“Going to be hard for Mya to beat this,” Petor was thoroughly sick of being in the water around the pirate docks. He’d moved around from ship to ship, using seaweed and ever burning brambles. Adding in half formed Emberbloms and Hellfire Thistles.
He’s made the mistake of trying to use Algae to jump around the ships. It didn’t have roots, and it was really noticeable with the mats of material they made.
He peeked around the side of the ship he was fouling up as something monstrous broke and creaked.
“You’re fucking kidding me.” The tower snapped off and fell. Petor jumped to a nearby anchor rope and held on.
The waves of the impact were sharp and tough the ropes holding the ship to the dock making the ship and dock creak, something broke. People yelled as they were tossed about, several hitting the water.
Petor was rattled around like a pair of socks in a washing basin, holding onto the anchor chain for dear life. Why the fuck do I get stuck in this shit?
It calmed down as Petor worked to get his brain back in working order.
He sent commands through his plants. The everburning ember under the dock’s pressed themselves to wood and rope, while he kept pumping mana into them.
Hellfire thistles ripened and ember blooms, budded, flowers starting to appear.
Bells started ringing out, flames spreading through ships. A powder locked ignited, tearing out a chunk of ship and spraying wood across the dock, killing those running on it.
Smoke curled and roiled.
Petor kept pulling in mana, feeling the seaweed tug as ships fought to get clear of the docks.
Emberblooms bloomed and overloaded with the mana surging through them.
Fireballs detonated through the docks, fire spreading rapidly.
Fire burned up through dozens of ships. Another powder locker went up.
Petor jumped through his plants to a ship trying to escape.
He stabbed his spear into the ship under the water line and used cavicate.
Nearly four-square meters shattered under the spell, the water’s pressure dragging it all inside, the ship slumping as it took on water.
Explosions ripped through a ship, a fountain of wood and flame.
Petor blinked and jumped down the ship he was on, using cavicate repeatedly before jumping to another ship.
The fires were raging across the city now. The wind picked up as he looked into the sky. The clouds started to spin, feeding the flames and spreading them.
“We’re taking on water!” Someone yelled on a ship he was holding onto.
He jumped to another ship, panting as he took in a mana potion thankfully the ships had enchantments and he could drain those with his attacks.
With every ship that detonated it was a rush he shoved into his plants as fast as possible.
They broke through the decking, some as thick as a man. The water smoking where they touched.
Pirates tried to hack through them, but there was just too much.
A chill ran through Petor’s soul as he tore out his spear. His familiarity with such spells the only thing that kept him moving.
What you up to now Mya?
A shiver of power ran through him, like the blast wave from an explosion, but one that made his mana and core shiver, not touching on the physical world.
Groans crawled out of throats.
The dead shuddered and jerked.
Sounds of fighting grew.
Cannons fired on the docks. Others shot at the buildings mounted around the columns. Most had been destroyed with the large ropes swinging through them.
The crystal on his hip glowed.
He threaded mana through his hip to it as he kept stabbing and blowing holes into ships.
“Petor here.” Saying P here, well it wasn’t exactly adult was it?
“Good, get your ass to the tower, I need some help!” Mya yelled.
Petor looked at the ships fighting one another, the dead and the living, the plants waging their own war in the burning mass with side of explosions.
“Fuuuuuck.”
“You have three minutes before the hurricane hits,” Desari said.
“See you soon,” Mya said sweetly.
Petor chugged down a fire resistance potion, hiked up his spear and jumped onto the dock, his spear cut through two pirates, energy filling him as he jumped forward again, breaking into a run with each step taking him further along the deck.
Grow further, in that direction.
The roots were laid out in a plan in his mind, like veins running through the docks. His plants exploded into motion, tearing up the decking, cannon diameter brambles, grew dozens of meters, thinning down to tendrils as big as fingers, crawling through the wreckage of buildings, setting them aflame.
He hopped from side to side but always onwards, his spear reaping lives as plants cracked their way up to the tower.
The sound of gunfire drew his eye, Mya swung on a rope, firing a pistol, storing it to hurl out another rope and swing on, the first one disappearing.
She carved a steep arc, launching her self upward, her inhuman strength hurling her tens of floors up the tower to disappear.
