by Dante King
After we made camp, I offered to keep watch. “You two get some sleep.”
Within minutes, they’d followed my instruction, and Kegohr’s steady snoring rolled out across the clearing.
I sat looking at the pile of cores in my lap. Lampreys were a new one for me. The Seven Realms had one hell of a learning curve, and every time I thought I was getting near the top, it only got steeper. But putting off the inevitable wouldn’t help; it was time to do this.
I opened my tunic and pressed the first of the cores against my chest. A ripple of power ran through me as I absorbed it, and I felt the new energy combine with what had come before. The other cores followed until I had absorbed all six. It was exhilarating to feel a new force within me, and I wondered what I might achieve this time.
I sat back, sword across my knees, as I watched the woods for any sign of danger.
“So, when will you fight the dreaded water spirit?” Nydarth’s voice entered my mind. “I very much despise that element. So wet. And so melancholic. Always dousing the passions of life.”
“As soon as I’m done with my watch,” I whispered. I didn’t want to wake the others.
I could hardly wait to fight the water spirit. Victory over the spirit would mean adding another element to my growing repertoire.
Although my eyes were glued to the thicket, my mind was elsewhere. I could feel the ebb and flow of magic in the Vigorous Zone, and at the heart of it was a great object of power. The Water Heart. It was the center of the glade and the reason why magical creatures appeared here. I felt its awesome energy flow over me and all around me as my vision shifted.
“Oh, shit,” I said, realizing now that my fight with the water spirit was happening already. “Vesma!” I yelled at her, and she roused from sleep. “I gotta go! Can you stay on watch?”
“Ugh,” she groaned and rubbed her eyes.
Before I could hear her reply, the world vanished from view, and I was underwater.
Chapter Two
I was completely submerged. Water soaked my clothes, filled my ears and my nose, and pressed in so completely that I felt as though I must be drowning. My heart pounded in my ears as I clawed for the surface.
Despite the pressure of my surroundings, I forced myself to stay calm and started swimming up. There had to be air here somewhere. All I had to do was find it.
My arms made swift, powerful strokes while my legs kicked hard. I dragged myself toward some imagined surface, and I desperately hoped I would find it. All around me was darkness, illuminated only by glowing points of light scattered like tiny stars through the gloom. I moved toward the lights and realized they were glowing stalactites made of ice. I didn’t feel the cold of the water, but I was definitely starting to worry about running out of air.
Something else appeared in the water above me—a surface like the ceiling of a cave. I swam toward the surface and found that it was a thick block of ice. I scrambled across the roof in search for a hole or cavity to climb out of, but I quickly realized it was an impossible task. The roof stretched away in every direction before curving down as an impermeable boundary.
I was stuck in an underwater cave with no way of reaching the air.
Fucking Kegohr. He’d said trying to gain an element without a teacher could be dangerous, and this futile situation had proven him right.
I wasn’t willing to give up yet, so I slammed my fists against the frozen ceiling. Despite how hard I struck, the ice didn’t give. I might as well have been punching a mountain, for all the good it did.
Terror gripped me as my lungs screamed with desperation. Air. I needed air. My mouth opened of its own accord, and I breathed in. Water flowed down my throat and into my lungs. I choked and retched as I tried to force the water back out, to breath in the air that wasn’t there. I closed my eyes, overcome by the sensation, suddenly sure that I was about to die.
Then, I opened my eyes and took in the gloom around me. I grounded myself in the ocean realm. The water wasn’t my enemy any more than it was my friend. It was the world through which I moved, the power with which I worked, the essence of the struggle.
With that realization, the sense of drowning passed. I was one with the water, and it was one with me. I breathed as easily as if I was on land, the sea flowing in and out as refreshing as a breath of brisk mountain air.
Tiny bubbles floated out from my face, and I realized that I could breathe water like a fish. I reached up to my throat and felt little incisions. This spirit world had gifted me with gills. I wasn’t sure why, but I assumed the spirit realm would always grant me the necessary tools to survive in a new elemental domain. Defeating the realm’s champion was still up to me.
My pulse calmed, and I continued breathing as though I wasn’t treading water in the world’s deepest ocean. In place of the fear that had threatened to overwhelm me, I found myself awash with excitement. Few things in life were more satisfying than mastering a new skill, and now, I had the opportunity to learn the water element.
After my adventures in the realms of wood, fire, and ash, I knew what to look for. Somewhere in this underwater expanse would be an elemental spirit. I would have to defeat this creature in unarmed combat to access water magic.
I’d learned that Vigor was impossible to use in these spirit realms, and the only weapons I had available were ones I could gather from the environment. I couldn’t see the surface or the bottom of the ocean, nor were there any lifeforms swimming around me. I would just have to rely on basic martial arts, along with these gills I’d sprouted, but I doubted they would help me much in combat.
I let myself slowly sink and looked around as I went, trying to spot the spirit that would challenge me.
Something flickered through the water. I caught a glimmer of scales and a flexing of muscles as it shot past, briefly catching the light before disappearing into the gloom. Then it swam past again, and the water whirled around me. The spirit’s torso could have belonged to a world-class bodybuilder, and every muscle bulged with incredible power as it swayed in the water. A fish-like tail propelled it through the water with a lithe ease.
