Brimcliff: Churning Gate
Fathomheart 01-01
David Collins-Rivera
The sea was heaving.
It roiled. It screamed. It foamed in madness and terror -- for the gate was nearly open, and power blasted out like a tidal wave, tormenting the water and all Earthly life within it.
Oh! They were coming, and maybe now nothing could stop them.
Above was a dark and mottled sky, black and gray and spitting yellow -- here and gone, like the tongues of snakes. On the water's surface, all was madness and howling winds, and that pounding/howling/sizzling was deafening to those below.
It was a storm beyond any that Bhav had seen before, and she had seen the worst. She risked a look at the sky, rising slowly from the cold depths. Above her, the form of an animal, black against the shattering brightness of lightning on high, dived under, racing to meet her. It was a seal. Elouwi was fast -- faster even than a ketea, Bhav had to admit.
The animal nuzzled her urgently, avoiding the black spine-like hair on Bhavjeet's head, her motions indicating some new danger -- as if the end of the world wasn't enough!
Elouwi rocketed off again, returning to the spasming surface; the ketea girl followed, though more slowly, with terror welling in her heart. In moments, she broke the surface, a lightning flash illuminating her dark brown skin, black eyes, and anemone hair. She was glazed with water and fear.
Elouwi had to be nearby, but a mountain of careening water bowled the ketea over, nearly knocking her senseless. She could swim along with any natural wave, like all of her people. But this storm was not natural, and it buffeted the girl like she was insignificant flotsam, and she sank slowly again, stunned, shocked.
It would be so easy to just let the currents draw her away from this awful scene...
No!
Beneath the boiling surface Bhav shook her spiny head, Elouwi dashing in a circle, looking concerned. The seal had expressive brown eyes, and she was clearly frightened. The ketea spread her arms, webbed fingers catching sea water like handholds, pulling herself up with an effort. She kicked her sinewy legs hard. They ended, not in feet, but in long, undulating fins. On bright days, when the sun beamed into crystal waters with a clarity unmatched in the world above, Bhavjeet's fins nearly glowed, their scales reflecting in dazzling gold and scarlet.
But not today. Or was it tonight? It was impossible to tell if the sun had risen, or if, like all sane beings now, it hid from the mad forces that approached.
But madness was meaningless now, she knew, once again rising up to the air world.
"We're crazy!" she shouted over the storm, when Elouwi's dark gray muzzle broke the surface. The seal honked in agreement, but then turned in the water to look off to one side, barking furiously. The animal was ducking under and popping up again in clear agitation.
"Where?" Bhav demanded, looking where her friend had indicated. "No ships could sail this storm!"
In reply, the seal dove again, racing off in the same direction. The ketea did the same, following fast. (Or trying to, anyway: her strength was not in surface swimming -- and certainly not on this day!)
One rolling mountain, up and over, then another, and she was very suddenly upon them: five massive lateen-rigged ships, triangular sails dark in the murk. A lightning flash revealed the sails to be crimson in color, with a black spiral in the center. Bhav felt herself sinking inside, though she bobbed on the tortured surface like a cork.
"The Blood Fleet! No! The Council is so close...!"
Elouwi, at Bhavjeet's side, whined in terror.
Bhav had dismissed the rumors that the Corsair Lords of Rutas had thrown in with the tritons. Everyone had! The Council had assured them that no human maritime power already outside the influence of the Bleached King, no matter how ruthless or ambitious, would ever join him. But pirates know no loyalty except to their purses, while the tritons hold the scavenged coffers of a million sunken hulks.
Buying the help of greedy humans was a new development; tritons were warlike in all respects, and preferred battle and conquest as the way to assure loyalty in their slave races. But the myriad peoples of this world were not what those monsters expected to find when they'd opened the whirlpool between dimensions, and the resulting war had been fierce and uncompromising.
Tritons were hard to kill, but the Council wasn't afraid of hard work. By all accounts, it had astonished King Hrunagon and his admirals -- those leaders of the triton swarms -- that the disparate mer and land folk of this place could be so tenacious and deadly. His initial confidence and audacity had slowly morphed into care and strategy, as their warriors died and sank to the depths for sharks and scavenging crabs to feast upon. Indeed, clouds of these opportunistic animals now followed the Swarm whenever it moved en masse, a sure sign of military action to come, and the subsequent and inevitable banquet to follow.
