by Matt Larkin
She fell into a chant, evoking ancient powers to come to her, invoking others to protect her from Pō. The chant built in rhythm and urgency, echoing off the ice walls. The snow sisters’ voices joined her own, beseeching, cajoling, and demanding the universe and its greater denizens bend to her will. That was what it came down to in the end—a contest of wills. If she were strong enough, she could bind anything. If not … well, then the price would be that much greater.
Coldness built in her gut and spread over her muscles like a creeping tide, sapping them of strength, making her knees wobble. This was the only time she even felt the cold, as her mana burned away to pierce the Veil between the human world and Pō. It was not a barrier through which anything could easily pass—for which humanity was profoundly fortunate. Pulling something through took its toll.
It was trying to take hold of her.
A glorious rush filled her even as her own strength depleted, a giddiness not unlike the moment before orgasm, stretching from an instant to a near eternity that left her panting. She collapsed onto the icy floor, her lips continuing the evocation as much from rote practice as conscious thought. Her body and soul ached for release and to give in to the alien presence seeking to fill her up.
The chamber grew darker, her infused light dimming as the air turned stale. The mountain, or at least this cavern, rumbled in the presence of this entity, trembling as it pushed itself through the barrier blocking it from the Earth. Indeed, the air rippled, like something was actually trying to push through it, the faintest outline of a giant face visible for an instant. Just long enough to realize the being she’d seen was humanoid, perhaps, but far from human.
“Come to me,” she found herself saying. It was so close now it would hear her words spoken in any language. “Come to me and serve.”
A presence settled over her mind, caressing her body and whispering things that were not true words, only intent. Begging and cajoling her into surrender, into letting it have her body. To falter for the barest instant would have granted the spirit access, let it ride her as a host.
Poli‘ahu grimaced against the akua’s will. “Serve me.”
It did not take well to the command. Invisible, intangible claws latched onto her mind, rending and tearing. The pain shot through her body and soul and some indecipherable bit of herself was yanked out. Blood pooled at the corners of her eyes, stinging them, blurring her vision.
A fresh surge of elation built in her abdomen as she felt the spirit pushed out, driven into the birds. The ceiling above cracked with a cacophonous roar, the glyph split down the middle. A piece of the roof tumbled free, crashing into the tree and smashing one of her beautiful branches.
And then the icy feeling in her body gave way to searing pain on her inner thigh. Despite knowing it would happen, she shrieked, clutching at the wound. The glyph had branded itself into her leg. It was one of several such brands. She had no time to dwell on her latest glyph, however, as the creaking of ice grinding on ice now echoed through the chamber.
One of her hawks turned its head, ever so slowly. They all had. All stared at her now, dragging talons of ice along the tree’s bark in an obvious threat. They couldn’t hurt her. It could not hurt her. She had bound the spirit and now bore its mark.
Remember that. Remember she was safe, so long as her will remained strong. If she allowed it to frighten her, to make her believe it had the power … well, then it would have the power.
Poli‘ahu shook herself and rose, not taking her eyes off her creations. The hawks’ eyes were still mere ice and yet, somehow, they now reflected something more than the faint light of the cave. Something lurked behind them. A presence, by her will divided into four bodies.
Servants, spies, messengers—they could be whatever she wished them. She had created something the world had not seen in an age.
Something glorious.
The hawks watched her with malevolence buried beneath unblinking eyes. She rubbed the spirit’s glyph on her thigh. Were it not bound to her, it would surely tear her to pieces for what she had done to it. She would not let her guard down, would not let the spirit turn on her, but she could give it a direction to vent its rage.
“Go down and find the Flame Queen on my mountain. Kill her …”
“Her man …” Lilinoe whispered, the sound barely audible and yet seeming to come from all around.
Lilinoe was right. She had no choice, really.
“Kill the man as well.” A wave of her hand reopened the chamber. “Go.”
The hawks took flight.
25
P ain. Pain and a profound chill that had settled so deep inside her chest no thought of warmth could halt her shivering. An unknown man sat nearby, bare-chested, rubbing his arms for warmth. Pulsing with mana … a kupua?
“Aloha, Lava Girl. Had me worried there.”
A wave of nausea seized her when she tried to speak. Every muscle in her body felt like it had been smashed repeatedly against a mountainside. That was, she supposed, not so very different from what had happened.
“Fire.” Her throat hurt when she spoke.
She needed a flame to draw strength from, repair some of the damage Poli‘ahu had done to her.
“Uh. Got nothing to burn.”
She groaned. No trees this high up, no foliage. Not even a dry spot to build a proper fire. Anything would do, she supposed. Anything was better than nothing.
Panting with the effort, she pulled off her kihei and laid it flat before her. ‘Aumākua, she was going to be sick. Her mana was probably the only thing keeping her going, so summoning enough of it to ignite her hands set the whole mountain spinning beneath her. She retched on the cloak even as she pressed her burning hands on it.
It did not immediately catch fire. Made from tapa, a kihei didn’t burn easy. But she had nothing else. The stench as her flames ignited her own bile was so noxious she would have been sick again, had her stomach not already been empty. At last the cloak too caught fire, smoldering. It would not last long.
