Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 86
He slumped backward, feeling the curvature of the deck bite into his back through his soaked tunic. Micah’s mind was racing as he tried to sort out what had just happened. He sifted through his recollection of the attack—that was the only way he could conceptualize the failure of his spell—but kept coming up blank.
Try as he might, Micah couldn’t think of anything capable of disrupting a seventh-tier spell like that. It might have been a ritual, but even that seemed impossible. It was true that rituals had the power to step outside the natural order, letting a low-level practitioner craft incredible works so long as they had sufficient skill, but at the same time, they were borderline useless on the water. Precise locations and ambient conditions were vital parts of designing any ritual. No one had been able to come up with a way to hit a moving target other than to simply attack a wide enough area.
Shakily, Micah reached out and planted his hand against one of the room’s walls, dragging himself to his feet. Other than the creak of the Amelia’s wooden skeleton as it rocked back and forth on the Emerald Ocean’s waves, there was no sound to disturb Micah as he tried to catch his breath.
After almost a minute in which nothing strange happened, he grabbed his spear from where it rested beside the door and stepped out into the ship’s narrow hallway. Quietly, Micah made his way past the various bedrooms, the smell of the unwashed sailors sprawled in their hammocks hurrying him along.
Finally, he reached a ladder and clambered up the two levels from the Amelia’s hold to its deck. He emerged into the moonlight.
He took a deep breath of the salty night air, reveling in its fresh scent after the cloying staleness below deck. As far as Micah could see, there were nothing but waist-high waves and stars filling the empty sky. When the sun was out, they could see smoke welling up from the Serpent’s Teeth on the horizon, but the volcanoes were still a couple of days away from their current position.
Slinging his spear over a shoulder, Micah made his way across the ship’s deck toward the aftcastle. Around him, supplies in large burlap sacks were packed into netting secured to the sides and the deck of the ship, leaving corridors for the sailors to pass back and forth closer to its two masts.
Just before he reached the rear of the ship, Telivern’s stark white, antlered head popped up. The stag was curled up and trying to sleep in a small, covered enclosure designed to keep two to three horses out of the elements on the Amelia’s long transoceanic voyages. Hardly comfortable accommodations, but short of the massive, magically shielded warships and luxury yachts, Micah hadn’t heard of a way to make long-term, deep-water sailing truly enjoyable.
Telivern stood up, stretching its wings as it daintily stepped over Ravi’s curled-up form. It closed the last couple of paces toward Micah, burying its muzzle in his shoulder. He reached up, hooked his fingers into its white fur, and scratched it behind the ear.
Concern. Unease.
“You feel it too, don’t you, buddy?” Micah asked softly, closing his eyes as he leaned into his friend’s comforting weight.
Telivern pulled back slightly, wrinkling its muzzle as it chuffed out a dissatisfied breath.
“You don’t smell all that hot yourself, there,” Micah said with a quiet chuckle. “Neither of us have had a chance to bathe in a couple of days, and that isn’t going to change for a while. As bad as I smell, it’s only going to get worse over the next couple of weeks.”
Dissatisfaction.
“Sorry, buddy,” Micah replied, patting the deer’s flank. “You’ll have to live with it. Just another one of the sacrifices made in service of our quest to save the world.”
A board creaked, drawing Micah’s attention as a silhouette climbed down the wooden stairs from the aftcastle. For a second, his muscles tensed, the words to a spell on the tip of his tongue as his mind spiraled back into the previous attack.
He relaxed upon recognizing the shape of Hanna, the ship’s captain. She nodded at him, reaching the main deck before calling out for his attention.
“Out enjoying the stars, Mr. Silver?”
“After a fashion.” He shot her a smile, left hand still rhythmically stroking Telivern’s fur. “I was performing an augury in the room you set aside for my workshop, and something went wrong. I thought visiting with old friends and some fresh air might clear my head.”
“What went wrong with the augury?” she questioned, drawing closer. Hanna was about a hand shorter than Micah, but she carried herself like she was twice Drekt’s size, ordering the sailors around with a casual but unquestioned authority.
