by Rosie Scott
“Gods, you are just like Nyx. When you're not being an asshole, anyway.” I stared at the stars, trying to recognize the constellations.
“Should I just assume that whenever you say gods you are speaking to yourself and your fickle golden-eyed friends?” He questioned.
I chuckled softly. “Please stay like this. I like you like this.”
“I'm amazed to hear you say you like me at all.”
“I like you a lot when you're not being a dick. It's you who had something against me.”
“If we continue the way that we are, I will hold something against you,” he teased.
“Calder, I love Cerin, and I am monogamous.”
“Yes, but Cerin is missing.”
I was silent. The waves of the ocean glistened in the starlight. My chest seized with fear. Was it possible everyone I loved was just before my eyes, consumed by water?
I heard a thick exhale before Calder managed, “I'm sorry. That was cruel of me.”
“How far were we from shore?” I asked, distracted.
“Not a crazy distance. Far enough that many drowned. Back when we first came to shore, I could see the bodies of my sailors floating in the distance.” Calder pointed off to the right, which must have been the direction of our shipwreck. “They're not visible anymore, so they've floated off. They were good swimmers, too. That doesn't matter sometimes if you're below deck, though. It's hard to maneuver underwater as it is, and being stuck inside a ship makes it worse.”
All of this talk of the battle and following chaos reminded me of the lizard, which in turn reminded me of my wound. I pulled my pant leg up, lying my hands on the wound and preparing to heal it.
“I'm sorry,” said Calder, as I was in the midst of healing.
“For what?”
“For not getting to you until you were hurt.”
“I'm happy you got to me at all, or else that thing could have eaten me.” I watched as the healing skin pushed the dried blood outward, accelerating the scabbing process. “And anyway, I felt awful enough for not getting to you when you were falling overboard.”
“You tried?”
“Yeah, I was running after you. You were too far, though.”
“How sweet.”
I snorted a chuckle. “Yeah, okay. I just try to keep my friends safe.”
“Aww, we're friends. My little black heart is warming.”
I could have been amused by him, but I went still, my hands finishing up their healing before I put my leg back down to the sands. My previous statement had only made me think more about how no matter what precautions I took, it was never enough.
“Calder, I'm going to cut through all the bullshit and tell you I'm really sorry for everything that's happened to you. I've said it before, but I want you to know I'm serious.” I faced him, because I wanted him to see I was being genuine. “I have lost people even though I tried to save them. I went into this trip thinking I had everything squared away, and that I would bring no misfortune to anyone I crossed. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt someone who was innocent to it all. You and Koby and your crew had nothing to do with this war, but you were all affected. I am deeply, deeply sorry.”
His red eyes almost glowed in the starlight as he nodded slowly. “I understand, Kai. I appreciate that. Don't let my rages affect you. It is how I deal. The more I learn of you, the more I like you. I know you didn't mean for any of this to happen.”
I exhaled in a wave of relief. “Okay. Good. Then let's stop bickering and help each other out.”
“I can think of a way we can help each other out and both get what we want.”
“Calder,” I protested, thinking it to be another dirty joke of his.
“No, I'm being serious, Kai. Look at me.” I did so, finally lying back on the sands so we were near each other. “What is your goal in this war?”
“To overthrow my adoptive father in Sera,” I replied.
“For revenge of your loved one's execution?” He asked. I was surprised he remembered me telling him that.
“Among other things, yes. Sirius holds his magic over the heads of people in my home country and others. I wish to normalize magic in all countries of the world by releasing Chairel's hold on it. I also wish to legalize necromancy.”
Calder nodded. “Then I agree with your goals. Perhaps you will agree with mine.”
“Your goals? I thought you were complaining about having nothing.”
“I have nothing, right now,” he agreed. “So I will fight to gain something once more. You are already late on your way to Eteri, and you appear to be willing to take on the world. How many allies are you seeking?”
My gaze stayed solid in his. “As many as possible.”
“There are thousands upon thousands of allies for you underground.”
I was silent a moment. “Ah,” I finally said, understanding. “You wish to free your brothers.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft, as if he worried about what I might think of his request. “You told me slavery is something you hate. I hate it as well. The underground is full of slaves, and I'm sure many of them would be willing to support you in this quest in exchange for their freedom. The underground has tunnels connecting it to all countries of the world, Kai. The Alderi would be invaluable to you.”
“That's assuming they could get past the fact that we would be starting a civil war,” I mused. “Freeing the male Alderi means to wipe out most of the females.”
Calder nodded slowly. “Yes...but some of the women might join us as well. The ones who disagree with the culture even if they give into it. It would not be genocide.”
I thought about this, staying silent.
“You do not like the idea,” Calder finally stated.
“No, I do like it. Very much,” I admitted. “I simply can't agree at the moment, because there is too much I need to do first.”
“Is Eteri so important?”
“You misunderstand me. I don't make decisions without my friends, and they are not here. If they are dead, well...” I trailed off, refusing to believe that entirely. “I won't have much support in this war I fight at all, and may have to return immediately to Nahara. And I need some method of contacting Hasani, regardless. I need to update him on our progress.”
