Vesiphis took out a small clay vial from his pocket and flowed his greyish-yellow manna into it. A dim glow perfused the object, and soon, sparkling particles of sand trickled out.
A talisman, but not a spatial one.
It did not carry but conjure.
A system of magic the Naeman Witches were adept in, a gift from his father and mother.
“[Prymeodon Sand-sea].”
He called out the name of his Nascent Totem. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Cadfael do the same, as a black sheen covered the white bone blade in the boy’s grip.
Vesiphis’s eyebrows twitched, facing away before his counterpart noticed his gaze.
As the eldest cousin of the cohort, Vesiphis had dutifully asked Cadfael if he wanted a part in his and Howell’s plan.
Unsurprisingly, a muttered snort calling them ‘Wimps’ was all he got for a reply.
‘Well, that’s fine too. We have our own creeds. His is supremacy, while mine….’ The winged boy fixed his attention towards lake Sagathan, steadying his mind for flawless execution of the hunt.
The edges of the yellow cloud surrounding him touched the water, the conjured particles serving as an extension of his senses. While they were nothing compared to Howell, Elrhain, or Cadough’s detection capabilities, he would at least notice a gheist swarm bolting towards the rock formation.
Vesiphis went over what he knew about their target.
The Sawmouth Snapper.
About Vesiphis’s size lengthwise, these fish were predators of the lake that hunted in swarms of many.
They were quick in the water, equipped with well-armed flesh and bone appendages.
Their jagged blade-like upper jaw could break through stones and metals alike, living or not. The saw edges were motionless, but the discharge of sharp manna surrounding it wasn’t.
These gheists’ preferred hunting method was to clutch onto prey with their claw-like lower jaw and split it open with their bladed saw.
But their menace wasn’t restricted only underwater.
The Sawmouth Snapper’s high velocity in the currents could cannonball them out into the air borrowing their explosive momentum.
They were known to plough straight into the insides of unsuspecting land beasts drinking in the shores of various lakes. After which, the rest of the swarm would grab onto the dead or disabled prey’s other body parts and drag it and their comrade back into the water.
A creature no doubt conjured by a cruel undergod’s nightmares; spawned by a manna-riogh far into the lake depths.
But this was Fanas Diosca, where even these Sawmouth Snappers were at the bottom of the food chain.
They were but dumb beasts that could merely act on instincts.
A low-level animal may not detect the fast quakes in the water left in a Sawmouth Snapper’s wake.
“[Sand-sea Bulwark]!”
But to Vesiphis, it could not be more obvious!
Baam!
The saw-like jaw of the gheist drilled into the barrier of sand with a small shock wave as a blue shadow leapt up with a blur.
Vesiphis held strong with confidence. He opened his left wing and flapped, swerving his body in the opposite direction, evading the second Sawmouth Snapper as it ambushed from behind.
‘Only two? No!’
Surrounding the algae-covered islets, more dark shapes moved erratically. The bloodlust was palpable.
‘… four, five, ten… twenty-two!’
The moment he finished counting, one shadow dove upward as the water above it swelled before bursting.
It was Howell!
With an excited shriek, the shark-eyed boy sailed over Vesiphis’s head while holding the end of his spear in a vice grip. The momentum of the now thrice-extended manna-filled talisman was no weaker than the gheists themselves.
Before Howell plunged back into the water on the other side, he splashed a vial of blood-red liquid directly onto Vesiphis’s [Sand-sea Bulwark].
‘So, twenty-one of them.’
Vesiphis re-adjusted the shape of his defences. The first part of their plan was a success.
The red liquid sizzled like fire as it came into contact with the manna on the Bulwark, releasing a pungent red smoke.
As if a mark of death had been planted on Vesiphis’s back, more than half of the monster fish let out a screech of rage in his direction.
The sound wave broke into the atmosphere, and four Sawmouth Snappers vaulted out with bloodshot eyes.
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Vesiphis grinned, slanting the sides of the Bulwark so that it would partially divert the impact.
The gheists slid off without much resistance, but the effect of the blood smoke remained. They circled back with renewed ferocity.
‘Not bad, considering Howell must’ve used some of the lure’s magic when baiting these gheists.’
“Hiya!” Speaking of the boy, Howell jumped out of the water again, this time from the right of the islet.
The retracted spear in his hand was wedged between the snapping jaws of one of the gheists, bending slightly as the gheist tried to chomp down.
The Sawmouth Snapper looked perplexed, while Howell’s grin sang with exhilaration. Then they plopped back into Sagathan.
A second later, a pained roar, different from the bloodthirsty one before, wailed out, making Vesiphis wonder exactly what Howell did down there.
He could not see as the water there was now a murky brown, clouded with gheist blood.
The rest of the swarm jolted away at their comrade’s death cry, their instincts seemingly wary of the pesky two-legged spike-thing creeping in that brown fog.
Despite the first kill, the overall frequency of their attacks did not lessen.
From the side, Vesiphis could sense the depths of Cadfael’s manna and the whooshing sound of his shadowy tendrils cleaving apart the lake water.
A flash of darkness, and Cadfael separated the upper jaw of one incoming gheists from its mouth. He followed up with a straight thrust after binding the creature with his shadows, ensuring that the second kill of the hunt would not escape.
Unlike Vesiphis, Cadfael would instead attack than be so passive.
But that was fine.
Because Vesiphis still had enough leeway to check up on Cadfael, despite being pelted by the crazed charge of the gheists every few seconds.
“Guaaaaaaaa!”