Petor put his spear away, drawing daggers and used his plants to shoot up the side of the tower. He dug his blades into the side of the building before stabbing his feet into the wall and flung himself upwards. Daggers, foot holds, hurl, repeat.
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In three jumps he was above the top of the broken building.
Mya whirled, her eyes aflame, her pistol leveled at his head.
“What you need now?” Petor put his daggers away as she holstered her pistol and threw a supporting beam out of the way.
“A gunner, don’t have one of those, but you’ll do,” Mya held out her hand, palm down.
“Har-har,” Petor said dryly as he held out his hand underneath hers. “What is this?”
“Cannons.”
Petor’s storage rapidly filled as it was indeed cannons, and all manner of weaponry.
“That feels better, damn storage was creaking it was so full!” Mya moved through the wreckage of the tower.
“Good thing we got those goods out of there.” Petor threw out bramble seeds, giving them directions to spread through the building and create a way to escape.
“Take the two sides we weren’t in,” Mya said. “These cannons don’t have recoil, just aim them, fired at anything that’s floating and give it a good few shots then we’re out of here.”
They waded through walls and threw parts of the tower as if they were but twigs in their way.
Petor used a beam to clear a part of the floor, he pressed on it, checking its strength.
“Reminds me of Jaxus,” He said, taking out a cannon, it was a thick square thing covered in runes with a round barrel sticking out on one side.
“Who?”
“The guy who tried to consume his god and you shot with a cannon.” Petor adjusted his aim and pressed his hand to the activation rune.
“Its not firing!”
“Tap your card to it!”
Petor did so, the runes lighting up and he pressed his hand to the rune.
A fireball shot out the front of the cannon, its runes dimming. Petor stored it and took out a second, dropping into the same place as the first.
The shot went too high. Fireball weighs less than a cannon ball.
Petor adjusted and fired again, hitting a dock instead of the ship pushing away from the chaos. The third hit the ship’s barrier. Petor dropped cannons with the same adjustments and fired them as fast as he could touch the rune, a half dozen fireballs hitting the ship over a handful of seconds.
The hits colored the barrier till one broke through, hitting the unfurling sails, others hit the main deck. Water vaporized into steam, obscuring the decks as fireball afterfireball hit, flames spreading across the ship.
Petor shifted his point of aim for a nearby ship and fired another dozen fireballs now he had the range figured out.
His hands flew over wheel that adjusted elevation. More hits registered.
The tower started shuddering.
“Well its seems they figured out where we are!” Mya yelled over the wind.
Another explosion rocked the ships as a two decker scattered over the waters and docks.
“Time to get out of here.” Petor fired his last cannon.
“See you out there!” Mya took a run at the edge of the tower, throwing an anchor attached to a rope out.
It stopped in mid-air, shots tearing up the tower as Petor ran for his plants. Mya jumped off the tower, her ‘sky anchor’ holding her up as she swung away from the tower.
Petor appeared halfway down the tower, then on the ground, then on a dock, on the water, another dock, the side of a ship, his spear carving through the hull as he used cavicate. Then he was out on the open water, jumping erratically across the space between the burning pirate cove and the columns that surrounded it.
The wind pulled at him, drawing on the fog.
He glanced back. Desari’s vortex drew up loose parts of the pirate cove, then tore it apart, the force of wind shattering buildings like matchstick models.
Flames ignited debris, the black clouds turning red and blue.
Lightning lanced down at the ships below.
A third or so ships were stuck in their docks, burning or destroyed. Most of them the largest three decked ships.
Another explosions went off, the flame-hurricane spun around the docks. Snapping masts with casual ferocity. Barriers of wind, of water or just mana tried their hardest to protect their crews.
***
Ikosari, held onto the wall as a wave of pressure battered her ancestral home. Sections floated free, broken from their mooring. Through the windows she saw several of the sections of the city that had settled around the seal had broken free and were bring pushed away by the aftermath of the battles above.
Light bloomed to the point that she could see it in the depths.
“Where is my brother?” She demanded his attendant standing outside of his office.
“He went to see your lord father,” The attendant said, wild eyed and panicked as a large shockwave ran through the building, jarring off more parts of the building. People hurried down into the bottom of the home, to get away from the pressures exerted higher in the water.