“Lack of,” Calder corrected helpfully.
I laughed dryly. “...yeah. That.”
“I have people I trust here in the wildlands. If you agree to help me, we can go there and send a message to Nahara.”
“They have connections?” I questioned.
“They are people like anyone else, Kai. One of them can send your message with the rest of the mail across the seas.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you trust what I've told you of the beastmen?” Calder asked.
“Yes, why?”
“Because you seem hesitant whenever I mention them.”
“I'm not hesitant. I'm simply learning I was taught wrongly about them, so everything you tell me is new. I have yet to meet one officially. I am sure they are as diverse of a people as anyone else.” I hesitated, before I chuckled. “Besides, I have no room to talk. My group of friends are a bunch of rejects and outcasts. I will probably get along famously with them.”
Calder laughed. “Perhaps you shall. You are an optimistic person. You speak as if none of your friends are missing.”
“I have faith I will find them. They are capable people.”
“Then let's get some sleep, and we will start looking in the morning.”
Fourteen
The warmth of the morning sun felt nice after a night spent soaking wet. The heat sunk into my skin, warming and soothing aching muscles. This time when waking, I had no doubts about where I was, because my worry for my friends had been at the forefront of my mind, even in my dreams.
I sat up, immediately facing a pile of belongings that hadn't been there the night before. There was a chest, here, full of clothes that were
all soaking wet, though one shirt and one pair of trousers laid out flat on the beach, drying slowly in the sunlight. There was a satchel laying beside me. Reaching over, I opened its flap, peering inside at its contents. Sure enough, this was my satchel. Inside were my belongings. Gold, my surgery kit, toiletries. Some of it was ruined, and some of the gold was missing. But these were my things, and I never thought I'd see them again.
My eyes scanned my surroundings. Calder was gone. Turning, I saw the ocean melding into the swamps of the wildlands some distance away. Between my island and the wildlands, however, there was another island, about two to three times the size of mine. It was mostly a hill of sand that poked its head out of the water, with a small array of trees and bushes at its center.
I saw no one, and felt completely alone. I reminded myself that Calder and I had developed a mutual understanding of each other the night before. I had started to trust him, so I tried not to panic that he wasn't here. The wildlands reached toward our island quite closely to the north. It was possible the Alderi swam over to look for the others.
As I waited for Calder to return, I pulled out everything from my satchel and sat it out to dry. I also wandered over to the pile of things beside the chest, looking through and finding more that belonged to us. I found the alchemy book I'd bought in Nahara, though it was mostly bloated and ruined. So was Jakan's book of illusion magic. My heart skipped a beat when I found one of Anto's arm blades, and Cerin's scythe.
Please don't let that mean what I think it means. I stood up tall, looking out over the ocean. In the distance, I could just barely make out floating pieces of wood, and a few floating bodies. One of the bodies tugged and moved, and I looked away, unwilling to watch a corpse be eaten by whatever was hidden in the water.
I took a moment to move closer to the center of the island. The kraken's head alone had been larger than the entire piece of land I sat upon, but regardless, a small precaution was still a precaution. The last thing I needed was to be grabbed by something near the shore.
As if to cement my fears, I heard a rush of water behind me, and I spun, immediately forming an ice shard in my hand. The first thing I saw rising from the waters was the thick, flat head of a lizard, the head nearly twice the size of mine and surrounded with thick knobs of horns. Its scales were a light blue which shimmered in the morning sun with a opalescent hue. The muscular, smooth body of a biped reptile followed, with two thick arms that ended in long, webbed fingers and claws of a few inches. It dragged a long tail behind it which was aligned with more spikes. In one front hand, it tugged a chest up onto the beach.
The lizard then lurched its neck forward, before it let out an immense sneeze. A thick, gelatinous residue expelled from its nostrils, landing on the beach in a thick glob. I stumbled back a step, startled by the move. It noticed the movement, and whipped its head up to face me, the pupils within two glowing red irises thinning to the thin sliver of a reptile's in the direct sunlight.
It was the lizard that attacked me. My heart thudded against my chest as I scurried back another step, before I released the ice shard.
The creature dropped the chest at its feet and lifted its arms up. A thick, shimmering shield surrounded its body like an egg, emulating my own magic wards, though this was different. The energy of its shield swirled within itself, reflecting back toward me in a light. The ice shard collided with it, before it shattered into at least one hundred pieces, falling to the sands in ice cubes.
My breath caught within my chest. It had successfully deflected my spell. How?
I didn't bother to ponder that for the moment. I threw another ice shard at it, then another. It deflected both, before I hesitated my attacks. Perhaps it was immune to ice. Its red eyes watched me, waiting. Then, the shield dissipated.
Fire was above my palm in a heartbeat, and then I threw it, hoping to catch the creature off guard. The lizard threw out its own arm again, and a new shield generated around itself. This one was different. Instead of swirling, it appeared to vibrate, the egg shape shaking against the backdrop of the ocean. The fireball hit the shield, spreading out over the magic in flames before it was absorbed.
Gods. It's taking my energy. That was terrifying. I'd never come across such a creature. How could I defeat it without melee?
