Survivor Skills

by S. E. Smith

  Magna sat up. “What, is there more going on in that head of yours? Are you upset because Kapian couldn’t join us tonight?” she asked.

  Orion shook his head and looked down at the sand. He picked up a handful and let it filter through his fingers before doing it again. She waited, barely containing a huff of impatience.

  Finally, he sighed and spoke. “Kapian went with his father to the Isle of the Monsters,” he said in a distracted voice.

  “The Isle of the Monsters! Oh, I would love to go there. We should have followed them. I heard the Empress has these wonderful birds that are made of lightning, and beasts so huge that they make even the Giants appear tiny in comparison. I think we should go there tonight,” she breathed, thinking of all the amazing creatures she had heard about while growing up.

  Orion chuckled and shook his head. “Why am I not surprised you’d say that?” he retorted before he sobered.

  Magna twisted and scowled at her cousin. “Why not? If we left now we could be there by tomorrow night. Our stags are the fastest in the ocean! I bet we could beat Kapian there. Can you imagine his expression when he sees us?” she said in excitement.

  She stood and twirled around to look at Orion. Biting her lip, she gazed at him with a pleading expression that usually worked. Her smile faded when she saw the glum look on his face.

  “I can’t go,” he said, rising to his feet to stand next to her.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve been all moody tonight,” she complained.

  Orion was silent for a moment before he shrugged. “Father and Mother have chosen my bride. I’m to be married,” he said.

  “Married! But…,” she started to protest before her voice faded as the realization of what he had said sunk in. “Can’t you tell them you aren’t ready? There are so many things we planned to do still,” she murmured, gazing up at him in dismay.

  “Those were childish dreams. It is time to grow up. We each have our responsibilities. Kapian told me yesterday that his father reminded him that I would one day be king. Servants and guards are not the friends of a king. They are there to serve him,” Orion stated in a tight voice.

  Magna snorted. “Kapian’s father has a seaworm stuck up his butt. Just because you are a king does not mean you are no longer a person! Even a king needs friends. Besides, Kapian and I know too much about you to act like we never saw you covered in Sea Hares or helped you escape from Coralus when he insisted on extra training lessons, but you wanted to ride Sea Fire instead. Your father and mother are great rulers, Orion, but you will be an even better one because you have a genuine connection with your people,” she declared with a wave of her hands.

  Personally, she wanted more from life than being tied down with the weighty expectations of others. She loved exploring the vast world they lived in. Her plans were to visit every kingdom and meet the people who lived there. She wanted to learn everything that she could about the wonders of their world until she felt like her brain would explode from all the knowledge.

  Then, I will find new worlds to explore, she thought with excitement.

  She wanted to fly like the dragons, do magic like her mother’s people, live in the clouds with the Elementals, and swim to the bottom of the oceans as free as the sea dragons. She was in love with the independence, the differences between the people, and the unexpected treasures that she found when she visited each place.

  Orion chuckled. “How did you get to be so smart?” he teased, bringing her back to the present.

  She tossed her long black braid over her shoulder, looked up at him, and grinned. “Why from my cousin, the future King of the Sea People, of course,” she retorted just before a light in the sky caught her attention.

  She parted her lips in awe. Orion took his cue from her and looked up. A bright flash of light was cutting across the dark sky. They both turned, following the path it made across the sky until it disappeared into the sea with a tremendous splash, not far from the cove.

  “I call it! It’s mine,” she yelled, playfully pushing him down onto the soft sand before she laughingly raced for the water.

  “Not if I find it first,” Orion yelled after her, rising to his feet as he was overcome by her excitement and the challenge of finding the meteorite first.

  Magna raced him to the water. With a loud whistle, she called to her sea dragon, Raine. Diving into the waves, she swam as fast as she could out into the water. Raine swam up under her once the water was deep enough. She grabbed the reins and glanced over her shoulder. Orion was a good two hundred feet behind her.

