by Dante King
Waterfalls gushed out of the tall buildings and flowed through channels carved into the streets. Fountains fashioned from coral projected water to the skies in a celebration of the elements. But the beauty was marred by lampreys descending from the waters to invade the city.
Packs of scaled monsters skittered through the streams and rooftops, the faster ones tearing down statues and leaping on the fishfolk. Screams and howls filled the air as the monsters tore the fishfolk asunder with their claws and feasted upon their flesh. Starsquids roamed the streets and lashed out with viciously barbed tentacles.
“Good spirits!” Vesma cried.
I ripped the Sundered Heart free of its sheath and tried to discern the best place to start. Everywhere I looked, someone needed my help. I heard a woman scream and turned to the door of a nearby house.
A Qihin woman was valiantly trying to fend off a starsquid with a broom. Blood glistened on her dark skin as it dripped from a dozen small wounds. I forced myself to move even faster and raised my free hand. I caught the starsquid with a gout of flames that did little more than distract it, but that was the point.
The monster tore its attention away from the woman and spun toward the light as I slammed into it and put all of my weight behind Nydarth’s blade. The powerful strike broke through the squid’s natural defenses and pierced deep into its rubbery organs. I kicked the dying monster off the end of my blade and wheeled to face the panting civilian.
“They’re everywhere,” she moaned. “We can’t hope to hold them!”
A lamprey collapsed to the ground beside me as Vesma pulled her spear free. “Where the hells is the garrison of the clan guards?”
“Monsters. Everywhere,” the woman moaned again.
“Get inside and bar your door. Treat your injuries as best you can,” I ordered her. “We’ll cut down their numbers until the garrison gets here and re-takes control. Stay quiet and behind solid doors.”
The woman slammed the door behind her after she barreled inside.
“What’s the plan?” Vesma asked me. “We can’t kill every monster in the city.”
“The garrison has to be on the way,” I said as I scanned the street. “The monsters aren’t going after the people in the houses. As long as the citizens stay inside, they’re safe. We’ll clear everything we can on this street and hold it until the guards get here.”
“There are only two of us. How the hells are we going to manage that?”
“Easy. You take that side of the street.” I pointed behind us. “I’ll cover this side. We throw enough fire at them, it’ll work as a lure. They’ll be too busy with us to attack the citizens.”
A hard light glittered in her eyes, and she pushed Vigor along her weapon. In an instant, the blade of her spear flickered with flames. “Don’t get killed, Swordslinger,” she said.
I caught hold of her shoulder and kissed her quickly. “Two of us versus an army of monsters? That’s what I call a fair fight.”
She turned so that our backs were pressed together as a pack of lampreys dived from the nearby rooftops. The locals had barred themselves inside the buildings and left the street mostly clear. I covered my upper body and arms with a layer of Frozen Armor and turned to meet my new foes.
A lamprey latched onto me and hauled me in close to snap at my face with its toothed maw. I elbowed one of its claws off my shoulder and smashed it against a wall while Vesma stabbed another. A rapid stab through the gills finished the lamprey. I impaled two more of them with my spiked Plank Pillars, stunned one with a spray of Stinging Palm, and dispatched it with the Sundered Heart. Fire flared from Vesma’s spear as she pushed toward the other side of the street.
I caught a vicious claw on my ice-armored forearm, stabbed my attacker through the mouth, and shoulder-checked the dying monster into three more of its friends. Mist began to cloud around the lampreys as they fanned out to attack me from different angles. I countered their blanketing cloud with my own Ash Cloud and followed the sound of strained hissing until I found the monsters around me.
“Yes, sweet man, yes,” Nydarth murmured in my ear. “Use me. Take my power and make it yours. Show me just what you can do with this sword that was given to you.”
“You suddenly like the taste of the lampreys?”
“I have grown accustomed to it, yes.”
The claws of the lampreys skidded off my slippery armor as I sliced into their scaled flesh and spilled their blood and viscera over the pavestones. I ripped the Sundered Heart from the last corpse and turned to see Vesma retreat. Her chest heaved as she hauled in breath and composed herself.
