by Matt Larkin
Like her. Like … them.
Poli‘ahu stole a glance at Lilinoe. Yes, without doubt, she hated the spirit. Hated with a fervor she could not have imagined in life. Still, she also understood. Lilinoe, too, possessed the Will to persist, to hold her essence together down through nearly five millennia since the Deluge. To rebuild that which was stolen from her, as well.
They heard the river long before they saw it, for it was filled with shards of ice clanking together in a discordant din that had Poli‘ahu grinding her teeth. Lilinoe pushed her forward, toward the banks, and Poli‘ahu could have sworn the ice in the dark waters looked sharpened. Almost unbidden, her form broke apart, becoming mist, and joining the others in flitting across the surface of the water.
It was tantalizing.
The delicious fear of passing a hairsbreadth above a threat she knew would shred her very soul. The rush of it felt akin to having her pulse pound, as if she were alive once more, if only for a bare moment.
Her senses tingled as they reached the far bank. The undulant landscape of the Roil gave way to a mist-filled tableau. A world of endless snowfields and ice-coated peaks.
“Behold, the Pit of Milu,” Lilinoe intoned.
Lua-o-Milu.
50
A splash displaced the waters, and Namaka surged above the waves, arms spread wide as though basking in the glory of the sun. Pele gaped at her sister, wondering what possessed her to such a display now.
Treading water near to Kama, Pele coughed and sputtered. “Is it done?”
“Yes.” Namaka looked to her now, her eyes lit with incandescence. Like a mo‘o.
Pele could do nothing save gasp. Her sister had claimed such a beast lurked within her, but Pele had not thought to see it with her own eyes. To witness such awful grandeur in the woman before her.
“Yes,” Namaka repeated, though the voice was not her own. Deeper, resonant and yet dreamlike, as though she had fallen into a trance. “It is done. Your treason against the true lord of the Worldsea is now finished. You, who turned against the emissaries sent to offer you redemption. Kilioe would have saved you, but you scorned her, preferring the accursed hand of the Firebringer.”
“Aww, shit,” Kama said. “I think something’s wrong with your big sis. Like she got some saltwater inside her coconut or something.”
Namaka glanced at the wereboar and sneered, as if dismissing him utterly. A flick of her wrist sent a wave surging, hefting him up and hurling him aside, hundreds of feet away in an instant.
“Fight this, Namaka!” Pele screamed.
Something snared her ankle and yanked her beneath the waves. She barely had time to gasp down a breath before the force of it pulled her head below the surface. Blinking through the disorientation, she spied the mermaid swimming toward her, even as she was pulled further and further underwater, toward the benthic city below.
Frantic, she glanced upward, but the surface was already a hundred feet above, and still they were descending, drawn down to the tumult unfolding below. Dimly, she could make out the gleam of faint lights, the battling of mer and sharks and octopuses. And there, beyond, the gargantuan form of a sea dragon, bigger even than a taniwha.
A tableau of madness playing out beneath the Worldsea, just as Namaka had warned.
Namaka swam over until she was a mere pace away, staring at Pele with those radiant eyes. With that inhuman malice.
Crushing weight built around Pele’s chest the deeper they went. Her ears popped—felt ready to burst—and still an invisible grasp held her ankle.
Desperate, she whipped her hand forward, trying to summon flame. All she achieved was the boiling of a small expanse around her arm, quickly absorbed into the surrounding waters. Namaka’s hand darted out and caught her wrist. A single twist snapped the bones.
Pele shrieked, blowing out a stream of bubbles in agony, desperately trying not to suck down a lungful of seawater.
The rising grin on her sister’s face exposed a row of shark teeth and a too-wide maw.
It had always been heading here.
The thought slithered into Pele’s head and refused to leave. Since the moment she had defied Namaka on Uluka‘a, they had coursed toward this moment. For so long, she’d imagined she could beat the sea. That fire was the purest power. But purity mattered little given the infinite expanse of the ocean.
Terror seized her, even as her lungs gave out. As Namaka leaned in, licking her lips, exposing those hideous teeth.
