Azela Incarnate

Hours after being violently dragged back into consciousness by a fit of coughing, Azela hacked out a few more drops of bloody saltwater and looked dolefully at her hair, which hung in limp, sodden clumps. She wondered if it would ever be smooth and shiny again. In the blue light of the crystals surrounding the underwater cave, it looked like mud.

The crystals, at least, were pretty. Throwing cold light across the wet stone, their glow trailed along the walls until it died at the edge of the only exit: a dark pool that led out to the open ocean. Around its rim, six mermaids sat in silence. Their golden hair caught the crystal-light and glittered with insufferable loveliness.

Azela coughed and spat again.

The eldest of them, Teresa, crawled from her place and wiggled up beside Azela. "What's wrong, Miss People? Is you sad?" she asked in her small, sweet voice. Teresa was the one who saved Azela, and the most talkative of the bunch. It was Azela that named her, along with the others. Apparently, mermaids never placed much importance on names or identity.

"I'll be alright," Azela muttered.

At once the others followed their leader, crowding in around Azela with a chorus of questions.

"Is you hungwy?"

"Is you lonely?"

"Is you thowsty?"

"Is you mad? We're sowry."

The sixth ran her fingers along Azela's toes and announced, "Peoples is so cute."

Azela groaned. It would take some effort before she could get them to leave her alone again. Though their top halves looked like young women, these mermaids behaved like children.

Mercifully, a splash at the far end of the cave drew their attention. A seventh mermaid surfaced, cradling a young woman in her arms. The girl gasped, fighting to reclaim her breath, as the mermaid hoisted her up triumphantly and cried, "Lookit! Lookit! I found another people! Can we keep her?"

The mermaids surged toward the newcomer in a wiggling tide. The one Azela had named Felicia squealed, "Ooh! Look at her sword!"

Reaching out, Lisa breathed, "It's… so pretty…"

"Don't touch that! It's dangerous!" warned a familiar voice.

Azela was on her feet before the words had finished. She tore through the crowd, crying, "Catherine!" The mermaids parted, giggling as she threw her arms around her friend, perfectly content to never let go again.

Catherine fidgeted in her grip. "Zel… please… can't breathe…"

"Don't ever leave me again!" Azela commanded and squeezed harder. "I thought you drowned, or the monster got you, or—"

"I'll be crushed to death if you keep it up..." Catherine was smiling. "Now I know how the poor ship must have felt."

Azela backed away but kept her hands on Catherine's shoulders. "Are there any other survivors?"

"I saw a few in the distance; they had salvaged at least one lifeboat and were searching the water. But I didn't join them. I rested on a drifting chunk of the ship until one of these girls found me."

"What about the serpent?"

"It's gone." She looked at the circle of mermaids that had formed around them, staring with wide eyes. "I saw islands on the way here. Could you take us to one? We peoples need to eat."

They looked to Teresa as she considered. "You gotta gets us some fruits we can't reach."

"And let us make you look pretty!" Lisa said.

"And you play games with us!" demanded Felicia.

"It's a deal," Catherine said before they could add anything else. She turned to Azela. "I'll tell you more when we have proper land beneath our feet. Oh!" She untied something from around her waist and handed it over. "I did find this, floating in the water."

Azela laughed. "The Reizu towel!" She tied it around her own waist. "You know, I think this thing might just be bad luck."

Catherine patted her sword. "It can't be any more cursed than this. They say you make your own luck. Our type just happens to be bad."

* * *

Some time later, Azela and Catherine were taken to one of the smaller Pandorian islands. As for which island it was, or how to navigate to the main island, even the mermaids that led them there didn't know. There were many small islands in this area, and even with a good map, it was easy to become lost. Unfortunately, most of these islands, including this one, were surrounded by rocky shores that made rescue by boat seem reasonably impossible.

This island rose from the sea like a closing beast's paw, black rock shearing upward from the foam in jagged, salt-bitten columns. A single beach softened one of its edges, but other than that, there was only the merciless stone, against which the waves broke themselves again and again in futile fury.

Azela stood at the lip of a cliff and looked outward. The horizon was a gray seam, sky and ocean stitched together by distance, and between her and it lay tiny scattered islands.

Behind her, Catherine made a sound that fell somewhere between a sigh and an oath. "Marvelous," she said. "Utterly marvelous."

