I summoned an Ash Cloud around a monster, and the glow of its lure faded behind the smog. Then, I heard a sucking sound, and my magical cloud vanished into the angler’s gaping mouth. Its lure flickered before my vision like a strobe light, and I tore my eyes away before I dashed backward. I heard the monster’s jaws snap after it’d pounced to my previous location in a flash of speed.
“Shit,” I said. “I thought an Ash Cloud would have worked.”
“Not easy prey,” Nydarth whispered.
And they were much faster than I’d thought. They only had the appearance of sluggishness.
Vesma backed around one of the statues and baited an angler after her. The creature followed her in the same way a cat followed a mouse. These predators weren’t violent and fast. They were slow, careful, deadly, and had all the time in the world.
But we didn’t. Kumi’s father was in danger.
Vesma raised her hand, and an Untamed Torch flared in her palm. She directed a blast of fire to the base of a coral statue beside her, and the explosive force blew away a chunk that tumbled to the ground. The statue teetered on its suddenly unstable feet. The vampiric angler, fixed on Vesma, didn’t notice the sculpture until it toppled over. A resounding crash filled the courtyard as the statue crushed the angler into paste.
The other two anglers spun at the noise and raced toward the fallen statue, apparently drawn by the noise. They didn’t use eyes, not on bodies like that. They followed sound.
“Vesma!” I shouted. “Untamed Torch!”
She didn’t need telling twice as the two anglers bolted toward her. She sprang away from the fallen statue just as the two monsters found it.
I summoned the power of water to create a cloud of Smothering Mist. I poured as much Vigor as I dared into the huge mass of mist and sent it to blanket the vampiric anglers and what was left of the courtyard decoration.
“Now!” I roared.
A torrent of flames rippled free of Vesma’s hands. I reached out, found the heat of her technique with my Vigor, and channeled Flame Empowerment into the attack. Vesma’s gout of flames expanded outward into a firestorm. It collided with my Smothering Mist, and a deafening hiss from steaming vapor filled my ears. The anglers made their first sound as their delicate senses were fried by our combination attack.
And it wasn’t pretty. It was like a chorus of boiling tea kettles.
I caked myself in the ash technique, Fire Immunity, and leaped into the boiling steam.
“Directly ahead of you, sweet man,” Nydarth said.
I swung my sword and felt it connect with something before it passed through it. A lure dropped to the ground and came to rest at my feet.
“A little lower, Swordslinger.”
The Sundered Heart rippled through the steam, and I felt cartlidge give around the blade. The vampiric angler collapsed at my feet with another tea-kettle squeal. A lure swung through the steam and threatened to steal my focus again.
“A low and fast sweeping strike,” Nydarth urged me.
I obeyed instinctively and claimed a hand of knife-like claws for my efforts before it could rip through my thigh.
“Now, press the advantage,” the dragon spirit instructed from within my sword.
I sliced downward and found the vampiric angler’s thick body. The Sundered Heart tore effortlessly through the creature’s flesh just as the steam began to dissipate.
I stalked past Vesma as I flicked blood from my sword.
“We’ve got a king to save,” I said as I spotted Kumi already hurrying across the outer courtyard toward a giant set of ornate doors.
I raced after her with Vesma on my heels.
The doors of Qihin Palace would’ve been impressive, if not for the blood and gore smeared across them.
“They’re locked,” Kumi said as she pushed against the doors. She pounded on them three times before she yelled and balled her fists.
“I’ve got this,” I said. “Get behind me.”
Kumi and Vesma gathered at my back as I sheathed my sword and summoned an Untamed Torch. Flames gathered between my outstretched palms as I continued to feed it Vigor. When the fireball was the size of a watermelon, I launched it toward the doors. The wood exploded in a cloud of smoke and splinters.
“We’re too late,” Kumi whispered.
I couldn’t see very far through the smoke, but a mess of fishfolk corpses lay among mounds of severed monster parts.
The smoke cleared, and the smell of blood and viscera hit me. Huge pillars twisted upward to hold an enormous ceiling of latticed coral that opened into an enormous skylight. Gongs of burnished bronze bore religious symbols and hung from each of the pillars, splattered with streaks of blood. Midday sunlight streamed down and glistened off a shallow pool that spanned much of the room. Corpses lay at the far end of the pool, and above them sat King Beqai of the Qihin in a simple chair.
“Father!” Kumi cried. “You’re alive!”
He was a large man, his muscular chest decorated with a patchwork of silver-blue scales. His humanoid torso gave way to dozens of squid-like tentacles that coiled around the legs of his chair and ran down into the water in front of him. His skin was turning gray with age and was spotted with dark blotches. Stringy hair and a kelp-like beard swarmed down his shoulders and over his chest.
He looked completely oblivious to his dead bodyguards in the pool before him. He also seemed not to see Labu and three other fishfolk fighting for their lives against a pack of vampiric anglers in the very same room.
Water splashed against my feet as I darted through the doors with Kumi and Vesma at my side.
Chapter Nine
It was clear that the few remnants of King Beqai’s bodyguards were down to the last of their strength. The monsters not only outnumbered them but had them pinned against a wall on the far left side of the pool. These anglers didn’t move
