by Eric Asher
Gradually the dark of the ocean gave way to the dim light of the sun overhead, and that dimness gave way to the blue of the seas, and a brilliant warmth. She broke the surface a long way from the forts on the northern shore of Puerto Rico.
Nixie could have used the gauntlet then and there without issue, but she remembered the fire demons in the darkness, and she wanted to be far away from the place that had taken her to them. She shivered and glided over to the Mosasaurus, ready to hitch a ride back to the shallows. Besides, he’d be handy to have around if they encountered any more leviathans.
She rode on the back of the guardian, nestled between the base of his skull and the smooth scales that made excellent footholds. It wasn’t long before the sun started to drift farther toward the horizon, and the shadow of San Morro grew larger.
But Nixie and the guardian weren’t alone in the waters below the fort. Shattered hulls and the wreckage of a fishing boat floated by. At first she thought it was leftover debris from their earlier battle, but there was too much. They were just close enough to the shore to see the figures standing on the shoals when she heard the voice, and her grip tightened on the guardian.
“Hand over the Eye of Atlantis or we’ll bury the rest of the commoners in the bay.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The gray flesh of the Fae standing on the shoals caught Nixie off guard. She knew the Unseelie Fae had returned. She’d been warned. Her allies had faced them in the ruins of Quindaro. But to see them in the flesh after they’d spent so much time in the shadows …
As if on cue, screams went up from the channel. Nixie snapped her gaze to another fishing boat as the mast crumbled and the hull shattered. But it didn’t stop there. The ship exploded, splinters erupting into the air on a geyser. If any commoner had been on that boat, they were dead.
The Unseelie Fae raised his hand to the heavens and another fairy appeared above him, standing at the edge of the fort. From the watchtower, he extended his arm and a young boy screamed as he first tried to pull away from the Fae, before he realized he was dangling dozens of feet above the rocks below.
“The choice is yours,” the Unseelie Fae said.
Nixie assessed the Fae, and the likelihood of saving the child. The Unseelie were known for their ruthlessness. And that was something of note among the Fae.
“The Eye of Atlantis is yours.” The rage Nixie was trying to keep hidden was betrayed by her armor. Bright red bolts of power lanced down her arm as she reached into the pouch at her side and raised the Eye for them to see.
She stepped off the Mosasaurus’s back and let the water carry her toward the shore. The guardian growled behind her, the violent promise in that sound sending a chill down Nixie’s back.
“And they call you a queen,” the Unseelie Fae said. “Why they ever feared a water witch is beyond me. Docile creatures, aren’t you? Servants who know your place?”
Nixie smiled at the Fae. Ten feet from the shoals was close enough. She slid the Eye back into the pouch at her side as the next wave crashed against the shoals. A stream of water continued up the side of the fort, slithering through the cracks and crevices until it reached the fairy dangling the child, promising his death.
The water lashed out, mortar exploding from the old fort. Stone that had not seen the light of day in centuries shot skyward, cutting through the fairy’s groin, arms, and face. The child screamed as the ruined flesh collapsed in front of him. But that deadly water changed, extended, and caught the boy, pulling him back into the watchtower.
Nixie sent her voice through that water to scream a warning to everyone standing upon the fort. “Run!”
The Unseelie Fae crashed onto the walking path below, a crumbled, bloody heap as his body collapsed in on itself and a terrifying tortured scream rose out the ruined armor.
“General?” one of the other Fae asked.
The speaker who had threatened Nixie responded. “Unleash the leviathans! Soak the commoners in the blood of her ignorance.”
The water of the bay churned and boiled. Tentacles as thick as trees rose and chased more of the fishing vessels. Even those who had retreated far into the bay weren’t safe.
Water cascaded down the backs of leviathans as tentacles shot out to the shore and found purchase to drag themselves close to the docks.
“Go!” Nixie shouted to the Mosasaurus. “Protect the commoners as if they were your wards!”
