by Billy Wong
He admired her honesty, although he supposed she didn't have much reason to talk herself up not being a warrior or even apparently an aspiring one. "It's good to have some knowledge in defending yourself, anyway. But don't worry, me and Allen will handle the fighting. Can you lead us to the pond now or do you have to ask Cart-Dragger for permission?"
"I'm not her actual servant, I don't need her approval for everything. I don't normally go outside the city, but with you two accompanying me, I think it isn't too risky."
Before they set out, Allen had another question. "Wait, don't it seem kind of wrong to kill a creature that hasn't harmed anyone just to heal me? At least some of them think, don't they?"
Lars realized he had a good point. But, "Even if we spared it, it must have already been driven mad with pain, especially if Jen's theory is correct. Killing it would be a mercy."
"I don't know, I still not feel good about this. If it talks or something, we'll let it go right?"
"Alright, if it talks to us, then we won't kill it unless it insists on attacking."
They let Jen pick up her bastard sword, which she didn't normally carry around as she felt content with a concealed dagger in town, and departed from Galantria. They only needed to walk an hour and a half southeast before they reached the pond, a shadow of a lake with its former bottom exposed all around it. "The God Soldier lives there?" Lars asked. "Looks rather small even if it is only fifteen feet."
"That's what people say." Jen inched towards the water flanked by the men, sword held shakily before her. "I hope it's true. If it isn't I don't know how far you'd have to go to find another water ele-"
A snakelike head the size of a lion's burst from the surface, and she jumped back while Lars stepped before her. He struck its snout with his axe, but failed to penetrate the green metal hide though he knocked it back. Rearing up out of the water the serpent thick as a big man hissed at them. "Looks like it is just a crazed animal after all," Lars said. Its cranium felt heavy from the impact, but not so heavy he couldn't budge it. Good, their adversary this time didn't seem so overwhelming.
Its jaws shot forward. Allen thrust with his spear, but it caught the tip in its teeth and jerked him sideways off balance. As he stumbled left, Lars saw the serpent's neck exposed and swung hard. Though his axe didn't draw blood, it dented the metal coating over its gills. The beast shrank back in pain, releasing Allen's spear. He lunged forward and jabbed at its front. Finally a small hole appeared, and blue fluid leaked out. "It's hurt!" Allen said. "We're doing it!"
Suddenly the serpent twisted around, its tail throwing up a miniature wave out of the pond. Momentarily blinded by water in his eyes, Lars struggled to blink his vision back and heard Allen curse while he did the same. "Guys, watch out!" Jen cried. "It's coming... shit... yaaah!" He heard a splash.
When he could see again, she stood in front of him. He spotted the serpent rising again from the water, having apparently been knocked down. A long scratch was visible across its throat. She must have protected them, meeting the beast when it tried to attack them in their vulnerable state. "Not bad for somebody who's only trained and never fought," he said.
She shook her head. "I've fought, just not in a life and death battle. Willow has entered me into tournaments among the guards before. She says I'm good at putting my weight behind a blow, a high compliment coming from her."
"That makes more sense." So maybe she was more of an aspiring warrior than he'd assumed.
He stepped forward to strike at the same spot she'd hit, and the metal gave. Blue blood ran from the wide gash down the serpent's body. Allen aimed his spear at the wound, looking to deliver the final blow. As he thrust, though, it dove back into the water, and his point glanced off the top of its head instead of driving into its neck. The trio stared down after it. "Where did it go?" Allen asked. "Little puddle can't be that deep can it?"
"The thing lives here," Lars pointed out, "so it could be decently deep. We might have to go down there to finish it."
Jen frowned. "Go down? Your axe isn't much of an underwater weapon, and neither is my sword even if I can still stab with it."
"Well, like you said you can stab with it. As for me, I can use a dagger and go after its existing wounds. Let's at least take a look and see if it isn't too deep to try."
