephtalie was involved. I wouldn't hold out hope that you'd be able to fight them off."
"Even if they could, they'd be outnumbered," Agwe said, having sorted out what Cleo and I were talking about even though he only heard one side of the conversation. "One wyrmrider could probably take out ten or more ships, but those numbers would overwhelm them."
"There has to be a way," I said. "We took out the frigging voidbringer. We stopped a zombie shark apocalypse, and there were thousands of those buggers investing the ocean."
"But this is a different threat entirely," Tahlia said. "Until we know how to beat them, any traditional analysis of our advantages or disadvantages based on the numbers won't be accurate."
"I hate the whole idea of giving them more time to gain even more vessels in their fleet," Agwe said. "But Tahlia is right. We will need the other wyrmriders, most likely. But we need something more, too."
"Like what?" I asked. "A miracle?"
Agwe nodded. "Probably. I fear that's exactly what we'll need."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I DIDN'T LIKE leaving the ghost ships behind at all. Granted, we probably didn't stand much of a chance against them. But how could I be sure we'd find them again? Chances were better than not that they'd find us first. And then, not only would we still be outnumbered, we'd lose the element of surprise.
The only thing we gained by leaving, though, was probably the one thing we needed—a chance to figure out how the hell we were going to be able to take them out.
Cast them into the void. That was the first and most obvious option. Sure, that would work. But it wouldn't give me the chance to fulfill my side of the Baron's bargain. And even if all the wyrms could open gateways to the void—which wasn't true, in fact, since the younglings had shown no capacity to do so—there were so many ships that our chances of getting rid of all of them before they got to us were slim. Add to that the fact that a wyrm, to cast a portal to void, has to combine its natural portaling ability with Fomorian magic. They need more than a common Fomorian possess. The only way to cast that many portals, on a mass scale, would be to sacrifice the wyrmriders. It would take every last ounce of magic they had to do it, which would mean they'd die in the process. And even if we figured that out, I was the only one, apart from Enki and Cleo, who could see them. Every wyrm, except for Nammu, would be firing blindly in their efforts to throw void portals at the ships.
Then it dawned on me. "Why couldn't you all see the ships?"
"Because you have the Baron's aspect, duh," Tahlia said.
"It's not just that," I said. "The very first time we saw that ship, Agwe, you could see it. It was Ruach, in fact, who cast it into the void back when we were in the past."
"And we did see it later," Tahlia said. "When it came out of the void in the middle of our fight with Odette and Nephtalie."
I bit my lip. "These aren't just dead pirates. Sephus, one of my ancestors we met in the past, said that there were legends that said an enchantment of some kind bound the ghost pirates to their ship. Sure, they're dead. But in their case, what if it isn't just that they didn't move on when they died. What if there's some kind of magic binding them to their ships."
"A magic, perhaps, that Nephtalie is using likewise to bind the new ships they're taking and the souls aboard them into their armada."
"Exactly, Agwe," I said. "It's almost like you're finishing my sentences now."
"See," Agwe said. "You said it before. When we're facing some kind of world-threatening force, we're in sync."
I bit my lip. If our whole marriage was built on the foundation of conquering baddies and saving the world, it wasn't something we'd be able to maintain forever. Then again, if I didn't fulfill my side of this bargain, our marriage would be over anyway, and I'd belong to B.S. No, not bull shit. Baron Samedi. But his bargain, I was starting to think, was a bunch of B.S. of the former sort.
"All of that is likely true, but it doesn't explain why now I'm the only one who can see them as if they were common ghosts."
"It has to do with energy," Cleo piped up.
I raised my hand to silence everyone else. "Explain, Cleo."
"As ghosts, we can appear to mortals. It's not easy to do and takes insane amounts of magic. Enki and I could appear, for example, but we'd have to draw on a noticeable amount of magical energy to do it. And we'd have to have access to it. What if Nephtalie is hoarding the magic for herself? She's probably gathering the fleet but preventing them from accessing it until she's ready to attack."