Desperation made finding the meditative trance needed to do this all the harder. Pele kept her hands pressed into the flame, opening herself to it as it reached its peak. Lonomakua had taught her this, but it was always a challenge. A feat to draw energy from the fire, rather than pour it back in. Nor was this an efficient use of her power, given she’d had to light this fire in the first place. But when she emptied her mind, strength began to flow from the flame into her. It flickered and winked out, and with it, she let herself shut her eyes once again.
The flame’s energy seeped into her battered muscles, suffused the numerous tiny fractures along her bones, sealing them. She was a long, long way from full strength. For that, she’d need to soak in a volcano for a few hours at least. But maybe it would be enough that she could make it off this damn mountain. Could do so, if she didn’t still have unfinished business with Poli‘ahu.
The Snow Queen had obviously been taunting her, challenging her to a contest rigged against Pele. Damn the bitch.
So … war it was.
She would claim this island, by force or any other means necessary. If only this mountain had been a volcano she might have drawn on. Calling up the lava here had taken a lot out of her.
“Uh, Fire Tits?”
Lapu could take this man for his temerity. Had she the strength, she’d have scalded him for speaking to her that way. Pele didn’t open her eyes. “What is it?”
“There’s birds circling us.”
“Birds are everywhere. Let me rest.” Lonomakua loved birds, but Pele didn’t really share his enthusiasm.
“These look like they’re made of ice.”
Now she jolted upright. The man was right. Three, no, four hawks flew overhead, their icy forms glittering in the moonlight. As if in response to her rising, they screeched. Not a series of cries, but rather a single synchronized call coming from four voices. Birds of prey were not flocking birds, and yet they acted as one.
Their dive, when
it came, was so fast she barely had time to scream.
The man threw himself over her, knocking her down. By the time she crawled out from under him, he was drenched in blood. Talon marks marred his chest and back and arms. A long red streak ran from his temple to his lip, passing within a hair’s breadth of one eye. The kupua pushed himself up, panting with a palpable fury.
Pele crawled to her feet even as the hawks circled back for another dive. She had no fire to call on save that which she could produce from her own inner heat. Her hair and hands were already aflame with that.
A hawk swept down at her while the others went for the kupua. Panting, Pele tossed the flame from one hand to another, building an arc between them. The effort left her swaying on her feet, dizzy and nauseated. The ice hawk crashed through her fire stream and slammed into her chest, bowling her over. Her flames had melted the points off its talons and the tips off its wings, leaving the thing flapping around on the ground nearby.
The kupua roared so loudly it echoed off the mountain. If anything, his form seemed to have grown larger, and tusks had risen from his lower lip.
What the …?
He held a bird with a wing in each hand. With his roar, he jerked his arms apart, rending the bird in a shower of ice shards. The other two had torn further gouges in the kupua.
Screaming wordlessly back at the birds, Pele launched a stream of fire at one. They were too fast, dipping around her attack like the throw of a clumsy child. The hawk she’d attacked dove for her. Rather than try to aim at it, she ducked into a ball and engulfed her entire body in flame, pouring mana into it, sending the conflagration surging higher and higher. The bird was nothing but hot water when it struck her, and even that evaporated an instant later.
She rose to find the kupua screaming at the last bird, which had flown away.
“Kupua …” Pele stumbled to his side. A hundred wounds, a few deep, covered the oversized man. And she swore his rage had somehow added to his height, to his bulging muscles.
He turned to her, face framed by tusks as long as her hand, panting. His shoulders heaved, then slumped, and he fell forward to the ground. He shook himself and before her eyes his muscles did indeed shrink back into themselves.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
26
K ama cleared his throat and beamed at the queen he’d just saved. “I am His Royal Egregiously Incorrigibleness, Kamapua‘a the Mighty.” He thumped his thumb against his chest. “Extra mighty. Shitting extremity, you might even call me.”
“What?” Pele shook her head like she thought maybe she was still dreaming. Understandable, given how dreamlike Kama was when he wanted to be.
He had charm coming out of every shitting orifice in his body. “I just want to say, your flaminess, I shitting love you.”
Pele’s face screwed up in what he chose to take as a half smile, then she strode toward him, eyes darkening. With each step, a tendril of smoke began to waft off her shoulders. Then all at once, her hair burst into flame. Her eyes were lit by it, unearthly in their furious beauty.
As she drew near, he had to fall back a step from the incredible heat surging off her body.
“Who do you think you are?” she demanded.
“Well, uh … I think I’m Kamapua‘a. I thought we covered that. You know? Father of your future children. Fulfiller of your secret passions. Also, lots of fun at a luau.”
For a moment she stood there, mouth agape. Sometimes he had that effect on people. Then she placed both palms on his chest and shoved him. Her strength was nothing compared to his, but still he fell back, his bare chest scorched where she had touched him. The pain didn’t end with her contact and he looked down to see her handprints, fingers and all, seared into his chest like great red welts.
Well, shit.
Yeah. He was going to have so much sex with her. Musicians would write songs about them. The Love of Pele and Kamapua‘a. It would be a classic played at wedding feasts for centuries. He could hear it now, played on a pahu drum—bumpa-bumpa-boooom!