  “Go, Raine!” she encouraged, clinging like a second skin to her sea dragon.

  Magna loved the heady feel of the race. She really didn’t care who found the meteorite first – or even if they found it. It was the thrill of the adventure, the fun of riding as fast as they could through the ocean, and the joy of not worrying about things like getting married or becoming a warrior like Orion and Kapian.

  Several miles out to sea, the ocean floor dropped from a sheer cliff into a deep canyon. Orion, Kapian, and she had explored the long narrow canyon a few times out of curiosity. Raine swept down along the cliff, turning in a tight spiral that left Magna laughing and slightly dizzy. Orion charged after her, swiftly closing the distance between them.

  “Magna, wait up!” Orion called.

  She glanced over her shoulder when she heard him. “I called it, Orion!” Magna replied. “This is my treasure.”

  She turned back and focused on guiding Raine through the long, narrow crevices that ran along the ocean floor. They weaved through tall ghostly lava vents left over from the volcanoes that had risen up out of the sea to create the islands that would become the Seven Kingdoms. She swayed from side to side in unison with Raine as the sea dragon rounded the columns.

  Up ahead, Magna could see a red glow illuminating the darkness. She knew that the canyon dropped again into an even deeper ravine. She had explored the deeper sections once before, but had found them dull and boring. There was not much down there except dark gray sand and volcanic rock.

  “Magna, wait!” Orion demanded behind her.

  Magna turned to see Orion reining in his sea dragon. She slowed Raine and patted the side of the young sea dragon’s elegant neck when it fought against her hold. She turned on her saddle and grinned at Orion. If he thought that she was going to be tricked into letting him race ahead of her, she and the young sea dragon would show him.

  “It isn’t much farther,” Magna replied with a smile. “I can feel it, Orion.”

  Orion shook his head and frowned. “I don’t like this, Magna. Something is wrong,” he said, glancing around at the tall, rugged cliffs not far from the drop-off. “The water doesn’t feel right.”

  Magna shook her head and chuckled. Her eyes danced with merriment. She waved her hand through the water surrounding them. It felt the same to her.

  “You aren’t afraid, are you?” she teased. “The water hasn’t changed.”

  Orion shook his head again and pulled back on the reins of his sea dragon. “No, there is something very different about it,” he said in a slow measured voice. “We should go back.”

  Magna’s face crumpled with disappointment, and she glanced back over her shoulder toward the dark crevice with a look of longing. While she wanted to see if they could find the meteorite, she knew that if Orion said the water felt different, then there was something wrong. Pushing aside her disappointment, she reluctantly nodded.

  “Okay,” she muttered with a sigh of regret. “But, I still call it, even if we never found it.”

  Orion laughed. “I’ll give you this one,” he agreed with a grin. “I’m still ahead though.”

  Magna rolled her eyes. She was about to argue with Orion when a dark shadow rose up from the depths beneath him. Her eyes widened when she saw the mass of dark tentacles reaching for him. Without thinking, she kicked Raine’s sides and rushed toward him in a race to get to Orion before the black mass did.

  “Ori
on, look out!” Magna cried in horror.

  Orion yanked the reins in surprise to avoid colliding with Magna’s mount. The move startled his stag, and it bucked. Magna watched in horror as Orion flew over the neck of his sea dragon. His head struck a section of the rock face, and his body went limp. Terrified, she moved on instinct. She grabbed Orion around the waist as he began to sink and pulled him over the saddle in front of her.

  “Go, Raine, go!” Magna urged as the tentacles began to close in around them. “Go!”

  The young sea dragon, weighted down by two riders, fought in vain to rise above the reach of the creature coming up out of the abyss. Raine cried out in pain when one of the black tentacles grazed her hindquarters, leaving behind a long welt. The frightened sea dragon kicked back, but the ugly tentacles continued to reach for her.

