Kingdom of the Deep

by EJ Altbacker

  Shear skidded to a halt by Gray. “We must get through! This may be our only chance to face Hokuu with the complete guardian force!”

  “Then let’s get him!” cried Striiker. He raced toward the barrier and smashed into it as hard as he could. The wall stopped him cold as if he’d rammed a thousand-year-old coral pillar. Gray went over to the great white, who shook his head woozily. “I’m still kind of stupid sometimes.”

  “No, it’s a good idea! But we need to do it differently,” Gray said. “Shear, everyone! Push!”

  Mari helped Striiker order their mariners into lines so they wouldn’t jostle each other. Shear and his guardians took the center. “Set!” shouted Gray. The Riptide and guardian sharkkind put their snouts against the hazy surface of the barrier. Even though it looked like a thin line of cloudy water, it was cold and hard. “Swim! Swim forward!”

  For a full thirty seconds the wall did not budge despite the massed power of over five hundred sharkkind and guardians. Hokuu waved his tail at them from the other side, his horrible smile growing even wider. “Silly sharks! You look so stupid!”

  “I’ll show you stupid!” shouted Striiker.

  Hokuu swam in front of the great white on the other side of the barrier. “You already have—by being here! Ohh, you really set yourself up for that one!”

  “Concentrate! Keep swimming!” shouted Gray.

  The barrier began to bend and everyone inched forward. But it was painfully slow. Gray’s body ached from the effort. “Come on, do it!” he urged everyone.

  “It’s moving!” exclaimed Snork.

  Hokuu’s snaky tail twitched. “Stop this! You’ll never get through, so why try?”

  “PUSH!” Gray countered. Sharkkind around him gasped and strained but the barrier curved noticeably.

  “No, no, no!” cried the frilled shark. “You’ll ruin everything!”

  With a hissing riiiip, the barrier failed and a huge hole was torn through it. Shear and his guardians were quickest and they whipped through the waters after Hokuu with Gray and the Riptide mariners following. The frilled shark easily kept ahead of everyone chasing him.

  “Oh no!” wailed Hokuu, his eyes wild and rolling. “How could you break through my shield!” The frilled shark darted into hissing waters. Everything was clouded by the sulfur and whatever else was being vented from the seafloor.

  “After him!” yelled Striiker. “No mercy!” The Riptide sharks got into formation and followed.

  Gray saw the frilled shark heading toward a single column of smoke that glowed red on the seafloor. Lava! That had to be where the walls between the two oceans were thinnest!

  Hokuu was leading them right to it!

  The frilled shark flashed ahead. His amplified voice screamed, “You’ll never stop me from freeing Fifth Shiver! I’ll do it right now!”

  Gray sped after Hokuu, but something worried him.

  The full moon hadn’t risen yet.

  In fact, the sun was only now going down. And why was Hokuu so vocal about what he was going to do, unless . . .

  Unless this was a trick.

  Or a trap!

  “SHEAR, STOP!”

  But Shear and the Guardians were too far ahead to hear anything. Gray wheeled as fast as he could, but the advance guard from Riptide streamed past him.

  “STOP! STOP!” he yelled as the pyramid formation of mariners came forward.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Striiker from the diamondhead. The main force of Riptide mariners was a little slower than the advance guard.

  “IT’S A TRAP!” Gray yelled. He made sure that Mari, Barkley, and Snork heard.

  “EMERGENCY STOP!” bellowed Striiker. The racket of the hissing waters carried his words away. Luckily, Olph the battle dolph was there. Dolphin click-razz language was now required study for every Riptide mariner. The clicks, whistles, and razzes cut through even the noisiest of waters. Olph pierced the chaos with Striiker’s command.

  Sharks piled into one another! It definitely wasn’t the smoothest of emergency stops, but it got the job done. The water was thick and cloudy, the taste of sulfur choking everyone. Gray’s eyes watered as he looked for Hokuu. It was a confused mess!

  But stopping saved their lives.

