Chapter 19

Bayla had enjoyed the Week of Sharks and her printed pictures of battle in action, but it was different watching Marazza duke it out with a blade-cat while she lay there helplessly. Not as helplessly as Vincemeyer, though. Even with her lack of experience with Landman legs, she could tell that his was not supposed to bend that way.

She tried to crawl over to his fallen form, struggling to find purchase on the loose sand. Even if she was twice as heavy as she had been as a pure Landmaiden, she should have had the arm strength to haul herself along the beach, if only she could get a firm grip!

There was always the possibility of going the other way, back into the surf. The witch could handle this sharky appropriator of her race’s magic. Or, the shark would give chase, since he only seemed really interested in her. That would not be the worst outcome; the longer she was in this halfway form, the more she found could move her lower half. In a few minutes, she was sure she would be a threat in the water. Let Marazza come, if he wants to face an orca!

She could not, though. Neither the shark nor the witch were likely to give Vincemeyer aid, assuming they let him live, and the poor boy could not get himself to a healer. So, she needed to get to his side first. But how? I have a flipper at one end, and two arms at the front. Neither are useful on this shifting sand!

She grit her pointed teeth. “By using neither.” As much as it disgusted her, Bayla’s body was shaped rather like a seal, and she knew how they got about on land. Without dignity, is how. Still, she had no choice. Undulating her body, she slowly rolled her way up the beach, hopping to start the process over again. The sand bit into her sensitive skin on both halves, but she pressed on.

She finally arrived at Vince’s prone form. “Vince? Are you alive?”

“Hurts too much to be dead,” he said, smiling weakly up at her. The act seemed to pain him, and the side of his face was as red as a spawning salmon. “I thought I told you to get out.”

“I do not take orders from you,” she replied.

“Yeah, so I hear, Princess Wakerider,” he said. “Is Bayla even your real name? Am I really just a servant to you?”

“We can discuss that later.” She stretched her hand out towards the churning surf, drawing a stream of water that she shaped into a sphere. “Where does it hurt?”

“Leg and face, mostly,” he said, wincing as Bayla laid her hands on him. “Better hurry; that witch’s monster isn’t doing so hot.”

*************

Nanora did not notice any of this, as she was focused on the battle before her. Yarlan put up a valiant fight against the sharkman, but it was clear that the summoned ideal blade-cat was a poor match. Yarlan’s claws could not find a proper hold on the shark’s jagged skin without ripping open the pads of his feet, as they had found out during the initial tussle. The wounds were not fatal, but he was bleeding golden motes of energy through his feet, and it clearly pained him. His saber teeth would be snapped if he took a careless bit, unless he could wrestle Marazza into submission. All Yarlan could do was trade blows with the shark, and the shark had the same inhuman strength as the transformed orca had before. The shark seemed to shrug off the gouges torn into his skin, even as his red blood wetted the sand beneath their feet.

“Now this is good prey! A real fight. No blood, though.” His soulless eyes tracked over to the witch, and he nodded with understanding. “It’s not a real cat, that is why. Pity.”

Yarlan took advantage of Marazza’s distraction, rearing up on his back legs to take a swipe at the shark’s face. The extended claws hit home, tearing parallel tracks in the shark’s roughened skin.

Marazza’s head snapped back, but he caught Yarlan’s wrist in both hands. He bit down as hard as he could on the ideal creature’s paw, tearing it off in a great hail of golden sparks.

Yarlan leapt back, his jagged stump spewing his lifeforce. Ideal summons were not true flesh and blood creatures, yet Yarlan’s agonized howl was heard for miles.

Another summon brought down by a heartless foe. I have two enemies to contend with here.

There was a shred of doubt about that assessment; the poacher had thrown himself against an enemy stronger than even a blade-cat for the blackfish. That seemed out of character from everything she knew about that womanizing, vile creep.