With some reluctance on Jen's part, they dove down. It quickly became clear it wasn't that deep, as they could see the bottom right away, but the serpent was nowhere to be found. It took a moment to spot the underwater passage leading from the side of the pond. They surfaced to catch their breath and discuss. "Should we go in there?" Jen asked. "We don't know how far it is or even if it leads anywhere with air."
It was definitely perilous, but Lars felt too close to give up now. "I'll go first and see if it's too far. If I don't think I'll make it, I'll come right back. Allen, can I borrow your spear?"
So armed, he swam into the tunnel. After a tense few minutes, he surfaced on the other side in an enormous cavern. Solid rock loomed above all around him, and it should have been pitch black, but a greenish glow from the water itself lit the chamber softly. He returned to the others and reported what he'd found. "Seems that our quarry escaped to an underground lake connected to the pond. It's probably hanging out somewhere in there."
Allen and Jen followed Lars through the passage and came up in the lake. Jen looked around. "Wow, this place is huge. Makes more sense than it living in that tiny puddle, I guess."
They paddled around for a bit, not seeing any sign of the serpent, before Lars spotted a patch of rock sticking out of the water. "Hey, there's a little island. Maybe we should get our bearings there and come up with a plan."
After climbing up onto the natural platform, Jen brushed wet hair out of her eyes and sighed. "No doubt this thing swims much better than us even injured. Especially in a place like this, there's no way we'll catch it without luring it out or cornering it somehow. And if we chase it around too much, I'm sure this lake feeds a river that flows out to the ocean, and it might just decide to..."
Lars nodded. "So trying to corner it is probably out. I would suggest taunting in hopes of angering it enough to bring the fight to us, but I doubt it could understand our words."
"Maybe we could just try to make enough noise to get it mad?" Allen said.
"This place is too big and the water too deep—we couldn't see the bottom from where we entered, so I'd assume it's much deeper than the pond we came from. We wouldn't be able to make enough noise from here that it couldn't easily move away from and ignore."
Jen asked, "Do you think if somebody cut themselves and let their blood drip into the water, the scent of it might tempt the creature enough to come for them?"
"Who are you suggesting cut themselves and serve as bait?"
She leaned back from his look at her. "Uh..."
Before they could ponder any further, the serpent emerged from the water on its own. But something appeared off. Instead of swimming, it rose straight up like it was being elevated by something from below, its back emerging first instead of its head as expected. In fact, it itself didn't seem to be moving at all. It looked... dead. When its face came into sight, they confirmed it to be so, the open eyes glassy in death. What? Lars wouldn't have thought they had wounded it enough to kill it. Maybe the metal hide hampered water elementals' healing, making them harder to damage but die easier if they were hurt. And if it was dead, what was lifting it up? Its corpse exited the water completely, and they could now see what it rested on—shining green metal somewhat similar to its skin, only much thicker and with more pronounced ridges. And was that a... fin he glimpsed in the water behind it? He kind of knew what he must be seeing, but his mind refused to fully accept it.
A massive serpent head with catfish-like whiskers rose from the water to loom over them, so large it could easily have eaten them all in one bite. Judging from the size of the head, if its proportions were similar to those of its smaller counterpart, it must be around three hundred fee
t long. Lars' heart pounded as he imagined the bulk of its vast body undulating beneath the surface.
A deep yet distinctly female voice filled his head, and from his companions' expressions theirs as well. A matronly voice, some might say. "I am Leviathan, King Elemental of Water." The serpent?!
Lars stared in awe. "You can talk? But I thought... shouldn't you be insane with pain?"
"We King Elementals are different from our brethren. We are not so easily broken."
"Shouldn't it be Queen Elemental in your case?" Allen asked.
It—she?—wasn't amused. "You dare to attack my adoptive child who harmed no one, then chase him terrified and dying into my home? You humans never change. For this I should sink the floating city of Velinthe, and kill ten thousand callous humans to show you that you are not the sole masters of the world who can behave however you please. But first, I will punish the three of you."
"Wait!" Jen said. "We attacked him thinking he was already too far gone. Is a life in constant unbearable pain, such that the mind is lost, really one worth living?"
