Azela Incarnate

As her dream slowly faded, Azela awoke to find Catherine tracing the scar on the glitch's otherwise gentle palm. The touch was so light it barely registered. The scar was from the time they had shared blood, a physical mark of their unity. Through all their traveling, this wound alone had refused to heal in a matter of hours, as her others so miraculously did.

Before Catherine noticed she was awake, Azela closed her fingers around Catherine's hand. As she squeezed, each could feel the other's pulse beating in their grip. Gradually their eyes met, but Catherine's stare was one of sadness.

The pain in her eyes passed to Azela. But as the glitch opened her mouth to speak, someone knocked at the door. Catherine pulled her hand free to answer it.

Lance walked inside and locked the door behind him. His eyes avoided Catherine. "I need to ask a favor of you, if you'll listen," he said quietly. He stood with his back against the door for a moment, as if deciding whether the lock was enough. Then Catherine returned to her spot on the floor beside Azela, and Lance settled onto the hammock across from them.

Azela said, "You can ask us anything. Despite last night's incident, we are trustworthy people. Mostly."

Catherine turned her eyes toward the floor.

Lance folded his hands. "I left my daughter, Tisha, in the care of an old friend. Her name is Phoenix. She lives in Pandoria."

Catherine's eyebrow rose. "That's the reason you're so willing to help us get there."

Lance finally looked at her. "I'm a wanted man in the city. I want you to check on them; tell them I'm okay. Let them know I'm with my father, and that when I have enough resources and supplies, I'm going after—"

The floor lurched.

It rose beneath him, then cracked open. The wood split with a sound like a snapping bone, and the water that surged through was dark and bitterly cold. He fell with a splash of water that hadn't been there before.

The boards groaned and buckled. The girls fought to find their feet as the ship began to jerk and heave. Azela seized a hammock with both hands as the room yawed sickeningly to port. Her feet slid out from under her on the flooding floor. Water poured through as more of the room snapped and gave way under mounting pressure.

Around them, the walls splintered and buckled. More wood gave way in sharp, irregular bursts.

Outside, they heard frantic shouting. Then gunshots.

They were answered by an earsplitting screech.

Catherine clutched her hammock. "What in the hells was that?" she cried, looking to Lance for the answer.

His face had gone ghostly white. "Every sailor's worst nightmare."

Azela rushed to the door, only to find it jammed. She drew back, pushed past the others, and threw herself against it. It gave way in a burst of splinters.

Without pause she staggered up the wreckage of what had been a staircase, Lance close upon her heels. They vanished into the storm above, swallowed by wind and spray. Only Catherine noticed that Azela had been cut by the shards of the door.

Crouching, she lifted a drifting splinter from the water where it had fallen. Her gaze fixed upon the stain of fresh blood darkening its grain.

Her eyes fell shut as she drew the splinter slowly to her lips and pressed it to her shivering tongue. The blood was still warm. It was salty.

Suddenly sickened by herself, she slammed her fist into the rising flood. Only then did she register the weight in her grasp and realize that her sword was already in her hand.

"When did I—" she began. The words faltered and died. She cast the thought aside and hastened after her companions.

The three emerged to find most of the ship twisted and torn by some tremendous power. Wrapped around the vessel's center was a gigantic creature, snatching sailors from the deck as though it were a dinner plate. Crashing waves and the monster's coiling body tore at the hull without mercy. As a bullet ricocheted off its scaly hide, the serpent reared back its head and screeched again. The crew struggled to keep their feet as it wound itself tighter around the crumbling ship.

Captain Tao stood atop the mainmast, facing the beast with a harpoon in his hands and iron determination on his face. Glowing symbols on the shaft and attached chain of the harpoon hinted at some unknown enchantment.

Catherine was the first to see him, struck with awe that any man could stand so still while the vessel lurched and heaved beneath him.

His booming voice rose above the crew's panicked shouts. "Avast, foul beast! Or have a taste of cold steel!"

"Father, no! You'll be killed!" Lance tore off his shirt and spread his wings.

The captain hurled his harpoon at the serpent. It struck and skidded harmlessly across the creature's scales, but in the same motion, he drew it back by its chain, wound it about his wrist, and cast it again.

Lance shot into the air and battled the fierce wind. As the serpent opened its maw to shriek again, the captain's next throw plunged the harpoon deep into its tongue. Dark blood welled from the wound. The beast thrashed in agony. Its tail swept wide. Lance barely evaded the blow as it shattered the crow's nest beneath his father. In the same instant, the serpent reared back, and the captain was wrenched along the chain, swinging perilously toward its flank.

Below, a twisting mass of the serpent's body divided the ship in two. Splashing water rained down on the deck as Azela climbed over it and ran toward a sail. The rocking boat and treacherous scales proved too much for Catherine, and she could not follow.

With an infuriated growl, she raised her sword. "Alright then. My sword is thirsty anyway, and you must have a lot of blood!"

Meanwhile, the serpent flicked its tongue repeatedly, but the harpoon held fast. The captain shouted a battle cry as he hauled himself up the harpoon's chain onto the massive reptile's head. He crossed to the far side, dropped, and swung himself back atop it again, wrapping the chain around its neck as he went.

