Elephant Pond 4:

Remembrance (2)

The black ship was approaching them from behind, cannons ready. It’s black shape was menacing, imposing on the soft green palette of the sea and the flora of the surrounding isles. Its sails were closed and no oars touched the water yet it gained on them regardless. It was fast, frighteningly so.

“Are those pirates, this far into our waters? How did they even get here?” Morgan asked bewildered. The sea surrounding Khantani and its isles was a dead zone, a sea of perpetual calm with little to no winds and very low waves. As such, rowing was the only option for vessels aside from theirs. It had been a solid deterrent in the past that protected them well, given that any pursuers would have to chase their nimble vessels with slow laborious rowing, so most had given up on trying altogether.

“By no normal means I’m sure,” Typhon said. His father’s face had grown stern and Morgan could see him planning, his focus unabated by the dire situation or his family’s growing panic.

Behind the black ship, a second peered out from behind the isle the first had come. It was burnt-coal grey with rows of hooked harpoons primed in cannons along its hull, followed by third, much bulkier light brown ship. Unlike the first two like that of a whale

“Maya, can we go any faster?” Typhon inquired.

She shook her head, worry and panic setting into her face. The black ship was still a ways away but it was steadily gaining on them, the grey in tow.

“Okay, take the helm; we’ll need to be agile as possible.”

“I’m not sure our boats can outrun their ships, but I’ll try my best,” Maya said and sat down at the back of the boat while Typhon moved to the very front. She placed her hand on a rune carved into the back panel of the boat, the helm rune, and began issuing mental commands in place of verbal ones.

Within a few minutes, they were out of the small encirclement of isles, the pirate ships even closer behind. Morgan swallowed nervously, comforting his sister while Typhon unwrapped Tide Reaver from the black cloth he’d carried it in and brandished the supreme spear. Its golden shaft was decorated with symbols and runes Morgan couldn’t recognize, while the head of the spear resembled polished dark blue stone. Morgan himself was unarmed but he couldn’t imagine any of the weapons or armor he’d made being of any use here either way.

Typhon held the spear up and the engravings across its shaft came to life. He swung Tide Reaver diagonally, upward in a sweeping motion and the otherwise perfectly calm waters around them responded, a swell in the water forming and travelling from their boat, growing to a sizeable wave that collided with the black ship, momentarily slowing it as it rocked.

In response, the black pirate ship opened fire. Cannonballs rained down around them, but none of them hit, instead Maya was forced to slow down the boat to maneuver as cannon fire splashed down ahead of and around them.

Typhon fired off numerous waves like the first, hitting the ship at odd angles that slowed its momentum, trying his best to maintain the gap even with the cannon fire, while limiting the strength of the waves to avoid harming the pirates.

“That isle over there,” Morgan said motioning to an isle to their right and pointed to its base that seemed to be made a black porous stone. “Those holes widen into caves just above the surface, there could be a place we can hide.”

Maya looked at her husband and he nodded in agreement. Typhon sent even more waves at the grey ship, swinging his spear tirelessly, endeavoring to increase the distance between them before they reached the isle. When they were close to the small island and far enough from the black ship, Maya peered back at their pursuers. Morgan watch his mother, careful banked right hard, tilting enough that Morgan wondered if they’d capsize. And they rounded the edge of the isles, disappearing from view on its right side. They raced along the length of the isles searching for a cave large enough as the seconds ticked away, the pirates closing in on them.

When they were almost half way along and basically out of time, they spotted a cave big enough for their boat. Maya commanded the boat to sink, each of them manifested their depth skins as they sunk and entered the cave underwater. When they surfaced inside, it was dark, barely bright enough to see each other and the smooth black ceiling was too low for them to stay inside the boat so they opted to tread water beside it.

Moments later, by the churning of the water, Morgan heard the pirates round the corner after them, .He wondered if they were slowing because they lost sight of them or if they had managed to spot the isles’ caves as well. Morgan himself had barely noticed the mostly submerged cave since its ceiling was barely above the surface of the water. He doubted the pirates would be able to spot it from the height of their ship, added to the fact that they were deep enough in the cave to be completely hidden from sight.

But Morgan felt something approaching with the pirate ship or rather beneath it. He could feel the water shifting as a massive body toiled it, even from inside the cave and he shivered as a long pure white maw, with red tipped whiskers came into view a distance away from the cave entrance. Agape with thin-glass like teeth that curled and bent into crooked shapes, its mouth had the appearance of rows of misshapen glass blades. As more of its long white body came into view, Morgan could see it was in fact an eel with a strange metal harness connecting it to the grey pirate ship. How were they so well equipped to hunt them, and much less hunt them in their own territory, Morgan wondered.

