Stemming the Tide

by Rosie Scott

  The shadow of night consumed Jaecar and Kali as they ascended high in the air. They would attack first, using their airborne speed and quietude to their advantage before us brawlers could catch up. Other than that, we were going into this surprise attack with no plan save for killing Cale, his crew, and rescuing as many paddy workers as possible. I looked forward to killing Cale, but as we reached the crest of the hill that would lead us to blood and chaos, I realized that the adrenaline running through my veins was less potent than it was before coming face-to-face with Astred. Cale had destroyed our ship and caused us countless headaches. Why wasn't I raring to go?

  Vengeance.

  Vengeance fueled me. Rage empowered me. Cale was a thorn in my side, but the most he'd taken from me was a ship. Neliah's advice from years ago came back to me: I always fight for vengeance no matter the identity of the person at the end of my blades. It could be therapeutic for you to do the same.

  The pirates had taken many freed Alderi men hostage. After the hostages were no longer useful to them, they likely had plans to sell them into slavery across the seas after the men had already escaped it once. Was it so hard to compare these slavers to the women who had once oppressed me?

  Evidently not. As Kali and Jaecar swooped through the skies above to start the attack, I used these comparisons to work myself up. The fangs in my widened mouth clicked together as I trembled with rage in desperate need of an outlet. Suddenly, I wished for the two flying beastmen to quicken their pace so I could sink claws and fangs into slaver flesh.

  In the paddies, the hostages worked hard as the pirates watched. To one ruffian's credit, he asked questions and followed the Alderi man around, showing interest in actually learning the skill rather than simply demanding it be done. A few pirates smoked and ate dried snacks as they played cards on a low table near the buildings. One of them stood up, wandered over to the nearest river that flowed north, and tugged down his trousers to urinate. A blur of gray fur and thick leather swooped down from the night skies, and the man disappeared.

  Yelps and grunts of panic and pain echoed through the skies as the pirate protested his sudden flight. Jaecar ascended higher, utterly invisible to most due to his dark complexion that got lost against the night sky. Hanging by his skull from one of the bat-kin's feet, his victim was easier seen, for flickers of firelight glimmered off his white shirt in ripples even when he was many stories in the air, and a trail of urine followed his dangling body, splattering across land and water as Jaecar carried him toward the wooded area along the eastern shore. A few of the man's peers stood up from their game of cards in total confusion, for it looked like he floated away on his own.

  Jaecar hovered over the swamp, the stars blinking in the sky as they struggled to shine through the flutters of his leather wings. The bat-kin readjusted from left to right, calculating his position above a hardy swamp tree with sprawling horizontal branches. He released his grip of the pirate's head, and the man's screams rose with desperation as he plummeted, his body twisting in the air as he tried to find a last-minute saving grace. He ended up facing the skies as the gravity below him pleaded for blood.

  Crack!

  The pirate landed on his lower back on the broad branch of the tree with such force that his spine snapped backwards at the same time his navel tore open. Convinced by the pressure on its back, the body attempted to eject its inner organs through its unveiled floating ribs, but they only protruded and ruptured in a chunky crimson mist. The corpse slid off the branch and into shallow waters, its disembowelment reviving the drab gray-green environment with a new color scheme.

  The others hesitated in their panic, for more screams sounded from the skies. The wails were followed by sobs, then gurgles, and then nothing; a roughly decapitated head hurtled out of the darkness, hitting the wooden platform surrounding a shack so hard it bounced and splashed into nearby waters. The woman's headless body followed as Kali dropped it just over the card game. As it landed with the shattering of multiple bones, we charged.

  “Attack! Attack!” a pirate screamed, grabbing a sword from his belt. The camp fell into pandemonium. Sleeping men and women scrambled to stand and prepare for battle. Shack doors burst open before others filed out. Some of the ruffians dropped to the ground and recited the spell of transformation. I didn't yet see Cale, but I would focus on killing shapeshifters first. The average transformation took three minutes. If we could take them all out within that time, we wouldn't have to face beasts.

