BT II - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

“By Maarika’s grace,” Hanna cursed, steadying herself against the aft-castle somewhere behind Micah.

He didn’t turn to acknowledge the woman, instead keeping his focus on the giant daskin as the Amelia shifted and rocked beneath his feet.  Water splashed on the deck in torrents, pouring from the monster’s deceptively small scales as it seemed to fix its gaze on him.

For a moment, time itself seemed to freeze.  The head-sized yellow-green orbs of the daskin’s eyes blinked once, ignoring the sailors as they began to congregate on deck.  Two of them threw the canvas covering off of a deck mounted harpoon gun, wheeling the weapon around to point it at the sea serpent.

They didn’t fire, instead pointing the weapon at the monster and holding their breath.  Silently, Micah thanked their terror-fueled inaction.  As powerful as the harpoon gun was, it didn’t appear to be magical.  Given the size of the daskin, he doubted it would actually pierce the animal’s scales, let alone injure it.

For now the daskin wasn’t attacking, merely surveying the Amelia as the vessel was tossed back and forth on the water disrupted by its rise.  There wasn’t much of a guarantee that it would remain so restrained, but even if it was only a small possibility, Micah would prefer to avoid combat if possible.

A wave of power pulsed off of the creature, flooring the ship’s sailors and pushing Micah back a step.  Blue lines of mana pulsed into existence alongside the daskin’s flanks, lighting up intricate glowing runes etched into its water-slick flanks.  It reared up further, glowing eerily in the night sky as it looked for all the world like the final monster in a high end dungeon.

Quietly, not breaking eye contact with the daskin, Micah pulled his spear from his shoulder.  Given the amount of magic pouring off of the giant snake, he suspected that it might have begun its life as a dungeon boss.

Many of the dungeons scattered about the Serpent’s Teeth were rarely visited by adventurers.  A handful of nations established outposts in the region that would keep a specific island clean from monsters so that ships could dock, take on supplies and repair any damage taken in their crossing, but the vast majority of the chain was wild and untamed.  That meant dungeons going unpruned for months at a time until the monsters inside of them grew strong enough to break through the barriers and escape.

It was a large part of the reason why trade across the Emerald Ocean was so expensive.  As dangerous as sudden squalls could be, they had nothing on the higher level marine life that plagued naval vessels.  Most ships had at least one team of higher level adventurers on board to keep them safe, but a quick glance around the deck confirmed that they were in trouble.

Four balls of glowing blue energy hovered around Hanna as she frantically chanted the words to summon a fifth.  A heavily muscled shirtless man, tanned from long days in the sun hefted a bow made from some sort of magically treated steel.  From the hold, a man and woman that looked like siblings scrambled onto the deck, the man clutching a spear and the woman holding a trident.

One spellcaster, one ranged combatant, and two intermediate fighters, none of them moving with the strength or speed he would expect from a warrior around level forty.  Only Hanna herself appeared to have any appreciable level of power, enough for the four of the Amelia's defenders to fight off a small kraken, a tribe of sea ogres, or a shoal of carnivorous fish, not the giant glowing serpent staring down at them.

The daskin opened its mouth, revealing the tinder pink flesh of its throat for a fraction of a second before mana began to swirl around its head, forming a vortex of blue energy.  Water flowed upward from the ocean, sparking in the moonlight as it clustered around the serpent.

“Maarikava!”  The call came from somewhere near the forecastle, followed almost immediately by an arrow the size of Micah’s forearm.

The silver dart struck the monster in the head, ricocheting off of the scales between the daskin’s eye and ear slit.  For a second, nothing happened, the daskin almost too surprised by the affront to even react to the ineffectual attack.

Then it whipped it’s head to the side, letting out an unearthly shriek as it sprayed a geyser of scalding water at the shirtless man.

He disintegrated, ripped apart by a stream of superheated water without even a chance to dodge.  The blue sigils adorning the sides of the dasin dimmed as the magical jet punched through the Amelia’s deck, shredding the wooden planks before evaporating into a hissing cloud of steam that shrouded the damage.

Screams erupted from the ship as the fog bank seared the flesh of lower level fighters, but Micah didn’t have time for their injuries.  He leapt into the air, mouthing the words to vacuum as he let the flight enchantment in his necklace take hold.

