Chapter 42
We travel low, then rise gradually. The ocean goes from black to blue, and then I’m above the surface, only a little dizzy, blinking away the bright sun while my left arm grips the kraken’s tentacle.
My familiar’s head slowly rises from the water beside me, breaching the surface like an entire island rising from the depths.
Waves of water crash down off of him. In the sunlight he's the color of rust.
Seven Hellions are in front of me, the ship’s hulking frames rising up from the water like mountains. An eighth Hellion is sinking, its prow burning as it slowly drags down beneath the ocean.
I recognize Gut and Triumph; solid, reliable ships that have gained enough intelligence from draining the Enchanted to have their own naval ranks.
There are a few old ships whose names I barely remember, unremarkable Hellions that can deal heavy damage but cost an expensive amount of life to power. And at the front?
Rancor, former pride of the War-Father, the six-masted ship Harfor brought to the Bluff.
This is barely a quarter of the imperial fleet.
And while I’m not sure I could recognize Aveinor from the outside, there aren’t any mountains in sight.
Where are we? There are only two dragons overhead.
I can see a green blur up in the clouds, but my focus is on Sava.
Powerful, vicious, and fast. She plunges toward the ships, head tilting left as her jaw opens. Fire crackles out from her mouth.
A blast of blue light stabs out from the Hellion, faster than my eye can track. Sava’s attack cuts off as she barrels over, narrowly dodging the blast. Another follows on its heels and she’s forced to rise higher, out of range of the ships. My heart’s in my throat.
I hope the imperial fleet split up, and then so did the dragons. Although it would be a massive victory if we’d gotten them down to just these Hellions, if the other dragons haven't split off it would mean we lost them.
“I need to get onboard,” I say, pointing to the burning ship.
That one is already defeated, little knight.
“There could be Enchanted they didn’t drain,” I snap as my blood pounds. “We don’t have long before it’s gone.”
I can feel he’s still uncertain. The tentacle coils around my waist. For twenty years, he believed I was dead.
“The fire won’t hurt me,” I tell him, and shove a vision of my burning room into his head. “Hurry.”
Be careful, little knight.
His tentacle carries me up over the ship’s hull, where the fire hasn’t reached yet.
It’s chaos on board. The fire roars to my left.
Sailors plunge overboard, risking reapers or drowning to escape the flames as the ship goes down.
Two groups fight over a rowboat. One man sprints directly into the flames.
I break into a desperate run the moment my feet touch the ground, dragging on the kraken’s power to strengthen my limbs and cover more ground.
It doesn’t work as well as the armor used to. Not because of the volume of power, but because I only have my own limbs, not metal that’s been inscribed with enchantment marks.
I whip around the deck to plunge down the rear stairs. The berth is empty. The oil lanterns still flicker on the walls. By the time I find the bunkroom water sloshes up around my ankles. I rip the door open and step inside to the dark room, heart pounding.
There’s no hum of power. No strand of enchantment. Whatever knight rode this Hellion, he drained every single one of them to defend the ship against the dragons. I came down here for nothing. I grip the doorframe and stare into the dark.
Too late. I’m too late.
A scream rips from my throat, guttural and raw, not grief but rage at how pointlessly these lives have been wasted.
Come back, little knight, the kraken warns as the water rises up around my knees. It’s moving fast.
I wade through it to the stairs and sprint up as the dark water rises after me. The entrance back onto the deck is wreathed in flames. Gritting my teeth, I pump my arms and run up the stairs towards it.
As my head clears the stairs, the ship shakes and wrenches down into the water. The kraken’s tentacle plunges it down to extinguish the flames. I kick my legs like Roiven taught me, trying to reach the surface. The kraken grabs me with another tentacle and whisks me away from the wreckage.
I rise to the surface in time to see a blast of blue fire shearing toward us.
“Kraken!” I scream. He’s a big target, even bigger than Sava.
The kraken shoves me under water, so fast and hard that I can feel the pressure pushing against my body as dizziness washes over me.
Through it, I feel the blow hit. Not me.
Kraken. Pain, so fierce it doesn’t allow any other thoughts, bursts over us both.
“No,” I scream, into the air bubble he brought along with me.
Bright blue blood swirls in the water above me.
They’ve hit one of his tentacles. The kraken thrashes, sending shockwaves across the surface of the ocean.
I watch him drag the Hellion named Gut down into the deep, crushing the ship’s frame so it can’t rise again.
“What are you doing?” I shriek. “There are innocent people on that ship!”
I kick my legs like Roiven showed me, keeping them straight beneath me, and rise up toward the surface. The kraken’s tentacle pushes beneath me, helping me ascend. When my head bursts above water I cough through gritted teeth. My ears are pounding.
Those bottom feeders have become stronger, the kraken says, his thoughts laced with pain.
“How badly did it hurt you?”
It is far from deadly. But it stings worse than a venomous coral.
