Chapter 60

A Sea Painted Black

Femira darted across the sand, her three lances trailing after her. The wind pushed at her back, propelling her faster than she could normally run. The enormous body of the kragal loomed to her right, the ground shook as it took another step.

She passed into its rear shadow, the sea arch ahead of her. The wind behind her curved with her path, still pushing her. She reached out her arms and pulled at the sand supporting the kragal’s tree trunk legs. The sand dissolved in massive clumps, evaporating to nothing as it was sucked into her. She could feel the weight of all the additional material slowing her muscles but she was unrelenting with the momentum of the wind behind her. That is a very useful trick. If they found a way to soulforge another runestone, Femira decided that stormstone would definitely be the way to go.

The sand at her feet shuddered as the kragal lost balance, stumbling backwards into the pit that Femira had created. The pit itself was huge, she’d dug out a hole ten feet deep but to a creature the size of the kragal it was a mere pothole.

Her legs burned as she sprinted as fast she could, rounding the creature. She flung the sand out from her, away from the kragal, she would need the space. The additional weight gone, she felt a burst of speed as she approached the front of the creature. Its front four legs were already clambering, pulling itself forward out of the pit and adjusting its focus on her.

She’d captured the monster’s attention.

She smirked and pushed firm on her back leg, launching herself into the air. Another gust of wind rushed up underneath her and gave a considerable boost to her jump. Soaring through the air, she launched her steel lances in a succession at the kragal’s face—or rather the breaks in the carapace that she assumed was its face. The two crevices at the front were its weak spots. It’s eyes. Large black orbs of emptiness floated in those crevices. She aimed for those.

The first lance glanced off the carapace right next to the eye. The second was too far off and batted uselessly against the harder shell further up its back. The third bit into black flesh at the crevice but didn’t pierce the eye.

So close! She’d figured her aim wasn’t good enough to land. But that wasn’t the point. She landed, her boots thudding against the sand and she rolled so that her legs didn’t take the full impact of her wind-enhanced jump. She heard the kragal groaning, glanced over her shoulder and saw the creature shifting to face her head on.

This was what she’d wanted. Its mouth pincers shuddered, its behemoth claw rose laboriously into the air. The sun was blocked out as it dominated the space above her.

She bared her teeth in a malevolent expression halfway between a grin and a snarl. She sent out a pulsing wave of her edir and dissolved all of the sand around her in a powerful blast of her edir, absorbing as much as she could hold. Just before the sand beneath her feet vanished, she kicked off backwards and felt a mighty surge of air lift her up, flying her back out of the kragal’s range. She couldn’t see Landryn but she could sense his edir pushing the air around her, throwing her out the strikezone.

Where she’d been standing was now a crater twenty feet in diameter and depth. She dropped ungraciously just outside of the perimeter. The kragal’s claw—easily the size of a fishing boat—crashed down into the crater. The ground shook violently and Femira staggered.

“Now!” She roared, regaining her balance. Her skin was alight with the amber power of the earthstone inside of her, holding the mountain of sand she’d just absorbed. She thrust her hands forward and felt the sand explode out of her in a storm. She looked to her side and saw Selyn sprinting towards the crater—right on cue—with a river of crashing white water flowing around her. Selyn glowed with an azure light as she came to the edge and shot her hands forward.

The torrent of water cascaded into the crater like a breaking dam. The deluge of water mixed with Femira’s own flow of sand, at first flowing brown and wild until blending further, making a heavy roiling clay on top of the kragal’s claw.

Femira pressed down with the force of her edir on the clay. Selyn to her right also strained with the effort. She could feel the creature trying pull against the force, attempting to pull itself out from the clay. Her muscles tensed as she poured every ounce of strength she had in holding down the massive claw. The clay began to solidify as Femira exerted more and more pressure. The clay began to harden with the pressure to rock.

The kragal made a roaring sound that reverberated in the air. It’s six legs pressing hard against the sand in an attempt to pull free its trapped claw. Femira didn’t relent. She poured all of her focus and will into maintaining the pressure.

A black shape blurred past her. Landryn moved with such grace and speed that he seemed more like a panther than a man. He dashed along the top of the cracking clay towards where the claw arm was submerged. In a series of elegant bounds he leapt up onto the creature's arm and climbed up the carapace.