"That makes some sense," I said. "When we saw the ghost ship before, there was a lot of magic in the water."
"What is she saying?" Agwe asked.
"That spirits require free magic to manifest. Nephtalie must be hoarding the magic they're gathering herself and preventing the spirits she's imprisoned on these ghost ships from using it. That's why we hadn't seen them at all until now. Those ships could sail right over Fomoria, and so long as Nephtalie kept all her magic contained, bound, and dormant, we'd be none the wiser."
"It's a good thing you have your new ability, at least," Tahlia said.
"It certainly follows," Agwe said. "When we first saw the ghost ship, it was carrying what we assumed was the former host of Marinette. They must've been using magic from her to materialize."
"And when I landed on it, they tried to siphon my magic out of me. They wanted more."
"So Nepthalie isn't giving them all her magic like we assumed," Tahlia said. "She's hoarding it for herself. Tempting them with it, perhaps, using it as leverage to command them according to her will."
I took a deep breath and released it. "I think I know what we have to do. Cleo, Agwe, anyone else, correct me if I'm off base here. But I think the way to free the ghost ships from Nephtalie's control is to give them what they want. We have to blast them with enough magic to materialize on their own."
"So that they won't need Nephtalie anymore," Tahlia said.
I nodded. "And even if they do remain loyal to her after that, at least you and the rest of the wyrmriders will be able to see the enemy so we can toss them into the void."
"But Joni," Agwe said. "Nephtalie has the same powers you do. The second we give them magic, she'll start siphoning it, taking it away again."
I scratched my head. "If we fail, though, she'll be more powerful than ever before. She already has an ungodly amount of magic at her disposal, an amount equal to what I released to harness the zombie sharks."
"And more than that," Agwe said. "If she siphons our magic and we used it all to try and make the ghost ships visible, we'll have nothing left to use against her other than brute strength. We won't be able to cast portals into the void because we won't have any to combine with the wyrms' portals."
"And that means we'd be playing right into her hand. She wouldn't use her magic against us. She knows I could siphon it back again. Instead, she'll use whatever ability she's been using to claim and harness the souls of all the sailors she's gathered into her armada. She'll assimilate us into her fleet like the Borg."
"The Borg?" Agwe asked.
"Sorry," I said. "Star Trek reference. Human stuff. I mean, technically, the Borg are an alien race. Not human at all. But the show is a human show. The point is that we'd be reduced to the same fate as the rest of them. Enslaved to her will, unable to move on. And, of course, we'd be dead, which would suck a donkey butt, too."
"Wait," Cleo said. "When you were talking to Agwe before, didn't he say that there was a monster that feeds on magic?"
"Holy crap, Cleo. Brilliant!"
"What is brilliant?" Agwe asked.
I smiled. "Agwe. I know you don't like it. But we have to summon the Kraken."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"TOTALLY OUT OF the question," Agwe said as we returned to Fomoria and dismounted our wyrms in the wyrm field.
"We can't summon the Kraken, Joni. If we do that, we'll all be, as you might say, fucked."
"Not necessarily true," I said. "When I met with Marie earlier, she said that the Kraken would leave once it was satiated. Once it absorbed enough magic or energy."
"Right," Agwe said. "But how do we know that what Nephtalie has will be enough?"
"Trust me," I said. "She and I amplified so much magic that we could have created a hundred firmaments over our kingdom with it."
"But the Kraken, so far as I'm aware, has never taken Fomorian magic. The merfolk have always been smart enough to leave the monster well enough alone whenever it's been summoned."
I shrugged. "But you said it has absorbed magic from the witches who've summoned it before. I know Fomorian magic isn't the same as what witches use, but it's still magic."
"And there's always the chance that the Kraken will be satisfied with just a little taste of Nephtalie's magic. Then, we'd still have Nephtalie to deal with."
"But then the Kraken would go away, and we'd have a less powerful Nephtalie to deal with."
