Catching Epics

by Halie Fewkes

  Iquis screamed and crumpled to the ground as a row of coffins clattered down beside us and a massive chunk of the floor collapsed, falling to the lower level in a loud series of thuds and crashes. Vack regained control of himself just as his row tipped and fell, but the other Zhauri drew their blades in outrage, and I never saw what became of Vack. I shot lightning at Maverick, but Dauer leapt to his defense and threw a shimmering blue shield between us.

  The floor became so slanted that I could barely stand as one of the men next to the fiery pit exclaimed, “We can’t let her burn!”

  Dauer lunged after me, and I bolted away as Maverick turned to Kit, giving him one simple, calm instruction.

  “Break it.”

  I prayed Maverick didn’t mean me, but I dashed behind a row of coffins in a rash attempt to distance myself anyway.

  I tried to take short breaths, but began to cough as burning smoke coated my throat and lungs, and Dauer darted after me. I turned around with lightning in my hands and he pulled up short as I shot a powerful bolt of destruction at him, which hit his shield and pushed him back a few skidded steps.

  A deep crack resonated across the ocean, like the cracking of a thousand-year-old tree trunk, and more burning caskets fell behind me, sliding across the floor as the ship began to capsize, one of them bursting open to expel a dead woman’s body.

  “You ready?” Dauer asked, seeming to take absolute joy from whatever was coming. The pile next to me was leaning, and I had to lurch back toward Dauer as it toppled over. The floor split beneath me, and I stumbled straight into him to keep from falling through to the fiery lower level.

  I elbowed him sharply in the side as he caught me, but he just yanked me off to the side as the split in the floor widened with another earsplitting crack.

  I jerked myself free of him and leapt across another growing fracture, back toward the other Zhauri, my only route away from Dauer. I stopped in pure shock as I saw Kit ahead, his hands glowing with purpled black. He was moving them slowly apart, a look of deep, strenuous concentration on his face, and I realized what he was doing. He was breaking the entire shanking ship in half.

  A giant gaping fissure broke through the ceiling above us in a deafening roar, and the hull below the lowest level splintered apart as well, allowing water to rush in and quench the flames. The entire ship was solidly pulled into two halves, and I couldn’t even figure out what was keeping either side standing.

  Maverick stood directly in front of Kit, watching with calm intensity before telling him, “Drop it.”

  The dark bearded brother dropped his hands and both halves of the ship simultaneously fell to the left and the right in a whoosh of air, crashing into the ocean in a massive explosion of seawater.

  I wanted to scream, but held my breath instead as water crashed in over me. Every coffin from the lower stacks sprang up to rush for the surface, and I threw my hands over my head for protection as they swarmed by, battering me along the way.

  I clawed my way to the surface as well and took a great gasp of air, grabbing one of the closed caskets as somebody exclaimed, “Didn’t you at least mark which one it was?!”

  “Of course we did! We painted red over the words.”

  The weapon wasn’t the dead themselves, but it was inside one of the countless coffins now dotting the ocean surface. I knew I could swim back to land unnoticed among all the wreckage, but I didn’t want them to get their hands on whatever it was. I looked at the face of the coffin I’d grabbed, but the burned Long Live King Kelian didn’t look red by any means.

  “I found it!” shouted a woman near the border of the wreckage.

  “Hold on, we’re coming!”

  I looked frantically around to see that the other swimmers were about the same distance from her as I was, but swimming was my most severe weakness. I’d never reach her first.

  I pulled my knees onto the coffin to which I clung and recklessly leapt to my feet as it wobbled beneath me. I didn’t have time to hesitate, but leapt to the next wooden box floating in the water, and then quickly to the next until I was essentially running across the tops.

  I threw a bolt of lightning at Maverick before he even saw me, and kept going. I was two boxes away from the woman and could see the red paint across the words on the coffin when an arm lurched up from the water and tripped me. I stumbled and fell into the water, twisting to see my attacker, struck with the fear he might be one of the dead.

