1
It’s like I’m flying, Izumi thought as she watched the foam-crested waves speed by beneath her. Technically, she wasn’t flying, she’d been thrown. A rather alarming event by itself. The raw strength required to launch sixty-four kilograms across the air for such a distance could only be described as god-like. If Gram’s effect hadn’t strengthened her limbs, her arms would’ve been torn clean off by the force. Yet, even the Rune of Power had failed to slow the opponent in the slightest.
Izumi looked behind her. Loudly roaring in the style of the cinematic depiction of a tyrannosaur, a small mountain of horns and scales came flying at her—actually flying—on a set of wondrous wings nearly as wide as the galleon in the background was long. Izumi had seen the beast from a distance, circling above the battlefield, but one could only grasp the scale of it up close. Now, she was beginning to think that a bit more distance would’ve been better.
“The dragon has entered battle fever,” Yubilea reported. “It won’t stop until it has laid waste to everything around it.”
“That’s not helping,” Izumi replied.
On such a field of battle, the enemy held advantage in virtually every conceivable category. The human warrior, in the meanwhile, had nothing but handicaps. No contact surface, no cover, no allies, only hazards everywhere. Falling in the sea was no less a death trap for Izumi than the fangs of the monster itself.
Going into battle even while fully aware of the impossible conditions couldn’t be called wisdom by any means. But it was never sanity that had led Izumi to take her sword; only the desperate, overpowering desire to end all the pain, by whatever means. Whether that conclusion came by her own death, or the death of someone else, was no longer important.
She was certain of only this:
One way or the other, it would be over today.
Erynmir glided low at the woman, apparently planning to ram straight into her. Only a small nudge by that horned head would be more than enough to render a person to a broken pulp. But Izumi wasn’t completely helpless. Keeping still to feign immobility, she waited until the last moment, before pulling her knees in and turning her sword under her heels in the fashion of a surfboard. The dragon tossed her head and a metallic bang rang out. Izumi was cast up higher in the sky, finding herself well over the level of the distant Hammer’s mast tops. But with Gram and her resilient weapon, she was able to weather the attack, still alive and in one piece.
This miracle only bought her lifespan a slight extension. She needed Erynmir to attack her again, or else a very painful landing in the ocean awaited.
“Yee-haw—!” Izumi shouted, performing a heel flip with her blade, taunting the opponent. “Missed me!”
“Hrnh?” the dragon grunted, surprised to find the prey still alive, and curved upward after her. Like swimming through the air, unhurriedly curling, the beast passed Izumi by as she began to fall. She watched the thorny tail coming below wind up for a lash and grimaced. By the strength she had felt before, she could tell that a full-force tail whip would leave nothing of her behind, guarding or not. The rock-like spines protruding along the dragon’s back all the way up until the tail end were like a line of coarse spears.
But the same way as no person would think to punch a mosquito in earnest, the idea of going all-out on a small human didn’t occur to Erynmir either. She spared Izumi only a playful, passing slash—even if that “gentle” gesture would have broken a schooner’s hull. It was just about slow enough for Izumi to act. Using her wide sword for an improvised sail—or an oar, more like—she swung hard to the side, turning herself around and rolled out of the rising tail’s path. The tip of it brushed past her, the dreadful spikes bare inches from her side.
Missing the sense of impact, Erynmir began to turn around to see what had happened. The lifted tail came back down—a tad too close to its target. There was no way Izumi was going to miss the lifeline cast to her like this. Leaning quickly forward, she thrust her sword arm up and stabbed the blade through the dragon’s tail. Finally with something solid to hold onto, she pulled herself closer and seized the tail firmly between her thighs and kept low.
“HYIIIIAAAURRRRRRRH—!”
Yowling like a big, startled cat, Erynmir shook her tail to get rid of the attachment, while rolling around in the air, but Izumi wouldn't let go.
“There is an open wound on the beast’s upper back,” Yubilea appeared to inform, unfazed by G-forces or weather. “You might be able to inflict a killing blow there. Striking the heart is the only way you can win this.”
“It’s a bit far away,” Izumi looked up, unable to even see the spot past the beast’s arching back and wings.
Erynmir continued to twist and toss in the air, trying to shake off the unwanted passenger. Knowing she wasn’t going to be able to hold on forever, Izumi gazed up through the biting wind, looking for a way to improve her post. There was no chance she could climb up while the creature kept twisting. In the absence of safer methods, she had to make do with the less safe ones.
“This could be a little painful.”
Feeling the motions of the dragon’s curling body, Izumi waited for the next up-going wave. When it was upon her, she pulled out the sword, put force in her legs, and jumped. The arcing tail flung her high over Erynmir’s wide back, between the busily flapping wings. From above, she could see the aforementioned wound below the right shoulder, the blood oozing from it dying the green scales black far down the flank. Her momentum didn’t reach that high. She began quickly to lose altitude. Adjusting her flight path with her blade and limbs, a skydiver without a parachute, Izumi caught hold of the long, protruding vertebral spines near the lower back, and began to climb them like ladders, while the dragon yet ascended. But as little as she weighed in comparison, her opponent was not an unfeeling rock.
