The Leviathan - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

People were talking, or shouting, it was hard to say. A foreign weight pressed on her lower body and a white sensation was growing from her abdomen. As her world realigned itself, the white became pain, which became excruciating. Brienna was bleeding from her side and something had collapsed on her, pinning her to the floor of her cabin. The voices, a hellish chore of overlapping tenors unravelled slowly to her shaken hearing. They were the cries of all the children.

Dana! Where was Dana?

Trying to connect her mind to her body, Brienna tried for some movement. Agony shot into her stomach robbing her of strength and leaving her panting against the coarse wood of the floor. Individual splinters of wood threatened to pierce her skin as her ragged breathing coursed her over the wood. She wasn’t just bleeding, whatever had punctured her side was still there and her movements were pushing on it. Help, she needed help. Opening her eyes revealed a chaos of children huddling round the prone Foster Daughter. The ashen face of the brown robed woman twitched among the children as she tried wearily to calm them from her stumbled position across the cabin. Brienna raised her arm, her flesh leaden and unresponsive. It was only when the Foster’s gaze locked on Brienna’s mangled form that she was sure it had stirred at all. The woman gave a hurried shriek as she pushed over to help Brienna, her hands fingering along the cabin as she failed to regain her feet.

“My child, can you hear me? The supplies, they came loose”, looking about, the Foster Daughter searched in vain.

“Children help me please”, her voice edged a jumble of plea and dread.

Brienna breathed into the bustles of movement that horded over her, trying to slow her body’s natural reactions and still the blades of pain from her wound. In the strange calm, her mind returned to the pounding that vibrated throughout the timber of the cabin. The rainfall was turning savage and the blasts of wind and waves continued to shock the structure. Every howl carried a renewed burst, as collected rain shattered against the prone glass of the windows in one mass strike. Cooling impressions road along Brienna’s legs as her mind acknowledged the weight being removed. The Foster held her shoulder and gingerly helped Brienna stand. Her legs groaned in response, and Brienna knew she’d have a coloured mirage of bruises shrouding her thighs come the morning. She didn’t have long to adjust.

With the added roar of a great wave, their world rose and the ground lost its plane. The battering of continued waves threatened to tumble their cabin all the way over. Brienna held onto the crate that had trapped her and struggled to keep her pulsing side, out of the bedlam that ensued. The Foster and the children flew all around; the jolt of something sending a shudder through the ship, which sent the Foster into a huddled heap after battering into the walls with a sickening crunch. Brienna stared in shock as the brown mess refused to move. The woman... Mara, was she dead, no, no, she couldn’t be dead. Out of the sea of crying children, Brienna gathered her fraying thoughts only at the fair sight of her daughter, alive and unharmed. Brienna reached out into the jumble of books and blankets and cluttered debris toward Dana. Crouching over the cabin, jabbing her hands back as she encountered broken shards of wood or glass, Brienna finally clutched her daughter in her arms. Dana shook against her chest, tears wetting Brienna chest. Brienna closed her eyes and hugged her daughter, taking calm from her presence. The storm rose in fury and the battering of the ship matured into a constant beating. The ground became untrustworthy and ever changing in its movements. Brienna shouted for all the children to stay low and hold on to anything that was bolted down.

“Dana? Dana I have to find help, find your uncle. See the big boy at the bunk bed. You go crawl behind him, keep the wall to your back and don’t let go of the bed frames. No matter what, Ok”

Her daughter stared in awe out at nothing, but when Brienna held her jaw and forced eye contact, her daughter’s pupils fasten on Brienna and she nodded once. Staggering off to the sealed door, Brienna turned and watched, until her daughter had secured herself. Despite her best interests, she couldn’t help but look at the mess that use to be Foster Daughter Mara. It was nauseating; pink from revealed flesh leaked scarlet blood into the course fabric of the foster’s robes. Jarring points of white stood out at inhuman angles and ended. Brienna had never seen bones protrude out of flesh before; it brought a fear of frailty that crept along her spine and made her shiver. Water was beginning to seep from under the door. Brienna imagined a wall of water flooding their protective cabin, but calming herself forced the door open. She had to get away from that sight.