"Look, I'm not saying it's the only way she might be stopped. But so far, it's the only viable option on the table. Unless you have a better idea, we have to at least consider it a better alternative than tossing magic at them and hoping that we have enough left to create a void portal and somehow manage to get the whole armada sucked into it."
"I can use the power of the ocean itself to toss them into the portal if the ships have materialized."
"Where are we going to get more magic from to cast the void portals?" I asked.
Agwe folded his arms over his chest. "If we fight the battle here, we can use the magic of the firmaments over both Fomoria and the wyrm fields to do it."
"And then we'd leave the whole kingdom vulnerable! I can't put my people at risk like that, Agwe."
Agwe grunted. "I'm starting to question whether fighting battles together really does put is in sync."
"Stop it!" I shouted. "This isn't about you and me. This is about Fomoria and, hell, probably the rest of the world. Do you really think Nephtalie will stop after she wipes out our people or, worse, absorbs our whole kingdom into her armada?"
"I don't want to summon the Kraken, Joni."
"I know you don't want to. What the hell? I don't want to either. But the Kraken will leave once it's satiated. Nephtalie won't ever be satiated. Not until she has the whole world on bended knee, not until she does what she's wanted to do from the beginning and destroys the world so she can remake it in her own image."
Agwe nodded. "Fine. But we try my way first. If that doesn't work, we can release the Kraken. But it isn't a spell or some kind of magic you can cast that summons it."
"Well, that's all the better," I said. "Because if we do your plan first, and it fails, we won't have any magic left to use."
"To awaken the Kraken, we'd need the Totem of Hafgufa."
"Where's it at?" I asked.
"With the Kraken."
"So we'd have to find the Kraken to summon the Kraken? How does that make a lick of sense?"
Agwe sighed. "Because you don't technically summon the Kraken. It isn't brought forth from some other realm. It's here already. The Kraken isn't evoked by some kind of spell or pulled out of the void through a portal. It is awakened."
I cocked my head. "But Marie said that the Kraken is a creature of the void, like the wyrms."
"Of it as in its nature consists of the void, always eager to swallow up energy, power, magic," Agwe said. "When it is at rest, I suppose, its spirit dwells in the void in some sense. But you won't pull it out of the void through a portal. You can only awaken the Kraken by vivifying its body. To do that, you must steal the Totem of Hafgufa."
"Which the Kraken is holding in its sleep?"
"Sort of," Agwe said. "At rest, the nose of the Kraken appears to most sailors as two rocks, breaking through the surface of the ocean. Beneath the sea, the Kraken's body appears as stone. The way it tucks its tentacles into itself, you probably wouldn't think a thing of it if you ever came upon it. The Totem of Hafgufa is, I suppose, something analogous to what a doll might be to a child. So long as it holds the Totem in its tentacles, it remains at rest. Take it from the Kraken, speak the inscription written upon it, and it awakens with rage and hunger."
"A rage against whoever took it?" I asked.
Agwe nodded. "Once awakened, the Kraken has two goals. To retrieve the Totem of Hafgufa and satisfy its hunger for power. Once it has both, it will slumber again until someone so foolish as you would take it from her again."
"Based on your pronouns, I'm assuming the Kraken is a female?"
Agwe nodded. "I suppose so. I mean, with all those tentacles, it's hard to tell. As something related to an octopus or a squid, if it were a male, it would have a third right arm with a specialized tip called a hectocotylus that deposits into the female's mantle cavity spermatophores allowing the octopus to reproduce. All I can say is that I haven't seen a hectocotylus on the Kraken."
"Wow, Agwe. You made something that I imagine is supposed to be enjoyable for an octopus sound boring as hell."
"You find octopus copulation exciting?" Agwe asked, raising one eyebrow.
"No," I said, rolling my eyes. "I don't. But I imagine the Kraken would. You could say they hump. Get a little jiggy with it. Bang the clock. Screw. Whatever. I highly doubt an octopus thinks about it in the terms you used."
"And you think an octopus would call mating banging the clock?"