“Harúmhé—?” Erynmir sensed the woman on her. “Sorón ché.”
“Come again?”
The beast stopped going higher and turned instead around to a steep dive. From close to the level of the clouds, the two faced the vast surface of the sea, like so much crushed glass. The dragon stilled her wings and began to fall.
Bit by bit, their speed grew faster, wind whistling in Izumi’s ears.
“Hey, hey, hey, are you serious now!?” she cried, recognizing the monster’s intent.
The force of gravity in this world appeared to be close to the same as on Earth. In other words, if Erynmir kept her course unchanged, they would strike the sea at the terminal velocity of a hundred and eighteen miles per hour. Izumi wasn’t happy at all to possess such trivia now. Not being the fire-breathing type, the wyrm had no natural aversion to water, and assuming the maneuver a bluff could prove unhealthy. But Izumi had very few options left, in any event. Jumping off now wouldn’t save her any more than a passenger leaping off a falling airplane would. There was no way she could reduce her velocity by enough to survive.
But safety might yet be found closer, in the last direction you would think to look for it.
Erynmir appeared quite sturdy and the thick plates of bone jutting out of her back were perhaps enough of a cover. At least, they might serve to break the surface tension and reduce the force of the collision. The ocean fast approaching, there was no choice but to take the bad odds. Mingling between the spines, as close to the dragon’s body as she could get, Izumi appended Gram with Tauhirn, drew a deep breath and held on.
Making no effort to slow down, Erynmir pulled her wings in, turned her horned head forward and tensed her powerful body.
The horned meteor hit the water with the force of a genuine stellar traveler.
Izumi blacked out, stunned by the sudden deceleration.
In what she guessed were a few seconds at most, her consciousness slowly cleared and she found herself underwater, mostly uninjured, but her enchantments dispelled. She saw and felt nothing but foam and bubbles, bubbles like crystalline beetles climbing all over her, thousands, millions of them, brushing against her face, lips, and eyes with force. She gritted her teeth, covered her face with her free arm, and the bubble avalanche gradually cleared, allowing her to see the surroundings better.
Not that there was anything there to see.
Everywhere around extended only shapeless emptiness, deep blue diffusion of daylight above fading without a seam into the total blackness underneath.
Instinctive, overwhelming horror gripped Izumi at one glance into the borderless abyss that was strange to her. She realized she was still stuck among Erynmir’s spines. Unfazed by the plunge, the dragon kept on diving deeper and deeper towards the remote darkness of the ocean floor, as if determined to carry the woman straight to Hel with her.
Izumi hurried to kick off the beast and began to scramble towards the dim light of the surface, her ears stinging, chest hurting, the haunting void behind her and everywhere around her. She very nearly lost grip of the Amygla in the effort, and the fear of losing the dear weapon forever to the sea was almost as bad as the fear of the sea itself.
Right when she began to seriously think she wouldn’t make it, Izumi broke through the surface. But she found little solace in the above world. She was alone, surrounded by tall waves, like mobile mountains. They passed her in the way of uncaring giants, lifting her high up and throwing her tumbling down again, as if to mock the fool who had tried to challenge nature, and failed like countless others before her.
Acutely aware of the terrible emptiness still below her feet, yet unable to find escape from it on any tangible landing, Izumi kept coughing and gasping, seeking help from the horizon. But only getting enough air to breathe was a challenge that took her all, swimming any distance was too much. She was entirely at the mercy of the enemy and acutely aware that any passing second could be her last.
“Yui-chan!” Izumi shouted between rushed breaths. “Where am I? Which way are the good guys? Which way are the bad guys?”
“Don’t ask me!” Yubilea offered little consolation, even more susceptible to panic. “I don't even know which is which!”
“You—!” Izumi interrupted herself, nearly swallowing seawater. Keeping afloat was even harder than it should have been while holding onto the heavy sword. “You dummy fairy! Pfft!”
“Did I tell you to go fight the dragon? No, I didn’t tell you to fight the dragon! You’re the idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot!”
“Pipe down, light bulb! Bwhuaa!”
“Look out! It’s coming again!”
Izumi looked down in the water, seeing nothing at first. Then, a lighter shape began to emerge from the emptiness under her. In the next moment, she made out the outline of a monstrous head coming up, the fanged jaws stretched wide open.
“Hyaaghh!” she cried aloud out of horror and disgust.
But like the cruel orcas, Erynmir wasn’t going to end her prey so quickly. Instead of devouring the woman in one gulp, the beast abruptly closed her jaws and dived up, lifting Izumi on her nose. Rising out in the air, the dragon flicked her head back and tossed the woman back in the sea.
“An seins av adhé mor faal’hua, immein!?” the dragon roared, taking to wings and climbed higher to the sky. Halting in mid-air some hundred feet above the restless waters, she turned back to gaze down at the woman and spread her wings wide open. “Héso! Tuón andi anhúwa sé'as!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Izumi groaned.
She did feel the effect. The aimless, chaotic storm winds that had tormented the sea air like so many whips underwent a sudden change. All the rampaging currents began to come together and blow the same way. They turned to revolve around the floating beast, turning gradually firmer and faster.
