Chapter Sixty-Four

The Wake

“Back off or I swear to Khasm that you’ll need a filter and a sieve to clean up what I do to her!” Michael yelled, unsure of what he meant.

In his right hand was the small silver-bladed dagger and in his left was a sphere of glowing light, no bigger than an apple, held to the back of the Holorhi-Nahni’s head.

For dramatic effect, Michael had conjured it to be red.

“Everyone throw down your weapons!”

The Mariniad guards croaked in panicked Hoiise until the Holorhi-Nahni yelled, “Do it! He’s crazy!”

With gritted teeth and dark eyes, they let their weapons sink to the platform below.

The foremost of the guards, a young Merhoii woman with yellow eyes and black hair glanced to the edge of the platform as her tail flinched.

Michael brought the silver blade closer to the Holorhi-Nahni’s throat and yelled, “Anyone who tries to run is goin’ to get her killed!”

The Chieftain’s Daughter saw exactly how close the knife was and without moving her mouth, muttered, “Easy, Paladin...”

“Sorry- Okay, you!” he shouted, nodding to the uneasy Mariniad. “Open the hatch!”

The guard angrily replied in accent Common, “We can’t do that. We aren’t Cell-House Guards, they don’t tell us the command to open it.”

Michael splayed out his fingers and the light in his fist flashed, forcing a gargling scream out of the Holorhi-Nahni.

He halted his magic in panic as the guards all yelled out for him to stop. Michael leant behind her head, whispering, “I’m so sorry! I was sure it wouldn’t hurt!”

“It didn’t!” she growled. “Come on, reinforcements will be close by!”

Michael was baffled by her commitment and tried to regain his composure.

In Hoiise the guard hesitantly muttered, “What’s going on, Holorhi-Nahni?”

Michael saw the scepticism in the guard’s face and blasted his pseudo-captive with another round of light, from which she pretended to recoil in agony. “I know you can open it! I’m going to count to three! One!”

The Holorhi-Nahni begged, “Please! I know all the guards have the command!”

“Two!”

The guard blinked in panicked uncertainty, looking back to the others, all floating behind her in shock.

“Three!” Michael raised his fist.

“Enough! Enough!” the guard yelled in her deep, Merhoii accent, propelling herself over to the cage door and laying her palm on the jade stone.

Its edges came to life with a blue light and then died away as the entire stone swung outward by a hinge and the party of Legacies came swimming out from the depths of Dead Man’s Peak. They all smiled awkwardly, mouthing apologies to the Merhoii, until they saw Michael holding a knife to the Holorhi-Nahni’s throat.

Michael, in that instant, realised he hadn’t briefed them on his plan. And everyone, in the same instant, managed to put the pieces together.

Everyone except Aroha, who yelled, “Whoa! She was your friend like two minutes ago, what happened?”

The Merhoii guards glanced in confusion at Aroha and then angrily to Michael, who had now buried his head into the Holorhi-Nahni’s back from embarrassment. “Cheers, Ari,” he mumbled.

The lead guard dove and snatched a spear from the platform as the company of Legacies shouted. Before anyone could stop her, she whipped it around and pushed it up against Oliver’s neck, one sharp movement away from ending his life.

The guard sneered at the Holorhi-Nahni. “You lie to your people like its second nature, Holorhi-Nahni.” She turned and barked an order to her fellow guardsmen and two of them shot away, disappearing over the platform’s edge.

The Holorhi-Nahni pushed Michael’s knife away and swam cautiously toward the lead guard with her hands held aloft. “These people did nothing wrong. Their imprisonment is the lie. We have been forced into a time of lesser evils by my father.”

Michael caught Oliver’s panicked eye as the spear-tip rested on the soft flesh between his collarbones. His hand rose slightly toward the spear as he glanced to Rose, immediately to his left.

Rose’s hand shuffled to her wand, sticking out of her waistband, and nodded gently to him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The two remaining sentries swiped up their own weapons and began forcing James and Carter back toward the hatch as they both inched their hands toward their concealed knives.

The yellow-eyed commander shouted, “Each and every one of you will come with me right...” she turned back to her hostage only find Oliver had vanished.

Little more than a shadow on the floor, Oliver grabbed the spear with his unseen hands and ripped it out of the stunned Merhoii’s scaly fingers. Before she could react, he cracked the guard upside the head with the butt of the spear and Nichole and Aroha grappled her by the wrists.

Rose ripped out her wand and the veins on her fingers blossomed with light as the other two Sea Dwellers spurred into action.

Before the guards could drive their spears through Carter and James, the seaweed braids in their dark hair sprang to life, coiling around their eyes and face, dragging them headfirst toward to the open prison door as Rose beckoned her wand like a demonic composer.

The head guard, struggling out of the rangers’ grip, watched Oliver reappear and rage flushed to her face a moment too late as a silver dagger was pushed against her neck. She turned to the blade to see the Holorhi-Nahni floating over her.

“The Cages, or the Block? Your decision,” said the princess, her emerald gaze, dark as prison-door.

The bitter-faced guard swallowed, unable to hold her ice-cold glare and moments later the Dead Man’s Point cell slammed shut with three new residents.