Unable to hold it back, Pele gagged on seawater. It burned her throat and sinuses, lit a new kind of fire in her lungs, and sent convulsions ripping through her. Agony and terror beyond anything she ever imagined.
Until even her tremors grew weaker.
The ocean darkening around her.
51
On the banks of the ice-laden river, twisted trees had risen up, bent back upon themselves as if crushed under the weight of ages. Beyond, the mists themselves seemed to whisper, though not in any tongue Poli‘ahu knew. More sibilant nonsense than speech, perhaps, as the vapors of this world held a perverse life of their own, welcoming her among them as kin.
Amid the mists passed a procession of flickering shades, souls of the damned trapped within Lua-o-Milu, their moans joining the wind to create a howling wail.
With the snow sisters, Poli‘ahu passed through the desolate, snow-drenched forest and came to a wall of ice Lilinoe called a glacier. The sheer scale of it left Poli‘ahu utterly dumbfounded, gaping as its immensity vanished into mists in any direction, even above. As if the wall of ice enclosed the entirety of a world. Or perhaps that was exactly what happened, and what lay beyond was the proper Pit of Milu.
Within the wall, Lilinoe led them to an ice cave. Though mist filtered into the cavern, after a few hundred feet it thinned, leaving her to wonder at the faintly luminous, sparkling walls that bespoke endless ages. This world embodied a sense of timelessness in the cold, as if the warmth others treasured in the Mortal Realm were but an aberration in the natural state, and this was what would endure for eternity.
The ceiling above rose up taller than many hills, as if the cave were a hall fit for a goddess. Onward they pressed until coming to a cliff face barring their passage, with a ledge perhaps seventy or eighty feet above. The snow sisters assumed their mist forms and drifted upward, and Poli‘ahu—not wanting to be abandoned here, even by her hateful companions—did the same, flying to the ledge and alighting before resuming her body.
Without a word, Lilinoe continued, leading them toward what Poli‘ahu could only imagine as a temple cut directly into the ice wall. Columns supported an extruding roof rising some forty feet up the wall. The pillars themselves seemed to possess mana, drawing her gaze until she saw apparitions squirming deep within the ice. Souls bound here in torment, their very essence warped into edifice for the worship of Milu.
Past the threshold, she caught sight of more snow maidens, perhaps dozens of them.
Lilinoe led her not inside the temple, however, but past it, exchanging but simple glances with those lurking within, perhaps in some unspoken accord.
The ice cave became a maze of tunnels leading ever deeper, until Lilinoe delivered Poli‘ahu and the others unto an expansive cavern centered around a pit that disappeared into misty nothingness far below. A great shelf ringed the pit, with a descending slope running off it, down into the void, but Lilinoe avoided this, instead guiding her to a final snow maiden.
This one rested with legs folded beneath her, a blue-green flame rising from her upturned palm, her opalescent eyes tracking Poli‘ahu’s every move. Her skin was white as sea foam, her hair billowing mist.
Of their own accord, Poli‘ahu’s legs carried her over, to sit before this Mist akua. The entity radiated power and, though young in appearance, her essence so saturated the air before her that Poli‘ahu had no doubt this being was ancient, far beyond even Lilinoe.
“Why am I here?” she asked the other spirit.
“This is Khione,�
� Lilinoe answered, settling down beside her. “A disciple of the Elder Goddess of Mist.”
“You mean Milu,” Poli‘ahu said.
“There is much for us to discuss now, but first, you must understand why we need to return, reclaim your body, and unify our souls.”
Poli‘ahu snorted, the sound wispier than she’d have expected. “My body is dead.”
“Yes,” Lilinoe admitted. “And frozen solid upon the mountainside. Not so much time has passed upon the Mortal Realm as you may think, and you may yet reinhabit your mortal form, with our aid. Your stubbornness must come to an end.”
Poli‘ahu turned to look at Khione.
“At the terminus of the last era,” the other spirit said, finally speaking, “I came to Lilinoe and visited my power upon her. Together, we convinced the others to strive for a breach between the Spirit and Mortal Realms. But whereas we sought to restore the primeval goddess of Mist and unleash her, the sisters ultimately turned instead to the World of Water and unleashed the Leviathan and thus the Deluge.”