"Well, no," I said. "But you get the point. Whatever. I can't think of anything devoid of passion more than inserting a hectocotylus into a mantle cavity. Whatever. I digress. The important point is that we could awaken the Kraken if we found it and retrieved this Totem of Halfpoopoo... whatever it was."
"Hafgufa," Agwe said. "It's Norwegian. It's what they call the Kraken in the rvar-Odds saga."
"Please tell me that the Kraken isn't sleeping in Norway."
"In the Greenland Sea, actually. Between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans."
"Do you think we could move it here? Maybe through a wyrm hole?"
Agwe shrugged. "It's possible, I suppose. But if you awaken it here, there's no telling how it will respond to something like Fomoria's firmament."
"That may be," I said. "But I still think it might be our best shot if your plan to give the armada energy fails. Suppose Fomoria's firmament ends up dispelled or even weakened, and we don't get rid of the entire ghost ship armada. In that case, we'd be totally screwed."
Agwe sighed. "We can attempt to move the Kraken here. But I must insist that it only be as a last resort. If my plan succeeds, we cannot leave it here. We must hide it, again, where no one is likely to discover it."
"Agreed," I said. "So you'll take us to wherever it is that the Kraken sleeps?"
"I will," Agwe said. "But there's one more thing you must know."
"What's that?" I asked.
"There are guardians set in place the last time the Kraken fell asleep. They will protect the Kraken at all costs."
"Well, if you put them there, can't you just tell them to go take a lunch break or something?"
Agwe shook his head. "I didn't put them there. The Valkyrie were sent to guard the Kraken by the Norse gods."
"Those gods are real?" I asked.
"Even as we Loa are real," Agwe said. "But those gods have little interest in this world. They've abandoned the earth and returned to Valhalla, their own domain, on the plane of Guinee or Annwn. Still, the Valkyrie they set in place before remain, and they are bound to their original purpose."
"And their purpose is to protect the Kraken?"
Agwe nodded. "Yes, and no. They will fight to the death to protect the Kraken, not that they might spare the Kraken from others, but that they might thereby protect the earth. Their purpose is to prevent anyone, no matter if they be human or Fomorian, or anything else, from awakening the beast."
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHANGING CLOTHES ISN'T that complicated. For the most part, since I have a tail and it isn't considered "indecent" to go pantless in mer society, all I had to do was remove a few things. I could have changed into a sea weed bikini, but let's face it—what sounds more comfortable to you? Sea silk or sea weed?
"How do you defeat a Valkyrie?" I asked Agwe as he unstrapped some wrappings from around his wrists.
"You don't," Agwe said, looking back at me all bare-chested and exhibiting his rippled abdominals. "I told you already, this whole thing is a fool's errand. There's a reason why no one has awakened the Kraken in three centuries."
"What if we don't have to defeat them at all? Could we get past them?"
Agwe sighed. "You're talking about trying to transport the Kraken here before you awaken him. It isn't like you're suggesting just sneaking in, grabbing the totem, and taking off. Not like you'd have a great shot at doing that, either."
"What if we explain to them what's going on? Surely they'd understand. If the Valkyries are supposed to protect the earth from the Kraken, but they realize that there's another threat worse than the Kraken..."
"Seriously, Joni?" Agwe asked. "You don't negotiate with the Valkyrie. They are single-minded, with a unified purpose. They don't care what your motives are or whether you're a good or bad person. There's nothing you can offer them in exchange. They will use all the power, vested in them by the Norse gods, to do one thing and one thing only—prevent the awakening of the Kraken."
I bit my lip. "What sort of power? You mean, a kind of magic, right?"
"Of course," Agwe said before widening his eyes. "Don't think about it, Joni. We don't know what will happen if you siphon their power. The magic they wield, it's not like anything else you've ever engaged."
I shrugged. "I siphon. I amplify. I dish it out harder than I take it. Whatever it is, or however it works, I should be able to do my thing."
"It's still risky, Joni."
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