He didn’t climb the way that Femira did, hoisting herself up to the next handhold in reach. Landryn launched himself from one grip point to the next and within moments he was on the kragal’s flat top shell, weaving his way around the thick sharp spines.

The kragal either didn’t notice or didn’t care that the man was scaling up him. In the same way that a man didn’t bear much mind to an ant crawling up his leg. But some ants carried a deadly bite.

The kragal’s shell shifted and staggered as it continued to fight against Femira and Selyn’s combined efforts. Landryn deftly stepped his way closer to one of the eye sockets. Landryn looked so small on the kragal, a tiny black clad insect. The silver of his sword caught the sunlight in Femira’s eye as he drew it back.

The sudden burst of force against her edir caused Femira to lurch back. The ground trembled violently underfoot and the kragal let loose a deep and hateful roar. Femira could see Landryn’s body being tossed by the kragal’s jerking movements, clinging fiercely to his blade now buried in the creature’s eye crevice.

A large fracture appeared on the surface of the clay, a network of cracks forking out from it like streaks of lightning in a storm. Femira tried to push down against them but it was useless, it was like trying to hold back a landslide with your bare hands. The claw burst up from the ground in an explosion of clay.

Femira turned her heel and ran, hoping to outrun the bigger chunks. The sand beneath her was still shaking and she lost her balance tipping forward into a roll. As she came up, she glanced over her shoulder and watched in horror as the kragal swung its claw to the side in a sweep. Selyn was also running but she was right within the kragal’s range.

Femira opened her mouth to scream at her but no noise came out. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had. The claw swatted Selyn as if she were nothing. The woman was flung across the beach like a ragdoll, the azure light of her soulforged waterstone ability winking out like someone had blown out a candle.

Her lifeless body hit the sand in a heap.

Chunks of debris rained down where the crater had been. The kragal’s body moved with the weight of its claw. The powerful legs stepped forward with the momentum. Femira saw Drad running towards where Selyn had landed.

She felt her chest tighten. She could feel it all falling apart. This had been her plan. She had gotten them all killed with her recklessness.

Femira watched, frozen, as the kragal took a step forward, its other claw coming down on Drad. It crashed down with a deafening boom. The sand around where it had dropped dancing up into the air around it.

They were dying and it was her fault. Selyn, Drad… Landryn!

She looked up at the creature’s head. Somehow Landryn had managed to climb his way across to the kragal’s other eye crevice. Despite the thing’s erratic movements. His sword flashed and he drove it into the crevice.

The kragal reeled backwards, its legs twisting and crumpling in pain. It tripped into the first pit Femira had made, falling and stumbling under the cliff arch. The monster shook it’s body violently, the sides of the shell carapace crashing powerfully against the leg of the sea arch. Chunks of rock rained onto the sand below.

Landryn had somehow managed to hold on to the shell during the collision. A boulder bounced off the chestplate of his nythilium armour—not even making a dent in the thing. But the force threw him from the creature, falling directly into the danger zone between its claws.

He fell in a bundle. A small black mound in the sand, the enormous creature looming above him making frenzied shrieking noises. The shelter of the sea arch casting them in a shadow.

The Prince of Reldon, Lord Commander of the Reldoni military, was going to die. And it was Femira’s fault. The kragal still thrashed blindly inside of the arch. It’s claws and shell grinding against the rock.

Femira was on her knees, her teeth gritted. The image of Selyn being thrown across the beach flashed in her mind.

She was on her feet. Drad being crushed under the creature’s claw.

She was running towards the sea arch. Her blade puffing to dust against Endrin’s chest.

Her edir stretched out before her. Her chest burned and amber light filled her vision. The pain of her soulforging ritual now thrumming in her chest. Her brother’s bodies bouncing against the cliffs. Her legs burned.

The kragal’s claw raised up above her.

She was so close.

Landryn lay just a few feet ahead. She passed under the shadow of the sea arch. The claw directly above her. She leapt forward, her stoneshell forming around her.

She landed on top of him and everything went dark. For a single moment there was nothing. She could feel the cold metal of Landryn’s armour beneath her. They existed in a space of pure silence and nothingness.

