Warlord Arcanist (Chapter 4)

As an apology for the $10 tier having difficulties seeing the first 3 chapters, I've decided to post the 4th chapter earlier than scheduled! <3

I hope everyone enjoys reading the story early. Please look forward to more chapters soon!

CHAPTER FOUR

A NEW STYLE OF COMBAT

I hit the water and plunged a good ten feet deep. The fall from the atlas turtle shell was more than I had expected—perhaps a good twenty feet—and it took a bit of effort for me to curve toward the surface. The ocean had a way of being deceptive. Tides and large waves took swimmers by surprise all the time, but I was an islander with a lifetime’s worth of experience. Despite the flow of water, I broke the surface and whipped my head back to keep my messy hair from clinging to my face.

If Luthair had been here, we could’ve flown to the airships…

I shook the thought from my head before it could take root in my heart and blossom into despair.

Terrakona didn’t need any further instruction. He twisted through the water and then lifted underneath me so that I sat on his crystal mane. I held on as tightly as I could. Then Terrakona lunged forward through the water. He raised his head above the waves, taking me with him, and wind whipped through my wet hair as we rushed forward.

The speed…

We were keeping pace with Devlin’s roc, racing toward the merchant ships. The waters weren’t hindering the world serpent’s movement. What would the pirates think of the approaching god-creature? They’d probably assume he was an odd-looking leviathan and nothing more. After all, no one had seen a world serpent in thousands of years. Why would these dastards recognize my eldrin?

We passed Master Zelfree and the Kraken-Traces. He gave me a sideways glance from his perch on the tentacle of his eldrin, but I just smirked and waved.

“Terrakona,” I said as we closed in on the ships. “We’re to protect the merchants from the sky pirates. The men and woman aboard are our top priority.”

“As you say, Warlord.”

My chest twisted into a knot of anxiety. Without magic, how would I fight? I released one hand from Terrakona’s mane and placed it on the hilt of Retribution. I’d have to rely on my swordplay. My blade could cut through magic, even barriers and other types of artifact armor. I wasn’t useless.

Once we were a hundred feet from the merchant ships, Terrakona veered to the side and stopped his approach. His scales flared as he roared at the vessels. His screech sent a shiver up my spine.

“What’s wrong?” I called out.

“Corruption,” Terrakona telepathically replied. “It’s all around us. In the water… In the breaths of these villains… It warps magic and drives all insane.”

I leaned forward, almost slipping from Terrakona’s mane. My heart hammered against my ribs as I searched for any signs of the arcane plague—it was the ultimate corruption, and I had seen dozens of individuals fall to lunacy while twisted by its influence.

Counting their eldrin, I could tell there were five sky pirate arcanists. They had two rocs, two wyverns, and a hippogriff, each adorned with leather armor and wearing a black bandana. Rocs were considered man-eaters, which meant they were immune to blood diseases, and thus, the plague. But wyverns and hippogriffs weren’t man-eaters, which meant they could be twisted by the plague. The wyverns were too far away for me to see any details about their bodies, but the hippogriff flew close enough for me to examine. The pirate’s eldrin was just as distorted as I had feared.

Hippogriffs typically had the head, wings, and front legs of an eagle, while having the back end of a horse. The pirate’s hippogriff looked as though it were vomiting its own skull—a second eagle-like beak jutted out of the hippogriff’s mouth, the new beak jagged and serrated and coated in blood. The hippogriff’s milky-white eyes bulged and jiggled, similar to a dead fish.

Each time the hippogriff cried out, its voice was laced with psychotic laughter. Its crazed cackling was more disturbing than the whistle of storm winds or the crack of freshly broken bones.

When I’d had Luthair in his true form, I couldn’t be twisted by the plague, but…

“Terrakona,” I whispered. “Can you be infected with the arcane plague?”

“This weak corruption cannot taint my magic.”

I unsheathed my sword.

“Then we’ll handle the hippogriff,” I said. “We can’t let anyone else get infected.” We had someone who could cure it, but I didn’t want to take any chances. What if something happened to Vethica? Better to be cautious.

