Ragay swam faster than a sleek racing fish propelled by powerful muscles and webbed toes.
Alright, he wasn’t doing most of the work.
The swirling orb, the Heart of Sinaya dangling from the end of his staff pulled him through the water.
The deep singer’s blood had drawn in predators of all shapes and sizes, but they left him alone. The orb dangled like a lure, but had the opposite effect on the animals and monsters.
They circled the wounded singer, kept only at bay by the Skills and spells employed by the Merquani aboard their massive ship.
Skills and spells that would undoubtedly cease the longer Miss Karagatan passed Sinaya’s judgment.
He reached the deep singer quickly.
Her song sounded like a dying thing. One of goodbye.
He didn’t understand, nor could he communicate like some of his kind could if they obtained the right classes.
He thought he could hear a soft answer in the distance.
Others of her pod saying goodbye.
He swam around her barnacle-covered head, passing a dinner plate sized eye to reach her left flipper.
The massive appendage would be an adequate surfboard for a giant.
An iron harpoon longer than he was tall had gone through her flipper.
He scanned the rest of her body, finding another two cruel harpoons. One through the thick hump on her back and one through her tail, near the flukes.
He looked into her eye.
“Honored singer, please bear a little longer. I shall free you or my blood shall mingle with yours.”
Ragay thought deep blue thoughts.
Simple shapes and objects.
Easier and more solid the better he could hold the image in his mind’s eye.
A large saw extruded from the swirling orb dangling from his staff.
The kind they used to take down trees.
Dark blue like the ocean depths.
Harder than the iron chain.
He snatched it in his free hand and went to work.
It was hard to concentrate, to focus with the sounds and scents coming from the ship’s deck.
Explosions rattled the air filling it with the acrid tang of combustion and flame.
Fouler scents too.
Magic and Skills, yes.
But, he recognized the scent of piss and shit.
If he still doubted that Merquani were dying then the screaming was confirmation enough.
Good, he thought.
They deserved it for what they would do to the deep singer. To treat a wise and benevolent one like so much swine—
He raged, causing his saw construct to waver for a few seconds before he could refocus.
The chain snapped free, whipping up to the ship
The weight of the loose harpoon dragged it through the deep singer’s flipper.
Blood drifted, though not nearly as much as from the wounds in her humped back and tail.
“Two more.”
He swam, struggling in the choppy water caused by the ship’s churning ahead. They had picked up speed, but they were far from any help.
He sawed through the chain and was faced with a dilemma.
The harpoons were barbed and like the spear he used to spearfish one didn’t pull it out the way it had gone in without tearing flesh.
Panic welled up from within.
The deep singer pulled away with weak flaps of her flippers, but she still had one chain tying her to the evil ship.
Worse, the predators were getting closer.
She had left such a far and wide blood slick after all.
He saw massive blue fins cutting through the foam.
Tentacles thicker around than him flicked out to the surface for split-seconds as if tasting the blood in the air.
“I’m sorry, but there’s not enough time.”
He stuck his head under water for a brief moment to listen.
He thought, or hoped, that she sang encouragement or understanding.
The saw construct vanished.
A knife appeared in its place.
He imagined the sharpest blade he could and began slicing.
It felt like forever and there was so much crimson flowing into the blue that it turned violet around him.
Until finally, he was able to pull the harpoon out, leaving a huge, gaping wound.
Well, huge to him, but to her it was perhaps like an arrow would be to him.
He had a bag of holding filled with first aid supplies.
Miss Karagatan had provided it.
Of course she knew it would be needed.
He hurriedly pulled out a flask and poured liquid over the wound.
It took two more flasks, but the wound was sealed with a biologically absorbable hard foam filled with antiseptics.
“Just one more.”
The harpoon in her tail was a simpler, quicker matter.
Saw the chain, push the harpoon through, seal the hole.
She had been lucky that it had gone through only muscle, missing the bone.
He smiled.
Happy and relieved that one deep singer would live.
“She’s getting away! Fire everything!”
He turned.
Thought deep blue thoughts on instinct.
A large shield, for him and her, or as much of her immensity as he could.
A loud thump.
A shattering sound.
Darkness and cold.
He swam.
He hadn’t seen what hit his shield, but he was still alive and so was the deep singer.
She dived deep, giving him one last wave of her flipper before vanishing into the black.
He thought, no! He was certain he heard the songs in the distance grow louder and, yes, happier.
The predators swarmed the waters underneath the ship, drawn by her blood, but losing her completely.
They’d turn on each other or simply leave once they realized that easy prey was gone.
One Quest done. One to go.
