Dream Storm Sea (24 page)

“So you don’t have gems for brains after all?” Emesea’s snaggle grin may have had a bit of dragon in it.

Hiresha had made the deduction even though it jarred with her blue-dress facet. Everything clashed. She grew aware of the pitching boat, the disorienting collisions of waves. She thought she understood at last what it meant to be sea sick, a dry twirling in the throat.

Emesea could have deluded herself, Hiresha thought. Believing that dragon blood flowed in her veins might grant Emesea abnormal courage.
Not that I’m in any position to criticize. I’m deluding myself into grandeur.

Tethiel leaned close to Emesea to be heard. “Then, Madam Dragon, do you think much about changing back? Or are hands too useful?”

“Shape changing is harder than you worms make it out. I didn’t even turn into a big person, did I?”

“An inefficient transformation?” Hiresha asked.

“Go back and I’d be a dragon the size of a shit.”

The enchantress said, “You’re not the most venerable dragon I’ve met.”

“What’s the point of being human if you can’t be vulgar?”

“All I know,” Tethiel said, “is that there’s no point to being an adult if you can’t be childish.”

Emesea smiled at him and tapped her tattoo. “It’s enough to remember and drink beer. That and…”

The warrior swung an arm behind the Feaster and smacked his posterior. She cackled and did not stop even when her arm appeared to disintegrate. The illusion caused her fingers to sift to ash and blow away over the waves. Emesea took it in stride, and the magic soon faded. She whistled as she fixed the rigging with both hands.

They had crested only three more foothill-sized waves when Tethiel grasped Hiresha’s arm. Excitement burned its way along her skin.

“My heart, it’s our favorite kraken. There’ll be no point in my telling you to be careful.”

Hiresha leaped out of
The Roost
, her terror-croc fangs hissing after her through the air. Something glowed under the surface. She dove and saw the Murderfish with one tentacle shining red. The rest of the kraken was invisible, just a single wriggling worm of an arm.

A great platehead pursued the lure. Its anvil brow shifted side to side in time to the swaying thump of its massive tail. It looked to be made of rock, muscle, and meanness evolved over millennia.  Scavenger sharks dashed close to its armored head in anticipation of a meal.

He’d be not so eager, if he knew he chased a kraken.
Hiresha could see the Murderfish, and the enchantress swam toward its side. She needed to close the distance without throwing her only jewel within tentacle reach. If the Murderfish tried to leap into the air, she could launch her barrage of fangs all the sooner.

The Murderfish waved its crimson arm toward the enchantress then let it vanish. Blending into the whitewater above, the kraken swam away. The only red light left came from Hiresha.

Throwing more sea brutes at me, are you?
Hiresha suspected the kraken had guided the terror croc to the boat as well.

The enchantress hid her jewel under an arm. The great platehead still turned to her with a sweep of its spear-shaped tail. Eight eyes fixed on the enchantress, six black ones from sharks. The two from the craggy monstrosity gleamed with the confidence of an alpha predator. Its cold assurance told of never being afraid a day in its life. And to its minnow-sized mind, Hiresha was already as good as eaten.

Hiresha decided to show her respect by killing the creature quickly. She dove beneath its spotted belly. Her fangs whisked behind her, one skidding off the armored head. The rest of the teeth she pulled with more force, and they formed white lines shooting toward the fish’s unarmed gills.

The teeth impacted. They shattered off a translucent plate of magic. More armor surrounded the fish in crystal that shimmered then faded back out of sight. Pieces of broken teeth drifted away, along with the body of one shark that had been pierced.

A monster with magic? That seems uncalled for.

The fish twisted into a half circle, its fins tilting to bring its crag jaws close to her. The enchantress slung herself past. Using precise calculations of angle and trajectory, Hiresha Attracted a fang into its golden eye. The tooth splintered into ivory shards. Unhurt, the big fish had not even flinched.

The enchantress decided to spare this great platehead’s life and fly away. Bubbles of foam washed over her. She met the air. Winds howled about her, but they still slowed her less than water as her leap carried her in an arch above the waves.

A crinkle in the froth below her warned her of a massive creature. The whitewater hid all sight of it, but Hiresha had no doubts.
The Murderfish is waiting to catch me.
She Lightened herself, stopped her descent, and waited for a gale to position her for a perfect strike.

Water exploded behind her. The great platehead breached, its tail hacking through the waves. Hiresha was reminded of a trout jumping to catch a fly, an unfavorable comparison for herself.

Being a creature of intelligence, Hiresha was frightened. Her intestines felt oiled with fear, but she did not let that stop her from escaping to the side.

Back underwater, she glimpsed the Murderfish circling ahead. She changed course again. The sea boomed as the great platehead fell back in and resumed its chase. Its tail strokes were slow but powerful. Each made a “whoom!” sound underwater. Hiresha tossed her diamond to stay ahead.

