Into the Storm

by Christopher Johns

  Balmur and Yohsuke closed their eyes and focused just before the shadows around me shifted and pooled in two different locations. I closed my eyes, and I felt them shaping the shadows like children molding sandcastles.

  Balmur, make it a little wider toward the rear of it? He did as I asked, and I mentally probed the shadows on Yohsuke’s side. Make it a little shorter bud, there you go.

  I cast Trade Winds and split the spell in two, filling the makeshift wings.

  The ship lunged forward, knocking me, Jaken and Muu off our feet. “Jesus Christ!” Muu shouted.

  Odany giggled fiercely and clapped.

  “I need to hire six of you!” Captain Holly bellowed with a ferocious smile. The crew cheered and clambered down to the deck with nothing left for them to do.

  “Should we try and prepare some new spells?” The others looked my way as Balmur asked the question, and I shrugged, wondering what they were all looking at me for. “You’ve been making new spells the longest, man. We’re still new to it.”

  “Oh!” I couldn’t contain my surprise as it dawned on me that they were asking for my help. “Uh, sure—I’ll help you make some, what’re you trying to do?”

  “I’ve got a little bit of an idea on how to do it from listening to you teach Odany,” Jaken began, shaking his head and motioning to the full sails and then to the shadows on the sides of the ship. “I don’t have the control yet to do the things you guys do with my magic, but I can learn. I was just thinking of making some sort of attack spell with light magic. I think I’m going to try it on my own, though.”

  My chest puffed up with pride at my friend’s desire to push his learning on his own, and I grabbed him into a quick side hug, whispering, “Slow and focus on keeping your mana flow steady. You’ll get it, I promise.”

  He nodded my way, and the others began to suggest types of spells they wanted to try making. Yohsuke wanted to make something that had shadows pulling health from a distance, which was going to be wild if he could manage it. I wasn’t sure how to help him do it, but I coached him through my process of spell craft, and he seemed to pick it up readily before going to meditate on his idea.

  Balmur had ideas for some spells that would allow him to mix fire and shadow together and have the shadows stick to the person like Napalm. I had a similar spell that I hadn’t used yet due to the ease of access to water we had here, but I could see it being useful. I gave him some coaching as well, but with his wizardly understanding of magic, he was almost better at it than I was.

  James and Muu just eyed us from the sidelines before shrugging and going to watch over the rails of the ship. They were faster now, that was all that mattered to them, and there was no jealousy I could pick up on.

  “You aren’t going to make anything new while you can?” Vrawn asked quietly from where she watched Odany concentrating on her own improvement. Bea stood with her head rubbing up against the large woman’s arm affectionately as she watched me.

  “No.” I shook my head, turning my eyes to the waves around us. “I have a lot of spells I don’t even use these days, and if I go creating something now, I take some of my mana out of the fight if something attacks us. It has a place, but we need to focus on staying alive.”

  She nodded, and Yve bumped my hip with her head. “Wise words, young King.”

  I took the small jab in stride and kept a lookout while the others worked.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dawn cracked in the eastern sky by the time the others stumbled toward me, Jaken had managed to create a light spell that acted as a buff for his weapon attacks, which was awesome.

  “I am so proud of you, man!” I smirked at him and shook him by the shoulder, and he took it in stride grinning back at all of us.

  Balmur still scribbled in his spellbook and Yoh had given up on his spell entirely, muttering something about, “…goddamn pitching and rolling ship ass fucking stupid ocean makin’ me all weird when concentrating bullshit fuck this stupid ship I hate the water, wet ass…”

  I stopped listening after that with a snort and noticed Bokaj strumming his guitar. He’d been trying to figure out how to use his mana while strumming like his newest mentor had suggested but seemed to be having a little bit more difficulty with it than he had with his voice. He took a deep breath after strumming an off note and sighed heavily before setting his guitar on his lap and staring at it.