The ship hid a lot of its bulk beneath the surface.
He knew this intellectually, but to see a drylander-made monstrosity of steel and poison as if it was like one of the floating ice mountains he had seen once as a younger child on an educational trip was a learning experience. One as unpleasant as the ones in his youth were pleasant.
He swam. Faster when pulled by the swirling orb that seemed to be responding quicker and more naturally to his will than ever before.
The ship’s massive propeller churned the waters in its wake, threatening to suck him in, but he powered through toward the chain he had just cut.
Ragay climbed into the worst sight of his young life.
Training, fighting monsters, nothing had prepared him.
Miss Karagatan floated above in a bubble of blue water hardened against every weapon the Merquani turned on her.
Not that they were focusing everything on her.
No.
They had a bigger problem, a much bigger problem.
An octopus as large as a baby kraken sat astride a large swatch of the ship’s deck.
It was deep blue, hard water.
Ragay smiled.
He couldn’t help it.
Finally!
He could watch her in action, but this time it wasn’t through an orb or in pictures.
The construct was connected to the swirling orb at the end of Miss Karagatan’s hooked staff by a thin line barely visible in the distance.
It responded to her will, gathering Merquani in its tentacles and crushing them before tossing them to the swimming predators.
A gun spat loud bullets, bouncing off its glowing, deep blue flesh.
Unlike with his shield, they left no marks.
It smashed the dome-like weapon emplacement with a tentacle falling like a tree.
“Ragay.” Miss Karagatan said so that only he heard. “Enter the ship. Give them Sinaya’s Judgment.”
He nodded, reluctant to leave as a Merquani mage bathed the octopus construct in fire while a Merquani warrior leapt from a high tower with an axe that suddenly swelled to thrice its size.
Alas, he followed her orders and dashed into the open door leading to the bowels of the ship.
His heart thumped in his chest, feeling like it was a breath away from forcing its way out his throat.
As a junior reef defender he had combat training.
Assaulting a fortified enemy location on his own hadn’t been included.
The ship was a sort of floating, moving fortified location, even though it was a fishing vessel.
Judging by their armaments and the strength of the crew, the Merquani seemed to be a war-like people.
Still, he counted his advantages.
As one of Sinaya’s people he was naturally many times stronger and tougher than the baseline drylander. It came as a natural consequence of being adapted to the ocean depths.
There was his training, both from junior reef defenders and Aunty Bilaya, which he was beginning to think was more significant than he had thought.
There was his armor. Slick and skintight, but proof against most normal handheld projectile weapons.
And the last one, which was the big one dangling off the end of his hooked staff.
“Seafood!”
Merquani appeared around a tight corner.
Ragay’s thoughts turned to instinct.
It appeared that Miss Karagatan’s training had served its purpose.
A shield of deep blue water snapped out to block the burst of bullets.
He willed it into spears like he used to spearfish back home.
The Merquani cried out, activating defensive Skills, but the deep blue spears struck home in throats or faces.
“For the deep singer.”
He left the dying to their deaths, stepping over them to find a quieter spot to listen.
It seemed that most of the Merquani had already gone to the deck to battle Miss Karagatan.
The interior of their ship was quiet of living sounds.
The signage was unfamiliar.
The words were translated by the Universal Translation System, but the strange symbols were not.
He moved quickly, but carefully, stopping to listen every so often until he found more people.
They fought, but not well.
The crew for the running of the ship then. Maintenance, cleaning, food makers and such.
Non-combatants, but Sinaya’s Will was clear and they had attacked him on sight.
He swept the ship, killing all he came across or came across him.
The swirling orb on his staff made sounds to calm his heart and soothe his conscious.
The Merquani were foul murderers, but he wouldn’t be a person if giving them Sinaya’s Judgment didn’t affect him.
He killed a few more.
The numbers thinned as he went deeper into the foul ship’s bowels.
He came across great pits filled with meat cut in neat cubes and stored in nets with preservative magic.
They ranged in color from white to deep red.
Deep singers.
The thought that Miss Karagatan hadn’t been allowed to intervene until after these wise ones had already been slaughtered filled him with—
Sinaya’s song soothed him once more.
He marched on into a chamber filled with painful noise and foul scents.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The stench of metal polluted his nose slits, the smoke stung his eyes. He blinked, placing his swimming membranes into place, but retracted them. Too blurry when out of the water.
He found a Merquani holding a large wrench in two hands.
Young, male.
He guessed they were the same age, but the Merquani was no warrior.
He almost shot a spear construct into the Merquani, but stayed his hand at he last moment for some reason.
“Surrender.”
The Merquani swallowed and dropped the wrench.