Tory reeled back at the sight, instinctively kicking her feet to try to swim away as its head turned towards them. The eel picked up the movement and in a lightning fast movement sprang forward, lunging at the cave’s entrance, long maw open. But at the last second the metal harness tugged it back, the metal straining audibly even underwater. Whoever it was aboard the ship that was controlling the eel, had narrowly avoided a head-on collision with the isle’s cliff face, but now they were trapped.

“Tory, calm yourself!” their father yelled and tears welled up in her eyes as her hands trembled. Maya instantly shot Typhon a deathly glare just as fast he’d said it, but he was already ashamed of the outburst.

“I’m sorry.....just stay as calm and focused as you can okay? We can't afford to make any mistakes against these people.”

“...I always thought eels couldn’t do long distance chases? This one chased us without stopping even once,” Morgan said. The massive eel was a shock to him too but his experiences in the depths had kept him composed, not to mention what he’d seen in the depths just minutes prior.

“They are usually ambush predators that sit in caves and burrows, waiting to take their prey by surprise. But this wouldn’t be the first time the magic of the isles has endowed a predator with much more than they needed.”

“That aside, how do we make it home, or even leave this cave?” Maya interjected while comforting Tory.

“...Do we fight?” Morgan asked, and his mother eyed with a frown.

“Absolutely not, under no circumstances are any of you to attack them. Our power might be why they are hunting us, but it’s also the only thing keeping them from killing us outright. Even if we lose our value as blacksmiths, they won’t want to leave anyone alive to report what we’ve seen.”

Then after a moment of consideration he added: “We’ll make it out of this, we're not far from Khantani,” in reassuring tone.

Morgan looked at the eel waiting outside the cave, cold unblinking eyes staring at them from on either side of jaws large, enough that it filled the entire cave’s entrance; the same their boat had entered easily. As if to say this is your only option, this is where you will be eventually.

“We’ll leave the same way we came. I’ll create a distraction and we’ll make it past this beast with no problem,” Typhon said confidently. “Everyone get in the boat.”

When they were all onboard, Maya once again took command and angled the boat to face the cave’s entrance.

“Submerge us, and then go for the exit on my mark,” Typhon instructed.

Maya complied, and they slowly sunk beneath the surface while Tory closed her eyes and concentrated on manifesting her depth skin again, Morgan grabbing hold of the boat to avoid floating off.

Typhon held the spear up, tip skyward and closed his eyes. At first Morgan couldn’t tell he was doing anything at all, until he felt it. The water around them was being pulled in towards his father. The pull gradually strengthened until Morgan could actually see a slender vortex forming around the spear itself. Typhon pointed the spear forward at the eel’s open maw and released the swirling waters. The vortex shot off the end of the spear and into the eel’s face, plastering it’s whiskers to its face, as it was pushed back, while doing no actual harm to it.

The eel shrunk back from the cave’s entrance disgruntled, pulling the pirate ship with it as Morgan and his family shot through and banked left, towards Khantani. But as soon as they surfaced Morgan heard something churning the water behind them once again and turned to see the black ship directly behind them.

Typhon immediately fired off a wave larger than all the previous ones, a risky but necessary move, pushing back the ship for mare moments before it began regaining speed, racing up to their right. They were caught between the black cliff side and the black pirate ship. The pirates edged closer and closer, threatening to crash into them as they sped along the length of isle. Typhon, using Tide Reaver once again, made numerous swells to force them back, each and every time but they refused to relent.

The black ship closed in on them again, this time readying the cannons to fire at the family, just meters from them. But they were also close enough now that Maya could actually see the cannons being primed and then aimed individually. She glanced ahead of them just once and then focused completely on the dozen cannons along the black ship’s hull, and when opened fire they dodged them. Their boat, shot left and right, slowed and accelerated as Maya dodged two to three cannonballs at a time as her husband crashed waves into the ship, both to keep them away and prevent them from overtaking their boat as they neared the end of their island.

In a final attempt to seize the opportunity, the pirate ship made sped into them at full speed while firing their cannons. This time instead of dodging outright, Maya commanded the boat to submerge and they dove below the surface and the pirates as they came at them, the harnessed eel hauling the vessel snapping and lunging at them as they passed underneath, out of reach, before resurfacing to their right.

Whoever was steering their ship tried to correct their course but between the ship’s momentum and the eel abruptly attempting to change directions, it failed and they veered left, barely avoiding crashing into the very end of the isle.

They were past the last of the sired isles now, Khantani and its multicolored waters finally in view and hopefully in reach.

