Chapter 15

The closer half of Tabaskil was beautiful. Arched doorways and curved porticos of cream-colored stone lined the smooth roads. Unless I looked closely, I couldn’t tell where one part of the road began or where it ended. Parts of it circled around dark palms with hanging fronds. Unlike the open market in Vivenheim, the shops nestled indoors. The smell of grilling fish and sautéing vegetables made my mouth water. Thankfully, we stopped just long enough to each be handed a steaming plate of local fare.

I polished mine down in record time. The skin on the fish was flaky and crunchy and tangy and salty, and the light blue flesh melted in my mouth. The slimy, savory green vegetable on my plate reminded me of the seaweed I would get at the sushi place by our apartment in St. Louis. That brought back some other..less welcome memories.

A few days before my dad deployed, we’d gotten sushi. I always got the deep-fried eel roll with the special eel sauce on top. My dad liked the California roll, and I never understood why. It always tasted bland to me. As we pushed our chairs in to leave, he put twenty dollars on the table and we left the restaurant.

“Why did you leave such a big tip?” I asked. “It’s just sushi, dad.” My dad smiled.

“Son, we should treat everyone like they’re the main character.”

Except he didn’t take his own advice. Once he deployed, he would call once a month. Then the calls stopped coming. He was out on assignment one day and..they never found him.

The food soured in my stomach. I clenched my fists. He should’ve come home. If it weren’t for him, mom would have.. Hot tears stung my eyes as I gripped the knees on my trousers.

“Does the food disagree with you?” Myria looked over at me in a puzzled way. Not warm, but not unkind. Embarrassed, I snapped out of the spiraling rage.

“No, no, the food was great. It’s just, my knees are cramping.” That wasn’t a lie either. There wasn’t good leg room in the carriage. For more reasons than one, I felt I could use a stretch.

I quickly discovered that Tabaskil was much smaller than Vivenheim. The other half of the city was in ruins. Chunks of the stone wall were missing, and various fragments of lumber were floating down silty rivers three feet deep. It meant we were definitely walking the rest of the way.

I tried not to stare as Myria scrunched up her face as she waded in the water. So cute. Magnus confidently walked ahead, and I was last. The driver stayed behind with the carriage on the drier side of the city.

As we reached the outer wall, I noticed a long board covering a hole in the wall. The board wobbled fiercely. The Archmagus pushed back the board, and a flurry of sand and rain smacked him in the face. He sputtered and coughed.

“Ach! Even with my magic I cannot hold back this storm.”

“I can keep us out of the elements once we reach the other side.” said Myria.

Magnus and I shielded our faces as we pushed through the loose board and into the scourging gale. Our boots sunk into the dunes. The sandstorm stung every inch of exposed skin. Myria confidently faced the wind as she stepped through the hole. She removed her soaking shoes.

“Get close to me,” she said. I was happily nervous to oblige.

She held out her hands towards the storm and began to sing something too soft for me to hear. Some of the sand around her started flowing towards her feet. A crack of light pierced the air around her hands. Then another. Then another. Then a hundred sprung to life, growing wider and thicker. Suddenly a wall of glowing red spread out all around her and encircled the three of us. I could feel the unbearable heat singing my arm hairs with the pungent aroma of cinnamon. Then it cooled into a dome of solid glass. She looked back at the Archmagus to see him nod approvingly. Myria smiled for the first time. I knew right away that I wanted to see that smile again.

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I could finally make out the edge of the vast lake of Iridesca, but the heavy rain obscured it. It reminded me of a windshield in a thunderstorm, but without the wipers. Everything blurred into a kaleidoscope of dark greys and blues. The enormous lake could probably hold all of Vivenheim, with room to spare.

Waves churned and hammered the shore.

“The eye of the maelstrom is where we shall find the tear.” said the Archmagus.

“How do we intend to do this?” asked Myria. Her face did that cute scrunchy thing again.