  Cyrene was the fastest beastman of us all. The jaguar-kin was a blur of cream and black as she raced downhill, her movements fluid from run to pounce as she leapt through the air at a man who held a shield protectively over his chest. Grasping the edge of the shield with her giant front paws, Cyrene instead mauled his face, tearing skin from muscle and eyes from sockets. Unbelievably, he was still alive for a few moments after she left him for another victim, but he merely wheezed through an exposed nasal bone a few times before going still.

  After Cyrene, I was the fastest. The rumbling of the beastmen's charge behind me pounded through my head, exciting me for carnage. I focused on a woman at the front of the camp who was in mid-transformation, her nude body convulsing, building muscle, and sprouting dark fur. Her sweat-soaked face glanced up at our charge in panic as she realized she had run out of time, but she was helpless to stop the metamorphosis now. At first, I didn't recognize the woman, but as I continued to work myself up and prepared to leap, her features morphed into those of an underground rapist.

  Like blood rained down from the skies, red seized my vision as I launched myself at the still-changing shapeshifter. Temporary insanity made the next few moments a blur as I lost control in my rage. A woman's scream combined with the squeal of a canine. My fangs sunk inches deep into flesh and muscle until shreds of meat brushed by the scales of my cheeks. The world was painted in blood. Tension in my jaw turned to immense pressure. Vaguely, I recognized that I was thrashing my head. After a crack, I held something heavy in my arm.

  So many sisters underground had raped me that I focused on none; as I lost myself in chaos, I imagined I killed them all at once. When I finally came to, I found myself beating the ground where the shapeshifter's head had been before it exploded. In my webbed hands, I held her severed leg, its foot busted after being used as a weapon. The intense aching of my jaw told me how I'd separated the limb. The ruffian was dead, yet her body was in a state halfway between woman and wolf, her transformation never completed. My chest tickled as blood ran down its scales from the back splash. I stared at the gory mess I'd made by imagining this woman was one of my rapists and floated into a high born out of catharsis; after expending so much pent-up rage, I felt more in control of myself than ever before. Feeling eyes on me, I glanced to the right. A trembling pirate held his hands up in surrender, but Hassan's bolt cracked through the temporal bone of his skull, nestling comfortably in his brain. His body crumpled into shallow waters, unveiling more of his advancing peers that I quickly met in battle.

  To my left, Vallen crashed through a group of pirates like a battering ram. They flew back from the bear-kin like fleshy shrapnel, wheezing from blunt force trauma and the agony of broken bones. Vallen swatted one ruffian who decided to try his luck with a weapon to the side by a swipe of his giant paw. Claws tore through fabric and flesh, dampening the man's attire with blood as he flew back into a swamp tree and died from the blunt force to his head.

  A geyser of blood, swamp water, and bubbles erupted in a watery clearing as Jayce spun with a man clenched between her jaws. Considering the body parts spicing up the surrounding swamp like chunks of meat in a stew, this wasn't Jayce's first victim and it wouldn't be her last.

  “Aw, now, this ain't fair,” Hilly blurted, chasing after a man who backed into the shallow waters of a paddy. The water level that reached the human's knees lapped up against the dwarf's gut, and her movements slowed. In the midst of a one-on-one battle behind Hilly's foe, Koby glanced over and noticed the dwarf's
predicament. While defending against his Vhiri opponent with his sword, he lashed out a leg, kicking the human in the back of the knee. The pirate fell forward just before Hilly's beaming smile.

  “Thank ya!” she exclaimed to Koby, bringing her flail down over the ruffian's head with a crunch. The spikes of the weapon's three heavy heads punctured flesh and bone, but because the man's body was buoyant in shallow water, the force dazed him and didn't kill him. Hilly buried her stubby fingers in the pirate's long locks, grabbed hold, and shoved his head underwater, her thick biceps bulging as she held him still against his drunken protests. When he finally drowned, Hilly left his body to float amidst ferris plants as she hurried out of the water.

  Koby's battle had moved back to drier ground, and his prowess against the Vhiri attracted a human foe. The human hurried up behind Koby, a chain wrapped around both hands until it was taut between them. Koby noticed the second man, but there was little he could do to avoid the chain as he was in mid-dodge of the Vhiri's sword.