“The great guardian of Atlantis,” the general said with a hollow laugh. “You’re outmatched, queen. You could have worked with us, embraced your true self, helped us drown these commoners in an orgy of your power.”
Every word sent a frisson of rage through Nixie’s body, and the Eye pulsed in her pocket. She swept her arms up to the side, and the ocean responded like it was the wings of a goddess, carrying her skyward.
Nixie unsheathed the sword at her waist and leveled it at the general. “You’ll die last.” She shifted the blade to the Fae standing beside him, and the ocean moved. Red lightning crackled from her armor, lancing out through the water and bathing the entire scene in an eerie red glow. She surged forward.
The soldier raised his sword to block Nixie’s incoming strike, but it shattered when her stone sword swept through it and relieved him of his head. Her foot caught the edge of a shoal, twisted, and she lunged for the next. She impaled two of the fairies on her blade and used the ocean water to pull them down as their screams began.
Shouts drew Nixie’s attention back to the fort. She let the ocean carry her to the wall, leaving the general to scramble away from a tower of water crashing onto the shore. A smooth arc carried her to the top of the battlements where the Unseelie Fae had dangled the child.
In the distance, the world shook as the guardian unhinged his jaws and roared. Teeth locked into a leviathan that had reached one of the cruise ships. Nixie could hear the rubbery snap of flesh from the top of the fort before the Mosasaurus spun violently and tore the leviathan away.
The tentacles reached for the guardian, but another chomp of its mighty teeth stilled the leviathan. As soon as the creature lay motionless, the Mosasaurus sped off through the water, seeking its next victim. It created a huge wake as it went, threatening to capsize the smaller boats, but Nixie had other things to worry about at the moment.
At the top of the fort waited a small squadron of Unseelie Fae. These weren’t like the soldiers the general had stood with on the shoals below. At least two of them were knights, their powers given away by the frost running along their gauntlets.
To slay a knight would be to make an enemy of that knight’s court for eternity. Nixie remembered the warnings and stories in the books from Atlantis. And then she remembered the atrocities the Unseelie Fae had committed, and would commit again.
Her eyes widened as the power coursed through her armor, sending her hair into a wild halo behind her. The choice was made. They would all die here.
Every.
Her sword reached the first impossibly fast.
Last.
The knight’s confused look didn’t change as his severed head hit the ground.
One.
The jet of ocean water hit the third hard enough to pulp her gray flesh, sending a ruin of gore to splash down beside the clattering armor of her allies.
Nixie ground her teeth together as more screams sounded from the floor above her. The last knight was not so easy a target. By the time Nixie reached him, he already had an icy shield prepared to parry her blow.
Even as she rebounded off the knight’s defenses, the knight attacked. A foot-long spike of frozen water crashed into a weak spot on Nixie’s armor. The magic flexed and bent but it did not break. But she hadn’t been expecting it. Her arm had still been solid inside the armor, and she could feel the wound.
The knight struck again, and Nixie deflected the worst of the blow, but an icy blade still cut into her cheek. It felt as if the blade was going to suck the life from her very body just from that tiny wound. A horrid chill c
oursed through her, so much so she almost wished she could be in the presence of the heat of the fire demons once more.
Screams sounded again. Nixie cursed, focused her will, and a cannon shot of water pushed the knight off the side of the fort. Nixie doubted very much it would be enough to kill him, but would give her enough time to get up the stone ramp, through the tunnel, and see what the hell was happening.
She sprinted through the darkness and broke into the early evening sun. It looked like it was only commoners huddled there.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“There’s a thing …” an older man started, his voice shaking. “A thing on the grounds outside the fort, killing people, Miss. It’s not safe.”
“Where they fly kites?”
The man nodded.
Nixie cursed and sprinted past a family holding their child. “You all need to get out of here. It’s not safe. Get back to the city! I’ll make you a path!”
None of them moved as Nixie reached the far archway, but the Mosasaurus bellowed in the distance, and the earth-shaking sound was enough to startle them into motion.