“Why, we take the boat.” said Magnus. Then he tapped the rim of the bowl of glass with his staff. My eyebrows shot up.

“You mean..?” I started to ask.

“Definitely so,” said the Archmagus with a wide grin.

We walked to where the waves struck our feet. Myria held her hands up and the dome started to spin. I lost my footing as the glass moved, and I fell into the smooth window, bonking my cheek against it. Then more molten glass filled in the top, with a couple holes for air. I’ll just say this: I had zero confidence that a glass boat was the best idea for going into a hurricane, but it was already too late to turn around.

Myria lowered her arms and the Archmagus’s staff started to glow. I felt the tide of powerful water magic emanate from it, then the glass orb began to float. We made slow progress at first, since when the waves crashed into the glass we shot backwards. We rode the waves, some of them high enough to give a rollercoaster a run for its money. Up and down and left and right we were thrashed about as the magic pulled us along. We often bumped into the glass or each other. Myria started to look pale, and I felt pretty dizzy too. The Archmagus didn’t look unsettled at all; he stared straight ahead.

In a sudden miracle the storm stopped. We floated on a patch of tranquil lake the size of an olympic-sized swimming pool. It was bizarre. The storm still raged; we could see the claws of wind and water thrashing about in dark circles around us. A beam of intense sunlight pierced the darkness.

Peace settled on the outside, but something struck my heart. I couldn’t see the mana tear, but I could feel it, about fifty feet away. It felt..like the world was weeping, bleeding. Crying out to be mended and whole again. I clutched at my chest and fell to my knees, just in time to see the shadow rising beneath us.

It resembled a black river, and it cut across the center of the lake. It looked like a mountain was surfacing from the darkest depths.

“Aagh!” I cried in a very undignified way, as I pointed down.

Myria and the Archmagus both jumped and looked to where I pointed, and the magic in Magnus’s staff glowed hot, working double time. The glass orb shot back towards the storm like a motorboat. That’s when the most horrific monster emerged from the abyss.

It was so impossibly massive that its long serpentine body looked as tall as the St. Louis arch. Spined fins like huge sails spiraled around it. It eclipsed the rings of the sun, casting it and us in an ominous shadow. I guessed this had to be Wyvergath.

It fell towards us, and I counted on dying. The giant maw opened like a crocodile’s, but left and right instead of up and down. It crashed behind us, missing us by mere feet, but the tremendous force of its descent pulled us under. The Archmagus strained with his magic to push us away as we shot down hundreds of feet. Geysers of water stung our faces as the air holes became submerged. Then we finally broke away, and rocketed up to the surface. I felt my ears pop.

When we finally breached, there was no time to celebrate. Wyvergath’s enormous tail swept across the lake towards us.

Myria raised her arms in a panic, and the surface of the glass glowed on the outside. It burned our fingers as it raced to the point of impact to reinforce it.

The tail struck. The dome cracked. We launched like a bullet and punched holes in the mighty waves. That slowed us down, but not enough. It was a cascade of elbows, teeth, knees, and ribs. Then we crashed on the banks of the shore like a meteor and the glass shattered, throwing us in the sand with thousands of shards.

It felt like hours before I could move again. Every bone and joint, every inch of skin burned. Sand whipped about my face and my throat felt like I just swallowed half the beach. Still, I was glad to be alive. I shuffled over on my knees to try to find Magnus and Myria. I looked up to see them hunkering down in a small cave on the side of the shore. I joined them.

We were all huffing and coughing and groaning from the pain. That’s when a strange noise caught me by surprise. It was a cute little bark, and it wasn’t from any of us.

I looked and saw the most adorable creature. It looked like your run-of-the-mill grey spotted seal with a sleek, chubby body and large eyes. But it’s most unique feature was the spiraling unicorn horn on top of its head.

Myria noticed too.

“It’s a selkie,” she said.

I looked at it. It looked at me.

“Well,” I chuckled, “you’re no sea dragon, but it looks like we found our Plan B.”