Into the Storm

by Christopher Johns

  “What proof can we give her?” James scratched his head, and Yohsuke rolled his eyes.

  “How quickly we all forget that we’re knights of the Unseelie Court.” He stared at me, and I felt the urge to punch him in his smug chin before or after facepalming.

  “I, Zekiel Erebos, King of the Unseelie Fae, swear to you that by quest of the Elemental Water Primordial, my brothers and I went to a series of islands to rid the waters of the tainted influence of a black dragon called Riktolth.” I saw the notification for my word pop into view. “We dispatched him and cleaned up his body so that the waters would be purified.”

  She frowned and read the notification, her lips moving as she did, the words brought a sad smile to her lips. Looking a little more closely, she would have been exquisitely beautiful except for the monstrous black patch of scaring marring her face and shoulder on the right side.

  “I see that you speak truth.” She frowned, her hand finding her scarred cheek absently, “Would that you could have been there sooner.”

  “Maybe we can fix that for you?” Bokaj asked out loud, looking to Jaken and me.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t really get the chance to try and cure anything affected by the taint.” Jaken looked at me. “I have magic that heals, but that’s not something I could handle, I don’t think. Maybe use Purify?”

  “You heal her,” the shark-man ordered loudly, brandishing his spear at me. “You heal her, or me no teach fight.”

  Well, there’s that. Balmur thought to the rest of us.

  QUEST ALERT!

  Scarface – A mysterious sea creature has demanded you heal his scarred friend in order to learn how to fight in the water. Reward: Unknown, Training from the creature. Failure: No training, and likely made into chum.

  Do you accept? Yes / No ?

  I rolled my eyes and accepted it readily before addressing the others, We may have to overkill this thing to keep it from returning. Or somehow getting into the water or anything else here. I need Bokaj and Jaken as well as Balmur.

  Me? Balmur seemed shocked at his inclusion. I kill things, I don’t have healing spells.

  “Come on, I’ll explain as we do it.” I motioned all of them toward the water, and the shark-man snarled at us. His spear closed the gap between me and him, the sharp edge of it almost in my throat. “Look, we want to get this over with and make sure she’s okay so we can learn. It may take all of us. Relax.”

  “It’s okay, Blinthil,” the woman called as she pressed away from the rock and toward the water’s edge. She wore no clothes, and the guys except for Bokaj blushed furiously and looked away.

  “Bokaj, you want to try and see what Purify does to it first?” I offered as the woman lay on her back in the sand.

  He did so and the darkness on her face flickered and ebbed before returning to what it had been.

  “Okay, how much magic can you amplify, Balmur?” I asked and watched as he did some figuring, stopped, opened his book and ran his fingers over several lines of words I had no understanding of.

  “I can multiply any magic cast in front of me, if I know the premise of the spell, by a minimum of two.” He frowned a little more. “If I know how the spell works, I can make it up to four times stronger, and if I can perform the spell myself, it goes up to five or more depending on how well I know it.”

  “Fucking wizards…” I groused half-heartedly. He smiled at me, and the others for me to decide what to do. I summoned Hubris, and they eyed me skeptically. “It’s going to help us amplify this further. I’m a little worried that we may not be strong enough to do it, but we can give it a shot. Jaken, you’re going to pump radiant healing magic into the scepter. Bokaj, you cast Purify for all of your mana, once you’re out, stop. I’m going to hold my own Purify for fifteen seconds and see if that helps. Balmur, I want you to amplify the purification magic.”

  “Can you explain how it works?” He looked to Bokaj and me both.

  Bokaj started it, “Think of the mana coming in and eating away the tainted energy and darkness of the thing.”

  “Almost scouring it out completely and setting it to right,” I finished. He closed his eyes as if envisioning how the spell would go down.

  “I think I have it.” He growled. “Sorry, gotta feed the eye.”

  We blinked at him as he turned away and fed his eye once more. We tried to ignore his discomfort, and once he returned, he seemed a little more focused.

