CHAPTER 27

  “Do not go too low!” I yelled to Sora over my shoulder. “She is going to jump any s–”

  The water in front of us erupted.

  “Evade!” Raine screamed.

  I snapped my wings left. Sora mirrored me, nearly running into me. Raine rolled right, and her hands blazed violet. A jagged bolt of lightning tore from her fingers and smashed into Nerida’s side, and I watched as purple and blue lightning rippled across her sea monster form.

  The Sibling’s scream shredded the air and she crashed back into the water. A splashing sound followed and I looked down, just in time to see a cluster of tentacles shoot up toward us, black and slick, dripping seawater and purple poison.

  “Fern!” I shouted.

  “On it,” he growled, holding the sword.

  His snake body whipped out blow me. The Ashsteel blade, which usually screeched like a knife on glass, hummed now, low and hungry. He brought it down in a brutal arc, and the edge carved clean through a tentacle as thick as a tree trunk.

  Tar-black blood sprayed, and Nerida’s tentacles crashed back into the churning flood. She circled around in the water preparing to jump again.

  The deadly, pearl-skinned, hauntingly beautiful mermaid demigod’s new form was like a warship of scales and Lovecraftian horror. Her body had grown and thickened. Every inch of her body was plated in iridescent armored scales. Her face had been shaped and pulled into a shark’s maw full of serrated teeth, ringed with six unblinking black eyes. Nerida now had two tails, studded with purple spikes that churned the water like twin propellers. Her arms had multiplied and warped into giant tentacles, each ending tipped with quills and dripping with poison.

  “Fassster,” Fern Hissed. “Ssshe is angrier now.”

  We were a mile from the central spire. Typically, flying for this long would have my shoulders burning and begging to be given a rest, but the Breath training had increased not only my endurance but everyone’s. Beside me, Sora’s wingbeats were pumping heavily through the air, and despite it being her first time flying in her Third Form, she kept up.

  “You got it!” I shouted to her.

  Across the rolling water, about a hundred feet from us, Raine flew backward, blue eyes blazing. Her hands crackled, and she hurled another bolt, slamming into the waves beside Nerida. Electricity spider-webbed across the water’s surface, then climbed up the Sibling’s scaled bulk. Her whole body spasmed with the volts.

  For a heartbeat, Nerida’s chase stalled.

  “Nice shot!” Sora panted.

  “Keep breathing,” I called to Sora, noticing fatigue. “In through the nose, slow out. Keep your heart steady.”

  She bobbed her head and dragged in air, trying to match the rhythm Kael had drilled into us. Her flying smoothed a little.

  Behind us, Nerida thrashed off the pain from the shock. She turned towards us and charged, smashing through flooded huts and half-sunken docks. Almost the entire Second Tier was flooded now, and all the civilians had retreated to the safety of their boats. However, the ones near us, near Nerida, were not so lucky. Hundreds of wide-eyed families were crammed into narrow canoes. Nerida’s bare-chested guards, spears ready, were packed into small rowboats as well, and all were trying to paddle away from the sea monster’s path of rage.

  “Shit,” I muttered. Seeing the disaster about to happen.

  My eyes scanned for a clear path, one where the Sibling would crush no one. I looked to the far western side of the Tier, under the shadow of the central spire. There, thin, clear of boats, area of of water lay.

  “Keep going straight!” I shouted to my friends. “Raine, punch us a hole into the spire and get inside.”

  “You are going to do something stupid aren’t you?” She called back.

  “Probably,” I said.

  I banked away from the spire and the boats, toward the wider stretch of open water.

  Be careful, Fern said.

  We cannot drag her through a hundred civilians, I thought. They will die.

  The water beneath us bulged and darkened. Nerida surged up again, but this time her six eyes tracked me alone. She coiled to pursue, and began chasing me.

  Good. Come on then. I thought.

  “FOOLISH FLY,” her voice boomed. “DIE QUIETLY AND I WILL MAKE YOUR COMPANIONS’ END MERCIFUL. YOU THINK I DIDN’t KNOW ABOUT THE PASSAGE?”

  My gut went cold.