  The human swept his arms overhead, bringing the chain around Koby's throat and tugging back until the pressure forced his exhales to puff out in wheezes. As Koby swung his sword rabidly at the approaching Vhiri with his right hand, his left dug between his throat and the chain, pulling at it desperately so he could get in a gulp of air. The Vhiri thrust his short sword at Koby's gut as the human held still him. In a rush of adrenaline, Koby hopped up with a kick, his boot clashing into the end of the blade and knocking it out of the Vhiri's hands. As the Vhiri chased after his falling sword, the human behind Koby lost his balance from the sudden burst of movement.

  The man fell backwards to the ground, the chain he held around Koby's throat bringing him along. Koby couldn't use his sword at such an angle, so he dropped it. As the two wrestled on the ground for control of the chain, Koby ripped open a pouch on his belt in which he kept alchemy tools. His left hand reappeared holding a metal stirring stick like a dagger. After raising his arm high in the air, he brought the tool down toward the human's face behind him.

  Hoarse screams pierced the night. The chain went lax as the human reached up to his face, shaking hands searching for the stirring stick that stuck out of one eye. The metal punctured the man's brain, but it didn't yet kill him. Koby scrambled out of the chain's hold, grabbed his sword, and silenced the wailing man with a deep cut across both jugulars. He reached toward his stirring stick to retrieve it, but the Vhiri was once more upon him with a flurry of angry swipes of his blade.

  Still holding the chain in one hand, Koby leapt up to stand, dodging and blocking the Vhiri's messily calculated hits. Behind the man, Hilly rushed forward with her flail, determined to repay Koby for his earlier aid. With a hearty swing, the heads of her flail punctured the soft flesh behind the Vhiri's right kneecap, ripping pieces of its meat through new tears in his trousers. The Vhiri staggered forward, somehow staying standing even as he struggled for balance.

  Koby circled his foe, wrapping the chain around the man's throat and jerking his head back until he viewed the stars. Holding both ends of the chain with his left hand to keep the man steady, Koby thrust his beautiful black sword into the Vhiri's lower back in a series of rapid stabs. The man punched backward and tried to loosen the chain, but his strength weakened as fluids drained from multiple puncture wounds. Like the final nail in a coffin, Koby thrust the sword through already frayed flesh, shoved it deeper, and tore it out of the pirate's side, partially disemboweling him. As soon as Koby let go of the chain, the Vhiri fell to his knees, breathing like a fish out of water as intestines dangled from his gouged waist.

  Down an embankment behind Koby, a rhythmic set of ripples waved through the water. Instinct promised that whatever came for him now was larger and far more dangerous. I'd been too late to aid Koby while they outnumbered him, but I continued rushing toward him now, guided only by my senses.

  Koby stilled as I barreled toward him like he was the enemy. Genuine fear settled in his black eyes as he started to believe I'd gone completely insane. He held his sword before him like a defense, but he made no move to use it as he said, “Cal...?”

  I leapt, claws glimmering copper in the light from dried blood. Water erupted behind Koby just as I passed over his shoulder; a snake as black as night shot out of the swamps like a cannonball. The beast was at least a foot wide and long enough to wrap twice around the nearest shack. At first, I thought it was simply a creature of the swamp. But as it reevaluated its trajectory and revealed its fangs to me instead, I noticed that its eyes were eerily humanoid, full of intelligence and anger. Somehow, we had missed killing one of the shapeshifters during their transformations.

  The snake-kin was quick as lightning; instinct couldn't prepare me for its unparalleled reflexes and speed. In one moment, we faced each other in mid-air over Koby's shoulder; in the next, its fangs punctured through my scales in four places as it held my torso from the side. We crash-landed on the dry ground near Koby, rolling over the terrain from the snake's attacking momentum. Its fangs retracted as it spit me out. Confused by its mercy, I rolled to my hands and knees and prepared to stand. Just before me, the snake-kin unhinged its jaw, arced its neck high, and struck again.