“That tiny creature is but a distraction,” Terrakona stated, anger in his telepathic voice. “It’s the ancient guardian of the depths we should be concerned about.”

The guardian of the depths?

Before I could solve his cryptic statement, a man burst out of the water—straight up, propelled by the waves themselves. He wore a long cloak that fluttered behind him like a shadow of a dragon, but it was his necklace that drew most of my attention. The silver pendant glinted in the sunlight, the shine contrasting harshly with the black coat.

It was a guild pendant.

The Frith Guild.

“Gallus!” I said with a wave of my hand. “Over here! We’ve come to help!”

The man turned to me with a quick snap of his head. He fell back into the ocean a moment later, falling faster than the water and mist he had created with his initial jump. Gallus hit the water and plunged deep, disappearing from my sight. When he burst out of the waves a second time, it was in my direction. Kraken arcanists could easily manipulate water, and Gallus used his ability to leap high into the air. Kraken arcanists could also breathe while beneath the surface, and they jetted through the waves without moving any part of their bodies.

Gallus leapt high enough to land atop Terrakona. But the world serpent flared his scales a second time and hissed with the rumble of thunder. A moment before landing, Gallus swiped his hands in front of him and evoked storm winds—gale-force winds, hail, and frigid water, all at once.

I lifted my shield, but not fast enough. I blocked the storm winds from freezing over my face, but the gust of powerful wind knocked me off Terrakona. I tumbled off his crystal mane and fell a good fifteen feet before hitting the water. I lost my breath from the force of the impact. My vision blurred as I sank into the ocean waters, half-paralyzed from the terrible sensation.

Ocean water stung my eyes a bit, but I had long become accustomed to the bite of salt.

Gallus dove in after me. In half a second, he was on top of me, close enough that I could finally make out more details.

He had a white beard but a thick, black mustache. His bright blue eyes locked on to mine, his gaze so intense, I could feel his hatred. His salt-and-pepper hair fluttered in the water, and bubbles escaped the corners of his mouth, but the ocean didn’t seem to bother him in the least. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and twisted his fist, dragging me close.

His arcanist mark was a seven-pointed star with a ten-tentacled squid wrapped around the points—a kraken. But it was different. It glowed, but unlike Guildmaster Eventide’s mark, Gallus’s shimmered with a crimson hue, sinister in all regards.

The deeper we went, the darker the waters became. Soon, wiggling lines of abstract light and Gallus’s mark were the only things I could see. I grabbed Gallus’s arm and attempted to swing my sword, but the ocean fought against me. It was difficult to get any force behind my swing, but I did it anyway.

Gallus, on the other hand, moved with the grace of a divine fish. He spun away from my attack and then withdrew a blade from a scabbard on his belt. When he slashed, he clipped my stomach, leaving a crimson line across my body.

I had forgotten how much getting hit hurt. With Luthair, I had always had armor…

I coughed and the last of the air rushed out of my lungs. Water slipped in. I hadn’t known water could burn so badly until that moment. It seared my throat, my nose, my chest, and my gut. Salt water had a distinct taste, but my tongue didn’t work with so much fire in my body.

Gallus swam around and stabbed at me again, this time aiming for my kidney. I spun and slashed with Retribution, and my black blade sliced his clean in half. He could probably still use it as a jagged weapon, but instead he released the sword and allowed it to sink to the bottom of the ocean. I thought he would retreat, but I was badly mistaken. Gallus punched me in the center of my chest—an entirely new type of pain.

Despite my agony, I lifted my shield. It pulsed with light amounts of magic. Forfend could reflect attacks, and I had blocked at least some of Gallus’s initial storm wind attack. With my jaw clenched, I unleashed the stored evocation and blasted Gallus away from me. He swirled through the ocean’s tides, obviously caught off guard by my action.

My heart slammed against my ribs so loudly, it reverberated in my ears.

Where was the surface?

Panic clouded my thoughts.

I flailed my arms.

Terrakona!

My eldrin’s thoughts lingered at the edge of mine, and I could sense his concern. Although I hadn’t been able to sense Luthair’s proximity, with Terrakona, it was different. I knew where he was. I knew where he was going.