“I don’t have to worry about you accidentally summoning a hurricane or something, do I?” Hanna asked him nervously, her eyes darting back and forth across the mostly dark deck. “The Amelia can cross the ocean without too many problems, but she only has two masts. I usually only use her for coastal trade during monsoon season.”
“I can use Air magic,” Micah reassured her, “but I’m far from a weather mage. I don’t even know how to make a hurricane, let alone actually summon one.”
“Then what did you mean by augury?” She walked next to Micah, pressing her back against the wood of the castle. “Last time you talked about performing one of those, it was right before you warned me about that squall outside of Janamyr. As I recall, your warning came a couple hours before it happened. That sounds like a weather mage to me.”
“I have some Time magic, actually,” Micah said, trying to keep his voice casual. “It’s not perfect, but it can give me some insight into the near future as it relates to me. The spell can’t peer more than a week into the future, and even then it’s more a matter of probability than anything certain.”
“That sounds—” Hanna trailed off, frowning at him. “What level did you say you were again, Mr. Silver? You mentioned that you were an adventurer of some sort, and you had the attunement to finish outfitting the Amelia for one of our yearly trips across the Emerald Ocean so I didn’t ask that many questions, but that sounds like some serious magic.”
“I didn’t mention my level, actually,” Micah answered easily, moving his hand down Telivern’s back to start scratching its fur just around the base of its neck. “Once you get into my circles, information like your level and class are generally treated as secrets. I’m sure there’s a dossier somewhere listing my demonstrated abilities, but I’m not going to give a gift to the intelligence agencies keeping tabs on me by just volunteering what I can do.”
For a minute, she didn’t respond. The sound of the waves and the flapping canvas of the sail were the only sounds as Hanna frantically searched for a response.
“What circles would those be, Mr. Silver?” Her voice cracked as she stared at the mast, unwilling to even look at him.
“Nothing too nefarious,” he replied. “I run a guild in Red Sands. We’ve had a lot of work cleaning up the dungeons along the major caravan routes and made a bit of a name for ourselves. I’m not wanted in Saravok, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I couldn’t help but notice that you were awfully specific about the country you weren’t wanted in for someone with a foreign accent.” Hanna squinted off into the distance, eyes fixed on the moonlit waves.
“I may have had a dispute with a noble in Pereston.” Micah let a wry smile play across his face. “I didn’t break any laws, but in Pereston that doesn’t always matter. So long as we avoid the Horn Coast, there shouldn’t be any problems.”
Telivern snorted, raising its head to guide Micah’s hand toward a particularly itchy spot that it wanted scratched.
“Can I at least ask why you wanted to cross the Emerald Ocean?” Hanna questioned as she took a step away from the aftcastle, leaning forward slightly to stare at something out on the water. “If you’re a bigshot in a guild, it doesn’t make sense for you to drop all of your affairs for something inconsequential.”
“It’s a treasure hunt of sorts,” Micah replied. “A rival and I have both discovered the location of some ancient ruins. The ruins themselves will be dangerous to explore, so we can’t send one of our lower-leveled teams, and at the same time, if I waited too long someone else would jump my claim. As much as I didn’t want to drop everything and spend a good chunk of attunement hiring you on short notice, it was the best option available to me.”
Rather than reply, Hanna ran to the side of the ship, gripping the railing as she stared in horror out into the ocean.
“By the Sixteen, no,” she muttered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the sails.
Micah frowned slightly, unsettling Telivern as he peeled himself away from the animal enclosure to follow her. The stag huffed at him, signaling its displeasure before lying back down next to Ravi.
“Anders, hard port—now!” Hanna screamed, turning back from the water with her eyes as big as dinner plates.
Behind her, the water swelled as the dagger-like head of an elder daskin broke the surface, its light green scales glittering in the moonlight.
The monster opened its mouth to reveal a maw as big as an adult man, lined with curved fangs the size of Micah’s forearm. Distantly, Micah heard a lookout screaming as he tried to rally the sailors on board the ship to arms, but it barely even registered.