  “You good?” I sat next to him on the stairs to the upper deck, where the first mate Joesa navigated the waters before us. I’d had to cast my spell once more about an hour back, and according to him, we would be in sight of land by mid-morning if we kept traveling as swiftly as we had been.

  “Yeah.” He sighed and touched the wooden neck of his instrument affectionately. “I just never thought that my music would be so important like this, you know? Every musician wants to change the industry, and make songs that will touch peoples’ souls, make them feel like we do, but this? This is insane. Sometimes I wonder what it’s going to be like if we—when we—make it back home. You know?”

  “I can understand that.” My own mind wandering to what it would be like to feel like I had no power again. “I know you’ll do good things, man. There’s always that chance that you’ll go big, you know? What’s the name of that band from where we grew up? Boba-something?”

  “Bobaflex?” He smiled at the name. “You mean one of the few bands from the Midwest to have made a living out of going state to state and rocking out? I love those guys. Yeah, maybe someday I’ll get that big or bigger. Just seems like a lifetime away.”

  “Yeah, I understand that, too.” A hand grasped my shoulder and Bokaj stared me straight in the eyes, a sad look on his face. “What?”

  “I remembered that you’ll be leaving Maebe and Vrawn behind.” A mrow from his hood and a paw swat made him grunt. “Kayda, Bea, and Coal, too. I mean, I get to take T’ home with me because she came here with me in the first place, but they’re all stuck here.”

  I nodded, a little more robotically than I meant to. “Yeah, but they’ll be okay. They all have each other. And maybe someday I can come back? Who knows. But I can agree with Maebe. I want to have what I can with her here while I can. Vrawn, too.”

  “You’re a good dude, Zeke.” He patted my back and pulled me close. “Always have been. Glad I have you here to watch my back with Balmur.”

  “Me too, buddy.” I patted his knee, and I heard a whistle.

  I turned and looked at Muu’s silhouette, the sun behind him, making me strain my eyes.

  “You two gonna make out or what?”

  I rolled my eyes and flipped him off, his laughter cut short by a titanic wave rocking the ship hard enough that it listed to the side dangerously.

  “Kraken to port!” Several crew members shrieked, cannons firing the few balls we had left at it to distract it.

  The sky darkened instantly, a funnel cloud reaching down toward the water between us and the land that had just come into view. Winds whipped at us and threatened the ship’s course and integrity as the weather system picked up intensity.

  Kayda, can you help stop that thing? I asked uncertainly.

  I will try if you ask it of me father, but I do not know if I can. I am not strong enough to take on a hurricane yet. Her mind raced alongside mine, and the only thing I could think to do was to try and send wind at it to disrupt it, but where the hell were we going to get that kind of power?

  “James, man the ballista!” Yohsuke howled, turning to me and the other. “Muu, you help him! All casters to Zeke and me!”

  I frowned at him, and he motioned to the storm and then mouthed scepter. My eyebrows shot up, and I summoned Hubris.

  “You’re going to funnel all of our magic into this spell to help me stop that funnel cloud from reaching the ocean,” I explained, and the scepter understood.

  Balmur, Bokaj, Yoh, Jaken, Odany, and I all grasped the staff and pointed it at the funnel cloud before another, lighter hand joined ours. I turned to
see Yve, who smacked my arm and motioned toward the cloud. “I can’t guard you if you die!”

  Fair point. I thought to myself. I brought Bea into my collar with a tap from her snout on my shoulder to protect her and then opened my link to Kayda wide. Mana funneled from all of the hands on the scepter and down into the brightly glowing gem at the top of it.

  I willed the magic to disperse the wind, the mana built and built until our arms vibrated painfully, but none of us dared let go.

  I ground my teeth, changing the angle of the shot to meet the slowly descending wind cell and let the magic burst forth in a bright, glowing globule of energy, just as the ship lurched upward.

  The shot arched just right, scattering a slight portion of the dangerous mass of rotating wind, but not enough to get rid of it.

  “Fuck!” Muu snarled loudly, my throbbing headache-encompassed mind agreeing with his sentiment.

