Air! Air, air, air…
I had almost nothing left in my lungs, and I was about to spend it all.
I choked on my blood. It had to be enough. I strained and spat it out into the current with the most basic of power words. “Hesaad.” Mine.
The current convulsed like a living creature, a sea serpent caught between my blood and Aaron’s net. Seawater roiled, breaking into foam. Waves clashed, its grip on me loosened, and I surfaced long enough to suck in a desperate breath.
The sea pulled me under, and I whispered into it, letting it wash my bloody mouth. Amehe, amehe, amehe…Obey.
Something squirmed into my mouth. I tried to bite down on it, but it slipped past my teeth into my throat.
Aaron’s net broke. The sea ripped free. My feet touched the bottom, and I kicked up. My head broke the surface. Air. All the sweet air I could ever want.
The water streamed away, and I stood. It was to my armpits and rapidly receding.
My throat was on fire like someone had poured boiling oil into me. My left arm hurt like hell, and when I tried to move my shoulder, it ground, shooting spikes of pain both ways. I couldn’t lift it properly.
On the stage Aaron snarled. Magic twisted around him, building again.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. No voice. No power.
No matter. I still had my sword.
I started toward Aaron, wading through the water. It was barely to my thighs now, and I was moving fast.
Aaron jerked his hands up. A wallop of magic tore out from his hands and sank into the water in front of him. Three dark knots spun in the sea, sucking up the remaining water until it was barely up my ankle. The nearest whirlpool erupted. A big head broke the water. A round snout, bristling, blue fur, and huge tusks ready to gore.
Manannán’s eternal sea swine. Shit.
The whirlpool popped in a fountain of water, and the first pig spilled onto the floor, a walrus-sized monstrosity with porcine front legs armed with 9-inch hooves and tusks the size of carving knives. A forest of bright blue quills rose from its mane. Past its forequarters, the bristles stuck together, transforming into matching scales, and the body flowed seamlessly into a muscular, thick fish tail that coiled behind the beast in a classic Capricorn curve.
The first boar tore across the floor, aiming for me. Two others were forming behind it.
Legend said that Mucca Mhannanain, the eternal swine, provided an endless supply of food to the Tuatha Dé. They continuously regenerated, and the myths were fuzzy on how exactly that happened and how long it took. Killing them permanently was probably impossible. But I didn’t have to kill them. I just had to get past them.
The first boar charged, coming at me like a battering ram. Sea, land, it was still a boar, and the club’s dance floor was wet and slippery.
The two other boars scrambled across the floor, each on their chosen trajectory.
The first one was almost on me. Wicked tusks gleamed, the unnaturally pale, wet bone reflecting the feylanterns’ lights.
I twisted out of the way with zero time to spare, spun, turning, dashed left inches in front of the second boar, sliced at its snout in passing, and threw myself right, out of the third boar’s way. The gleaming tusk grazed my thigh in an icy slash, but I kept running.
Behind me the second boar collided with the first and snapped at it, enraged by the bloody gash across its snout. The third boar barreled into them, and they slid across the room in a tangled mass.
Sea hogs weren’t made for dancing.
I cleared the room and vaulted onto the stage.
Aaron raised his hands. Gold coins glittered in his fingers. They were large and yellow, with uneven edges, cold struck and minted by hand.
He smiled and hurled two at me. I dodged, but they turned and streaked toward me. One struck my right arm, the other hit my left. Heavy manacles clamped my wrists and sprouted chains that whipped into the water on the floor, where the sea hogs grunted, trying to follow me. The chain jerked my arms straight, sending a bolt of dizzying agony right into my left shoulder. Cold magic swirled through the metal, sinking into my skin.
Aaron held his coins on his palm and flicked them off one by one with his index finger. Two struck my legs and another hit my waist. Manacles clamped around my body. A web of chains shot out from me, sinking into the water. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Aaron smiled. “I don’t know how you broke out of my net, but I can use you.”
Icy water swirled around me in a crystal-clear column and swallowed me whole. It forced its way into me, into my pores, into my nose, my mouth, and began pulling me apart.
“It’s very difficult to transform a normal human,” Aaron’s magic voice echoed in both my ears despite the water filling them. “They don’t have enough magic to survive the transformation.”
The water pulled on me, trying to reshape me from inside out, and a different version of myself bloomed in my mind, one with gills and a long, glistening tail where my legs used to be.
The sea drew me in. I could feel its currents, sliding just beyond the ship. I heard its song, and it beckoned me. I wanted to swim.
“But you, whoever you are,” Aaron whispered. “You have all the magic in the world.”
I did. I did have all the magic in the world.
I focused inward, beyond the water, beyond Aaron’s magic, to the core of my power. I couldn’t speak the words, but I could think them. If faith had power, then thought had magic, and I wouldn’t permit my body to be polluted. This was my body, my blood, my bone. I owned it.
I thought the words, sinking all my power into them. Estene ared dair.
The magic swelled inside me, thrilled to be unleashed, as if it had been waiting for permission all along. I pushed, directing it to my throat, focusing all of my power on it.
Estene ared dair.
My magic collided with the creature lodged inside me. I strained, pushing hard, harder, through the blinding pain, through the instinctual panic, shaping my magic, wrapping the obstruction in it.
Pushing harder. Harder. Harder…
It came loose. The water around me broke. I gagged and spat out a tiny glowing jellyfish.
The words of a long-forgotten language spilled out on their own, crackling with power.
“ESTENE ARED DAIR.” You have no power over me.
The chains snapped, fracturing into a thousand pieces, and evaporated. Coins slid off me to the floor.
The old man cringed.
Aaron’s mouth gaped open, his face a mask.
“FEAR ME, FOR I AM DEATH WHO COMES TO THE TAKER OF CHILDREN.”
The ship quaked, rocked by the language of power. The sea hogs screamed in panic.
“ARRAT NASU SAR OR.”
Magic jerked Aaron off his feet, into the air, pulling his legs and arms taut.
“ARRAT UR AHU KARSARAN.”
His arms snapped, bones breaking in too many places to count. Aaron screamed. His magic splashed around him, broiling, but it couldn’t counter mine.
“ARRAT UR PIRID KARSARAN.”
His leg bones fractured. It sounded like firecrackers.
“OHIR GAMAR.”
The human bag of shattered bones who used to be Aaron landed on the stage. He howled as I walked to him, as I raised my sword, and as I struck, until Sarrat’s blade finally cut off his scream.
The sea swine melted back into seawater. The ocean streamed back through the gap in the hull, leaving puddles in its stead.
I raised Aaron’s head by its hair and turned to the old man.