“So what did she say?” the dark-haired Satellite asked as she popped a slice of orange into her mouth.
“She said ‘Oh, Breena, you get so dramatic when you’re stressed. Fine, we’ll have it your way, and if it actually turns out just like you say, I’ll give you an apology right in front of Guineve and Wes.”
“And were you right?” Via asked, like it was the only news she had in months.
“It happened the very next time I saw him,” Breena said after she swallowed. “Two bets in one day! Oh, hey, Wes,” she said as she turned to me. “Breakfast is ready. We brought you some.” She pointed to a third plate that had everything but pastries on it. “Sorry, they didn’t make enough sweet stuff for the two of you.”
“How did you sleep?” Via asked, brushing strands of her curly hair out of her face.
“Pretty well, actually,” I admitted, and I really did feel refreshed. “How about you two?”
“Fantastic,” Via said with a smile. “I have not slept that well in so very long.”
“Same here,” Breena said with a smile of her own. “I guess you were right, Wes. We all needed a break. Glad we could all take it at the same time.”
Then my fairy companion looked at me, then Via, then back at me.
“I’m going to go get some fresh air. If they need either of you, I’ll let you know.”
Then the little fairy flew off.
I was finally alone with Stell’s local Satellite, a woman who had been this world’s only protector for who knew how long.
“Hey,” I said awkwardly.
“Hey, yourself,” Via said, smirking a little. “Did we both forget to say hello earlier?”
“Um, maybe?” I hedged. “There was sort of a ship battle and a bunch of other stuff.”
“Aye, ya,” she said uncomfortably. “Like how I called you a pendejo, instead of thanking you for your help when you showed up.”
“Meh,” I shrugged. “I can pretend I don’t know what that word means, and it’s not the worst greeting I’ve had from one of you. Merada actually tried to kill me when I showed up in the Woadlands.”
“Really?” Via gasped. “She was that mad?”
“No idea,” I shrugged. “I think she thought I was an imposter. She had gotten a lot of those, apparently.”
“Ya, Stell mentioned that once.” Via nodded. “They didn’t bother doing it here, though. No idea why.”
“Has Stell been able to visit you much?” I asked. But the dark olive-skinned woman shook her head.
“Just a few times. About once every ten years. She never stayed long, just enough to get a brief update, drop off supplies, and pour as much power into me as she dared—which was almost nothing. She did say you had gotten free on her last visit, though.”
I nodded.
“She told me that you’ve had it rough here. Looks like you’ve been holding a lot together without any help.”
Via shook her head.
“No, I’ve been losing this world piece by piece. Nothing to be proud of about that, ya?”
The events of my last dream came back to me.
“If I were you, I’d feel the exact same way,” I admitted. “And until recently, I wouldn’t realize it would be wrong. But let’s talk about what you’re dealing with right now. What’s left, and what are we up against?”
“A dozen islands are all that’s left,” Via said bitterly, holding her face in her hands. “The major port cities were all looted and burned. At least a third of their people were killed or enslaved. The Icons and I were able to save the rest. Then that… that monstruo began appearing. It would follow the Malus men, attacking in their wake. Sometimes it would strike an island before their ships arrived, cover it up with that black cloud, and then disappear with all of the people. Other times it would show up and take both the Malus ships and the people they were after. Sometimes it went after islands we thought were completely safe. Each time, the people would disappear. Sometimes the animals and crops would, too. Other times, they would be poisoned along with the nearby water.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, not knowing what else to say. “Do you know what that thing is?”
Via shook her head.
“I don’t think it’s a Dark Icon,” she replied. “It doesn’t care about getting worshippers, and it attacks the Horde just as often as it attacks people. It kills them outright, as far as I can tell, because most of the bodies look to be Horde. No monster like it has ever been to the Sun-Jeweled Seas before, not in Stell’s memory. I got close to it once, but all I was able to make out was a burning shape and a strange chant.”
“You heard it, too?” I asked as I leaned forward. “We ran from it on the way here.”
“If I hadn’t seen your ship, I wouldn’t have believed you could escape,” The Latina woman shook her head. “I’ve only been able to get people away because of my Water magic. Certain spells repulse it. Fresh water ones, I think. I wish I knew why.”
“You said you heard a chant when you came near it,” I said slowly. “Were you able to make out any of the words?”
“Maybe,” Via said cautiously. “I don’t remember whether most of them were gibberish or if I was just so focused on getting people to safety that I couldn’t remember them afterwards. I just remember the words at the end of it: nuckelavee, nuckelavee.”
Nuckelavee… Nuckelavee…
The word bounced around my head, knocking around my brain until it hit a certain spot that made everything click.
“Name,” I said suddenly. “It’s the monster’s name.”
“Could be,” Via hedged, tilting her head at me. “But why are you so sure?”
“Earth myth,” I answered, the old school project coming back to my mind. I forgot why, but I had been doing a presentation on rare monsters from rarely remembered myths, and the Nuckelavee was one I dug up. I did my best to forget my research afterwards, though, because the monster had been total nightmare fuel to my middle-school-aged brain. “It was a demon of the sea. Near the northern Scottish isles. One of the bigger ones in that culture. Was a monster of fire and poison.”
