Chapter One #2
lions seized pails of water and flung them at the flames. Many burned and fell.
Through it all, the ship kept moving, slicing a wide river
across the sand. Even if the wheel and navigator were now burning to ash, the
vessel would still carry its momentum.
It was heading right for him.
Before he could fully regain his strength, Isaac grabbed another
scroll and attempted to run laterally, hoping to escape the vessel’s path. The
pirates on the bow began to loose their crossbows.
Isaac felt a dozen bolts whistle past his head as he kicked his way through the
loose sand, creating a graveyard of buried shafts. One missile nearly took him
in the shoulder, and he dove to the sand, the bare skin of his hands scorching
upon contact. He scrambled by the sleeves of his robes, barely dodging several
more bolts.
As the broadside of the ship presented itself, Isaac got
back to his feet, unfurling the last scroll in his possession.
Wind.
This was the same sigil that powered their ship. It was much
simpler to cast. He felt years of his uncle’s lessons came back to him at once,
all the careful study and painful instruction.
He had trained his entire life for this moment.
Isaac pulled out the last dregs of his energy. In one smooth
motion, he cocked his arm, bent his fingers, adopted the proper sigil, and
flung himself forward, spewing a massive hurricane from the palm of his hand.
An instant later, the left broadside of the pirate vessel exploded in a shower
of splinters, rope, and blood. Planks and bodies rained across the sand. The
bilge of the ship immediately shattered open, sinking below the sand. All the
magical momentum was arrested in seconds. As the front buried itself deeper,
the flaming stern leaped into the air, nearly three tons of wood and sail
rising like a bucking horse, the entire vessel ripping in half from the
shearing force of its own weight and speed. In seconds, the skimmer was reduced
to pieces, several flaming decks tumbling across the sand like the chunks of a
bee’s hive, nearly a dozen zoanthrope bodies twisting between nets, broken
planks, and the tumbling blocks of cargo.
As the ship blew apart, Isaac collapsed into the sand,
breathing desperately hard. Blackness creeped at the edge of his vision. He had
cast several powerful spells in short succession, and now all he could do was
gasp for air and watch the pieces of the ship roll across the sand. Somewhere,
he was amazed that he was still alive.
For a minute, the pirate vessel settled into the sands,
burning and splintered. On the fallen sail, the magical sigil for wind
continued to glow and flutter in the breeze. Isaac felt a moment of relief.
Slowly, the pirates began to emerge.
A sizable fraction of the crew were now clawing their way
from the burning wreckage—lions slithering from the broken decks, foxes
stomping through the rigging and sails, even a few hyenas scrambling over the
spire of the upturned prow. A few of the zoanthropes had previously leaped from
the ship as it was set to flame, and now they were making their way along the
deep sand, hissing at the heat on their shoeless paws.
As he watched, a legion of activity began to emerge around
the fallen ship. Isaac kept his body prone in the sand, despite the burns on
his skin. Many of the surviving pirates were injured, but the vast majority
were still armed, and he did not fancy his chances trying to outrun them
through the sand. His best hope now would be to slink away unnoticed.
“There he is!”
Isaac cursed.
Suddenly, several of the walking beasts pointed in his
direction. A lioness kicked some burning debris out of her way, snarling at
him, raising a cutlass into the light of the sun. A male fox used his halberd
to steady his balance as he limped across the sand. Two hyenas jumped down from
the half-buried deck of the ship, baring their teeth and maces.
Isaac tried to get back to his feet, tried to ready himself
for battle, but his strength was nearly gone. He had poured too much energy
into his magic. All he could do was weakly pull himself along the sand, trying
to crawl away.
“Gut him!” the lioness shouted. “Cock to throat!”
“Watch the arms!” the male hyena yelled. “Don’t let him
cast!”
Isaac continued to crawl, sand leaking between his fingers.
He never imagined he would die this way. He had spent his life preparing for
this mission. He had suffered for years beneath his uncle’s lessons, mastering
the arts of magic and alchemy. All this time, he had hoped to die in battle
against a fellow mage, not be tortured and cut apart by a band of common
pirates before he had even reached the grave at all.
There would be no one to rescue his father now. It was all
for nothing.
His entire life had been wasted.
They were close. He felt the growl of a lion, the hissing of
a fox. With his hands burning in the sand, Isaac stopped crawling, gathered the
last of his strength, and flipped himself over.
At the very least, they would not stab him in the back.
By now, a male hyena stood above him, blood leaking down
from his furry fingers onto the haft of his mace. Sharp, half-rotted teeth
flashed in his snout. He was large enough to block out the morning sun,
providing the first bit of shade Isaac had felt in hours. The mace he wielded
was covered in ornamental flanges and jeweled knobs. It looked ridiculously
gaudy in the zoanthrope’s hands, which Isaac could only guess meant that the
hyena had robbed it from an equally gaudy knight.
It seemed like such a stupid way to die.
Was this really it?
Isaac had studied battle injuries. He knew how easy it was
to crush a human skull. In the hands of a strong warrior, a mace could be swung
with great force. As the zoanthrope raised the weapon high, Isaac found himself
remembering a lesson on medicine taught by his uncle, identifying the various
bones of the skull. He saw his mentor’s face reflected in the candlelight.
He closed his eyes.
There was a crash behind them. Wood splintered and flew. The
male hyena stopped, his mace drifting down. In the wreckage, flaming debris
began to churn behind sections of the hull.
Suddenly, another hyena smashed through the flaming wood. Her
clothes were in tatters, forming a loose collection of fabric and leather that
only barely concealed her fur. Her long mohawk of hair was coated in shining
blood. In her hands, she held a poleaxe, the steel also stained a colorful red,
and on her wrists there was a broken set of manacles, the chains dangling down
like a pair of snakes.
