BT II - Chapter 9 (Patreon)

“Maarikava,” Micah repeated the word thoughtfully, letting it roll off of his tongue.  “I’m sorry, but the name doesn’t really help.  Is it weak against ice attacks?  Maybe sonic?”

“How do you,” Hanna began, only for her voice to dry up, trailing off awkwardly and leaving the aft-castle in silence once more.

“Does its species  have a soft underbelly that it keeps beneath the waterline?” He asked hopefully, grasping for solutions to their mutual problem.  “I need some help here.”

“No,” Hanna shook her head, finally snapping out of her stupor.  “Maarikava isn’t a type of monster.  It’s a name.  She’s the biggest daskin in the Emerald Ocean, at least a couple of centuries old.  Rumor has it that she’s the daughter of Maarika, Goddess of the Ocean and Travel.”

“Great,” Micah replied, not bothering to look back at her as he kept his eyes trained on the ocean for signs of the sea-serpent.  “Now how do I drive her off or defeat her?  We have just over a minute before she attacks, so I would appreciate a little haste.”

“You pray,” Hanna answered bleakly.  “She’s more of a tavern tale than anything, but Maarikava isn’t supposed to attack anyone that has Marika’s favor.”

“Beyond that?”  Hanna asked with a shrug.  “I don’t have the faintest clue.  Anyone sane tries to avoid her, and every sighting is at distance near the Serpent’s Teeth.  I’ve never heard of anyone lucky enough to actually survive an attack.”

“Fuck,” the word tore itself from Micah’s throat.  “You’ve got about eighty seconds to get pious then because now would be the perfect time for a little divine intervention.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond, instead pushing off from the deck and activating the enchantment in his necklace.  Floating up into the moonlight, Micah chewed on his lower lip pensively while he scanned the waves.

Defeating the Maarikava shouldn’t be too much of a problem.  Even without knowing the daskin’s specific weaknesses, the previous battle had revealed enough about its capabilities for him to gauge the situation.

It was fast compared to a normal blessed, but nowhere near as quick as Micah.  Unfortunately, it was armored to the point that only Trevor, Drekt, and him would be able to harm it.  Worse, it was more than strong enough to destroy the Amelia.  Even without magic, a single swipe of its tail hand snapped the ship’s masts like kindling.

Killing the Maarikava wouldn’t mean anything if the ship was too damaged to complete its voyage.  Given how prone the monster was to violent thrashing when he injured it, merely fighting the serpent would probably result in the Amelia’s destruction, even if he could keep its attention on him for the entirety of the battle.

He halted himself, hovering in the moonlight over the Emerald Ocean.  A quick glance back at the ship revealed the deck swarming with sailors trying to arm and prepare themselves, all woken by his shouts of alarm.

The Maarikava wasn’t his only dilemma.  He wasn’t sure how the third prince had found him, or even what exactly it was doing, but there was no question that it was influencing events.  His predictions failing and the appearance of the legendary monster were enough to prove the point on their own, but the daemon’s taunts all but confirmed the situation.

Somehow, despite the gods’ best efforts, it had tracked him down, and it had already begun interfering in his plans.  He doubted that the prince was there in person, if it was it simply would have attacked him outright rather than relying upon tools such as the Maarikava.  Still, predictability was his enemy.  If the daemon knew where he was and what he was doing, it would find a way to defeat him.

That meant finding a way to break the pattern.  To escape from the Third Prince’s clutches.

The water roiled as the Maarikava breached the surface, it’s triangular head shining in the moonlight as it loomed over the Amelia.  Before it could interact with the ship, Micah began casting vacuum.  The spell took up a fair fair amount of his dwindling mana, but there was no denying that it was effective where most of his other attacks barely managed to draw a trickle of blood.

Just as the runes etched into the monster’s scales began to glow blue with water mana, Micah’s spell struck it in the side.  The air around the spell’s epicenter disappeared, rending the daskin’s scales apart and exposing its violet flesh to the moonlight.  A fraction of a second later, the wind rushed in to fill the void with a thunderclap.

The Maarikava lurched backward as if burned, spraying an arc of purple blood into the moonlight.  Before she could react further, a trio of air knives struck sparks off the scales of her face.  She turned toward Micah just in time for him to hit her in the throat with a pressure spear.

Despite his skill level in both the specific spell and his spellcasting in general, it didn’t draw any blood.  Instead, the powerful spell only served to dislodge one of the first sized scales just under her head.

Incensed, she pulsed with blue energy, drawing water from the ocean toward her maw only for Micah to fire a wind blade into her gullet, slashing open her tender and unarmored forked tongue.

She screeched with rage, unleashing a cone of steam hot enough to strip flesh from bone at Micah’s dodging form.  He winced as some of the heat bled through the wind shield he’d erected at the last second, turning his skin a bright cherry red and shaving off a small amount of his hit points.