Melee. I turned and ran toward Cerin's scythe. I was not as strong as him, but I needed to defend myself in any way I knew how. I grabbed the weapon, finding it to be even heavier than it looked, and spun to face the lizard, prepared to defend myself.
The reptile still stood where it had been, though one arm was at its chest. In its front foot, it held something out toward me. I squinted, seeing a bronze key, attached to its thick neck by a silver chain.
I stared at the creature, my hard breaths from panic and battle swaying me. I lifted the scythe out to the side, letting it fall heavily to the sands in a clatter.
The lizard fell, then, hitting the sands on all four feet beside the chest it had brought to shore. It lurched forward, coughing and hacking in bursts of pained air as its body began to convulse. I took a step toward it, my mind in a state of shock, watching as its body began to shrink. Its scales were slowly melding together and softening to a smooth skin, and the horns of its head and back absorbed into its body, before I heard a snapping noise that traveled up the length of its spine. It screamed, falling to the ground on its side, writhing in agony.
Its breaths were wheezing through its nose as it shook, its head crackling as the bones reformed. The red eyes opened, for a moment, before they rolled back into the head, only showing the whites. Beside each small, hole-like reptilian ear, gold earrings lined the skin. As I watched with morbid fascination, the skin grew and thickened into cartilage, reforming the tall, pointed ears of an Alderi.
The transformation took three minutes. A full, agonizing three minutes. At the end of it, Calder laid on the beach, looking exhausted and in pain. He turned over to face the ground and dry heaved, until a splatter of red blood splashed over the sands.
“Fucking hell, Calder,” I breathed, hurrying to his side, and collapsing on the sands beside him. He was completely nude again, but I didn't let it bother me. He looked like he was living his last day, and I went to heal him.
“You're telling me,” he wheezed, his chest rising and falling rapidly with uneven breaths, before lying on his back again. His red eyes were pained in mine as I leaned over him, putting one hand on his chest, and the other over his gut.
“Lower,” Calder blurted. I ignored him.
“Sik la trama,” I murmured, and white life energy spread from my palms over him, seeking out his internal injuries.
The hand over his chest felt a pulse of heat. I moved it over toward his neck, repeating the spell. Heat pulsed beneath my pinky finger, drawing my attention to his throat. I laid my hand over his neck, feeling his Adam's apple bob beneath me.
Givara le life. A warm life energy sunk into his blue skin.
“Is that supposed to tickle?” Calder questioned.
“Shh!” I continued to give him healing energy, hoping the injury was close enough to the skin so I wouldn't have to do surgery on him. The throat was a delicate place of the body, and with an unclean surgery kit, I wanted to avoid that.
“How does it feel?” I asked him, after a moment.
“Really good. Itchy, though.”
“Good. That means it's working.”
“Oh, you meant my throat?” I glared at him. He laughed roughly. “I'm joking, love. Jeez. You look like you've seen a ghost.”
“I feel like I have. Why the hell wouldn't you tell me about this?”
“Because it's not something I can just tell people about, Kai. There's a reason beastmen are kept out of civilized society. There's a reason you were lied to. We're not accepted anywhere but here.” He flipped a blue hand toward the swamps across the water from us. “The wildlands.”
“But I told you I trusted you about what you taught me of them,” I protested.
�
�Yes, which is why I risked showing you today. Not that it fucking mattered, since you tried to kill me anyway.”
“I didn't want to kill you, I wanted to kill the thing that tried to eat me!” I exclaimed, frustrated.
“The thing. This is why we hide,” he mused, before rolling over to his stomach.
“Oh, come on, Calder. You know what I meant.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.”
I watched as he stood, still looking exhausted. I looked away, not wishing to stare and make him uncomfortable. “What magic were you using to deflect my spells?”
“Alteration, of course. The magic of the shapeshifters,” he said, before I heard a tug of the chest on the sands.
“I'll get that,” I insisted, taking it from him, and pulling the heavy chest up the beach myself. “What were your shields? I thought life mages were the only ones who could know them.”
“They were not shields in the sense you think of them. Alteration magic deals in...well, in altering energy. So my first spell was used to resist magic. The second was to absorb the energy of the spell, because I am feeling pooped.”
I left the chest sitting near the center of the island, and turned to him. “Turning into that lizard takes the life out of you.”
“Yeah, it's fucking traumatic,” Calder grumbled, before he collapsed to the sands with a need for rest. “I'm not joking, either. You don't know what pain is until you go through a transformation. And all my fucking ferris is at the bottom of the ocean.”
“What's ferris have to do with it?” I questioned.
“It helps the pain,” he replied, as if it were obvious.
I sat down beside him. I wanted to look for the others, and my stomach was grumbling with a need for food. Even still, I needed to be sure Calder was all right. “Why would you do this if it's hurting you?”
“Because it's useful.”
“But it's killing you.”
“You're being overly dramatic. It could kill me, yes. But it hasn't yet.” He laid back to face the sky suddenly, and grumbled, “Gah, I could use a cigarette.”
“Where can we get you ferris?” I asked him.