  Magna realized that if she didn’t immediately do something, they would all be lost. Sliding off of Raine, she slapped the sea dragon on her hindquarters. The sea dragon bolted upward and away.

  A strangled scream of pain and terror slipped from her lips when a tentacle wrapped around her slender ankle. Searing pain exploded through her and began spreading up her leg. She struggled to break free, but more of the creature’s tentacles wrapped around her, pulling her struggling body down into the abyss.

  She reached up, grappling for a hold on the rock wall of one of the lava vents. Her palms were shredded by the sharp rocks. Blood from her torn flesh mixed with the water. Anguish filled her when she realized that there was no way she would be able to break free. The grasp around the lower half of her body was slowly moving upward, consuming her.

  “No!” she choked.

  Despair filled her as she watched Raine disappear with Orion, still unconscious, on her back. The black sludge was rising higher and higher. She felt like she was on fire instead of surrounded by water. Fear gave way to a certain knowledge that all her dreams would never be realized, because she was about to die.

  “Help me,” she whispered, stretching her lacerated hands upward in a silent plea even as her vision began to blur.

  Magna twisted and was pulled deeper into the abyss. Shivers wracked her body. The water had never sent a chill through her before. As one of the sea people on her father’s side, the oceans were her home. Now, the frigid temperature of the water seeped into her bones. Whatever held her in its grasp was sliding beneath her skin, scorching the very core of her bones with a fiery cold. The pain burning through her was overwhelming. Her heart thudded violently as she desperately tried one last time to break free.

  Please, do not let me die like this, she silently begged as her mind became cloudy and disoriented.

  You will not die, a hollow voice whispered through her mind. We need you. We need your world and you will give it to us.

  For a moment, Magna saw what the creature was and what it wanted. It would use her to take over not only the sea people but all of the kingdoms. It would spread like a deadly virus; taking, using, and destroying everything in its path until there was nothing left. The alien creature would feed on the misery of every species here. Only when it had used up all of its resources would it move on to other worlds.

  “Never,” Magna whispered. “I will… stop you. I bind you to me. Neither you nor any of your kind may live inside another. Let this spell unite us and give only me the power to set you free.”

  The spell she wove was powerful, born from fear and the determination to protect those who she loved. If the creature thought to destroy her, it would also destroy itself. She bound the alien to herself, trapping it inside her own body. She could feel the creature’s shock and rage at the unfamiliar magic that slid through her and wrapped around it.

  Magna’s lips parted as agony ripped through her. As the spell continued to wrap around the creature, it tried to withdraw from her. Rage poured through the alien when the spell prevented it from leaving her body.

  The creature’s tentacles shot outward in an effort to catch up with Raine when it realized what Magna had done. It thought to seek out Orion, to use his body as well. Barely conscious, she felt the recoil as it was jerked back toward her. The spell had held.

  A sense of relief swept through her even as she felt the cold surround her heart. With one last effort at self-preservation, she tucked a small part of herself away. To protect that part of herself in a place where the creature could not find her, she used a touch of the ancient magic she had learned from her mother. She would bide her time, and when the creature was least expecting it, she would kill it.

  Even if it means destroying myself, she vowed before she slipped away, and the creature took control.

  Chapter 1

  Present day – Isle of Magic:

  Relief filled Magna. It was a feeling she had not felt in so long that she almost didn’t recognize the emotion at first. Relief and a sense of peace – another sensation that she had not felt in over a century. Today, she – and the Seven Kingdoms – would finally be free. She had to believe that they would be, because this last shred of hope was all that was keeping her sane. The Goddess would give her the strength she needed, and they would all be free.

  Her failures and successes – some new, some old, and some previously forgotten – flooded her until she felt like she was reliving them over and over again. Her heart ached when she thought of how Orion’s father had been forced to banish her to the depths of the ocean over a century ago, but it had gotten the alien entity isolated.

