19.

Every one of Agatha’s shots killed an elemental. The stone bolts burrowed through the rippling currents of their bodies, shattering the tightly woven cloud structure and releasing devastating bolts of lightning upon the marching fishmen. It still wasn’t enough. She was the only one getting kills on the elementals, the rest of the crews were focused on firing into the horde, or if they did shoot at the elementals, they were ineffective. My mind was swirling as I tried to figure out a way for us to come out of this alive.

Miguel and Bobby were working in silence, and Olivia was panting and cursing under her breath as she continued to fire into the crowds below. What could we do? These floating monsters were near immune to our traditional attacks, only hitting them in specific spots was working, and Agatha had to use her skill to do it. She couldn’t have much longer with the skill active before she started to burn out.

I swept my eyes across the sea, behind the elementals floating towards us. There was so much spray in the air, the light from the fort's walls fading away. I still swept my eyes around the sea behind the elementals. Something had summoned those waterspouts and built these monstrosities. Everything the tutorial had thrown at us so far had been survivable, meant to make us grow and level. It wouldn’t send something that we couldn’t beat. I prayed that my logic was correct.

It took only a few seconds to see it. So obvious that I wanted to smack myself. Thin tendrils of water rose from the sea and linked to each of the elementals like chains. I followed the link of tendrils, toward a spot in the sea not far from the shore. I was willing to bet it was right at the edge of the range for one of the scorpions actually. Six water chains were linked to a slow rotating pool of water that wasn’t disturbed by the regular motions of the sea.

“Agatha! Look at the chains connecting the elementals. Look where they connect to!” I pointed at the swirling water with one shaky finger as the old woman pried her eyes away from the approaching calamities. Her eyebrows rose after a moment as she saw the tendrils, before a violent smile graced her lined face. She swung the point of the scorpion away from the elemental she had been about to skewer. It took her a moment to adjust her aim, her brow scrunching in concentration. Then she fired.

I watched that bolt fly. Slicing through the air, threading between the elementals, arcing gently into the center of the swirling pool. There was barely a splash as the bolt punched through the surface and disappeared. For a split second I thought she had missed.

The water tendrils fell away, the six chained beings stopping immediately, looking around as their water bodies began to swirl faster and faster as they perched above the battlefield. They no longer called lightning down upon our increasingly battered golems, they just hovered there thirty feet above the fight. From the whirlpool a beast erupted out in a blaze of orange skin and black blood. Tentacles thrashed about as it screamed, a sound of rage and pain that had everyone clutching their ears.

I watched it as it splashed above the surface of the water, my hands covering my ringing ears. It looked like an octopus. Eight writhing tentacles slashed the air, with large suction cups on them, water rising in dancing spirals around it. It remained at the edge of the light, making it a challenge to view, but I did see the bolt that had punched through its singular eye. Blood fell in a rain around it as it thrashed back and forth. I released my ears and was immediately assaulted again by its screech, but I had to load the next bolt. It wasn’t dead, not yet at least.

Bobby and Miguel grit their teeth and re-armed the scorpion after I loaded a bolt. Olivia came over to us, a sleeve from her jumpsuit missing. Wadded up cloth filled her hand as she pointed to her own stuffed ears. Smart kid. I took some and nodded in thanks as I balled the fabric up and stuck it into my own ears. It was a poor insulator from the shriek, but it made it bearable. Agatha fired again. The bolt crossed the distance, the waving tentacles trying to interpose, but were too slow. This bolt impacted right next to the last one, sliding even deeper through the ruined eye. The octopus stiffened for a moment, its tentacles frozen in the sky, before slowly sinking beneath the waves.

The six frozen elementals burst into motion. Instead of heading toward us, they retreated, back away from land and closer to the storms further out to sea. Hayden raced up to us as I was reloading. He yelled something, but the muffling prevented any of us from understanding what the man was saying. I tugged one of my poor earplugs free and leaned in to hear what he was asking.

“Where are those octopuses coming from? How did you see it?”

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“The chains of water connecting the elementals, follow them!”

Weren’t multiple octopus called octopi? That random thought derailed the rest of my mind. It didn’t matter, but for some reason my brain wanted to know. Maybe I’d ask Bobby? She seemed like she would know. Or maybe one of those college kids from the scout party. What were their names again?

I shook my head, putting my earbud of twisted fabric back in. I couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. Agatha was already aiming at the next pool, firing again to injure another giant octopus. This time, as it breached the surface, a half dozen more scorpion bolts followed before it had time to scream. It turned into a pincushion, the elementals it controlled breaking free. I looked over to Hayden after I loaded the next bolt, I was waiting for the signal to unleash another heat blast to clear the walls.