As the whirlwind expanded in mass and scale, the water began to follow its lead.
The previously isolated waves were bent and turned like cattle called by the shepherd. Beckoned by the unnatural typhoon, the seas collided and merged, forming scattered lines. They began then to climb higher and higher, becoming as walls of an ancient tower raised from the depths one slanted floor at a time, an aquatic Babel. The whirl ascended higher and higher, the waters running their mad circle, dragging the lone mortal and everything else in the vicinity along with them.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Izumi cried, as she felt the weather’s pull turn tighter on her. The waves carried her along onto the spiraling flurry, where the tempestuous wind stole her from the ocean’s grip. Sword and all, she was taken up in the air and found herself spinning around in the ever-building pandaemonium. Gaining in size by the second, it went on to pick up more jetsam and debris, and even smaller ships, anything that happened to float too close, along with untold gallons of seawater.
There was no more ocean or sky, or the air in between, only that enormous, semi-liquid shaft, an elemental carousel, the helpless riders of which were left to weather the great wyrm’s wrath without hope of escape. Erynmir posed in the eye of the hurricane, tall and majestic, her magic only augmented upon each passing moment with no apparent limit, might freely lent to her by the planet itself.
“So this is the true power of a dragon, huh…?” Izumi grunted, surrendering to the storm’s pull. “Well, it might be just about bombastic enough as my end.”
Before such an overwhelming show of force, Izumi couldn’t even feel scared anymore. She ceased her struggle, relaxed, and closed her eyes, waiting for the end of the line. Colliding with anything solid in that fierce twister was going to put a swift stop to all living.
“——.”
But before death could have her, Izumi thought, to her confusion, to hear a distant voice call her name.
No, there it was again, closer.
“Izumi——!”
Startled by the familiar pitch, Izumi looked back in the direction of the voice, and used her arms to turn herself around. It hadn’t been her imagination. There really was another living person mixed in the tornado. Some twenty fathoms away, likewise borne by the wind, was Yuliana, reaching for her.
“Yule…?” Izumi frowned in confusion and tried to adjust her flight with her limbs to get closer.
Likewise, Yuliana tried to catch the wind to bring her at least a little closer, at the same time trying to distill the swirl of emotions within herself into something sensible.
There were many things to be said.
Many stories to be told.
Many memories to be shared, both good and bad.
But the time the fortunes had allowed them was likely to be brief. Chance wouldn’t favor long-winded conversations, explanations, or excuses. If there was only enough time for a few short words, what should they be? What did she want to say? Yuliana found the answer soon enough. The message was quick to come to her, as it had been consistently on top of her mind over the past months, only looking for the medium to take it.
“Izumi!” she again shouted into the wind. “Come back to us! Come home!”
Before words of regret or farewell, she had elected to put her faith in the future.
Hearing those words, Izumi’s madness left her.
Like one waking up from a long, unpleasant dream, she forgot about destiny and prophecies, about balance and revenge, about doom and despair. For the first time in weeks, she became aware of such a thing as “tomorrow”, the heralding light of which she thought to perceive with sobering brightness. She felt her heart beat heavy and steady, alive and in the present, a sense of purpose in her restored. And her mind was made up.
“I will!” she shouted back, struggling against the wind, reaching for Yuliana with her free hand. But the hurricane wasn’t slowing down and they were drifting further apart. Seeing she wasn’t going to reach her, Izumi yelled again,
“Ai-chan! Please!”
In response, voluminous wings of light veiled the Empress’s form, and in the next moment, she was already gone. The Divine of Light slipped away from the hurricane in a ray of light, which earthly gales did little to hinder.
With bystanders out of the harm’s way, there was nothing left to worry about. Resolve restored strength in Izumi's tired limbs. She renewed Gram and Sifl, tightened the grip on her sword, and turned her gaze back to Erynmir hovering in the heart of the cyclone. No more for madness or revenge, she had to fight—to survive.
“What are you waiting for!? I’m still here!”
Employing her blade, she brushed aside the debris flying her way, waiting for an opportunity to show itself. If there was even the slightest chance of turning the desperate situation around, she wouldn’t miss it.
It was surely still coming. Human or dragon, no one fighting for personal supremacy could be content with a duel concluded in a random accident. Unless the finishing blow came by the combatant’s own hand, there would be no meaning.
Erynmir raised her head, like a thorny orchid greeting sunrise, and let out a long, reverberating cry that wrung air and made every molecule of water tremble. Beating her wings, the beast dived forward and rode the storm, beginning the final pursuit.
No more playing around, only the finishing blow. She closed in on Izumi from below, and opened her maw wide. Izumi fixed her aim at the horn protruding from the dragon’s muzzle, held her sword behind her back, and waited, waited. At the last moment, she bashed down at the tip of that bony lance with the face of her blade, taking herself out of the fangs’ path.
“HRNH—!” Erynmir flinched at the hit.