Getting closer.

And closer.

But I tried to breathe again, and I couldn’t. The burning intensified.

My vision darkened.

If I were still a knightmare arcanist, I could slip through shadow, manipulate darkness, evoke terrors—fight in ways I could expect—but now it was different. What was I doing?

Something wrapped around my body. An instant later, I was yanked upward. The moment I was pulled from the ocean, I hacked up water and a bit of blood. My sight returned in short waves, slowly becoming clearer as I focused.

Terrakona had dragged me from the depths. Willow trees grew from his body at various locations, each with long limbs and vines. The vegetation moved with a will of its own. The vines pierced the water and grabbed people who had been thrown from the merchant ship, carrying them to safety.

“Terra…kona…” I said through my wheezing. “Thank you…”

“We are the earth and tides, Warlord. A wave does not drown. A rock cannot breathe. Stop fighting against yourself.”

Master Zelfree’s voice rang in my head. He had given me advice for my knightmare magic.

A shadow can’t fall.

Was I misunderstanding my magic, just like I had with Luthair?

Gallus shot out of the ocean and flew twenty feet into the sky. When he started to fall, he laughed and evoked his storm winds again.

I raised my shield, but it wasn’t needed. Terrakona lifted his tail out of the ocean and blocked the blast.

“We need to stop him,” I said through my coughs. “He’s infected with the plague!”

And if his arcanist mark was glowing red, it meant he was too far gone to help… The red glow indicated his eldrin had transformed into a dread form of itself. A product of the arcane plague. A wild monster with no hold of being saved.

When had Gallus been infected? Had it been after the Sovereign Dragon Tournament? It had to have been. Had he been looking for us since then? Had he been hoping we could help him?

Terrakona tensed to attack, but it was too late. Gallus had been a distraction. Tentacles burst from the water all around us. The gigantic kraken snared Terrakona in his grip.

And the kraken was equally infected…

Its tentacles had boils and blisters everywhere. Pus oozed from the open edges of each boil, and the foul yellow liquid looked—and smelled—like lumpy, rotten milk. As I watched the tentacles tighten, I saw blisters were forming constantly, as though the creature was boiling from the inside out. Small eyes bulged from the tentacles as well, staring at us with unblinking intensity. For some reason, each time I caught a glimpse, I could’ve sworn the look they gave us was one of pure agony.

Terrakona screeched as the disgusting tentacles yanked us deeper into the water. His tree-like appendages lashed out at the kraken, but Terrakona was still a hatchling world serpent. His magic was powerful, but a dread form kraken was on par with an adult dragon, perhaps more so, since magical corruption was so devastating. And krakens had the advantage in the water.

Even against a world serpent? I didn’t know.

Determined to free my eldrin, I leapt down the back of the serpent and slid along his emerald scales until I reached a tentacle. I swung Retribution and slashed clean through the kraken’s limb. Black blood splattered across Terrakona and then ran in rivulets into the ocean. A cloud of bloody darkness spread outward.

The kraken lifted its body high enough out of the water that I spotted his beak-like mouth underneath. Normally, the beak looked similar to a bird’s. Twisted with the plague, however, it was a maw straight to the abyssal hells. It opened far wider than it should have—ripping the kraken’s skin and creating a smile that bled. The kraken’s throat was lined with arms and hands, each grasping forward, as if looking to pull something into the kraken’s belly.

I had been too busy staring into the void of the kraken’s gullet to notice Gallus bursting out of the water next to me. I turned just in time to defend with my shield as he evoked another blast of stormy winds. I tumbled across Terrakona and then went straight back into the ocean. With my breath held, I sank beneath the waves.

I swung my sword. Gallus had already become predictable.

He showed up a moment before I completed the arc of my attack. My black blade sliced through a part of Gallus’s arm, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He smiled, his beard and mustache distorted with his freakish grin.

Then he swirled his hand around and manipulated the waters.

With all the force of a riptide, I was yanked deeper into the ocean, my breath already burning.