It moved forward grudgingly and shuddered to a dead stop. A new wave of sea water basted into the cabin and fear forced Brienna to pull on the door. It was wedged; she had no choice but to continue. Slipping through the crack, her side brushed the door edge and sent a hot flash of pain into Brienna’s stomach, but she struggled through without collapsing in a whimpering heap like she wanted. A body waited in the narrow corridor of the ship. Red washed into the murky sea water around her. Brienna wanted to scream, but the muffled cry of other survivors gave her courage she didn’t have. Forcing the cabin door closed, took several bashes from her injured body. Protecting her side prevented Brienna throwing her full strength against the timbers, plus she felt like her energy was pouring out with every wash of blood from her wound.

Brienna hurried as best she could through the ship. The narrowness of the hall made it easier, she could brace herself against the crushing of the waves, but each jolt forced her tired side against the walls. Brienna supported her back and strut her leg out against the wall to steady her. Delicately she peeled back ragged cloth, red with blood and probed around her wound. Something solid protruded under her clothes, exploring carefully with her sodden fingers revealed a course texture, a broken splinter from one of the wrecked crates. Brienna had little experience with an injury like this. Her father had experienced his share of burns from working the furnace at his workshop, and the occasional cut when sharpening the woodcutters’ tools. Brienna was sure this was much more serious. She wanted to grip the splinter and force it out. Feeling something foreign invade her body, gave a sensation of wrongness, but in the end Brienna feared the wave of blood that could follow. In this battered ship, rapidly filling with water and no one around to help, Brienna knew if she fell from weakness she would drown in the low pool of water that rushed over her ankles. Struggling onto the end of the hall, revealed a door, the noise of the storm roared loudest beyond the thick oak. Brienna felt the gush, the source of the water coming through the space below the door. She prepared to turn back, she had no desire to venture outside, but her sight caught on the bar that held the storm out. Dangerous noises were escaping from the wood that sealed the door; it creaked and splintered with unnerving speed under the torrents of the storm. Brienna reeled toward the ship door, ready to use her weight to hold out the winds and rains and waves that nature was hurling against them. Grabbing the door, Brienna experienced the splinters splash over her and the storm blasted the door inwards with wild abandon.

Her body lurched back into the darkness of the corridor and Brienna envisioned her stomach crawling into her mouth. Out in the night the ocean was receding beyond Brienna’s view. There was a feeling of emptiness as the great wave carried the Racing Aven far up into the sky. The ship quivered on the high of the wave, and then a nasty jerk sent Brienna crashing backwards. Blackness crept in, as a nauseating crunch resounded on the back of Brienna’s head. Rain fell upon her limp body, the white noise of the storm faded to nothingness as Brienna slipped into unconsciousness.

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Gulls called out into the crisp air of the morning. Magus rubbed his pounding head and tried to recall why he was soaked from head to toe.

The storm.

The horrific memories of the previous night flashed through Magus’s sodden mind. The oceans had opened like the jaws of The Leviathan itself, grasping his landship out of its path and under the cruelty of the livid sea. He had compelled the magic’s of his node to push against the elementary might of nature, but the savagery of the winds and the volatile currents of the waters had forced his island back again and again. Magus had taken to the heart of the Landship when the waters had pushed into his comfortable study, sending water creeping into the stacks of books that covered the hard floor. Standing hand to rock, Magus forced waves of power into the flailing black of the node. The surge of the seas was beyond his mortal mind to decrypt, ever interlacing into new, more potent currents. Ever torrent that Magus cut prematurely, only delayed the inevitable. All his hopes had expired when the pulsing of the onyx fizzled out, and Magus had watched in great solidarity as his node collapsed down upon the circles and shattered into the winds. Without a focus point to pull his magic, Magus’s control of the island crumpled to nothing against the strength of the storm. His last memory had been the wave emerging through the tree line. Rough bark and fluttering leaves, disappeared into the night. No time to concentrate his powers, he had stood in silence as the surge of black foam submerged his body. The raw torrents washed him through the night and Magus lost all sense of anything.