Hayden was racing from scorpion to scorpion crew, pointing at the elementals and then how to follow the chains to the whirlpools. More and more of the crews were firing at the pools. The bolts caused the octopi to rise; but rarely were they so grievously wounded as when Agatha fired, often needing three to four more bolts to silence them. The tide was turning, momentum tipping toward us as the elementals slowed and ceased their assault completely on the golems. Freed from the devastating lightning attacks, the golems continued to dismantle the crabs.

Hayden finally looked back my way after several minutes, giving the signal to activate another burst of the heat. It took only a moment for me to connect to the fort menu and find the ability before activating it. I watched as the fort's energy reserves plummeted. Another wave of apocalyptic heat washed out, frying more of the fish and crabs in their tracks. The minutes trickled by until, finally, the last of the octopi were slain and the elementals raced away.

The waves were bringing the octopus corpses to the beach, leaving their still bodies on the shore. I had no doubt the six beasts all had mana hearts, and with greed was rearing its head now that fear had fled. I could almost forget that blood chilling terror that had threatened to paralyze me as I stared down at the beach. Scores of crabs lay shattered and fried, and several of the elementals had been killed above the beach, their hearts falling to the sand. I wanted it all.

“Miguel, want to come with me? I want to try to find those mana hearts,” I asked the boy after removing our earplugs. He was a little wan, his face pale beneath his natural tan. I hadn’t seen him in days, almost the same amount of time I had known him. His mustache had thickened, his lean body seemed to be more filled out. Was it the increase in stats?

“Sure,” he said after a moment of hesitation. Agatha was busy clutching Olivia to her, hugging the girl and whispering in her ear. Bobby was leaning against the parapet, drinking from a canteen. She seemed to pay no attention to the two of us as we left the walls and headed through the fort. Opening the gates, we passed by the few sentinels we had left on watch. They were some of the oldest here, bent backed with gnarled fingers crippled from arthritis. They had few levels and hadn’t invested their points yet.

Going to the field was like stepping into a nightmare. The stench was nearly a physical blow. Fried fish, rotting meat, sea brine, and a dozen other smells I couldn’t identify. I ignored the line of crabs stacked like a wall by the golems. We had plenty of constitution points, I wanted to see the clear mana hearts from the slain elementals. Also I was interested in what the octopus had inside of it, but cutting through those giant bodies didn’t interest me at the moment. I had a feeling that the only way to activate that mana stat was by finding a magical creature and consuming their heart.

Miguel stuck next to me, watching the lines of dead carefully, his short sword in hand. My own spear was at the ready, though my eyes were more alert for the sight of the clear crystal. We waded through a sea of blood, pools of it thick enough that our feet went nearly calf deep. I couldn’t imagine trying to hold out nightly against this threat, and if more of the forts and keeps were cleared and occupied, what then would come for us? How would we survive against escalating waves like this? Would the tutorial really screw us like this? How could we go out and conquer if we were busy fighting to just hold our bases?

That thought held me. The tutorial said conquer and survive. What if it meant we had to conquer to survive? Maybe clearing each fort and their keeps weren’t just an experience boost, but a way of controlling the area. Could it be that if we activated the keeps, we could keep these types of attacks to a minimum? If that was so, then tomorrow we would have to send out teams to all of the keeps.

Lost in my own thoughts, I nearly tripped over the crystal heart.

The shadows cast from the golems and heaped crab corpses made the field a darkened hellscape. Bodies lay in tangled masses with weapons all around us threatening to leave gashes if we weren’t careful. In this mess my foot hit something hard and smooth and slipped, causing me to stumble. Miguel chuckled under his breath as I got my feet under me, and I shot him a glare. It only made him laugh harder. It wasn’t that funny.

Looking away from the laughing youth, I reached down and picked up the crystal heart that I had just stumbled over. It was smaller than any of the other hearts we had found. The size of a baseball and clear as glass, though when I moved it around I could see liquid moving inside. I had to have it. Now.

I knelt down on the beach and pulled my axe free, using the blunt back to crack it open. The heart was more fragile than the others had been, splintering open with the sound of tinkling glass. I nearly lost the precious liquid inside, I had to lift the broken heart above my head and open wide as the broken container let its prize loose. Mint, ice cold mint, was the taste of magic. Fire on my tongue, my mind going blank as ice spread through my body. Power rolled through my bones, more than any of the other mana hearts I had ingested today. Intoxicating.

I quickly opened my stats, desperate to see what I hoped for. There at the bottom of the list, a child's dream was fulfilled. Magic.

Mana: 1