Salveran Tides Ch. 03

"Hardly!" Yesseil answered. The elf had splayed herself against the cabin wall to keep herself from being bowled over by the rocking of the boat. "If she doesn't try to tack against the waves they'll swamp the bilge and sink us!"

"I think the rain will do that job just fine if it doesn't let up!" Leona said. A particularly large drop splattered against her cheek, hitting with enough force to actually jerk her head to the side. A flash lit up the world around them. "Or the light-"

As if drawn to her words like a verbal lightning rod, the world around her turned a brilliant shade of crimson for an instant. The bang that followed threatened to deafen her. Yesseil flinched away from the noise. The smell of burnt wood touched Leona's nose, as the ropes around her went slack.

It took her a moment to process that fact. The ropes are slack. The ropes are slack!

Leona scrambled to her feet, reaching the side of the cutter in four long strides. She threw herself over the railing, into the raging seas below. She'd take her chances underwater - it was far more predictable than the two pirate women.

The sea surrounded her like a familiar hug, water rushing into her body through her gills, rejuvenating the organs with nutrients from the surrounding liquid. Leona felt a relief like she hadn't known in a while at just being underwater. She turned over, treading water as she looked up at the keel of the cutter, still gamely battling the raging waves above. "Sorry, Scarlet," she said. "But I'll not be your prisoner any lo-"

A lightning bolt slammed into the surface, then kept going, cratering the water along its path of impact as it narrowly missed Leona by a few yards. She yelped in fear, flipping over and diving down with a powerful kick of her legs. Now that she was submerged, water filled membranes along the inside of her thighs, allowing her to suction her legs together into an approximation of a single, powerful appendage. Apparently the unique feature of their biology had been mistaken by humans as a tail of some kind. Imagine! An Altaean with a tail.

The unique trait let Leona put some distance between herself and the surface with several powerful two-legged kicks. Her body scythed through the water, down and down, the pressure around her body increasing the further down she went. There was no way the lightning strikes could get this far down, right?

Red light shafted down, splitting the water nearby and leaving bubbles in its wake. Leona swore. "How in the Seas?" Even underwater she wasn't safe? What was going on?

As she turned and flipped, looking for a place to hide, she spotted a shelf on the ocean floor another hundred or so feet below her, an edge that dropped off into an even deeper abyss beyond. Leona kicked down towards it, angling to hide underneath the lee of it. Unless the lightning could curve around solid rock.

Cold water ghosted against her webbed feet as she took shelter, watching the red lightning strikes pierce even this far down. The lightning vanished into the darkness of the trench below her, as if they were going all the way to the ocean floor. Someone or something had it out for one of the people on that boat. Scarlet seemed to have a list of enemies a mile long. Yesseil was an elf, and they had a strong connection to magic, so it could have possibly been her. But Leona could shake the feeling that the storm had been aimed at her. Someone knew she was on that ship and vulnerable, and was trying to get to her. But who?

She shook her head. It didn't matter. She had to keep moving. Maybe she could draw the storm away. Scummy as they were, Scarlet and Yesseil didn't deserve to die in a storm aimed at her. Leona turned her head, bracing her feet against the wall to kick off and swim further out.

As she put her weight on the rock, it crumbled beneath her feet.

Leona pumped her arms and moved away from the underwater cliff face. Her motion had created a hole in the rock, a stream of bubbles erupting from within. A moment later, there was a heavy crunch as the whole section of the wall crumbled into gravel at the sudden change in pressure. Rock tumbled away from a large circular opening hidden under the cliff. Leona floated in place, waiting for the debris to clear. Another lightning bolt punched down behind her, illuminating the contours of the underwater cliff in crimson glow.

As the rock fell away, it revealed a small cavern hewn into the rock. It was small, only about as deep as the length of the cutter. Leona swam inside. It was clearly not a natural formation. The walls were smooth, as if the hidden nook had been excavated by magic. There were grooves inlaid into the walls, and upon closer inspection, Leona spotted Altaean script carved into them. She lifted her head, looking to the back of the small cave.

There, she spotted a stone plinth resting on the floor, a thick seam indicating that it was a box of some kind that could be opened. Leona swam over to it, reading the words on top. "Myrmidons, the contents of this tomb are yours and yours alone..."

It was one thing to find a strange Altaean ruin out in the middle of the ocean. It was another for it to have her family name on it. Leona hooked her fingers along the lip of the sarchophagi's lid and heaved with all her strength.

