pierced the shark with a ferocity that made my heart squeeze. I rounded on Keto and sent a wave of energy at her. It wrapped around her, but with a smile she blew it away with her own. Suddenly there were at least twelve sting rays flying around me, their beady eyes trained on me.
They mimicked every move I made, watching me carefully. A shockwave of cool energy hit my chest, knocking the breath out of me and blurring my vision. My world exploded in pain as the rays instigated their attack. My arm, my legs, and my shoulder were stabbed over and over, blocking my vision as the blood swirled around me. I felt myself hit the sea floor, but the rays didn’t let up. I mustered up as much energy as I could and tried to blow them off of me, but this made them come back even madder.
I felt a soothing presence arrive, but the frenzy of rays and the sand that my thrashing was churning up left me unable to see what or who it was. One by one the rays disappeared, and I was able to deduce what was happening. A massive sea turtle was taking chunks out of them, diverting their attention to her instead of me. I pushed off the sea floor and put as much distance between me and the rays as possible. Suddenly a bright green light shot out of the darkness and collided with the sea turtle, killing her instantly.
It felt like my own life had been taken, and the despair of it all crippled me. My stomach convulsed and my head exploded in pain. How could she do this? How could she be a sea goddess and have absolutely no respect for its creatures? As rage replaced the pain I harbored, I swam towards her and pulled the dagger from my pants. She saw me coming and sent me a sick grin that prickled across my skin. I threw a stream of blue sparkling energy in her direction, and it bounced off of whatever shield she had been able to throw up. She smiled again and started to…twirl?
As she spun faster and faster the water also started to spin, pulling me with it. I shot energy at her, but it spun off and dissipated into the water behind her. Keto finally stopped spinning, and my eyes had trouble convincing my brain that they weren’t seeing a hallucination. Every inch of her skin had darkened to a deep green; covered in overlapping scales. Her dark hair had taken on a life of its own - the separate strands melding together and squirming in the water like snakes. Her eyes had eclipsed a solid black, and the nose that once adorned her face had shrunk to two simple holes. She flashed triangular teeth at me and actually hissed, as a forked tongue shot out. She was something in between a snake and a lizard; both sending chills down my spine.
She moved towards me without swimming, and I backed up in shocked silence. As her hair morphed into full blown snakes that writhed and hissed atop her head, I fought the urge to throw up.
A blinding light suddenly shot out from within her, sending out a shockwave of green that radiated out from her body; leveling everything it came in contact with. Including me. I watched as my dagger was ripped from my hand, and tumbled out of my line of sight.
I was thrown onto a reef as Keto’s energy followed suit; waging war on my body. The coral that supported my weight sliced through my clothes and ripped my skin open, as I tried to struggle against my attackers. What I had first thought were snakes atop her head were actually electric eels.
They detached from her skull and like a sidewinder snake, cut through the water and headed straight for me. Large spinning barbs of green energy commenced to piercing my skin and burrowing into my body. They continued to stab me again and again, painting the ocean a deep murky red. The electric eels rubbed against my skin, sending volts of electricity through me and causing me to convulse and shake. My body slid down the side of the coral as I fought to defend myself; its sharp edges tearing across what skin was left on my back.
I pulled from the sand and blew my energy outward, but neither the barbs nor the eels were affected. I had to figure out how to combine my essences if I was going to overcome Keto’s power. I knew I was stronger than her. I knew I could defeat her. The main thing she had over me was experience. A barb suddenly stabbed me in the stomach and twisted sharply, as it pierced several organs on the way in. An eel ran its belly along the same wound, and I thought my soul had caught fire. The result left me racked with a pain that elicited screams from deep within; the kind of screams you hear when someone is about to die. Unfortunately, the cool reprieve of death would never come for me.
Chapter 43
I was reminded of the one way I could die, as I blinked my eyes open through the pain and made out her form as it hovered above me. Keto floated down toward me, more eels dancing around her face; enhancing the psychotic grin playing on her scaly lips. She held up her dagger and winked a cold black eye at me.
“Tell your mother hello,” she whispered in my ear. In a last ditch effort, I extended my arms and dug my hands into the sand. Instead of pulling energy from the sand, I pushed my own energy and essence into the sand at my back and throughout the water that surrounded my body. I sent some upward, on a journey to find the currents of air blowing across the surface. As I felt Keto’s dagger pierce my heart, I smiled and thanked the majestic world around me that had so eagerly taken me in and changed my life.
A light singing tickled my ear drums and I listened intently as it flowed through me; a symphony of sounds that touched and soothed me to the core. The ocean’s song. As my soul was swaying back and forth amidst the magical current of the ocean, I knew the song was playing just for me. As a loud whooshing sound drowned out the singing, I began to sense an immense pressure building up around me. Someone gasped as my inner damn broke, releasing the pressure around me, and filling my body with a million sensations at once.
The sound of the rolling ocean waves on a hot summer’s day roared in my ears. The smell of sea grass and midnight flowers filled my nose. The cooling ocean breeze blew across my hot, sun-baked skin. The warm, soft feel of sand shifted beneath my feet.
“No!”
My eyes snapped open at Keto’s shout, and I suddenly realized that all of my pain had disappeared. I ascertained that my entire body had been healed, and all blood in the water had vanished. Keto’s dagger lay beside me in the sand; the tip of its blade snapped off, and the rest bent at an odd angle as if she’d tried to stab concrete. I glanced down at my heart and found no puncture wound.
“No!” Keto thundered again, her now green, wide eyes staring at me. She had gone from Medusa’s half sister to sea goddess in a split second, and was moving backwards frantically, devastation written all over her face. Her eyes darted behind me and then she met my gaze with panic in her green eyes. The water swirled around her, imprisoning her. I watched, dumbfounded, as she tried to shoot out energy that was quickly absorbed by the swirling water around her. A wave of devoutness and passionate protectiveness washed over me, as a mass of creatures emerged from the darkness. The largest school of jellyfish I’d ever seen bore down on Keto, who was rendered helpless in her prison of water. They circled her with a fierce determination and suddenly squeezed around her, all stinging her with their burning poison at once. I couldn’t see her, but I heard her screams filled with pain. The jellyfish dispersed, as a cloud of resentful electric eels flew around her, betraying her orders.
I watched on with split emotions. The very ocean that she was connected to had turned against her. It had healed me, and was now punishing her. I knew that she deserved this, but I couldn’t bear the sound of her cries as the eels set her prison on fire with electric current, sending her body into convulsions. Once satisfied with their attack, they also dispersed in order to leave room for the next attack. As Keto’s body went limp inside her water cage, a familiar presence descended on me. I turned to see hundreds of sea turtles flying toward the scene. As they all rested silently on the sand around me, one large turtle in particular swam up and nudged me with her head.
She greeted me like an old friend, and I recognized the brown and gray markings on her back.
She was the same turtle that had first greeted me that day so long ago, as I swam in the ocean with Phoebe. I’d seen her memories and faced her energy. I ran a hand over her shell and soaked in the love and adoration she held towards me. The sight of hundreds of sea turtles resting on the sea floor with me was surreal and comforting, and was a vast departure from the dense hatred I could feel emanating from the next arrivals. The feeling cut me like a knife, and their conviction told me what they intended to do. I got to my feet as five great white sharks soared out of the darkness; the moonlight above glinting off of their bellies as they swarmed around Keto. One in particular dove down suddenly and headed straight for me. I froze as he circled me once, and then rubbed up against me. I briefly perceived Finn’s warm darkness and knew he had sent them. I also sensed the task he had impressed upon them. It was simple and straight forward: kill.