Poli‘ahu found visions playing out in her mind, not unlike the shadowy cavalcade of images Pahulu had shown her. Impressions, indistinct and yet overwhelming, of ancient rituals worked by Lilinoe—by herself, for at that time she was as yet part of that soul—and her sisters. Of the fall of continents as all was miscalculated.
“But Achlys could sweep into the world and claim it all for mist and snow,” Khione said. “Freed of her bindings, she will usher in the future the Sorceress Queens ought to have created last time.”
“Who?” Poli‘ahu asked.
“Milu was never the first Elder Goddess of this world,” Khione said, “merely usurped her power. This”—and the spirit waved her hand—“is the destiny of life. Transformed as you are, now you see the path to victory. All your foes shall crumble when we rise as the children of the Elder Goddess. When her Mist spreads across the Earth. No one—not your petty siblings, nor Kanaloa—shall survive our wrath. You have but to return and embrace your fate.”
“One last chance to return to life and rule as we always should have,” Lilinoe said.
Limitless power. The glory of Mist and snow engulfing the world. The breaking of the power of the mer, of the god-king of the he‘e. Of Pele and her Kahikian dynasty. With the spread of snows, Poli‘ahu could ensure her line rose to complete dominance from now until the end of time.
Perhaps Khione read the look upon her, for a slow, cold smile crept over her visage, a twinkle in her opalescent eyes.
52
The blood of Pele’s heart lingered on Nyi Rara’s lips, stuck to her fingers, and warmed her insides with pulsing mana as powerful as what she’d once taken from Milolii. Rivers of magma flowed through her veins, the last vestiges of her sister’s presence in life.
Power saturated her, filled her gaze as she took in the devastation the traitors wrought over Mu, trying to overthrow their rightful lord. A torrent of shame clenched her throat for her part in bringing about this treason. Even now, the draconic abominations she had created denied Kanaloa, swimming in confusion, clearly uncertain how to act now Nyi Rara’s eyes were opened to the truth.
The truth of the one who possessed the sole right to these waters.
Pele’s life essence infused her with power. Maybe enough power to kill those self-styled Dragon Kings, but doing so might leave her too drained. Rather, she summoned water jets to carry her back through the breach and into Kuula Palace’s throne room.
Kanaloa’s majestic arms had finally ensnared Mokuhinia, one around its throat, squeezing, the dragon’s eyes bulging.
Not so unlike how Pele’s had bulged when she drowned.
Just before Nyi Rara had …
Pele’s strength thrummed through her. Boiled her insides. Baked her brain in her skull. The crashing tumult of mana from devouring another god-queen lent a kind of a euphoria, although one tinged with something distasteful. Something … horrible.
A psychic tether coiled around her mind snapped. Her ears popped like she had just dived into some undersea chasm. A pressure she had forgotten was there released itself from her head and she shook herself. What the fuck?
What … what had she done?
She’d murdered … and eaten her sister. The thought settled upon Nyi Rara with the weight of an ocean, pinning her to the throne room floor. It felt a momentous effort to even look up at the behemoth that had overmastered her. He had claimed her as he might claim any of mo‘o blood, using a Chintamani.
Even now, it pulsed inside the creature.
But in claiming her, Kanaloa had clearly underestimated just how much power she would absorb from consuming her sister. Nyi Rara’s jaw trembled. Quakes of self-loathing seized her, left her aghast at the monstrosity she had allowed herself to become.
To fulfill the oath she had made so very long ago. To sacrifice Pele to Kanaloa.
He had held her to that oath.
A silent wail caught in the back of her throat and she pounded her fists upon the floor.
Kanaloa was crushing the Dragon King within his arms. Saurian limbs splayed out wrong, neck twisted too far in the wrong direction, spine pulled so far surely it must snap.
Protect her lord … the thought lingered in her mind, yet now it seemed wrong, foreign. An invasion of identity. Kanaloa had controlled her, but thanks to Pele she had regained her self. Had, at the cost of her sister’s life, found this singular moment of clarity.
