Petor waited with Desari and Valter on their mounts as Mya rode up on Mirradon.
“Well that’s messed them up something fierce,” Mya said.
“Though there are still quite a few ships left,” Desari said.
“If we can get ahead of them and at the mouth, we can add our firepower with Noose and Reckoning. I can drop a couple of the ship—”
Mana was sucked away, like something had just breathed in the world. Desari’s hurricane stuttered briefly.
Petor looked at the others.
“Something is consuming souls,” Mya looked into the water beneath, her eyes white flames.
Desari’s were purple as she looked around them. “The columns.”
They shuddered, rock and moss peeling off, dropping into the water.
“Time we were going!” Petor yelled as the columns shook, runes running up their sides. Perfectly hexagonal.
“This way!” Mya took the lead, the others following her.
Desari cast a spell. “Irshon!”
“Desari?”
“What’s buried under Demon’s Rest?”
“There is a lot of conjecture and unknowns. None of it verified.”
“Well I can verify its something!” She yelled back.
“Oh—you’re there aren’t you?”
“Yup! Information?”
“Sorry, just getting the books. Uhh.”
Their mount’s hooves threw up streams of water, each moving faster than any normal horse could move. They were the wind and the sea as they came around a pillar, the crew of a pirate ship pointing at them as they plunged back into the fog, leaving ripples through it.
Mirradon, Rezzie, Ignus and Mesurial stretched out to their full length, each filled with the power of their owners.
Petor rode with Mirradon’s powerful strides, the salt and spray stinging his eyes as a keening noise came from the pillars around them.
Suddenly they were out of the fog, racing across the waters. A wind passed over the water, clearing the fog from Demon’s rest.
Petor glanced back as they kept riding through the wreckage and remains of the battle held at the mouth to Demon’s Rest.
The fog fled between the pillars. Each stone nails covered in the swirling and weaving runes of the water elementals.
His stomach crawled into his back as they started rising.
“Irshon?” Desari’s voice rose.
“Just a minute!”
The pillars dropped suddenly, the runes through them glowed brighter, fighting off the breached dawn.
A cracking rippled through the columns, openings like black veins snaked up the columns. Rune power failed, releasing itself and breaking the column. Stone rained down into the water, a magnitude greater than the sheathing falling off. The water was stirred up into a froth.
Pirate ships succumbed to the falling stone. Others lucky enough to escape. Without the fog or the columns they ran in any direction they thought safe.
The water seemed to boil and rise, ships rode down the water or tipped over. The creature’s eyes were as big as the one decked ships.
“Conjecture point to a consumption demon. One that ate elementals, creatures and people to fuel its own power. An abomination.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The water sloughed off of the beats, revealing its true form. Hundreds of eyes over dozens of mouths, the largest as big enough to swallow a ship whole.
It was mottled blue, white and black, tentacles lay behind the mouths and eyes. A massive tail sticking out of the end. Eyes glowed with the aquamarine of elementals.
Desari grabbed her reins and began an arcing turn.
“Well shit,” Mya turned with the others, getting back into a straight line, now racing for the big ugly demon-thing.
“Well Irshon, if you have a way to talk to the Water Lord, it might be good to see if he has some way to kill this thing because it just broke out of whatever was keeping it down,” Desari said.
“Nothing if not interesting with you around Desari,” Irshon’s voice was tinged with wry amusement and worry. “Take care of yourself. Whatever it consumes, it gains their powers.”
“Understood,” Desari said.
“Petor bleed that thing. Pile up leeching attacks to it to wear it down. Mya get the dead on our side. Valter lay in the damage and keep it distracted,” Desari said, her spell book in her hand.
“Think the Water Lord will answer?” Petor asked, his mana flowing into them all.
“I think that this thing is fucking with his plane and he’s not going to be too happy about it.” She’d seen what he’d done when finding those that trapped his people. Something that consumed them, keeping them alive in constant pain to draw on their power?
