Into the Storm

by Christopher Johns

  I turned my steady, mirthful gaze down at her. “You’re starting to catch on, Odany. There’s hope for you yet.”

  She scrunched her nose in distaste, and I snorted at her. “Make a barrier.”

  She motioned before her and brought wind into a small whirlwind in front of her, the clothes around her frame billowing.

  “Strengthen it,” I ordered softly. She scowled and compressed the winds until they swirled thinly, but they were compacted and seemed dense as I smacked them with my fist.

  “How?” She grunted both hands pressed forward to try and add more to it.

  “Imagine it denser, like a maelstrom, or storm contained in a small jar.” I condensed a bit of shadow in my palm and made it grow smaller, like a smith folding iron until it was small but hard. I cast Void Shield in front of her and knocked on it. A thunking sound rang out. “Like so.”

  She focused on the construction of my spell, touching it and prodding it. She held her hands together in front of her, palm to palm, and slowly spread them before shoving them in front of her body.

  A shimmering wall of solidified wind popped into existence, and sweat beaded from her forehead from the exertion of it.

  “How’s your mana bar?” She looked at me weirdly. “If you look in the corner of your vision, just under your health bar, you’ll see a blue bar that shows how much mana you have.”

  She frowned at me and opened her status screen, she fiddled with some things on her own, and I had to fight the urge to just have her show it to me.

  “It’s almost empty.” She frowned again. “But it seems to be going back up a little. Is that normal?”

  “Yes.” I nodded at her, and she smiled as if relieved. “Your intelligence dictates how much mana you have, and your wisdom decides how fast your mana regenerates. If you touch the names of the stats, you can actually see what they do.”

  She did so, and her small smile brightened.

  “That’s weird then.” She grinned at me. “Because you’re wrong.”

  I blinked at her, confused, and a little irritated. “Well then, your magic may be faith-based so it could be that your wisdom needs to be higher, so it dictates how much mana you have. That’s how it is for Jaken.”

  “Nope!” She giggled and planted her ass on the ground with her arms and legs crossed.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Odany?”

  “I get mana from intelligence and wisdom!” She giggled. She touched something, and then a small filtered screen popped into my vision that looked like it had been redacted with question marks.

  Name: Odany

  Race: ???? (?????)

  Level: ??

  Strength: ???

  Dexterity: ???

  Constitution: ???

  Intelligence: 27*

  Wisdom: 13*

  Charisma: ???

  Unspent Attribute Points: 10

  “What in the actual fuck?” I tapped on the asterisks and found out that her mana was indeed affected by both, equally. But her mana regeneration was still only affected by wisdom. So the little shit had 400 MP already.

  “That’s a bad word,” she tutted at me with a stern look. “Vrawn said so.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I groaned. “What level are you, Odany?”

  “Dusty and Sylphy said not to tell you.” She closed her eyes and turned her head as she crossed her arms mulishly. “Because it’s dangerous.”

  “Look, I get that, but I’m here to help you, not harm you,” I insisted, which seemed to only make her buckle down harder. “Okay, you don’t want to tell me? Fine. But you have ten points to spend and if you’re going to spend them anywhere, I would suggest constitution and wisdom.”

  “Why?” She quirked her head at me, inquisitively.

  “Because your constitution will make your health go up and raise your endurance a little as well.” I rubbed my stomach as if it would show her what I meant. “And your wisdom will make your mana higher and recover faster.”

  “Is yours high?”

  “Yes, it is.” I smiled at her, and she looked ready to pop until I sweetly explained, “But I can’t tell you how high because it could be dangerous.”

  Her harrumph made me think of an old-timer, and I actually laughed for a minute, almost pitying her, but I sighed and patted her shoulder. “Spend your points how you feel is best. My friends and I will try to help you, but unless you’ve got a lot of health, to begin with, you’re in danger every time you get into a fight. Okay?”

  Her brow furrowed again, and she tinkered around with it. “Seven in wisdom and the rest in constitution.”