“She escaped!” the lioness shouted.
“Get the prisoner!” a fox yelled.
“Kill her!”
The hyena roared and charged, hefting her poleaxe high. Most
of the pirates turned to face her. She swung down at the closest opponent with
such vicious force that it shattered the haft of his halberd, nearly cleaving
the fox in half down through the groin. She kicked a foot into his chest as the
zoanthrope’s legs buckled, yanking her axe blade free with a sliding of
entrails. Two lions moved in to engage with short swords and cutlasses, and she
met their challenge with a screaming sweep of steel.
The hyena above Isaac hesitated. His mace fell further. For
a moment, he could only stare in horror at the rampaging prisoner.
Isaac seized the chance.
He pulled a phylactery from his pack and threw it at the
pirate. The glass vial shattered across his chest. Immediately, the leather
armor began to deform and twist, erupting with a hissing smoke, and the hyena’s
confusion turned to panic as the acid ate down into his flesh. He flailed,
dropping his mace, snarling in pain, desperately trying to untie the straps of
his armor. While he was distracted, Isaac dove forward, grabbing the mace from
the sand.
He struck the hyena’s knee, feeling a sharp crunch through
the haft. The hyena screamed as he fell into the sand, twisting in agony. Isaac
stumbled over to him, barely able to stand, and lifted the mace above his head.
The first blow crushed the zoanthrope’s snout, spraying teeth and blood. The
second caved in his skull. Despite this, the pirate continued to gurgle and
twitch. Isaac struck a third time, and the movement finally stopped.
A short distance away, a lioness pulled her attention away
from the escaped hyena to see Isaac standing over her fallen comrade. She
roared at him, loud enough for him to feel it in his chest, rushing with a
curved sword. Isaac had no proficiency in martial weapons, so he immediately
dropped the mace and cast a spell.
The pirate reached him just as bolts of ice flew from the
tips of his fingers. With his hand shaking in exhaustion, two of the bolts
sailed wide, but the other three managed to catch the lioness squarely in the
chest, piercing through the leather breastplate and shattering into shards. She
gasped, feline eyes going wide. The pull of her lungs only stabbed the ice
deeper. She stumbled, still lurching ahead, and, for just a moment, Isaac
feared she would manage to gut him with her sword—instead, she tried to lift
the blade, coughed up blood, and collapsed into the sand, groaning and choking.
Isaac fell beside her. His body was completely spent, and he
hovered on the edge of oblivion. For a while, all he could feel was the sand on
his face and the heat of the sun on his back.
Slowly, he became aware that the sounds of fighting had
stopped.
He lifted his head. The female hyena—the escaped
prisoner—stood alone amongst a pool of bodies, leaning her poleaxe into the
sand as she fought for breath. Her spotted fur was covered in blood. After a
few heaves of her chest, she stood up to her full height, wiping her face with
a leather pauldron, her muscular form outlined by the fires of the broken ship.
A moment later, she raised her arm and began to bite at the shackle still
clasped around her wrist, teasing and nipping at the metal like a wild animal
gnawing at carrion.
Isaac watched her work at her former restraints, his body
half-buried in the sand. Once again, he tried to keep as still as possible.
This beastwoman had almost singlehandedly killed the rest of the pirates, and
he did not want to become part of her rampage. She bit and tore at her wrist,
furiously working the metal, her lip curling with every snap of her snout.
Isaac attempted to reach into his pack.
The movement caught her eye.
All at once, she turned, looking directly at him. Isaac met
her gaze. She lowered her jaws from her manacles, studying him. He watched her
back, unable to do much else. For a long moment, the only sound was the roar of
a dozen burning fires.
She hefted her poleaxe and began to walk his way.
Isaac tried to stand. His legs were completely limp. It felt
like manipulating a puppet. The massive hyena never changed her pace as he
desperately struggled back to his feet.
“Human!”
Isaac managed to reach his knees.
“Yield!” she called out. “I’ll show mercy!”
Isaac grabbed the mace from the sand. It was enormously
heavy, far heavier than his books had ever implied. He could hardly keep it
steady in his hands.
The hyena flashed a hint of teeth. It might have been a
smile. “Come now. You can barely stand.”
Isaac could barely grip the mace’s haft through the sweat
and grit in his hands. The heat of the sand had blistered much of his skin. As
the zoanthrope drew closer, he began to realize that she had at least two heads
of height above his own, along with the musculature and stamina endemic to her
breed of people. She could likely gut him with the tipped spear of her poleaxe
before he even thought of lifting his mace.
She slowed her walk, stopping just out of reach. Her brown,
slitted eyes seemed to regard the weapon in his hand. Her teeth flashed again,
and he was now sure that it was, indeed, a smile.
“You ever held one of those before?” she asked, amused.
Isaac could only breathe, trying not to collapse.
Her amusement faded. “Don’t throw your life away, human.
That mace ain’t your cock. Don’t swing it where it don’t belong.”
Isaac blew hair from his eye.
“Yield,” she said.
“No,” Isaac replied. “Never.”
She blew a breath through her nose, the fires of her former
ship burning behind her. Embers drifted down past her bloodied mohawk,
reflecting in her eyes. With a quiet sigh, she shifted her axe, stepping
forward.
Isaac swung the mace. It clashed off the haft
of her weapon, splintering the wood. She heaved her poleaxe, shunting it up,
ending the cross with a burst of strength. Isaac stumbled back, nearly twisting
his ankle in the sand, desperately trying to renew his stance.
The last thing he saw was the haft
of her polearm flying towards his face.