Greenhair’s song lilted, the water rising about her ankles, coaxing the water to flow up to the boat as she had coaxed clarity through Dreadaeleon’s mind.
She makes water move, he thought. In the blood, in the mind, in the loins. That’s how she does what she does. Good trick. I should ask her about that. He glanced up at the beach. Assuming that isn’t what it looks like.
It was.
The netherling was up, on her feet, at the side of her flailing mount. Its thrashing lasted only as long as it took her to bring her fist against the side of its head. A crack of bone, a shake of its jowls and it was smiling broadly as she hauled herself up onto its back.
Netherlings, in his brief experiences with them, were not renowned for possessing a vast panoply of emotional expression.
It all tended to be variations on rage, as was on her face now. But those had been natural rages, something they simply did. The fury twisting her face into a mass of scars and lines was something personal.
It spurred her, just as she spurred the beast forward into a headlong charge. And it came, in a shrieking, warbling, cackling ball of bone and blood and fur.
“She looks angry,” he said.
“They all look angry,” Denaos said between grunts.
“I mean really angry.” It was at that moment he noticed something wrapped around the rogue’s hand: a chunk of stone hanging from a chain. “What’s that?”
“I grabbed it when she threw me off,” he replied.
“Well, give it back!”
“It doesn’t work that way!”
“Will you just push harder?” Asper demanded, huddling defensively behind the rails of the boat. “She’s getting closer!”
“Why is it all on me?” Denaos snarled, shoving violently. “Why can’t your sea-tramp sing harder?”
The earth exploded under the sikkhun’s feet, the sun refused to shine off the massive blade held high above the netherling’s head. Teeth, claws, and a tremendous wedge of metal grew ever closer.
And yet, that seemed not quite so important to Dreadaeleon anymore.
His head hurt.
Or at least, it started as just a hurt. Pain became searing in but a few moments, blinding in another few. Too much pain to be from any cause within him, even as strong as the Decay was. It was magic.
A lot of it.
Coming very close.
Very quickly.
Just like the shadow that had appeared over the netherling and was growing immense.
Just moments before the entire beach exploded in fire.
Something struck the earth hard, scorched the sand into smoldering, blackened clumps as the impact sent it flying through the air like offal from a volcano’s craw. The impact sent the boat flying from the rocks and into the sea amidst a hail of black and red, between curtains of steam as the fiery debris crashed into the water.
Through the veils of rising vapor, over the sides of the vessel, Dreadaeleon peered. He saw the corpses first. One of them was the netherling, the other was the sikkhun. Both had been splintered and blackened beyond recognition and lay smoldering amidst the fields of fire that stained the beach.
Against the carnage, the figure was scarcely noticeable: a scarecrow of a shadow rising against the flames, looking as though he might be consumed by them at any moment. But as Dreadaeleon stared at him, at the rounded head, at the familiar coat, at the red, burning eyes, he felt the pang of familiarity.
“Bralston?”
Followed shortly by the pang of terror.
The blood painting the man’s face and neck were unmistakable, even blackened and steaming as they were. The crimson power burning through his eyes was as bright and vivid as the fires burning around him. The electricity dancing at his fingertips, the thrust of his fingers, the gape of his mouth-
“GET DOWN!” he screamed.
It was hard to tell which was worse: the thunderous cackle of the lightning bolt shearing overhead as they hit the deck of the boat or the cry of rage that tore itself from Bralston’s throat that guided it. Dreadaeleon was more inclined to think the former, given that it twisted and lashed the boat, cracking off shards and tearing out splinters as it wildly thrashed about like a living thing.
It dissipated after a long time, too long for it to have been normal. The air smelled torched and the latent electric chuckles in the sky stung at the boy as he peered up. Bralston stared back, murder in his eyes, and soon to be on his lips and springing from his hands.
“What the hell was that?” Denaos demanded. “Even for a wizard, that was insane!”
“There’s no words,” Dreadaeleon muttered. “No gestures. He’s just screaming. His Venarie isn’t being guided at all, it’s just sort of. .” He made an all-encompassing gesture. “This.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning row until you puke, idiot, he’s about to cast again!”
The rogue and lizardman began to paddle furiously, shoving their tiny vessel farther and farther away. They hadn’t even come to vomiting when Bralston opened his mouth once more and screamed.
His voice came with ice, a deluge of frost that lay over the sea like a blanket and froze the water beneath it. A serpentine trail writhed across the surface of the sea, chasing the pitifully slow vessel. That itself wasn’t much concern, Dreadaeleon noted.
The fact that Bralston was raising his foot over it, was.
It came down with a crash of thunder and the ice shattered. The sheets of frost broke and clashed against each other, great white spikes bursting up, following the bridge of frost that was now forming beneath the vessel itself.
The gesture was instinctive, the word seemed perfectly natural. Dreadaeleon thrust his fingers at a downward angle and spoke aloud. The cobalt electricity sprang to life and danced from digits to water. A tiny blue worm against the great serpent of frost, it charged across the water, bursting to crackling life as it struck the impending wall of jagged ice and splitting it in twain.
The pain that followed was not natural, collapsing to his rear end was not instinctive, but he couldn’t help either. Asper caught him, eased him down, though neither her eyes nor his ever left the smoldering shore.
“Faster, faster,” Dreadaeleon urged, “oar faster.”
Bralston’s bloodied mouth gaped. His eyes went ablaze. But in the instant he turned about and noticed them, so did Dreadaeleon.
“AKH ZEKH LAKH!”
Their war cries were audible even so far from the shore. Black against the fire, the longfaces came barreling through, undeterred by flame or fear. Blades aloft, they rushed the lone figure on the shore standing over the charred corpse of their companion, without fear, without hesitation.
And, very soon after, without skin. Bralston’s fire leapt from his hands, raked those closest to him. He twisted, turned the jets of flame pouring from his palms as he turned his feral yell upon them. They continued to come, they continued to die, he continued to howl.
That would stall him for a time.
Hopefully long enough to prepare for a future as ashes and spit.
“What was he doing?” Asper asked. “He was on our side yesterday.”
“He didn’t look well. And he certainly wasn’t acting well,” Dreadaeleon replied. “He was using power like it was nothing. He’ll burn himself up before the day’s out if he keeps doing that.”
“Something must have happened to him to make him do that, right?”
“Whatever it was that made him bleed like that, yeah.”
As if by suspicion, or perhaps instinct, eyes turned slowly to Denaos. The rogue was already staring at them, as though expecting such silent accusations. And, just as easily, he pointed a finger at them.
“Racists.”
“Racist against whom?” Asper asked.