Two things brought us to the surface of Kalo-Mahoi.

The first was our encounter with a certain terrifying water spirit. The orb that had taken residence in Dick’s body was apparently able to activate the Drowned Diadem and summon Lord Acheron. We didn’t want to chance another incident and so decided to head for the surface.

As for the second reason, it came to our attention while watching a local news cast we picked up on the viewscreen that our group was being hunted in earnest by the Syreni authorities. We felt it would be easier to avoid detection near the surface since Syreni typically stuck to the deep water and trenches.

We cruised the surface for a few hours before discovering a picturesque archipelago consisting of about ten small islands. Tropical looking trees dotted most of the islands, which were situated like a large crescent with the largest island in the middle.

“I thought there was no land above the surface on this planet besides the Malunite sky islands,” Cash said as we cruised into the center bay near the big island.

We were traveling about 100 feet above the ocean’s surface, low enough to scout the islands, but high enough to maneuver easily between them. Most of us were gathered once again in the control room as it was the easiest room to view the outside.

“No, Maluna raised many surface islands in addition to the sky islands,” Vomero said. He had studied the history of the planet more than any of us. “I don’t know if it was intentional or just how the magic worked, lifting land up at various elevations. The Malunites just prefer to live on the sky islands because of the separation and autonomy it gives them from Syreni.”

“So, does that mean most of these islands are uninhabited?” Dick asked from the pilot’s seat. “Or are we going to find more hostile species like the Tritons here?”

“I would imagine they are deserted for the most part,” Vomero said, “except maybe some local wildlife. But even that is sparse. Most of the indigenous species are water based. The only animals that would thrive here on an island would be lower life forms like insects or variations on imported animals let loose to populate the islands.”

“Looks like a great place to hide out for a while,” I said. “How about that spot?”

I touched a spot on the viewscreen and a zoomed-in view of the area appeared in a pop-up window. The area was on the coast but not directly on the beach. Lush tropical trees would provide us some camouflage from the air, while the distance from the water would help avoid detection from any Syreni patrols in the water.

Dick nodded and guided the transport down toward the spot. After a quick search of the area, we determined it free of any hazardous flora or fauna and brought the transport to berth just at the tree line.

By this time, it was getting close to dusk. On my way to the transport hatch, I passed Matthew carrying a pile of blankets and some type of tarp.

“Going somewhere, kid?” I asked.

“Just to find a spot to sleep for the night,” he said, a smile beaming on his face. “There’s no way I’m sleeping in that stuffy transport like a sardine stacked in a can if I don’t have to. I’m surprised you’re not doing the same, Skye. I mean there’s sure to be a million stars out tonight.”

He carried his pile of materials a few yards away from the transport in the direction toward the beach. Dumping the items in a heap, he began setting up what looked like a rudimentary tent.

“The kid’s got a point,” Dick said from behind me. “Sleeping under the stars sounds like heaven after spending nearly two weeks at the bottom of the ocean.”

He also had a pile of materials gathered under one arm.

“It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic,” I said.

“That’s the spirit,” Dick said with a smile. “But I have to warn you, if you decide to camp out here with us, you probably shouldn’t put your hammock right next to mine. All that starlight and sound of crashing waves could get a little too romantic for you to handle.”

He winked cheekily at me as he continued toward the beach camp area Matthew had picked out. I couldn’t help but chuckle at his teasing.

“That sounds like a challenge,” I called after him and was rewarded with the sound of his low, sexy chuckle drifting back to me on the breeze.

An hour later, most of us gathered around the campfire Matthew and Cash built at the beach camp. All of us had agreed that a little fresh air would help everyone sleep better, at least for tonight. Only the old man declined, mumbling something about being too old for that shit before shuffling off to sleep on his favorite lounger in the transport. I noticed, however, that he left the transport hatch open.

Dinner consisted of soup from our food supplies heated over the campfire. Cash had drug several crates from the cargo bay to use as seats, so we sat and ate and laughed at some story Ryuuk was telling about a time he dueled a man with a giant pink moustache.

As we watched the sun set over the archipelago bay, the day seemed surreal.

“Those look like deep thoughts, Skye Alnasi,” Dick said, sitting on the crate beside me. “What clever mystery is that brain of yours unraveling this time? The secret to the old man’s actual name? How Ryuuk manages to keep his feathers so insufferably groomed? What I’m wearing under these leather pants? Hint: It’s nothing.”

At that last part, he leaned forward and waggled his eyebrows provocatively at me. I just shook my head with a grin.