  “You will not beat me again!” Baranzil cried happily. “I will kill you all and claim these oceans for my own in the name of War!”

  “What do we do?” Bokaj looked around at all of us, his breathing too fast to get enough oxygen to his brain.

  “We nut up and fight, man.” Jaken shoved him, reaching into his inventory for a medium mana potion. “Let’s get to it!”

  You need to flee! The water primordial screamed into my mind, the tide of her voice like a tsunami hitting my brain. He has incurred their wrath!

  I watched for some kind of sign as to what she could possibly mean, but all I saw was the asshole we had been running from.

  The ship listed again, this time from behind, large tentacles reaching up over the end of it and sweeping several sailors into the turbulent waters and depths below.

  The kraken was close enough that we could see his level now.

  Baranzil Lvl 78

  “Fuck me.” I wished I could’ve cursed more, but wasting breath like that would do me no good. I used a couple potions of my own, getting me enough mana to cast Aspect of the Owl for the heightened mana regeneration that the raised wisdom would give me. “We need to get out of here! The water prime says something pissed off is coming!”

  I took out Storm Caller and kissed it before running to the side of the deck and activating cleave as I swung for the fences at the tentacle. A wave of light rippled over my weapon, Jaken’s buff, Glaring Smite, covered it and it sank deeply into the bastard’s flesh, barely taking a percentage point of his HP bar with it. I hoped that would help distract it so I could get Odany to fill the sails when there was a scent of brine, and a musty odor of dead fish reached my nose and made me gag.

  The ship listed again, and a ballista bolt slammed into Barazil’s head. “Argh!” The piercing aspect to it helped it to bypass the scales covering the body, and the burst of electrical energy took a couple more percentage points of health from him. The metallic bolt sticking out of the flesh like a lightning rod.

  Kayda took my thoughts and ran with them, lightning flashing from her and into the creature, one of the freezing shots for the ballista smacked into its body and the right half of it froze as Kayda’s Lightning Ball latched onto his head near the two protruding bolts.

  A tentacle crashed into the hull of the ship; it didn’t burst, likely thanks to the shields that I had made via enchanting, but another strike like that would break the ship apart, and it would do us no good.

  The scent intensified and then was gone as soon as it had come. The water stilled, and I worried that the kraken was trying to stop us from fleeing when lightning crashed all around us in a circle. The fur on my body stood on end as it continued to pulse, crashing into the water and electrifying it painfully for Baranzil.

  “Is that you and Kayda?” Yoh called out to me, a look of uncertainty plastered to his face.

  “No!” Panic rose in my voice as the water beside the ship exploded upward with enough force to make the nearly ship-cracking attack from the kraken look like a fucking love tap from a high school sweetheart. The ship split from port to starboard with a splash and eardrum-shattering force. My health dropped 20% from the concussive blast alone, and my body flew twenty-five feet over the starboard rail into the cold ocean. My eyes opened beneath the water only to see a long body writhing beneath the surface.

  A pair of serpentine eyes opened more than a hundred yards below me, and I thought I was going to die then and there. Whatever it was rushed up and by me hard enough that it launched me into the air and sixty feet away with ease. I hit the water with a grunt that threatened to pull water into my lungs, and I fought on, just trying to get to the surface, but the damned thing was so long and moving so violently that it was all I could do not to be sucked toward it.

  Eventually, my head broke the surface, and there I was just treading water as best as I could, but what I saw flowing from the water damned near stopped my heart. A long, scaled body similar to that of a sea serpent’s, floated out and stood as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The body twisting and turning back on itself in loops that shifted hues of color from black to green and then blue to seafoam green. The small, clawed arms growing from the length about sixty feet from the ocean’s surface grasped at the air, and the funnel cloud ceased to exist.

  The wind dissolving up by the new creature’s massive head reminded me of dragons from Japanese lore. His whiskers looked almost like that of a catfish, and his head was draconic in shape. His piercing red eyes filled to the brim with primal hatred as another section of his huge body rose from the ocean and split the ship even further apart.