The Legacies all groaned with relief as the door sealed with a magical, blue hue and the Holorhi-Nahni said, “Their pass-spells won’t work now that they’re inside.”

Aroha scratched her head guiltily and stuck her hand up. “I’ll take responsibility for that mess.”

Michael smirked before he glanced over Aroha’s shoulder and saw an entire platoon of guards heading their way. “I think we may have worse problems.”

*****

The Holorhi-Nahni had the Legacies make a chain of linked hands and she towed them slowly down the back of the pyramid, doing her best not to slap Michael with her tail as she pushed through the water.

“Do we have a plan?” James yelled from the back of the line-up.

Everyone looked expectantly at Michael who nodded assuredly, turning to the Sea Dweller. “Right?” His shoulder was now exceptionally sore.

The sea-woman guided them back into the thick reeds of the ocean floor as the cloud of guards settled on the platform, yelling angrily in Hoiise as they unlocked the prison door.

The company and Sea Dweller guide skirted along the main road until they slipped into a quieter neighbourhood, little more than a ring of house-sized gemstones, hollowed out and smooth as glass. In the centre of the space was a great garden of sea-vegetation, busy with Mariniad children zipping between the corals, giggling and squealing as they played.

The Chieftain’s Daughter drew them all to stop, huffing slightly from the effort of dragging eight Legacies’ worth of weight. “We only really have one option. You can’t just flee, because our magic stops working if you get too far from our borders, at which point you’d drown and my day’s work would go to waste.”

Rose’s mound of blonde hair was all but suffocating her as she fought it into a seaweed knot, grimacing at its slimy touch. “I vote that we don’t do that.”

“Wise,” the Holorhi-Nahni said sincerely. “What we can do is go to my Arcanii- The Arcanii, I mean,” she corrected quickly.

Sarah swam forward and asked, “Arcanii? You have a Court Mage here?”

Oliver glanced at her, subtly impressed. “You speak Hoiise?”

“No, it crosses over with the Drakonian language a bit...” her voice dwindled, bogged down by the thoughts of her scaly companion. “Do you think they could get us out of here?” she asked, slightly quieter.

The Holorhi-Nahni nodded, glancing anxiously toward Dead Man’s Point as the Sea Dweller soldiers began to disperse. “I think so. She handles our communication with other Merhoii villages. Come, we need to hurry before my father thinks to send to guards to her home.”

They slowly made their way through the back-alleys and deep trenches between neighbourhoods, occasionally hugging the shadows or darting into seaweed to avoid detection. Finally, they broke out of the main city and into the endless hinterland of seabed, and sitting quietly as far from the city as possible was a small shack, looking peculiarly like a sunken, Draendican’s house, as opposed to a Merhoii structure. It was alike any Dim-Side hovel, made of stone-brick and thick thatch roofing, even complete with barred windows. The waters between were filled with long, tall seagrass, swirling and dancing with the drifting tide.

“There it is. You all wait here. Pray she is in a co-operative mood.” The Holorhi-Nahni shot off toward the small, stone-brick shack, sitting perilously on the edge of a massive trench.

Michael and the others waited in the thick brush in silence when Carter cleared his throat. “I take it Magnus didn’t make it?”

Michael blinked with confusion and saw the rest of their faces sitting with the same conflict. “Oh, no, he’s fine. He managed to avoid getting caught. He’s in the sea-cave just above Kavoe Farnea.”

James scowled. “Of course he left us to deal with this by ourselves.”

Michael watched the sentiment move through the group and tersely said, “He actually saved me. Pulled me out of the water.”

There was a beat of silence, particularly from James and Carter.

Nichole bit her tongue and shook her head ruefully. “Well, I guess we have to figure out a way to go get him, then...”

Aroha glanced at her girlfriend, her arms crossed. “Do we?”

Nichole narrowed her eyes. “Yes. He’s in our company, we can’t just leave him.”

“He’s a vicious prick. Not to mention he’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t care about us and doesn’t want to be here!” Aroha said sharply.

James nodded to Aroha. “Nicky, she’s right.”

Carter breathed a slow, measured breath, interrupting the bickering group, “I think the more important question is are we going back into the cavern? If we are, we can just try to go back the way we came...”

No one seemed to comprehend why on Draendica he would want to do that and Carter sighed.

“I’ll remind you guys that we went in there to find something. Seeing as we haven’t found it, we can either go back in or go back to Guardian with nothing to show for all the damage we’ve done.”

Michael stitched his brow. “Damage?”

Carter sighed and shrugged, heatedly gesturing with every point, “Arcane Cherries used, weapons lost, relations with allies destroyed!”

Michael felt his lip trembling with a sudden anger. “The Holorhi destroyed that alliance, not us! We took a risk, which no one else was willing to take!”

Nichole came to Michael’s side and said stiffly, “Not to mention, if the Immortal Flame was in those caverns, we’d have seen our amulets glowing bright white. Not something we’d have missed.”

Michael’s heart stopped like someone grabbed it in his chest. Nikereus’ smile appeared in Michael’s mind. Their pointed teeth. The darkness being pierced by the bright, flashing amulet light. Michael left out a breath of shame, closing his eyes.

Carter and James spotted Michael look of shame first and the Carter shook his head, “No...”