Heretical Fishing

Book 5: Chapter 50: Chest Pains

Book 5: Chapter 50: Chest Pains

Roger’s column of chi blades raced overtop the bay. Despite the small amount of chi at my disposal, I could tell it was a battle-ending attack. When it struck the god-empress, even her monstrously vast core would be overwhelmed.

But then Claws did... something. She exerted a tiny fraction of will, which I only sensed because of our bond.

The sword flashed with blue power. Claws started snickering. And the column of blades, only a few meters away from the god-empress’s torso, changed direction. The countless blades of silver chi slammed into some random mage above an entirely different ship. Roger’s attack was so strong that all of the mage’s chi rushed from his core at once, expending itself so his body wasn’t sliced apart, rendering him unconscious. The second his core was empty of divine essence, the column of blades left him alone, instead cutting the ship beneath him into splinters.

“Eleven!” cackled Claws, rolling around and pounding her forepaws into the sand. She was laughing so hard that she accidentally broke her whistle, one paw shattering it apart. She glared at it for a moment, as if it was at fault for breaking, but then she just continued cackling. She was too amused to care.

Bob the Boat crashed down onto the heads of four enemy cultivators, his curved hull knocking them out cold and sending them skipping across the bay in different directions. That was nothing compared to what Bob did to the ship beneath them, though. He flattened it like a pancake as most of his hull disappeared beneath the surface of the bay, his deck only a few inches from going underwater.

A few things happened at once.

Bob, well, bobbed back to the surface, his deck swiftly stabilizing. The fire cultivators onboard scrambled for the cannons, readying their chi to unleash more fireballs. The god-empress poured even more chi into her followers, whose channels started to break down under the strain, especially those who had only recently awakened.

She screeched an order; her followers rushed to obey. They all leaped towards Bob, summoning spears of divine chi in their hands.

They weren’t going to throw them. They were going to jab them into him and tear him apart. The faint stabbing pain in my chest returned.

The cannons wouldn’t be enough.

Trent and the others were still gathering their fire essence, but even if they got their shots off, they couldn’t hope to hit the entire circle of descending mages. At least half of them would make it through, and though Bob had apparently become a Prime Vessel, I held no disillusions that he’d escape this unscathed. My stomach churned as I imagined dozens of spears stabbing into his unprotected stern.

Unlike Tropica’s fire-aspected cultivators, he wasn’t surrounded by Teddy’s aura. Even if Deklan and Dom were still conscious, I assumed their shielding couldn’t extend to cover him. Before I’d had a chance to find out what Bob’s transformation meant, he was about to be destroyed.

I stared in confusion as Teddy removed his empowered aura from Trent and the rest of the fire squad and sent it somewhere else. My gaze darted towards Roger, but the aura surrounding him hadn’t grown stronger. Next I scanned the sky, and though I spotted Pelly, Bill, and the rest of the pelicans, none of them were wreathed in the red and white light of Teddy’s empowered ideal.

But then I spotted the four-limbed good boy that was in freefall, having leaped from the back of Bill and Pelly. Borks’s entire body glowed. He opened a portal in the air before him, which he plunged through in the form of a Golden Retriever. When he exited the other side and landed silently on Bob the Boat’s deck, he was in his natural form—that of a red eyed, serpent tailed, midnight furred hellhound.

Trent and rest of the fire cultivators unleashed their burning torrents of chi, not into the cannons, but towards Borks. I leaned forward. What was their plan? Was Borks going to reflect it somehow? Create a firestorm like he had done on the same deck back when Cal was still an amalgamation of earth elementals? He created a firestorm, all right, but not by reflecting their flames.

Borks ate the billowing columns of fire.

His ideal flared, and he asked for more flames. He trusted the fire cultivators. They were members of his pack. Returning that trust, Trent and the rest of them opened their cores and offered up everything they had. Eight cultivators’ worth of fire chi disappeared down Borks’s gullet.

And then, throat glowing, eyes smouldering, tail wagging so fast he might take flight, Tropica’s goodest boy unleashed hell.

A cone of crimson flames spewed from his mouth, and the dozens of enemy mages unfortunate enough to be in its path blanched as they sensed the wrath about to consume them. And when Borks started doing spinnies, casting his hellfire in all directions, the blood drained from the rest of the enemies’ faces.