  “Who wants boiled shark?” yelled the frilled shark, hovering on the other side of the largest of the hissing vents. With a wave of his tail he sent a bolt of energy into it. The power burst activated the lava gurgling under the seabed.

  FWHOOOOM!

  There was a thunderous roar and an explosion of sizzling lava that created a gaping hole in the seabed a quarter mile around! The burst of hot gas burned most every guardian and Riptide advance sharkkind above it to black ash. What was left of them was blown apart by the roiling updraft of water that came after.

  The lethally hot water would reach Gray and his friends in less than a second. And inside the explosion was lava rock, frozen into jagged spikes by the colder sea and hurtling at them. Gray could do nothing but close his eyes and wait to be pierced by the shards with everyone else.

  But it didn’t happen.

  Instead, the boiling water stopped a foot from Gray’s snout. It whooshed upward as the lava spikes clattered against an invisible barrier. Wait, it wasn’t invisible. It was hard to see because the water itself was so murky and thick.

  It was Takiza’s doing.

  Gray spotted the betta, rigid from the effort as he fed his power into a bright bluish shield that protected everyone. When the worst of the explosion was over, Takiza allowed the barrier to dissolve.

  “I hate you, Taki! Do you know how long that trap took to set up? DO YOU?” screamed Hokuu from the other side of the crater. The lava inside was frozen from the colder water rushing onto it.

  Steam gurgled and hissed all around them, but the frilled shark amplified his voice so everyone could hear. He was angry this time. Really angry. Not like before, when he had been acting, which was obvious to Gray only in hindsight.

  Now Hokuu was furious and his glittering eyes blazed with hate. “You have spoiled my fun for the last time. This is the end, Taki. Now . . . YOU DIE!”

  CHAPTER 27

  SHEAR AND A FEW OF THE OTHER GUARDIAN finja were miraculously alive but had been rolled and tumbled in the violent waters, and badly injured. Gray had no idea how anyone near the explosion had survived. The vast majority were simply gone.

  Hokuu jittered through the water, supple as a piece of greenie in a twisting current. His turns were so sharp and unpredictable it was hard to follow his blurred course with the naked eye as he stabbed mariners through the gills with his pointed tail or bit their fins, tails, or heads off. All the while the frilled shark raced toward Takiza and Gray. Striiker and the other Riptide mariners were no help, being tossed about by the remains of the tremendous explosion of lava that Hokuu had almost lured them into.

  Almost, except for Takiza. The betta had saved them once again.

  Hokuu darted to a halt ten tail strokes away and launched a jagged bolt of lightning which brightened the water as it flashed forward. Takiza fluttered his gauzy fins and Gray was shoved sideways by a turbulent force created by his power. “Flee, you fool!” the betta commanded as he blocked the lightning bolt with one of his own.

  Gray swam at Hokuu, but the frilled shark dodged and gave him a paralyzing touch. Gray couldn’t move a muscle and drifted toward the seabed.

  “Taki, I will deal with your apprentice after I kill you!” Hokuu yelled, anger making his green eyes glow.

  “Must you always bleat like a whiny sea cow?” replied Takiza. “It is ever so tiresome.” The betta seemed composed, but the mighty forces he summoned in the battle so far had taken a fierce toll. He was in a fight for his life.

  And there was nothing Gray could do to help!

  Ho
kuu and Takiza exchanged jolts through their mastery of shar-kata. There were explosions and blistering thumps of power. Both had to retreat from the other during the fight, but Gray saw that Takiza was getting the worst of it.

  Hokuu kept advancing, closer and closer. He launched his attacks from ten strokes away, then five, then only two. This put Hokuu in range so he could use his fierce, spiked tail. It whipped through the water, creating a high-pitched whine as the frill tried to slice Takiza in two. The betta bounced and darted, somehow avoiding the strikes, but it was all he could do to stay alive.

  Gray felt helpless as he struggled against the paralysis. The tide had pushed him onto a thick clump of brown greenie, rough against his belly. It can’t end this way, he thought. Striiker and the mariners were still getting their fins underneath themselves and couldn’t help.

  It’s up to me, Gray thought.

