The ship to the north reaches us first. It pulls up alongside us, clearly getting ready for boarding. Not that there’s much of the ship left to board: its main mast is down, the captain is overboard along with half the crew, and the ship’s listed to the side, flooding the main deck, as the Prismatic threatens to drag it under. The handful of crew who’s left are giving Zyneth and I a wide berth. They’ve got bigger problems to worry about now, anyway.
I squeeze the arcana crystal in my grasp: glass for strength, and void to keep it from slipping from my fingers. I can feel it buzzing through both elements. The predator urges for me to tap into it.
Not yet, I think. Not until we have to.
“Got any ideas?” I ask Zyneth.
“Not particularly,” he admits, eyeing the ship. “You?”
“Oh, you know.” I shrug. “Do what I do best. Improvise. Break some things. Do you suppose we can throw everyone overboard and take their ship before that other one reaches us?”
Zyneth glances back; the ship to the south is at least ten minutes out. “Unlikely.”
“Well,” I say. “It was a nice idea.”
Zyneth glances at the arcana crystal. “What do you anticipate doing with that?”
“Nothing specific,” I admit. “Power up my attacks and keep my mana tank full. Figured there was no sense in letting it sink with the Prismatic if it might give us an edge in this fight.” I offer it to him. “Do you think you could use it, too?”
Zyneth reaches out a hand.
The predator leaps to the forefront of my mind. No! That is ours. We cannot give it up so easily. It reaches for control, pressing against my mind—and my hand jerks back, shadowy claws forming protectively over the crystal. Angrily, I fight it off, pushing the predator away.
Back off, I snap, yanking away its control. He’s not taking it from us. Just looking. It’s Zyneth! He’s my… he’s our ally. A friend! He wouldn’t do anything to wrong us. You should understand that by now.
The predator lurches itself from my grasp, angrily retreating from my mind. But of course, it doesn’t understand. It’s only begun to learn restraint, only starting to conceive that everything is not eat or be eaten. I’ve worked with it on compromise; it’s beginning to get a feel for ‘sharing,’ what with us splitting our time. But the concept of ‘trust’ is still very much alien to it.
At the sight of the shadowy claws, Zyneth draws his hand back.
“Sorry,” I force out, trying to get my frustration under control. It doesn’t help that the predator is still mad at me, resulting in a sort of irritated feedback loop between us. “It thought you were going to take it from us.”
“Perhaps you best hold onto it,” Zyneth says. “I do think with my Artificing abilities I would be able to draw on it as a source, but I’d rather not become a target of the predator’s ire in the process.”
“I understand,” I say, the last of my frustration fizzling out. “Sorry,” I say again.
We’re not given long to dwell on the predator’s behavior. Lines are thrown from the approaching ship to our own, and the few pirates still aboard jump at them in an attempt to hack the lines away. I tense. Zyneth rests a hand on the hilt of his knife.
[Mana expired. Void Whip ended.]
The line of void that connected to the glass wrecking ball fizzles out.
Uh oh. I left that spell active for too long. Well, at least I have the arcana crystal to make up the deficit. In fact, with it I’ll have enough mana for dozens of Void Whips if I wanted to. Not that I’d have the headspace to control a dozen whips independently, but the predator does. Something to consider.
The first pirates jump down from the new ship, clashing with the remaining pirates on ours.
“What if they are not here for us?” I say. “Do you think they might just have had a bone to pick with the captain of this ship instead?” It’s wishful thinking, I know, but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to fight them?
One of the pirates catches sight of Zyneth and I, then points and shouts. A group split off, heading in our direction.
“I’m going to guess it’s us,” Zyneth says.
He draws his blade. I tap into the arcana crystal.
The magic zaps straight to my soul before the predator starts siphoning it away, filtering the magic through its void and preventing my soul from becoming overcharged. Its shadows condense around the arcana crystal, and I both mentally and literally hand over control of the arcana crystal to the predator. This is one thing I trust it with; it has vested interest in keeping me alive.
I reactivate the Void Whip as the first of them reach the top of the stairs. The excess magic is making me jittery. Twitchy. Ready to fight.
Zyneth raises his knife, but I step forward first. He was barely able to fight off that captain, and I’ve seen him handle far worse. He’s in pain, and that might make him slip up. I can’t risk him getting hurt. Besides. This is the whole point of my class, right?
[Arcane Guardian ability activated.]
I swing my glass flail, and the pirates scatter. I keep a careful eye on Zyneth as well, making sure he’s nowhere near my range. As long as he stays back there, he’ll be safe. I press toward the pirates, and the rest of the combat becomes a blur.
The glass flail keeps everyone at bay for about a minute; then someone catches it in a blast of ice, anchoring it to the deck. I activate a Sculpt, breaking the flail in two and shattering the ice. Activating another Void Whip, I grab the second piece as well. Two flails makes it harder to spin them around without crashing into each other, so instead I stop my spinning top approach and use them like the spell name implies: as a whip.