I wondered why. Roger—with the help of Claws’s unreliable sword—wielded enough power to slap their god-empress silly, yet her followers had remained stoic in spite of his strength. How much could Borks really do to them on his own? Every enemy had readied a spear of divine chi. Were they not evenly matched?

My questions were answered when the Prime Cadre all launched their spears into the approaching flames.

Borks’s firestorm didn’t just look like hellfire.

It was hellfire.

The conflagration was of Hades’s realm. Like the divine cultivators, Borks was controlling chi of a higher tier. That wasn’t all.

The golden light and the blood-red fire seemed antithetical to one another. They each sought to extinguish the other. And unfortunately for the entire enemy force, their higher-tiered chi wasn’t being enhanced by the combined aura of a bear, a god-king, and an ancient tree spirit.

Borks’s hellfire surrounded them, consuming their chi, using each spear as fuel. Though his flames had also engulfed the fire cultivators and most of Bob the Boat, they remained unharmed. The hellfire’s heat only affected those Borks saw as enemies.

Seconds later, the good-boy’s spinnies came to an end, and almost two-hundred unconscious mages splashed down in the sea, every drop of chi in their cores burned away. They yet lived, but they’d been gravely injured by divine chi on the inside, and by hellfire on the outside. Only the Prime Cadre and Seer Anius remained conscious.

The surrounding boats had fared about as well as Phostheia’s mages.

“Two...” Maria whispered, staring wide-eyed as the scorched remnants of the Divine Fleet. Of the enemy ships, only Theoris and Elegos remained.

The god-empress’s reaction was far more intense. She released a wordless scream, and potent tendrils of condensed golden chi shone from the ocean, coalescing above the bay before pouring into her. With another scream, she sent half of the chi flooding back out, six winding ropes that streamed into her six conscious followers.

“Roger!” Paul yelled, eyes locked on the Prime Cadre and Seer Anius as they were filled with twice as much chi as before. “Handle them!”

Handle them? I thought. Why would Roger need to...

Borks stumbled, teetered, and collapsed. The hellfire he’d released had only been a glimpse of the power he might one day wield. It’d been far too much for him to handle. He had exceeded his limits. So had Trent and the rest of the fire cultivators. They collapsed to the deck beside Borks, barely clinging to consciousness.

“Aerial forces!” Theresa called. “Fetch the fallen!”

The pelicans were already swooping down from above, angling towards the ocean.

“Maria,” Toby calmly said. “Please heal them.”

She gave a sharp nod. She’d have healed them even if ordered not to.

I looked up as Roger raced across the ocean. He’d procured coconut boats from somewhere, and he cut a direct path for the six mages. The god-empress hadn’t stopped flooding them with power.

Their cores doubled in size, then doubled again, tears forming around the nexus of their power. They were my enemies, yet I winced all the same, knowing first-hand how it felt to rupture their cores like that. Divine essence leaked out into their bodies. It flooded them, burning them from within, consuming their channels as sure as Borks’s hellfire would. Still the god-empress forced more chi into them.

I felt the stabbing pain slowly return to my chest. Beside me, Teddy was trembling. He’d been enforcing his ideal this entire time—his limit was near. Out on the bay, Roger thrust his bastard blade forward, striking out with a column of blades. On the shore in front of me, Claws trilled nervously. She sent a pulse of will across the bay, setting the bastard blade’s chance of attacking the wrong target to 0%.

Roger was now the sole recipient of Teddy’s offensive aura. His column of sword-chi struck true, thousands of blades cutting, slicing at Anius’s chest. But the Prime Cadre all moved to block it. Roger’s strongest possible attack hit all of them... and only managed to remove just over a third of their combined chi.

Rubbing my chest, I stared at the god-empress. She was staring back, her face a mask of golden fury.

No longer having to split her absorbed power between hundreds of mages, her threat level had risen significantly. She was even more dangerous than before. Like her followers, she was burning herself away by holding onto so much chi, but that wasn’t a good thing.

I didn’t want her to die. I’d let it happen if it saved my friends, but only after exhausting all other options. If Ellis was right and a worse threat would eventually come Tropica’s way, the Kingdom of Light could be an invaluable ally. I had to get through to the other part of her—I had to get through to Aletheia.