A tentacle lashed from the darkness. The Murderfish slapped her gem back.

Adrenaline slammed within Hiresha’s heart. She launched a volley of fangs, to keep the kraken away if nothing else. She caught her gem in time to feel herself lurch backward.

The great platehead had snapped open its maw. The inrush of water yanked her legs into the living crevasse of the predator's mouth. This fish had no teeth, but its plated jaw was like a jagged mountain range. Its spikes would fit into a matching upper lip of stone, with her hips between. She could not move her body fast enough to escape.

So she used her mind. A spell Attracted her feet to her diamond, pulling her legs out from between those crushing jaws. They slammed together, shearing off a fold of Hiresha’s dress. She was bent into a ball. She rocked in the tremor from the fish’s closing mouth and tumbled over the breadth of its brow.

A shark’s underbelly shone cherry from the light of her gem. It swerved to bite her. Her feet landed on bony plates, and she jumped to safety.

The enchantress rushed at the Murderfish, ready with her ivory fangs. The kraken sped away from her with ease, disappearing into the depths.

Caught between a cautious kraken and impervious boldness?
Being surrounded nipped Hiresha with panic.
Time for some innovation.

As if her mind granted her a magical wish, Hiresha knew what she had to do. Emesea had given her the right approach. ‘
When your foes are strong, make yourself look weak. They’ll believe it.’

Hiresha left behind her fangs and diamond. They floated like a school of fish. She swam in line with the great platehead then started flailing. She did her best to flounder and look like a drowning princess.

And the kraken no doubt has seen me leave my jewel.
She suspected she had only four seconds before tentacles reached for her. By then, the great platehead had to be dead.

In its fearless stupidity, it opened its jaws. Water sluiced inward, with vortexes of bubbles twirling to either side. Hiresha had anticipated it and Attracted herself backward to her gem to counter the suction. She hauled on her fang projectiles with equal force.

Three seconds until the kraken could grab me.

Hiresha bounced against the monstrous forehead. Neither its rocky face nor fish eyes could register surprise. Its mouth started closing.

Hiresha’s fingers fluttered in front of the gap between its jaws. She yanked her hand away, and seven of her ivory daggers tore past, inside the fish, like harpoons hurled into its mouth. The slatted jaws fit together and closed them in.

Two seconds left.

The great platehead tossed its head. Its mouth popped open leaking a red cloud. Hiresha ran along its back, Attracting the fangs within it deeper.

One second.

Hiresha sprinted off the end of the great platehead’s tail. The fangs burst out behind her. Either the magical armor only defended from one direction, or the giant was already close to dead. Its long hulk listed downward. Blood trailed it like incense smoke, and the sharks took a new kind of interest.

A thrill of accomplishment made her next breath taste less grimy, but she could take no great pleasure in mangling the innards of a dumb beast. She braced herself for the true test of wills, when tentacles wrapped around her.

None came. The kraken jetted by the obvious target. As it sped into the distance its arms folded behind it like a spiral steeple.

Hiresha could only assume the Murderfish had guessed her plan.
It suspected something.

The enchantress returned to the boat. Emesea spat out sea spray to shout.

“Saw that great platehead leap to gobble you. Wish it could’ve been me.”

“I wished it could’ve been you, too.” Hiresha said. “But I thank you for the battle tactic. Appearing helpless brought instant results.”

Hiresha pointed to a patch of surf now brown with blood.  

“Some women gain all their power through meekness,” Tethiel said. “I did not expect it of you.”

Tethiel reached around her waist. His touch grazed over the hole cut in her dress by the fish’s jaws, and waves of heat and chill rippled through her.

The enchantress removed his hand and Attracted the edges of the fabric closed. “I cannot pursue the Murderfish. Its caution thwarts any direct attack. If I’m to defeat it with one jewel, I must deceive it.”

“A grand feint.” Emesea let go of the paddles to clap her hands together and rub them.

“Yes, I must appear more helpless than a princess in a scribe’s accounting office,” Hiresha said. “And I already know how it’s to be done.”

Tethiel lofted a black crescent of an eyebrow.

“Recall the tale of the spellsword and the Murderfish? He speared it near the heart. When the kraken grabs me, I’ll sense the enchanted spearhead. I’ll tear it through the kraken’s vitals.”

Tethiel asked, “You are certain the spear tip remains inside?”

“It was thus in the story and my dream.” Hiresha believed Intuition was trying to help by seeding hints into the other facet. “And the Murderfish has the same horrific web scar in this facet. The serrated spear that made such a wound would snare itself in the kraken’s tissues.”

“I’ll be sorry if you kill the beauty,” Emesea said. “She was a good friend. Won’t be a better way out for her than dying to the strongest warrior enchantress in the lands.”