Azela thought her voice sounded like Shi-Yon's often did, both sarcastic and not. She looked toward the shoreline below. The rocks were slabbed and broken, worn to razors. "We're going to be here for a long time."

* * *

Days passed.

Survival was never an issue. Fruit and fish were plentiful, and the mermaids kept them well supplied with everything else. Countless wrecked ships littered the sea floor. In the Pandoric Ocean, what was a watery grave to seafarers usually became a playground for mermaids. Any treasure that Teresa's group found was shared happily with their new "pets."

The mermaids came at dusk, more often than not, pulling themselves up onto the lower rocks with a casual grace that no man-made vessel could dream of. Sometimes the junk they brought was actually useful: silverware, pewter cups, rusted tools, bolts of cloth stiffened by salt yet still serviceable.

They once brought a sextant with a cracked housing that Catherine turned over in her hands with the reverence of a priestess handling a relic. Potentially useful, but they never figured out how to use it.

Catherine immediately began to take inventory. She was always planning, always thinking. Azela wondered how loud her mind must be, always full of thoughts that never stop.

Catherine, of course, never mentioned how envious she was of Azela's mind, which often seemed devoid of any thoughts at all.

Warm days kept the two relaxed. Heat came not just from the sun; the earth itself ran warm. Hot springs were everywhere, tucked between basalt formations. Azela's favorite sat in a natural alcove where two rock faces leaned together overhead and framed a strip of sky. She would lie there in the shallows until the heat worked into her bones, watching clouds drift across that narrow window of blue.

The island rewarded exploration. There was a waterfall that fell at a peculiar diagonal angle, an area where the stone rang like bells beneath their feet, hollow caverns that sounded as if they breathed, and a grove where the trees grew in perfect concentric rings.

Catherine mapped everything, using a length of charcoal and a warped ledger that the mermaids had salvaged.

* * *

It was on the eighth day that Catherine saw one of her worst fears.

A shadow that stood like a man, on the hill to the northeast. A silhouette against an empty blue sky.

It was unmistakable.

Catherine's gut sank. Something cold gripped her chest.

He had found them.

She thought of Azela, still sleeping not far away, and the thought turned the cold feeling sharp.

He stood on a hill, as still as a statue. Perfectly visible from the cliff that Catherine stood on. The armor was dark, catching no light at all. She climbed down immediately and readied her sword as she crossed toward him, taking the open ground rather than sneaking through the brush. There was no need to hide. Seeing him meant that he chose to be seen.

He had not moved when she reached him.

"Hello, Shira," she said. "Or is your name Shi-Yon?"

The armored figure turned to her. "You've found each other," he said. His voice was low, uninflected, giving nothing.

"Don't pretend that you haven't been spying on us this whole time." She didn't lower her sword. "Zel told me what you did to her."

"I didn't come here as your enemy, and there are things you don't know about your friend."

Catherine pointed her sword directly at him. The Katherine Odachi was already awake. She could feel it in the grip, a faint pull, a current running the wrong direction through her palm. "Really? Did she kidnap a comatose patient and try to drown them? Did she find a victim in an alleyway and try to choke them to death? Did she rally a lynch mob to chase her through the streets when she got away, so that they could beat her and set her on fire?" She stepped forward and pressed the end of her sword against his breastplate. Black shadows began to swirl around the blade. They moved like something living, oil in air instead of water, reaching toward the dark metal of his chest. "No, that was you. And now you stalk her to the ends of Aon." Her stare turned dark. "No more."

She slashed. The shadows exploded where her blade hit, a burst of black that scattered and dissolved. But he was already gone.

On her side, a shadow. She slashed again. Another miss.

Behind her. She slashed again. She felt the air where he had been, nothing else.

"How are you so fast?" she said, frustrated. She kept moving, not stopping her feet, refusing to let herself be fixed in place. She hadn't fought an opponent faster than she could track before, but she knew it would be a mistake to simply wait for him to appear.

Something grabbed her ankle.

Below her. He pulled her with him as he rose, sending her to the ground. She hit hard, rolled, and was quickly on her knees.

"There are things you don't know about me, as well."

"You can teleport," Catherine said flatly as she scrambled to her feet. She checked the ground, but Shi-Yon stood where she wanted to be. Over the lines she had partially scored into the dirt during the exchange.