Mya popped out the circles on her armbands, replacing them as she continued to stare at the abomination smashing into the pirate ships nearby, tentacles and maws working in concert.
Barriers and ships cracked apart, smaller tentacles grabbing sections or people and throwing them into awaiting maws.
The ships closest fired and attacked with everything they had. Those further away did all they could to get extra speed. Some shooting one another to slow them.
Reckoning and Noose hurried to orientate themselves to the waves, getting pushed away as they fired on the beast.
They rode up a truly massive wave, jumping onto the other side to gain speed again.
Petor took out a seed putting it against the base of his spear and wrapped it into place with some gauze.
Valter spun his sword, the dimantium blade reflecting the light. “Hearing senses are the most sensitive?”
“That and temperature changes,” Desari said.
Petor searched the beast’s visage, Holes dotted around its eyes.
Mya started to glow, her ritual circles taking on the light as she threw out ingredients that was dissolved and transmuted.
“Catch you on the other side,” Petor said.
“Remember to take the deal with the devil!” Mya said as she and Desari peeled off.
“Well, its been one hell of a ride,” Valter said beside Petor.
“Ain’t done yet is it?” Petor looked over and grinned.
Valter laughed, a deep booming thing. “Not done yet at all.” He fixed his gaze on the beast again. Petor watching as well, several eyes rotated onto them, and tentacles were reaching for them. “I still have to see my son.”
They split apart as a tentacle hit the water with the force of a whip, the wind stinging as Petor and Mirradon weaved through the attacks. The beast was massive, its side nearly a wall from his perspective.
Petor stored his spear and spun his sling hurling Hellfire Thistle.
It sunk into the beast’s hide and disappeared from view. Should have exploded. Though something that size… I’m going to need something stronger.
“Mirradon you okay with a bit more weight?” Petor yelled.
She doubled down.
I hope we’re right about them gaining strength in concert with us. Certainly they weren’t normal mounts—well he doubted Mesurial and Ignus had ever been.
Petor took out Nether Forge cannons, Mirradon adjusted for the weight as Petor activated it. Aiming was a suggestion this close.
The fireball hit the creature, blasting out some tentacles and carving out a space.
Petor stored the cannon, hurled an everburning bramble at the weeping wound and drew another cannon, firing it too.
Mirradon dodged the tentacles as the abomination started to put more focus on them.
Petor used one of his cannon shots to blow away a tentacle.
Rock from the columns shot out of the water, igniting in flames, crashing into the beast and hammering it to the side.
Burning and broken ships fired at the beast, drawing its attention away.
The flaming hurricane dragged the burning pirate cove and slammed it into the creature, its burning remains embedding into the abomination’s side.
“Thank you girl,” Petor patted Mirradon, drawing his spear as he loosened his feet. Ever burning bramble spread through the creature’s wounds, forming a burning lattice on the creature’s skin.
Mirradon gave him an extra buck forward as he stored her away. He touched the everburning bramble and jumped onto the abomination’s back. He stabbed his spear into the beast, cavicate opening a vicious wound, his leech power drawing its very life force out.
Power flowed into him from the wound, he shoved it towards the other horsemen and into the crystal-fall Willow seeds stuck in the bottom of the beast’s wound. Still more flowed off of him.
Petor drew from the beast and set off running, dragging his spear and activating cavicate once he had seeds in his hand, throwing in all manner of fire attribute plants.
He dove away from a tentacle, sliding on the rubbery surface of the abomination to cut into the tentacle, timing his cavicate to blow it apart as he jumped up to running, more limbs attacking him.
Petor moved in a whirlwind of spear thrusts, jabs and cuts. The mana around him and extension of himself. The creature’s wounds healed quickly.
I’ll just have to be faster at increasing the damage.
Petor took out a cannon as long as he was tall. Blasting apart a tentacle, he jumped over the ravaged crater and wound, throwing in ever-burning bramble.
He skidded away from the regions that Noose and Reckoning targeted. The impacts blew out chunks of the beast. The wounds crawled back together.
Petor threw poison into a closing wound.