The impact flipped Izumi around, and she landed on her feet on the dragon’s chin. Angrily growling, the beast tried to bite her again. Izumi jumped up to elude the chomp and widened her stance, coming to stand on the spread rows of sword-like teeth, as though balancing over a gaping gorge. With how her eyes were positioned, Erynmir couldn’t see well what was directly in front of her. But nothing entered her mouth and she felt the weight of the person on her face, and knew she had missed again. She thrust her head forward and tried to catch the woman in her jaws, but Izumi remained alert and shifted to stand onto the lower row of teeth to avoid being left in the trap. The dragon attempted to bite once more, but Izumi was now ahead of her. As soon as Erynmir parted her jaws, she stuck the Amygla between them. Feeling the blade tip dig into her tongue, the handle against the palate, the dragon froze and wouldn’t bite down. But the respite was only temporary. Quickly changing tactics, Erynmir drew her jaws even wider apart and inhaled.
The rumbling of her vast sides was enough of a warning.
“Oops!” Removing her blade, Izumi leaned to the side and escaped the coming breath with an aerial cartwheel. A vicious, wet burst, like a giant sneeze, shot out of the monster’s throat and nostrils, but it missed the target.
Falling off the face, Izumi grabbed the larger horn protruding from the side of the wyrm’s head, and hung on as they continued to soar through the storm. Erynmir shook her head up and down, trying to get rid of the accessory, and Izumi saw no reason to fight against it. Spotting a better target below, she released the antler and let Erynmir throw her off—at her own left wing.
“Hi-ya—!”
Izumi brought down the sword, her full weight behind it, and cut deep into the wing, close to the back. The blade sank straight through the thin hide, muscle, and tendons, and inches into the steely bone. She held on and rotated around the prodigious avian limb, slicing nearly all the way through before being swung onto the back of the beast. The turbulence did the rest. The hurricane was now turned against its conjurer. The wind broke off the almost detached wing, and swept it away.
“HYEEEEEEEEEEUUUURRWHHHH——!” A pained howl rent the sky.
The magic was broken.
The wind faded.
The water devil dissipated.
The uplifted sea fell back down, and the debris from the broken ships scattered like solid rain on the waves. Perpetually unbalanced, the dragon couldn’t remain airborne anymore. She fell, spiraling, tossing, raging. Clinging to the spines on the back, Izumi put her sword away and tried to climb up with both hands, towards the wound below the right shoulder, to finish what she had started. The blood of the beast burned her hands and made the spines and scales slippery. She didn’t reach the place.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
All of a sudden, the great beast was gone. In Izumi’s hands struggled a green-haired girl in a white dress. Howling in rage, her face contorted by fury and pain, Erynmir groped for Izumi’s neck.
“Agh…!” It was not a child she struggled with. Izumi could do nothing to resist the force of those slender hands. Gripping the thin wrists, she tried to push herself away from the beastly girl and escape having her head plucked off, but was too slow. Erynmir caught Izumi with her legs, wrapped her powerful thighs around her waist and pulled closer, hands closing in on the neck. Izumi reached for the small thumbs and tried to wring the hands aside, but not even Gram allowed her mortal frame to overpower one finger of the dragon. She let go one hand and reached for the greatsword over her shoulder. Erynmir saw it and stopped her elbow before she could draw the blade, continuing to squeeze the woman’s neck with the other hand, screaming in her face with fury.
That would have doubtless been Izumi’s end, had their tragic flight not reached its conclusion first. So absorbed in their scuffle, neither of them could foresee the manner of their landing. Instead of salty sea water, they fell against sturdy canvas, like two butterflies caught in a biologist’s net. From the lower topsail’s embrace, they went tumbling down onto the boom, the main sail, and from there to the hard deck of the brig below.
Given the circumstances, it should’ve been called a soft landing, perhaps, but that didn’t make it a very gentle one either. Izumi found that she was still alive and able to feel pain, and was fortunately removed from the dragon’s hold. On the other hand, her neck hurt so bad she couldn’t move her head at all and just inhaling burned. The greatsword’s frame had covered her back but she had broken a rib or two. Not even attempting to chart the total damage, she cast Ohrm, thanking her luck for being left conscious to do so, and lay helpless on her back, waiting to recover.
Despite her vulnerable state, the finishing blow wasn't coming. Little by little, the pain lessened. Able to breathe easier and move again, Izumi turned to look across the deck and saw Erynmir near the main mast.
The dragon girl struggled like a berserk monkey, tightly embraced by a kneeling man. She should have made short work of him with her might, and yet the beast appeared reluctant—if not outright unable—to harm him in earnest. Not that this made her any more agreeable to being restrained either. She kept on struggling to get away with increasingly harsher methods, to resume her rampage and vent her boundless rage. But no matter how she clawed and screamed at him, the sailor stubbornly held on. In the end, she bit her canines into his shoulder in frustration, but even as blood streamed down his arm, he wouldn’t let go.
Who was that man?
Being the only one brave enough—or mad enough— to sail directly into the eye of the hurricane, that captain had escaped the grinder where several others had been obliterated.