Nixie hurdled the outer edge of the fort, crashing down onto a narrow wall before she saw it.
“Fuck me, what the hell is that?”
A blob, for that was the only name she could give it, a mass of teeth and arms and legs that surged and compressed as it undulated across the grounds. It had no logical form. A hundred mouths gnashed their all too human-like teeth as broken and maimed limbs scratched at the ground, dragging it forward.
Nixie almost vomited when she saw it catch a commoner. The man’s body just … came apart, absorbed into the eldritch thing in an instant. Another mouth, another pair of legs, and a streak of blood appeared, flowing through a new tangled mass of vessels.
A third leviathan appeared offshore to the north, and despair knifed its way into Nixie’s heart. This couldn’t be stopped. There were too many. It was too much.
She could go, get the Eye to Zola. Maybe they could save Damian. But could she live knowing she abandoned all these people? These commoners lived on the edges of Atlantis, they were her people, even if they didn’t know it.
And before she was sure of what she was doing, her legs carried her in a mad rush toward the vile creature leaving death and ruin in its wake. Long enough they’d been hidden in the shadows.
The Eye pulsed in her satchel.
Long enough she’d stood by and tried to speak sense into her enemies.
Her hand slid into the pocket without knowing why.
Long enough they’d been subjected to cruelty at the hands of a mad ruler.
Warmth flowed into the chilled wounds the knight had inflicted.
Long enough they’d stood by as the world devoured itself.
The scream that rose from Nixie’s throat wasn’t hers. The magnificent arches of water that erupted from either side of the fort weren’t her own. This was an old power, an ancient thing meant to test the heart of a ruler.
Two hundred eyes swiveled toward her as the translucent mass lost its focus on devouring commoners. Nixie’s cry fractured into the thundering scream of a goddess, and searing red lightning leapt from her blazing armor, lighting the incoming water with the rage of an entire people.
The ocean crashed down around her, and the eldritch being screamed from a thousand mouths that weren’t its own. Lightning pummeled the beast and water crushed it into the surface of the grass.
She heard the cries behind her, her body turning slowly to see the cowering people behind her.
“Run!” she said, but her voice sounded wrong, too loud, too confident. “I’ll hold it back, but you have to run!”
A young girl went first, the determination on her tan face an unspoken promise to the baby bundled in her arms.
The creature tried to move, but Nixie closed her hands into fist, sending a shower of blood red lightning into the thing’s body.
More commoners ran. People she would have dragged to the bottom of the sea not a century ago, and that guilt awoke a rage inside her she could not contain.
Nixie’s scream was joined by more voices, and she stared in awe as figures sprang from those waters. Undines crashed to the earth around the fleeing commoners, running beside them, slaughtering any Unseelie Fae foolish enough to stand in their way.
The seas shook, and the silvery flashes of the tails of the blue men of the Minsch flickered through the waters, scooping up commoners and delivering them to the shores.
Nixie raised her voice to the sky, her head shaking as she came to understand the power of the Eye. It would have burned her to ash if she’d been unworthy. It’s why the Eye was never wielded as a weapon. No witch had ever been prepared to take the risk. Never prepared to change their nature.
The last of the commoners ran to the relative safety of Old San Juan.
“You can’t kill it,” the general said from behind her.
Nixie closed her eyes, and the towering arches of water shifted, erupting beneath the eldritch thing and tossing it into the ocean like it weighed nothing.
The Mosasaurus surged to the surface, distracted from its prey as though it had heard Nixie’s signal. The horrible blob vanished into the guardian’s jaws. A long time ago, in ages forgotten, it was a great honor to be sacrificed to the guardian. Nixie hoped those people might find some peace in that, however small.
“What are you?” the general asked, backpedaling as Nixie turned toward him, red lightning sparking across her gauntlets.