  He strained to move. The more he struggled, the more his muscles didn’t want to work. Then he remembered Takiza’s words about will. Maybe it wasn’t about physical effort at all.

  Gray concentrated. He imagined his tail swishing back and forth—and it did! But it was only the tiniest of flicks. He must do better!

  “I have you now!” Hokuu’s tail split the water in a blur and struck Takiza’s shield, smashing through it and sending the betta tumbling. The frilled shark reversed position, batted the betta the other way, and then paralyzed him. “So now it ends, Taki. Do you have any last words?” Hokuu’s pointed tail poked Takiza gently on the forehead.

  “What is the point of speaking with one who will not change his mind?” asked Takiza with a calm that infuriated Hokuu.

  “I hate when you answer a question with a question! You always had such a high opinion of yourself!” huffed the frilled shark. “Even when you were my Nulo, you fancied yourself master. Didn’t you, you arrogant little puffer fish?”

  “You say this,” answered Takiza. “So it must be true.”

  Gray closed his eyes and cleared his mind as Hokuu smacked Takiza from side to side with his tail, toying with him.

  There was still time.

  Gray blocked out everything and pictured the warm, calm waters of the Caribbi. He could swim as fast as he wanted. He just knew he could. There was nothing to stop him. His tail swished easily in his imagination. When Gray opened his eyes, he would be moving.

  And he was. He hurtled at Hokuu as the frilled shark drew his spine-sharp tail backward for the killing blow.

  “Enough of your nonsense!” Hokuu spat. “Time for you to go!” The frilled shark’s tail zipped toward Takiza—

  But Gray blasted into Hokuu from his blind side. The point of the frill’s tail grazed the side of Takiza’s face. Gray raked Hokuu’s flank with his own dagger teeth.

  “YOU!” Hokuu screamed. “IMPOSSIBLE!”

  A sizzling bolt of electricity flashed past Gray and struck the frilled shark, causing him to shudder violently until he swept the energy away.

  Hokuu looked at Takiza, who was listing to the side as he hovered. “It doesn’t matter, fools. I’ve done what I wanted to do. And we will meet again!”

  “Stop him!” shouted Takiza as he loosed another burst of energy. But this one was weak and didn’t even reach Hokuu. Gray rushed the frilled shark, but he disappeared in a streak of bubbles.

  “Are you okay?” Mari asked Gray.

  “I’m all right. But Takiza’s been hurt!”

  The betta waved his fins dismissively. “It is no matter. I must go.”

  Striiker joined them. He had a gash on his side that was leaking blood, but it didn’t look too bad. “Thanks for saving our lunch, Takiza, but where are you in such a rush to go?”

  “Fifth Shiver isn’t coming to the Big Blue today,” Gray told the Riptide leader. “The full moon meant nothing! The whole thing was a fake, like Barkley said.”

  “Oh, really?” Striiker asked pointedly as he eyed Velenka, who had been hiding deep in the greenie. She heard, though.

  “I didn’t know about that!” she cried. “I swear it!”

  “We’ll see about that when we put you in a cell with a thousand hungry cuttlefish!” the great white told her.

  “NO!” Velenka began to weep. “I didn’t know!”

  “I don’t think she did,” Snork said.

  Takiza snapped his gauzy tail and it made a cracking noise, quieting everyone. “She was merely a pawn. Hokuu allowed Velenka to escape to give us the information that would lead to this trap.”

  “Right, to get us here and boil us alive,” said Mari.

  “Not us! We were only a bonus,” said Barkley. The dogfish motioned to the injured Shear.

  Gray couldn’t believe he had been so dumb not to see any of this! “It was for Shear and the guardians,” he told everyone. “Kaleth’s defenseless!”

  Shear joined them. The captain of the guardians could barely swim and was horribly burned on one flank. He had avoided the blast of super-heated lava by the thinnest of margins. “I must go. The Seazarein ordered . . . almost all of us here. . . . ” The tiger shark finja lost consciousness.