Drawing his wearied body up into the light of this new dawn, Magus gazed into the rubble that had been a small village. That couldn’t be right; the only island in range was Aven. Aven town was larger than this. There must have been a fishing village on the other side of the Island. Picking up a staff of wood from among the wreckage, Magus lent into the wood to help him along the sandy shores. Assuming the obvious, and the worst, this was Aven. Magus was on a deserted island, with no ship, no supplies and at best a few days to live. His only hope was his landship had survived the storm and was in the vicinity. Magus reached at his chest, finding the accustomed lump, he relaxed and went in search of somewhere quiet to work his magic.

Each wizard found his muse at an early age, the material - rock, metal or gem, in rare cases animal - that held an affinity with his being. In Magus’s case that was the precious stone onyx. He never knew why. Most lived or worked near their muse; Magus had found his first piece in a market bazaar. Channelling with their muse, magic was easier to do; it brought clarity and a focus for the wizard to work through. Wizards had a habit of decking themselves with said item. The onyx tipped chain that hung from Magus’s neck, was far too small to control a landship, plus the magic’s to convert it into a node would take longer than Magus had. But if any onyx had washed upon the shores of Aven, Magus would detect them. With luck a large enough fragment of the node would be here, and then it was only a matter of following the node home to his island.

Finding the mostly unspoiled interior of one of the fishing huts, Magus tread up splintered steps and let himself in. The roof was lost and the sea-facing walls had succumb to the beatings of nature, but through some minor miracle the poor furnishings still haunted the timber shell. Brushing seaweed and flotsam out of his path, Magus made a clear route to a tired but sturdy armchair touching the inland wall. It had the smell of mould and years about it, threadbare arm rests and a pattern long lost to the brush of many bodies. Not what a powerful wizard should have to suffer, but still far preferable to sitting on the cumulative waste of the seas that littered the broken abode. Drawing out his Onyx pendant and resting his new walking stick at his feet, Magus prepared to empty his mind. The bird calls and the crash of ocean waves against the shore line were pushed from his conscious thoughts. His doubts and fear of the night before, he hid to worry over another time. The smells of the previous owner of the hut proved challenging. The oldness of the chair, gave way to powerful odours of fish. Magus had always hated the pungent reek of the marine’s plentiful bounty. And here in this hut, the smells bore into the very fabric of the timbers. Scents were always a problem for Wizards; they crafted their way like parasites, entwining with events beleaguered throughout a wizard’s life. Magus saw a boy, young and untrained, carried out to sea by a strong and compassionate man. The details were weak, the man a haze, almost an afterimage, but the feeling warmed a cold part of Magus’s heart. The boy longed for the carefree days to go on forever, but soon they were lost, and the man forgotten. He faded into the ocean breeze, leaving a tatty jacket to float down into the boat. The details were sharper, stronger, mended lines of thread and rows of feathered hooks decorated the common auburn hemp. This too, faded beyond recall as the scene receded. Magus could barely remember his father; the letter had arrived during his sixth year at the Order. He’d been deep into the histories of the Republic and he was old enough now to enter the great markets of the city with his fellow novices. The thought animated images and smells of the market. His childish thoughts that he had to return to the mud shack hamlet that spawned him filled him with adolescent disgust. And then his teachers had broadcast that his fisherman father was dead. It shamed him.

But only shame at himself poured from the memories now. His only immediate family was gone and he had refused to give him the sending off he deserved, because of the boorish teasing of his ‘friends’. Magus never did find out what happened to his father’s body. Most likely food for the fish he hunted all his years, part of the great cycle the common folk put so much faith in. Perhaps it would have been worth the scorn, to visit his old home. The Order had banished him in disgrace, but the time limits were murky. No, if he escaped this island, Magus would continue on and find his old Professor. His old life was dead, his regrets suppressed, better he let his ghosts drift into obscurity.
Magus clawed deeper and summoned his weak emotions to enter the dark space in the recesses of his mind.

He must be cold; he must be stone, as unmoving and isolated as the shear Obsidian walls of the Order.

