by DM Fike
Still, as we hiked our way through the first few hours of the morning, I knew my luck wasn’t going to hold. The sun decided that this spring day needed a bit more sunshine than usual, bringing hotter temperatures with it. Although the foliage kept things somewhat cool under the canopy, we sometimes had to travel across grass plains between wisp channels. As the day progressed, I had to ask more often for the others to wait so I wouldn’t lose sight of them. Guntram and Baot paid no mind, but Zibel muttered not-so-softly about how I slowed us all down.
We ended up traveling much farther north than I expected, out of Oregon and into Leadbetter Point in Washington state. The state park touts itself as the “World’s Longest Beach,” but that’s a bit of a stretch. I suppose “World’s Longest Continuous Peninsula Beach” doesn’t look nearly as good on a fancy stone archway. Nevertheless, the park contained a decent-size, isolated forest, making it a great rendezvous point for a group of shepherds.
As we exited our last wisp channel, I wondered who else would appear to aid with vitae collection. I rarely worked with any of the northern shepherds. I figured we were in their territory, so they might join us.
Zibel spied our helpers first, lounging on some rocks not far from the soft blue hue of the wisp lights. “Oh great,” he grumbled. “Another child to babysit.”
I was about to ask what he meant by that when a voice snarled, “Don’t you dare lump Darby with this riff-raff.”
I would have recognized that thick scorn anywhere. A ray of light through the canopy struck the perfectly sculpted bodies of the Sassy Squad, my not-so-friendly fellow shepherds. Tabitha, the augur, stood taller of the two, her stance sharp like a military general. She blessed me with her usual glower underneath a fur-lined cloak. Darby, the eyas, smirked at me, ringlets of platinum blonde hair framing her jasper green eyes. The look of superiority she wore would have looked ugly on anyone else, but somehow fit Darby with her princess perfect body curving in all the right places.
Suddenly, Zibel didn’t seem like such a bad traveling companion.
Darby took a few long graceful strides and poked at my breastplate with a snicker. “Nice fashion statement, Ina. You going on a joust after this mission?”
I reddened as Tabitha said, “It’s a breathing charm. Guntram,” she rounded on my exasperated mentor, “you can’t possibly bring Ina to a vitae cleft if she has not mastered underwater breathing.”
Guntram sighed, sick of repeating himself. “Ina is ready. The Oracle requested her presence, and her other water skills are up to the task. I fully expect her to pull her own weight.”
Tabitha looked down her nose at me. “She’ll pull weight, all right. Right down to the bottom of the ocean.” She threw one arm around a proud Darby. “My eyas has no problem maintaining an underwater breathing sigil for hours on end if need be.”
The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. “But can she keep her hair in place? It would be a tragedy to mess it up.”
Guntram, Tabitha, and Darby all turned to glare at me in unison.
Baot stepped into the circle before the squabbling deepened. “Hey, it’s not a problem. If the Oracle thinks we can handle it,” he said, waving his hands to indicate all of us, even me, “then we’re good to go.”
His positive attitude killed the grumbling. Guntram opened the satchel around his waist and produced a royal blue glass ball, the kind you normally see wrapped in rope and tied in rafters as coastal décor. About the size of a softball, it shined with an inner radiance, a twinkling of sun projecting outward and illuminating Guntram’s face despite the fact that no visible light appeared to glow within the glass itself. I craned my neck and spotted several more shiny spheres within the pouch.
Guntram held the ball out to us. “We have six. If we each carry one, we should harvest at least as much vitae as usual.” He then passed them around, giving me the second to last one. I did not expect the numbing buzz that shot through my fingertips when I touched it. It drummed with an internal energy, a faint heartbeat-like rhythm emitting from within.
“What a weird ball,” I breathed.
“It’s called an orb,” Guntram corrected. “And don’t drop it. Sipho added a few extra sigils to strengthen them, but they’re still made of glass.”
“How does it work?” I asked.
Tabitha straightened her spine. “Not with your sloppy hands. Only an augur or Oracle can fill orbs with vitae.”