But how?

The stabbing pain got worse, and I rubbed my chest. It didn’t help.

The god-empress tore her gaze from mine. Her hands and forearms had been replaced by razor-sharp blades of divine chi. Golden light streaked behind her as she flew closer, stopping when she was above the deck of Elegos. She raised her arms to either side, and with two deadly slices of the blades covering her hands, she cut the top off of the containers lining Elegos’s hull.

Paul, Theresa, and Toby opened their mouths to bark an order, but I beat them to the punch.

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“Borks!” I yelled.

The goodest boy to ever grace Tropica’s shores lifted his head, gave a single wag of his tail, and tore a portal open beside him.

As the element of those concealed within Borks’s dimensional space came flooding out into the world, the god-empress went rigid, losing hold of the condensed chi she had already started absorbing from Elegos’s containers.

Three abyssal cultivators and an earth elemental came striding out at full power. As planned, they had rested for the entire battle, leaving them reinvigorated for when it truly mattered.

Or so I had hoped.

In truth, George and Geraldine stumbled out into the light leaning on one another for support, cheeks gaunt, skin pale. Fathom slid out like an inky blob, dragging himself from the portal with lethargic tentacles. Cal wasn’t much better, but he did manage to float above the deck, at least.

My heart sank. These four were one of our trump cards, and they looked like shit. I hoped they had recovered enough to succeed.

The god-empress released another furious screech. She was already too far gone for rational thought, but she’d clearly recognized their aspect. Fathom was an abyssal elemental. George and Geraldine were his bonded humans. And while Cal might not be able to summon abyssal chi by himself, his connection to Fathom let him manipulate it. Before they could strike, the god-empress resumed absorbing the divine essence from Elegos’s sundered containers.

George, Geraldine, and Fathom responded immediately. Despite their visible exhaustion, they reached for the abyss, attempting to open a void as close to Elegos as possible. It wouldn’t be close enough. Cal joined his will to theirs, helping shove it nearer to the god-empress. Teddy let out a rumbling growl. He wanted to aid them. But Roger was still fighting the enemy mages, his sword and body a blur as he parried, countered, or dodged the six deadly spears that jabbed at him constantly. He needed every drop of Teddy’s offensive aura.

The abyss opened up above the port-side railing of Elegos, only meters away from the god-empress. It started as midnight-colored pinprick in the air, but swiftly expanded to the size of a basketball. I held my breath, hoping it continued to grow, praying my friends had enough essence to absorb all the divine chi remaining on the battlefield.

Though the black hole they’d opened didn’t grow any larger, it started drawing in the golden light that the god-empress was trying to grasp. She shook with fury as those luminous strands started drifting away from her, curling towards and into the void. The god-empress tried to leave, but she couldn’t move an inch, the abyss and the four wills controlling it keeping her locked in place.

I clutched at my aching chest. The best I could hope for was that they’d keep the void open long enough to drain all of the condensed chi from the containers lining Elegos. But even if they managed it, the artifacts lining Theoris were still full to the brim...

Realizing that I was worrying about the future, I reined my thoughts in. This moment was all that mattered. I focused on the battle before me, willing my friends to succeed.

They faltered almost immediately.

Only half of the divine chi had been absorbed, and they were already at their limit. All four of them barely remained upright atop Bob’s deck, their spirits and cores still fatigued from their efforts with the tunnels below.

I looked at Maria. The enemy mages had been delivered to shore by the pelicans, and she and Slimes were already healing them. The damage to their channels was so severe that their cores had become unstable. If Maria or Slimes stopped healing them for even a second, the instability would spread. In the short term, they’d lose their ability to use chi. In the long term, they’d die. Maria couldn’t help me.

I reached for my chi. I’d been holding on to it as long as possible, knowing that once it was spent, I’d be completely powerless. If I used it now, I could stop the god-empress from absorbing the rest of Elegos’s chi, but I’d have to attack her. And with the state her body was in...

If she absorbed more divine essence, she would die. If we attacked her to stop her from absorbing it, she would die.

Paul turned my way, his gaze demanding my attention. When my eyes met his, his ideal drew me in. With a series of shared thoughts, we went over the facts, seeking a way out.

