Chapter Eleven #4
“Fukkate,” I spat out, stepping around the twins as the first of a dozen dewraith began to take form.
“Get the king and his family to safety!” My shout rang out just as the largest translucent figure with hollow eyes like an empty well reached out to lay a watery hand on the head of the large woman.
Frost coated her face as the monster drained the warmth from the noblewoman.
Mouth frozen in a scream, the woman tipped over with the pallor of blue death on her skin.
“Prescott, protect the twins! Tezen, V’alor, Pasil, Le’ral, my crew to arms! Show no quarter!”
V’alor gave me a dark look but drew his sword just as Pasil and Tezen did.
Le’ral slid a rapier from a jeweled scabbard.
Utter bedlam broke out as nobility from the far corners of Melowynn tried to flee.
Old people were knocked aside, some onto the wet floor where the emerging dewraiths enveloped them in the cold of the depths to siphon off their body heat.
Frost began to coat the floor, the walls, and the stained-glass windows, keeping the violent sea at bay.
Pirates, scorned by the ones battling through to save them, leapt into action with hoots of glee.
They, too, had been too long without a good brawl.
I called on my powers, sigils flaring to life but much weaker than normal, and pulled a large ball of briny water from the middle of a monster, only to have the seawater reach out to engulf my glowing hand.
That was obviously not the way to battle these beasts, so I shook the water off and fell back to melee fighting.
“What the hells are these things?” Pasil shouted, sliding on a patch of frost as he shunted Aelir and the queen out of the main chamber.
I glanced back to see that Prescott had the twins in his arms, shouldering the royal guards that were encircling Aelir, Raewyn, and Lady Merrilyn out the side door.
Lady Merrilyn was most displeased to be shuttled away from the fight.
“Dewraiths! Handmaidens of the three sisters,” I yelled as I ran at one of the creatures.
The lucent was cold and dead in my pouch.
I’d never known it to grow so cold nor to refuse to respond to me when I needed it.
“They seep through stone to steal the heat of the living. We must find a way to seal the stone, or they will overrun us!”
Knowing it was futile, but left with no recourse, I dove over a nobleman cowering on the floor between two pews to slice through one of the transparent but lethal monsters.
My scabbard sluiced through water with sickening ease.
I called up my powers to bring the water to my bidding then recalled my previous attempt, so I let the magick fizzle.
It was then that I knew these beasts of the deep were here to deliver a warning. To me.
“Ack, my picks go right through them!” Tezen bellowed, zipping over my head to avoid the watery lunge of a dewraith. “How do we fight something we can’t make fucking bleed?! Sorry, Your Lordship!”
The man on the floor seemed uncaring of titles or profanities at the moment. I could hear the twins crying in fright, and that, more than any dead noble or cowering prude, stirred my anger.
“Got to seal the stone!” a gruff familiar voice bellowed out just as Asdren appeared at my left with a flaming gold candelabra in his hands. “Buckets of bitumen!” No one replied. “What? You’re going to doubt the fucking dwarf when it comes to stonework?!”
“Summon the masons’ guild! Tell them we require all the pitch and lime they can ferry to us and to do it with haste!” V’alor called out to his men, who were trying to get the crowds outside. “Wise thinking, Grimmane!”
An arrow whizzed by and through a dewraith, embedding in a wooden table holding a delicate oil lamp.
I knew the fletching well. Beiro was somewhere, probably up with his damn dragon in the rafters.
The table tipped over, spilling oil onto the floor.
An idea appeared, a desperate one, aye, but an idea just the same.
“Our blades are useless on them. We can only repel them. Asdren, put fire to oil!” I yelled out as I touched on my magicks, pulling them forth as I sheathed my weapon.
Blue sigils flared to life. I pulled fresh water from a font then hurled a tight ball at one of the dewraiths.
It impacted its side, diluting the seawater enough to slightly weaken the spawn of the deep but not to destroy it.
I shoved a weeping man in peacock-blue pantaloons to the guards and fired off another volley, getting nowhere quickly.