Yarlan stumbled back, his body starting to waver like a reflection in a rippling pond. The shark lunged forward, taking the weakening great cat by the scruff. A glance down at her collection of charms showed the blade-cat’s gold fading to black. “Yarlan, you did a good job, sweetie! You can rest now.” She shut off the flow of mana to Yarlan’s charm, and he exploded into a hail of golden sparks. The shark’s teeth closed on nothing, and his momentum sent him crashing onto the sand.

Nanora bit her lip as she considered her options. I do not have much time. More experienced witches could command multiple creatures at once, but she could only keep mana channeled through one of her summoning charms at a time. Tanos, with his scaly, eagle-like feet, could have withstood it better, but his charm was still blackened and useless. Ureq would only be a snack to the shark, and Vincemeyer had already dispatched Paira, her Pseudotooth bird. Her strongest summon would be too tall for beneath the wharf.

That left her with one remaining option from her collection of charms. I’ll have to find a way to make more from the local animals. I’m burning through summons much too quickly! She channeled her mana into the enchanted jewelry, the dimensional distortion shutting down the cell phones of the wharf’s few patrons for the second time in five minutes.

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For the most part, Nanora had selected summons that could be mistaken for an animal on the Earth side of the Veil if one did not look carefully. From a distance, the dully-feathered flightless bird could have been mistaken for an ostrich or emu, until one noticed that it sported a dangerously curved bill as long as Nanora’s arm. The titan-bird stepped from the rift in the Veil, its beak letting out a deadly clacking noise as it rapidly opened and closed its mouth.

I shouldn’t, but… Nanora reached out, caressed the predator’s feather side. Still fuzzy. This is for her, not me. She’s in for a rough fight. “Kalenka, I need you to stop that sharkman.” Her eyes drifted over to where Bayla was desperately trying to reach the fallen Vince. “Leave those two alone for now, but be wary; they might try to trick us. The whale is ensorcelled. And be careful! I don’t want to see you hurt, either. It already beat Yarlan. Keep your distance.”

Kalenka did not respond to her name, but she did obey her command. Long, agile legs carried her forward. She heeded Nanora’s warning, not because she knew what Yarlan was, or could understand the comparison, but because orders were orders. The titan-bird clacked its beak twice more, the threatening sound echoing off the timbers all about them.

Marazza had recovered by then. “Another bloodless beast? Bah! Send all you like. I will devour them all!”

Kalenka darted around Marazza’s initial charge, her flexible ankles letting her turn on a dime. Her long neck and massive head gave her excellent reach, letting her peck a deep puncture wound in Marazza’s left shoulder and withdraw before the sharkman’s wild punch could connect.

Nanora bit her lip nervously again. Yarlan and Tanos were her bruisers; Kalenka was good for scouting and long runs, but her hollow bones meant that Marazza only needed one decent hit to end her. And then what? Throw Ureq at him as a distraction? Try to summon Phosphata in a space where she’d have an easier time hitting her head on the timbers than hitting the shark?

She turned towards the human and blackfish, her eyes drawn by a familiar glow emanating from the bubble of water surrounding Vince. Whatever half-formed body Vince Meyer had inflicted her with now would be impossible to move, even without a land-shark breathing down her neck.

If he had. There was that doubt again; the local clearly had some sort of magical signature, which meant he was not a normal down-planer. However, the blackfish had insisted he was innocent, and she was trying to rescue him rather than make her escape. Could he brainwash an ascended blackfish so thoroughly?

Kalenka cried out in surprise as a swipe from the shark nearly separated her head from its body. The summoned creature had little sense of self-preservation outside of its mission, but Nanora had ordered it to be careful. She danced around another lunge as the shark went on all fours, but it was a near thing.

We need their help, even if he is a villain. Nanora swallowed her pride, riding her jeweled staff towards Vince and Princess Wakerider. With the wind whipping past her ears, she could only see that the pair were talking. A moment before she could land next to them, the yellow aura around the pair went from a steady glow to a blinding pillar of light. Dazzled by the display, Nanora crashed into the sand at high speed.

“You villain!” she spat, along with a mouthful of sand. “You lured me in with sympathy and then…” She trailed off as her vision cleared. “What? That wasn’t an attack?”