A second passed and the entire world shuddered around her. The impact was so deafening that her ears rang in the hollow darkness. Then light appeared in cracks around them and in the fractions of a second the stoneshell was crumbling. Femira felt the dust debris fall against her back.

She was on top of Landryn. Her face inches away from his. He looked up at her through dazed eyes. She could feel his breath on her face. She heard crashing and cracking as the kragal tried to move within the sea arch.

She looked up. The toothy maw was above them.

Femira clenched her jaw. Her hands came together in fists. Crumbling rocks fell around them. Each of them resonated with her edir. She ignored them. She ignored the kragal’s approaching maw.

Her mind darted between forming another stoneshell to dissolving the sand below them. They could sink into a pit… and then what? She could feel the sand below her resonating in response to her edir. It begged her to be pulled in… Then she felt something else below her.

It was a distinct and inharmonious pulse. A cacophony of oscillating senses touched against her edir, radiating from her clenched fists. She looked down. Her fists were planted on Landryn’s armour.

The mystic metal of Landryn’s armour was giving its own distinct impression on her edir. The nythilium did not beat in a regular cadence like regular metal. It was wild and erratic, like it didn’t understand what she wanted. Like it’s alive?

On instinct, she tried to absorb it. The metal resisted her and a blast of bizarre dissonance of senses invaded her mind. Flashes of concepts her brain couldn’t understand, of rolling fields of stars. Of an alien woman’s face laughing. A roiling sea, painted black. And a hand holding a blade.

The image of the blade formed and took root in her mind.

She opened her palm and slammed it down onto the breastplate, clenching her eyes shut. With every ounce of strength in her will, she commanded the nythilium to obey. The armour exploded into a cloud of scintillating dust and flowed into her.

She could see in her mind’s eye the amber light coursing through her. She was the vessel, the conduit and the conductor all in one. She channelled it above her and reformed the metal into a long black sword. It was unlike anything her mind had ever grasped before. A thick sword larger than any human could ever wield. Its blade twisted in a paradoxical helix, knotting together at the tip into a deathly point.

Her eyes snapped open and she looked up. The mouth loomed just above them. The creatures jagged teeth mere inches above the tip of the blade.

Every muscle inside of her tensed and she pushed up with all of her mental and physical force, shooting the sword forward. It sunk into the mouth of the monster as easily as if through butter.

She pushed forward with her edir and felt the blade tear through the kragal’s fleshy interior. The creature recoiled, its pincers flashing forward protectively. They crashed against the walls of the sea arch.

She kept pushing. The pulse of her edir washed over everything. She could feel the sand below, the rock of the arch around her. And the weakening pillar of rock. The arch itself was losing its stability.

She rose to her feet. She focused her edir on the rock above her and pulled.

Dust and debris began to fall.

Chunks of rock tumbling down from the underside of the arch.

The kragal was thrashing against the arch walls, trying to back up. The nythilium blade still forcing its way through the monster’s insides like an enormous crossbow bolt. Her hands shot upwards.

She pulled with all of her strength.

The arch groaned.

More rocks fell.

There was a sound like the rumble of thunder.

She grabbed Landryn’s tunic and dragged him back out of the shadow of the crumbling arch. Her boots dug into the wet sand as she pulled him back, desperately trying to get out from under her own destruction. The arch collapsed in on itself in an inexorable cascade of falling boulders and debris.

The rock rained down on the kragal’s shell. The carapace was too strong to break but its tree trunk legs buckled, crushed beneath the weight of the falling arch. She watched as the creature seized. Its wrought muscles tensed, then went slack, succumbing to its inevitable fate.

It was all over in moments. A few smaller rocks continued to tumble down the mound of the now buried kragal.

She let out a breath. She’d killed it.

The exertion of what she’d just done slammed against her and vision blurred and she stumbled. She looked around and saw the remaining kraglings, the ones that Selyn had originally swept up into the ocean, scurrying across the beach. Oh. She tried to think through the haze of exhaustion.

Shit. She didn’t have the energy to fight them. She could barely keep her eyes open.

She took a step towards them but her legs buckled. She felt hands catching her before she hit the sand. She looked up and saw Landryn’s face… then everything went dark.