“Eryn,” the Prince called the dragon’s name. “Eryn, listen to me. Listen! Remember the words that you taught me. Sih sarté anolias a onhé, dua ánnas enie sú vonhe. Let me bear your rage together with you. Let me endure your pain. I’ll be with you to the end of the line, kid. Always.”
“What…?” Izumi frowned at the strange scene.
Growing suddenly calm, Erynmir closed her eyes and breathed a faint sigh. Subsequently, her form turned light as air, fading away in the Prince’s arms. In the girl’s place, a glow of greenish, shapeless light passed into his body. The Prince staggered stiffly up to his feet, speaking not a word, and the light continued to dance inside him, glowing through his flesh and the rags veiling his body, the way daylight shifts through water.
Right as Izumi was about to ask what he was doing, he tensed and doubled over in evident agony, and a terrible howl escaped him.
“HYEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH DRAGON FUSION—!”
An intense wave of pressure erupted from the man’s stout figure, striking down everyone on the deck. Izumi too was thrown back to the foot of the foremast. Aerial humidity was condensed in disc-like, milky layers, rising high over the sails, speaking of forces outside human comprehension and natural explanation.
“Now what is it…?” Izumi groaned, watching the strange show with alarm.
“That fool of all fools!” Yubilea shrieked. “What has he done!? The thing most forbidden of all things forbidden! He’s offered his own flesh as sacrifice to the dragon! The double, the triple-forbidden!”
The created would only ever be allowed to sacrifice to the glory of the Old Gods that were no more, or the Divines that came after them—so it had been decreed when time itself was still young.
Doing so for any other reason would not escape penalty.
The greed of the Makers was not the sole reason to the ban. In the wrong hands, for the wrong reasons, the high energy yield of sacrificial rituals risked breaking the system integrity. Of such nature were the rituals once recorded in the ancient Index of Kronenberg, spells that were forbidden, magic that is “black”.
Alas, modern man had lost knowledge of such taboos, and this was the only way the Prince knew to help Erynmir in her plight. Could even the gods of eld have foreseen a scenario, where a dragon would willingly bestow the knowledge of the Immortals upon a man, or where that man would give up his life in favor of a monster?
But the Prince’s compassion became his undoing. Such rites were for the dragons themselves, for the wise and experienced to protect the young. For a mortal to attempt to bear the full fury of a grand wyrm was tantamount to embracing a hurricane. From that moment on, the Prince of Luctretz was doomed, no more a man, but only a cursed beast.
A solitary, scaled wing sprang from his back. The pain passed as all human thought and emotion in him were blown away. He raised himself again and was neither a noble nor a pirate anymore, but clad in the armor of a dragon, his weapons the saber and magic of dragons, and wrath veiled him like the shadow of the eclipse.
The abomination turned to Izumi, the target of Erynmir’s ceaseless wrath. Sensing the proximity of death, she quickly renewed her runes and raised her blade.
But what followed couldn’t be called a battle anymore.
Breaking the sound barrier in one step, the Prince was already in front of her, swinging his saber in a vicious uppercut. To keep from being sliced in two, Izumi could only throw her whole weight against the blow, the Amygla in between. The elven blade withstood the impact without cracking, but her modest mass did nothing to halt the force of it. As though launched from a catapult, Izumi was cast high up in the sky, well past the masts of the green brig. Her left thigh was sliced through the Iron Hide, and blood gushed out of the severed artery.
There was no time to recover.
Izumi glanced down and saw her opponent had vanished from the deck.
“Watch your right! Watch your right!” Yubilea cried.
Izumi had yet to even reach the apex of her trajectory, when the next strike came. With the speed of a crossbow bolt, the Prince came flying in from the side, brandishing his curved saber. Izumi shielded her heart and stomach with her sword, but he rammed straight into the guard without care, sliced deep through her left flank, and was then gone. Tauhirn was good as paper against that relentless force, though the damage likely would have been worse without.
“Behind you! Behind! Behind!” Yubilea already yelled, with barely any suspense, while Izumi was still trying to come up with a plan.
She looked over her shoulder. True enough, the next attack was already on its way. No trickery could turn her completely around in the second or so she had to react. All she could do was flip her sword over her shoulder to cover her neck and spine and hope for the best. Deliberately avoiding her vitals, the monstrous foe stabbed his saber through her back, a bit above the hip on the right, and sped by, tearing open the wound and sending her spinning down. Like Erynmir before, it seemed he was determined to toy with her to the limit before the killing blow. They were one and the same now, after all, a fusion of two minds and souls.
“Left, left, left, left, left!” Yubilea’s warnings continued without rest.
“Gh...Shut up!”
Rolling uncontrollably around and around in mid-air, Izumi couldn’t well tell which way was left anymore. It was fairly remarkable how, despite her constant motion, the enemy was nevertheless able to cleave her left shoulder with such accuracy. Bones and muscles cut were almost through from the shoulder down to the upper back, her left arm rendered useless. If there were any good points at all to be found in the hopeless situation, Izumi felt less pain than she thought she should. Overusing the runes over the week had numbed her nerves to the point that she couldn’t easily tell if there was any one spot hurting particularly more than another.