  But it was shanking Ratuan, pulling me underwater as he clawed to get his hands around my throat.

  I had my knife still in my sandal-laces, but Ratuan was both Human and young, so I wrapped an arm around his neck and strangled the life out of him instead as he thrashed and clawed at me. Easy prey.

  At the top of the tower, I had been ready to shove him over the edge and kill him. But now I felt torn by the fact that the kid I was killing didn’t have any hope of escaping me and was panicking in my crushing grasp. He was a child. I should be protecting him, not killing him.

  I let go as Ratuan fell limp in my arms and somebody grabbed me from behind, shoving me underwater as I twisted around to grapple with him for the upper hand as well.

  But this was Kit.

  He had one arm around my neck and a hand holding the back of my head so I couldn’t pull my face back above the surface. I had no idea how to fight in the water, and had already lost most of the air in my lungs, so I resorted to the age old trick of bringing lightning to my hands. I grabbed the arm around my neck and unleashed a deadly stream of destruction that sizzled through him.

  Something was wrong though. I couldn’t make it stop. It was something about the water, the lightning just kept flowing from my hands, lighting up the ocean around me, long after he’d released my throat and ceased moving at all.

  I breached the surface but began to panic as the stream of destruction continued, growing continually weaker as I grew infinitely more tired. Oh shanking life, I didn’t know this would happen. I would never have used my power in the water if I’d known, and all I wanted to do was take the decision back.

  I sputtered and gasped for breath as the lightning in my hands dwindled into a dull glow and I clung to the nearest floating coffin, right on the verge of passing out.

  All the other swimmers converged around the coffin with red paint, except Dauer who came straight for me.

  He unlatched the nearest coffin and dumped the body of the man into the water, where he floated facedown to my absolute horror. I growled at Dauer as he grabbed the coffin edge to capsize the box and fill it with water, scooping it beneath me before I realized what he was doing. The box leveled out, still floating with me inside, and Dauer grabbed the wooden lid as I threw my arms up to keep him from clamping it over me.

  “Don’t you dare!” I shrieked as my will to fight finally refilled my limbs and I tried to shove the lid away.

  He already had one side wedged down, and I lunged forward to grab two handfuls of his thick hair, snaking my torso out of the box so he couldn’t shut me in.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed. The heavy lid came to rest on my head and shoulders as he pried my hands out of his hair, shoving them back into the box with the rest of me.

  I was nowhere near ready to give up, and already had one of my legs halfway out of the coffin when he lifted the lid and brought it heavily down on my skull, dazing me with the sudden urge to curl into a ball and vomit.

  “I’m looking forward to the chase of a lifetime with you.” Dauer snapped something cold and metallic around my wrist before pushing my every limb into the box and snapping the top down to encase me in utter darkness. I groaned and pulled my hands over my face, trying to regain my good sense when I just felt sick and dizzy.

  His muffled voice carried through the sealed wood. “Make it worth my while.”

  The bottom of the coffin was filled with freezing seawater, and I pushed my drenched, tangled hair from my eyes, taking a panicked breath in the confined space. Things were hap
pening all around me, but the lid above was stuck in place, and no matter how hard I pushed and kicked, I was wearing myself out to the tune of no progress. I tried to bring lightning to my hands and got nothing.

  Ok. Still yourself and think.

  I fell still, closed my eyes, and then withdrew the hunting knife I kept between the laces on my sandal. Taking one more deep breath, I wedged it into the tight space where lid met coffin. I couldn’t get the opening to budge until I gripped the knife handle with two hands and used my whole upper body to splinter straight through the wood, just barely prying open a peephole between the latches.

  I pressed my face close to my only source of light as the casket tipped forward and water gushed in through the opening. I moved my weight to the other side of the box to tip it back upright, and carefully leaned back to look out, mindful to keep the thing balanced.

  I heard desperate voices saying, “It doesn’t look like the fire got through.”

  “Well hurry up and get it open!”

  “Out here?”

  “Yes, out here. We have to check on her.”