“That’s the lampreys on the street,” she panted. “But look.”
Starsquids climbed the pagodas around us and hammered on the thin wooden blinds of the windows. I’d thought the citizens were safe inside their homes, but it seemed the tentacled monsters had adapted.
“There are so many of them,” Vesma said. “This isn’t a Vigorous Zone. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I can’t explain it,” I said, “but we have to make sure they don’t get inside.”
“I can’t scale walls; can you?”
I could have summoned a Plank Pillar beneath my feet, but there too many buildings with starsquids on them. I’d never kill them all in time. Once the monsters were inside the houses, it would be a massacre I couldn’t stop.
An Untamed Torch wouldn’t lure them all away either. I’d used Burning Wheel as a lure before, and I could always do that again, but it risked igniting the homes with the people inside them.
My eyes flitted over a squat shrine to our right with an open ceiling. Water streamed from fountains on every side of it. Large bowls used to light fires were barely visible inside the structure.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said to Vesma.
Flames flickered around her spear. “It better be good.”
“Follow me.”
I sprinted for the shrine and hit the door with a flying kick. The wood shattered under my weight, and I took the stairs up to the roof.
At the top was an open-air shrine, pillared and roofed but without walls. Statues in poses of veneration stood in the corners. A spring bubbled up from the middle of it and formed the waterfalls as it rushed out every side. A round platform surrounded the source of the rushing water and gave us a centerpoint to hold our ground. But it was the large steel bowls blackened by fire that had caught my attention from the street.
“Starsquids like fire,” I told Vesma breathlessly as I summoned an Untamed Torch.
Vesma’s eyes widened in understanding. She doused the flames on her spear by drawing the Vigor back inside her. Then, she raised her hand, and fire flashed between her fingers. We launched swift bursts of fireballs at the dead fuel within each of the steel sconces. Flames roared suddenly as our Augmentation techniques lit the torches anew. In moments, the shrine was suffused with an almost blinding incandescence.
I looked out, down one of the shrine’s waterfalls, and into the streets below. Sure enough, the flames had caught the attention of the starsquids. Dozens of them squirmed toward us in a mass of suckered tentacles as they left behind the pagodas and raced toward our elevated position at the roof of the shrine.
“Good thinking,” Vesma said. “Now, we’ve got all of them coming at us. At once.”
“Ah, it’ll be fine. This is just a warm up for us.”
“I like my warm-ups with a lot less squirming tentacles.”
“Don’t we all?”
The starsquids crawled up over the shrine edges and cut our banter short.
Vesma lunged at the first one and caught it through the eye with the point of her spear. She planted her feet and swung the monster toward me. I turned one of my gauntlets into a set of blunt knuckle dusters and slammed a punch into the starsquid’s icy carapace. The ice shattered, bounced off my cheek, and I ripped its stomach open with the Sundered Heart. Entrails splattered through the air and splashed into a fountain.
More starsquids
invaded the shrine, and Vesma ran in among them as fire flashed from her blade. The bright light instantly drew their attention. They grasped at her, but their tentacles found empty space as she twisted away and sliced barbed limbs from their owners.
I charged past a fountain, toward a starsquid, and put all of my force behind a kick. The blow connected with the monster, and it collapsed against one of the torches, scattering steaming coals over the floor. I found its throat with my blade and bathed the Sundered Heart in black blood. The air filled with a fine mist as the fire of the Sundered Heart melted the starsquids’ armor. There was a smell of burnt fish alongside the smoke of the torches as I engaged the monsters grappling their way up the side of the structure toward our bait.
Vesma cannoned past me as she used Untamed Torch as best she could. Direct fire techniques didn’t do much more than agitate the starsquids. I was about to tell her to focus her efforts on something else when she started using blasts of flame to propel herself from one side of the shrine to the other.
“New trick?” I yelled as I cut down a tentacled monster.
“You like it?”
