We submerge when the ships continue on an intercept course, hoping to lose them beneath the waves. But we’re above the coastal shelf now, and the waters are shallow. The most we can stay beneath the surface is fifty feet. It will have to be enough.
The ship is tense and quiet. Neither of us speak as we continue toward land, watching the display in the Prismatic’s bubble-shaped window as it tracks each of the ships converging on our location. Two have shifted course, now angling behind us, though it’s uncertain if that’s because we’ve managed to shake them, or if they intend to prevent us from retreating.
“How much longer?” I can’t help but ask, breaking the silence.
“At most an hour until we reach the shore,” Zyneth says. “Probably less, as the waters will grow too shallow for the ship to continue.”
“We will have to bail at that point, or we will be sitting ducks,” I say. “Though maybe we should bail sooner. We have one escape pod left. Do you think we might be able to slip away in that while they continue to track the Prismatic?”
Zyneth turns to me with a look of astonishment.
“What?” I ask. “Was that a terrible idea?”
“Not at all,” Zyneth says. “That was actually an incredibly good idea.”
“Thanks!” Then it sinks in. “Wait, why are you so surprised?”
Zyneth scratches at his chin as he thinks. He shaves every few days, but a goatee is still threatening to grow in. “The question is, when would be the best time to jettison? The escape pod is small and lacks the weapons system of the Prismatic. We wouldn’t be able to fight back in there if they found us. And I’m not sure we’ll have the same displays as here, where we’re able to track the other ship’s movements, meaning we might be blind to their pursuit. It could be risky.”
“More risky than trying to fight them all head-on?” I ask. We both know the answer to that.
“It’s a tough choice,” Zyneth admits. “Maintain firepower but engage in a sure fight, or a chance to avoid the fight entirely that will leave us more vulnerable.”
“A choice.” A lightbulb flips on in my mind. “Ah! But we do not have to choose.”
“What are you…” Recognition flickers in Zyneth’s eyes, too. “That’s too risky. And your range can’t be far enough to be worth it.”
“But I can be in two places at once,” I say. “Even if the range is not very big. What if we escaped in the pod, but I left enough glass and void here to use the weapons systems on the Prismatic?”
“Would that work?” Zyneth asks. “You’d need your core to be here in order to operate the weapons, right?”
“Minor detail,” I say. “If it is just my core I have to worry about, and as long as I leave void in the escape pod, too, I should have plenty of mana to use a Displace spell and teleport out when things get hairy.”
“Assuming the escape pod is still within range,” Zyneth repeats. “What if we’re too far away? Would you lose access to the void and glass you put in the escape pod? What if you aren’t close enough to teleport back?”
So, he’s right; if my Attuned void is outside my manipulation radius, then I won’t be able to use a Displace to pop out the other side. And even if the plan does work, I’ll be abandoning whatever void I leave behind in the Prismatic, which the predator would certainly not be thrilled about.
But if the predator is working with me, then I have more options. Its range is double that of mine.
“We should be able to buy us some time,” I say. “And a little bit of time might make all the difference.”
“It could,” Zyneth hesitantly agrees in his ‘I’m still thinking’ voice. “But that’s all the more reason to leave now, isn’t it? We shouldn’t waste any time letting them get closer: that only increases the likelihood that they’ll notice the escape pod.”
Now that he’s made up his mind, Zyneth spins back around in his seat, his hands flying over the ship’s controls. The markers on the window’s display shift.
“You are turning us around?” I ask.
“Just altering the course,” he says. He pulls one final lever, then stands. “Might draw them away from us. Buys us a bit more time, as you said.” He begins to head to the cargo bay, and I follow fast at his heels.
“Are you sure you do not want me to leave some glass and void behind?” I say. After so much time spent in this submarine getting used to wielding its six giant mechanical tentacles, the idea of cramming ourselves into a defenseless escape pod barely the size of a Volkswagen beetle isn’t very appealing.
“I’m quite sure,” Zyneth says. “We will be out of its range soon enough, and then you’ll only have handicapped yourself. And we might need all the firepower at your disposal.”
An unnerving thought, but he’s right. And this is what I signed up for. So long as Zyneth’s outside his element, I need to be there to do what he can’t.
He snatches up his bag, and I grab my satchel and stored glass. We hit the spell circle above the hatch that leads into the last escape pod, and the aperture spirals open.
The first thing I notice is that the escape pod only has one seat. That’s quite an interesting choice on Gillow’s part, considering the Prismatic is designed to house up to six people.
Zyneth looks back at me, worried. “What—”
“You take the seat,” I tell him. “I will find a way to fit.” Piece by piece, if I have to. It’s kind of uncomfortable to acknowledge that my body is only a facsimile of the real thing, and that there’s no reason for it to even be human shaped at all—or in this case, in one piece. I might have to leave some of my glass and fulgurite behind, but that’s a small price to pay for escaping with our lives.
