Jonnik’s tentacles hung by his sides as their tips rested in the water. I didn’t except a starting bell. The roar of the crowd was all Jonnik needed as he started chanting and lifted his tentacles. Water flowed up with them and formed waterfalls that seemed to run without end.
Jonnik whirled one of his tentacles around his head then flung it forward to point at me. Water flew from the tentacle’s tip in a huge mass that roared toward my chest. I jumped aside and reached out with the Crashing Wave technique to redirect my opponent’s attack, but I was too slow.
The chief shifted his tentacle, and the water redirected toward me. The full force of the attack crashed into my chest and threw me off my feet. I fell back in the pool and, for a moment, I was completely submerged. Every sight and sound distorted as it came through the water. I leaped back to my feet as salt water ran off me.
Jonnik had vanished and left only a few ripples as proof that he had ever been there.
I waded out toward where he had stood at the center of the pool. I knew I was at a disadvantage in the water, but this fight seemed like it could only take place inside the pool. Whether I liked it or not, I would have to best a fishman on his home turf.
The spectators cheered their leader. They clearly knew what Jonnik was planning. I recalled the vampiric anglers and realized that the chief had pulled a similar trick by obscuring himself in a body of water.
Something stirred in the water to my right. It was little more than a flash of movement, but I turned and blasted the ripples with an Untamed Torch. Steam boiled off the water, but I didn’t find my target. The crowd howled with laughter as I muttered a curse and searched for my opponent.
Another movement, this time to my left. I let a spray of low-Vigor Stinging Palm thorns free to conserve my energy. They splashed fruitlessly into the water, and I heard a splash behind me.
I jumped clear just as Jonnik’s tentacles swung down where I had stood. I landed in the water again, rolled forward through it, and spun around to face him. Jonnik disappeared back under the surface before I could get more than a glimpse of him. The water wasn’t deep enough to fully submerge him, so his technique must have dissolved his body and made it one with the water.
I summoned a thin coating of Ice Armor over my chest. I thought that I would have a few moments to recover, but I hadn’t banked on how fast he could swim. I could see the water shimmer and figured the blur was Jonnik, almost invisible beneath the surface. There was a flash of movement, and then he burst out in front of me.
I blocked a strike with each arm, but I only had two arms, and he had six tentacles. Three hammered me in the sides with all the power of a heavyweight champion. My frozen chest plate absorbed most of the blows’ strength, but the thin coating of ice cracked beneath his tentacles. I aimed a kick at his belly, but he caught my leg with the last tentacle and flung me backward.
I splashed through the water and hit a patch of submerged rock. My ass was going to be bruised in the morning, but the shock of the impact seemed to shake something loose in my brain. I realized that I was playing to Jonnik’s strengths, not my own. I could do better.
I got to my feet again and instinctively raised my arms to block another attack. Jonnik bellowed with laughter as he formed whip-liked strands out of the water and hurled them at me. One hit me in the shoulder, another in the belly, and a third wrapped around my neck. My Ice Armor cracked and fell away.
The whip tightened around my throat and threatened to cut off my breath. I forced myself to ignore it. Instead, I focused on my Vigor and on the sensation of the water around me.
I pushed through my internal channels of Crashing Wave technique, and a thick wave rose around me all the way to my head. It absorbed the water of Jonnik’s whips, and I heard him curse as I launched the wave. It rushed across the pool, flung Jonnik from his feet, and crashed over the far side into the sea. Boats full of spectators rocked wildly as the aftershocks hit them. Their cheers doubled in volume as they scrambled to rebalance their crafts.
“Sounds like I might have just become the crowd favorite,” I said.
Jonnik stumbled back to his feet, then vanished under the water. A ripple of motion flittered toward me. I tapped into my Vigor again and let the element of acid flow. It rushed out along its channels and through my skin to form a green miasma around me.
The chieftain erupted out of the water and abruptly stopped. He screamed as his skin started to burn. The huge Wild clenched his eyes shut to stop the stinging cloud. I summoned a Plank Pillar beneath his feet and caused it to grow rapidly. It flung him backward, and he flew through the air end over end.
Jonnik struggled to rise again. His skin was reddened and blistered, his eyes bloodshot, his teeth bared. I had him figured out. And I wasn’t about to give him an opportunity to regain the upper hand.
I blinded him with another Acidic Cloud. He gasped and choked as he flailed at the
