by Raymond Cain
Theoric removed a long dagger from his belt, cut a line across his palm, and made a fist over the bird. A few drops of blood spilled from his fist and the bird eagerly caught them in its beak. He folded his arms and waited a few moments for something to happen, but nothing did. “That’s long enough.”
Theoric picked up the bird, brushed ash from its wings, and put it on his shoulder. It lost its balance a few times but managed to maintain its perch. It looked around the room curiously and seemed to be getting its bearings. Being brought back from the dead was surely a disorienting experience.
“If I may ask, sir,” Gorkan began. “Why did you order me to perform such a dangerous and costly ritual to animate the bird?”
“I think it will be a useful ally,” Theoric replied, admiring the brightly-colored creature. It had a pleasant smell, like something that was burnt in a fire but escaped before getting disintegrated. “And because you need the practice.”
Gorkan glanced toward the human corpse in the corner, a grim reminder of his inexperience with such magic. “Practice, sir?”
“Much needed practice before you perform another spell,” Theoric continued, and he turned to leave. He motioned for Gorkan to follow him and the two Azurans ascended the bone stairs to the main deck.
When they reached the upper deck, the crewmen were milling around the masts. None seemed willing to hang over the sides as per usual. Theoric grinned when he realized why. They sailed over The Abyss, a miles-long trench in the ocean floor filled with total blackness. As far as he knew, nothing lived there, not even algae, and there was no shortage of myths to explain how it came to be that way. Even his crew, a group of seasoned pirates, were afraid of what creatures lurked in there. Or rather, what did not lurk there. An absence of life would explain the darkness.
With a chuckle, Theoric put his hand on one of the bony prominences at the side of the boat and leaned over to take a better look at the darkness below. There was not even a pinpoint of light from the tiniest plankton within that trench. His crew stared at him with mixed expressions of concern and respect.
Ahead of them, a mountain range loomed on the other side of the Abyss. The peaks towered thousands of feet over the ocean floor and a glowing white mist enshrouded their bases. The taller peaks loomed dangerously close to the black, lifeless waters above. Theoric made a mental command to the ship and it responded by angling bone rudders and steering the vessel more directly toward the mountain range. The bones creaked and the rigging groaned as the ship changed course.
Theoric approached a prisoner that was tied to the main mast. It was the man he rescued from Terrak and he was secured to the mast with the same type of sinew that secured the sails and rigging to the masts.
The man’s body was held fast but his hands were tied together in front of him. Inside his palms, there was a glowing crystal sphere with an arrow floating inside. His hands and wrists were tied together in such a way as to make it impossible for him to drop the sphere. The light reflected off the man’s green eyes, revealing the hatred burning behind them.
“Yes, Gorkan,” Theoric said. He tugged on the restraints and traced his fingertips over the crossed-tridents symbol on the man’s armor. “You will do another ritual. This human is not done serving me.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Flynn woke in a cold sweat. His head ached, his thoughts were muddled, he was exhausted, and he didn’t know where he was. There were glowdiscs on the ceiling and their glow made his headache worse. His eyes were watering and it took some time before he became accustomed to the light.
“Ugh, where am I?”
He was lying on something squishy. It was a large, watery cushion, similar to his waterbed. He rolled over to try to get up and he ended up sliding off the cushion and onto the floor. Once his face was pressed against the flagstones, his surroundings were more familiar.
After getting back up to his feet, he found himself in a room filled with stone tables covered in tools. At first glance he thought it was a torture chamber but it was something much worse.
It was Tasker’s laboratory.
Torture would be preferable to hearing another one of Tasker’s lectures about Flynn’s reckless behavior. After glancing around for his brother, he let out a relieved sigh that Tasker was not in the room.
A knee-high ball of water rolled out from the aquarium and tackled him behind the knees, knocking him backwards. The water changed its shape into a chair, and without realizing what happened, he found himself sitting down. It felt as though there were cobwebs in his brain. He could not collect his thoughts enough to realize how he had gone from a standing position to sitting down.
Remembering his injury, Flynn removed his shirt. The black streaks were gone. He stood up in front of a silvery pool of liquid on the wall and the mirror revealed there were no black streaks anywhere on his body. Remarkably, what the spiritualist said was true. The wraithsnake venom cured the poison.
There were three bandages on his torso—on his chest, his shoulder, and his neck. He removed them and inspected the wounds from the wraithsnake. They did not appear to be infected. He re-bandaged the wounds and put his shirt back on.
Flynn was surprised to find a great deal of stubble on his cheeks. He must have been unconscious for days. As he regarded himself in the mirror, something in the back of his mind told him that there was something important that he needed to remember. He sifted through his thoughts like someone trying to remember a forgotten dream after waking up. There were echoes of memories but he couldn’t piece them together.
Suddenly, Flynn remembered the visions and the realization of what he saw hit him like a punch in the face. His dad was in trouble! He cursed himself for sleeping so long while his dad was a prisoner on an Azuran ship. Fired up by the knowledge his dad was still alive, Flynn jumped up to his feet and kicked his chair away—or tried to. His foot squished into it instead, but that didn’t stop him from pulling it free and storming toward the exit.