Rather than slow his assault, Micah moved further from the Amelia, firing another pressure spear at the Maarikava and removing another scale on her chest.  She followed him, turning entirely away from the vulnerable wood and canvas before diving below the surface.

“Go on ahead!” Micah shouted, eyes on the water tracking the sinuous line of glowing blue as the Maarikava swam toward him.  “I’ll lead her away and catch up later.  Just keep an eye out for me in port if I don’t catch up with the ship.”

On the Amelia’s deck, Drekt saluted him with his cleaver before running toward where Hanna stood frozen on the aft-castle, wide eyes trained on Micah’s flying form.

Then the Maarikava jumped from the depths of the Emerald Ocean, body shining blue as wings of steam spread out behind her.  They flapped once, giving her the extra push she needed to reach Micah as her jaws opened wide for the fatal snap that would punch her fangs through his unarmored torso.

With a grimace, he cast time leash, sending his mana reserves well under one third of their maximum levels.  As her jaws closed, a faint tether of greyish light stretched from her back toward a glowing silhouette deep beneath the water.

She snapped out of existence, reappearing in the position she had been barely three seconds ago.  Micah simply turned and flew away, aiming toward where he had remembered the jagged triangles of the Serpent’s Teeth.

Time leash was a powerful spell, but it came with its own limitations.  It was quick to cast and it would send a target back a handful of seconds in their own timeline without making any other changes, but it took a tremendous amount of mana and he could only use it twice in any twenty four hour period.  In short, it was there to stop killing blows, ambushes, and other surprises, but it wasn’t something he could rely on consistently.

Eventually, his mana would run out and he would fall to the ocean.  If some aquatic life didn’t slay him, it was only a matter of time before Micah’s stamina was insufficient and he drowned in the water.

Maybe if the previous battle hadn’t drained his reserves, Micah would have enough mana left over to properly fight the Maarikava and return to the Amelia.  As things were, he needed a place to land and recuperate once the battle was over.  Maybe he’d be able to find the ship once he was done, and maybe he wouldn’t.  If all else failed, he’d find a way to cross the ocean on his own.  After all, he just needed to head West from the Serpent’s Teeth.  A continent was a hard thing to miss.

He glanced backward, the glowing blue snake of the Maarikava swimming furiously after him.  Barely visible past the daskin were the fading lights on the Amelia itself.  No matter what else happened, Drekt, Trevor, Eris, Esther, Telivern and Ravi were safe for now.

Micah turned his attention back toward the Serpent’s Teeth.  One of the islands was barely visible in the moonlight, and with a slight adjustment of his course, he aimed himself toward it.

Eventually, his necklace failed, the gemstone he was using as a reservoir for night mana cracking as it ran completely dry.  It would take time and money to replace it, but the mana well had served its purpose, giving him time to replenish his reserves as he made his escape.

His altitude stuttered as the enchantment faded, slowing Micah as the magic propelling him faltered.  Quickly, he recast flight, but the moment of hesitation let his pursuer catch up.

The Maarikava breached the surface, firing a tightly concentrated blast of boiling water from its still bleeding mouth, forcing Micah to corkscrew to the side as the bolt of glowing blue scorched past him.

Without looking, Micah tossed a pressure spear behind him.  It was impossible to know whether he actually managed to hit anything, but the daskin didn’t attack him again.  At a minimum, the spell made the creature flinch, buying him enough time to outpace it once again en route to the Serpent’s Teeth.

Micah set his shoulders, pressing his arms tight to his side and holding his spear against his chest in order to cut down on drag as he sped through the night air.  His normal flight speed was high enough that the Maarikava couldn’t quite catch up with him, but at the same time, he didn’t want to risk another attack.  Fighting the sea monster before he was ready would just slow him and burn up more mana that he couldn’t afford to waste.

The chase lasted almost fifteen minutes.  Micah had to slow down to re-cast flight and let the Maarikava catch up a bit once, but with him paying proper attention to the monster, it never got a chance to launch another attack at him.

Finally, he landed on the rocky beach of one of the islands.  Volcanic stone crunched under Micah’s feet as he fished a tiny bauble of spun glass out of his pocket.  Shaped like a star, it glowed with its own inner light.

Micah crushed it, letting the mana stored inside seep into his body.  Unfortunately, he only had one replenishing consumable.  Much like his armor and most of his day to day enchanted gear, Micah hadn’t brought the rest of them with when he began casting weave of fate in the belly of the Amelia.

After he became aware of the attack, there simply hadn’t been time to re-arm himself.  He would simply have to beat the monster with nothing more than his burned out necklace, his spear, and a ring of emergency healing that he hopefully wouldn’t have any need to use.