Hiresha leapt ahead of the boat, towing it over a wave. Her magic pulled
The Roost
from the path of a converging thunderstorm and essence tempest. With the sky clear the moon would light the sea to Hiresha’s satisfaction. She did not wish the kraken to lose them.

Hiresha soared among the sky skates. The mantas flew in a cloud formation. They glided in peaceful poise, their fins spread aloft, dipping down at the corners. The skates trailed lines of distortion through the air, and Hiresha found she could leap off these beams of haze. It felt like springing from fabric held taut.

A sense clung to her that in another place, another facet, the stormy seas did not seem so inviting. Here, she delighted in them, and she would collect flood magic for the storm dragons with abandon.

The enchantress wished she could have flown over the top of the dream storm. Even with Skyheart looking as small as an octopus below, the tempest spanned higher with a vapor of green. Hiresha’s height gave her a unique vantage of the storm. A river of emerald light branched like a delta. Power fumed from the currents, its color mixing upward with that of the sky to teal, to turquoise, to aquamarine.

Hiresha hurled seven of her diamonds into the river. Spinning around and snapping her arm outward, she launched her paragon into the heart of the storm’s delta. The pyramid-cut jewel whirred through the wind.

The gems looked like shooting stars of green. Enchantments Attracted the wild magic. The energy funneled after the diamonds leaving holes of clear blue.

It is working.
The enchantress back-flipped with excitement.

Hiresha descended level with her diamonds then yanked them toward her. The gems gathered even more of the tempest in their new paths. Pinpoints of blue trailed avalanches of ghostly power.

An exhilaration of fear filled Hiresha with a pounding chill. Skyheart had warned that so much wild magic would sunder Hiresha’s consciousness, and she believed it only too well. She fled ahead of her jewels.

Skyheart launched herself out of the water, her pigmentation the brightest yellow Hiresha had ever seen. “Lady of Gems, you are a storm of wonder.”

She signaled back. “I feel like I’m dragging great plateheads by their tails.”

The kraken water-wheeled her arms. “Keep pulling. The seamount is straight ahead.”

Earlier, the kraken had shown Hiresha an underwater peak. There they had found the dragons, coiled around the slope and dozing. Their breaths fluttered kelp. The underwater forests swayed uphill. Corals bloomed at the summit with colors of topaz, and they formed a wall around a caldera bowl.

“Fill this with wild magic.” Skyheart circled around the seamount. Fish zipped from her in bright streaks and silver shoals. The kraken turned upside down and spread her tentacles like an opening flower. “Store a dream storm here. The dragons will bathe in power and spawn the hurricane.”

“This was once a volcano.” Hiresha had a swooning sensation that she had seen this place before. She had no memory of when. “Won’t it be dangerous to store wild magic here?”

Skyheart slithered down the peak. Skin between tentacles rippled, and with a tall-armed stride the kraken looked like a woman walking under a cloak. “It’s cold. Feel it. There’s no fire in this sea mountain.”

Hiresha searched for steam vents that were not there. Not one rock was stained by sulfur. Far from reassuring her, a feeling of wrongness simmered.
Is this a dream?
The enchantress wondered if her mind had crafted this place out of a mountain she had once seen.

The feelings of falseness returned later when Hiresha towed the wild magic. The dragons had woken up, and they chased each other around the seamount. Their circling warped the sea. The surface bent inward, water spiraling into a whirlpool. A pit of air descended to the summit, exposing the caldera.

The enchantress leaped over the vortex of water and dragons. She released her hold on her jewels, and they blazed down into the summit’s indentation of coral. The wild magic gathered. The top of the seamount shone so green that the afterimage remained in Hiresha’s eyes for five seconds.

The paragon diamond shot back up the funnel, a spinning pyramid that Hiresha caught. She ran along the side of the whirlpool. The flow of water increased her speed, and she flung herself toward the dream storm. Tension heated her insides to the point that each breath of sea breeze was a relief. She did not know if her anxiousness came from worries about the seamount or hopefulness for her task.

This time she sprang off the back of a sea skate. Its yellow tail whipped with a barb, but Hiresha was already looping upward. Wild magic thickened in a haze around her, but she Repulsed it.
Even a whiff might break my dream inversion.

She tossed nine diamonds and Attracted them back like a net. The essence tempest collapsed, curtains of power torn away by the gems. Hiresha hauled what looked like comets.

When she passed the kraken, her eyespots bounced off each other in eagerness. “I’ll stop them from following to the seamount.”

The “them” were the schools of fish that had noticed the dream storm diminish. Dolphins leaped after Hiresha. Sardines migrated in reflective rivers. Gulls flocked. Shrimp swarmed. Tuna bolted. Whales paddled, and a great platehead tailed.