We had to get her to use all of her chi somehow. If I didn’t use any chi, and we got her to empty her core without burning herself away, I could enforce my will upon her and knock her out. It was the only way for everyone to survive, and it all hinged on the god-empress not being able to absorb a single drop of additional essence.

Rather than give me an order, Paul left it up to me, inviting me to choose our next course of action. I chewed on the possibilities for a long moment. We had all the pieces needed to defeat the god-empress. There was a path we could take that would let us win without spilling any blood, but only if we had an answer for the containers lining the hull of Prime Vessel Theoris. Those artifacts, and the condensed chi within, were the only things giving me pause. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find an answer.

I stared at Paul. How was he so confident? What did he know that I didn’t?

Paul gave me nothing. He stared back unflinchingly, refusing to give me any reassurance. Yet I knew the answer he was looking for. He wanted me to trust. Not just him, but the entirety of Tropica.

“A trust fall, huh?” I asked.

“I don’t know what that is, Fischer.”

We continued staring at one another. Eventually, the corner of my lip tugged up into a wry smile. As I broke eye-contact with Paul and returned to the present, I rubbed my chest. Now that I’d reached a decision, the stabbing pain had faded.

“Cal!” I yelled, cupping my hands to my mouth. “Cadet Calamari! This is your god-king speaking! It’s now or never, mate!”

His slitted pupil focused on me, its surrounding iris flicking between brown and black.

“Yes, I’m sure! You’ll just have to trust me!”

The speed with which he accepted that statement made me feel like a real prick—it had taken me ages to conquer my doubts today. No sooner had I finished the last word than he’d reached deep within, latching onto something he’d been slowly cultivating since my wedding.

Starting from his pupils, a black sheen washed over his entire body. It was like he’d slipped on a cloak of midnight.

With how fast my heart was beating, you’d think he was about to unlock some anime finishing move—like laser eyes, or laser tentacles, or laser anything, really—but he was doing something way cooler than that: the impossible.

As if shrugging off a torn short, he cast aside his earthen aspect, leaving it behind. The cloak of midnight took its place, settling on his skin and soaking into him, suffusing his entire body.

Fathom, George, and Geraldine went bolt upright. They turned away from the enemy monarch, their sunken eyes filled with life as they witnessed the ascension of another of their kind.

It felt like a cold wave crashed down over my chest.

Cadet Calamari, terror of the deep and newly awakened abyssal elemental, writhed with power.

He flooded it into the faltering void. The abyss flared back to life. That black orb of nothingness grew blurry at its edges as it consumed the surrounding light—divine chi included. The ripped-open containers were drained in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing for the god-empress to absorb.

The void collapsed, and so did Cal. His reawakening had filled him with power, but only temporarily. Barely remaining conscious, Fathom, Geraldine, and George caught him. They huddled around him atop Bob the Boat, staring defiantly at the god-empress.

She paid them no mind. Instead, she flew onto Theoris’s deck and raised both her bladed arms, gathering the chi she would use to tear the surrounding artifacts open.

I reached for my power. This was it—the moment I didn’t have an answer for. I stared at Paul, Toby, and Theresa, but they ignored me, simply watching Theoris with passive gazes. Without realizing it, I gathered my chi, preparing to slam it into her.

If she absorbed so much condensed chi, she would die, but not immediately. Who knew how many attacks she could get off before she burned herself away. Wouldn’t it be better for me to end her now?

I clenched my jaw, softly rubbed my chest, and let go of my chi, choosing to trust in my friends.

My heart leaped up into my throat as the god-empress’s blades descended. They sheared through the metal artifacts. The screeching cacophony made my every hair stand on end. From within the containers came... nothing.

I frowned at them. “What the fra—”

The god empress wailed. I felt it in the depths of my spirit, as if she was doing damage directly to my soul.

It had a similar effect on the two glorious idiots who had been hiding in plain sight.

A patch of air shimmered at the front of Theoris’s deck, right by the bow. Before I could wonder what it was, Dodge lost hold of his invisibility, revealing both him and the portly mammal he was trying to push overboard.