A pair of water golems prevented him from leaving. He waved impatiently at them with his ring hand, gesturing for them to get out of the way, and realized that he didn’t have his crystal ring on. He tried to push past them, and through them, but they solidified themselves and shoved him back. Without his ring, there was no way he could get past them.
Flynn sifted through the laboratory tools for something he could use to escape. Perhaps buried under the piles of clutter there was a solution to his problem. In frustration, he hurled a cutting tool against the wall, smashing it, and a moment later the sound of splashing emanated from the other side. Someone was in the pool room.
The stone wall slid open and Tasker stood before him. He had red, glossy eyes and aquazite dust on his stubbled cheeks. His black, unwashed hair was tucked under his crystal utility helm. Its water tentacles held tools for grinding and polishing crystal, but it shoved them into his various pockets when he noticed Flynn. He crouched down and picked up the broken cutting tool that Flynn threw against the wall.
“How did this happen?” Tasker asked through tight lips.
“Oh that?” Flynn said, innocently. “It fell.”
“It fell off the table and landed on the other side of the room?”
Flynn looked around sheepishly. “I know. I thought it was weird, too.”
Tasker didn’t look amused. “You’re lucky to be alive, you know. Three bites from a wraithsnake. . .”
Flynn gestured toward Tasker’s work clothes. “Doesn’t look like you were that worried.”
“I wasn’t,” Tasker replied. “Not after your vital signs stabilized and you were sleeping comfortably. Once you were stable, I kept myself busy with an exciting new project—a pair of ships entirely out of aquazite. I designed a revolutionary propulsion system that operates in a completely different manner from propellers. They should be significantly faster than any other ship ever built. I’m putting the finishing touches on them now. I call them Searunners.”
Ships built entirely from
crystal were unheard of and, ordinarily, Flynn would have been fascinated. But at that moment, he was not in the mood for idle conversation. “That’s great but I need to go. Can you give me my ring? The golems won’t let me pass.”
“Go where?”
Flynn dare not tell the truth. If he admitted what the magical venom showed him, it would sound like the ravings of a crazy person. “Nowhere, really. Just. . .out.”
“I was worried you’d say that.”
Flynn wrinkled his eyebrows in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Tasker sighed and removed his helmet. The watery tentacles went limp as he tucked the helm under his arm. “I did some research on the species of snake that bit you. You were bitten three times which is enough to kill most people, but the most dangerous aspect of its bite is not the lethality of its venom.”
Flynn sighed. “You’re referring to the visions.”
“Yes,” Tasker agreed. “According to the literature, its bite drives people insane. It induces visions that coax people into running away to chase some toxin-induced fantasy that they never return from.”
Flynn cocked his head to the side in exasperation. “So you’re trapping me here? You’re joking, right?”
Tasker looked at him sternly. “Do I look like I am?”
“Yes, actually,” Flynn said with a chuckle. “I can usually tell you’re joking because that’s when you say something that’s not remotely funny.”
Tasker scowled. “It’s for your own good, Flynn.”
“I need to go, Tasker.”
“Really,” Tasker said, raising an eyebrow. Flynn identified it as a skeptical eyebrow, which looked like his sympathetic eyebrow except it rose higher. “And where is it you need to go?”
Flynn opened his mouth to answer but clamped it shut. He wanted to tell his brother everything he saw in the visions. They explained why the wooden vessel was cut in half, why the dragon corpse was missing, and how the Azuran pirate acquired his skeletal ship. He desperately wanted to tell Tasker their father was alive and needed their help, but he knew that would sound exactly like the toxin-induced fantasy Tasker was referring to.
“I need to eat,” Flynn said. He couldn’t think of a better lie at the moment.
“Very well. I’ll have something brought down.”
“Come on, Tasker. What are you going to do, keep me trapped down here forever?”
“Of course not,” Tasker said, entering the laboratory. “I only plan to keep you here until I feel confident you won’t run off and get yourself killed.”
It was Flynn’s turn to scowl.
Tasker shrugged. “You can’t leave the city anyway. It’s in lockdown.”
“Lockdown? Why?”
“A teenager from the Sorcery Academy was found dead a short distance from the Safe Zone. He had a chest wound that looked like yours. After all the people dying lately, the City Council decided to lower the portcullis, ceasing all traffic in or out of the city.”
Flynn folded his arms and pondered the boy’s disappearance. Surely, Theoric was responsible. But why? Perhaps the Azuran was looking for him and he took the boy to get information on his whereabouts.
Tasker removed a small leather-bound book from one of his many pockets and laid it on the table. It was their parents’ journal. “I found this, by the way.”
Flynn’s shoulders slumped. “I was going to show that to you.”
Tasker’s skeptical eyebrow rose again, even higher than last time.
“Okay fine,” Flynn said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t show it to you because it would hurt you to learn our parents led secret lives and kept it from us. And because I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
Tasker stared at him coldly.
Flynn wasn’t sure what the blank stare meant. Anger? Indecision? His brother was so hard to read. “So how long are you going to keep me here?”
Tasker removed another item from another pocket—their mother’s aquazite compass. The needle pointed squarely at Flynn.