“Come.”
The Merquani hesitated, glancing back at a locker.
Ragay listened.
“Both come.”
It seemed that the Merquani might pick up his wrench again, but Ragay exhaled instead when the boy pulled a smaller Merquani from the locker.
A girl.
Brother and sister, judging by the resemblance.
He hoped that he hadn’t left a parent or two dead upstairs.
“Move.”
He prodded them upstairs, taking them on a path that avoided the bodies he had left.
The ship’s deck was a ruined battlezone.
The octopus construct was gone.
Miss Karagatan stood over the ship’s captain.
“For your violation of the treaty. Sinaya’s Judgment is death.”
The bloody captain blustered and threatened, then begged, but she simply picked him up by the back of his neck and threw him overboard where the waters churned red with the feeding frenzy.
“You fed on the ocean, so shall the ocean feed on you.”
She regarded Ragay and his two captives.
“Prisoners. Noncombatants.”
“Children,” she agreed. “How old are you?”
The Merquani boy gulped.
“Thirteen. Please let her go. I brought her with me cause there ain’t no one else that I trust to watch her. She ain’t got nothing to do with anything.”
“She signed no contract to perform duties on this vessel?”
“No, she’s just a kid.”
“And you.”
The boy swallowed.
“I did. Yes, ma’am. I did sign. Had to. Don’t get on otherwise and we needed the money or we go hungry again.”
“Signing the contract makes you just like one of them.” Miss Karagatan regarded the two for what felt like a long time.
Miss Karagatan created a giant hand of deep blue water and pulled one of the lifeboats from the ship’s side onto the deck.
“Never take another job on a ship of this like again. Mercy shall not find you twice.”
“Is the only thing I could do,” the boy said.
The girl only whimpered, keeping her eyes tightly shut as she clung to him.
Miss Karagatan’s eyes glazed over for a split-second.
The boy’s widened.
“You shall not speak of this. They would only take my gift from you. Be quiet, be wise. Use it to better your lives. Education for the both of you. And never return to the waves unless you do it with the proper respect for Sinaya.”
She put them into the lifeboat and lifted them down to the water.
They waited in silence as they watched the boat’s propellers carry it toward the southeastern horizon.
“That should be far enough,” Miss Karagatan said.
“What will happen to them?”
“They will be questioned, but nothing will be done to them beyond that. I shall send the Merquani president a threatening message. It is how these things go. I spare one or two each time. To carry the warning, but they never listen. Their greed always triumphs over good sense.” Her beautiful face twisted into something terrifying for an instant before it returned to her customary mask. “Only a fallen society forces children to work in environments dangerous to adults.”
“Shouldn’t not such a society be destroyed so that a better one can be put in its place?”
“Yes.”
He pondered that as she carried them off the ship in a bubble, while he watched her tear it apart with giant crab claws.
“Let the depths and the hungry mouths feed on its bounty according to Sinaya’s will.” Miss Karagatan plunged them back into the ocean and the underground river network. “There are more vessels to judge. The other potentials must see as you did, Ragay. Well done today. I find no faults in your performance.”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t know what else to add.
The experience would stick with him for a long time.
At the start of the exercise he had looked forward to retelling the tale to Talima, Aunty Bilaya and his house.
Now?
He had killed people.
How did he tell them that?
Suiteonem Prime, Mountainholds, December, 2057
Across the mountains. Over and under.
An arduous trek even with using the tunnels.
Not so much for the tireless undead that could march without stopping as long as they had death mana to power them.
They carried gems and crystals, pulled massive death pillars in ornate carts that compared favorably to tanks in their impenetrableness.
The tunnels were trapped.
The traps were sprung.
It wasn’t a problem when one could just throw zombies or skeletons at them.
There were ancient, half-forgotten defenses from an age or two before.
There were barred gates and entire underground fortresses, but those had been empty for centuries.
The empress had been been mostly quiet.
While the blue-skinned people’s population never grew.
Cal had to make it look good for the golden eyes watching from atop the tall towers scattered across the landscape in a poor imitation of the spires.
He supposed the populace saw the former more than the latter since Suiteonem’s towers were always there, ever-present. While the spires fooled the mind, making their presence slip notice until needed, wanted or got too close.
The golden eyes scanned the ground and the sky, but he simply thought and they passed right over him.
Gales whipped clouds of frozen white down the mountains’ northern slopes.
Soft powder, untouched in its isolation.
He had his undead hordes emerge from the tunnels to the surface rather than assault the holds through hidden ways.
The Blues only knew of some of these passages.
The empress had known of all.