  I held out my fist and winked at her. “Good job.”

  She tapped my fist with her own and giggled. We rested for a short time longer so that her mana could recover, and then we went right back into practical applications of her shield spell.

  She was so adept at it by the time we finished a couple hours later, that she could mold the winds to suit her needs and almost effortlessly as I flung spells at her from all directions. We also kept her Continuous Gust spell up, too. She was tired after, but beamed with pride as she strutted through the crew to the cabin to wait with Muu.

  He was going to protect her since Vrawn refused to let the rest of us board the naval vessel without her.

  “Maebe would destroy me if I were to allow that.” She was right, of course, but the stubborn set of her jaw stated she would be joining us one way or another no matter what. “Leaving you alone again to potentially fight a demon? And a general? I will not fail in my duty to her, or you.”

  “I appreciate your strength of will.” I bowed my head to her, a wry grin stretching across her face. “Captain, how would you like to do this?”

  Captain Holly eyed the ship as we closed on it, only a mile or so away by now, and grunted. “We follow the accords.”

  She turned and clapped the eyeglass closed, eyeing us. “The accords are law to the pirates of the oceans, and without them, the already chaotic and merciless waters would be even worse. We will announce ourselves and allow them a chance to surrender after we board. Should they wish to fight, they will be dispatched with minimal casualties if possible.”

  “And if it’s not possible?” James asked quietly from behind me, making me turn and stare at him for a moment.

  “Then, all but those who surrender die.” She sighed as if having to relive seeing something similar before. “We can take on extra hands if needed, accommodating them and their lives until we make land. At which time they can choose to stay aboard, or leave the seas forever. That is our way.”

  She snapped her fingers, and her crew moved by us with practiced ease, weapons prepared, and the sails pulled taut with the wind. The ship pulled closer to the naval vessel, the Harbinger, and our crow’s nest watcher bellowed, “Battle stations! They’ve rear cannons trained on us, Cap’n!”

  Cacophonous booms shattered the sound of the swelling waves around us, whistles that reminded me of munitions falling back home. My first reaction was to try and find cover before remembering that I was the cover, casting my senses to where Kayda watched from on high to check the trajectory of the projectiles in time to block the first one with Void Shield. My mana drained, and I grunted with the impact, my knees flexing as I brought the slightly heavy object down onto the deck. No sense in wasting ammo.

  “They’ve disregarded the accords!” Captain Holly bellowed, her saber sliding free of its sheath with metallic whoosh before she held it aloft. “To battle!”

  The men and women around us cried out raucously, and we set to work. The vessel’s attempt to escape was thwarted by us making ground on her and cutting her off, Odany canceling her spell for us with a mental command from me through Muu. The anchor for our ship dropped with us three or four football fields away from the incoming naval vessel. The men and women on board cheering as they thought to ram us.

  I reached out to the element of water and ground my teeth as I solidified it using the shadows of the depths. T
he water froze in place like a glacier before us and lifted the ship out of the water entirely. Hubris appeared in my hand to assist me with the finer mana control needed to avoid completely destroying the ship.

  “Should we board first?” Jaken called over the grinding of wood against ice.

  “No! You’ll go with me after the strikers’ board.” Captain Holly whistled a shrill note over the din, her ears flattening against her head. “Strikers!”

  Taejon and ten other crew members whipped out grapnels and ropes, slinging them over onto the ship before us, the bow of it only a foot away with the large figurehead of a knight with a lance striking forward towering above us.

  Kayda, keep an eye on things for me baby. She screeched, and flitted over to the other ship swiftly on the breeze.

  I watched through her eyes as the strikers clambered over the rail and onto the deck to meet the sailors on the other ship.

  I’ve got eyes on too, these sailors are well equipped. Bokaj warned the tension in his voice was palpable. Should I start with cover fire?

  “Bokaj wants to know if you want him to fire on the men attacking your strikers?” I asked the Captain, her surprise quelled when she noted the ranger on the side of the crow’s nest. She nodded, and I passed her permission on to him.