“Until this stops pointing at you,” Tasker replied.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tasker headed for the exit and the two golems standing guard stepped aside to let him pass. As the door swung closed and water rushed in to carry the lift up to the next level, Flynn breathed a sigh of relief. He needed Tasker gone in order to escape unnoticed.
Stingray was on the table and it occurred to Flynn that it might come in handy where he was going. He picked up the weapon and ran his hands along the smooth, polished surface. The power within the crystal weapon tingled under his fingertips. A similar tingle traveled down his spine at the thought of piloting a ship created entirely from aquazite.
Flynn braced the butt end of Stingray against his shoulder and peered through the targeting sights. He aimed it at various objects around the room, looking for a suitable target to practice on. A flash from a lightning fish caught his attention and he looked no further. That hated fish had zapped him more than once. It was perfect.
With a squeeze of the trigger, water inside the weapon tube expanded and launched the bolt from the barrel. It flew across the room and made a thwip sound as it plunged into the water, followed by a tnk as it struck the wall behind the aquarium. It missed the lightning fish by a finger’s width.
“It pulls to the left,” he said, wrinkling a lip in disappointment.
A bandoleer with ten bolts lay on the table and Flynn placed one of the bolts in the end of the barrel. A spiral of water inside the barrel latched onto the bolt and retracted, like a coiled spring. He looped the water strap and the bandoleer over his shoulder, and headed for the pool room.
The scraper was pinned between the hidden door and the wall, leaving it slightly ajar. There was enough of a gap for him to squeeze his fingers into but he could not budge the door open. He needed something for leverage.
After scouring boxes of tools, he found a metal vice intended for securing pieces of crystal or steel. It was solid, heavy, and thin enough to fit in the gap. He wedged it between the door and the wall and pried it open. Once the gap was wide enough for him to fit, he released the vice and leapt through. The door slammed shut behind him.
Floating in the pool was a pair of the most beautiful ships Flynn had ever seen. Crafted entirely from polished crystal, the vessels were shaped like sharks. They were sleek crafts with three fins, two on the sides and one on the roof. They cast a soft blue glow that cascaded off the rippling water and reflected dancing lights onto the walls. They glittered like glowing jewels in the water.
Although they appeared fragile, their aquazite shells were as hard as diamonds. The three fins provided stability and the rear of the vessel tapered into a fish-like tail of overlapping crystal plates. The design reminded him of some of the specimens in Tasker’s aquarium and he wondered if that was the source of his brother’s inspiration.
Curious about the new propulsion system his brother mentioned, Flynn studied the exterior of the vessels. He slid his fingers over the smooth crystal and his hand tingled from the magical energy that purred within. Curiously, the ships did not have propellers. In their stead, there were four narrow tubes extending from bow to stern within the hull. They were spaced an equal distance from one other and he wondered how they worked.
Flynn pulled himself through the hatch doors of one of the Searunners and plopped down on a chair made from water. Ripples rolled through the chair as he sat down and it felt as though he was sitting in a bowl of jelly. The water readjusted to support him as it molded itself to fit the contours of his body. It was, by far, the most comfortable chair he had ever sat on.
“Wow,” Flynn said as he leaned side-to-side, testing the chair’s ability to support him in every position. “I wonder if it can give a massage like the chair in...”
The chair responded before Flynn completed the sentence. Thousands of tiny bubbles created a pleasant, bubbly sensation on his skin. Dense balls of water formed along each side of his spine and his legs, rubbing his muscles
. There were areas on his back and legs he didn’t know were sore until the chair kneaded them. It felt so good that he forgot about the urgency of the situation for a moment and let the chair soothe him into a state of pure bliss.
The rapture he felt was interrupted by the thought of his father tied to a bone mast on Theoric’s ship. Flynn returned to the matter at hand. He stowed Stingray next to the chair and found five crystal switches attached to the hull, facing the pilot. He didn’t know what they did but there was a simple way to find out.
Flipping the first switch triggered a pair of open hatch doors at the front of the vessel. They slid closed and made a c-chnk sound as they sealed shut in front of him. They joined together to become the front window and they fit together so perfectly that he could not see the line between them. Once the hatch doors closed, two belt-shaped bands of cool water washed over his shoulders, crossed over his chest, and attached to the base of the chair. The water belts were snug, yet comfortable, and much improved over the kelp belts used in other vessels.
Aquazite-rich water rose in front of him, forming a steering globe above his knees. The globe was the size of his head and he placed his right hand on it, letting his palm and fingers sink in. There was one acceleration lever next to his pilot’s chair and Flynn pushed it ahead while rotating the globe forward. The ship rumbled to life, drawing water into the tubes from the front and expelling it out the back. The water’s surface rose over the ship and, as he submerged, he rotated the steering globe from side-to-side. The vessel’s tail responded by changing its angle and turning the ship, maneuvering the craft in much the same way that a shark’s tail would.
The ship was more responsive than any he’d seen. As he descended into the tunnel below, it was all he could do to avoid overcompensating and smashing into the walls. When he reached the bottom of the tunnel, the stone slab rolled out of the way and he proceeded into the ocean.