“I’m afraid that last one’s not a mystery,” I said. “I don’t think anyone would be surprised to find out you go commando. Plus, your pants are so tight, I doubt it’s possible to actually get undergarments in there too.”

Dick sighed in mock disappointment.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you deduced that one so quickly,” he said with a wicked twinkle in his eye. “You do spend quite a lot of time starring at my rear.”

He laughed as I pushed him off the crate in retaliation. Looking back at the horizon, the sunset had yielded the sky to an innumerable amount of stars.

“It seems so strange to have a respite from all the chaos,” I said, answering his original question. “Ever since we met, it’s been a constant stream of one crisis after another. A week ago, I was suspicious of every one of you, not knowing if I could trust you enough to even turn my back to you. And now...”

I motioned to the good natured ribbing and arguing going on around the campfire as Cash challenged the validity of Ryuuk’s story and Matthew accused him of still being sore about the darts.

“So much has changed in such a short time, yet sometimes it feels like it’s been forever,” I concluded.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Vomero, who had been calmly leaning against a crate nearby with his hands tucked behind his head, chose to join the conversation.

“There’s studies showing how people who survive a disaster together form associations with each other more quickly than they would have under normal circumstances,” he said. “It may sound odd to say we’ve been surviving one big disaster for the last week and a half, but it’s true, if you think about it.”

“Well, I for one am not going to begrudge the break,” Cash said, catching on to the conversation, as well. “And I’m sure we’re not done with disaster just yet. Afterall, we’ve got an entire nation looking to pin the assassination of their monarch on us.”

“He’s right,” Ryuuk added but paused as each of us gave him various amused looks. “What’s so funny?”

“We just never thought we’d hear you say Cash was right about anything,” Dick answered.

“Well, I don’t argue just to hear myself speak,” Ryuuk said. “He just happens to be wrong a lot!”

This drew a chuckle out of each of us.

“I mean it!” Ryuuk said, with light-hearted indignation. “For example, right now. He happens to be right. We should enjoy a night of peace and quiet. But we also need to quit lettin’ these folks lead us around by the beak. So, tonight, I say we relax, clear our heads. And tomorrow we get after it.”

I shared a bemused smile with Vomero. It was the most insightful thing I had ever heard Ryuuk say. The man may have more layers than his feathery façade seemed to indicate. Soon afterward, some of us retreated to our makeshift beds and hammocks for sleep.

Vomero and Matthew remained by the fire talking for a good while longer. Vomero was a fount of knowledge and Matthew was a sponge soaking it all up.

As I settled into my hammock, I glanced over at where Dick placed his bedroll on a pile of soft vegetation he had pulled off the nearby trees. The bed seemed suspiciously oversized for just one person to sleep in. He lay on his back with his hands linked behind his head as a pillow, eyes closed.

As I watched, his mouth turned up in a knowing smile as if he could sense me looking at him, and he casually dropped an arm down to the empty space beside him on the bedroll and gave it a little pat. The gesture was so nonchalant that I knew nobody else would have even registered it.

Smiling at his antics, I resolutely rolled over in my hammock and fixed my eyes on the sky as I fell asleep to the sound of waves washing gently on the shore.

* * *

The next day, as Ryuuk had suggested, we did indeed take time to get after it.

Vomero and Cash were out on the beach near an outcropping of rocks, working on the boosting technique they had improvised during our escape.

Dick wandered off with Ryuuk, determined to locate and acquire a couple of useful aquatic forms he could transform into. Ryuuk was mainly there for support and scout, but he also had the idea to use Jack Trader’s book to identify potential species that would be most useful.

I spent time practicing some of my lesser used fighting skills and grilling Matthew about his Void magic.

“So, you can summon tentacles?” I asked, skeptically, aiming down the sight of my light bow as I practiced my aim. “Wow, Void magic is even weirder than anyone could have guessed.”

“Very funny,” Matthew said. “It’s attitudes like that which lead to unfortunate stigmatization and bigotry, you know.”

I chucked and shook my head in disbelief as I aimed at another target protruding out of the water. He was summoning tentacle-shaped manifestations of dark energy that were popping in and out of the bay’s tranquil surface. They made excellent moving targets for me to practice my shooting, even if it was a little creepy.

My light arrow sliced cleanly through one of the Void appendages, dispersing it completely as it did. Interesting, I thought. It’s like my powers cancel out his. I wonder under what circumstances it might work in reverse. Could any of his powers cancel mine?