***************

Neither Vince nor Bayla had noticed the witch’s approach, or much of Marazza’s fight with Kalenka. Vince had been occupied with his wounds, and Bayla with tending to them.

“Vincemeyer, I must insist that you flee as soon as you are able,” she said. “Now that I can shuffle along the beach, I can get out to sea. That beast just destroyed a blade-cat like it was nothing! This is beyond us.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Bayla I know,” said Vince.

She let out a humph as she glared down at him. “If I had my legs or my jaws, a shark would be no problem. Stuck in between like I am, I am little good to anyone.” With a gesture, she hurled aside the now-reddened seawater left from healing his wound. “You should be fit to move again.”

Vince sat up straight, finally able to fully take in the spectacle before them. He was long past questioning where a bird taller than the shark had come from. “Well, you can stop offering me outs. I’m in this, one way or the other. I just wish I could do much more than annoy it.”

Bayla embraced him from behind. “There is a way, though I’ve never had cause to try.” She hesitated a moment. “The Matriarch might have my head for doing this with a Landman.”

“If you’re a princess, she’s probably your ma, right? She’ll forgive you.”

“She is not as gentle as your mother,” replied Bayla.

Sheesh, there’s a scary thought. “Well, I’ll take my chances with her. What’s your plan?”

“We will have one chance at this.” Bayla placed a delicate hand at the center of his chest. She closed her eyes in concentration. “Vince Meyer, will you be my Champion?”

He looked dumbly at her for a heartbeat, before realizing there was only one answer. “Yes.”

“Will you take my enemies as yours?” A dull glow surrounded her fingers, and Vince felt a second wind coming on.

He hesitated; this was starting to feel like joining the army or getting married. Maybe a bit of both. “If they’re all like that shark and that crazy witch? Seems they chose me.”

He hissed in pain as the warmth flowing through her hand turned red hot. Bayla’s fingertips singed, and a pained, cetacean squeal echoed beneath the wharf.

“This is ritual magic, Vince! It cannot be stopped once started. Yes or no!”

“Yes!” The heat became bearable again.

“I will leave out the part about being at my command; you are not my servant. Not really.” The glow intensified, washing over him. “I accept you, Vince Meyer. Will you be my Champion, my tooth and fluke in the stormiest of seas and the darkest of depths?”

His stomach twisted, and not just from the magic flowing through Bayla’s hands. Was this a permanent promise? Was she going to haul him back to her kelp forest? Would this keep her on Fin Island forever? Why had she given him a false name? There was so much he did not understand, so much uncertainty in the whole situation.

Then again, it beat whatever the shark was bound to do to him.

“Yes.” The doubting voice in his mind was washed away by the waves of warm energy flowing through her hand, though it was more than that. He had cried at the idea of something so special as Bayla slipping through his fingers. He could not know for certain, but it seemed to him that Champions were not so easily left behind.

She nodded, squeezing her eyes harder as she focused more and more magical energy into his body. “Then let my power be added to yours. Go, and conquer or die.”

The warmth turned into a metallic coolness in a flash, and brilliant light surrounded the two of them. When his eyes cleared, Vince saw that he was clad head to toe in sleek blue-steel armor, with only his face exposed by a slit in the helmet. The helmet and shoulder pads bore projections like an orca’s fins, and the whole suit was sleek, designed to cut through the water.

Vince completely missed Nanora crash landing behind him. He had bigger fish to fry. Specifically, Marazza’s attention shifted back to his real prey as the titan-bird collapsed on a broken leg.

The sharkman did not bother dispatching the summon. Not because he knew of Nanora’s limits, or because Kalenka was no threat to him; he had suffered enough gouges from her wicked beak to prove the opposite. No, it was instinctual. A denizen of the seas around Avalas knew an Orca Champion when he saw one, even if the armor was modified to fit a Landman.

Vince was not prey any longer; Marazza could see that. This was a rival predator, and rivals needed to be dealt with.