“Look up! Above you! Come oooon!” Yubilea’s warnings by now were spiced with a good deal of frustration and accusation at her partner’s apparent incompetence.
Izumi very much wanted to tell the spirit that she had impossible expectations for a 39-year-old human woman, but didn’t have the leisure to do so. Unable to muster a proper guard anymore, she hugged her sword and received directly the rider kick aimed at her solar plexus.
What happened next, Izumi wasn’t quite sure, as she lost consciousness. By the time awareness returned to her again—as it somehow did—she found herself deep underwater. The last blow had to have plunged her straight into the sea, a bit east of the ship.
The surrounding darkness seemed less frightening now—almost comforting.
Drawing his power from air, the enemy wouldn’t be able to toy with her so easily in the sea. For at least a few seconds, she was safe, until she would run out of oxygen and had to return to the surface. She had never known how to savor life as she did now. The runes undone, Izumi let buoyancy lift her back up without any hurry and cast Ohrm as soon as she had her face in the air. The spell got to work with unfailing loyalty, to put together her tattered form that salt water washed. Though she lay in sea, she felt like being on fire.
Why had did she even try to recover? Was there any real point in persisting?
High above in the sky, the man, the dragoon, turned his blade around, readying for the final plunge. She saw his movements as though in slow motion. Her distressed brain’s desperate attempt to deny reality for as long as possible? Or another side effect of overusing magic?
Not that it meant anything.
No matter how they were turned around, the numbers were stark and cruelly one-sided. It would take her almost fifteen minutes to fully recover from her injuries. He would pierce her heart in under a second. Even in top form, under the ideal circumstances, she was way out of her league.
The game was over, no way around it.
“This is as far as we go, eh…” Izumi muttered and closed her eyes, lying limp on the waves. “That really is cheating, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Yubilea nodded, floating beside her. “The enemy is cheating. Then so must we.”
Izumi turned her eyes at the spirit with a frown. The former Divine met her look with an uncharacteristically mild, a tad sad smile on her lips.
“I know one way,” Yubilea said. “Well, I only came up with it just now, but it will probably do the trick. At least, you will have a chance. I will share the method with you. The rest is up to you, as usual. Or no. For this once, you won’t be fighting alone, I suppose.”
“What are you talking a—” Izumi furrowed her brow, interrupting herself as foreign information began to flood her awareness.
It was a spell, a whole new type of a spell.
And what absurd spell it was.
Perhaps absurd enough to achieve the impossible, as unnecessarily complicated as the process was. Certainly, such a trick would qualify as cheating by any measure. Had Yubilea always been capable of such outrageous things?
But the sliver hope soon became sidelined on Izumi’s mind by a different observation. The more she learned about the method, the more acutely she became aware of the critical flaw in its execution. Though she had to have known it, Yubilea appeared to pay the issue no heed. She was already carrying out the preparatory steps at the speed of light, drawing upon the invisible linking.
“Wait!” Izumi hurried to stop the spirit. “If you do that—”
“—I know,” Yubilea answered, the smile on her lips unclouded. “This means the end of our journey together. To make this work, I’m going to have to draw a stellar amount of mana through you. Only, it won’t be your mana I’m taking. There’s no way the Monster of Brann will ignore this. We’ll likely only get one shot at this, before she snuffs me out. So make it count, all right?”
“But what about our agreement!” Izumi protested. “Wasn’t it me you wanted to fight? I thought you wanted to get even? Didn’t you do all this so that you could live? There might still be another way! If only we think about it a little more—”
Yubilea interrupted the woman with a slow shake of her head.
“You know as well as I do that there is no other way. I told you this before, didn't I? I wanted a ‘satisfying conclusion’ to our dispute. And it’s been quite a while since I stopped seeing your death as ‘satisfying’ in any sense. In fact, it couldn’t be further from what I want. No. If you somehow manage to win now, I can be more than content. My existence had purpose! I didn’t go through all this for nothing!”
“Yui-chan…! Wait!”
Izumi looked around and saw that she wasn’t swimming in the sea anymore. She stood on the waves, now solid and stilled under her shoes, strength steadily pouring into her. The additional influx of mana accelerated her recovery, and her injuries were fast disappearing.
Reality itself was imperceptibly changing. The ocean was no longer the playground of chaotic natural elements, the product of raw causality. Every atom in the water, in the air, and within Izumi’s own being, had become linked, rearranged, and bound by a new “order”, information rewritten on the fly. But she paid no heed to any of the senseless things unfolding in the background.
“Stop it…!” she repeated her appeal. “Please! Yubilea!”
The spirit was no longer anywhere in sight. There could be no confusion as to where she had gone either. Her spirit burned in Izumi’s chest, warm, intense, and consoling, pulsating alongside the woman’s own heart.
Now’s no time for that, is it? I’m waiting for your mark. Just say the words.
“Damn it…!” Izumi grunted and hurriedly wiped her eyes.
It was already too late to turn back, she could tell as much.
The longer she dallied, the closer she brought them to failure.
The only path left was straight ahead.