  I squinted and watched as much as I could see, considering there were several other coffins bobbing between mine and the excitement.

  The rescuers pried the lid off and I barely caught a glimpse of the red paint on the front before a very loud and panicked gasp rang from the opened coffin, and a woman with fiery orange hair bolted upright.

  Well, shanking life.

  This would make the Humans stronger.

  They hadn’t brought back a weapon, but a leader — one everybody would follow and listen to.

  And her name was Anna.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Allie

  My box tipped too far forward and water poured in through the hole again, so I dislodged my knife and returned it to my leg as I lay my head back in the drenching cold.

  Even if Savaul hadn’t killed Anna like he claimed, she would have been killed in the massacre of our mages on Tekada. I had no idea how someone had snuck her onto the ship and gotten her across the ocean, but it was no wonder they’d gone through the effort.

  That was their final treat to end tonight’s celebration, the knowledge that Anna would be able to unite the Human cities in a way nobody else could. She was well known, feared, respected, fierce — the leader Humanity desperately wanted and needed.

  I wrung my hands together, trying to warm them with my breath as I caught a severe case of the shivers. There was no way to get warm with cold water caressing half of me. I curled my knees into my chest and hugged them as I resigned to ride this out. The ocean around me had fallen silent but for the waves knocking against my box. I’d been abandoned.

  The adrenaline in my veins eventually turned to cold, slow-moving mud, and my fears of dying were replaced by fears of living. Because assuming I escaped this container alive, it would just be to run from the Zhauri and their sudden fascination chasing me. There was nothing to go back to. The Escalis wanted me dead, and the Humans wanted worse.

  Hours passed, and the only victory I had, alone in the dark, was that I refused to hate myself, even though I was incredibly, incredibly tempted to.

  Why do we, as people, do that to ourselves? Why, when the world has turned on us, do we want to tear our hair out and scream at ourselves that we deserve everything handed to us?

  I hated that temptation, and so I stomped on it by confronting every decision I’d made since saving Vack. I didn’t regret a single one. I hated their outcomes. I hated where I was and what I had to look forward to, but there was triumph in knowing I hadn’t lost sight of myself. My sense of self was all I had to cling to anymore.

  That, and the tight metal band Dauer had clamped around my wrist before locking me in here.

  I tried to slide it off my hand, but it was too small, and I couldn’t feel a single crease in the metal where I could pry it back open. I toyed with it over the next hours, knowing I couldn’t fall asleep with all the cold water pooled up around my head.

  I was exhausted. So incredibly tired, and I did drift off at one point, only to startle myself awake, choking on the salty water with tears in my eyes.

  After a day or two of drifting, my coffin began to tumble, and the spinning momentum tossed me around until the box finally settled to the sound of sand scratching the exterior, upside down. I wedged my knife into the opening to let the water drain out, but instead of gaining a fiery will to crack the lid open and flee to safety, I hugged my knees once more and drifted to sleep.

  Of course my dreams were filled with coffins, and dead bodies, and Zhauri patrolling among them as I tried to pull the lids off. I got them off, one by one, to find Karissa inside, then Robbiel, then Nessava, Corliss, Emery, Celesta, and eventually, in a panicked stupor, I pulled off the coffin lid with Archie inside.

  I woke with tears streaming down my still damp face, landing in my still dripping hair, and I shivered as I remembered how cold the world was. Closing my eyes, I rubbed at the fresh new welts I’d just clawed into my neck, and then began planning my next move.

  Muffled voices reached me from outside just before my whole box was flipped over. I tumbled over inside but remained still, leaving my eyes closed for precious seconds longer.

  The lid above me was pried off and I heard a sympathetic sigh.

  “Can’t believe Kelian did this,” a girl above me said.

  “I know. You can go if you want. Digging the graves might be easier than pulling them off the beach.”

  “No, I’m fine,” she replied as two hands reached under my arms to lift me out. “I just think I might hate Kelian more than the Escalis.”