I held myself as still as I could, treading water while I waited for the spirit to reappear. I steadied my mind using the meditative techniques I’d been taught at the guild. Without Vigor, I needed to conserve my energy and focus on the task at hand.
The spirit swam past again, slower this time, and turned its head to assess me. Its face was a composite of water and ice that constantly shifted from one state to another. One second, its facial features were frozen crystals, like the broken shards of a mirror. The next, they were a swirling pool, like the ripples of a disturbed liquid. It was impossible to pinpoint a nose, eyes, or mouth, and I got a little dizzy trying to make them out.
With a flick of its fish-like tail, the spirit twisted through the water and flashed through a gap between me and the nearby wall of the cave. I turned to follow, but the spirit moved faster than me. I hadn’t been gifted with a tail, so my swimming abilities were limited.
I could feel the water shifting around me, and I prepared myself to strike. I whirled around, only to find the spirit had already passed. It struck me in the back and knocked me forward. The spirit’s tail whipped around, and I was face-to-face with the lord of this realm.
I lashed out with my fists, but it twisted away from my blows. Every strike was a complete miss against the bobbing and weaving merman. I pressed my feet against the wall behind me and pushed off it. I tumbled over and kicked the spirit in the torso. It recoiled from the blow and bounced off the wall before shooting away again with a quick flick of its tail.
My attack had been little more than a lucky strike. Against a creature who’d likely evolved to live and thrive underwater, I was doomed to fail. Except it had seemed that way with every other elemental spirit, too, and I’d found a way to conquer them. The Resplendent Tears Guild was probably filled with water Augmentors, and every one of them would have defeated this same spirit, or one like it
.
I could do it. I just had to use my damned brain.
I turned in the water and watched for another attack. This time, the spirit came at me from above, its arms stretched out as it hurtled toward me. I saw it coming just in time to avoid being punched in the head, but the blow still struck my shoulder, and pain shot down my arm. The spirit kept moving, and I tried to snatch it, but it was fast and slippery and writhed through my hands before vanishing once more into the dark depths.
Frustration boiled in my stomach, and I struggled to maintain my equilibrium. This was a test of my strength and of my ability to grapple with the element, not a pure fight for survival. I had to think about it in those terms.
When I had faced the fire spirit, I had found a way to push on through the fire. I hadn’t resisted the elemental environment but forged through it. If I hadn’t, I would never have been able to fight the fire spirit or to scatter the ashes of the ash spirit. I needed something similar for water, a way of embracing the element so that I could master it.
I’d already breathed in the ocean’s liquid, but maybe I could do even more to become one with it. I had been treating the duel as if it was the whole test, but there was more to these spirit realms. Besting the elemental spirit was merely one aspect; conquering the environment was just as important.
And achieving victory over my surroundings didn’t always require force. I closed my eyes and felt the motions of the current, the water pressing against my skin and filling my lungs. My body was made almost entirely of water, I knew that much, and I could now sense every vaporous drop. The water was me, and I was the water.
As the realization took hold, the elemental spirit rushed at me again from my left. I twisted, my movements now as easy as if I had been on land. Although the water still made my movements slower, much of the hard-earned speed and agility I displayed on the surface came back to me. I dodged the spirit’s grasping hands, looped through the water, and hit it with both fists. The spirit jerked away and settled a few meters in front of me. It held out it arms defensively while glowering at me through hair that flowed like seaweed in the tide.
With a flick of its tail, the spirit started circling again. Its muscular body produced swift, confident strokes as it swam around me. I lunged at it, but it darted aside, flickering away from between my hands. I put more effort in this time and dived for it with my arms outstretched. My fingers grasped at its slick body, but the spirit was too quick, and I was left grasping at empty water. The third time, I gripped its tail and winced as sharp spines jabbed my skin. I was forced to release the tail, and my opponent swarm clear.
I had embraced the water, but this was still the spirit’s natural habitat. As long as it had all this space, there was no way I could defeat it. I needed to find an advantage.
I backed away from where the spirit and I had been fighting, until I was pressed up against the frozen wall. The spirit followed, circling me cautiously at first, then swimming back and forth once that became impossible. Its face was hard to read, a thing of flowing water and flashing moments of ice rather than skin and muscle, but a look of excitement crossed its frozen eyes. My opponent thought it had me on the defensive, trapped against the edge of the cave, when in reality, I was exactly where I wanted to be.
The hardness of the ice against my back was a reassuring patch of solidity amid the ever-changing waters. I ran my fingers across its surface and found individual stalactites protruding from crevices. I closed my hand around one of them and wiggled it until it was so loose that it was on the verge of falling out.
The spirit flashed out of the gloom and swam straight toward me with all its speed and strength. I stayed in place, as if pinned against the ice, and let myself appear vulnerable to draw the creature in. I raised a hand to defend myself, and the spirit battered it aside before delivering a punch to the gut that almost doubled me over. Its hands went to my neck, and its icy fingers tightened around my throat. My skin went numb from the cold, and I was unable to draw the water into my lungs.