  Arrows soared through the air, and cries of pain rang out over the edge of the railing of the ship before us.

  Father, these people we are with will need help soon, something is wrong with these other people. A crash of lightning punctuated Kayda’s words of caution.

  “Cap, we gotta get up there, your men are in danger.” I started forward, but she grasped my shoulder, her claws digging in a little as I made to move by her.

  “We will wait for my word,” she snarled. A horrendous shrieking scream pierced my ears, making me flinch. A figure crashed onto the deck, his neck snapping as he hit the wooden deck head first, the skull cracking and caving in from the weight. Taejon’s once capturing eyes gazing lifelessly at us from his shattered face.

  “Come!” Captain Holly roared and sprinted forward. She was up the rope almost as fast as I could shift into my eagle form to fly up. I fluttered up to the rail and surveyed the area.

  Sailors in white with mottled purple and red skin savaged the bodies of the strikers who had fallen. The others fought bravely against the line of barely human enemies with arrows sticking from the bloated bodies barely registering the projectiles’ presence.

  I shifted out of my eagle form and shouted to the others. We got some weird shit going on here, y’all. Kayda! Bring the storm, Yohsuke, get your stinky ass out here.

  I was trying to sleep, you stupid bastard, his half groggy voice cut through the din around me. The fuck is going on?

  We have darkness inbound, we need your help out here with these assholes! Jaken called. I felt a hand on one of my tails and turned with a snarl to find him struggling to get up with one of the enemy sailors on his waist, trying to bite him. I pulled him up even as he battered the sailor’s head for all he was worth, the damage just not even calculating on his health bar. His attacks did nothing.

  What the fuck are these things? James grunted, I saw him bounce off the main mast of the Harbinger and kick one of them in the head, its neck snapping gruesomely, but it continued trying to attack him. He blasted a hole in it with his ki, the chest smoldering before it crashed to the ground and began to thrash violently.

  “Go for the chest!” he roared to everyone in earshot. He seemed to rethink that when he tried to shove his hand through the right side of another sailor’s chest. “The heart! It’s the heart!”

  “We got it!” Yohsuke appeared to my left freshly shifted from bat form, Kayda’s healing rain beginning to fall around us and darkening the sky. “You better get to fighting brother, save me some.”

  Vrawn flung me out of the way as one of them came at me with a clawed hand and snarling open mouth. I spun and pulled my claws across its throat, warm blood gathered under my nails just before Yohsuke’s astral blade pierced the man’s heart, and he tossed him over the side of the ship.

  “Game time.” I shook my shoulders out and rolled my neck, reaching into my inventory for Magus Bane. I cracked my neck before twisting the axe in my hand familiarly.

  I planted the haft of it into a sailor’s chest, knocking his feet out from under him, and used the axe to pin him down. I cast Aspect of the Ursolon and roared loudly, shoving the spike at the bottom of the haft into his heart. The thrashing began, and I moved on to the next enemy, a woman foaming at the mouth with wild hair trying to grapple Vrawn from behind.

  I went to assist her, and her blade whipped around behind her, the sword passing through Vrawn’s attacker’s neck. The body fell backward but rose again in time for me to slash the body through the back and spine.

  The heart flopped out of the corpse, sloshing onto the deck with a noisy squelching, and I stomped on it with a satisfying splash and splatter.

  I growled in delight and moved past Vrawn, her weapon flashing just behind the small of my back to cut down the severed upper body of one of the strange sailors that had tried to grab onto my lower back to bite my ass.

  “Thanks!” I growled, and she just grinned my way as lightning danced along her sword.

  I grabbed one of the chomping sailors by the throat and felt a pull on my being from the sails, an aura of sulfurous rage emanating from above me drew my attention. I glanced up in time to see Tmont scaling the rigging to try and get to a human-looking man muttering and waving his hands.

