Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen (36 page)

Despite the efficiency and the assurances to the contrary, the Guilds could tell something was wrong. Loaded ships began setting sail and leaving, instead of waiting for all to be loaded as was the plan, making the remaining ships even more skittish. The whole situation was hanging by a thread, and the crew of the Dreadnaught felt like they were spending nearly every moment playing politician. Athel checked the time obsessively. The Navy was bearing down on them. Their very lives now depended on Odger’s message, and he was as crazy as a bag of weasels.

The pace became a blur of sweaty sailors, yelling captains, the passing of ships and the thunderous chiming of millions of coins. The rolling dunes of gold began to disappear so fast, it felt like they were clearing the landscape for some construction project that would never be realized. Whole fortunes passed by their faces as if they were no more than quarry stone to be shuffled off and out of the way.

Athel checked the time again. It was getting close...or was it? She found it hard to do the simple math in her head. She was getting tired, and so were the others.

The vault was nearly empty now as Setsuna slid her gate around, allowing coins to fall into it like a mobile hole. All of the larger stacks were gone and she was reduced to sweeping up the loose coins and bars scattered about.

“Devil’s Luck, are you the last one?” Mina called out, double checking her list.

“It’s hard to tell,” Reimay called back as he leapt down and picked up a stray gold bar off the deck, shoving it into his longcoat pocket. “Everything’s all pear-shaped out there. Ships taking off in every direction, rumors of every kind.” Reimay grabbed his wide, mouse-like ears in a panic, “Just what the blazes is going on in here?”

Athel rubbed her eyes and looked up at him. “Oh, just rumors, everything is fine,” she said, faking a smile.

From the other side of the gate there was the thunderclap of cannon fire, and iron shells struck the Devil’s Luck in the aft, splintering apart the captain’s cabin and the poop deck.

Athel instinctively jumped back, a rifle bullet whizzing through the air where her head had been only a second before. “Of course, I've been wrong before.”

“Is it the Navy?” Ryin asked, taking cover behind a pile of loose timbers left behind from repairs to the Syrtir.

“No, those aren’t Navy guns,” Mina said, her keen, fox-like ears rotating this way and that.

As the Devil’s Luck slipped out the exit portal, a new ship began to enter the vault. Far larger than the average pirate vessel, it was painted black, every inch of its surface adorned with bleached skulls hammered directly into the hull. Even the masts and maneuvering fins were lined with skulls, giving them the appearance of long spines.

“It’s the Claw,” Captain Evere said.

“They flew all the way back here?” Margaret asked in disbelief, hiding behind her command podium.

“Well, it’s not like we sent them to the other side of the realm,” Setsuna explained as the small pile of coins beneath her disintegrated in a burst of mortar fire. When the smoke cleared, Setsuna was gone only to reappear at the far end of the vault, sitting atop an empty rack of chests.

The crew of the Claw used the ship’s swivel guns to spray the vault with canister shot. Nails, crushed glass, and all sort of remorseless bits of material dug into every surface. Ryin tried to take a shot with the Dreadnaught’s cannon and took a hit to the shoulder for his trouble. Gripping his injury he managed to roll himself off the deck and down the steps before the sharpshooters could get a bead on him.

Hanner appeared from behind a small stack of gold bars and pulled out his volley-gun. Triggering all six barrels at once, he cleared the entire foredeck with a spray of buckshot. “Oh, I like this one,” Hanner praised, kissing the weapon then handing it to Strenner to chew on.

The Claw was about half way into the vault when Setsuna finished her incantation. The entry portal snapped shut, slicing the ship clean in half. The stricken forsection careened out of control, crashing down onto the vault floor and spilling out injured sailors in all directions.

Mina threw a blizzard of frost and ice into the crash zone, Dr. Griffin tossed a few vials, covering the area with smoke of every color. Just as soon as it had started, the sounds of battle died down, leaving only the groans of the injured, hidden in the smoke.

A lone figure emerged, his hands clasped calmly behind his feathery back. His deep-set eyes looked out calmly across his beak.

“Anak, why attack us?” Captain Evere called out, his rifle readied. “There’s still enough gold in here for your ship to take its fill.”