  “You cool?” Bokaj asked him softly. The dwarf merely nodded back once and refocused on the task at hand.

  “All hands in,” I ordered, and three other hands grasped Hubris. “I’ll cast first and hold the spell, then when I say now, you all join in. Hubris will tell you when to cast your spell Balmur.”

  He nodded, and we all fell silent. The sound of the waves broken by the giant entity we rode on drowned out by the thudding of my heart as I held Purify. One ding. The second. Finally, the third. “Now!”

  800 MP siphoned from my body into the scepter and melded with Jaken’s healing energy and Bokaj’s less powerful Purifying spell. The nimbus of golden and green energy swirled down the length of the weapon growing larger and more focused until it reached the gem at the end and met Balmur’s magic. The muted beam of surging energy shot into the woman below the four of us and zapped her directly in the chest.

  Her shriek of anguish and cries to make it stop coupled with the look of angry boiling that roiled along the left side of her body made my entire body run cold until something pierced my right shoulder, and the sound of shouting and violence erupted behind me.

  I couldn’t take my eyes away from the mermaid, her fin splashing us with water as she writhed as if tortured from the inside. Finally, just below her left-most rib, her skin split open, and a geyser of black, brackish liquid splattered out onto the ground. The sludge almost living as it did what it could to get away from us and the damnable light that had outed it.

  I summoned the shadows around us as Jaken saw to her healing, and let the void delightedly gobble it all up. Like a child with candy and a voracious sweet tooth, the ooze was gone.

  The woman stilled almost like she was dead, for mere seconds before Jaken, Bokaj and I buffeted her with healing magic. Her body was still a moment longer, so I decided to give in to my first aid training and ensure she got air the old fashioned way.

  By force.

  I tilted her chin back, and went to ensure her airway was clear when a small glimmer caught my eye in her throat. I sent shadows into her mouth to try and dislodge it, and it worked, but she still wasn’t breathing. I grasped her nose, covered her mouth with mine and blew twice, her rib cage inflating as I did so. Then I clasped my hands together and began compressions to the tune of Stayin’ Alive.

  Three rounds of this and she coughed up some more ooze that screeched and tried to work its way toward me, but I nuked it with Fire magic. She coughed and sputtered, her hands cupping together close to her chest. I cast Regrowth over her and she began to shake a little less.

  “What was that brutal thing you did to me?” She glared at me distrustfully.

  “It’s a resuscitating technique I learned for when someone stops breathing.” I glanced at the others, but they seemed content to let me speak. There was no more arguing or sounds of fighting behind us, and I was curious to see what had happened.

  “You could have just pushed me into the water.” She complained, but a small smile came to her lips as she sat up and looked into the water. “It’s true. It’s gone.”

  “We’re glad to have been able to help.” Bokaj smiled at her, and I turned to the others behind us.

  Vrawn sat on the shark-man’s back with his legs up over her waist in some kind of weird wrestling move, and he looked like he was about to pass out from the pain. She blinked at me. “He stabbed you and tried to stab the others. He earned this.”

  “I’m sure that he means well now, right?” Balmur tried to get his attention, but the man seemed to be blanking. “Let him go,
Vrawn, please?”

  She released his legs slowly before standing and walking over to me. “How does a kiss resuscitate someone?”

  “It wasn’t a kiss.” I rolled my eyes. “It was me forcing air into her lungs, and keeping her heart pumping blood until her body could start back up on its own. If it would have started back up that way.”

  “So, there was no certainty in that?” She frowned and cocked her head to the side. I shook my head, and she frowned more. “You will teach me this.”

  There was no arguing that point with her, so I just shrugged and nodded my agreement.

  It took a moment for the shark-man to stand on his own, and see to his friend before he turned to us and grumpily snapped, “Fine. We teach to fight in water.”

  We grinned at each other and got started immediately.