The magical trinket held a limited charge, if the battle dragged on, Micah would likely need to recast the spell using his own stores of mana, but more importantly, it freed him to act.  The enchantment went into effect immediately, letting him soar through up into the air and into attack range even as he began casting another spell.

He swooped in and with his spear, sonic enchantment active and drawing a steady trickle of mana as Micah slammed it into the daskin’s rock hard scales.  The blow felt like he had punched the side of a mountain.  The spearhead vibrated and blurred, barely sawing through the creature’s thick armor and drawing a trickle of violet blood.

The torrent of steam stopped, and the blue lights wreathing the daskin winked out.  It wheeled around, eyes gleaming as it locked its gaze on Micah.

He darted to the left, narrowly dodging a snap from its massive jaws just as he finished casting vacuum.  A chunk of reality along the creature’s spine deleted itself with a bang, taking a mass of scales and flesh with it.

The daskin writhed, spraying dark purple blood into the night air as it shrieked in pain.  Micah took advantage of its distraction flying around behind the monster while lining himself up for another spear thrust.

From the steam-shrouded deck of the Amelia, a trio of blue blasts launched themselves at the monster.  One missed entirely, zipping past the thrashing snake before the high pressure and speed lance of water dissolved into mist when it reached the spell’s maximum range.  The other two rocked the beast backward, but did little damage beyond shaking the daskin as the water blasts were unable to penetrate the sea creature’s scales.

Its head whipped upward, trying to bludgeon Micah out of the sky with the top of its skull only for him to match speeds with its attack, gently touching his toes down on the creature’s scales as he stabbed downward with his spear.

This time the attack managed to punch through the layer of armored scales protecting the monster’s brow.  His spear’s sonic enchantment unleashed its fury about a hand-span deep in the creature’s flesh, sending pulses of energy through its skull and into the soft tissue beneath.

The daskin writhed, its tail breaching the surface of the ocean and sweeping through the ship’s masts like they were dry tinder.  Another jet of water zipped past, barely missing both Micah and the shrieking snake monster’s head.

He ripped the spear free, replacing it with his hand.  Warm purple blood gushed over micah as he sank in up to his wrist.

“Infest,” Micah said with a grimace, wincing as the skin and flesh of his arm writhed, his muscles flexing uncomfortably as they pushed a dozen fingernail sized ‘seeds’ down his arm.  A brief flash of pain marked them breaking his skin as Micah deposited them in the fertile soil of the monster’s flesh.

Infest was a powerful spell, but one with limited applications.  It was quick to cast, but it required Micah to make physical contact with an unarmored foe.  Once he had afflicted an opponent with it, the seeds were slow but inexorable.  Unless his target could rip them from its flesh or magically cure itself, they plants would grow at a rapid pace, burrowing deeper into their victim until eventually the parasitic growths killed their host entirely

Micah jolted backwards, content to let the spell do its grisly work.  As he flew away from the creature, bolts of blue light and mana arced up and down the daskin’s sinuous length.  It screeched in rage, head scanning the sky for its assailant as the uncontrolled cobalt mana discharged from its body toward the ocean around the Amelia.

The water began to boil around the mastless ship as the mana from the daskin danced across its choppy surface, sending another cloud of scalding steam up into the air amidst a chorus of screams.

The ship itself creaked as water bubbled around it.  A glance from Micah drew a frown to his face.  It was completely wreathed in a superheated fog.  Even if his companions were able to survive the daskin’s attacks, it was almost certain that most of the sailors were dead.  Between the death toll and the damage to the masts, there was no way that they would be able to complete their journey across the Emerald Ocean.

A moment later, his concerns became a moot point as the serpent’s tail swung up into the air before crashing down amidship, shattering the Amelia’s deck, and letting steaming water pour into her hold.

Even if his spell guaranteed the daskin’s death, it was too late.  His ship was destroyed, and even if Micah was near enough to the Serpent’s Teeth to make it to one of the islands, the whole chain was set to erupt in a couple of weeks.  He might be able to make it across the ocean on his own, but his companions were as good as dead.