There isn’t much in the rest of the capsule to take in. A simple controls display before the single seat, some leg room, and a small storage space behind the headrest. The entire front half of the pod is a window, providing a perfectly clear image of the surrounding waters. Even now, lines of magic shift over the window just like Prismatic’s display, tracking moving shapes that would otherwise be too distant, obscured by the ocean.
“Are you certain?” Zyneth asks, glancing over my body. I bet he’s mentally dissecting me, too. “Maybe if I keep to the far side…”
The magic symbols on the pod’s display shift in a strange way. One dot becomes a ring, which rapidly expands. Then a shadow appears inside of it. When I finally understand what I’m seeing, it’s nearly too late.
I throw myself at Zyneth, tackling him away from the pod. The Prismatic explodes behind us. Oceanwater begins to gush in even before we hit the ground.
[7 Bludgeoning damage sustained.]
Something’s cracked in an arm, and only my arm, which is a small miracle. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that Zyneth broke my fall, as I’m now on top of him. No time to acknowledge our compromising position, Zyneth rolls me to the side, springing to his feet and pulling me up as behind him all in one deft move. Man, if he’d been the one doing the tackling, I bet I wouldn’t have broken anything.
The predator jumps to the forefront of my mind, angry and alarmed as it searches for our assailant. It doesn’t have to look far.
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Where the pod had been a moment before, a giant coral spearhead has pierced the Prismatic. Even as we recover, the spear opens up like a flower blossom, hundreds of coral feelers curling apart and pressing themselves into every surface they touch, anchoring itself in place. This slows the torrent of water somewhat, but the floor is still rapidly flooding.
Never in the two months we’ve lived here has something managed to break through the Prismatic’s hull. Gillow had often boasted about the spells that ran through the Prismatic’s skin, enhancing its strength and keeping the crushing pressures of the ocean at bay. Then again, the spear didn’t actually break through the hull; we opened the hole for it.
The ship lurches to the side, and we both stumble in the direction of the coral. Now that the predator is alert, it grabs a nearby strut with its void, steadying us.
“We’re hooked,” Zyneth says, drawing his blade. Lightning crackles down the knife. “They’re towing us in.” Splashing across the deck, Zyneth uses both hands to plunge the blade into the center of the coral’s mass. It only makes it an inch deep. Unrelenting, Zyneth’s magic flares, and electricity bursts from the impact point like a nest of angry snakes. They lick back toward Zyneth, singing his sleeves, and crackle over the surface of the coral. But the anchor doesn’t give any indication of damage, and a moment later Zyneth withdraws, shutting off his lightning magic to reassess.
The predator, having witnessed this display, decides to take matters into its own hands. It lashes out with a whip of void, slashing at the coral. But while the substance can be made sharp enough to cut flesh, it’s not nearly solid enough to cut through the stone-like substance, and the void skips ineffectively over the surface.
[0 points of Slashing damage dealt.]
This only irritates the predator more, because it can feel the coral is full of living things, and it desperately wants to eat them. I offer it some of my glass, just on the off chance it would make a difference, and the predator hungrily accepts. But even with my help to give structure and solidness to the void, the most it’s capable of is a few shallow scratches, like Zyneth’s knife.
“Get to the arms,” Zyneth says, switching his magic over to fire instead of lightning. As flames wisp down his knife, the blade begins to turn a dull red. “I’ll keep trying here, but neither of us may be of much use. We’ll likely have to stop it from the outside.”
I’d already come to the same conclusion. “On it.”
As I race for the nearest spell circle that accesses the Prismatic’s limbs, the predator reluctantly pulls away from the coral, annoyed to be bested by a mere handful of tiny unmoving creatures. Very hard tiny unmoving creatures. It turns its irritation into savage eagerness when I slap a hand on a spell circle, excited to exact its revenge in a different form.
That’s what we humans call ‘being petty,’ I tell the predator. It’s too excited to pay me any mind.
As I tap into the spell circles, Echo abruptly speaks up. [Arcane Guardian activated. While spells are used for the benefit of anyone other than the user, all arcana use increases in effectiveness by 100%]
I’d forgotten about that. Perfect! As the ability activates, I feel stronger, too. I guess that’s because basically all of me is made of magic and Attuned elements. But will it make the spells powering the Prismatic’s limbs stronger, too, or only magic that I directly cast? One way to find out.
I grab two of the Prismatic’s limbs, and the predator takes the last four. Through my omni-vision, I watch Zyneth attack the coral with his glowing knife. This seems to have more effect than the lightning, but he still has to put everything he has into it just to cut a scorching mark. It’s slow going, but there’s little else he can do: there’s no point in him taking control of one of the Prismatic’s limbs, because the predator and I are far better at it.