If they were to hit him enough times, in enough places…
You cannot live in fear, the kraken reminds me.
Another blast comes toward us, aimed for my familiar and not me; I doubt they can even see me, with how small a target I am. The kraken’s head sinks further under water, avoiding the blow, but he holds me up above the surface where I can see.
“You can’t go after the ships,” I rasp.
Then how do you intend to kill them?
I heave air and wipe the sea water from my eyes, turning to look at the landscape of the battle.
Sava swoops over a ship, roaring and then shooting fire that crackles over the ship’s shield.
If the kraken destroys a ship, the Enchanted die.
But if I board and attack, the ship’s knight will drain the Enchanted fighting against me.
Unless I can kill them fast enough.
“That one,” I rasp, pointing at one of the old Hellions. They’ll carry more Enchanted since they take more work to power. “Put me there. And reach over this side of the ship first, so the other Hellions don’t see—”
Do not teach me strategy, little knight, he says, amused instead of annoyed.
I can still feel traces of his pain from the blow.
“Be careful, won’t you, kraken?”
You could use my name, you know. I am Hafgúa. Though I am sometimes also called ‘Holy Gods, What is That, Oh Fuck, Ten Hells’ by human sailors.
“Cai. Caiteven.”
Yes, I do remember. I've known you your whole life, little knight.
The kraken’s tentacle squeezes a little tighter again. I think it’s supposed to be a hug.
It’s time. His tentacle shoots up, stretching over a hundred feet into the sky to deposit me on top of a Hellion for the first time in years.
I crash down in a wave of water, on one knee.
Sailors scatter, sprinting for the other edge of the ship.
Surprise and speed are the only chance I have to save the Enchanted, before the ship’s knight can channel too heavily and drain them.
The only other way to save them would be to take out the ship’s spear to stop him from channeling altogether, but those are so heavily enchanted that there’s no way to do it while facing down the knight.
The ship’s knight has seen me. He’s over by the spear, but he turns and sprints towards me as the kraken removes his tentacle. I recognize him as Odiren, a man knighted a decade before me, from the blue braided metal around his shoulder pauldrons.
Odiren charges. As I rise, I draw my sword.
I reach for the kraken’s power and find there’s nothing to key into.
It’s just there, an immense well of strength at my command.
I pull the same way I used to channel a Hellion, and send a ring of fire like a blade slicing out around me.
The fire washes harmlessly over Odiren’s armor, but he falters all the same. He’s recognized me.
And realized I didn’t die on the Bluff like Harfor must have said I did.
Once, I was the best of the knights. And now, I’m going to be their downfall.
Odiren regains his footing, sword drawn and held straight out in front of him. He charges like he’s going to impale me on it.
He’s strong and fast, but not very agile. That was always his weakness on the training mat. Pulling on the kraken’s power I haul myself to the side, leaping out of his path before turning and launching myself at his back. Odiren begins to spin, sword glinting as it slashes in an arc.
I leap with a roar and drive my sword into his eyeslit, my legs wrapping around his waist. Odiren’s sword clatters to the ground.
As he collapses, I disentangle and roll on my good shoulder, glad Roiven secured my right arm so well.
I rise and yank my sword out of his face.
The ship’s squire sprints towards the spear, helmet and gauntlets missing.
If he doesn’t key in fast enough, he won’t stand a chance against me.
I point my sword at him and charge across the deck, feet pounding as I leap, each step bigger than the last as the kraken’s power floods my veins.
The squire dies as I ram my blade through his neck.
“Push the ship aside so the dragons don’t go after it,” I scream to the kraken, as I sprint to the edge of the Hellion and hurl myself over. We’ll have to get the Enchanted out later.
I could ground it on that rock, he thinks, showing me the one he means in his mind, not big enough to be an island, but sticking up over the surface all the same.
The next ship we attack, the kraken grabs one side with his tentacles, slowly tilting the ship towards his head as the sailors scream and dive for the water.
Another of his tentacles pops me up over the ship’s other side, to take out the knight before he can even turn to see me. The squire manages to block a strike from me, but goes up in flames. Two ships of Enchanted saved.
The green dragon rises away from a flaming ship, climbing straight up into the sky as the ship plunges beneath.
Above us, Sava dives in toward Triumph. She swoops along its length, setting a blaze of fire. Each beat of her wings fans the flames. By the time her whole length has passed over the ship, the deck crawls with fire. I clench my teeth and wish I could scream loud enough to make the dragons stop.
There’s a reason Rancor was the War-Father’s pride and home for so many years.
She’s vicious, and powerful, and the Hellion doesn’t need to turn around to angle herself back on Sava.
With the ship’s prow pointed the other way, she fires a spear of blue light at Sava as the dragon flies away from Triumph.
“Sava!” I scream, as if she can hear me to see it coming, as if I can reach Roiven in time. It’s the same powerful blast that obliterated the Governor’s ship and sank it in a flash.
And now, it tears through Sava’s left wing.