Gritting his teeth, Micah began casting Deja Vu.  Below him, the daskin screeched again as the roots from infest pushed deeper, questing to find an opening in the massive animal’s skull to feast on the tender brain underneath.

Mana flowed into the spellform, leaving Micah lightheaded as a full quarter of his maximum reserves disappeared in a matter of seconds.  The Amelia cracked apart, the waves created by the daskin’s death throes too great for the beleaguered vessel.

Just as the vessel began to sink into the ocean, time itself stopped.  Deja vu flickered to life around Micah, ripping him and everyone else backward through the timeline.  The daskin disappeared beneath the waves as chunks of the Amelia rose from the water, reassembling the ship before Micah’s very eyes.

Then, the spell pulled him from the air, depositing him back in the cabin he used for his spellcasting. The dreamlike state of weave of fate flickered into being around him.  Once again, he found himself a couple days in the future.  He turned toward where he was attacked last time, the world overly bright and slightly surreal.

Where there had once been a wall of fire and caustic Elsewhere energy, a burning daskin rose from the waves.  It stared back at him, unmoving as reality stretched and warped around it.

“NOW YOU SEE MANLING,” the serpent didn’t bother to open its mouth to speak, instead projecting its booming voice directly into Micah’s mind.  “YOU MAY RUN BUT IT IS NOT FAST ENOUGH.  YOU MAY HIDE, BUT A PIECE OF ME FOLLOWS WITH YOU.  YOU MAY BEG FOR MERCY, BUT THE CONCEPT IS AS ALIEN TO ME AS MY HUNGER IS TO YOU.”

“YOUR GODS HAVE SENT AN ONKERT TO COMPLETE A PROPER DAEMON’S JOB,” it continued, cracks ripping themselves into the spell and letting the misty winds of Elsewhere blow through Micah’s mind.  “YOU WERE DOOMED FROM BEFORE YOU INCARNATED IN THAT PITIFUL FLESH PRISON YOU WEAR NOW.  YOU CAN STRUGGLE AND SCHEME, BUT BEFORE MY EONS, YOUR WILL IS MEANINGLESS.”

With a grunt, Micah dismissed the spell, the prince’s parting laughter echoing in his skull.  He opened his eyes, grimly taking in his half empty mana pools.

Five minutes.  That’s what deja vu bought him. He had the opportunity to redo the last five minutes of his life, his mana unrecovered from the brief but brutal battle.

Micah sprang to his feet, running to the cabin where Drekt and Trevor were sleeping.  His fist slammed into the door with enough force to splinter wood, bending the frame.  Drekt shouted something indecipherable, but Micah ignored him.  There simply wasn’t time.

“We are about to be attacked!”  He shouted, barely pausing his rush toward the ladder that would bring him above-decks.  “I don’t know how but the enemy knows where we are.  Wake up and stay vigilant!”

Then he was gone, taking the rungs two at a time before exploding upward into the night air.  The stars hung in the sky, exactly as he remembered them.  Below, people began shouting, responding to his raised alarm.

Micah ignored them, running toward the aft-castle and jumping from the deck with a grunt.  His body attribute carried him most of the way, and with a quick thrust of his hand and final vault over the wooden railing that kept sailors from falling off in poor weather, he found himself standing next to the ship’s captain.

Hanna blinked at him in the moonlight.  A sextant in her hands and a map unfurled on a table in front of her.  Almost unnoticed to her side was a fit young man with a closely cut shock of bright red hair.

“Silver,” She began, eyes widening as she processed the situation.  “What are you doing up here?  Is something the matter?”

“Quickly,” Micah cut her off, planting the butt of his spear on the deck as he glanced out at the choppy ocean.  “We are about to be attacked by a massive daskin.  I don’t know how old it is, but it is at least as powerful as a level sixty blessed and covered in magical blue tattoos. As best I can tell, it can use water magic, mostly associated with superheated water and steam.”

“If you know anything about it,” he continued hurriedly, “I need to know.  One is about to attack and knowledge about its preferences or weaknesses could very well save lives.”

The sextant fell from Hanna’s shaking hand as she took a hesitant step backward.

“Oh gods above, no,” she whispered.  “Maarikava.”