The familiar calm of his focus was a welcome sensation. Here in the black calm of his mind, Magus was free from all the nuisances of life, here he worked the great arts of magic, here Magus was all he envisioned of himself. Used to the larger presence of his node, the lesser throb of his pendant was a curious implement to work with. With the node, Magus would expect to distinguish the full sights within his mental limits, every detail from the pins on the conifers to the flocks of seagulls that swarmed between islands out over the seas. The pendant was erratic and fickle in its apparitions, in comparison. Magus got disjointed images, overlapping in their confusion. Many elements of his sixth sight blotted with voids of blackness, rendering a purely visual search hopeless. Magus focused on his analysis of the onyx, and begged the surrounding areas to produce a clone. Weak pulsing of reds dotted the shores of Aven, indicating life, but his Onyx node eluded him. Drawing out of his physical location, Magus touched the many items of the fisherman hut and the diffuse collection of flotsam that littered the coast. The grains of sand had a linked presence, and Magus reached for them too. Wringing the excess magic’s of the world around him, Magus pulled the extra power to clear his visions. The sharp strike of the Island’s Node stone burned into Magus’s mind and he almost lost his concentration. No doubt about it, Aven housed an Onyx node at its heart. Baring his mental charring, Magus sought under the powerful throb of Aven’s Node and with relief, felt three weak pulses. Two were lost in the interiors of the island, but one resided further along the shores, trapped amongst the pulsing red of the storm’s survivors.

Sighing, Magus returned to the mundane world and worked his way down the beach.

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He was in the forest. Somehow he had survived the night, flashes of consciousness and watery imagery troubled his waking mind. His last coherent memory had been the hard surface of the ship side, as his body washed over into the storm. Tay stumbled through the layered undergrowth, beams of fractured light highlighting his tangled path to an unknown destination. The forests of Aven were vast. The fact that no signs of cutters were anywhere, suggested Tay was lost near the heart. What with organising the men and taking charge of training sessions since his promotion to Second, it had been years since Tay had roughed it on patrol. His lungs burned with the continued effort to stay moving. Many questions fettered through Tay’s head.

Where were the survivors?

Had the Racing Aven endured the storm?

How long did the island have?

Tay only knew he had to keep moving, past his endurance, past the aches of his exhausted muscles.
Something flickered at the limits of Tay’s vision, the glitter of light off metal. The momentary elation in his chest, gave renewed strength and Tay shuffled toward the sparkle with dread and hope. It was a body; he knew that before he got too close. It was expired, wholly still in the peace of the sun’s rays. The clothes were ragged and unfamiliar and gave Tay a guilty reprieve; it wasn’t one of his men. Turning into the body’s shadow, Tay studied the deceased form of a dead slaver. It hung in callous floridity, impaled on the shredded remains of the tree branch. Grime stained leather, covering greasy skin - and the smell. All the sea water of the night had barely dented the reek of months of sweat and the sickly odours of the truly unclean. The beginnings of decomp added an insidious undercurrent that forced a gag reflex from deep down Tay’s throat. Steeling his nerves, Tay forced the head to view him. The pupils had lost their spark of life, glazing a pale blue in the morning light. Shaggy facial hair tried to cover the ghastly death masks of the man’s last outpouring of suffering. He had been alive briefly before succumbing to his grave torso mutilation. At least nature judged all men equally. Tay was at a loss to move. What horrors were dangled like prizes throughout the canopy of the trees?

His contemplation was short lived. A rock struck the tree bark, shattering the brittle covering with caustic abandon as it skidded off into the stratum of leaves and mud that composed the forest floor. Tay hunted randomly from his axis at the dead slaver. Frightening glimpses of tattered slavers glittered in and out of the trunks and shrubbery that haunted Tay’s surroundings. Tay reached in instinct for the handle of his blade.
Nothing. Lost in the nights adventures.
Growing desperate, Tay roughed the cadaver from any weaponry. The crunch of closing boots became the only sound from Tay’s back. A shabby eating knife was clinging from a space in the man’s belt. The rusting handle of a longer weapon protruded from the far side. It was wedged amongst the jutting growths of the tree branch.

“Turn round real slow, this doesn’t have to end in bloodshed”, echoed one of the deep voices of the approaching thugs.

The man was hefty, his dominating feature the eye patch that scarred his face. Panic lent strength, and Tay ripped the handle from nature’s struggling grasp. A corroded but servable line of metal emerged and Tay held the wieldy cutlass of the departed slaver. Eyeing four assailants, Tay ignored his pulsing heart and focused of the upcoming skirmish. He was a guard; he’d trained for situations like this all his life. While any opponent from his past could be subdued with help from his colleagues, this would very well be the death of himself, or of four human lives. He couldn’t afford the weakness of caring, all attention must be for the strikes and manoeuvres of his enemies.