He said, "You were carving a summoning sigil into the ground with your boot just now. I'm not going to let you do that."

She felt the back of her neck prickle.

"Perceptive," she mocked, and lunged toward his head. He vanished.

"Another thing you should know," he said, appearing a short distance away. There was no drama in it, no shimmer or smoke. He was simply somewhere else, between one breath and the next. He reached up to his helmet.

She closed the distance before he finished the motion.

There were two distinct clicks, and a hiss.

Catherine lunged again. This time she hit. The helmet went flying. It struck a boulder and rang out a single clear note.

But the body was gone.

"Over here," said a female voice from behind.

Catherine turned, and froze. "You were real," she said.

The eyes looked older, worn by experiences rather than time, and there were no scars, but she recognized it, this time.

Shi-Yon's face was a mirror of her own.

Catherine's jaw tightened. She kept her sword up. She did not let herself blink.

"No," Catherine said. "It's an illusion."

"It is not," said Shi-Yon. He didn't move. He watched Catherine the way Catherine imagined she herself watched things: with assessment, with patience, with something behind the eyes that was not quite readable.

"What are you, my sibling?"

"Of a type."

Catherine's hand found her back pocket. She reached in, felt the ledger there, and slid it free. She kept it behind her and turned the pages by memory as Shi-Yon spoke.

He said, "Where I'm from, I was raised in Jastria. By our father. But in this world, when you were born as a sapien and our mother died, he thought it would be best for you to be among your own kind."

Catherine felt something move through her that she didn't have a word for. Something that hadn't been named yet because she hadn't known it was possible to feel it. Her grip tightened on the ledger until the spine creaked.

She tore a page free, dropped it, and lunged.

As Shi-Yon vanished, Catherine turned the attack to the side she expected her foe to appear on, anticipating the pattern now.

But struck nothing.

"I don't want to hurt you," said Shi-Yon, appearing before her. Close, this time. Closer than before. "I want to tell you why you're putting yourself and everyone else in danger."

Catherine looked at the face that was her face, worn by a different life entirely. She lowered her sword, stabbed it into the ground, and put her hands behind her back.

"Then talk," she said.

"My home was razed to the ground. Those monsters killed nearly everyone I've ever known. I couldn't let that happen here. That body she's in, it's… Are you singing?"

The ravens were on Shi-Yon's face before he realized what was happening. They dove from straight above, clawing and pecking at every bit of exposed flesh. The air split with the furious thunder of wings. Shi-Yon teleported—

—directly into Catherine's thrust. The sword sliced across his right cheek.

The cut was superficial, but she wasn't fighting alone. Shadows from the cursed blade spilled across Shi-Yon's face, warping flesh, freezing muscle, slicing bone.

Or so she had thought. Shi-Yon appeared some distance away, clawed, pecked, cut, but alive and still wearing a too-perfect version of her face.

"I saw you drop the sigil," Shi-Yon said. "But the page you tore out wasn't the one you used. You activated a different one still inside the book."

"How did you survive that?" Catherine asked.

Shi-Yon tapped his breastplate. "The Katherine Odachi was shattered. Killed. I had her melted into this armor. My past wasn't full of playful days and island paradises. You do not know the nightmare you seek to unleash."

Catherine's expression was cold. "You don't know the nightmare I will bring upon you if you ever touch Zel again."

"Actually, I have intimate knowledge of the evil acts that you and I are capable of." Shi-Yon sighed. "There is so much I want to tell you. About our mother. About our father. About your friend." He plucked a spider off of him before it could reach his neck. The ravens had settled in the trees above, watching. "But you won't listen, and you're proving very good at not listening."

Catherine shifted. Her eyes measured the distance between them.

Shi-Yon appeared in a slightly different location. "If I keep up like this, I won't have the power to teleport home, so you win. I swear to you on our mother's name that I will not trouble you again as long as you stay out of Pandoria."

"What… what is our mother's name?" Catherine asked.

"Oh, now you want to hear what I have to say?" Shi-Yon smiled, somehow both sadly and pettily. "Too late for that."

Then he was gone. The hillside was quiet again, just the wind through the grass and the distant sound of the water below. Catherine stood motionless in the sudden silence, breathing hard, the Katherine Odachi's shadows still bleeding from the blade into the sunlight and dissolving there. She quickly checked for shadows in every direction, then sprinted toward Azela.