46. FORTY-SIX #2
If Calver had ever needed powers, it was now. He eased into the void state, where he’d only ever gone to run away. Now he went there determined to preserve himself so he could pull that damned woman out of the sea.
The void thrummed. The Survivor fell away. Calver remained.
Two Tera’thian soldiers stepped toward the ledge. Calver stepped in to meet them. Their blades locked together with a thunderous clang.
NIKLAUS
Niklaus looked into the frothing rush, more than ten meters down, where the Ruxian had disappeared. A second ticked by. Then another. A metallic reverberation rang through the air.
Calver was occupied. He may not have even seen the woman.
“I’ll—I’ll just—go get her,” Niklaus said, though his voice didn’t carry over the clashing of dowagas.
The ripples where the Ruxian had landed had disappeared, absorbed by the waves against the rocks. He kept his eyes on the spot and aligned his body with it.
Chaos. This was suicide. He remembered a time, not very long ago, when he had stood on a Skywalk balcony and stared into the Casowhatan with that very thought in mind.
Best be on with it. Niklaus planted his feet wide on the ladder, leaned out over the narrow pass that separated the warehouse from the cliffside, and launched himself toward the sea.
The fall stole the air from his lungs. He was about to scream when the icy water struck him. His eyes opened against the sting of salt, unable to see anything in the fading light. He swam blindly down, arms reaching, when by an extraordinary stroke of luck, his fingers collided with fabric.
Lungs bursting for air, he kicked for the surface until their heads broke free.
Niklaus gasped for breath and, like music, the woman in his arms began to cough and hack.
He treaded water, already exhausted, and pulled her the short distance toward the rocks.
He sliced his hand open as he grasped for purchase through the battering of the waves.
There was nothing to stand on, and he couldn’t climb out on the rockface without letting go of the Ruxian, so he held tight with one arm and supported her with the other.
She choked and wheezed for nearly a minute before managing, “Niklaus?”
“Aye. Niklaus Meyernes,” he panted. “Ruxian assistance services.” And a hell of a job he was doing. He was a kretch swimmer and had no idea how he would get them out of this.
The woman’s weight lessened as she floated, hair fanning out in a watery halo.
“I missed,” she breathed, eyes locked on the wall vaulting from the base of the cliff into the crimson sky.
Then she chuckled, a feeble, lifeless thing.
“I’ve always dreamed of making it to the Casowhatan…
but this wasn’t… how I planned it.” Another laugh rumbled from her throat, and she began to sink.
Niklaus threw an arm beneath her, nearly going under in the process. “What’s happened to you?” His arms began to tremble. He might not be strong enough to keep them there for much longer.
Her words were so faint they almost didn’t leave her chest. “I can’t seem to distort… without it coming… at my own expense.” Another gurgling giggle. The woman was damned loopy. “First Ruxian in a lifetime. Can’t distort. Joke’s on me.”
“I’m going to tow you in,” he said, hoping the words might give him the power to actually do it. “We’ll have to get around to the docks.” They were a few hundred yards away. If she remained buoyant and no one pelted them with tanka bits, they might actually make it.
She didn’t seem to hear him. “Calver’s alive. Is he under attack?”
Niklaus looked at the warehouse roof, two stories above the sea. “I think so.”
“I have to get to him.”
“Much as I can appreciate your optimism, the best thing you can do right now is hold yourself together.”
The woman fell silent. The waves cascaded against the stone beside them. The yells and clangs of battle sounded beyond. Niklaus thought for a moment she had lost consciousness. But when he searched her face, her eyes had narrowed, silver centers darting all around.
“Niklaus… what you just said… is right.”
He’d waited twenty years for someone to say so. Even if that someone was a half-dead, out-of-her-mind kelp enthusiast. “Glad you can see sense,” he panted.
“No. I’ve been seeing nonsense. Distorting wrong. I’ve been trying to pull energy when I should have been holding it together! I have to…”
Preservation help him, the fall had addled her brain. Niklaus searched his memories for how to treat a concussed person, but could hardly bring them to surface above the cold creeping into his limbs.
A fleck of ocean spray did a peculiar thing, then, after splashing off the rock.