“This isn’t right,” he muttered to himself, reaching up with his left hand to grip his enchanted necklace. “I’ve been using weave of fate every other night to look out for major hurdles like serious monster attacks, and this scenario never came up. Something must have changed.”
EIGHT
MAARIKAVA
“By Maarika’s grace,” Hanna cursed, steadying herself against the aftcastle somewhere behind Micah.
He didn’t turn to acknowledge the woman, instead keeping his focus on the giant daskin as the Amelia shifted and rocked beneath his feet. Water splashed on the deck in torrents, pouring from the monster’s deceptively small scales as it seemed to fix its gaze on him.
For a moment, time itself seemed to freeze. The head-sized yellow-green orbs of the daskin’s eyes blinked once, ignoring the sailors as they began to congregate on deck. Two of them threw the canvas covering off a deck-mounted harpoon gun, which they then wheeled around to point at the sea serpent.
They didn’t fire, instead pointing the weapon at the monster and holding their breath. Silently, Micah thanked their terror-fueled inaction. As powerful as the harpoon gun was, it didn’t appear to be magical. Given the size of the daskin, he doubted it would actually pierce the animal’s scales, let alone injure it.
For now, the daskin wasn’t attacking, merely surveying the Amelia as the vessel was tossed back and forth on the water disrupted by its rise. There wasn’t much of a guarantee that it would remain so restrained, but even if it was only a small possibility, Micah would prefer to avoid combat if possible.
A wave of power pulsed off of the creature, flooring the ship’s sailors and pushing Micah back a step. Blue lines of mana flashed into existence alongside the daskin’s flanks, lighting up intricate, glowing runes etched into its water-slick flanks. It reared up further, glowing eerily in the night sky as it looked for all the world like the final monster in a high-end dungeon.
Quietly, not breaking eye contact with the daskin, Micah pulled his spear from his shoulder. Given the amount of magic pouring off of the giant snake, he suspected that it might have begun its life as a dungeon boss.
Many of the dungeons scattered about the Serpent’s Teeth were rarely visited by adventurers. A handful of nations had established outposts in the region that would keep a specific island clean from monsters so that ships could dock, take on supplies, and repair any damage taken in their crossing, but the vast majority of the chain was wild and untamed. That meant dungeons going unpruned for months at a time until the monsters inside of them grew strong enough to break through the barriers and escape.
It was a large part of the reason why trade across the Emerald Ocean was so expensive. As dangerous as sudden squalls could be, they had nothing on the higher-level marine life that plagued naval vessels. Most ships had at least one team of higher-level adventurers on board to keep them safe, but a quick glance around the deck confirmed that they were in trouble.
Four balls of glowing blue energy hovered around Hanna as she frantically chanted the words to summon a fifth. A shirtless, heavily muscled man, tanned from long days in the sun, hefted a bow made from some sort of magically treated steel. From the hold, a man and woman that looked like siblings scrambled onto the deck, the man clutching a spear and the woman holding a trident.
One spellcaster, one ranged combatant, and two intermediate fighters, none of them moving with the strength or speed he would expect from a warrior around level 40. Only Hanna herself appeared to have any appreciable level of power—enough for the four of the Amelia's defenders to fight off a small kraken, a tribe of sea ogres, or a shoal of carnivorous fish, but not the giant glowing serpent staring down at them.
The daskin opened its mouth, revealing the tender pink flesh of its throat for a fraction of a second before mana began to swirl around its head and form a vortex of blue energy. Water flowed upward from the ocean, sparkling in the moonlight as it clustered around the serpent.
“Maarikava!” The call came from somewhere near the forecastle, followed almost immediately by an arrow the size of Micah’s forearm.
The silver dart struck the monster in the head, ricocheting off the scales between the daskin’s eye and ear slit. For a second, nothing happened—the daskin seemed almost too surprised by the affront to even react.
Then it whipped its head to the side, letting out an unearthly shriek as it sprayed a geyser of scalding water at the shirtless man.