He blew out a breath as he relaxed into the first stance of TI… Trevor’s combat art.  Micah gripped his spear loosely, point unwavering as he aimed toward the gently rolling waves.

The Maarikava burst through the surface, glowing bright blue as mana coursed up and down its length.  Wings of steam unfurled behind her as a wall of water, the product of her sudden appearance, washed over Micah’s knees and waist.

She screamed, an incoherent and rage-filled assault on Micah’s ears as purple blood flowing from the numerous wounds his spells had left in the armored hide of the sea serpent.  Steam hissed from her nostrils, tracing two lines that disappeared into the night sky.

Micah blew out a breath, tensing his legs.  Quietly, he began mouthing the words to another spell, eyes not leaving the daskin as she quivered with rage above him.

The Maarikava lunged forward, a cone of boiling water flickering with blue light as it left her mouth.

He jumped into the air, the attack fusing sand and rock into glass beneath him as Micah finished muttering the words to his spell.  Temporal vortex triggered, blurring a chunk of the world as time went wild, head sized chunks of the monster accelerating years into the future while swirls of energy dragged parts of the creature into the past.

Updraft kept Micah free of both the Maarikava’s attack and the ravages of his own spell as it blended the daskin’s back into a brittle and incongruous mess.  Its breath attack ground to a halt, trailing off into a whimpering stutter as the powerful time spell inflicted its damage.

A second later, the spell winked out just before Micah landed on its back.  His spear jabbed downward, tip blurring as he wedged the point under a scale and sawed the rocklike chunk of armor off.

Just as he was reaching downward to use infest, seeking to end the battle with one quick blow,  the Maarikava bucked backward, throwing Micah back into the air.  He cursed silently, twisting so that he landed on his feet in the waist high ocean water.

The beast curved around toward him, a noticeable tilt to its body from the two ruined expanses of flesh left by his powerful area of effect attacks.  Her eyes burned dangerously, sparks of blue light jolting from her jaws only to ground themselves in the Emerald Ocean with hissing clouds of steam.

Micah felt the temperature of the water around him began to spike, and he silently cursed himself for not renewing flight.  She snarled, curving backward like a jungle snake preparing to strike.  He dropped into a crouch, tensing his muscles as his toes bit into the smooth rocks beneath the waves.

It’s maw snapped toward him, a blue arc of energy lancing toward Micah and spearing him through the thigh just as he jumped into the air.  His flesh bubbled and expanded as the blood of his leg instantly evaporated under the power of the Maarikava’s spell, instantly slashing away almost a quarter of his hitpoints.

Bitterly earned experience kept Micah from losing hold of his spell form, the last words dragged from his aching jaw an eyeblink before updraft slammed into him, propelling Micah up and away from the monster as it slowly recovered to a guard position.

He landed on the rocky beach, left leg giving way under him as the cooked muscle of his hamstring refused to support the jolt of his landing.  Gingerly, Micah stood back up, the warmth of augmented mending flowing down his body toward his wounds.

In the shallow water, whitecaps crashing around her, the Maarikava recovered, slowly resuming her stately S-shap as she loomed over him once again.  Micah stared up at her, a grim smile playing across his face as he brought his spear back into a guard, blood dripping from its head and onto the rock and sand of the beach.

As badly as the monster had stung him with her attack, there was little doubt that he’d come out ahead in the most recent exchange.  Already, Micah’s leg was healing, but a steady drizzle of violet blood fell from the panting creature’s mouth like some sort of grisly rain.  The wound caused by vacuum was still there, an arm deep hole in the creature’s armored hide that wept purple in the soft moonlight.

She hissed in pain, head bobbing downward as the daskin slithered out of the ocean and up onto the beach toward Micah.  His smile grew as the Maarikava’s movements  exposed the damage caused by temporal vortex.  A huge smear of her scales down one flank bled freely, some falling from the monster’s side like leaves in fall while other stuck out at unhealthy angles, exposing the twisted and time-scarred flesh beneath.

He tossed a wink at the monster before turning and darting away into the maze of rocky crags that marked the mountain side of the volcanic island.  The Maarikava bellowed her discontent before lunging after him.

The beast might be seriously injured, but that didn’t change their comparative sizes.  Without his armor, one hit from the sea serpent’s magic was enough to do serious damage.  Now wasn’t the time to become cocky.  The creature would be dangerous until the light left her eyes, but with the Amelia no longer at risk, Micah had the luxury of time.

After all, the number one killer of adventurers was impatience.  If you could fight a monster slow and cautious, only the young and foolish would take that option.

If the creature was so blinded by its injuries and rage that it would follow Micah onto land, away from the water that fueled its magic and into a maze of sharp boulders that would restrict its movement, he would be happy to help it to its death.