The lid came off, floating up as water rushed into the open spot underneath it. It settled onto the ground behind the box, but Leona was already occupied with the contents. She'd been expecting something grotesque, maybe a body of some kind. But there was only an Altaean wavelance inside. It was a collapsible weapon with a sweeping, wave-shaped blade on the end of a long pole. Though Leona had never seen one as ornate as this. The metal hilt was made of obsidian black metal, inlaid with Altaean script that glowed blue. The blue glow emanated from the finely crafted curves of the blade at the end, along with a spiked crest along the spine of the blade that Leona had never seen on a waveblade before.

"Tidecaller," Leona murmured, reading the script inlaid on the haft. She reached out and touched the weapon.

Her entire world inverted, and not in the usual way it did underwater when she wanted to gambol in the deep sea eddies. For a moment, up became down, left became right, colors jumped the spectrum to their opposites and she needed to breathe out to stay conscious. Looming faces appeared in her mind, massive Altaeans with eyes as deep as the trenches and voices as loud as kraken roars. A MYRMIDON HAS TOUCHED THE TIDECALLER.

Leona felt herself cry out, but no sound escaped her lips. She had never beheld anything as vast and terrifying as the long, dark abyss that opened up in front of her. The water around her vanished, and she felt as though she was falling through nothing as the faces loomed above her.

FOR GENERATIONS WE HAVE WAITED. AN OCEAN HELD IN WHISPER, A RIPPLE THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS. THIS IS WHAT YOU SHALL BE, FOR ALL LIFE BELOW, AND ALL LIFE ABOVE.

Leona screamed and twisted, hearing herself. "Who are you?" she howled. "What is this?"

WE ARE THE SHAPERS. THE LAMENTERS. THOSE WHO WERE BEFORE AND THOSE WHO SHALL ALWAYS BE. NO MATTER HOW MUCH HE DESIRES US TO FADE, WE WILL REMAIN.

"I don't understand!" Leona cried.

THE TIDECALLER COMMANDS THE SEAS. IT IS WHAT CAN TAME THEM, OR TURN THEM LOOSE. GO. EMBRACE YOUR BIRTHRIGHT.

Leona's whole body jerked, and she opened her eyes. She hadn't even realized they were closed. She was back in the small chamber, holding the Tidecaller in her hands. She swore and let it go. The weapon drifted away from her, wholly ordinary now. With a ginger motion, Leona reached out and touched it again. This time, nothing happened. No visions assaulted her, no power jolted through her. It was an ordinary weapon, a relic that-

An itch flared to life in her mind, right in the center of her brain so there was no possible way to scratch it. Leona cursed under her breath, pressing knuckles to her temple. "Come on..."

As she willed the sensation to fade, knowledge flickered into her mind, as if the images were being dumped directly into her subconscious. In a matter of moments, she was filled with the knowledge of just what she could do with the staff in her hand. Even though she wasn't a magical talent like the rest of her family, she had just enough of a spark for the Tidecaller to fulfill its namesake purpose. All that was needed was a smidge - the enchanted staff could take care of the rest.

Another lightning bolt blasted down through the water, bringing Leona back to the present. She could take the staff and flee, go to the depths where she belonged. But that wasn't the kind of Altaean she was. Leona swung the Tidecaller around in her hand, pumping a tiny spark of magic into the staff. The water around her bubbled and shifted, flowing upward out of the small cave in a powerful current. Leona kicked her legs, guiding the current with her mind in the general direction she recalled the cutter had been traveling in.

She broke the surface, leaping out of the surf like a dolphin. The cutter was still afloat, somehow, still tacking along a massive wave that threatened to send it to the bottom. Leona dove back down, using the Tidecaller to create a current and propel her along. She scythed through the water, almost smacking into the underside of the small boat with how much momentum she had. Leona pivoted and kicked out, breaching the water alongside the cutter's portside. She grabbed hold of the deck railing and heaved herself on board.

Yesseil rounded the corner of the cabin, pistol raised, finger on the trigger. "Leona?" she spluttered.

Scarlet's fiery head of hair poked around behind her. The pirate had gotten a length of rope and had lashed herself to the tiller directly. "Nice of you to come back, Princess!"

"Just steer!" Leona yelled. She spun Tidecaller in her hand, then slammed the butt of the shaft into the deck timbers. The cutter's wake bubbled and shifted, a fresh current appearing below it and propelling them forward. Air whipped past them, blowing Scarlet and Yesseil's hair behind them as both women held on for dear life. Leona willed them to go faster, and the cutter skipped and skimmed off the waves at a speed far faster than it had ever gone before. Leona just hoped the speed wouldn't cause the ship's structure to rattle apart.