He disintegrated, ripped apart by a stream of superheated water without even a chance to dodge. The blue sigils adorning the sides of the daskin dimmed as the magical jet punched through the Amelia’s deck, shredding the wooden planks before evaporating into a hissing cloud of steam that shrouded the damage.
Screams erupted from the ship as the fog bank seared the flesh of lower-level fighters, but Micah didn’t have time for their injuries. He leapt into the air, mouthing the words to vacuum as he let the flight enchantment in his necklace take hold.
The magical trinket held a limited charge—if the battle dragged on, Micah would likely need to recast the spell using his own stores of mana, but more importantly, it freed him to act. The enchantment went into effect immediately, letting him soar up into the air and into attack range even as he began casting another spell.
He swooped in and slammed his spear—which had its sonic enchantment active and was drawing a steady trickle of mana—into the daskin’s rock-hard scales. The blow felt like he had punched the side of a mountain. The spearhead vibrated and blurred, barely sawing through the creature’s thick armor and drawing a trickle of violet blood.
The torrent of steam stopped, and the blue lights wreathing the daskin winked out. It wheeled around, eyes gleaming as it locked its gaze on Micah.
He darted to the left, narrowly dodging a snap from its massive jaws just as he finished casting vacuum. A chunk of reality—along the creature’s spine—deleted itself with a bang, taking a mass of scales and flesh with it.
The daskin writhed, spraying dark purple blood into the night air as it shrieked in pain. Micah took advantage of its distraction by flying around behind the monster and lining himself up for another spear thrust.
From the steam-shrouded deck of the Amelia, a trio of blue blasts came rocketing up at the monster. One zipped past the thrashing snake entirely, its high-pressure lance of water dissolving into mist when it reached the spell’s maximum range. The other two rocked the beast backward, but did little damage beyond shaking the daskin. Neither water blast was able to penetrate the sea creature’s scales.
Its head whipped upward, trying to bludgeon Micah out of the sky with the top of its skull, but he matched speeds with its attack. He gently touched his toes down on the creature’s scales and stabbed downward with his spear.
This time the attack managed to punch through the layer of armored scales protecting the monster’s brow. His spear’s sonic enchantment unleashed its fury about a handspan deep in the creature’s flesh, sending pulses of energy through its skull and into the soft tissue beneath.
The daskin writhed, its tail breaching the surface of the ocean and sweeping through the ship’s masts like they were dry tinder. Another jet of water zipped past, barely missing both Micah and the shrieking snake monster’s head.
He ripped the spear free, replacing it with his hand. Warm purple blood gushed over Micah as he sank in up to his wrist.
“Infest,” Micah said with a grimace, wincing when the skin and flesh of his arm began to writhe.
His muscles flexed uncomfortably as they pushed a dozen fingernail-sized “seeds” down his arm. A brief flash of pain marked them breaking his skin and being deposited in the fertile soil of the monster’s flesh.
Infest was a powerful spell, but one with limited applications. It was quick to cast, but it required Micah to make physical contact with an unarmored foe. Once he had afflicted an opponent with it, the seeds were slow but inexorable. Unless his target could rip them from its flesh or magically cure itself, the plants would grow at a rapid pace, burrowing deeper into their victim until eventually the parasitic growths killed their host entirely.
Micah jolted backwards, content to let the spell do its grisly work. As he flew away from the creature, bolts of blue light and mana arced up and down the daskin’s sinuous length. It screeched in rage, head scanning the sky for its assailant. Uncontrolled cobalt mana discharged from its body toward the ocean around the Amelia.
The water began to boil around the mastless ship as the mana from the daskin danced across its choppy surface, sending another cloud of scalding steam up into the air amidst a chorus of screams.
The ship itself creaked as water bubbled around it. A glance from Micah drew a frown to his face. It was completely wreathed in a superheated fog. Even if his companions were able to survive the daskin’s attacks, it was almost certain that most of the sailors were dead. Between the death toll and the damage to the masts, there was no way that they would be able to complete their journey across the Emerald Ocean.