Vesma used another fire blast to almost catapult herself into a pack of monsters. She hit them with all the force of a jousting knight on horseback. The starsquids scattered in a tangled mess of rubbery limbs, and she went to work on them with her spear.
If one got too close, then she would hit it with a powerful blow that knocked it back into my path and let me cut it down. If more than one closed in, she leaped out of the middle of them and bathed her spear in flames. The monsters sizzled as her weapon cleaved them apart.
Vesma continued to lead the creatures in a merry dance around the statues while I dealt with the stragglers clinging stubbornly to the edges of the shrine.
There was no end to the monsters. We were almost ankle-deep in rotting squid flesh and severed tentacles when Vesma lost her grip on her spear and leaned on the central fountain.
“I’m open to new ideas,” she said through ragged breaths.
A roar echoed through the shrine beneath our feet. Four fishfolk in green tabards raced up the stairs with barbed spears in hand. The starsquids rushed toward them, but the cavalry had finally arrived.
The newcomers used the reach and barbed heads of their spears to avoid monster tentacles. I severed limbs where I could as the armed fishfolk helped turn the odds. I saw a flash of coffee-colored skin and seashell braids before I heard a beautiful and familiar song. I felt water touch my skin and imbue me with renewed strength.
Kumi stood behind the guardsmen as her song thrummed powerfully from her chest. A fresh band of fishfolk guardsmen marched up the steps and took positions at each side of the shrine.
“I heard that I was missing out.” Kumi smiled as she helped Vesma to her feet. “Can’t let you outsiders take the claim for single-handedly winning back out city for us.”
The guards advanced and took on a new horde of the squids that had climbed into the shrine. They were joined by lampreys that filled the air with mist.
“Took you long enough!” I called to Kumi. “Where did these monsters come from?”
“We don’t know!” she shouted back as she drew her daggers from over her shoulders.”Our guards are clearing out the streets as we speak.”
“They missed some,” Vesma shot back.
“It appears they did,” Kumi agreed.
Vesma and I charged back into the fray. Kumi’s healing song and ribbons of water filled us with new energy and determination as we took on the newest wave of starsquids. Lampreys appeared behind them with their teeth bared in hungry grins.
“Your city has all the prettiest monsters!” I yelled to Kumi over the sizzle of cooking flesh and the thud of blows. “Why don’t you make statues of these?”
“We wouldn’t want to make every other city jealous,” she replied.
I shot a blast of thorns into the eyes of an onrushing starsquid. Its milky eyes burst, and the monster screeched as it swung a rippling mass of biting limbs. The barbed tentacles sliced through my Frozen Armor and tore it from my chest.
A half dozen starsquids pushed past the guards and closed a tightening circle around Vesma. She kept them at bay with rapid stabs from her flaming spear as she tried to cut through their armor and clear a path. Before I could jump to assist her, she rocketed herself into the air with another Untamed Torch pointed toward the ground, but a tentacle caught her around the ankle and slammed her into the floor.
“Vesma!” I yelled as I hacked down the starsquid in front of me with a spray of Stinging Palm thorns and a well-timed swipe across the creature’s face.
I summoned an Ash Cloud around the lampreys blocking my path and tore through their scaled flesh as they choked and swung blindly at their surroundings.
A starsquid raised its tentacles high, ready to bring them down on the fallen Vesma. Kumi appeared beside her like a guardian angel and drove a knife between two thrashing limbs. The tentacles went limp after her well-aimed strike. She ripped her weapon free before spinning gracefully around and delivering a deadly stab to another monster.
Together with the guards, we drove the invaders past the fountains, beyond the flaming braziers, and back toward the drop at the shrine’s edge.
“This beats all the cloak and dagger with the guild,” Vesma said.
A single starsquid broke from the pack and dragged itself toward a waterfall, but I sent a blast of fire from my hand that caught it in the back of the head. The lone monster spun as I closed in and punctured its rubbery skull with the Sundered Heart.
The guards cheered now that the shrine was rid of monsters.