“This won’t end in yer favour lad, put down the cutlass”

A large presence, eye patch man, heading with a source of composure he was the most likely leader of this scattered group. Tay stared at the man, nearly wanting to disarm and spare the carnage, but a younger and lanky Slaver forced Tay’s hand, launching himself at the edge of Tay’s view.
Rule one, three were easier than four. In a fluid motion using his free hand, Tay grabbed for the utilitarian knife in the dead slaver’s belt. Parrying the inexpert blade of the youth with the cutlass, Tay held the knife horizontal and let the boy’s momentum drive him bodily onto the seeking blade. A scream and tenderness of unleashed blood flooded Tay’s uniform, and Tay pressed and turned the handle to herd the twitching body out of the melee. His continued cries swam around Tay’s senses. A quick check confirmed the knife had struck under the ribs. The boy was no threat for the rest of this battle.

Moving, keeping his distance equally amongst the three raging Slavers, Tay watched and waited. Rule two, when outnumbered don’t take chances. Calmly deflect your opponents and wait for the opportune moment. The men were angry; they hadn’t envisioned losing one of their own to a single opponent.

Tay could use this.

Waiting for the first attack, Tay waited for his target to select himself. A stronger and more capable Slaver lashed out first. In amongst dodging his savage blows and the more calculating shots of his friends, Tay noticed a potential resemblance. His attacker was almost positively the sibling of the bleeding boy. Tay used his brief moments of calm to toy with the brother. Weak cuts designed for pain and infuriation enraged the man all the more, but tested Tay’s abilities to the full. Holding off the beast’s savage assaults was bringing numbness to Tay’s already tired arms and keeping three opponents back was all the greater challenge while wielding the foreign blade of a cutlass. The guard used short swords for daily drilling and patrols. The cutlass had a longer blade and a curve along the bronze edge. Tay theorized you could run enemy blades over the curve and slash vital flesh, before darting out of combat to safety. But years of jabbing and precise slanted parrying with the shorter blade of Aven, and the unrelenting battering of three antagonists, gave Tay no time and no belief in his abilities.

Finally, the big brute overextended his strike. The blade went over the space Tay had occupied, and reinforcing the blade with both hands, Tay jabbed out at the exposed armpit of his foe. The larger width of the cutlass shred flesh and hair with mutual abandon and torrents of various veins burst from the metal faucet. The blade caught on bone and Tay had to exert essential energy to release his weapon and parry the combined strikes of the remaining slavers. The twin blades drove Tay’s exhausted form to the forest ground, his knee pushed into the depths of dirt and mud. Only guards’ intuition saved Tay as his body took control. The cutlass turned in and he rolled out of the finishing shots aimed at his torso. Rolling on the balls of his feet, Tay returned to height with his attackers. Spinning round revealed many new figures approaching fast. He was surrounded.

The two slavers at the fore clocked their weapons and stepped back into the fold.

“Second Taymous, you will sheaf your weapon and disarm”, the empty chill of Queen Diora’s voice carried over the canopy.

Tay looked beyond his tormentors to see the straight form of Diora, held between two more brutes. She appeared unharmed, ragged from the trials of the storm but unharmed by the pursuits of the unruly Slavers crew. More men had crowded beyond the reach of his blade.

“It’s over guard, lose the blade now and you’ll still keep breathing”

It was over. He was past exhaustion. The cutlass bounced on the ground, any noises muffled by the muddy texture. Rough hands grasped him at the shoulders and around the arms, another locked behind his head dragging him back. Landing on his knees, Tay got to watch his two victims struggle together, as his captors argued over his fate. Eye patch must not control the horde after all. The boy had recovered enough to stand, the knife higher and less fatal than Tay had surmised. His brother on the other hand was failing fast, the life-force spilling out of him in great weaves of crimson. A glow of murder entered the boy’s eyes as his brother weakly groaned into the earth, and before anyone could withhold him he launched enraged boots to Tay’s exposed stomach and groin. Hands held, coughing empty air, Tay’s focus diverted to white hot pain that emanated from his struggling privates.

The next Tay was aware of; he was being man-handled through the woods, the sounds of ocean waves growing out of his pain.