Seven mountainholds scattered across the entire mountain range.
Hundreds of kilometers from east to west across the continent’s southern coast.
Hypersonic flight to trigger avalanches.
Carefully guided to clear the path for his hordes and to avoid destroying the walled villages and towns that guarded the entrances to the Holds.
The golden eyes watched.
He wondered what Suiteonem thought.
The fake god’s apocalyptic show begun a few years ahead of schedule.
Would that draw him from his hovel on the golden moon?
No.
Suiteonemiades memories suggested a man that, though quick to anger, preferred to enjoy the viewing experience when on his vacation.
This world was like one giant man cave, where he could relinquish some of the demands placed upon him by his domain.
Which was just as well.
The plan to bring Suiteonem a true, lasting death required much more than a simple fight.
The Blues finally noticed the horde.
Oracles with their visions.
Mage-types with their spells.
Rangers and beastmasters with the senses of the wild.
Anyone with a danger sense ability.
His timing needed to be close to perfect.
The attack had to be genuine to fool the watchers and the Skills.
It couldn’t be like the fishing villages where it was within the empress’ profile to prioritize captives over kills in the initial attack for intel.
When she had begun her war in earnest she rarely showed mercy.
He had maps.
He had the ability to place strong suggestions into their minds.
Really, that was all he needed to pick and choose who lived and who died.
“General Stormpyre, all armies are in position.”
“Lord Cross, if I may attempt to sway you one last time.”
He watched the revenant in her floating magic command tent surrounded by her staff as if he stood with her and wasn’t flying far away.
The command staff was small. Three additional revenants and one powerful undead bodyguard for each.
“Is it about the staggered attack plan?”
“Yes. One that desires victory attacks each hold at the same time.”
“Victory isn’t the goal. This is a farce of a Calamity. We are meant to entertain.”
“Yes, I—”
That information hadn’t been known beyond the empress until he shared it with some of the revenants he decided he could trust up to a point.
“The stagger is necessary for me to devote my attention to each hold and speak to the defeated properly.”
“Understood. I withdraw my objection.”
“Please proceed.”
…
The blue brute had a name, but it wasn’t worth remembering.
He cursed the alarm as it rang across Snow Bear Hold.
An attack!
One week before the festival. An ideal hunting ground for his next conquest.
He had his eye on a few maiden beauties.
Ha!
Not even maidens, yet.
For there was a truth he lived by.
While he grew older, they stayed just the age he wanted.
He was leaning toward claiming Relshara.
Her family was poor, weak.
Any issues would be taken care with a pittance from his wealthy house’s coffers.
But he didn’t anticipate it coming to that.
He had procured a supply of dreamspice.
In the chaos of the festival it would be easy to isolate her like a newborn rainhorn foal.
Just a pinch of spice and she’d remember nothing.
His loins tingled in anticipation.
Just one more week and this attack, whatever it was, to get through.
The brute guarded an out of the way gatehouse deep in the mountainhold.
Perks of his house’s wealth and influence.
Their sons and daughters saw no true danger unless they truly wanted it.
Thus, their surprise when a thing of smoke, shadow and teeth appeared in their midst.
The undead monster blended a huge, blue-skinned man into a purple smoothie.
It obeyed and let the rest of the blue-skinned people flee.
It had other targets to find.
…
An identity-less skeleton clattered across the cold stone floor of a massive tunnel.
The kill zone ate its fellow skeletons-at-arms by the dozen with spell and projectile fire.
From hidden murder holes in the walls and ceilings and from behind the shield wall at the other end.
Revenants had opened the gates, but stepped aside to give the blue-skinned defenders a chance.
An exploding rock nearby scattered the skeleton into pieces right in front of the shield wall.
…
A cheer went up with the destruction of the front rank of slowly advancing skeletons.
Garvrun called out a warning too late.
The scattered bones suddenly glowed as they swirled together in a tiny tornado of black magic.
“Spirit undead!” Garvrun didn’t have the class or anything, but he took lessons with an old, retired shaman that lived a few streets over from his home. He wanted to be more than a simple militia warrior, never mind being an even simpler general purpose cleaner.
That’s why he could sense the spirit gathering the bones to itself.
He cursed in a very un-shamanly manner.
Skeletons?
Spirit?
Together?
It could only be a few things.
The black bone storm resolved itself into a huge skeleton warrior that made him and his fellow huge warriors look like children.
“Draugr!”
Suiteonem Prime, Suiteonem’s Sanctuary, World Tree, Suiteonem V, 20136
Seven shouted orders.
“Guard her and wake her up!”