Elouwi had been so caught up in the sight of the imposing ships, and the realization that Hrunagon the Awful, Apex of Tritons, the Bleached King, had been making political alliances thought impossible, that she failed to take serious note of the savage men and women aboard the vessels. A change in the wind brought their howls and curses across cold undulating waves. Bolts of energy, some the yellow/white of powerful lightning strokes, some the bright emerald of pure magic, revealed the decks to be packed with bloodthirsty corsairs, each brandishing cruel hand weapons.
The tradition of Rutan corsairs demanded each claim and specialize in a personal weapon of choice. Pikes with a hundred differently-barbed heads waved tauntingly in the air from the top deck of each ship; swords of every design and character, some quite elaborate and cruel-looking, raised and lowered as challenges and taunts were leveled; bows and knives, and bronze-shod clubs of all descriptions waved like grass in the unnatural gale.
"We cannot let them reach the island!" Bhav insisted, and raised her dark, muscular arms above her spiny head. Elouwi could instantly feel the power rising from below them. The ketea people drew upon the strength of the sea, and could channel it's endless forces, if their need was in-keeping with the sea's. Indeed, many speculated that the ketea, above all other merfolk of the world, were but extensions of the boundless love and mind-bending rage of the oceans -- that they were part of the sea, not merely inhabitants within it.
Elouwi had seen Bhav use her power before, to create currents that channeled schools of fish toward or away from people and predators, depending upon the need. She had seen her raise a fog once, to let a pod of whales escape harpoon-wielding humans in fast boats. The ketea had even created a small swell on a particular occasion, that had tipped a dingy; the man sitting within had been throwing trash into the water, and he got a sudden and hilarious ducking.
Yet never, in all the years they'd been friends (more-than-friends, it was true) and sisters-in-arms, had Elouwi felt or seen anything like this! The hairs on her body, normally so slick and shiny, itched and began to rise, and she whined despite herself. Her friend's dark eyes, so like the prettiest of black pearls, were glowing softly now, a greenish light seeping out in small drops and rivulets, to float away slowly like weightless tears immune to the screaming winds. The ketea girl muttered words only her own people knew or could ever learn -- indeed, the seal heard them through the sea's roaring, as if they were beyond the effects of weather. And they were gone from her mind instantly, as if she hadn't heard them at all.
But the sea heard, and sea replied.
Bhavjeet's melodious voice carried far across the nightmare tableau of storm and enemy forces, those beautiful but unintelligible words rising like a whale song, and the ocean rose with it!
The sea before the massive ships began to swell up; true, it was undulating all about them, jumping and tearing in the winds, but now it began to do so with a purpose. The water rose, it rolled. It leaped, and was met with more high waves, piling up, and up, and even higher!. It began to take form: massive and humanoid and impossible! It was a giant of the water, a titan formed from the sea itself! In moments there was a being of pure oceanic rage towering before the ships, formed by Bhav.
The water was chaotic and tormented, and so very dark. But corsairs are sailors, first and foremost, and a change in the sea like this does not go unnoticed. Across the dancing waves, and through the howling wind, a hundred voices on the leadmost vessel rose in alarm. It was followed on by the others, flipping from belligerent and excited for battle, to absolute terror as they saw the towering human-like wave before them.
The waterform let out a deep growl, louder than the storm, and as deep as the sea -- a hissing bellow that shook the spine, and moved the very soul to panic.
Bhavjeet cried out one last time, her voice rising high and cutting through the chaos, and the monstrous giant of water (if a giant it truly was, and not just a manifestation of the ketea's terrible rage and fear) raised it's thunderous arms of boiling sea and slammed them down upon the first ship.
It was a horrible sound!
Howling winds mixed with the screams of women and men; the roar of tormented seas twined with that gut-rending, sea-spray bellow of the giant; and the crashing explosion of a ship, as it splintered like a tree before lightning.
Yes! Lightning! For it struck at the same time out of the dark swirling sky, scattering and igniting the pieces of the corsair vessel, blasting it utterly.
And then the giant just melted back into the waters it had come from, that it was made from, disappearing from sight in one heaving swell.