  Shark-man, Tony as we began to call him, was a gangster. Literally. Well, formerly. See, his family had been part of the original owners of this stretch of the ocean; they oversaw the peoples and creatures in the area, taking portions of the treasure from passing ships and those that sank. It had been lucrative until the Great One had come along and eaten half his people and mortally wounded the rest.

  “Only reason I survive was fighting style.” He lifted his chin and gnashed his teeth. “Bit Great One on his fin and surprised him. Earned respect and life. Became protector of shell garden.”

  “That’s a great story, Tony, but can you teach us something a little more practical than trying to bite?” Bokaj groaned at our would-be trainer. “The only ones that would help are Zeke and our Vampire buddy, Yohsuke.”

  He grumped a minute more before pulling out his guitar and strumming a melody to distract himself from our glares and pointed looks of anger and indignation.

  “What melody is that?” The mermaid asked, with her head poking out of the water toward Bokaj.

  “It’s just one that I came up with.” He shrugged and started to play a little more surely than he had been before. The song was soft at first, then crescendoed into a loud burst that made me smile. It was almost like the breakdown of a metal song, but not quite there.

  “You have a talent for music,” she observed with a smile. “Would that my sisters could be here to hear you play. Can you sing?”

  He blushed. “Yeah, I can sing a little bit. But when it comes to lyrics, I don’t have the greatest head for them. The melody is where I flourish.”

  She came up out of the water until she was up onto the sand, and once her tail fully cleared the water, the scaled appendage rapidly molted and fell away until a pair of legs sat in the debris.

  Master, collect the molting. It is a powerful magical component!

  I cast my shadow forward as she stood on shaky legs to take herself toward the still-strumming bard. She wobbled her way to him, his music stopping suddenly as she came to his shoulder. “Don’t stop playing, I will teach you how to sing even better.”

  “But you’ve never heard me sing,” he refuted as he looked at her feet, his cheeks turning a slight shade of purple.

  “Why does that lady have no clothes on?” Odany’s suddenly shrill voice scared the hell out of all of us. “She’s naked!”

  I turned to see her giggling and pointing, Vrawn grabbing her and pulling her aside for a moment.

  “I’m nude because it is the way of my people,” the mermaid seemed confused. “How else are we meant to lure sailors into the depths to mate?”

  “Lure sailors… I thought that was sirens?” James looked confused and pulled out a small notebook, readying his quill. “Is there some kind of difference?”

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled and motioned to the water. “If a siren were to come out of the water, she would transform into a hideous half-serpent creature with wings. Their bodies are scaled and their claws sharp. They eat the men and women they mate with. We do not.”

  Bokaj looked up at her, his eye stopping to follow every curve of her body, “What do you do with them?”

  She smiled, her perfect teeth flashing in the light as she looked down at him with her hand stroking his shoulder. “Other things.”

  I snorted, and Tony cleared his throat. “We train now?”

  We trained for a few hours, Tony going through how to use our ability to walk on water as an advantage rather than leaving us as sitting ducks.

  “Must watch the image if you can see, ocean is unforgiving and thick at time,” Tony motioned to where a large snake watched us from below. This creature was like a large coral snake, but super friendly. He would shoot out of the water and slap us with his face to show us how to dodge incoming attacks. “Image is lie, sometimes creatures use this lie to kill. You must be smarter. Move completely out of way, and use their contentment to your advantage.”

  He stood on the water and watched below himself as the snake shot out, dancing away from the creature and tapping it in the back of the head effortlessly. “Dead. You do.”

  We practiced, some of us getting it a little easier than others. James and Balmur got it on the first go around and Yohsuke on his second. It took my third try, and Jaken just didn’t seem to get the hang of it at all.

  “Damn,” he growled as the others took turns chasing the snake and Tony through the water. We sat on the shore so I could help him out. “I just can’t seem to get it.”

  “You just have to move further back, that’s all.” I thumped the plate armor pauldron on his shoulder, and he grunted inarticulately. “Seriously, all it really is, is a refraction of the light off the water, then the snake.”