Anak’s claws scratched the vault floor as he came to a stop. “I’m afraid your Mr. Anak has been dead since the fifth of this month.” His body of feathers and muscle exploded, revealing a skeleton of black bones that reshaped themselves into a smaller form. Organs and tissues reknit themselves around the skeleton, finally growing a layer of skin.

The man now before them had sharp features with eyes like needles, yet there was something oddly familiar about him.

“Who are you?” Athel asked as the man yanked a filthy longcoat off an injured sailor and wrapped it around himself.

The man breathed in deeply, as if he were savoring the injuries around him. “My name is Blair, and I have the rather mundane task of acquiring a live Treesinger. A task I inherited when you killed my sister.”

Athel’s mouth dropped open as Alder ran up alongside her.

“You're Mandi’s brother?” Mina gasped.

“Who the squat is Mandi?” Hanner grunted as he reloaded.

Athel placed her finger on her chin. “Wasn’t Mandi that short little Navy officer who attacked us with a construction golem?”

“No, that was Ms. Recaldier,” Captain Evere corrected.

“...Or was she the dog person who hit us with lightning?”

“No, that was Murphi,” Alder corrected.

Blair clenched his fist, unable to hide his rage. “The least you can do is bother to remember the names of the lives you destroy.”

“Yeah, sorry, I kinda have a problem with that,” Athel teased, sticking out her tongue.

Blair’s thin eyebrows twitched.

Alder knelt down next to his wife. “You know, I’m sorry to admit it, but I’m beginning to get used to watching you make people angry.”

Alder stood up and waved his bony little arms to get Blair’s attention. “Listen, we didn’t kill your sister, she stumbled and fell off a cliff.”

Blair chuckled and ran his sharp fingers through his dark hair. “Oh, is that what happened? Well then, that changes everything. I'll just be on my way then.”

Alder perked up. “Really?”

“Of course not! You silly ink blot, I still have my mission to accomplish.”

“You might want to rethink that,” Captain Evere said sternly as he aimed his rifle. “You're outnumbered, outgunned, and in the open. Best admit defeat now, before you get in a world of hurt.”

Blair laughed. “Do you really think there is anything you can do to me that will be worse than what they will do to me if I fail?”

Without warning, Blair charged at Hanner, his legs growing long, propelling him forward at alarming speed. Hanner triggered his volley gun and released a hail of metal, but Blair’s arm grew wide and bony, with a thick, tough hide.

“Is that the best you've got?” Blair taunted. His arm protected him from the buckshot like a shield, and he caught Hanner with a kick to the shoulder that broke his volley gun in half and sent Hanner cartwheeling over the pile of gold bars.

Captain Evere fired his rifle, and Mina released a silver blade of sonic energy, but Blair leaped high up into the air, allowing the attacks to pass beneath him.

“Too slow,” Blair boasted. Dozens of holes formed on his shoulders and back, and when he hit the ground near them, he spat from within those holes hundreds of hissing black quills.

Captain Evere and Mina dodged the darts as best they could by ducking behind the pile of timbers, but Mina caught two in the shoulder, and Captain Evere caught three in the leg. They screamed out in pain and clutched their wounds, already purple and swelling with venom.

Athel took advantage of Blair turning his back to her, and fired her flintlock pistol. The seed rifled through the air, then at her command, erupted into a mass of stranglevines that enveloped Blair and held him fast. Blair’s body changed again and he secreted a layer of green slime that dried and dissolved the vines with acid. Free again, he reformed himself into a massive, four-legged lizard, as large as a house. With a deafening roar, he charged at Athel.

She tried to turn and run, but her feet caught up with Alder’s and they tripped over each other onto the floor.

“I've got you now,” Blair leapt at them, his maw full of razor- sharp teeth.

Dr. Griffin flicked out his hand and from each fingertip whipped a wire, so fine that they were nearly invisible. The filaments wrapped themselves around Blair’s tail and legs, suspending him from the hooks in the ceiling like a marionette.

Blair stopped, his dripping teeth just inches from Athel’s throat. Slowly, he turned his head around.

“Go ahead and try it,” Dr. Griffin goaded, placing a little extra tension on the wires. “If you pull against them these filaments will cut straight through you.”

Blair’s reptilian eyes were full of mirth. “You know, if you had just stayed out of it I would have let you live. But since you insist on being the first to die, who am I to deny you?”