  She had hoped that given enough time, it would die, and she would be free of its evil grasp, but that wasn’t what had happened. Instead, the creature had tirelessly plotted the destruction of her world.

  When the Isle of the Sea Serpent was no longer easily accessible, the creature had searched her memories until it discovered her fascination with her mother’s home, the Isle of Magic. Tapping into her magical skills, it had forced her to return to the beautiful isle and betray her mother’s people.

  The creature had wanted her to kill everyone who resisted. Instead, she had turned them to stone, convincing the creature this was a crueler punishment than death.

  When the creature had used her to weave a spell that took the magic from the Isle of Magic’s residents every night, intending to harvest their magic for its own use, she had twisted the words at the last second to include herself – and by extension the alien – among those who would be powerless at night. Enraged by her blunder, the creature had come close to killing her. The only thing that saved her life was the alien’s need for her body.

  Over and over again throughout the years, she had tried to take her own life or give others an opportunity to kill her. Each time, the creature had prevented her from destroying them both. Their lives were melded – it could not leave this world, nor could it exist without her.

  But finally, her diligence and patience would pay off. Outside of the throne room, she could hear the battle raging. A malicious smile curved her black lips. She ran a trembling hand down her white gown. Deep inside, she could feel the alien’s growing frustration and rage.

  The creature, in its thirst for power, had spread itself too thin, just as she had hoped it would. The attacks by the combined forces of Drago, Orion, and the other rulers of the Seven Kingdoms were weakening it, and the alien was beginning to realize that it was in mortal danger.

  Magna took a deep breath. She would know when the time was right to strike the final, deadly blow. Almost a century of imprisonment had passed before she’d conceived of a way to defeat the parasitic creature possessing her body. The planning had taken time, and she’d had to wait in the shadows of her mind, carefully manipulating the creature until the pieces fell into place.

  She had lost count of the times she had been forced to commit atrocities against the peoples of her world. Her acts of defiance had to be subtle, but they had preserved a small amount of hope that one day she could reverse her spells and free those she had turned to stone.

  As the years passed, though, harboring the creatu
re’s dark essence had drained her. Now, her body was frail from the constant stress of fighting the creature, but she fought to retain enough strength to ensure that her spell would be powerful enough to succeed. This would be her one and only chance to destroy the creature. If she failed, the Seven Kingdoms would be doomed.

  Taking another deep breath, she mentally considered her plan. In order for everything to work, four things had to occur. The first three had been the most difficult to set up, but it was the last one that was the most important.

  The first thing she needed was the magic of dragon-fire. Guilt-ridden grief struck her at the high cost to the Kingdom of the Dragons. The alien inside her had rightly feared that the dragons had the most potential to destroy it, and so a whole species was taken out of the war, all except one dragon.

  Dragon-fire burned hotter than a normal flame, and none was more intense than that of Drago, the Dragon King – especially now, fueled by his all-consuming need for revenge. That was why she had refused to turn him to stone so many years ago.

  The creature had railed against her, inflicting excruciating pain on her after she had briefly taken control and escaped into the sea. During it all, Magna had desperately tried to convince the alien entity that leaving Drago alone was the smart choice. She had told the creature that only the natural death of Drago would void the spells and wards protecting the famed power of the dragons – the Dragon’s Heart. She’d told it the King of the Dragons would suffer greater pain if they did not turn him to stone. He would retreat into his unbearably empty kingdom and die of loneliness and grief. When the spells lifted, she reasoned, she would safely be able to retrieve the Goddess’s gift to the dragons.

  The creature had finally relented, but only because it could sense the tremendous pain and the piercing silence that had followed when Drago had retreated to his lair. She’d gotten lucky that Drago really hadn’t died of loneliness and grief.

  She needed Drago’s aid to weaken and destroy the tentacles the alien had posted along the surrounding wall and huge portions of the palace itself, while she focused on the parasitic host that was her master. Only a fire created by a dragon’s magic could injure the alien creature.