Ikosari spun around and went through the current shafts, her guard rushed to follow after her as she dove to the lowest levels.
Her guards pushed ahead of her and forged a path through the gathered masses trying to escape the painful pressure changes.
They passed through a group of guards keeping them from moving lower. These sections here had been fixed hurriedly, more for functionality that appearance.
Wood, coral and stone showing the rough edges where they’d snapped off of the rest of the city. The glow of the seal illuminated the space, just a few broken floors below. She could see it through the rents.
Guards stood at the entrance, her father’s and her brothers.
“Lady Ikosari,” One of the guards greeted her.
“Where are my brother and my father? The people need direction!” She said, trying to keep her rising panic down as successive blasts pushed her in the water.
The guards shifted but didn’t say anything.
She moved forward, her father’s guards shifted closer.
“The pirates above us are under attack. You think that whoever is attacking them will forget about us? Get out of my way.” Anger and fear ruling her more than confidence. The guards parted for her and opened a door.
“Go down the corridor, third door on the left,” A guard holding the door open said.
She gave him a signal for thanks and swam through the corridors. She could taste something foul on the water as she moved. It got worse the further she went in. Rotten and wrong, coppery.
She pushed the distaste away reaching the door and knocking. Nothing came from the other side. Ikosari leaned forward, hearing a mumbling through the door.
She straightened and knocked louder this time.
“Come!” It was her father’s voice but there was an irritated note to it. Surely he felt the pressure waves?
Another abutted her, sending the debris in the corridor fluttering.
Ikosari struggled to open the door, scraping on the ground. Why did you not have this fixed father? She entered the room. Light shot through in different spaces, the seal’s light.
No magical lights were used to illuminate the tables here.
“Father the pirates above are under attack.”
“I need more souls,” Her father said. His robe was dishevelled. She’d never seen it like this. He was always one to dress in the finest robes, his scales polished to a mirror sheen.
“Father with the pirates under attack we will be next,” Ikosari pressed.
Her father threw a box of tools in her direction.
Ikosari flinched away. A hand caressed her shoulder.
She flinched and looked back into identical eyes. They always said Indross and I had the same eyes. She let out a scream as she scrambled away from her brother’s corpse, nailed to the wall by a harpoon through his sternum, his stomach torn open, blood and offal spreading out from his body.
His face in a rictus of pain and shock, his eyes pleading.
“I don’t care about the pirates!” Her father turned on her, his eyes aglow with the same light as that on the seal. “Give me souls!”
“F-father, what’s going on?” she backed up towards the door, it would take more time to open, stuck against the floor as it was, its flaps didn’t open properly.
His head twitched and then moved softly.
“Stronger than the other trash,” He looked at the floor above. His hand moved at his side. The things on the tables twitched and shifted, then floated up from their positions.
“What is this father?” She knew, she’d always known. The people that her father requested, the ones that had not come back. Those she’d given to him so that their own weren’t dragged down here.
“Well to wake a true lord of the depths. One that can give me power to control all.” Her father smiled, a wild and broken thing.
“What about Indross?” She shivered, moving past her brother’s corpse.
“Worse than useless. Breaking up Kirtana. I had the city well in hand and he destroyed it.” He reached out towards Indross’ corpse. It twitched, its limbs snapping.
“At least he had some power in his core, in his soul. You are my creations, sired, fed and taught by me.” Her father’s eyes locked on her.
Ikosari grabbed on the door and hauled on it. A hand slammed into it as she had it halfway open, the hand with her family’s crest embossed on the ring.
A knife went through her spine, her legs becoming useless. The ring covered hand grabbed her face and turned her to face her father. She whimpered, behind him the dead danced on the undercurrents.
“Fitting that the one who fed me all these souls joins them too.”
She gurgled as he grabbed her by the throat, striking at his clothes as he carried her towards one of the tables. Restraints to hold down one’s limbs, old blood hung thick in the room, the taste in the hallway.
Her feet didn’t work anymore as he strapped her onto the altar.
“Probably not strong enough.” Her father looked unimpressed, his gaze rising higher to the floor above. His face split into a smile that held only malice. “They’ll do nicely, nothing but hangers on that tried to use my power for their own.”
His eyes turned to his daughter, an eagerness to them—he was far past madness already.