Page 110 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
The Oricaans stepped forth, their massive feet inches from crushing Zahara, but she pushed faster to reach Calvin and Jun.
“Halt,” Raveeka whispered. It was a divine song in one word, a melody that demanded attention. Although the tree line was many meters away, everything froze—Zahara, Calvin, Jun, and the gilded beasts that hunted them.
The titan sprung forward in a run, spinning the trident piece above her head and using it to throw herself into the air. She blasted the stilled Oricaans in one swing of her weapon, power flowing precisely where she intended. A bolt of glimmering green light shot through the beasts’ towering legs and the men that controlled them. They broke apart into glimmering dust, drifting slowly back toward the ground in fading trails of light. The remaining gilded bodies fell in heavy silence, striking the land below.
Noctis and I met Raveeka when she landed back on the ground.
“We need your help,” I declared.
“Assumed.”
“The Ocean Mother storms our Bound.”
Raveeka’s gaze turned rabid. “Speak.”
I blinked as the titan’s power overwhelmed me. Words vomited from my mouth without permission. It wasn’t that I was going to deny the information, but I had no choice.
Raveeka could speak things to her will.
We told her everything—the sacrifices, merfolk power, the puppeteering, my parents, the trials, prison heist, Oricaans, Raoku, and waking the titan herself. There was no detail from our journey that we could hold back.
“My trident,” Raveeka said quietly in response to it all.
I didn’t understand.
“Only for goddess blood,” she offered in explanation.
The Ocean Mother’s blood ran through my own. The devastation would have been grand if she had retrieved the titan herself.
“So, will you fight with us?” I asked again, nearly a beg.
Raveeka nodded once. “Your Ocean Mother caged me.”
Four hours separated us from Brigg Isle and the pending battle. What should have been time spent in fear, was only followed with silence.
We sat across the main deck, snacking lightly on dried meats and cheese. Jun sharpened his blades against a rough stone, his eyes flitting toward Calvin who rested against a barrel, staring at his hands. Jun was exhausted, his stone-stilled face focusing on the blade, but his movements were stiff. I rested beside a sleeping Evelyn in the crew circle, waiting for my friends to break the silence. I expected Calvin to be the one to end the brutal quiet, but even he couldn’t say anything to prepare us all for what lay ahead.
Maybe the silence was what we needed. A calm reflective time to face the havoc of war. It was calm, I knew, that would always come before a storm, but I hoped the storm would work in our favor. There was too much loss in my life and the lives of the realm’s people to endure more, especially at the hands of a tyrant.
“One last game before the end?” Calvin finally asked, sending a jagged crack into the silence.
“It will not be our last,” Noctis assured confidently at my side.
“Two armies against seven of us? I think it is safe to assume that we will not be walking away from this,” Calvin joked, but it fell short.
“I’ve demanded and came out brilliantly on top of battles where the odds were more against us. Have you never learned of the Severance War?”
We all sat there quietly, not knowing of the war, so Noctis went on.
“Four thousand Illerites marched into Roscoe, preparing to blaze the entire town. Before borders were placed across the land, a vague omen was read as predicting succession, which caused a stir as the current ruler was dying. One place of land disputed the heir up for the throne, arguing the prophecy was describing in riddles someone else that was not the supposed heir.”
“Does this story get better at any point, or should I leave now?” Calvin murmured under his breath.
But Noctis ignored it. “When they marched, the one who argued against the heirship blasted the four thousand armies to cinders with flame power like Jun’s. The prophecy? ‘With flame the crown will fall and crash, and he who cast will win the hash. The throne is theirs for if it comes, but only when you hear the war drums drum.’ That one man killed four thousand to take the throne the realm believed belonged to someone else.”
“And the point of the story?” Calvin asked louder.
“All it takes is one, even if it is against thousands. And we happen to have afewpowerful beings,” Noctis responded, looking over at me, who listened to the history with interest. “Now when he became king, he killed all of his people, but that’s a story for another time when it would be needed.”