  The snake-kin hadn't given me mercy; it only needed to readjust its bite so it could better swallow me whole. All light squelched from my vision, and the overbearing stench of stale saliva and bacteria became my consciousness as I realized my head and shoulders were in its mouth. Quickly, I took a deep breath to hold for as long as possible, and then I started thrashing with my legs. I could barely move my arms; the snake-kin's jaws clamped down over my biceps, keeping them pinned to my sides.

  Muffled screams and shouted directions reached my ears from outside, where my friends and crew members worked together to figure out how to defeat the snake. I wiggled and strained against its hold of me, but the snake-kin's lower jaw shimmied forward, pulling me farther back in its throat. Slimy saliva streaked over my scales, filming over my eyes and nostrils. Although I held my breath, a deep-seated panic took hold of my brain due to claustrophobia alone, and my struggling became frenzied.

  Shing!

  All at once, light permeated the end of the tunnel that was the snake's esophagus. Though I had stared into its innards, through a thick slime of saliva I now recognized land on the other end after someone cut the beastman in half with one mighty hit. The end of Sage's greatsword came into view, covered in blood and flecks of broken black scales. The snake-kin's fangs slowly retracted as it died.

  Neliah pried the snake's jaws open wider with her twin hooks as Sage pinned its upper half to the ground with his sword so I could get free. After wiping my eyes clear of thick saliva, I gave them both a look of gratitude, hoping they understood it.

  Cale's base was a mess of gored bodies, trampled paddy fields, and fallen gear, but the crazed pirate himself was nowhere to be found. The camp had quieted as our foes dwindled. The only noise came from the shacks, where the last pirate rushed up a set of rudimentary steps as if he wanted to hide in the nearest domicile. Koby was on his heels. As the human reached for the door handle, Koby shoved him from behind, forcing him face-first into the door. Dazed, the man simply hyperventilated as Koby spun him around and put his sword to his throat.

  “Speak,” Koby demanded, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

  The pirate visibly swallowed and squinted once sweat trickled into his eyes from his brow. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where's Cale?”

  “Cale?” The man frowned, baffled. “He left here almost a year ago.”

  Koby cursed with frustration and glanced back at the rest of us to ensure we overheard. “With his ship?”

  “No,” the human replied, nodding west. “He gave control of his ship to his second-in-command when he left just after the beginning of the year. Cale went to Silvi.”

  “Wait—where is the ship sailing to?” Koby asked, flustered. “Hammerton? Why would they go west?”

  “Llyr. It's a st
raight route from here to Llyr if you go south of the beastlands. It takes longer, but Cale thought it'd let us deliver a steady supply of ferris to Llyr without getting into trouble with the locals.” He grimaced and admitted, “Of course, here we are.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Koby cursed. “I was right. But why did Cale go to Silvi?”

  “To hire more people,” the pirate answered as if it were obvious. “After the galleon set sail we had a shortage of people here. The tunnel rats from the raid outnumbered us and we were at risk of them overtaking us.”

  In a fit of sudden anger from hearing the racist epithet, Koby spit. Saliva sprayed over the human's lower jaw as he continued to glare. “Is Cale still in Silvi?” Koby asked, his voice hoarser this time.

  “How the hell would I know?” the pirate retorted. With little more than a flinch, Koby's sword burrowed deeper into the man's throat. A red line of blood oozed below the blade. Convinced to speak more, the man blurted, “The plan was for Cale to steal another ship and head east to Llyr with the leftover slaves. Since the mercenaries he hired in Silvi showed up here as promised, I assume he succeeded. He would've had to hire a new crew.”

  Hassan laughed humorlessly. “That's just our luck, isn't it? We were in Silvi right after Cale left it.”

  I thought back to Jeremoth's story about the man hiring a crew and stealing a schooner from Silvi's harbor. The timing was right; I made the connections. Everywhere Cale went, we were two steps behind.

  “What's his plan now?” Koby continued interrogating.

  “I don't know completely,” the pirate admitted. “This whole get-up is Cale's responsibility, but he seemed to want to oversee it while doing other things. He loves being on the seas. Kept talking about raiding near Killick. He had the time of his life sinking the smugglers north of there.”