“We’re in open water now; we have nowhere to go and nothing to hide behind.” Maya warned.

Now that they were close, Morgan could see that one of the guards had gone for help. Well over a dozen tribesmen were standing on the shore, watching. Some of them stood at the water’s edge calling their own boats from the sand but that took time Morgan wasn’t sure they had. “Just keep us going, I’ll handle it if you can get me some time,” Typhon said. Morgan would have thought his face and shirt were just soaked with sea water as they had been recently submerged but the way his hands shook suggested otherwise.

The grey ship was the first to resume the chase, exiting the isles and closing the distance as effortlessly as before but Typhon didn’t attempt to slow them at all. Instead he sat down at the stern of the boat, taking slow deep breathes.

The pirates opened fire, sending volleys of harpoons knifing into the waters around them, unlike the black ship, they were seemingly intent on actually hitting them

“Typhon, whatever it is you’re going to do, do it now!” Maya exclaimed as a harpoon splashed down inches from them.

Then another hit the right side of their stern, blowing a large chunk of it off but it failed to find purchase. The boat wobbled and then leaned to the right, taking in some water but a rune on the boat’s right side promptly came to life and the water began draining from the boat, even as more came in.

Morgan looked around the boat, franticly searching for a way he could help but he found none. So instead he looked across multicolored waters for the help he was hoping for but instead found them still on the shore. A dozen boats sat ready on the beach but no one was in them. He recognized his Uncle Tallus in the distance, by his purple robes, surrounded by a growing crowd of tribesmen with his hands up as if arguing.

Morgan was sure that the rest of his family saw it too but they said nothing. Typhon simply stood up and raised the supreme spear.

Tide Reaver glowed a pale grey brighter than ever before and Typhon simply dipped its head into the water and a wave grew from the spot, curling in place. It kept growing; pulling the surrounding water into itself until a wall of water akin to a tsunami was erected, halting both of their pursuers. Morgan marveled at his father’s creation as Typhon gasped for breath, drenched in what Morgan was sure now was indeed sweet, arms trembling terribly as he held Tide reaver aloft, laboring to maintain gigantic wave.

In that moment Typhon hesitated. Morgan couldn’t see it in his face but he saw the hesitation in his shoulders; a motion beginning before he stopped himself and the same calculating look in his eyes. Morgan looked behind them again at their p until he saw what his father saw. The massive wave dwarfed the pirates, if he simply let go, the wave would crash onto the pirates enveloping their ship and most, if not all of them would be injured or simply down.

But if it didn’t work, like much of their attempts at escape did, and only injured a few of them Typhon’s spear would crumble to dust, and the chase would continue without any hope of escape. And Typhon would never be able to return to Khantani even if they did manage it.

“Don’t,” Maya said. It sounded more like a plea than a command, something Morgan had never heard from his mother.

Typhon exhaled slowly as he held the spear. He seemed to have decided. He swung Tide Reaver back in a half circle over his head and the wave responded, curling in itself to face them and came towards them instead. The grey ship immediately shot forward eager to close the distance.

The massive wave picked up their boat and pulled them several dozen feet into the air with it. It felt like they were scaling a massive sea-green wall in reverse. They were moving much faster now, gradually leaving their final pursuer behind.

Countless cannon shots rang out behind them. They were firing harpoons blindly into the wave, hoping to land one. Maya resumed control of the boat; swerving, rising and falling along the wave, desperately trying to avoid them. They were minutes away from escape, minutes away from their home, all they had to do was hold out.

That was until a harpoon pierced the bottom of their boat and sunk in, the pirates immediately beginning to pulling. The boat lurched backwards, Typhon almost losing his balance as he maintained the wave.

The wood below their feet shuddered and creaked as the harpoon pulled but they were still making progress.

“It’s not going to hold, we need to cut the chain!” Maya yelled.

“If I let this wave go, I won't be able to make another one.”

“The boat is in pieces, if we don’t cut it now, they’ll drag us to them!”

“If I drop this wave they’ll just come to us faster!”

Tears filled Tory’s eyes as more and more harpoons were fired into the wave and Morgan struggled to hold back his own. Their mother was still maneuvering, determined to avoid what seemed inevitable now, but with the first harpoon revealing their location, numerous others found their mark. The protective and reinforcing runes lining the boat gradually sputtered out, as harpoons punched hole after hole in the hull and sunk into it.

And as the last of his hope left him, Morgan heard a final cannon shot ring out behind them, this one distinctively louder. A second later the final black harpoon hit them. A harpoon as long their boat, completely blowing their boat’s midsection away, splitting it into two, and discarding the family in mid-air as Typhon’s wave crashed below them.