  Gray grew cold. Kaleth was left with only a few guardians and Hokuu was roaring toward her. He would get inside Fathomir this time because no one was there to stop him. Everyone was too far away to do anything about it!

  CHAPTER 28

  “LET’S FORM UP!” STRIIKER COMMANDED. “WE’VE got a triple-time swim to the North Sific ahead of us!”

  Riptide’s subcommanders relayed the great white’s orders. Though all the mariners took their position quickly, every one was exhausted from the long journey and ferocious fighting they had been through.

  Mari tapped the Riptide leader’s flank with her long-lobed thresher tail. “Striiker, they’re too tired. There’s no way.”

  “No one’s tired!” Striiker yelled. He listed to the right and winced from his own injury. “We’ll just have to suck it up,” he said in a weakening voice.

  “It’ll be tough, but we should try,” added Snork.

  “You will never make it to Fathomir in time,” Takiza told them. “I will go.”

  Gray sized up the betta. His energy seemed low. The effort of saving the Riptide armada and his battle with Hokuu had taken its toll. “You can’t, Shiro. You’ll kill yourself.”

  “All fins must one day swim the Sparkle Blue. Perhaps today is my day.”

  Barkley swished his tail. “You’ve fought Hokuu twice and both times got the tail end of it. What makes you think you can win even if you get there in time?”

  Takiza gave the dogfish a smirk. “I have heard that the third time is always a charm.” He gestured at everyone gathered. “If you would all be so kind as to move . . . ”

  Gray stuck his tail in front of Takiza before he could zoom away. “Wait, Shiro. Let me do it.”

  “Bah!” Takiza grumbled. “You are not ready.”

  Gray swam in front of the betta and looked him straight in the eyes. “I say I am ready. Now show me what to do.”

  Takiza held Gray’s stare. After a moment, he nodded. “Perhaps you can be of use.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Snork. “Are you going to magic yourselves over there?”

  Gray cut Takiza off before he could call the sawfish a dumb sea cow or something worse. “Shar-kata isn’t magic, Snork. It’s a form of specialized training where you can gather the power of the sea and turn it into things like energy bolts. It can also help you swim very fast.”

  “I must go with you,” Shear said. Being a captain of the guardians, the big tiger was intent on defending the Seazarein. But Shear had been scalded so badly the skin on his right flank was cracked and black. Any exertion would probably kill him.

  “Us too,” Barkley added, gesturing at Striiker, Mari, and Snork.

  Takiza swooshed his
fins, shaking his head for added emphasis. “None of you are coming!” he announced. “It would send every one of us to the Sparkle Blue. I must go with Gray and attempt to prevent his stomach from exploding or his eyes boiling from their sockets should he make a mistake.”

  “Oh . . . gross,” Snork said in a quiet voice.

  Gray tried to keep his most confident look on his face. He hadn’t known there could be such a bad effect. I sure hope I don’t explode, he thought.

  “Come,” Takiza told him. “I will begin, then you will take over, for I do not have the strength.”

  “Shiro,” Gray began, very worried.

  “You will not explode,” the betta said quietly. “But it is your first time attempting this. You will not have the ability to bring others with you, especially because you are such a large fish.”

  “Mom says I’m big-cartilaged,” Gray interrupted, trying to get a grin from Takiza.

  The betta shook his head. “I am glad that you are in such good spirits. But this is dangerous, Gray. Clear your mind and notice the energies I call forth. See them, not with your eyes, but with your other senses. We will have only one chance.”

  Gray nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “We shall know soon if that is the truth,” Takiza replied, hovering over Gray’s snout between his eyes. He began waving his gauzy fins rhythmically. “Let your senses expand outward, touching everything around you.”

  Gray did so. He had gotten much better at this and could identify the electrical shadows of all his friends. He sensed the hundreds of Riptide mariners nearby and even their injuries. He could feel the many different dwellers in the greenie, rocks, and coral below.

  “Sense the power inside the tides themselves. Gaze into the water and finally see, Gray. Look deep and understand. Only then can you draw strength from the ocean’s beating heart.”

  For a moment Gray couldn’t feel anything, but then there was . . . something.