Given the smaller sizes, they’re not powerful enough to blast people off the side of the ship, like my last one, but they’re still pretty effective at knocking weapons from hands, and punching people in the gut. Pirates go stumbling away, covered in bruises.
This works for a little while until my flails are again caught in ice; they’re figuring out how to combat my attack, which is annoying, because it’s one of the few attacks I have. I split them again, breaking the—
Void bursts from my coat, arcing over my back right as a sword crashes into it. The predator swirls down the blade, slicing through the hand that’s holding it and sending the attacker stumbling back with a scream. The void drops the sword, but doesn’t retreat back into my coat. It swings warily around, waiting for another attack.
If I had a heart, it would be hammering out of my chest. That was way too close. If the predator hadn’t been watching my back, I would have been toast. Despite my earlier frustration with it, I can’t afford to handicap myself by ignoring it right now.
Like the Prismatic, I tell it, yanking my glass back. If this strategy worked back on the ship, then it should work here, too.
I break the Chained clump of glass into all its constituent parts, then activate four more Void Whips. Instead of securing the glass to the end, like I’d previously been doing, the glass becomes the bones within each of the whips. I pull more mana from the arcana crystal, and it crackles down each of the six limbs, making the shadows darker, more solid, more real. The predator understands what I’m getting at, and is more than happy to oblige.
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I take two, and it takes four. Raising my seeing glass into the air, out of the range of the fight, I get a top-down view to keep a better eye on all possible angles of attack. The pirates hesitate as these six new limbs of glass and shadow appear. We don’t.
The limbs become an extension of us. Instead of smacking our assailants away, we can grab them with the shade and glass limbs, just like we’d done with the Prismatic’s mechanical arms. In fact, we’ve had so much practice these last two months that this approach is far easier.
We grab weapons, and throw them into the sea. If people get too close, they receive the same treatment. Blasts of water and ice come our way, and we use the limbs to push ourself out of the way, crashing through the magic with counter attacks of our own. With the arcana crystal to pull from, our void is as solid as steel. We spin and strike, a whirl of limbs, as satisfaction and triumph ripple through us. We like it when we’re winning.
With a jolt, we realize our minds had merged without us even noticing. But we don’t pull back—we can’t risk disrupting our joint control over the glass and shadow. Trying to separate at the wrong moment could leave ourself exposed to attack.
We’re stronger like this anyway. More precise control over all our Attuned elements. In fact, why only wield six limbs? With the arcana crystal, we could power so many more.
“Kanin!” It’s Zyneth. He’s still on the upper deck, but he’s pointing toward the other ship. “Watch—”
We throw ourself to the side as a hole blasts through the deck, showering us with splinters of wood that ping harmlessly off our glass. But that shot wasn’t harmless. If it had struck our core, we would have been dead in an instant.
We shift our focus to the ship, where a weapon of some kind has been rolled out onto the deck. A crewmate is loading another round into its barrel. A woman slaps a hand to the weapon, and green runes light up all over its surface. It swivels to point at us.
We leap to the side, and the cannonball blasts through the deck, along with one of our limbs. The Void Whip evaporates beneath the blow; glass disintegrated into nothing, shadows evaporating into the air. A distant voice crackles through our mind.
[....ing damage sustained.]
Phantom pains sting at our essence where the limb had been, and anger roils within us. How dare they! The crewmate loads another shot into the cannon, and we inwardly laugh. They think they have a weapon? We will show them.
Glass pulls itself from our limbs, swirling into the air above our head. The pieces fractal like a snowflake, then come together, snapping into a tight shape. We pull mana from the arcana crystal and thrust it into the glass.
[...ight Beam activa…]
Light blasts into the enemy ship, engulfing the cannon and the people who had been standing there. Our attack only lasts a few seconds, but cuts off in time for us to witness the scorched deck collapse in on itself. Everything and everyone that had been standing there vanishes with it.
Now, the pirates are running from us instead of toward us. The group scatters, and we instinctively give chase, egged on by the thrill of the hunt. Some dive into the water, while others race back to their ship, throwing themselves at ropes and ladders. Not all of them are fast enough to escape, however. We pounce on the nearest one, sending them crashing into the deck.
[...ane Guardian expir…]
A strength leaves our magic, but it’s not enough to stop us. The nereid screams as we slam one of our limbs on each of theirs, pinning them to the ground. For a moment, we see them as a different nereid—Gillow. That sneer of theirs. The knife they threw at Zyneth’s back. Hatred courses through us as we lean over our prey. And there, in its chest, we feel a familiar warm glow.
“Kanin, stop!”
Its soul, lingering just beneath the surface. We bring our fifth limb around, hovering over their sternum. It’s mere inches away. All we have to do is reach down and take it.