So far, Matthew had shown me the tentacle summons and a short-range instantaneous teleport. Of course I already knew about his portal jump ability. It wasn’t as fast as the teleport but it covered long distances and didn’t require him to be able to see where he was going.

Most of his powers seemed defensive in nature, and I wondered if he just hadn’t developed any offensive ones, yet, or didn’t use them much.

“What else do you got?” I asked. “Anything that does damage?”

“Well, actually, the err...tentacles do a small amount of damage and quite a hefty amount of stamina drain. But, um, I do have this other thing I can do, but it’s not that reliable.”

“Not reliable because you don’t know how to control it or because it works randomly?” I quizzed.

“Mostly because I don’t use it a lot, and I’m not good at modulating it.”

“Let’s see...”

“Ok, but you probably want to stand back a little,” he said, uncertainly.

Raising my eyebrows in interest, I took a step back. He waved at me, indicating I should go further. By the time he was satisfied, I was at least ten yards away.

“Here goes,” he called.

Next, he held out his hand straight in front of him, palm forward. The purple-black swirl of energy I was coming to associate with his powers sparked and swirled around his hand. He seemed to be concentrating intensely until finally a ball of void energy manifested in front of his palm. With just the tiniest movement of his wrist, the ball flew out from his hand and spun wildly toward the water where he had aimed it.

It’s trajectory curved, however, before getting too far and exploded into the ground nearby, doing a sizeable amount of damage to the beach and leaving a hole about six feet across. The sound of the explosion was loud.

“What the hell?!” Cash yelled out from his spot down the beach where he was attempting to punch a hole in a rock using Vomero’s aid in juicing him up. The explosion had startled both of them as they hadn’t been expecting it.

“Sorry!” Matthew called, then turned back to me. “I have a hard time aiming it right, and I can’t really make it any weaker or stronger. It’s just this one strength, but I know that’s on me. My mentor said I should be able to regulate it and aim it more accurately, but I just never got the hang of it.”

“We can try to work on it, if you’re interested,” I said. “It sounds like you probably never mastered it because you’re afraid of it.”

He shrugged sheepishly, not meeting my eyes.

“That’s not a bad thing,” I said. “Better for you to be cautious than cocky. A power like that could easily kill if it got out of control.”

He nodded, looking mollified.

“Come on, we’ll talk about it later,” I said, nodding down the beach. “Looks like Dick is back. I wonder what transformation he managed to snag.”

The four of us gathered on the shore to intercept Dick and Ryuuk as they returned. Dick practically stomped his way across the sand, threatening to punch Ryuuk in the face if he didn’t stop smirking. It wasn’t usual to see the changeling in such a sullen mood. Something obviously hadn’t gone to plan on their outing.

“All I’m saying is we couldn’t possibly know from the information provided how fast they would be,” Ryuuk said with barely contained laughter.

“I said, shut it!” Dick said. “I told you we’re never talking about this.”

“Oh we’re definitely talking about this,” I said, mischievously. “I take it things didn’t go well?”

Dick stopped a few feet from me, crossed his arms and stared at the water, refusing to elaborate.

“Well, we saw several interesting species,” Ryuuk said. “Some of them I think would have made good candidates according to Jack’s book.”

“Would have?” Cash said, also relishing what he sensed was a juicy story. “So, what was the hang-up?”

“That damn book is the hang-up!” Dick exploded.

“Hey now! You can’t go blaming the book,” Ryuuk said defensively.

“It doesn’t give any actual useful information when it comes to dealing with most of those creatures,” Dick argued.

Ryuuk sighed as he ignored Dick and turned to answer us, instead.

“In short, he couldn’t catch any of them,” Ryuuk reported. “Well, almost. He did catch one that—”

“Enough!” Dick said and stomped off. “I said we’re not talking about it!”

“What was it?” Matthew asked.

Ryuuk just shrugged helplessly, torn between telling us and respecting Dick’s wishes to not mention whatever creature he managed to wrangle. In the end, the truth must have been embarrassing enough for Ryuuk’s sense of chivalry to kick in.

“Well, it’s probably not my place to say,” he said, shaking his head as he wandered off.

The four of us stared questioningly at each other as Dick and Ryuuk made their way up to the camp.

“What do you think it could have been?” Matthew naturally was the first to voice his curiosity.

“Who knows what it takes to make that guy feel embarrassed?” Cash said.

“Probably something slimy,” Vomero commented.

I looked at Matthew with a rascally smirk as I added my guess to the list.

“Probably something with tentacles.”