The spirit’s hands tightened and squeezed around my windpipe until black spots danced across my vision. Frozen eyes sparkled out of watery flesh stretched across a skull of ice.
My fingers closed around the loose stalactite again, and I tugged it out of its niche. I raised it high and smashed it against the spirit’s head. The pointed chunk of ice didn’t penetrate my opponent’s skin, but it let go of my neck and drifted back, stunned.
I pushed off the wall with both feet and grabbed the spirit by the throat with my free hand. Its icy flesh almost burned when I touched it, but I held tight. Still holding my opponent by the throat, I circled around and slammed him against the icy wall. It squirmed, thrashed its tail, and grabbed hold of my wrist as it tried to break my grip.
I raised the stalactite in my hand again and smashed it into the spirit’s head once, twice, three times, over and over as its grip weakened. Each blow left a small wound on its head as well as the damage dealt by slamming it back against the wall behind it. After the seventh strike, the spirit’s skull cracked and then, shattered. Blood trailed through the water in lines like quicksilver. The creature went limp, and the watery realm faded from view.
I found myself sitting in the clearing again, wrapped in my cloak and staring at the stream.
“It’s about time you returned,” Vesma noted.
I looked up to see her sitting across from me, her spear across her knees and her cloak drawn up around her shoulders. Behind her, the first rays of morning sunlight were creeping over the horizon and through the trees. In the distance, a bird started to sing.
I rubbed my eyes, stood up, and shook out my legs, trying to dislodge the cramp that had settled in. My sojourn in the spirit realm had felt like only a few minutes, but hours must have passed out here in the mortal world.
“Have you been on watch all night?” I asked.
“Kegohr took the last one. Did you defeat the spirit?”
I winked at her. “What do you think?”
Vesma’s lips pulled into a wry grin. “If I wasn’t starting to care for you, I’d find you infuriating. Transported to the Seven Realms by a sword spirit, and you’re better at learning magic than almost anyone at the guild.”
“Almost anyone?”
“Well, I haven’t met all the guild members yet. There might be someone with more natural talent than you.” Vesma walked over to me and leaned down to kiss me.
“Ah, the folly of youth,” Nydarth whispered from the sword in my lap. “So young. So dumb. And so full of—”
“Shh,” I whispered to the sword. “I can’t hear myself think. How do you even know that reference? You spent way too long on Earth.”
“When will I meet Nydarth?” Vesma asked as she stepped away from me and eyed the sword suspiciously.
“When she gets strong enough to show herself,” I answered. “Spirits for the spirit god or something.”
“The spirits of your enemies are a delectable meal,” Nydarth confirmed.
Vesma placed her hands on her hips. “What did she say?”
“Never mind. How about you get some rest while you can? Once the day starts properly, we should get moving.”
She shook her head before she set her spear aside, laid down, and pulled the hood of her cloak up.
I focused back on our surroundings and kept watch while my friends enjoyed the last hour or so before dawn completely broke. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being constantly wet and needing to swallow water to breathe. Pressure pushed against my ears, as though I was still submerged in the spirit realm’s sea.
I needed time to get back to normal, so I stood up and paced the clearing. My fingers drummed against the hilt of my sword.
“Oh, yes,” Nydarth said, her voicing coming from the sword straight into my mind. “Keep that up. I like that.”
I hesitated for a moment, then set to drumming on the pommel again. Nydarth purred happily, like a cat stretching out across a soft, warm carpet.
“Well done, dear,” she said after a while.
“For getting you excited with my fingers?”
“No, silly,” she replied, her tone gently mocking. “For gaining more power and a fresh ability. That was quite a fight against the water spirit, but from what I feel inside you, it was well worth the struggle.”
“You saw the fight?”
“When I am in your hand, you are an open book to me, dear. I could not have helped but sense your struggle. It’s exciting to see you reign victorious.”
I recalled the lamprey cores I’d absorbed and decided to use them to forge new pathways within me. As soon as I drew into myself, Nydarth spoke.
“Ugh, Smothering Mist technique. It is an abominable skill from the worst of the elements.”
“Smothering Mist, eh?” I figured the lampreys had used something similar during my fight with them. I’d learned techniques from wood, fire, and ash, so I knew the drill.
I closed my eyes and found the blueprints for the water pathways, but they were faded and difficult to grasp. Etching them into my Vigor lines proved more difficult than cupping water in my hand. Unlike my previous elemental channels that were solid and strong, a single pathway couldn’t contain enough Vigor to produce any real magic. Every element drew from the same source—Vigor, a kind of mana pool that allowed me to fill the channels inside my body with magic and perform incredible feats.
Then, I realized that water pathways didn’t function like the others. Instead of one, single vein, I created a myriad of tiny routes, a thousand little rivulets for Vigor to run down.
It was an odd sensation, letting the magic diffuse through me rather than concentrating it for something powerful. My body tingled as small trails of Vigor ran through it, the boundary between flesh and spirit blurring. Then, the Vigor flowed out through my skin, and the air around me grew damp.