“We’re definitely shitting marrying.”
Pele sneered at him. “You are a buffoon. My gratitude for your having saved my life is the only reason I don’t reduce you to a charred husk of smoldering bones. I am afraid to even ask why you insist on lacing your every word with shit.”
“Oh! Well that’s easy. Big sis says people don’t like it if you say ‘fuck’ every other word. People are less offended by offal than by love, though.” Kamapua‘a cleared his throat. “Not me of course. I’m plenty good with sex. Speaking of which, on account of the gratitude and all, you are going to spread your legs, right? Boar’s all riled up and shit. You wanna see?”
Pele flexed her fingers once, then a flame leapt from her palm, surging up from her skin. It was no larger than a torch fire, but it sat there in her hand, not burning her any more than the fire in her hair did.
Glorious.
“Yeah, that is shitting amazing. Never did the shit with someone on fire, but I figure the first time will be down right expulsive.”
The woman snarled, whipping her arms forward like reeds, throwing lashes of fire at him that drove him stumbling away.
“Whoa, what the shit? I promise, my blood is as noble as any. I’m a descendant of Uli herself, and that’s saying something. You and me, we’d make a perfect pair. Matched as well as my two balls, you know. They’re both excellent, in case you wanted to know.”
“I know who you are. You are a fucking swine.”
“Now, see big sis says you shouldn’t say f—”
“You are a hog. The son of a hog, fit only to be a servant, and not one I’d ever let in the house, much less my bed!”
“Stop, don’t do that—” he begged.
“You, pig man, have lived as a bandit, feeding off the suffering of your own people. You are an animal, and if you come near me, you’ll be roasted alive.”
He felt it, then. The Boar God shifting around inside him. Deep inside his soul. Rage and arousal commingling into a haze of red-hot emotion that blurred his vision. It was in him, clawing its way up from his gut and pulsing down into his cock.
The beast that demanded respect. It demanded everything.
No one had ever shitting respected him. She blamed him for banditry? Old Haki’s rejections and resentments had forced Kama. Called up the boar.
Just like this woman.
A growl escaped his chest. Hard to … even … keep human form like this. His muscles began to tighten, shift and grow under the moonlight.
“Losing … control …”
Pele’s eyes widened and she fell back a few steps. “You are truly a madman. Or you are a slave … to that akua inside you.”
“No more … insults …” Kama snarled at her. He couldn’t take it anymore. Who did the bitch think she was? Who? Who!
Were these his thoughts?
Stop, stop, stop this, before …
THE BOAR GOD lunged at her, caught her wrists, ignoring the sizzle as his flesh burned and peeled. It felt nothing but the rage and lust.
Rage and lust.
Rage and lust!
He had already grown over seven feet tall, was still growing.
He forced her down, easily jerking her legs apart with his own. Enlarged like this, she was so tiny beneath him.
She was screaming, snarling like an animal herself. Thrashing, as he struggled to get inside her. The whole mountain trembling with his lust. The boar had enlarged his whole body, now pushing eight feet tall, so large he could barely fit in—
Something snared him under the chin.
Heaved.
Flung him end over end, the wind whipping past his face in a blur even as he crashed upside down into the snows.
THE IMPACT BLEW the Boar God out of him, giving Kamapua‘a control for an instant. Groaning, Kama rolled over to look up and see a man standing above him, steam rising off the stranger’s head and shoulders, billowing from his mouth and nose in a cloud that obscured his
face.
Before Kama could even gain his feet, the stranger had seized him up with one hand under his chin and hefted him off the ground. Kama gasped, choking. This shitter was as strong as he was, at least.
Kama grabbed the man’s wrist and struggled to pry his fingers loose. The stranger thrust his arm outward and flung Kama bodily down the slope. He hit snow, rolled, tumbling in a blinding white haze, hit something shitting hard, and blasted all wind from his lungs. Kept tumbling.
Spinning round and round.
Smacked something else that cracked under his rising momentum.
And then Kama fell free, flailing in midair as he pitched over the edge of a precipice, unable to even scream for lack of breath.
27
T he full moon lit the ocean like a pale fire overhead, casting Namaka’s foes in silhouette—like shadows come to prey on the forces of Mu. The Muians had set an ambush for the advancing Hiyoyans, one the he‘e would allow them to pull off. This morning was when the tide turned for Mu.
Namaka hung back, letting her army rush forward to meet the threat. Part of her wanted to be up there, to help her new people however she could. But she was no warrior and she’d only get in the way. From the back, she could do something the others could not.
A dozen tiger sharks surged forward from the enemy ranks, rushing in upon Ake and his forces.
This time it would be different. This time, she and Nyi Rara had what they needed.
Namaka reached both hands toward the onrushing sharks, begging the sea to stop them. “Come on.” Her soul reached the sea.
Namaka shouted her fury at the sharks. The instant before they would have collided with Ake and his people, an undersea wave shot outward from his position, crashing into the sharks and sending them spiraling out of control. The wave carried her own mer forward and they launched themselves upon the tiger sharks in an instant, impaling them with tridents and spears, filling the sea with blood.
