Blood of the Sea, Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter 51: Boil

Vance

The men wanted to cut Enya down in her sleep. Vance himself wanted to drown her. But she was right: he didn’t know how to take that step. How to use his magic within another person.

So instead of any of that happening, Vance spent half the night staring down Enya’s J’korun as it kept watch over its rider, staring him down and snorting occasionally until Vance finally fell asleep.

Morning came far too soon. Too bright, too early.

They packed up camp in silence. The air charged with a hostile sort of tension that, though it had abated overnight, frothed in the light of the new day. They mounted up and those closest to Vance formed a physical ring around his J’korun with their own mounts while Enya trotted ahead, red hair waving in the wind as it blew sleepily through the trees.

Around midday, the trees thinned out and dropped away as the path finally led up to the southern end of Kildangan. A bitter sense of deja vu comes over Vance, having left this place what feels like so long ago now on the back of a cart, having been offered no alternative.

Alas, here he was, reentering the city astride a predatory creature capable of so much more.

Enya turns her J’korun at the head of the column and they make eye contact. She smirks while Vance clenches his jaw. This is it. He stares beyond her and opens up his senses, immediately flooded with the smells of brine, salt water, ship caulk, and fish.

Closing his eyes, he almost feels like he is home, among the islands as life flows about him.

Opening his eyes, however, he feels the strain of last night weighing on him like the pinch of a nail being driven into wood. He strains, and he can hear it - the lapping of water against the sides of the river channel and the tide that pushes the water back out to sea. His magic unravels around him and he shivers, the rush exhilarating, freeing, and righteous. He reminds himself that these people would have stopped him from ascending to a place of power. And as he glares at Enya’s confident smile, he tells himself that it doesn’t take much to drown a person. Not nearly as much as he has access to.

“Well, what are you waiting for, water caller? Can’t you feel it? The water?” Enya taunts.

Show her the power of the ocean. Show her my power. The magic calls to him, and like a drunk answering the call of the bottle, he raises his hand for another taste.

It starts slowly, as these things tend to do. The channel begins to empty bit by bit. At first, it isn’t enough to notice. Then there’s an exclamation from someone walking along the riverbank as the waterline drops away from their reach, carrying a woven basket away from them. The call carries through town, gathering volume as the water continues to pull back. The ocean swells, the lapping of the tide turning into a retreating, ever growing wave.

They thought Kildangan’s buildings towered tall when they first arrived. They marveled at what it meant to build towards the clouds. To extend and touch the sky.

The ocean has no such questions about what it means to climb. The sea flirts nightly with the blushing sunset; fusing day and night in a blaze of color upon the waves.

A crowd gathers at the end of the pier-city, awe-struck as the water disappears, leaving ships to sink to the exposed ocean floor and rest haphazardly on their sides. Nets, fish, shells, rocks, it’s all laid bare before a mounting wall of water that climbs higher, glistening along its belly with the yellow rays of sunlight, almost turning it translucent though the blue shines through, crystalline, glossy.

Vance urges his J’korun up alongside Enya’s mount and catches her attention, tipping his head toward the city as if to say, Go ahead.

Enya flexes her hands and the smell of smoke reaches Vance before he hears the crackling. The houses closest to them, on the outskirts of the town, begin burning with orange and red and yellow ribbons of flame licking along their surfaces. Everything burns. Wood crumbles, sending multi-tiered buildings crashing toward the ground. Burning wreckage catches on the debris in the empty riverbed, turning the canal into a fire trap. The fire spreads with a whoosh and a whoaaaar which almost sounds like the sea retreating along the sandy sea-floor, but different, more hollow and hungry as the flames rise higher and work to slowly envelop Kildangan. The city of refuge. The city along the shore.

Screams begin to rise along with the flames; black smoke billowing into the sky; a cry for help, a signal that it’s already too late.

People begin to run, gathering themselves and looking for a way out. They would have, of course, taken the boats, but now the ships are gone and the city is split down the middle. They disperse out, following the pattern of a raindrop as it falls to the earth, splitting upon the hard, unforgiving ground.

Vance drops his hand, eyes fixed upon the back of Enya’s head.

The blue of the sky turns into the black of thunderstorms - the black of smoke and ruin. The blue of the sea turns into the blue of bruises, purpled around the edges as the might of the ocean comes roaring into Kildangan.

The Red Queen asked for rubble.

Vance’s hands curl into fists and the ocean slaps at the stony structure, scrabbling at their bindings and pulling them down. Homes, businesses, they all tumble. Stone gives way to water - persistence given form with the water caller’s magic pulsing through the current like a live wire.

The Red Queen asked for revenge.

Vance hears the screams and cries of people as they flee from their homes. As they come to realize they can face the fire or the flood. As they come to realize this is orchestrated.

The Red Queen asked for blood.

By the time the city falls, and the smoke is beginning to clear, and the ocean is returning to its steady push and pull of the tides, the river runs red.

The people, the city, the river, it bleeds.

The ground beneath his feet, speckled with ash and bone.

Enya

“Here lies Kildangan. The port city of Farrah,” Enya calls out, her voice carrying clearly over those backing the water caller and bearing witness to the magic on display. “The Queen has delivered her message.”

As she turns to leave, a few bold soldiers step forward, blocking her path. She raises an eyebrow, stating, “You will let me pass.” Her graze flicks to Vance. The water caller’s face is impassive, his eyes reflecting the chaos of the town being brought to its knees behind her.

The soldiers draw swords, maces, axes, and Enya laughs. “You think metal will stop me? I thought you heard me when I told him that bodies burn.”

They urge their mounts forward, a few uttering battle cries, and Enya ducks under the first polearm, calling the fire to burn in her hands as she swings toward the next opponent. Fire makes contact with their chest, imploding as their body ignites and they scream. The smell of burning flesh deters the next few blows, which Enya bats aside, their form sloppy with fear. The crowd parts and she burns a circle around her in the ground. “The queen will hear of this. Mark my words. Turn your anger upon those still alive in the city, and you may be spared the blood letting.”

Rearing up tall on her mount, her J’korun’s claws striking through the air, she gallops off, headed for Seyune directly.

Behind her, there’s the creak of leather and metal, but ultimately, the hoofbeats thunder away from her as voices take up a renewed battle cry.