The winds shifted, the ocean having upset the air so badly a tropical storm was forming above them. Nixie looked out at the bay. Pace dragged a life raft to shore in the distance, avoiding the dismembered tentacles floating on the water.
“I am Nixie of Atlantis, Queen of the Undines. Should you set foot upon these lands or waters again, you will meet a most unfortunate end.”
The knight struck from Nixie’s blind spot. She felt the chill as the icy dagger cut into her hand, one of the only unarmored spots on her body. He tried to follow it up with an incantation, but the ice met a wall of boiling water.
“An unfortunate end,” she repeated, and that wall of boiling water snapped closed around the knight, cutting him off from the ley lines, preventing him from escaping. Nixie raised her head slightly and stared at the knight.
He screamed, and as he screamed, she forced the boiling tower down into his lungs until they could hold no more. Organs ruptured, eyes collapsed, and his body expanded until it burst.
“It will be worse for you,” Nixie said, turning to the general as she let the knight’s screaming armor collapse to the earth in a pool of gore before it returned to the lines.
The general didn’t speak. He slashed at the air and vanished into the Warded Ways.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Well, that’s disgusting.”
Nixie turned to find Shamus studying the empty armor of the knight. Something huge and wet crashed together and Nixie caught a glimpse of the Mosasaurus snuffling through the ruin of a leviathan.
She looked down at the Eye of Atlantis in her hand. “Was that all the Eye?” Water ran off the grasslands, dripping onto the walking paths before it trailed back into the sea.
“Not entirely,” Shamus said. “That was the armor and crown of the queen who has accepted her station. I have not seen such a display in a very long time.”
Nixie turned back to the bay. “Is he just going to eat all of the leviathans?”
Shamus laughed. “I imagine he’s rather hungry after hibernating for a millennium. I doubt he’ll eat all of those creatures. Some will settle to the bottom of the ocean and feed the wildlife there. It is a cycle that will continue until the end of this world.”
Nixie rolled the Eye of Atlantis between her fingers and thumb. “How did you know I needed help?”
“The Eye of Atlantis bound you to the city.”
“What?” Nixie asked.
The old man grinned. “We knew the
island was in danger because of the Wasser-Münzen you carry. You drew on the ley lines through it, hard enough to move the earth. The mountain did not break away, the land did not shift and destroy the homes of the commoners as it could have. But it did reveal parts of Atlantis that had been lost. There is more now to see in the outer ring. More for us to rebuild. Perhaps, when this conflict is done, you may return?”
“I’d like that,” Nixie said as she slid the Eye of Atlantis back into the pouch at her side. It clicked against the coin there. “I’d like to see what else you saved in that bookshelf.”
“Then I will be sure to keep it safe for you.”
The guardian clamped down on one of the last large chunks of the leviathan and dragged it beneath the surface. The wake of the Mosasaurus sent small waves rushing toward the shore, and made the blue men bob among the rocks. Pace was there.
Nixie exchanged a nod with Shamus and then started down toward the shore.
“We’ll meet again, my Queen. And may it be a time of peace.”
“Just don’t drown anyone in the meantime,” Nixie shouted back. “Unless they really deserve it.”
Shamus’s laugh followed Nixie as her boots cracked onto the walking path and then gave way to the silt of the shore.
A commoner stood on the shore, not far from Pace on the other side of the shoals. She didn’t look panicked or shocked by the presence of the blue man, which likely meant she wasn’t what she seemed, or that Pace had saved her.
“That’s her,” Pace said to a soaking wet bundle in his arms. He pulled down the edge of a blue hoodie, revealing the face of a girl who couldn’t have been more than seven.
“She was injured when two of the ships collided,” Pace said, turning the child toward Nixie. “I did what I could, but the incantation had … side effects.”
The girl pulled her hoodie down again for a minute, took a deep breath, and then unzipped it to show Nixie her neck. A brilliant blue streak glowed in the girl’s flesh, translucent enough she could see the blood pumping through her veins.