The Sawmouth Snappers fumed more, their attacks becoming more unrestrained. They were no longer the orderly squadron of peltasts from before, but a haphazard mix of violent impulses.
Vesiphis knew they were not in such a frenzy because they had lost two members.
No, gheists didn’t do that.
The blood and the lure trapped the ravenous souls of these creatures inside the periphery of the islets.
Some of the stronger ones tried to escape, perhaps noticing the effect of Romero’s magic lure. But Howell was ever the nuisance.
And the mindless few who cared not for survival were plucked straight from water by shadows blacker than the depths, laden with blades sharper than swords.
Finally, a few more minutes of indiscriminate assault later, a notably larger Sawmouth Snapper with a golden stripe down its back raised half its maw above the water.
It screeched, the hue of manna surrounding its saw-like jaw taking a darker shade.
The other gheists followed its call. The leader's presence brought back a semblance of discipline in their midst as the gheists swam into a triangular-shaped formation.
The multitude of dark shapes circled the waters once, twice, and a few more times under the leadership of the alpha, as if in the tail of an elusive phantom.
Sometimes jittering, sometimes breaking apart, sometimes encircling. The gheists displayed a show of unity far superior than their intellect would suggest.
If it was Vesiphis down there right now, he would have already become fish food.
Randuman whistled, impressed. “Not bad. Not bad at all, young scion of Earthloch.”
Vesiphis could also feel a deep sense of pride rising in his chest at Howell’s game of deathly tag.
Soon, the Sawmouth Snappers proved once again that they were ruled by their bestial predispositions.
They ran out of patience after not being able to corner the lone prey, their formation long in disarray. The alpha broke out of the lake surface and roared again wrathfully.
Maybe it judged Cadfael to be greater danger than him, its frustrated eyes snapped straight towards Vesiphis. It dived with a guttural sound. The remaining swarm of fourteen followed, albeit more agitated.
The lure’s effect was weakening, but the gheists’ bloodlust did not allow them to retreat, neither did the alpha.
‘It’s time!’
The winged boy inhaled deeply, then poured in as much manna as he could into his Bulwark.
He knew a charge far destructive than before was coming; he knew how these gheists hunted. He was not nervous at all. There was a subtle grin on his lips.
As expected, the gheists first swam away from the islet to raise their momentum.
At first, the dark shadows on the lake's surface disappeared with the depths. But not even a few breaths later, the shadows returned.
They enlarged faster than his eyes could follow and finally burst out of the water with a deluge of manna and malice.
Crash!
The biggest impact yet.
Vesiphis planted his feet into the slippery rock surface, using his sand-covered sandals to create enough fiction that he didn’t slip off.
The rock cracked as he felt his limbs strain under the force.
“GAAAAAAAAAH!”
The leader, right at the forefront of the swarm with half its saw sticking into Vesiphis’s Bulwark, roared like a sword screeching against a stone.
Seven gheists bashed the bulwark head-on, while seven others bounced off with distressed grunts.
The ones that remained continued barreling in.
They Clawed, crunched, sawed, and slashed at the Bulwark until the despicable thing would break. Just like the rock grottoes and stone reefs these Sawmouth Snappers would smash apart every day for the prey hidden under.
However,
“Guhhh?!”
Vesiphis flared his nostrils as his eyes turned a fuzzy yellow. He wrapped his body with his wings and concentrated the augmented manna in one of the innate frames in his totemic soul.
He softened the sand, then pulled.
“[Prymeodon Quagmire]!”
And as the momentum of the charge of the seven Sawmouth Snappers finally ran out, their weight no longer pushing the Bulwark down, the magic spell took place.
Usually, the gheists would have fallen off into the water after their failed assault. The sand was too loose to obstruct their retreat.
“Guuh!!!”
But they had clawed at the sand to break the wall. And now the sand clawed back. The mushy clumps of brown and yellow squeezed their jaws from all directions!
The gheists were stuck there like a knife thrown into a tree, wiggling their monstrous bodies but unable to get free.
Large swathes of manna zapped around their saw-like jaws, driving the sand everywhere. But more clomped in, holding it tight like the sap of a Rubra tree.
Red veins webbed Vesiphis’s eyes. His muscles and meridians strained under the pressure of manna.
Though the momentum was no longer there, the gheists themselves weighted like boulders.
The boy could not hold the Bulwark steady for much longer.
But, it was enough.
“Howell! Now!”
“Hiyaaaaaaaaa!!”
One second of silence before the wind screamed in pain.
From the left, a line of manna exploded out with a blinding white tail-light.
The talisman of [Kraken’s Fury]!
Its edge gleamed like a crystal sun, penetrating straight into the side of the rightmost gheist’s head and nailing out from the opposite direction, skewering every beast in between, including the alpha.
““GUAAAAAAAAAAA!””
Howell’s feet firmly kicked the rightmost gheist’s body as if to break the charge, stopping the spear from flying off. His left hand gripped the spear’s shaft while his right pumped in the air with triumph!
“Ha Hahaha! See that? That’s me pa’s [Kraken Gore]!” The shark-eyed boy laughed with glee, boasting the name of the technique his father had taught him. He looked towards the spectating boats and waved, hoping his cousins could witness his time of glory.
Vesiphis grinned too, his gaze shifting towards Cadfael, who was finishing off the remaining seven gheists single-handedly with pure force.
Vesiphis’s eyes narrowed.
This was his creed.
He need not be the strongest; he will remain as passive as he wanted, as unmoving as the situation dictated.
Because Vesiphis was a manager. He was a controller.
He managed his allies; he controlled his enemies.