Guntram interrupted her bloated sense of self-importance. “Tabitha and I will fill the orbs while the rest of you keep watch. Vitae is a special form of Nasci herself, an energy any vaettur would kill to get their hands on. Vaetturs who manage to steal it will find their unholy abilities strengthened many times over.”
Darby leaned over to whisper in my ear, “In other words, don’t screw things up like you normally do.”
I resisted the urge to elbow her in the kidney, but not by much.
“Baot,” Guntram gestured to the grinning shepherd. “If you would be so kind as to guide us from here?”
“Absolutely!” Baot clapped.
And off we went, a ragtag group of magical shepherds who wanted very little to do with one another. It felt like an edgy sitcom in the making, one that would likely end in hilarious hijinks at someone’s expense. I hoped it wasn’t me.
We abandoned the forest for the sandy beaches outlining the ocean. Sweat caked my hoodie to my itchy skin, and my arms chafed from rubbing up against the metal. I drew a quick drying sigil so Darby wouldn’t notice and taunt me. The sun in its annoyingly cloudless sky would bake me at this rate.
When we got to the water’s edge, I wondered if we would immediately submerge underwater. I almost looked forward to cooling a few degrees. But Baot executed a quick sigil that allowed him to walk on water. He stepped with ease over the rolling waves as if they meant little to him.
I whistled at his deft water skills. “Look at Baot go.”
Zibel drew his own sigil. “Baot practically lives in the ocean,” he told me with authority. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“‘I thought everyone knew that,’” I repeated under my breath in a mocking tone.
I realized I’d have to ditch my boots. Grumbling at losing another good pair, I unlaced them and followed Baot out on top of the water. I nearly pitched forward as the first wave crashed toward me, not used to balancing with the extra twenty pounds. I glanced behind me, half expecting Darby to be laughing, but discovered to my delight that she had messed up her own walking on water sigil and had stepped right into the water up to her thighs. I let out a snort before I could suppress it.
Darby glared at me.
“Be careful or your face will stay that way,” I teased. Then Guntram called for me to keep up, so I scurried after him.
Baot led us so far out onto the water that the shore faded from the horizon. The waves evened out, indicating we’d made it past the continental shelf. We stood on top of some very, very deep water. And still, Baot kept marching on, leading us several more miles out to sea.
I finally ran up to Guntram as discreetly as possible and asked, “How far are we going?”
Guntram did not so much as blink as he stared straight into the horizon and said, “Eighty miles.”
“Eighty miles!” I didn’t mean to shout, but what else could I do when faced with absurdity.
Darby overheard me and said, “What’s the matter, haggard? Can’t hack it?”
Darby was nothing if not consistent. She liked to rub the haggard slur in my face whenever she had the chance. It’s a not very nice term for someone who began training as a shepherd well after puberty—aka someone destined to fail.
I decided lob a taunt back. “Your twig legs will break off too, Darbs. Eighty miles is no joke.”
Zibel decided to interject yet again. “We’re not walking the whole way,” he said in a tone that meant only an idiot would believe we would. “We’ll use a wisp channel.”
A small giggle escaped my thro
at. “A wisp channel this far out?” I asked, gesturing onto the rolling, wild waves all around us. “Last I checked, trees don’t grow in the ocean.”
Zibel sighed and shook his head at me. “You really are a rookie, aren’t you?”
Baot stopped at the front of the line. “We’re here!” he announced. He drew the sigil for breathing underwater in what I swear was only nine strokes, then executed a counter sigil that canceled his ability to walk on water. He slipped gracefully beneath the waves, sinking without so much as a splash.
I almost always go into things half-blind, so why should today be any different? I shrugged, drawing the sigil for inner heat before plunging into the water myself.
The moment the water went over my shoulders, the weight of the breastplate armor lightened. I basked in that relief until I could hold my breath no longer and inhaled a timid mouthful of water. For a second, I thought Sipho had made an error and I would drown, armor be damned, but then that awful grimy film coated my airways right down into my lungs. The sloshy sensation of water filled not only my pithways, but the blood vessels throughout my body.