  We have a caster! I bellowed to the others and felt a couple jerking impacts on the body in my grasp. Bokaj has fired arrows into the back of the creature before me, and it still tried to claw at me, the nails on its body dragging down my armor. The nail clipped my shoulder, and a pulse of sickening energy seeped into my body like venom.

  I snarled and threw the creature from me bodily, and cast Purify on myself. The spell didn’t do much, and I had to hold it for another five seconds to get it out of my body completely. Don’t let them bite or scratch you!

  Arrows screeched through the air and clattered into something in front of the mage, that looked like a barrier.

  Zeke, take Magus Bane and get up there, Yohsuke barked as he fought through a crowd of beefier looking sailors, his blade slashing and carving a path for him. James, you too. Jaken, get the hate for us, man, these guys are spreading thin and ganging up.

  Got it! Jaken clanged his sword against his shield and shouted for all he was worth, “Come and get me, you demon bred pieces of shit!”

  A glowing red aura burst from him in a wave and everything in the area took an interest in him. The caster created a symbol with his hand toward the crowd that stormed forward toward the paladin, and they stopped cold.

  Each one began to shake and grunt as if they were in pain, the backs of their shirts tearing and bursting as wings sprouted. The caster fell to a knee with a smirk and blood dribbling from his mouth. His dark robes and body my target as I jumped for all I was worth toward him. My body lifting twenty feet into the air and my left arm snatching some of the rigging beneath him. I felt a hand on my leg and turned to find one of the flying sailors latched onto me.

  I kicked out once, twice both landing in the face loosening his grip a little bit, doing nothing to actually damage him. Frozen lightning struck him in the spine, and he shook furiously as the electrical agony surged through him. James appeared on his back, his own wings flaring as condensed ki covered his clawed finger tips. Flesh tore, and the crazed sailor cried out in pain, sharp teeth flashing as James carved the wings from his back and stabbed into his ribs from behind, ending the sailor’s life. His ki blade caught my hip, 9% of my health bar falling instantly, but the rain helping to regenerate it swiftly.

  “We gotta kill him fast.” James stayed and clambered up over me as if I were so much netting on an easy obstacle course.

  James beat against the barrier with it cracking a little by the time I reached the
crossbeam and swung Magus Bane, activating Cleave to give my swing a little boost. The barrier shattered into millions of pieces, and the caster’s eyes began to bleed from the backlash of the spell shattering.

  “You’ll never win against my masters,” he gasped, a victorious grin splitting his face as he hissed, “This ship will be the last thing you interlopers ever see. You and your pet pirates.”

  “Where are your masters?” James grasped him by the back of his cloak, the man choking slightly as the monk lifted him.

  “I’ll never tell you that.” He cackled and licked his lips, his dark eyes shifting about. “The three remaining generals are plotting against you as we speak. Oh, Razmerdil will be quite upset he didn’t get to devour you as he planned, but who cares. Die.”

  He lifted his arm and revealed a long dagger that he brought toward his chest to try and kill himself. James stopped his arm, and I grabbed the blade with my metal hand snapping it in half.

  “Don’t kill him.” James nodded at my order and put him in a blood choke before I could turn away. The others fared well against the creatures down below, but Kayda had two of them attempting to bring her down to the ground, and Bokaj was trying to give her covering fire, but they kept weaving away from his shots despite leads and wind working in his favor.

  “I’ll get him to the others and take care of them, you go protect Kayda.” James shoved me toward her then dropped to the ground slower than what should have been possible. Had to be some kind of slow fall ability that helped him defy gravity so well.

  I took off toward the edge of the crossbeam and dove off before shifting into my eagle form, powerful wings lifting me aloft and toward my baby. I didn’t dare make myself much more of a target than I already was, and I couldn’t trust the dragon form to hold to my will.

  The two-winged sailors, one male with a hulking figure and a lithely built female, harried her as she flew. She clawed at the female as she flew beneath her claws, but the larger figure tried to break one of her wings. Static burst around her feathers and a ball of electricity attached to his face, but he seemed undeterred by it.