“Aye, Captain!” Grimmore yelled, charging to the small puddle of oil and touching the flames of the candles to it. Fire leapt up from the oil. Two of the dewraiths caught in the blaze turned to steam. “Fire! We need more fire! Ah, you blighted son of a cock poxy hag!”
I spun to see the frost touch on Asdren’s cheek and spread to his long beard.
I ran at the dewraith as I took off my cloak, whipping it through the spreading flames on the floor and tossing it over the monster with its hand on the dwarf’s shoulder.
It reared back and turned into a fog of seawater.
Asdren rubbed at his cheek, looked skyward, and gave his lover a cocky smile.
Beiro, atop the massive stone statue of Ihdos, nodded and fired off a shot that struck another lamp in an alcove.
Flames leapt to life. The dewraiths hissed and spat as they were reduced to steam one by one.
Le’ral raced past me, a torch made from his own cape and a broken table leg and waved the fire into the face of a monster that had sprung up from a nearby puddle.
I’d been so busy looking at the outrider sitting on a god’s head that I’d not seen the creature rise from the pool.
A large cloud of steam rose to the dragonling enjoying the show.
Fire now crawled around the floor, following the fingerlings of lamp oil.
The seas churned outside, our pants drowned by the irate waves.
My sight lingered on the stained-glass rendition of Ihdos for a moment too long.
“Coelum! Behind you!” Le’ral bellowed but too late.
Arms wet and cold as the depths wrapped around me.
My body seized as frost spread over my skin, my feet sinking into a puddle that enveloped both me and the watery monster grappling with me.
Down we sank, into the floor, as the shouts of my lover wavered then stopped.
I drew in a fast breath before the stone flooring sealed over my head.
The lucent now pulsed with renewed energy as silence, so complete my ears rang, closed in around us.
Ice crept over my chest, creeping into my bones, and sending my heart into a panicked frenzy before it stopped beating.
Opening my eyes with a shaky gasp that pulled bitter cold air into my lungs, I shuddered to consciousness, the cold embrace of the dewraith locking the muscles of my arms and legs.
My eyes were cloudy at first as I struggled to understand where I had been taken.
Then I saw we were in a throne room in a dark cave lit by hundreds of odd fish that glowed in the pitch black.
They swam in lazy circles around us, bottom jaws protruding to show rows of sharp teeth.
My vision moved to the three sisters before me, their hair floating about their heads, pale green eyes locked on me.
They sat on thrones of pink coral, thin women, scales covering them from head to webbed feet.
Shells and starfish clung to them like barnacles to a ship.
None would say they were attractive, but they were commanding in their presence.
My heart, still beating unevenly, sped up as Nymira Tidebound, Lirentha Saltveil, and Vaelora Moonwake stared at me with ire in their fathomless gazes.
A thin dark eel swam past as the grip of the dewraith grew ever tighter.
And so this was how the Cadere line ended.
At the webbed feet of three highly angered sea witches.
Pity, I would have liked to possibly sire a set of twins like my brother had someday…
“Coelum Cadere,” the tallest of the threesome—Nymira if the old sailors’ tales were correct—shouted inside my head, spiking a sharp pain through my brow that made me wince.
There was no eldest. All three had sprung from a cuttlefish at the sea titan’s command.
“Why do you pledge your fealty to a god of the land when it is through our blessings that your magicks are amplified?”
“My Lady, I pledge no troth to any other than you. I kneel before no other gods. I whisper no other names but yours. If I could take a knee before you, I would.”
By the witches teats, my voice was weak.
“My sisters and I hear you, yet we witness you leaving the sea for the land. Know this, young Cadere, the lucent that your family has carried for generations untold is a gift. A blessing from the gods to the family that showed the most devotion to the sea. That endowment was given with a promise made by your ancestors. Your line is of the ocean, your gifts from the titan’s daughters, your skills honed by the knowledge passed onto your family by us.
A most generous largesse, would you not say? ”
“Aye, a gift most generous. My life is on the sea, as was my father’s, and his father’s, and his father before him.” My heart thundered in my chest as I struggled to dredge up some of that famed cleverness Le’ral kept telling me I possessed.