Izumi contained her agitation and forced her breathing calm, her mind empty. She gripped her sword firmly with both hands, focusing her thoughts in the feel of the metal. Little embers parted from her skin, to erupt in scarlet flames, which veiled her hands, climbed along her arms, coating her figure all over. Those flames wouldn’t burn, but felt like the soft touches of countless, encouraging hands, and she thought to hear in her ears the sounds of drums and festivals outside the linear time. Her hair flowed like flames and she lifted her weapon, parted her lips, and spoke,
“——Divine Fusion.”
A streak of ruby red light cleaved the space above the sea in two. It went from the waves up to the upper atmosphere, a fine strand parting east from west. A hole was punctured in the heavy clouds above the duelists, and those glum curtains were swept aside and scattered even quicker than they had first appeared.
However, by the point such things could be seen, the fight itself was long done.
Standard evening lighting was restored to the Edrian Bay, and it shortly banished the lingering afterimage of that unnatural blood thread. From thereon, only tranquil, natural winds blew again and the waves were like ever before. Peace had at last been restored with some sense of permanence, and all the fighting had ceased.
Yet, it is doubtful our readers could be content with such a mysterious, open ending to the fable. We may not be able to explain what happened, precisely, in such technical terms mortals might comprehend, but there were witnesses who saw what happened directly after.
A small group of people happened to be close enough to ground zero to pay witness to the final act of this cruel confrontation, and those people would be the crew of the Jade Tempest.
Following the unsettling light show, the dragon knight who had been their captain came tumbling down from the heavens like a cosmic rock. Knocked straight through the main sail canvas, landing hard on the deck, the grotesque winged warrior was gone, and in his place tumbled two different beings, parted once more.
The Prince of Luctretz went rolling to the side, stilled by the brig’s starboard bulwark and lay there, unmoving, as though dead—as any average man should’ve long been, after subjecting his body to such monstrous forces.
The other one was Erynmir, split off from the Prince in form like a child forcibly taken from her mother’s womb, naked and raw, tossing and shrieking. Her magic was utterly spent, every ounce of her strength depleted. Blind and in torment, she hung on the verge of death. Yet, the instincts of her ferocious kind wouldn’t allow her to pass easy, but compelled her to cling to life with tooth and claw to the last.
Slightly after the two, Izumi appeared back on the deck as well. She didn’t fall, or fly, or walk, but disappeared and reappeared the way fire is kindled. But as soon as her feet touched the wooden boards again, the red flames coating her dispersed, as though blown out by the wind.
Brief had been the miracle, and immediate was the retribution.
Assuming the Lord of Light had been hitherto oblivious to the presence of the other spirit, even in her phantasmal state, was of course unthinkable. She had allowed Yubilea a sanctuary, not out of mercy to a colleague, but as a modest boon to her champion.
The pawn had now carried out her intended purpose and could be freely discarded. Only briefly intensifying the force of her blessing in Izumi, Aiwesh shook loose the fragmented soul of the Scarlet Divine, and nothing more was required. Sensing Yubilea’s presence fade, only stark emptiness in its place, Izumi watched after the embers that dangled above the waves, until they one by one faded from view.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “And goodbye.”
Exhaling a faint sigh, Izumi gripped her sword and faced forward again.
This day had served as one tragic but indisputable show on how the coexistence of humans and dragons was not a functional concept.
So long as Erynmir lived, there could be no guarantee that this chaos wouldn’t be repeated. It could well be that mankind itself might be swept away by her power some day, if allowed to mature any further from this point. For despite all her might, Erynmir was only a pale shadow of what fully aged ancient wyrms were once capable of, and why history had done away with them.
Moreover, seeing her pitiful state, it was probably more merciful to end her suffering.
Even if such thoughts coursed in Izumi’s mind, they were far behind in the line. Her topmost drive to act was something simpler and more personal in nature.
Humans or dragons, they were villains.
They were the root of all the bloodshed and evil today, and before today, and as such, they had to go. All of them.
Her anger coming back to her, Izumi walked across the deck to the girl before the main mast. Erynmir showed little awareness of her own circumstances, snarling and growling like an injured cat, clawing at the boards, trying to get up and run, but lacking the strength to even turn herself around. Izumi was not on her mind anymore.
Pity made the woman halt and she stood for a moment staring at the animal, silently questioning herself, seeking an argument by which to silence her protesting conscience. Then, in her peripheral vision, she caught sight of something else that made her frown in surprise.
The Prince wasn’t quite dead yet either.
Slowly, with obvious effort, the man moved. He had to have been in terrible agony, yet no sound escaped his lips. Likely, because he hadn’t the strength left to even cry out. His motions were powered by nothing but sheer force of will, and each of them might have well been his last. He should have kept still and waited quietly for treatment—yet, this he couldn’t allow himself.
Driven by some compulsion strange to Izumi, the man continued to drag himself across the deck boards with his elbows, inch by inch. She followed his struggle with unease, trying to guess what he was after, or if he even knew what he was doing and wasn’t just as clueless about his situation as the beast. Surely he didn’t think he could keep fighting in such a state?
No. Undeniably clouded and exhausted though his mind was, after everything, the Prince retained yet perfect clarity of his original purpose, of this singular need.