I shift my sight through the weapons system’s spell, looking out into the surrounding waters. A clunking groan comes from beneath our feet as we unfurl the Prismatic’s six squid-like mechanical limbs.
Finally I’ve got a good look at what’s hooked us. Bits of metal swirl around the wound in the Prismatic’s side—all that remains of the demolished escape pod. Thank god we hadn’t already been in there. The cable that now protrudes from where the Prismatic’s pod had been makes it look like the squid-shaped ship was speared through its side. The cable appears to be made of the same coral as the spearhead, and vanishes into the ocean’s dim. I reach a mechanical limb around and grab the line.
I tug, and the wire bends—but the Prismatic also tips. I stumble, and only the void keeps me from crashing into the wall.
“Sorry,” I tell Zyneth, but he doesn’t reply, focusing on cutting through the grapple, bit by bit: we’re both in survival mode.
The predator is annoyed that our giant mechanical limbs are so blunt and dull. We need something with teeth and claws! It could go outside the ship and attack the line.
No, I think. You couldn’t cut through it in here, and it won’t be any different out there.
The predator glowers, frustrated at our helplessness. I’m frustrated, too. It seems like there’s nothing we can do but wait until they reel us in. Once they’re within the Prismatic’s range—then we’ll be able to put up quite a fight. But until then, we’re just a fish on a line.
Zyneth must have realized this too. “This progress is too slow, and soon the ship will be flooded.” He flicks the fire out on his knife, then sheaths it. “I’m going to head up to the main deck and see if I can’t turn us around. The Prismatic is not built for speed, but she’s sturdy; it might be enough for us to counter them.”
I let go of the spell circle in the wall, and the predator pulls away a moment later, like a sticky bandaid reluctantly peeling away from skin. “I am coming, too.”
Besides, I thought of something in the control room that might help us. At this thought, the predator perks up, which maybe should be an indication that it’s not the best idea.
We both relocate to the main deck, water lapping at our heels, and I tap back into the Prismatic’s arms as Zyneth works the main controls. Outside, I can see a distant shadow resolving in the water: the underside of a boat, hundreds of feet away. I raise my limbs, waiting for the shadow to enter their range.
Zyneth throws the ship into motion, and it lurches, metal groans shuddering through the ship, as the Prismatic fights the pull of the grapple.
“Is it working?” I ask. If we’re making progress, it’s too slow for me to tell.
“Maybe,” Zyneth says. “Wait… Yes! Yes, I think we’re starting to make some headway. Hah! We might even be able to tow them under.”
“Would that work?” I glance at the water spilling onto the deck.
His brow wrinkles in worry. “We have enough power to do so in time, though it would be quite difficult. There definitely would be a back-and-forth… and if they realized they couldn’t fight us, they’d cut the line. That might provide an avenue of escape.”
The water is getting deeper. It’s already up to our ankles. “And how long would that take?”
Zyneth pauses to assess our rapidly devolving situation. He grimaces. “Too long, I suspect.”
“Then we need to get to the surface,” I say. “Even if they do cut us loose, if we sink and drown, it will not matter.”
“If we surface and abandon the Prismatic for air, it will be a surrender,” Zyneth points out. “We would be helpless and exposed.”
“But they intend to capture us, not kill us,” I say. “They would not be reeling us in if they did not want us alive, right?”
Zyneth hesitates. “Not necessarily… but you’re right that they’ve had ample opportunity to launch an attack since hooking us, and they haven’t yet done that. Yes, it’s likely they want us alive.”
“Then we surface,” I repeat. “We need to get you out of here before you drown.”
Zyneth notices my particular wording. “What about you?”
“I do not need to breathe.” And now that we’re in shallow waters, my vial doesn’t stand to be crushed by the pressure. I pull my mind back from the Prismatic’s limbs, leaving them in the predator’s hands, as I pause to pull some shards of glass and fulgurite from my store. I activate a Sculpt, rapidly smashing them into a baseball-sized orb with four spikey limbs.
“Here.” I hold it out for Zyneth.
He blinks as he gingerly takes the bizarre (and, frankly, poor) replica of me. “What is this?”
“A decoy.” Better than a decoy, actually: I can see and hear through that glass if I need to. Granted, given its asymmetric shape, sight will be extremely wonky, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Zyneth looks up at me, utterly baffled. “Why would I need a decoy?”
I tell him my plan.
“I dislike this plan,” Zyneth says.
“I dislike it too.”
“But I don’t have a better one.”
“Me neither.”
The seawater continues to gush into the room. It won’t be much longer until walking will become more like swimming.
“I will not let them hurt you,” I tell him.
He smiles out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I am not.”
Zyneth turns back to the Prismatic’s controls and pulls a lever back. “Let’s go fight some pirates.”