My enhanced brain tried to give more information on the subject, but the creature’s appearance probably wouldn’t help Via. Not right now, at least. “It refused to cross a running body of fresh water, and the smell of burning kelp sent it into a rage. Droughts and famines were blamed on it.”
Via made a face.
“Thanks,” she said to me. “It’s still weird, though.”
“What?” I asked in confusion. “The monster itself, or the fact that my world had a legend about it, despite never encountering anything that powerful?”
Because something strong enough to depopulate an entire magical world shouldn’t have had any problem with Dark Age peasants.
“I mean it’s weird that your world has so many legends about monsters that have supposedly never been to it,” Via explained. “It’s happened with a number of Challengers. We show you some rare and horrifying monster, and you guys always go ‘oh, look, a werewolf,’ or ‘oh my gosh, sea serpents are actually real!’ Then Stell goes into a research craze and tries to get to the bottom of the matter. And she always finds that, aside from a few untrustworthy sightings, there’s no proof whatsoever that the monster the Challenger knew about ever existed. And it happens even with monsters that Stell had never shown a Challenger before, so it can’t be that some of you are going back home and telling everyone about them. Your people just have legends about them anyway, and we’ve never been able to figure out why.”
That was weird. I thought I remembered Stell and Breena bringing up that fact before. I had just figured that my people had been bored enough to make up so many monsters that they actually came up with stories about real ones that existed somewhere else. But after uncovering my hidden memories and the secrets beneath Avalon, I realized there might be more to it.
“Anyway,” Via said, returning to her story. “The thing was too much for us to handle. Maybe if
the Icons hadn’t been so spent in battling the other Tumults that struck, it might have been different. Maybe not. I don’t know. But when they went against the thing’s poison, they disappeared as well. Triton was the only one who made it back, but only as a vestige.”
A vestige was the remnant of an Icon that survived death. Given enough time, the quasi-deity would manage to regenerate, assuming it could stay safe. But it would be powerless to help in any way, possibly not even strong enough for providing conversation, during the regeneration process.
“How exactly is the monster so strong?” I asked. “Or are you even able to tell?”
“We’re not,” Via said with another shake of her head. “We can drive it away with fresh water spells, but only long enough to escape. When the Icons tried to do more, the black cloud swept over them, and that was the last I saw of them. I don’t know whether the monster beat them in combat directly, or if the cloud’s poison got them. I can’t figure out what to do,” she said with a shudder, dropping her head into her hands. “All I can do is fight off the Horde when they appear to capture people, and stay one step ahead of the... of the Nuckelavee.”
“Okay,” I said calmly. I wanted to reach over and comfort her, and indeed, I could feel Teeth rousing and demanding that I do just that. But from what I knew of Stell, she usually didn’t appreciate a shoulder to lean on. Not at first, at least. “I think we should have a talk with the Atlanteans, and figure out if they know anything about the monster. They didn’t recognize it earlier, but if you can share what you know about it, then maybe something will jog their memories. Worst case scenario, we still gather up all your people and transport them to Avalon, where they can be safe.”
“That...” Via started to say. “That actually helps. Thank you…” she made another face. “It’s Wes, right?”
She actually hadn’t said my name yet, even though she had both heard me say it and connected with me over the mindlink. Revealing new knowledge makes her shy, I realized, going over my own impressions of her when we had connected before. If she wasn’t still so stressed, she’d probably be asking all kinds of questions right now.
“Wes Malcolm of Earth and Avalon, at your service,” I said with a corny smile. “I’m sure you already knew.”
“Yah, yah,” she said, relaxing enough to roll her eyes. “It’s a funny name, okay? I just wanted to make sure I said it right.”
And tease me. She had relaxed enough to tease me.
“Well, your name’s Via, right?” I asked. “Because I’ve been calling you that for over a day. If you don’t want it to stick, now’s the time to correct me.”
“She was right,” the dark-haired woman rolled her eyes again. “You are goofy. At any rate. Back to business. This ship,” her eyes gleamed as she leaned forward. “It’s amazing. Where did you find it? Why do you have a crew of Atlanteans? How do you know so much magic? And why does the Horde call you a traitor-prince, and where did you find that cute miracle jelly, and—”
“Time out,” I interrupted. “That’s too many at once.”
“Not for your mindlink,” she said without missing a beat. “Why don’t you use that all the time? And how did you get it? Was it something you could always do? Did someone else teach you?”
“It’s made primarily for combat,” I said quickly, since she had stopped talking long enough to take a breath. “I don’t think it’s meant for massive info dumps, although we have risked using it like that in the past. I got the ability after I killed a couple of other Earthborn. Killed them on Avalon, I mean,” I specified quickly. “I never killed anyone before I left Earth, and uh… never mind. You win. We’ll try using the mindlink to bring you up to speed, but be careful,” I cautioned. The link had been perfectly fine in the past, but this was the first time I had ever found anyone so excited about using it. It wasn’t exactly a feature I could stress-test, so to speak, and I was afraid Via wouldn’t be careful enough.