The crews of the other ships had turned their jibes and capers into cries of fear, punctuated by shouts of terror and shock when their sister ship was dashed to pieces before their very eyes. There was a confused scrambling upon each of them, as orders to turn about were called, and then belayed, and then supplanted by other panicked cries for action.
Elouwi watched her friend in complete astonishment. She had known her for so long, and had seen and swum and played by her side in good times and bad. But never, ever had she suspected such power!
The ketea were the will of the oceans. It was true! The legends were all true, and her dearest friend in the world, a girl like a sister, could wield the sea like a weapon!
Four vessels remained. They had been nearly swamped by the action, and had lost their tight formation (which had been so unnatural in this storm it could only have been magical in nature). Whatever spell had been protecting them from the worst of the elements, it was now broken, and the ships all heaved and jumped with the agitation of the angry surface waters.
Bhav began the song again, once more raising her voice and arms, high, high above her head -- and the water before the panicked ships responded as before. The sea-titan formed again, rising up, and Bhav's high, crystalline, incomprehensible words danced across the winds and wave-tops.
Two of the corsair vessels were close to the watery giant this time, and the humans aboard shouted and screamed for more speed, more sail; they cried for the helmsmen to do the impossible, to save them from the wrath of the sea! But it was no good, for humans are only human, and the mountainous being stood over them.
It stood, and it struck.
Elouwi could see it all, could see her friend crushing these evil land creatures and scattering their remaining forces. A brilliant, tremendous force for the world, for this world -- not the one that the Bleached King and his bestial hordes sought to create!
The Council would be safe! They would have the time they needed after all! They could close the Gate, and...
Blazing green light flew over Elouwi's small head with a saw-like sizzle, as she bobbed upon the waves. It dazzled her large brown eyes, and, instinctively, the seal dove to avoid whatever it was. She zipped away in an arc, careening through the water faster than she'd ever moved before, surprise and terror filling her heart. But she didn't go far -- just enough to get clear of whatever had happened, and to cautiously circled back toward her friend.
As she approached under water, she could feel the change in the sea.
No, not the sea -- in the temperature!
Though the storm hid the nature of the world where this battle took place, they were actually in the tropics -- a place upon the open ocean that was sultry and bright most days. But Elouwi felt stabbing coldness as she moved to where Bhav had been floating. Each second brought her closer to a wintry place, to an arctic place! The water was suddenly freezing!
There was a massive chunk of ice before the seal, bobbing, heaving heavily in the pounding waves. It was white and jagged, and hanged deeply into the surrounding water. Deep within was the shadow of something frozen and trapped.
It was Bhavjeet!
Oh! Oh, her friend, her dearest friend, her love!
Lost. Encased...just a heavy dead block, tossing in the angry sea.
A ketea was gone from the world.
It had been a spell. A vicious curse. Focused and tight, it had all the hallmarks of human sorcery!
These land creatures, this collective filth upon the ocean's face! They dabbled in powers beyond understanding, and counted themselves gods!
These ones would pay. All the humans would pay, but the one who had done this thing...was...going...to...fall!
Rage clouded Elouwi's vision, as she rocketed through spiking waves, racing so fast she was just a blur from the surface, invisible in the chaos and gloom. But she left a wake that was visible enough, and several corsairs shouted in alarm, pointing at this living vengeance cutting the water like a spear, a determined wrath headed their way.
Elouwi arced toward the ship from where the spell must have been cast, for it was the only one close enough. She pushed on with all her might. Once again, the hull was barely rising and falling upon the waves, testament that whatever unnatural magicks had been in play before were now back in force.
But it made for an easy target, and she went on, flashing closer and closer. From above, pikes and arrows rained down on the surface in a vain attempt to stop her, to slow her down. But it was pointless, for there was no power in the seas that could stop her retribution!
At the last possible moment, barely a body length from the ship, Elouwi aimed upward, and snapped at the surface. Such was her velocity that she exploded into the air, flying high over the main deck! And she rolled as she flew, shrugging off her pelt: it was her talisman of change, the enchanted garment that allowed her kind to take animal form.
For she was a selkie -- a seal-girl -- and she would avenge Bhavjeet with a selkie's rage!