Slowly, he wormed his way between Erynmir and Izumi. There he stopped and, one labored breath at a time, pulled his knees under him and pushed his frame back to prop himself somewhat upright. He then spread his thick arms wide apart, like Atlas holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, to prevent the woman from going past him. Too exhausted he was to even raise his face, his messy, wet hair dangling over his face, an altogether wretched shell of a man. But as easy as it would have been to walk around him, surely no one in the world could have mocked his resolve. As far as the Prince had already pushed himself, he pushed yet further and forced the quiet words out of his throat,
“She is a beast with no sense of right or wrong. I brought her into this. Take my life. Spare hers.”
Izumi stared down at him in silence for a beat.
This man was no doubt Cartognam, the Pirate King, the Dragonlord she had heard the scoundrels on land tell about. He was the one who had kidnapped Yuliana and caused all this worthless bloodshed and mayhem. The one in the ultimate heights of the criminal conglomerate, which had driven countless people into agony and ruin, people like Riswelze and Iris.
There was no reason to hesitate.
“Sure,” Izumi answered. She took a step forward, held her sword briefly against the man’s neck to check the distance. Widening her footing, she lifted the weapon high up overhead with a steady two-handed grip and focused on the kill.
“.....?”
However, before she could carry out the execution, the sound of quick footsteps caught her attention. Izumi looked to the side and saw a man approach her across the deck from the aft, a middle-aged sailor, round but robust, with a face sunburned, gray whiskers, and a black little beanie on his scalp. The pirate stared at her with a grim, unflinching look as he came, lips tightly squeezed together in a narrow line. Another pawn coming to die in defense of his scoundrel master? She had seen quite a line of those by now.
The man wasn’t armed, save for a small utility knife on his belt. He wouldn’t reach for it. Making no effort to fight or argue, Smith tore the hat off his head and got down on his knees before the woman. She could only raise a brow at him, dumbfounded.
“You know, our Captain’s many things,” Smith told Izumi, a warm smile spread on his face. “But he’s no navigator. I couldn’t count the times we lost our bearing because he read the charts wrong, or had his eyes on the wrong landmark. And he never improved, no matter how many tips I gave him. I’m fairly sure he’d even get lost on his way to Hel. So why don’t you send me down there first? Just to make sure we get in the right place on time.”
“Ha…?” Izumi’s confusion wasn’t getting any better.
Before she could recover from her stupefaction, a young sailor, Eliah, hurried over and knelt by the Prince on his left.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Every ship needs a scout, I should think the ferryman’s boat’s no different. I could do sounding, so they wouldn't hit any surprise shoals or the like on the way. So if you’re gonna cut their necks, then you do mine right along!”
Izumi had to wonder if they weren’t making fun of her. But Eliah bit his lip and waited for the verdict, stiff and pale, obviously afraid, yet not allowing the fear to win over him again.
The oddities didn’t end there either. Next came a tall, bald, scruffy-looking man in his forties, wearing a stained apron over his clothes. He was the ship’s cook, Jeremiah, though everyone just called him Cook. He pulled off his apron, tossed it away, and knelt beside Mr Smith in a hurry.
“It takes time to cook for this many mouths,” he told Izumi, his eyes red and voice heavy with emotion. “And I—I couldn’t bear let them go to Hel on an empty stomach! So you send me down yonder before any of these bastards! So that—so that I can get started with our last supper...with time to spare…!”
Jeremiah trailed off and hung his face, sadly sobbing.
One by one, the people aboard came forward, presenting various excuses for why they should be killed before the others. In no time, the entire crew of thirty-odd men of the Tempest were kneeling on the deck in front of Izumi, waiting to part with their heads. Surrounded by the many familiar presences, Erynmir ceased her struggle and whimpering. Her breathing grew easier, a faint glimmer of sentience returned in her wild eyes, and she turned to sit among the rest in silence.
“…”
Unable to keep facing those stoic, unwavering gazes, Izumi lowered her blade and turned away to the bow.
Somewhere along the way, her wrath had faded and she thought to have glimpsed, for a moment, a flash of genuine enlightenment.
No, she had surely known the answer all along.
It had been ever there, written in her heart, even if her pain made it at times difficult to see.
From the woods of Felorn, Izumi had embarked on her blood-soaked path from one disaster to another, not so much to find justice, but to flee her own grief. That long-winded path had brought her now a full circle, to this ship, where the final answer stared back at her, inescapable in its glaring certainty.
Where does hatred end?
Where does the cycle of vengeance draw close?
When all the villains are killed and evil defeated? When all the people are killed, the world cleansed entirely of sin? No. Certainly it ends only on that day, that very hour, that singular instant, when the courier chooses not to deliver.
Izumi put her sword away and wiped the corner of her eye.
For a lengthy while, she sought for the words, but eventually spoke up with hesitation,
“You know…I’m a landlubber through and through. I don’t know the next thing about ships or sailing. If I chop your necks, there’ll be no one left to steer this thing. So how about I trade all your lives for a ticket back to solid land, by the speediest way available? How does that sound?”