Blue-white lightning sizzled the air, boiling the rain as it fell around them. Ran Ai Yu whirled her thin, straight, double-edged long sword over her head in an effort to draw the creature away from the defenseless shipwrights. The men scattered in a blind panic. The beautiful Shou merchant grimaced when one of the monster fish fell upon a particularly unlucky craftsman. With a mouth as big around as the man was tall, the demonic beast bit the man so cleanly in half that his legs continued to run for fully three steps before falling into a twitching-mess on the rain-and blood-soaked deck. Her new ship, still not yet completed, christened in innocent blood.
The monsters towered above her. In all her travels, from far Shou Lung to the great western oceans and back again, Ran Ai Yu had never seen something so big that was actually alive. There were two of them, one just a little smaller than the other, more blue than green, but they were obviously the same species.
She thought they looked a bit like eels, but they stood twenty feet above the deck, which was twelve feet above the keel, and there was another five or six feet of wood-beamed dry-dock to the water below. Ran Ai Yu knew enough about what it took to float on water to guess that perhaps two thirds of the things’ bodies were still underwater.
She swiped at one of them with her sword and when the creature dodged back out of the way their eyes met. Ran Ai Yu detected a certain intelligencenot quite human, but far beyond the blank stare of a fish. That unsettled her more, and she shivered in her rain-wet robes.
One of Devorast’s crew, a stout dwarf she’d heard called Hrothgar, stood his ground nearer the rail. The smaller of the monster fish clacked its massive, fang-lined jaws at him, sending sparks showering down at them all. The dwarf steeled himself against the nettling burns of the thready lightning and drove at the thing with a heavy wooden mallet in front of him. It was a tool, not a weapon, but in the dwarfs hands Ran Ai Yu had some trouble seeing the difference, and by the way the giant fish eyed the hammerhead, it felt the same.
Ran Ai Yu saw Devorast’s face as he spun away from the larger of the two demon-fish. He was irritated, not scared, the look on his face as plain as the danger they were in. If she’d had any time at all to consider anything but her own survival, Ran Ai Yu might have thought him more foolish than brave.
The larger fish spat a bolt of lightning that momentarily blinded Ran Ai Yu. All she could see for precious moments was the purple, twisting arc of the great spark burned into her vision. She heard the dwarf curse loudly in his own coarse language, and at the same time the footsteps of the fleeing shipwrights echoed away into the distance.
There was a thud, and Ran Ai Yu stepped back quickly, squeezing her eyes shut to clear the lightning burn. It worked just enough to save her headshe dodged left just as the smaller fish’s massive fangs crashed closed an inch from her ear.
As she dropped away to the deck, she brought her sword up. The blade bit into the creature’s slimy, fine- scaled flesh and dragged a bloodless furrow half a yard long in the thing’s neck. The creature didn’t flinch, and made no sound. Its eyes rolled to follow her, but she detected no reaction to pain. Pulling the sword out of the creature and rolling away she saw that the wound had already closed.
Though the sword was of fine craftsmanship and had been in her family for six generations, it was not enchanted. Ran Ai Yu had heard tell of creatures that could only be injured by a blade forged with the Weave, but she’d never found herself face to face with one, and the prospect scared her more than the fangs, the sheer size of the monsters, or the lightning.
Hrothgar slammed his mallet into the side of the smaller beast and Devorast grabbed up a machete from a scattered pile of shipwright’s tools that littered the deck. Armed thus, Ran Ai Yu knew it was but a matter of time before the giant eels had tenderized them with their lightning only to eat them in one or two gory bites.
“It will not kill them!” she shouted even as Devorast’s machete sank deeply into the larger fish, producing no blood and not even a quiver of the eel’s skin to mark its presence.
She could see by the twitch in Devorast’s eyes and forehead that he was drawing the same conclusions as she.
“Well then what in the name of Clangeddin’s steaming bile do we use on the damned things?” the dwarf bellowed.
Ran Ai Yu had no answer, and she looked to Devorast.
The red-haired man banged his machete against the blazing white fangs of the larger fish, sending sparks of lightning scattering all around them. His arm jerked and he grimaced in pain. The huge creature snapped its head back and Ran Ai Yu thought it looked the same as the way Devorast’s arm had jerked,
“The mouth!” she said to the dwarf, but the weapon he was using was made of wood.
Still, Hrothgar struck at the smaller monster so hard he lost his footing on the rain-slick deck. The demon-fish took no notice of the hammer blow to its fangs and quickly bent to take the dwarf in its powerful jaws. Hrothgar looked up into the face of his certain death and opened his mouth to scream.
Ran Ai Yu dived head first at the dwarf, barrel-rolling in midair with her sword held straight out in front of her. The monster fish opened wide its jaws to eat the dwarf and instead got the Shou blade lodged between two teeth.
Lightning discharged from the crease at the edge of the monster’s mouth and smashed into Ran Ai Yu. Pain flared through her body. Her jaw clenched, her chest tightened, her back arched, and her hands wrapped around her sword pommel so tightly she feared her arms would break, then they tightened some more.
Her left forearm snapped like a dried twig, sending another spasm of pain through her still-seizing body. Her vision dimmed and blurred and she was certain she was dyingpassing out at least, and that would surely mean a hideous death.
She opened her eyes as wide as she could and only with the greatest effort of will she’d ever managed did she draw in a deep breath. It was enough to keep her awake, but her twisted, broken arm couldn’t hope to hold onto her sword and it stayed lodged in the monster fish’s gums.
The thing drew its head up, which revealed Devorast facing down its larger cousin.
Devorast glanced back at her and they made eye contact long enough for Ran Ai Yu to see the concern in his eyes. She knew it wasn’t a feeling he was entirely familiar with.
A shadow fell across her face and she looked up to see the smaller fish, her family’s blade still protruding from its mouth, falling toward her.
It means to smash me, she thought.
Ran Ai Yu couldn’t move at first, and when she finally put out her armthe arm that bent at an agonizingly unnatural angleto push herself into a roll, she screamed in pain.
It was Hrothgar’s turn to save her, and he did so by jamming his mallet to the deck head first, with the handle sticking straight up. The massive fish came down on the edge of the handle, which was too blunt to pierce its skin, so it succeeded in stopping the enormous bulk with barely a handspan to spare. Ran Ai Yu was not crushed.
Hrothgar grabbed her uninjured arm and pulled when the smaller fish reared up again, its too-intelligent eye lolling down to find its target once more below it. Lightning flickered around the sword in its teeth. The obscene blue-green folds of skin that sufficed the demon for lips twitched and quivered in time with the arc of blinding light.
Rather than try again to smash Ran Ai Yu or Hrothgar, the smaller fish shook its massive head. Fins like prayer fans fluttering at the sides of its neck. The sword bobbed and shook, and longer, brighter arcs of electricity played around it, but it appeared to be firmly embedded.
A strange noise like the tinkling of bells demanded Ran Ai Yu’s attention and she reluctantly tore her eyes from the thrashing giant.
Devorast whirled a length of chain over his head as the huge fish tried once, then one more time to bite it out of the air.
He looked at the Shou and bellowed, “If I miss, catch it!”
His eyes flickered to Hrothgar, who nodded. The bigger fish, having grown weary at last of toying with its prey, came in fast with its huge jaws agape.
Devorast let fly the chain but had to jump away at the same time to narrowly avoid being bitten in half. The chain flew toward the Shou long sword that the smaller demon-fish still hadn’t managed to tear from its gums. Had he not had to jump away, it might have hit its target, but instead it fell to the deck.
The larger fish smashed deck planks to splinters, biting at the still unfinished ship out of pure frenzied frustration.