"I have been searching for a cure for that. Yet what would you care, killing on a whim, using whatever reason you can to justify it. You act just like the empire which fitted us with these hellish plates did."
"Maybe we were wrong," Lars admitted, "too quickly deeming it okay to kill something that never harmed us. But it really was a mistake, we had no idea somebody was looking for a cure or it might have any hope of being saved at all. I implore you, let us go and we'll never attack another of your kind unless they attack people first."
"No. Why should I trust your words? Humans lie as easily as they breathe, casting aside their promises at the first convenience." Leviathan's jaws opened, and a mist or haze began to swirl at the back of her mouth. "Now accept your comeuppance, and pass into oblivion as you should."
Before she could unleash whatever attack she prepared, something shot up out of the water to strike her in the bottom of the jaw, snapping her head back, then flipped backwards. The smaller serpent's body slid off her cranium and fell into the water. Cart-Dragger landed on the miniature island and stood with the trio, mighty hammer in hand. "Willow!" Jen beamed.
"You make some fair points," she said to the titanic monster. "I can't say humankind hasn't done a lot of things to give us a bad rep, and I understand why you want to kill my friends. But since they are my friends... sorry, I can't let you have them."
Chapter 5
"What are you doing here?" Jen asked.
"I've been watching you for a while," Cart-Dragger said calmly while Leviathan glared down over them, "thinking you might get in over your heads. It's not like I haven't heard the legend about the healing of water elementals. Good for you handling that little one on your own. But now it's my turn to shine."
"You really think you can shine against me? You are a speck. You would be a morsel between my teeth. The arrogance of humans-"
"Is sometimes justified!" She jumped at Leviathan. A stream of water shot from the serpent's maw, striking her in the chest.
Allen's eyes widened in surprise. "It's just water?"
The stream carried Cart-Dragger across the immense chamber and slammed her against its side so hard the stone cracked. "At high enough velocity," Jen said, "it would be like being hit by a trebuchet shot! And look. The King Elementals have greater control over their elements." The water still pinning the duchess to the wall solidified into ice, encasing her in a large cube that dropped with a splosh into the lake.
"Shouldn't you be more concerned?" Lars asked, staring with clenched fists at the cube. "Your friend could be..."
Cracks appeared in the ice, and Jen smiled. "Don't worry. Willow doesn't die that easily."
Cart-Dragger burst the cube from within with a flex of her muscles. She hopped onto a piece of ice and kicked off the wall, propelling it across the water towards Leviathan. As they neared each other, she leapt. Leviathan spat something again, this time a cloud of scalding hot steam. She screamed as it burned her, but drew the chain-attached javelin from her back and hurled it into an eye. The serpent reared back in pain. Cart-Dragger used the force pulling her forward to her advantage, as it aided her yank on the chain to bring herself close to Leviathan's face. She smacked painfully with her ribs against the metallic cheek, gripped the haft protruding from the eye making Leviathan keen in agony. Bright blue blood gushed from the ruptured orb, dripping into the lake.
"Tiny creature, why do you fight so hard? Does your arrogance not allow you to accept the truth of your powerlessness?"
The hammer came up. "Arrogance? No, it's confidence knowing I'm not powerless! I've tamed as big as you before." She swung the maul at Leviathan's head again and again, clinging to the javelin regardless of the serpent's thrashing and flailing efforts to shake her off. Doom doom doom went the impacts as dents appeared in the metal visage.
"She's really doing it," Lars breathed. "She is a god of war..."
The barbed javelin came loose as Leviathan's eyeball burst open from the strain on it, and Cart-Dragger fell towards the water. She caught hold of one of the serpent's whiskers and resumed pounding on her face. Without warning Leviathan leapt like a dolphin out of the water. Lars and the others marveled as her gigantic form soared across the cavern. She smashed headfirst into the wall, breaking off large chunks and shaking the entire chamber. Cart-Dragger... had been between her skull and it.
The serpent splashed up huge waves in both directions as she fell back into the lake, drenching the humans watching from the island. Her head rose unsteadily into view again just as Cart-Dragger's body floated facedown to the surface.