Dodge’s eyes went wide, and he took an involuntary step back from the god-empress. RPM, however, couldn’t have taken a step back if his life depended on it. The rotund rascal had been busy. He’d grown to the size of a small shed, and his entire body was glowing gold, leaking strands of stolen essence. He belched, and a cloud of divine chi spurted out. He sucked it back in before the god-empress could get a hold of it.

He not just stolen some of her chi. He’d stolen all of it.

“Roger!” Paul yelled. “Retreat!”

The god-empress wailed again, her face twisting in rage, the blade on her right hand extending until it was a spear. She drew it back and shot forward.

Dodge made like his name and got the frack out of there, leaping overboard and sailing away on his coconut boats. Claws tried to cackle, chitter, and chortle all at once, which resulted in her wheezing silently on the shore, doubled over with mirth. The god-empress ignored Dodge, her spear arm stabbing forward, seeking to pop RPM like a balloon and retrieve her chi.

“Master,” gurgled RPM, his tiny little limbs flailing to no effect. “Hel—”

The god-empress’s spear stabbed out, a full third of her chi contained in the weapon.

She found only empty air.

Claws had absorbed her familiar. She was already streaking over the western mountains on bolts of lightning, intermittently roaring with laughter and groaning in agony. Rpm managed to extend one of his dextrous little grabbers from Claws’s pocket. He gave the god-empress a single-digit salute as Claws zapped over the mountainrange and disappeared from sight.

I wasn’t sure the god-empress even noticed. The moment she struck empty air, she’d drawn her spear arm back, doubled the power flowing into it, then used the rest of her chi to leap from Theoris.

She wasn’t going for RPM or Claws, though.

She was coming for me.

Her speed was terrible, as was the spear aimed for my heart. She closed the distance before I could hope to respond, her arm thrusting forward, its deadly tip hurtling towards my heart.

Maria shot to her feet. She launched Slimes towards me. He flew like he’d been launched from a trebuchet.

Too slow.

Roger had listened to Paul and had started retreating. He’d left his six persuers behind and was now fifty meters from shore. He thrust his bastard sword. A column of blades bore down on the god-empress.

Not fast enough.

Teddy knew those chi blades wouldn’t get here in time. He withdrew his aura from Roger. He shook, trying to redirected it towards me. Hints of the red-white flow flickered around my torso, then faded. Teddy collapsed.

I was undefended.

I gave the world a sad smile. This was the problem with caring about others. If I’d been more selfish, this never would have happened. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing. Since my arrival on Kallis, I had lived on my own terms. I could have guaranteed my own survival by squashing the god-empress like a bug the moment she arrived, but that wasn’t who I was.

If following my heart and doing what felt right caused my downfall, so be it.

This battle had gained Tropica three tacticians, an abyssal elemental, and an entire fleet of ships. Even if I perished here, they would not only survive, but thrive. I had complete trust in them.

As the head of the divine spear got closer, I pressed my eyes together and thought of my time in Tropica. I had too many good memories to count. I cycled through them over and over, letting my enhanced memory pick their details apart.

I stole one last glance at the outside world. The god-empress was staring directly into my soul, her baleful gaze anathema to the memories running through my head. She was watching for my reaction. She wanted to see my defeat. Wanted to see my terror.

I wouldn’t give her that. I countered her hateful stare with a shit-eating grin.

When the divine spear reached me, it didn’t pierce my jacket. That was something. According to my jacket’s description, it could only be damaged by ‘a blow possessing even greater faith’ than my followers.

I’d still die, of course—instead of getting dispatched by a spear, I’d be dispatched by a spear wrapped in a nice jacket. But it made me feel all warm and fuzzy that my followers had more faith in me than she had in herself. It was a small win, and I’d take it.

As my demise arrived, there was only one soul on my mind. One might assume I was thinking of Maria, my funny, endlessly kind, whip-smart, and criminally attractive wife. But they’d be wrong.

It was Sergeant Snips who scuttled back and forth through my mind.

In my defense, it was hard to think of anybody else—her eyepatch had been stabbing my chest on and off for the last hour or so, the spikes extending every time she got nervous. It itched something fierce, and I’d considered pulling the jacket off at least three different times.

I was sure glad I hadn’t.

“Pocket crab!” hissed Snips, a slew of bubbles trailing her as she burst through the front of my jacket.