Skyheart swam in front of them all, and her hide flashed in dazing patterns. Even a kraken could not keep so many fish back for long. Hiresha knew she would have to hurry. Her latest catch of wild magic crackled its way down the whirlpool. The concentrated power in the summit was the breathtaking hue of green sapphires, the color so enriched that it bordered on black.

On the return, she hopped over the
Pharaoh’s Wisdom
barge. Emesea ran along the railing and shouted. She pointed her axe at the sun.

“Stop! The Winged Fire will leave us. The sky will blacken forever.”

The last time she said the world would burn. Now eternal night?
The conflicting prophecies did not concern Hiresha as much as the sight of Tethiel leaning over the side of the barge. His ill-shaven face looked up at her blankly.

It struck Hiresha as wrong that Tethiel should take no joy in her accomplishment. She knew they were on better terms in the red facet, and if she could choose, she would prefer the other aspect to be real.

Without warning, she fell. Her jewels slipped from her control, breaking their orbits. They would plunge into the sea and be lost.

The moment of helplessness passed.
Most unpleasant, whatever it was.
She jumped between the wakes of sky skates. Her nerves still rang from alarm, but she controlled all her diamonds.

The essence tempest had shrunk to a single stream of light. Its channel curled as Hiresha snared it with enchantments. The last of the dream storm rolled after her. She passed sky skates and birds flying to the new center of power.

What am I doing?
Disbelief chimed through her, and a wrinkle ran over her vision.
I’m collecting flood magic for my kraken friend. How likely is that?

A more pressing worry was Emesea. She had steered the barge to the edge of the spinning dragons. The warrior climbed the mast and shouted something.

Hiresha found she cared for none of it. She could no longer believe it was real.
This has been nothing but improbability. And this seamount is a falsehood conjured by the Jeweled Feaster.

Hiresha’s mind darkened. Her vision constricted.

No longer did she glide downward in a calculated arc. She plummeted toward a collision. She had lost her powers, lost hold of her gems. Her arms flailed. She screamed.

Emesea leaned from the mast. “Grab my hand!”

Hiresha reached. Their hands whooshed past each other. The enchantress tumbled feet over head in a flapping of blue skirt.

She heard Emesea shouting to Tethiel. “Steer the ship. I’m going after her.”

The sea struck Hiresha with the force of a rock slide. Her ribs snapped, two pops of pain. Her breath exploded from her lips, and she skipped off the surface. She beat her arms against the current.

Scales slid beneath, shimmering like abalone shells—a dragon—a warning that she had landed in the whirlpool. The waters circling the base of the funnel were tinted emerald. The reservoir of magic throbbed in a dark brilliance, and Hiresha’s heart pulsed in time to it.

She stopped struggling.
What does it matter, if this is a dream? Let the shock of the wild magic wake me. Then I’ll begin a new cycle of dream inversion.

Sky skates spun into view with their placid mouths on their undersides. Beyond them, diamonds dragged an insanity of dream storm. They flared their way downward toward the whirlpool.

An acid terror scoured Hiresha.
I don’t have time to begin another dream inversion.
She sensed she would need her powers the moment she woke. Images of a great platehead and a kraken flashed with searing red light through her mind.

The enchantress kicked. She tried to catch the tail of a dragon. It sped past, did not seem to notice her. The strangeness of being overlooked only deepened her sense of the known world slipping away. The whirlpool steepened into a wall of water sweeping her downward.

Giving up on her strength, Hiresha focused her mind. This was a dream, and enchantresses ruled dreams.
But I’m not lucid. I’ve lost control, and this has turned into a nightmare.

Coral gashed her hands, and she clung to it by reflex. She had caught the rim of the caldera. Magic frothed and surged below her toes, and she was caught between that and her falling diamonds. She glimpsed them between the blasts of water in her eyes.

She pushed her will out to her gems, to Lighten them, to make them float away.
Nothing.
It felt as if the Jeweled Feaster clawed Hiresha’s skull, forcing her face lower, to drown her in green madness.
I refused to be a Feaster.
Is this her revenge?

Sea urchins and starfish clung to the coral, but Hiresha’s grip was failing. The deluge stopped her from breathing. Her world faded to white. Water pried her fingers free, one hand swinging loose.

That hand was caught by Emesea.

Water sluiced over the warrior in sideways rapids. She held a rope. She guided Hiresha’s arm to it.

A paragon’s blessing on you.
Hiresha’s shout went unheard.

Emesea shoved the enchantress upward. Hiresha climbed the rope, arched her back to take a breath, then spluttered when the funnel turned green. Diamonds whizzed past. She looked down, sensing the worst.

A gem had struck Emesea. The stream of its magic slammed the warrior into the caldera. A stocky arm flailed. A coiled tattoo flashed, and the tide of power swallowed her.