  “Gret... This one is warm.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she’s freezing cold. But she’s alive.”

  “What? How? The trip across the ocean — never mind! Let’s get her up to the house.”

  The man and woman lifted and carried me all the way up to their home, and I didn’t protest or even stir.

  I was only vaguely aware of them bringing me inside. I heard the girl shooing her husband, or whoever he was away, and then warmth. I was warm again.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Ebby

  The pile of coffins Vack had collapsed atop was tipping over. He was seconds from a long fall into a mess of flames and heavy tumbling boxes when the torture in his head became suddenly bearable.

  Vack gritted his teeth against the pain still searing his mind, and he grabbed the man beside him before jumping them both off the ship.

  He landed on the sandy beach with the man still at his side, then keeled over and pressed his hands to his skull as the agony of his attacker still throbbed through his head. Vack had never felt anything like it.

  Ebby and Jalia watched from the ridgetop as the man knelt next to Vack, asking if he was alright, and looking around frantically to find somebody to help. He had a kind face, and still thought it was Sir Avery’s daughter who’d curled in on herself in the sand. He took one glance toward Glaria before reaching his arms under Vack to lift and carry him.

  Jalia growled protectively and then took off, sprinting toward the beach. Ebby watched her for a shocked second before turning invisible and jumping down to the beach as well. The man carrying Vack nearly panicked as he spotted Jalia running at him.

  He set the little girl in the sand and drew a blade from his side, shocked by the appearance of such a young Escali, but also more than ready to kill her.

  Jalia stopped short of reaching Vack and hissed at the man, crouched low like she was ready to spring at him, blade in his hand or not.

  Ebby snuck behind him and pressed her fingers to the man’s back, willing with everything she had for him to fall asleep.

  He crumpled into the sand, and Jalia leapt over him to get to Vack, grabbing his hands and whispering, “I can help you. Let me help.”

  Jalia whispered more to him, and Ebby turned her attention back to Glaria to make sure they weren’t being pursued.<
br />
  The celebration had been disrupted by the commotion in the harbor as an entire ship was violently destroyed, but Sir Avery had never left Prince Avalask’s side, and Prince Avalask was still alive on the stage.

  Ebby watched fearfully around them as Vack opened his eyes, and Ebby noticed Jalia sharing in his headache, taking on some of the throbbing suffering so it would be more bearable. The two were staring hard at each other, and Ebby wrapped her hands around her lonely self, wishing she had somebody like Jalia in her own life. Ratuan would do this for her if she was ever in pain…

  She had only told Ratuan two things before he tried to convince her to stay with him. Nobody hurts my friends and if anything happens to Prince Avalask, you’ll never see me again.

  In hindsight, she should have included Allie’s safety in the ultimatum, but she was sort of proud she’d stood up to Ratuan at all. Ok, so she hadn’t done it perfectly.

  Ebby watched Glaria as they brought a woman with bright orange hair onto the stage to the amazement and vast excitement of the crowds beneath them.

  Everybody on the continent had heard of Anna, and Ebby watched as Anna told the crowds of the horrors on Tekada, and she swore on her life they would never again take orders from King Kelian, or send him valuables, or refer to their continent as Kelianland.

  Ebby watched the celebration until the very end, but Ratuan never reappeared on the stage, and no further acknowledgement was given to Prince Avalask. Maybe it was because of her threat. Maybe they had never planned to kill the Epic. She didn’t know.

  Jalia and Vack were still on the ground. The suffering shared between them was subsiding, but they hadn’t taken their eyes off each other.

  The man Vack had brought back with him still slept soundly as well, and finally, after the celebration had ended, after Ebby had scanned the ocean, and after she was certain Ratuan was safely back on dry land, she whispered, “I can’t find Allie.”

  “Maybe we should stop pronouncing people dead, just because we can’t find them,” Jalia replied, making Vack smile at her. His hair had finally turned black again, his nose and chin had sharpened, and his eyes had regained their hazy green tint. “It’s also about time we left. You two have to get stronger.”