“We’re not done yet,” Kumi said. “We have to regroup with the others and drive the monsters from the city.” She turned to Vesma and me. “Your efforts will not be forgotten, travelers.”
“Oh, we’re not done,” Vesma retorted.
“We’ll continue fighting while your people are endangered,” I said to the princess.
“Thank you.” Kumi bowed her head ever so slightly. “Then, let’s proceed.”
I followed Kumi and the guards down the shrine toward the street.
My gut was snarling at me for food. All the Vigor in the world couldn’t distract me from the fact that I hadn’t eaten since last night, and it’d been a hard, long day.
“If only I could satiate you, Ethan,” Nydarth whispered to me.
“You never told me you could cook,” I whispered under my breath. I heard the dragon spirit’s quiet chuckle in my mind as I stepped back out onto the street.
More guards joined our party, and they provided a brief report to the princess.
“The city has been cleared,” a soldier said to her. “We’ll continue searching the buildings for any stray monsters.”
“Thank you,” Kumi said as she cast a look around the street.
The stone bricks were barely visible beneath mountains of twitching monster limbs, fishfolk corpses, black blood, and monster entrails. Blood tainted the water that coursed in small streams beside the street. It didn’t stop the residents of the city from cheering as they emerged from their homes and saw us standing at the shrine steps.
A little fish girl ran up to Vesma and wrapped her arms around her leg.
“Thank you for saving my mummy,” she said. “The gods are good to send you.”
Vesma looked down at the girl uncomfortably. “We’re not—”
“The gods are good indeed, little one,” Kumi said as she sent the girl back to her mother.
“They know we’re not really from the gods, right?” I asked.
Kumi just smiled mysteriously. “Aren’t you?”
“I really hope the gods put sushi on their cosmic list of shit they wanted to hit me with,” I said. “If I see another starsquid today, I’m probably going to eat it.”
Kumi smiled a little but didn’t laugh. “Come. I’ll take you to meet my father. He’ll have you fed, if nothing else.”
We followed th
e princess to a set of wooden inner-city gates that led toward a steep path. The monsters hadn’t reached this far, and it was almost possible to believe none had attacked the city. Our destination was clear: an opulent palace in gleaming white carved into the side of a cliff.
“Someone sent the monsters here,” Kumi said. “I have an idea who.”
“Guildmaster Horix?” I asked.
“Indeed.”
“Have you any proof?”
“No,” the princess said as I walked alongside her. “But I will find it.”
As we ascended the mountain, I reached into my diminished pool of Vigor. Energy rippled through my most-recently created internal pathways and formed Sunlight Ichor. Honey-like sap bubbled from my skin and collected over a dozen or so small injuries from the monster fight. The ichor caught the sunlight, and my skin stitched itself back together with a warm itching sensation.
“That’s a neat trick,” Vesma said with a jealous smile. “Faryn teach you that?”
“Faryn’s taught me a lot of things,” I teased her, “but no, not this one.”
The mountain parth gave way to a winding set of stairs that took us up toward the palace.
“Something isn’t right,” Kumi said when we reached the halfway point. “We haven’t met a single guard on the way up the mountain.”
The princess suddenly burst into action, leaping over steps four at a time. I followed after her, Vesma close behind me. As we drew closer to the palace, small rivulets of blood slid down the carved steps. Kumi accelerated her pace, and I had trouble keeping up with her.
“And you thought the battle was over,” Nydarth said, her tone drowning in smugness.
Kumi slowed before pausing at a group of figures laying on the steps. I reached her in a second and noted that the figures were Qihin fishfolk bearing the same uniforms as the soldiers following closely behind us. Neatly sliced spears laid scattered next to them, and blood soaked their uniforms. A soldier twitched, forced open her eyes, and forced her head up.
“Your Highness,” the guard croaked as Kumi kneeled beside her. The princess cradled the poor woman’s head. Blood bubbled out of her mouth with each word. “Vampiric anglers. We couldn’t stop them. They’re heading toward… toward…”