Yet, we hesitate. We’re… not supposed to do this. Why? There was some reason. It was important…
The nereid is wailing, shouting words—sounds—we don’t comprehend. We plant a claw on its head, muffling the irritating noise.
We’ve been surviving off of scraps for so long now, and we’re desperate for a full meal. Our mouth waters, and void drips from our maw onto our prey’s chest. We have been so patient. We have done everything we’ve been asked. Yet, the hooks of Between still burn in our essence, waiting to tug us back into nothingness when we have no more energy to fight its pull. We should not be starving, we should be growing! We need this meal. We’ve earned it. We press the tip of our glass against the prey’s shell and begin to cut toward its core. The prey begins screaming again, flailing against our grasp, but we’re much stronger. We can practically taste its soul.
“Kanin!”
Something grabs us from behind, yanking us back. We wheel around, furious that our meal was interrupted. The person steps back, worry and fear flickering over their face. We raise a claw at—
—At Zyneth.
It’s Zyneth.
Oh, god.
We draw back, horrified. We were moments away from striking him down. And the other—Oh, no. We didn’t. We can’t have.
We look down at our hand—a claw of shadows so deep, we can’t see the glass beneath it. But we force our hand open anyway, and the arcana crystal falls to the deck.
[...ana depleted.]
The Void Whips evaporate. The glass that had been in the limbs remains suspended in the air for a moment, then rains down onto the deck, pinging against each other in a musical display.
Zyneth lets out a breath. “Thank the gods.” He takes a step in our direction, but we flinch away.
“Wait.” The sound comes through the translator garbled and broken.
Let go. Let go of us!
But the fight isn’t over. We have more enemies to defeat.
No! No more. We try to pull away, like clawing back a wall of tar. Where’s the seam? There’s always a seam. Panic swells within us.
Fine, we don’t have to fight anymore. But we don’t have to separate, either. We can work together—
No. No no no no no—
In a desperate cry, I rip away from the predator, and my mind and soul burn with an ethereal pain. I shove the predator as far away as our mental tether will allow. Without it controlling all the void in my limbs, my legs give out, and I crumple to the deck.
Zyneth’s at my side in an instant. “It’s over. It’s okay. You’re alright.”
“Did I—” I look for the nereid, but the place where he had been is now empty.
“No,” Zyneth says. “No, he’s fled back to his ship.”
“I was going to.” My soul aches. How did I let that happen? Why? I’m stronger than this. I should be stronger than this. “I cannot go back to land, Zyneth. It is too dangerous.”
Zyneth puts an arm around my shoulder, helping me upright. “We’ll figure it out.”
I eye the ocean, lapping at the broken deck only a few feet away. It’s not deep enough here for the pressure to break my core. I don’t need to breathe. I could shove Zyneth away and roll into the open waters, where I’d sink, and then…
And then what? Spend the rest of my life alone at the bottom of the ocean? Spending half my time possessed by the predator to kill fish and sea creatures just for the sport of it? What kind of life would that be? Not one I’d want to live. Not one where I would want to keep living.
Frustration and despair and helplessness overwhelm me. It feels like my soul is breaking apart. “I cannot keep doing this, Zyneth.”
He presses his mouth into a line. “We’ll figure it out,” he repeats shortly.
Oh. He doesn’t know what to do, either.
A shadow falls over us; the ship from the south has finally caught up to the battle, too. But I don’t have any fight left in me. I can’t.
“We need to move,” Zyneth says, pulling at me.
The ship that I’d attacked has produced another mana cannon, which they’re aiming at me and Zyneth. We’re the only living creatures down here, I realize. Everything that remains of the first ship’s wreckage has been abandoned. Did they swim away? Take lifeboats?
Die?
I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.
“Kanin, now!” Zyneth snaps.
It’s not that I want to take the hit, but I honestly don’t know if I could dodge another attack. Without the predator helping with the void, I’ve basically no agility. And I’m tired. I’m so damn tired of all this.
“You two should probably get down.”
I tilt my head at the voice. It’s coming from the new ship. And it sounds familiar.
Zyneth looks up, his eyes going wide. Then he grabs me, flinging us both back to the deck and behind the stump of a mast. Even so, I catch the moment when an arrow flies into the barrel of the mana cannon, and the entire thing explodes.
Bits of hot metal ping by us, hissing as they crash into the water. Luckily, none of them strike me or Zyneth. But I’m hardly aware, as my mind is still digesting that voice I heard. I levitate some of my glass, trying to get a better look.
Rezira puts a foot on the ship’s railing, craning over to look at us. “You guys okay down there?”
A figure appears at her side. “Oh no!” she signs. “I should have checked that they were behind cover first!”
Now my core feels like it’s cracking apart for an entirely different reason. Warmth and relief spill from my soul. I raise a tired hand.
“Hi, Noli.”