But she was right. There was a lot of material to cover and we didn’t have all day. And so far we’d been able to exchange complex tactics through the link without giving anyone cancer or anything else. So I opened up the link just a little, and took her through a condensed version of the questions she mentioned, starting with my encounter with the Horde, the ambush from the Malus Men, and the battles to retake Avalon and then the Woadlands. The whole thing had taken about fifteen minutes, because I still wanted to be careful with the magic and because Via kept tugging on something for more information every five or six seconds.
That stopped when I began describing my time of captivity. She grew quiet at that, and didn’t press for more information when I glossed over what deaths I remembered. I felt a little apprehension from her when she saw my Battleform, and again when she realized that my dungeon had Oceanfolk among the captives, but other than that, she did her best to project respectful silence. I could tell she was still curious about my dragonform, and she was definitely uncomfortable about Avalon proclaiming me as a Planetary Lord, but she still didn’t do more than send a polite tug on something she genuinely needed to know a little more about.
Especially when I went over Breena and Merada’s victories over Cavus.
Finally, though, I finished. I became conscious of the time, and felt it odd that no one had come down to disturb us.
“Thank you,” Via said quietly. “And I’m sorry. Again. I did not realize you were suffering so much while I was waiting for you.”
“Forgiven,” I said calmly. “And I’m sorry you’ve been suffering, too.”
“It feels like you’ve done so much more,” the woman said bitterly. “Saving worlds. Becoming a dragon. Helping the other pieces of me overcome our old nightmare. I didn’t even know that could be possible.”
“There was a trick to it,” I replied, “and I think I’m not the only one that can do it.”
“Really?” Via said, still sounding bitter. “A trick that let you handle having everything against you?”
“Yep,” I replied, “that’s actually the trick. I realized that if everything was against me, then just getting through the day would be overcoming a challenge.”
She froze at that.
I had to remind myself that Avalon’s sister worlds were familiar with Rising, and that they had formed comfortable patterns with using the power. The people kept thinking that only certain things counted as Challenges, like intense personal goals or saving lives. And like me, they didn’t realize that some Challenges only granted power after the victor became aware of the fact that they had just gone through one, and others granted power that one couldn’t easily recognize. During the dream I’d had last night, right after my most recent Rise, I realized that I had been guilty of the same thing. Oh, sure, I had relied on the power I had gained from doggedly choosing to survive most days, if not every single one of them. But I had still downplayed the Challenges I had faced in my mind, partly to help block out the pain of those memories.
Like Via, though, I had been a much greater hero than I thought I was. But unlike me, she was coming to the proper conclusion far faster than I had.
I saw her eyes move left and right, felt her ponder everything through the mindlink. Then, her mouth set as she made some kind of decision, and she closed her eyes.
A moment later, she pushed.
I saw green Woadfire flare around her body for the briefest of instances, followed by water swirling around her. The next moment, her body shimmered as if it was coated in iridescent scales. Then it returned to its normal dark olive color, and Via opened her eyes.
“That was…” she began, then shook her head. “Different. That was different. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to Rise, even with everything going on.”
I nodded. Stell had explained that Rising was difficult for Starsown, since they were usually one person spread out among multiple bodies.
“And you’re right,” she told me, smiling again. “I’ve been doing a better job than I thought I did. People are still alive
. Far more than there would have been without me. Thank you. For helping me see that.”
“You chose to,” I said frankly, “And you chose to, quickly, without a lot of insecure wallowing. You’re brave,” I finished bluntly.
“And you’re sweet,” she told me with another smile. “In a really clumsy way.” She stuck out her tongue at me. “Are you ready to go upstairs?”
“Sure,” I said. “But I’m surprised no one has come up to get us yet.”
“That’s because I talked to your captain before breakfast,” the Satellite told me. “Gave him course corrections and everything. He said that was all he needed. And I think he got tired of me asking so many questions about his ship’s glyphs.”
“I haven’t had much time to ask,” I admitted. “So you should tell me what you were able to pry out of him. Especially since I suspect you know Script magic too.”
That comment made her happy, and started a rapid discussion on Water magic, Script magic, Shaping magic, and Via’s thoughts on how all three of those arts tied in to glyph magic.
It was actually pretty neat, and as we headed upstairs, I found that Via had a much greater tolerance for my own curiosity than Breena did. She even brought up her thoughts about combining the different Saga magics, and she wanted to know how long I had been using my Script magic to augment my Ideal spells.
We were still chatting rapidly with each other by the time we emerged onto the ship deck. Most of the crew gave us little more than a glance as they went about their business, but Gabin was watching our conversation with an increasingly worried look. The Testifiers, however, were watching our approach in the same manner a man with a broken leg might watch an oncoming train. Breena, for her part, had gone completely pale, her glow dimming all the way out.
“Of course,” she muttered weakly. “How could I forget… of all of Stell’s Satellites, the most likely to be as crazy as he is…”
Lighting Distant Shores (Challenger's Call Book 4) Page 41
