“Aunts, Uncles, and Entles! What was that?”

Ichu shook his head at his sister’s shock. He didn’t know either, but it had ploughed through his house and his farm like they were dry grass. This wasn’t a random hailstone. It had spikes.

“Go check on Kuillay. I’ll investigate,” Ichu said in a low voice. Silluka picked up on his tone and nodded. There was a time for arguing and division, and there was a time for action. Everyone in the Huaca, undesirable or not, knew it. When a tsunami crashed into the shore, or a hurricane blew through, it was no longer time to quibble.

Silluka ran to the pile of wood and stone that used to be the house, picking carefully through the wreckage. Ichu paced across the yard, chayus running through his head as he tried to assess what had happened. Had the storm picked up a rock from offshore, melded by the two islands approaching each other? Was it something from the wall of storms? Ichu looked up, but the entire sky out over the sea was covered by dark—no, black—clouds. He couldn’t see the wall of storms at all.

The gash in the ground ran straight from the house and out through the main field. Corn stalks were everywhere. At least he had picked this field this morning, but nothing else would be coming from it anytime soon. He walked along the trench. At the bottom of it, the earth was smooth and slick, like it had been melted. Ichu put a hand out and the heat coming off it made him pull it back quickly.

Stalks obscured the end of the groove, and Ichu threw them aside as he walked, the last vestiges of Tortoise Shoulders His Load lending him strength to lift. The effect from chayus could work together, but the effect of the first decreased when the practitioner concentrated on the second. If he was quick, he could add to his boosted strength with another useful chayu like Quirra Hibernates In The Winter to keep the heat from touching him.

He was most of the way across the field, picking through the torn earth and plants, when Silluka panted up behind him. She was clutching the end of her right arm with her left hand, picking at it like she did when she was nervous.

“I’m…I’m sorry, Ichu,” she said. “He must have been right under the thing that crashed into the house.”

The stab of pain was less than Ichu would have thought. Kuillay had been a beautiful pest, but there had been a reason Ichu had let him stay for months when he’d turned out previous suitors in days or weeks. It was nice to have someone to care for. Still, the man had been useless at all but the most basic activities. He’d never have amounted to anything in the Huaca. His citizen chit must have been received by the barest margin.

“The strong survive in the Huaca,” he murmured. It was what people said when natural disasters took loved ones from them. The stronger the Huaca, the more people would live. He jabbed his chin forward. “Let’s see what this thing is, and then I guess we’ll have to go back to the village.”

He took one more step and the ground ahead erupted, dirt and stalks flying to all sides. Ichu shielded his eyes, and threw his other arm in front of his sister. When he looked again, a shape was rising from the destruction.

It wasn’t a ball. Facing them was what looked like a shell of rock, jagged edges forming sharp points. A limb lifted to one side, then disappeared in front of the shell, and Ichu realized its back was to them.

“Get back!” he told Silluka, and set his feet in Dexterity stance. He began the finger curls and wrist strikes that made up Jakua’s Claws, ready for whatever this foreign creature might be.

It turned before he was done, fast as a striking snake, and he only caught a flash of red eyes before it was on him, rocky fists pummeling his raised arms.

Jakua’s Claws curled around the incoming strikes, catching and redirecting them, while Ichu stomped his feet out into Immovable stance, legs flexing and rocking in Roots In Fitted Stone. The Chayu would make him nigh unmovable, at the expense of quick movement. He could feel the last vestiges of Tortoise Shoulders His Load leaving him, his strength decreasing and the strikes bruising his arms.

Then Silluka was there to the side, whipping a hoe with her one arm into the creature’s side, distracting it.

“I said get back!” Ichu cried, and Silluka ignored him as usual, but she’d given him an instant to see the creature in full.

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It was taller than him, and he was tall for one of the Huaca. The face was familiar enough to a man, but hard, like it was made of chipped stone, the skin slate gray. Red eyes—no, eyes glowing red—stared murder at him above an elongated and smoothed nose and mouth, more like an eagle’s beak than a man’s mouth.

It had two arms, two legs, all wrapped in coarse fiber, like beaten bark. There was an insignia on the chest plate, a carving of a beast with a long snout and overhanging teeth.

Ichu’s body was already moving through Tortoise’s Heavy Foot, which would make his strikes powerful enough to break stone. He couldn’t stray from the chayu while he did so, and despite the momentary distraction from Silluka, the creature kept pummeling him.