With every ounce of his strength, he pulled back, fighting to strangle the creature. But the serpent jerked its head with sudden speed and flung the captain through the air. He collided into Lance's grasp; yet in the same instant the chain ripped through flesh and bone, severing the captain's hand.

They flew in a wide circle around the malevolent monster. It watched its attackers with cold, calculating eyes, then lashed its tail against Lance's back with sudden terrible force.

His spine snapped loudly.

The captain fell into bloody water as the serpent caught Lance in its jaws and swallowed him whole.

Lightning flashed.

Atop the highest remaining sail, Azela stood defiant of wind and gravity. Rain lashed her face and the canvas thrashed and snapped beneath her feet. On one foot she faced the monster, sweeping back her flailing hair. Even from up here the glitch could hear Catherine's curses as she hacked at the serpent's coiled body, only to find its scales too resilient for her blade.

Thunder rumbled.

With a strong kick, Azela leapt into the wind and let it carry her.

Catherine nearly dropped her sword along with her jaw as the goddess-like figure streaked across the sky toward the serpent's back. The moment Azela landed she slid wildly across the icy scales until she caught one of its spinal protrusions, using it as leverage to begin her desperate scramble toward its head. Reaching the chain around its neck, she pried free the disembodied hand and pulled. Her preternatural strength succeeded where the captain's had failed. Frantically the beast thrashed and tore through the air in its fury to shake her loose, and Azela's muscles strained as she fought to hold on.

In answer, the beast dove straight through the remains of the ship and into the ocean below, tearing Azela free by sheer force. Catherine held her sword tight as the shattering deck flung her over the side.

The ship was now in pieces. Debris spread across the churning water in every direction: planks and rope and the disembodied remnants of the crew, already being swallowed by the dark. Visibility was poor in the storm, but Azela could make out at least two survivors clinging to a fractured beam, a third hauling himself along a trailing rope toward them. Further out, someone called a name into the dark and received no answer.

With her final effort before slipping into painful unconsciousness, Azela dragged herself onto the nearest drifting plank. The last thing she sensed was the smell of her own blood.

Catherine swam hard beside her. Tempestuous waves made it nearly impossible to keep her head above water. Reaching the bloody plank on which the glitch floated, she laid her sword across Azela's body and used her knife to carve one of the many summoning sigils she had committed to memory.

Then she pressed her hands together in the sign of elemental water. Deliberate, urgent words of an archaic tongue spilled from Catherine's lips.

The sigil glowed faintly. Seconds later a shape appeared below the surface, moving toward them with cautious intent. It circled once; then the mermaid rose from the water and cast a fearful glance toward the serpent.

"Please," Catherine said, retrieving her sword. "Take her to safety." The mermaid stared at her summoner with open concern and sent a wordless question through their psychic link. Catherine shook her head. "Don't worry about me."

The mermaid nodded reluctantly and began to push the plank westward, toward the Pandorian Islands.

With a shriek of rage, the serpent erupted from the deep in the distance, surging through the water at tremendous speed. It was after Azela.

Catherine reacted at once, swimming to intercept its charge. The monstrous jaws opened as it prepared to engulf her, but as it did so Catherine grabbed onto the harpoon in its tongue and climbed the chain onto its head, despite having only one free hand. The cursed sword Katherine was in the other.

The beast looked up just in time to watch as the black blade was driven into its pupil. Wild with pain, the serpent twisted and spun without warning. Catherine did not release her grip.

Another deafening screech split the sea. She held fast, carving the sigil deep into the monster's eye.

When the sigil was complete, she ripped her sword free and dove into the raging waters. She hoped that she was still close enough as she brought her hands together, yet even before the ritual could be properly completed, she felt another mind touch hers, just slightly.

There was no link. But it knew what she wanted. It was nothing like the careful negotiation of a summoning. This thing simply heard, and chose. It was ancient, and powerful, and too hungry to stand on ceremony.

The clouds parted.

Catherine surfaced to find the serpent eerily still.

The beast was frozen in terror. Catherine was frozen in awe.

The ocean dimmed as the sun was eclipsed. Massive red wings had swallowed the sky. The wind that preceded them arrived first, a pressure so vast and total that the remaining wreckage was driven flat against the water, the churning surface made somehow calm through sheer crushing force. Before the serpent could retreat into the deep, it was swept up in talons that made the great beast look like a worm plucked from the earth.

The dragon was unlike anything she had imagined a creature could be. Its size alone surpassed all expectation, but what she glimpsed from even a small brush with its mind revealed a being beyond any form of life she had ever known. This was the second time she had summoned a dragon, it was true. But other than its shape, the first had been nothing like this profound creature. That one had been an animal like any other, and had shaken her belief in the very concept of dragon gods.

Now she understood, with perfect clarity, how easily humans could look upon such a thing and call it divine.

As the dragon carried its prey into the heavens, the serpent's final haunting screech faded to an echo. Then the sky closed over it, and there was only the water, and the silence, and the slow drift of wreckage on a suddenly gentle sea.