He pointed at Fifteen and Thirty-two
The latter lay sprawled out in the sand after her impressive spell.
Sixty-eight had to admit that despite how much she disliked the older girl.
“Let’s go! Hit and move! Harrying tactics. Dog pack.”
She didn’t know the specifics, but she figured out his meaning.
Eighty charge toward the other lochos.
Two of them were down and unmoving.
One was already up on one knee.
The much bigger girl was easy to keep up with on account of her slowness.
Well, slow in the relative sense.
Eighty could still outrun said dog pack.
“Keep One occupied!” Seven grinned. “I’ll do the same for the other two.”
Eighty grunted.
Sixty-eight kept running in her shadow.
One shook his head and barked orders of his own.
“And watch out for the weaseling. She’s little, but she’s a vicious nose biter.”
Sixty-eight snarled.
She hated his smug arrogance.
From his face to the sound of his voice.
Nose biter?
She’d show him.
By biting his nose off.
Seven darted off, faster than Eighty by far, to engage the other two members of One’s lochos.
Sixty-eight recognized their faces, but couldn’t remember their numbers in the rising heat within her.
When her pot boiled over, unimportant things got evaporated with the steam.
All she had in her red-gold eyes was One and his perfect nose.
“Two on one?” He grinned. “Easy!”
Gold light sheathed his fists.
Eighty roared, having let her own pot boil over.
She was equal in size to One.
Fists flashed.
Two with gold.
One with nothing.
Sixty-eight caught tiny stars glinting in the sunlight amidst a crimson nebula.
Eighty’s head whipped to one side as she staggered off the line of her charge.
One grimaced, shaking his fists out.
Sixty-eight took her opening, leaping from behind Eighty’s bulk.
Hands ripped fistfuls of golden hair. Legs wrapped. Mouth opened. Teeth bit.
One screamed.
She ground down, shaking her head like her house’s vermin catchers.
The taste of iron ran hot over her tongue.
Sudden impact in her gut.
Air and blood gushed out, forcing her mouth open.
A second impact—
…
She woke up on warm grass.
Her head was hazy, but the feeling was familiar, which meant she was out of the training pit and in the nearby grass.
“Welcome back!” Seven grinned down at her.
His face had seen better days.
One side was purple with the eye swollen shut.
His nose was a little crooked and his mouth appeared to have less teeth than she remembered.
“We lost.”
She sat up with a groan, but slowly on account of the spinning.
The rest of her team was around her.
Eighty gave her a respectful nod.
The bigger girl’s face was even worse than Seven’s.
Thirty-two eyed Sixty-eight like she was a vicious weasel or something.
He too bore marks of a beating.
Only Fifteen had been spared.
She looked untouched as she slept peacefully like she was in the middle of a summer picnic rather than a brutal combat crucible.
“She never woke up.” Seven shrugged.
“We lost?” She seemed to recall him saying that.
She didn’t seem to recall anything in regards to how they lost.
“Eh, you’ll remember once you get healing. We have to wait until all the fights are done. If you want a brief recap… well… you and Eighty did good. Kept One busy long enough for me to knock out one and almost the second. It’s those golden punches of his. They’re a little unfair.”
…
There were more tests for the entire lochos in the following days worked into their regular schedule.
Some made sense in that they taught useful lessons.
Others seemed designed to just make them angry.
Case in point, the tower of rectangular blocks standing in front of Sixty-eight.
Each team in the chamber had one such tower in front of them.
The goal was simple.
Pull a block from the below and place it on top.
Last tower standing wins.
At Fifteen’s pompous instructioning, Sixty-eight gently poked a block halfway out before slowly pulling it free the rest of the way.
The wooden block was about half the size of her tiny, skinny forearm.
She took a deep breath and turned it over.
The second part of the test.
Endure the punishment.
“What is it?” Thirty-two said from behind Eighty.
Sixty-eight’s lip twisted at the tiny carvings in the wood.
“Bees.”
The enchantment in the block activated.
A swarm of bees buzzed out stinging.
They weren’t happy.
No one was happy.
At least it wasn’t Sixty-eight knocking over the tower in her rage.
Eighty did the honors.
For her part, Fifteen, covered in stings launched herself at the closest teacher directing the test.
Only Seven managed to control himself enough to ignore the stings to tackle her and hold her down.
Unfortunately, he only had two hands.
Thirty-two actually reached the teacher.
Sadly, the teachers could take care of themselves.
Thirty-two hit the floor.
At least he was out cold.
It meant he wouldn’t feel the stings until he woke up.
Sixty-eight shrugged, sat down and tried to meditate in a cloud of angry bees as her parents had taught her.