It hovered in the air, an arm’s length from his nose, just above the surface.
It was a perfect sphere of water: smooth as glass and berry-red in its reflection of the sky.
He stared at it unblinking, daring his mind to reveal the trick.
“There was a book—Calver’s book—by Katlas Dreiden.
He wrote chapters and chapters about fighting tactics, categorically defined for Ruxians.
Because the pathways upon which they could distort depended on the Fate for which they served as Conduit.
” She stared at the bead of water, and her words gained strength.
“Niklaus. This is stabilized. It’s not pulling anything. ”
A hundred more identical beads of water halted in the air beside it. Niklaus’s frozen grip slipped from the rock, and he plunged into the water. When his head broke free again, the Ruxian was still floating where he’d left her.
“It’s stabilized,” she said again, weary voice touched with excitement. “Niklaus… you fixed me.”
“I-I-I—” he stammered as she sat on top of the water—legs crossed like she was sitting for tea.
“There isn’t much time. I’m going up there,” she said, eyes cast toward the building above them. The beads of water cascaded like rain back into the ocean.
Distortion magic.
“Do you want me to bring you with me?”
The options were unfathomable: drown in the Casowhatan, get captured by an enemy vessel, or transport by stabilized Ruxian powers—from an unstable Ruxian—to a battle beyond his control.
“Bring,” he managed to splutter.
It was better than being bored.
CALVEROUS
The two soldiers barred Calver on either side. Calver edged sideways, waiting for an opening that would avoid fighting them at once.
Seconds passed. Each felt like hours with Raimee underwater.
The first soldier lunged at him with ferocious intensity. A number of deft twists and parries, and his opponent’s dowaga went wide. Calver spun to slice up the middle, felling the man to the rooftop. Cul’Mon moved in where the first had fallen.
This was the moment, the battle, he’d dreaded for years.
But suddenly Cul’Mon didn’t matter. Raimee will drown.
As soon as his blade began to fly, instinct took over.
Calver skipped backwards, retreating to the far corner of the roof to avoid being trapped between opponents again.
That put distance between them, but Cul’Mon pressed forward with confident, loping strides.
Calver lurched forward with the dowaga claw dipping low.
Cul’Mon swerved to the side and lashed out with a backhanded swipe Calver barely deflected.
Too long has passed. Calver took the offensive, launching into a series of intricate blows, but his efforts were rewarded only by parry after parry.
The remaining soldier had reached the roof’s edge, prepared to leap after Raimee.
Calver wrestled the claw of his dowaga free of Cul’Mon’s and hurled the weapon through the air, where it axed into the retreating soldier’s back. The man collapsed over the lip of the wall, unmoving. Cul Mon took advantage of Calver’s disarmament and swung.
Not enough time.
Calver scrambled backwards, the blade whisking just past his ear.
Even less roof.
He dove forward to retrieve his weapon. His hands clenched around the leather of the center grip and he rolled to his back in time to catch Cul’Mon’s blade over his abdomen.
Their dowagas locked. The Tohatu sat astride him—pinned.
His sweat dribbled over him. The heat of his body pressed down.
Terror occluded any and all rational thought.
Good thing Calver was wired with reflexes to kill.
He leveraged the dowaga to clip Cul’Mon in the chin, stunning him.
Calver threw him from his hips and clambered to his feet. Cul’Mon was still on the ground. Calver pulled back his weapon. Prepared to level it into his old master’s neck. He put all his strength behind the blow. His aim was true, and Cul’Mon’s defense lagged.
Calver’s blade was a finger’s width from its mark when an unseen force threw it backward, jerking his arm with it.
Calver stumbled. Then his feet were wrenched from the ground.
Invisible hands slammed him into the wall of the rooftop shed, a body’s length above solid ground.
His head rattled. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.
On the roof’s ledge stood a boy. A pale child with shocking silver curls.
Right. Reinforcements.
A part of Calver had recognized this moment would come when he discovered the Tera’thians had created a new stratum. The rest of him had caught up when Mastico pieced together the truth of his bloodline.
There was another Ruxian now. One he had created.