  “What does that even mean?” He threw his hands into the air, exasperated.

  “It means that the light is bending by the time it hits what you see, so it looks like it’s somewhere it really isn’t.” I showed him by putting my fists out in front of me. I lifted one and put it next to the other but slightly overlapped them. “What the light hits is really below the reflection, or slightly off from it.”

  “So then it could be even further away?”

  “Yeah, or a little more to one side than the other.” He nodded and stepped out onto the water.

  “Let’s go again!” He barked at the snake, the large creature swimming toward him and slinking into the water. He waited patiently and watched the water beneath his feet. Taking a deep breath, he peered into the water and hopped back and to the right as the snake just cleared the surface of the water where he had been. He smacked it on the back, and the rest of the observers cried out in triumph.

  Jaken looked back at me, and I gave him a thumb up in support. We carried on with our training.

  Underwater fighting was difficult, but we knew that already, the only way to really combat that would be to attempt outguessing your opponent or tricking them into giving you their back.

  We worked on that for a little while, then while we rested, Bokaj took lessons from our new mermaid friend.

  “You must focus mana into your voice,” she coached from her spot slightly behind Bokaj’s shoulder, her hand on his throat near his voice box. “Here. I have also heard stories of accomplished musicians using mana to stimulate and add to their playing as well. Let us try it.”

  “Could you show me how to?” He raised a brow and motioned to her, then the rest of us. “We would all love to hear you sing, I’m sure.”

  “Very well, but I cannot be held responsible for anything that happens due to my singing.” She stared at all of us for a moment then, looking each of us in the eyes until it had been bumped up to an uncomfortable silence.

  “What can happen?” Vrawn asked softly, just as the mermaid made to open her mouth.

  “A mermaid’s song is meant to enthrall and entice; once you hear me sing, you will understand what I mean.”

  “Is there a way to counteract it?” James asked, nervously rubbing the ring on his finger.

  “There is, but this is an important lesson, and I wish for this one,” she touched Bokaj’s shoulder as she spoke and smiled softly. “To learn the full scope of what he coul
d be. I will reward you for your assistance after.”

  Then she opened her mouth, and her voice filled the world. I could feel my mind slipping at the beautiful tones of her voice. The pitch was lilting, the wordless symphony that was her voice lulling us into an alarming sense of ease. Even with the blue-bathed area around us from the beacons on our hands, I wanted to be near her.

  To hear her sing her song for me and only me for all time.

  Vrawn and Odany shuffled closer to her, their faces pleasant but slack, somehow less themselves. The ethereal waves of warm, welcoming sonorous vocalizing came to a halt, the emptiness afterward making my heart ache so fiercely that the world itself seemed gray for the loss of it.

  The two ladies’ eyes welled up, and I felt that in my soul.

  “I have to learn how to do that.” Bokaj sniffed. His eyes were red as if he had wept, and he pawed at his face. “Please teach me.”

  “I will teach you.” She touched the faces of the two women, whispering something in their ears and kissing each of them fully on the mouth. “I will need to do the same for all of you. Come to me.”

  We all stood without a second thought and came straight to her, lining up behind each other so that she could address each of us in turn.

  When she came to me, she pulled my chin toward her and leaned against my chest so that she could speak into my ear. “Change your shape, shifter.” I did as she ordered and came out in my human form. “Thank you. My voice and the voice of my sisters will no longer hold sway over you. You are free to sail these seas as you have before, unmolested by my touch. Be at peace.”

  She pressed her lips to mine, and it felt as if I had kissed sea foam. A chill ran through me, and I knew without a shadow of doubt that I would never need to worry about her song touching my mind or heart again.

  I wasn’t sure if I would be better off for that or not. But listening to her teaching Bokaj how to do what she had done, I was grateful.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We fought for two days, learning how to combat creatures of the deep, and it was hard. Not only that, I had also been delving into the depths of my elemental control. I hadn’t made any new spells, but I was much more comfortable combining the elements in different ways.