Page 30 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

For a moment, I feared the worst. But then a fury of spells, more than I could hope to count, exploded around the creature all at once, lighting it up in a red, orange, and yellow halo. It looked like a fireworks display where someone had misjudged the timing and let everything off at once, so bright and breakneck that I could barely even see.

And when I could, it was to notice what had to be a hundred levitating weapons silhouetted against the brilliance, which I guessed Pritkin must have spelled on the fly because he hadn’t had them in that skin-tight suit. But they were there now, and the creature couldn’t anticipate them as easily.

The little magic they used was lost in the flood around the room from people’s protection spells, the guys working on getting the patchy ward to solidify, and others banishing water from the room before we all drowned.

So, no, it couldn’t spot them all, and as a result, it was getting skewered, as well as fried from the spell light suddenly crawling all over its body. It looked as if an entire war mage battalion had descended onto the place, but they hadn’t. It was just one man.

A man who believed I was dead, I realized with a lurch; he thought my doppelganger had been me.

“He’s going HAM,” Alphonse said, sounding impressed. “And he better hope it works, or that thing’s gonna kill him as soon as his magic runs out.”

And it would because no one could sustain something like that for long, even Pritkin.

“Like hell,” I gasped, the light, heat, and burning stench from the battle making me dizzy. But dizzy or not, we weren’t going out like this. Not as freaking after-dinner entertainment for this bunch of bastards!

“Over here!” I screamed, magically enhancing my voice, to the point that it echoed deafeningly round the space. “Hey, big boy! You’re looking in the wrong place!”

I didn’t know whether it could understand English or if the sheer volume was enough. But it got the idea. And whirled with an almost comical look of shock as if to say: “Didn’t I kill you already?”

“Try again,” I told it grimly as Alphonse cursed. Because immediately, a burning, furious, possibly elder god was storming our way in a cyclone of murderous limbs and spurting black acid.

And, okay, yeah.

That had worked.

“I hate you,” Alphonse said and plunged us underwater again.

The screaming cut out, more or less, except for the sound of the merpeople screeching in their strange language. It didn’t sound happy, and neither was I, as tentacles of all sizes started stabbing down all around us, sloshing tables everywhere as they followed us through the water, vampire speed notwithstanding. I should have worn something less shiny, I thought, right before my outfit abruptly went dark.

Thank you, Augustine, I thought fervently, thinking of the part-fey designer who had made my current ensemble. He charged a fortune but was worth every penny and was partly how I managed to evade getting ground against the floor. The other part was Alphonse, who shoved me away and went thrashing in the other direction, and considering how smoothly he’d been swimming before, I had to assume that was deliberate.

I broke through the water, gasping and exhausted. Swimming in armor, even the ultralightweight dragon scale variety, is not fun. And neither was that, I thought, turning to see Pritkin, Alphonse, and the silver-haired fey each wrapped in a giant arm and getting smashed into anything and everything the creature could find.

Pritkin still had his shield up and was firing between blows, but it looked like the pounding was throwing off his aim. Alphonse, who was immobilized except for his head, appeared to be trying to gnaw the creature’s arm off but had a long way to go. And the silver-haired fey still had one arm loose and was stabbing whatever he could find with his sword in between getting slammed against floating debris, the stairs, the ceiling, and the nearby wall.

The only good news was that the guards had started to remember that they were actually supposed to guard things instead of standing around looking pretty. And at least some of those who had run off had come back with a chest of potion bombs that appeared to be causing the behemoth some distress. I couldn’t be sure, as it remained eerily silent, with the only sound coming from the remaining crowd because the flying debris the creature was flinging at the guards was also hitting them.

But behemoth was looking the worse for the wear himself, with noticeable gaps in the forest of arms, a missing eye, and burn marks all over its huge head. Which had turned to look at the ward as if it was thinking of getting the hell out of Dodge. Only it couldn’t, as the room’s protection was back up, Nimue’s magic workers having earned their money twice over tonight, so it had nowhere to go.

Neither did I, and I was woozy and exhausted. Even worse, I was learning to tell when the portal was about to cycle away as my power started to thin. I had time for one more blast of dubious quality, but I had to take it now.

So, I did, throwing everything I could muster at the only target that made sense: the reinvigorated ward.

That gave the creature an escape route in case it was as tired of this fight as I was and just wanted out. I couldn’t tell if it did because a new wall of water hit me a moment later, slamming me back against a mass of floating tables and chairs that had washed up together like a beaver dam. And by the time I dragged my battered body out of all that wood, I still couldn’t see much as the lights remained out.

The only illumination was cascading through the flung wide main doors at the top of the staircases, which the crowd had mostly blocked before but which was clear now that they’d fled.

What happened, I thought dizzily, staring around, right before Pritkin grabbed me. And shook me like a maraca while screeching something I couldn’t make out because my ears were full of water. But the shaking took care of that in a minute, and they popped, only to immediately get assaulted in a new way.

“Answer me, goddamnit!”

I didn’t know the question, but I nodded because there was a terrible expression on his face that I’d never seen before. And because I was still trying to cough up enough water to be able to speak. And I guess that was good enough.

“Alphonse!” he yelled.

“Yo,” the voice came from somewhere near the stairs.

I stared at the big guy, half in disbelief, because he was okay. He looked okay! And then back at Pritkin and me, who were still somehow in one piece.

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