Ichu finished the third chayu in quick succession, each one only a few moves long. His body glowed with the ampuka, browns and purples with the blessing from the gods, enough to cast shadows against the creature. He caught the next strike, trying to throw his attacker off his stance, but the stonelike creature barely moved.

His eyes widened as the fist pulled back and sent him flying.

Ichu landed with a crash among dirt, rocks, and corn stalks, Fitted Stone keeping anything from breaking his skin. He rolled over in time to see the beast run at him like a tree falling, quick, but with no grace.

He rolled, pushed off from one arm, and spun to a standing position, twisting to throw a foot out in a snap kick directly into its path as it ran into him.

There was a sound like thunder as his foot contacted the bark-like armor. Roots In Fitted Stone and Tortoise’s Heavy Foot made his strike something that could kick through rock. But the creature only stopped, swaying, then raised a vial of thick, red liquid to its beak and drank, quicker than Ichu could recover and grab for the vial. The glow spread from its eyes to cover its upper body, like the glow of the ampuka, but dark and deadly.

The beak twisted into a grin, more flexible than he thought.

Then it punched him.

Ichu blinked back to consciousness twenty paces away, the churned dirt conforming to his body. His chayus were dissipating. He’d done them quickly and without precision, so their effects hadn’t lasted. The more perfect they were, the more powerful.

Then Silluka was beside him again, pulling with her hand and trying to pry him up with her stump.

“It’s coming! Get up! Get up!”

She pulled him to his feet, stronger than he remembered, and he turned just in time to cross his arms for another blow. He twisted to redirect the attack, and surprisingly, it worked. The creature flew past and Silluka tugged him the other way. So, strong, but not very flexible.

“Tiya Qhalikay, Aunt Healing, keep him from injury!” Silluka called as they both ran back toward the house.

“It’s gaining.” Ichu spared a look back to see the creature, as if a turtle had decided to be a man, down another vial of red liquid. Even from here, he could see its thick neck tense, like new strength coursed down its body. It started running. Fast.

Strong. Fast. Not as reactive.

Ichu pushed Silluka to one side and dove the other way as it shot past. It hadn’t expected them to be that nimble. Its charge took the creature far into the distance, nearly past the limits of the farm before it slowed.

“It’s looping around,” Silluka said.

“Do you know Flock Of Starlings?”

She grimaced. “I’ve maybe seen it once?”

“Follow my lead.” Ichu went into Dexterity stance. They had seconds to start. Flock Of Starlings was a group chayu. As long as the overall form was close, mistakes, or physical limitations, melded into the whole. Even if his sister couldn’t do all of the hand movements, he could be more precise in his to make up for her. He began, using only his eyes to signal her to start with him. Ahead, the creature was coming around in a wide arc. It seemed not to be able to turn quickly with whatever was in the last vial it had drunk.

“Now arms,” he said. “Good. Fingers—well, what you can do. Keep the legs light.” He had urged Silluka to practice with him for years. He hadn’t dreamed he’d have to teach her while an alien turtleman raced toward them.

Almost there. Ichu picked up his foot, expanding the muscles on just the outside of his leg to lengthen it and curve inward. Exact muscle manipulation took years to master, and his sister didn’t have it. Still, the chayu around them began to glow, more around him, but the ampuka spread to Silluka.

“I’m doing it!” she called. “Elder Quilqi was right!”

Who? But Ichu didn’t have time to question. The last move of the chayu fell into place and he felt the wind rising under him, his speed linked to Silluka’s and bound to Tiyu Pacha—Uncle Sky.

“Run!”

They both took off toward the village as the turtleman sped through where they’d been standing with a screech like grinding earth, leaving a gash in the rock where its claws had passed. It shot off to their left as they ran back to the Huaca, lifted as if on wings.

“What was that?” Silluka asked as they ran, the glow of the ampuka surrounding them. “Have you ever seen something like that before?”

“A storm came up fast this morning, directly from the wall of storms,” Ichu answered.

“Then you think it was a storm warrior?”

He laughed. “A god wouldn’t deign to come down to earth.” Then he sobered. All the signs pointed to the new island, approaching theirs like the Allwiya’s had, hundreds of years ago. The elder geologists said the ground near the coast would keep turning into jagged mountains until that island impacted theirs. Maybe it was happening sooner than they thought? Did islands change speed as they sped across the boiling ocean?

“Then what if something got through the wall of storms?” Silluka said what he was thinking.

“If it was strong enough to do that, it’s stronger than any of the Huca,” Ichu said. “It’s going to follow us. We have to warn the village.”