It had worked like, well, a charm. I could breathe underwater. One side effect I’d forgotten about, though, was how much unintentional water pith you absorbed using that particular sigil. With running water overloading your pithways, it left less room for air, earth, or fire. I did my best to ration them out in case I needed them, but in the end, I became more waterlogged than a sunken ship.
Next to me, a small flicker of light burst to life. Guntram had created a burst of flame under the palms of his hands, turning them into effective flashlights. It’s a complex fire sigil, but useful in the near dark of the murky ocean waters. The other, more experienced shepherds had already done the same and were swimming downward in the pitch blackness. I hesitated to do the same, not wanting to waste any precious fire pith, but eventually I did to avoid relying on anyone else’s light. Only Darby, I noted with some satisfaction, did not create palm lights, paddling in Tabitha’s wake instead.
I admit that I was petty and keeping score. That put Darby at 1 and me at 2. Winning!
Baot dove like an otter toward the ocean floor, keeping his legs together as one big fin and clutching the glass orb like a precious jewel to his chest. His bangs now floated around him, and I discovered he had bright, almost luminated, blue eyes. I pursued him in spurts, a decent swimmer in my own right, but nothing like him. With the faint light from our collective hands, we could only see within a small radius of light around us. Fish occasionally brushed past us, ghost-like, wandering in their own spirit realm.
Suddenly, a harbor seal popped up out of nowhere right in front of me, scaring me half to death. Whoa, I mouthed, although I couldn’t say anything underwater. I fell behind the crowd as my heartrate returned to normal. It took me several attempts to shoo his playful flippers away. Even then, he licked me on the nose before swirling away, the cheeky little beast.
I leaned forward to follow the others when my neck tingled with the distinct sensation of being watched. I paused, pushing out a little excess water pith to feel for anything past my field of vision. The wake of something large fluttered behind me, and I whipped around. But even raising my glowing hands, I saw nothing.
“Ina!” Guntram yelled.
I twisted around to find Guntram waving me forward. I kicked my legs toward him, pointing at his mouth.
Guntram grinned. “A few of us have mastered the sigil for speaking underwater,” he said as clearly as if we were standing next to each other above ground. “It is a pity that this is still outside your capabilities.”
Wonderful. This must have been Guntram’s biggest fantasy: a situation in which he could talk and all I could do was listen.
“Come along and don’t fall behind,” he ordered. I could just barely make out the rest of the shepherds’ lights fading in the distance.
I glanced around one last time. I guess it didn’t matter anyway. The sensation had ebbed, and besides, I hadn’t really seen anything. It could have been any number of ocean creatures we protected. I swam to catch up to everyone else.
The ocean depths managed to become darker the lower we sank, the pressure squeezing us in that oppressive expanse of nothingness. Just as claustrophobia threatened to overwhelm me, a familiar set of blue lights flickered up ahead. Baot dashed toward it, quicker than most marine mammals. It took the rest of us a minute or two to reach the dual pair of rocky spires glimmering with the distinctive glow of the will o’ the wisps.
I wanted to ask a million questions but couldn’t while breathing underwater. I could only watch with amazement as Baot swam back several feet, then burst forward right between the two spires. He disappeared between them, not appearing on the other side.
Darby, Tabitha, and Zibel went next. Then Guntram motioned me forward. I eagerly dove headfirst, thrilled to embrace that comforting bright light that indicated I’d teleported somewhere else. On the other side, I found myself next to Zibel, who grinned at my stupefied expression. At least he also couldn’t speak, otherwise, he would have rubbed my new knowledge in my face.
Apparently, will o’ the wisps weren’t just for trees.
We must have emerged even deeper down in the water, because the ocean became as dark as an underground cave. Oddly, though, an orange haze flickered like a fire up ahead. Baot spun in that direction, the rest of us trailing with varying degrees of grace.