The god-king turned his black eyes upon her, staring at her with challenge. Once more, the pressure in her head redoubled. An omnipresent shadow lowered itself around her soul, savaging her head, forcing upon her thoughts not her own.
“Glimpsing defiance, a god might find himself compelled to rein in apostate children through any means necessary.” Again, that muffled voice filled the throne room, echoing off the walls, carried through the waters, bombarding her from both inside and out. “Were any mermaid aware of the vicissitudes of the wheel, she might welcome any break in its incessant grind. That the foundry of souls should find itself bereft, the hand of fate deflected, ought to, in self-interest, awaken gratitude in even the most intransigent of children.”
No.
No more riddles, no more self-important nonsense designed to justify despotism.
“Milu take your soul,” Nyi Rara spat at him through gritted teeth. Were she to surrender herself to the call now, Pele’s loss meant nothing. How very long she had yearned for that sacrifice, but now … Now, it came unwelcome. Stolen.
Without warning, Kauhuhu sped forward, surging for the he‘e with blinding speed. Clearly, he had ignored her absurd order for him to destroy the Dragon Kings. While his defiance may have been pure self-preservation, never had she been so grateful for disobedience. His sudden attack seemed to catch Kanaloa off guard, and the pressure in Nyi Rara’s head abated.
She followed behind the Nanaue, using jets of water to fling herself forward. Kanaloa roared, the sound shaking the room. He released the dragon, who fell inert to the floor.
The god-king’s arms flew in all directions at once, each acting independently. Some grabbed chunks of the wall, widening the hole Mokuhinia had made. Those chunks he flung at her and Kauhuhu, but they were both too fast. Nyi Rara zipped under one arm, over another, zooming around the throne room on jets of water.
Where she was able, she flung blades and lines of water at him. Her attacks cut his arms in a dozen places, but always he managed to ward his eyes. Round and round she swam, dashing from one end of the room to the other. There was nowhere she could flee that those massive appendages could not reach.
She had to get closer, had to find a weak spot. Take out one of his eyes. She dipped under a surging arm just before it punched a hole in the ceiling, turned back, and used jet streams to fling herself forward. Out of nowhere another arm surged forward and slapped into her. The impact flung her spiraling into the floor where she banged her head. She lay there, only an instant, trying to push water through her gills.<
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And then the arm wrapped around her, crushing her limbs to her sides. Her mermaid strength was nothing compared to Kanaloa’s might. He hefted her in front of his eyes, those wells boiling with their ancient hatred. She heard her arms break as waves of unbearable agony rushed through her. Her ribs began to crack.
Kauhuhu collided with that arm, jaws first. Again and again he bit down, tearing through flesh like a long-roasted fish. The arm dropped Nyi Rara, and she fell to the floor, barely able to think or breathe, much less fight. She’d never felt such pain, didn’t think it should have been possible to live through such agony.
And still she managed to look up in time to see Kanaloa wrap the Nanaue in his arm and slam him into the ceiling and walls, beating the other mer to a pulp. Even as he drifted downward, his body began to shift back to human form.
Dead.
A dozen Nanaue raced in through the torn wall, swarming the god-king. When Kauhuhu had summoned his ‘ohana Nyi Rara didn’t know, but she was grateful he had.
Her gills weren’t working. She couldn’t breathe. Spasms took hold of her and she shook on the floor, losing track of the mass of blood and sharks and arms fighting just above her.
Even Kauhuhu had fallen, and without him, how could his people possibly win? Would all she had done be for nothing?
Whimpering in pain she opened her mouth, sucking seawater down her throat. These waters were sacred. Mu had been built here because of the Urchin, because this place was overflowing with mana. And mana could heal her, could save her. More and more she drank, trying to draw in the strength of this place. If she failed, everyone she had ever loved would pay the price. Everything would be lost. She could not let that happen. She had to pray for strength, from Kāne, from the ‘aumākua, from the Elder Deep, from the Urchin … or from herself.