“They won’t. I trust them.”
Cartari looked up in the air at Axis, as if seeking permission from my Prince, but he was tangled back in a wrestling grip with Gorgin again. I huffed in frustration. I didn’t need Axis’s permission. Before Cartari could say anything else, I telekinetically propelled myself toward the injured and bleeding firefin where he floated near the surface, supported by two other firefins.
Rensi was soon beside me in the swirling, hissing swarm of firefins as they noticed my presence. He chittered and chattered as others swam beneath my feet, ducking in and out of the aquamarine waters. I was soon right above the injured firefin.
“I need to look at him. Please, I need to see how he was hurt,” I said. “Please, firefin, let me see where you are hurt…” The firefin turned his agonized eyes toward me and then rolled his dorsal fin my way so I could look at the bleeding area.
I bent low, my dress and feet brushing the water and surveyed the injury. A firefin brushed against me from behind, snarling at me and I heard Rensi hiss at it. My heart was in my throat. The firefin was bleeding a lot, but he was fortunate. The cut was in his blubber, right below the fin, not in the spiked area that protected the dorsal nerve.
“You will be all right,” I said. “I can get some medicine to help it heal.” The impression of medicine didn’t seem to compute. “I can get some nourishment to put on your back that will make it heal. It did not do any severe damage.”
The firefin nuzzled me gratefully and I floated back up and returned to the gazebo.
“Cowrie. Will you please get the poultice bag for firefin salves? We have a dorsal fin knife injury. Need some mandroba ointment.” Cowrie responded quickly and said she was under guard but would see if they would let her come down to the gazebo with the bag.
When I was back on the dock, I was pleased to find the soldiers had not let up their calming litany, and it had just grown stronger. The dolgons were calmer, the firefins were quiet, aside from the few beside the one who had been injured by Gorgin’s knife throw. Gorgin and Axis, still tussling above, were the only real battle still happening.
I stood beside Cartari and watched my Prince get first one hit and then another in on the one-armed pirate. I was proud of having broken his arm. I hadn’t realized he was the pirate leader. It was bizarre that he was the one that had come to capture me.
Suddenly, the knife that Gorgin had thrown at the firefin streaked out of the water and headed for Axis.
“Axis! Below you!” I tried to warn him, but it slammed into his lower left side harshly and made him cringe forward with a sharp cry of pain. Gorgin roundhouse kicked him to the chest, sending him flying backward, crashing his back into the gazebo, his body melting down it and dropping to the ground.
I ran forward and grabbed hold of him, holding tightly to him. He waved me off.
“Are you okay?”
“Let me finish this.”
His mouth was bloody through the gas mask, and his shirt was cut by a knife in a few places. I didn't touch the knife sticking three inches out of his back.
Gorgin hovered off the dock, about four feet above the water. Rensi was swimming off to my right, his head lifted just over the water, his eyes lasering into my soul. I looked at him, knowing he was trying to connect to me. I opened my mind to him and felt my eyes go wide, and my heart picked up a few beats as he told me his idea. I looked from my Prince as he drew himself to his feet, ready to launch back into the air again, then I looked back at the firefin.
I nodded.
Rensi slunk back into the water and disappeared. I followed his winding ripple until it rested just behind and below Gorgin, then Rensi rose into the air behind him, his tail flicked up behind him and three barbs shot out of his tail, right into Gorgin’s neck.
The poison barbs pierced Gorgin's skin, and his hand went to his neck as he yelped with surprise. He plucked out one of the barbs and looked below him at the gathering swarm of firefins. A wicked tendril of black spiderweb infection began to stretch down his neck and across his face, tainting his skin, as his eyes grew bloodshot, and his mouth and nose started to bleed. He dropped a couple feet in the air.
A dolgon jumped up in the air and grabbed his left boot in his massive, dragon fanged mouth and tagged Gorgin under the water, disappearing into the depths.
All was quiet.
Axis stood up and grabbed me around the waist as we moved to the side of the dock and looked downward, trying to see any sign of Gorgin in the deep aquamarine. But, we could not.
The dozens of firefins and dolgons turned to look at us, their colorful arrays of wing fins floating in a rainbow of ribbons against the blue waters. They chittered happily.
One of the Spec Ops soldiers on Gorgin’s ship let loose a flare. The ship had been taken.
I looked at Axis, and he gently took my gas mask off, slipping it down and hanging it around my neck. Then he did the same with his. He wiped his bloody lip on his sleeve. He smiled at me.
“I guess we won.”
“I never doubted that we would.”
Axis turned to Cartari and his soldiers, holding up the gas mask. “The dolgons will not poison us. They are our friends. Thank you, soldiers. This was a first step in a very meaningful relationship we will build with our ocean friends. Let us say thank you.”
Everyone opened their minds telepathically and breathed a vast Will of thank you to the ocean animals.