The water rapidly rose in temperature as we approached. I axed my inner heat sigil but was still too warm. I realized why as the orange blaze slowly formed tendrils of red-hot streaks in the rocks, magma bursting up to the surface along the fault line. It formed a distinct slash across the ocean floor, billowing clouds bursting in plumes here and there.
“Keep your eyes peeled for the main fissure,” Baot’s voice drifted across my ears. “It’s the hottest point, a bright green light. Can’t miss it.”
We swam parallel to the fault, searching all the cracks to find that main trunk. We had to keep off to one side to avoid magma burns. As minutes passed with us silently gliding forward, I assumed Baot led us in the right direction because the heat continued to rise, forcing us to swim at a wider angle away from the quivering magma below.
A strange vibration emitted from a pile of stones a few yards away from the magma itself. Their dark bluish-purple color stood out from the brighter ocean floor around it. I broke the line of shepherds to check it out. The vibrations increased as I approached.
Guntram must have followed me because he suddenly appeared at my side. “Feels familiar, doesn’t it?”
I nodded. I’d experienced this sensation before, although I couldn’t quite place it.
“That’s one of Baot’s defensive sigils, a design he has perfected in the last decade. He maintains them for hundreds of miles along the coast. His diligence has greatly reduced the number of vaettur attacks we normally encounter collecting vitae.”
That explained the strange sense of déjà vu. I’d done a lot of defensive sigil work before, but never this intricate. I hoped to examine them, but Guntram tugged my arm upward.
“Come,” he said. “We must find the cleft.”
We rejoined the search party. Everyone kept shifting their heads all around, scrutinizing the crevices and crannies. We must have swum for at least another half hour before Darby suddenly flung out an arm, tugging on Tabitha’s tunic sleeve. Tabitha swiveled her head in her eyas’s direction.
“Over here!” the augur called, congregating us together in a circle.
It was surreal enough to be swimming next to an active fault line, but the vitae cleft itself appeared like an alien painting. In the middle of one crack, a fist shaped hole of the deepest black swirled, so dark I doubted that even our fire pith could penetrate it. All around this black hole rose green tendrils of smoke, curling like an exponentially growing spiral staircase. I recognized the pattern from my college math classes as the Fibonacci sequence, often found in nature when you examin
ed the ratio of things like shells and pine cones.
“You found it!” Baot exclaimed. He glanced over at Guntram and Tabitha. “Guess that means we dig in, yeah?”
Baot took Guntram’s orb, then scooted the rest of us backwards as the two augurs faced each other over the vitae cleft, bathed in the mist of the green light. Tabitha held out the orb several feet over the black hole and released it, letting it sink slowly down into the absolute blackness.
“Brace yourselves,” Baot warned. Zibel flinched and turned his head away.
I had no idea what to expect as the orb touched the edge of the hole, but I certainly didn’t predict it would trigger a new earthquake. We had nothing to hold onto as the sea rumbled, spurts of magma spewing in larger streams all around us. I collided into Darby, who pushed me aside into Baot, and we continued to bounce off each other in a sequence of pinball-like strikes as smoke filled the ocean floor. The orb itself morphed into a bright light with blue on the edges, like some of the fires in Sipho’s forge. It seemed to want to melt into a puddle as it sank into the darkness. Guntram’s and Tabitha’s hands flew in a dance of hasty sigils above it, various sparks of pith igniting from the edges of their fingers as they kept the pit from swallowing the orb whole.
Then, as suddenly as the shaking began, it died down. The orb continued to blaze in extreme heat above the darkened hole, sucking in the tendrils of green smoke instead of letting it float away into the ocean. Guntram and Tabitha relaxed a little bit, but they maintained their concentration, hands forming a dizzying array of sigils.
“The hard part’s over,” Baot said. “Now we just need to let the augurs do their job of filling each orb while we guard them.”
Baot positioned Zibel, Darby, and I in a rough circle around the vitae cleft, about fifty feet apart. Before he left me at my post, he told me that I was to keep an eye out for any stray vaettur, not that he thought we’d run into one. He also said he’d give me a filled orb and grab my empty one in a while.