"Willow!" Jen shouted, now sounding panicked.
"You are one of the strongest humans I have ever seen," Leviathan said, "perhaps stronger even than the empire's Four Virtues." The front of her snout was partially caved in, and she exhaled blood from her nostrils. "But still, you cannot-"
Cart-Dragger righted herself in the water, looking up with a smirk though with clear pain in her eyes. "What, beat you? I don't believe there's anyone in the world I can't beat!"
"Your arrogance is infuriating."
"If you think it's arrogance—come and prove it!"
Leviathan's tail swept at her, kicking up another big wave. For a moment, while the water obscured his view, Lars thought Cart-Dragger had been hit. But then he saw that she'd managed to land atop the tail. She bounded up Leviathan's body, hitting her with a thunderous blow at the end of each jump. She planted the spike end of her hammer into the base of Leviathan's skull, knocking her head down into the water. Now she took aim at the top of the serpent's dome. She leaped particularly high, hammer raised to maximum height above her head, and brought it down between her eyes. Blood erupted from her earholes, and her jaws opened in a wail of anguish. She reared up taller than ever before, crushing Cart-Dragger into the ceiling. Rocks rained down as she fell back towards the water, several hitting the duchess who finally slipped off her head and sank beneath the surface.
"She is probably dead," Leviathan said, shuddering visibly with pain. "But as she has proven unusually resilient before, I will make sure." She disappeared beneath the water.
The three humans on the little island waited, the tension overwhelming. The water tossed violently as if a cataclysmic battle was waged underneath it. Then the front portion of Leviathan rose above it, and the whole lake froze over around her. "Now your friend will spend her last moments in terror as she drowns."
"Can't she still hit your lower half from down there?" Allen asked.
Leviathan looked a little anxious, but said, "The pressure of the water steals strength from her blows. She will not be able to do enough damage to me before-"
Like a nail struck by a hammer, a javelin shot up through the ice. Cart-Dragger's maul followed right after, widening the initial hole the spear had made. Her head broke the surface and she sucked in a deep breath. "Ah finally, air! Now let's continue where we left off." The javelin came back do
wn and she hit it point-first into Leviathan's front. The serpent fell, shattering ice for hundreds of feet, and Cart-Dragger dove underwater in pursuit. More great sheets of water splashed up as they resumed their struggle.
After a while Leviathan burst from the surface again, twisting about frantically as if in terror. Then Lars noticed Cart-Dragger on the side of her neck—holding onto one of her gills. Dark blood covered her chin, hinting she had serious internal injuries, but she bore a wicked smile and her eyes... shone. "You keep acting like you're so big because you're so... big. But it isn't an advantage to be big to the point I can go inside your gills." She pried one of the openings wider and squeezed into it, disappearing from sight.
Somewhat muffled but still loud squishing and tearing sounds were heard from within Leviathan's neck, and she screamed while blood sprayed from her gills. She tumbled into the water and rolled around wildly, but could not eject the morsel-sized invader from her body. Her movements slowed, became involuntary spasms before ending altogether. Her titanic carcass lay dead in the water, staining it as far as the eye could see with her blue blood.
Her mouth twitched as something tried to move it from within, then popped open when Cart-Dragger succeeded on the second attempt. She looked at the others from between Leviathan's jaws, seemingly too tired to do more than hold them apart for the moment. "You guys caused me a bit of trouble just now, eh? I expect compensation." Finally she stepped out of the maw and collapsed into the water.
"Willow!" Jen cried.
She swam closer to them, lazily on her back looking like she was treading water, and they pulled her onto land. "I'm okay. Might have to spend some days in bed though, which is why you boys owe me big time."
"We'll pay you back," Lars said. "That was amazing."
"Yeah. It was amazing how you didn't try to help at all."
"It was so big..." Allen protested.
Cart-Dragger laughed. "I'm kidding, it's understandable." She regarded Jen. "Although, this might mean I should up your training a tad."