  Kayda! I barked through our mental connection. I could feel her flying nearby, but I wasn’t sure where exactly due to the presence of this magnificent monstrosity. Get Vrawn and Odany to the shore, now!

  But what about yo—she began, but the large dragon roared so loud that my HP bar plummeted again, leaving me at 35% health.

  Go now! I screamed, pulling myself out of the water and trying to scramble and find my friends as the behemoth dragon fell on the General with a fervor only a true ruler could. I couldn’t see his level, but every smack from one of the sections of his long, sinuous body brought the kraken’s health down steadily in five to ten percent chunks.

  Tentacles wrapped around the dragon’s massive body as I moved to get out of the area, and a massive wave slammed me from my feet into the water, the current kicking me further away as the two wrestled for supremacy. Ichorous blood dribbled into the water, acidic and sulfurous as soon as it touched the ocean’s salty body. The dragon’s screech of anger and rage only seemed to make it fight harder, its large mouth crashing around the body easily, crunching through the copper scales as Baranzil screamed.

  I took a pot shot with a Lightning Bolt that slammed into one of the general’s many arms, only shocking it and minutely the dragon as well. I would have assumed it would barely notice a small attack like that, but his immense tail lashed out and just barely missed me, the water around me lifting me and carrying me further away.

  Run! Fuck all this, get out of here! Muu urged us. I could see him springing out of the waves and into the sky, just barely missing the majority of the clouds that now spewed lightning toward the dragon. Multiple strikes crashed against its back, and it snarled, letting go of the kraken for a moment to rear back its head and inhale.

  Breath weapon! Yohsuke howled, I could just make out some of the others sprinting away on the water as fast as they could. A gold and blue-hued energy blasted out of the dragon’s mouth and hit the kraken directly in the eye. He screamed, his tentacles sharpening and punching out at anything they could, but the cutting energy from the dragon’s mouth hit the water, and as soon as it did, a tsunami-like wave more than two hundred feet high shot out all around the two of them. The water buckled beneath me somehow, sucking me down and back before my mana drained and my body rose. I was in the wave with no mana, and my lungs longed for a single breath. I was just barely strong enough to get out of the water’s surface for a second—long enough to gasp once, and then I
was back in.

  The dragon clawed the front of the kraken’s body, lifting it from the water slightly so that the bottom of the kraken dangled over the waves and shook it violently. Tentacles wrapped around the dragon’s throat, and it bit down on one of the coiling appendages violently. The limb detached easily, and it tossed it aside like a child with a broken toy before roaring again. The dragon slammed his adversary into the ocean and lashed out at it with his tail.

  Suddenly, two somethings dragging at my armor and turned to see both Servant and Yve fighting the water to pull me closer to shore and out of the depths. I had ordered them away, what were they doing here? Another fierce cry caught my attention as the two began to flag in their struggles. I urged them to go home, and they disappeared as my head broke water.

  Another stabbing tentacle pierced into the dragon’s lower coils like a blade, his blood leaking further into the ocean, bringing cries of rage and thrashing, making the waves around me chop and grow dangerously. They crested over my head, forcing me into the water as I fought for everything I had.

  I closed my eyes, my lungs burning. Mother! Mother help us. Please! Help… help… save my friends.

  This happened two more times, the water beating me down and sucking the air from my lungs before my vision blurred and faded to black as I called to the ether for someone to save my loved ones.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Pressure on my chest brought me out of my limbo-like dream of Maebe serving me a mojito on the beach while wearing a bikini, Vrawn playing volleyball with a group of seagulls. I was delirious, obviously.

  How would seagulls hit a volleyball?

  More pressure and a concerned squeaking noise before something cold and wet slapped me in the face, and something hard socked me in the stomach.

  Water rushed from my lunges in coughing fits, bile rising with it as I puked and coughed up all the seawater I had inhaled. I looked to my savior and found a furry face that reminded me of an otter. Only the size of a horse. With… purple and gold eyes.