Scarlet heaved back and forth on the tiller, face a mask of concentration as they raced the storm. A thin line of blue had appeared in the distance, the edge of the thunderhead, the end of the ordeal. Leona pushed the current further, the cutter going faster. The blue line gradually grew larger and larger, until the rain began to slack off and the lightning strikes vanished behind them. "Come on!" Leona said. An uncomfortable itching sensation prickled through her whole body. "We're almost there!"

Above them, the storm broke apart, far faster than any natural one ever would. The clouds turned from angry black to puffy white in a matter of moments, the seas calming and the wind dying down. Leona's current carried them forward another long way, water sloshing around the ship's keel as they settled into calmer waters. Only when the black storm was gone completely did Leona relax, collapsing onto the deck as exhaustion crashed down on her. It felt as though she had swam for a hundred leagues with no break.

Behind her, Yesseil and Scarlet leaned on the deck railing, both women catching their breath. Scarlet tried gamely to untie herself form the tiller, but the rain-soaked rope had pulled too tight. Her knife flashed as she cut herself loose. "Bloody hell, that was an ordeal and a half."

"I think I've forgotten what being dry means," Yesseil muttered. She gathered a length of her ebony hair in her hands and wrung the water out.

Scarlet picked her way around the deck, moving with slow motions. Leona could tell she was exhausted, but was putting on a show of not being so. "Why did you come back?" she asked. "You had a scot-free exit. Could've just let us get sent to the bottom. We would have, if you hadn't."

Leona took several more breaths, the uncomfortable feeling fading. She straightened up, holding the Tidecaller by her side. "I'm not that kind of person," she said.

"I'll not debate you on the merits of that at present, seeing as I can guess what that new toy of yours can do." Scarlet made a face. "Where exactly were you hiding that? Because I can't think of many places."

"I wasn't," Leona said. "I found it underwater just now, in a hidden chamber under a cliff."

"Quite the stroke of fortune, that."

"It's not that surprising. There are hundreds of Altaean ruins underwater, many of which have been lost to our recorded history." Leona held up the staff, admiring the way the light winked off the wave shaped blade. "Though I'm surprised we never kept track of something like this."

Scarlet looked skeptical, but she changed the subject. "I suppose you'll be wanting my thanks."

"It would be nice, yes."

"Do you one better." Scarlet unhooked Leona's necklace from around her neck and tossed it to her. The move was so unexpected that Leona dropped Tidecaller and fumbled to catch the bauble midair. "You earned that back, at least."

Leona slid the necklace over her head, feeling its familiar weight against her collarbone. "That storm was aimed at one of us. Most likely me."

"I dunno, I've no shortage of enemies who might be able to pull something like that out," Scarlet said. She turned in a slow circle, scanning the horizon. "And I have no bloody idea where we are now. Going to need a clear night to orient with the stars."

"So what happens now?"

Scarlet put her hands on her hips, staring off into the distance for a time while she thought. "I think it's in our best interest to rethink our arrangement."

"Not like I had much of a say in it to begin with," Leona commented.

"A say I am perfectly willing to give you now that you've got a weapon that you could use to sink us with all the effort it takes to sneeze," Scarlet said, nodding to the Tidecaller. "What is it that you want, Princess? Seeing as I owe you for both my and Yesseil's life, seems only fitting we reach some sort of accord where we mutually benefit."

"Well, if we're talking mutual benefit, what is it that you want?"

"TO save my first mate, get my ship back, and take my revenge." Scarlet made a circular motion with her hand. "But you already knew that."

"I'm looking for artifacts like this one," Leona said. "To help my people through a time of crisis." It would be faster for her to seek such things on her own, but that approach had already landed her on the beach. There was safety in numbers, and Leona still wasn't sure where she was in relation to her home. Even if those numbers had...questionable morals. "If I was able to find this staff just out of the blue, it stands to reason there's more on the Main."

"A fair assumption," Scarlet nodded. "Tell you what. Rescuing Lexaeus is still my priority, because time is of the essence. You help us spring him, and I'll gladly make a few detours so you can search for your artifacts as we pursue the laggards who took my ship." The pirate held out her hand, palm up. "Does that seem a fair arrangement?"

Leona stared at the offered hand, weighing the pros and cons. She couldn't predict what exactly Scarlet would do. But she had little other options. If the storm had been aimed at her, striking out on her own underwater would leave her vulnerable. There was something to be said for safety in numbers. And maybe, just maybe, she could do something good in the human realm above the water. Though morality seemed to be a much more malleable thing up here than down below.

She clasped Scarlet's hand, webbed fingers meeting rough, sea-worn ones, and shook.