Oblivious to the damage, Blair spun himself around in midair, yanking Dr. Griffin off of his feet and pulling him along the ground towards him. The wires cut off Blair’s tail and limbs. The severed chunks of flesh hit the ground and dissolved into ash. Before Dr. Griffin could right himself, Blair had regrown his severed limbs, and pounced on him. Blair wrapped his jaws around Dr. Griffin’s midsection and hefted the squirming man up in the air. In a moment, Blair would snap his reptilian jaws and cut the man in half. Blair inhaled deeply, savoring the fear in the doctor’s shrieks.

Hanner managed to prop himself up on one elbow and fired his pistol. Alder scavenged up a blunderbuss from the wreckage and fired. Athel ran up and thrust her saber into the beast’s belly. But all of their attacks did little against the thick hide and bony scales.

Blair bit down, but something glass broke in Dr. Griffin’s labcoat. A glowing green ooze splashed into Blair’s mouth, and the volatile reaction was so immediate and severe that he spat out Dr. Griffin from his maw.

“What...what was that?” He asked, foam pouring from his mouth.

Blair spit and coughed out as much as he could, but his body was already growing smaller.

“What’s.
..happening...
to
...
me?”

His tail disappeared, his bony plates became skin, and within a few moments he was no longer a hulking monster, but a regular man, standing naked on the vault floor.

“You...you have locked me in this form,” Blair coughed, his whole body trembling. “I can’t change. How? What was that stuff?”

Pulling out her staff, Athel grew a pair of huge Juupa roots up out of the ground. They wrapped themselves around Blair tightly and pulled him to the floor.

From her corner, lounging about some empty chests, Setsuna clapped slowly as she sucked on a candy stick. “Well done, team,” she needled them.

Dr. Griffin slowly came to his feet, shaking as he checked the broken vial. “Um, well, this used to be claustrophobia medicine, but it went rancid so long ago...You know what? I won’t lie to you; I have no idea what it is now.”

Margaret brought Ryin up, and Dr. Griffin attended to his wounds, as well as Captain Evere and Mina.

Athel approached Blair as he lay immobile in his casket of roots. She parted them enough to get a good look at his face. “Just what are you?” she asked. “There’s seventy-eight islands and none of them have shapeshifting magic. Where do you come from?”

Blair grinned but said nothing.

“Why do you need a Treesinger? Just what are you planning to do?”

Blair chuckled. “Boy, you guys are really bad at this, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

Blair blinked. “Why would I just tell you what my plans are? What benefit would that be to me?”

“Well, in my book the villains always explain their...” Athel waved her hand and cut herself off. “Never mind.”

Blair chuckled. “Villain? You actually think I’m the villain?”

Athel shifted her weight. “Well, yeah, what else would you be?”

Blair laughed. “My father and I are the ones who will bring the true villains of this world to justice, once and for all.”

Athel tilted her head. “Who?”

Blair grinned. “Isn’t it obvious?”

From her perch in the corner, Setsuna laughed as she swung her legs.

“What’s so funny?” Athel asked.

“You guys,” she teased. “Don’t you know you've gotta break someone first before you start asking them questions? A tough guy like this could take weeks to break, and frankly, you just don’t have the time.”

Blair turned his needle-like eyes and regarded Setsuna for the first time.

“For once, she brings up a good point,” Alder reminded. “We should leave here as soon as possible.”

“Tell me, Senndaisian,” Blair called out. “How much are they paying you?”

Setsuna appeared next to him, sucking on her candy. “What makes you think they're paying me? Maybe I’m here just because they are all my bestest buddies.”

Athel rolled her eyes.

Blair licked his thin lips. “Let me ask you, what good is a fortune if you never get a chance to spend it?”

Setsuna opened one green eye and looked at him sidelong. “Not much, why?”

Blair clucked his tongue. “If you don’t see it, then you're as naive as they are. If you steal someone’s wallet, you can just slip away. If you steal seven trillion you can’t just disappear. They will never stop hunting you.”

Setsuna flicked her wrist and a throwing knife appeared in her hand. “Well, you're the only one who has seen my face...”

Blair laughed. “Your image has been recorded by the observers hundreds of times since you got here. When you leave this place, you and your Guild will be hounded every minute for the rest of your lives. It won’t matter where you go.”