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  Fern snapped me out of my fearful thoughts. “Erik, spikes inbound!”

  I hesitated, thinking about my friends, and it cost me.

  Something slammed through my right wing like a thrown spear. I glanced over and saw a purple spike had punched clean through the membrane of my wing, leaving purple ichor dripping from the hole it made.

  Pain blossomed inside me. My heart lurched and sped up into a sprint. Every beat thudded inside my skull.

  “More spikes!” Fern yelled.

  I tried to weave, but the poison made me slow. My vision fractured, and the world doubled. Then it tripled. The horizon tilted, and my skin crawled, as if a swarm of invisible ants was gnawing under it. My throat cinched tight, and I could only breathe through my nose.

  “Spikes!” Fern yelled again.

  I did not see the spikes, but I felt the air as they ripped past. Fern worked like a machine. The sword flicked in his mouth; the lighter weight made him incredibly fast. I felt shards of purple quills break and tumble past me, broken mid-flight.

  “K-keep it up,” I gasped. My tongue felt thick. The edge of Tier Two was racing toward us, and beyond it was a straight drop into the storm.

  “I can see fine,” Fern said. His voice was too calm. “I will be your eyes. Turn around.”

  “Are we clear of the people?” I asked.

  “Yesss, now let me sssteer.” He said.

  “T-trusting y-you,” I croaked.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and listened for his instructions.

  “Down,” he ordered. “Sixty-degree dive.”

  I folded my wings and tipped forward, visualizing the exact degree and direction he wanted me to go. The wind howled in my ears. The torn membrane on my right side snapped and sang, in the air.

  “Twist, ninety degrees to the right. Now.”

  I wrenched my torso to the right. Something screamed past where my head had been a breath before. The roar of water swelled under us. With my eyes closed, I had no sense of distance, only the pounding in my ears and Fern’s instructions.

  “Faster. Harder. Three more beats. Then climb ninety degrees up, when I tell you. Ready. Now.”

  My abs burned as I leaned up to pull us upwards. The hole in my wing tore wider, and searing pain flared. I bit down so hard my teeth cut my cheeks. A wall of water spray hit us, cold and heavy like a rainstorm. Somewhere below, I heard the groan of something huge following.

  Fern’s body snapped downward.

  The sword bit, and cut something thick.

  I felt it through our entire frame. The resistance of the muscle and scale parting under the Ashsteel edge. Nerida’s howl ripped through the wind, raw and wounded, as he carved a deep line into her.

  We climbed higher and I heard her crash into the water below. The blade had slid free with a sickening wet sound.

  “Hah!” Fern crowed, voice sharp with adrenaline. “We cut her. She definitely felt that. Now, keep climbing up the spire.”

  I tried to crack my eyes open to see.

  Everything was smeared like a dirty mirror, but now, as I flew up the central spire, like a bird flying up a pole, I felt more secure. Above me, I saw an open jagged wound in the stone where Raine had blasted us an entrance. Below us, Nerida’s massive body twisted in the water. A wide ribbon of black blood spread from her, swirling around in the lake like an oil spill.

  It would not kill her, I thought. It will just make her angrier.

  But, we did not have to win right now. We just had to get inside.

  I clipped into the edge of the gap Raine had made, and slammed shoulder-first into the interior wall. The impact rattled my teeth.

  “Shit,” I groaned.

  For a second I just lay there, gasping. The poison still burned under my skin, hot and itchy. My eyesight was still blurry, and my right wing screamed. I dropped my Third Form and groaned in pain.

  “Erik, are you okay?” Sora’s voice came rushing in from my left.

  I felt Sora knelt beside me, back in her human form.

  Raine stumbled up on my other side, inspecting my face, which I suspected was now turning purple like Mel’s had. “Damn,” she muttered, biting her thumb. “This is bad. Where is every—”

  “Would you look at that,” a familiar voice called up from below. “Perfect timing.”

  Kael, Rasa, and Leace came running up.

  Sora breathed. “Thank the blazes.”

  Kael reached me first and dropped to a squat. His eyes flicked once over my face, then he grabbed my jaw and turned it toward him.

  “You look terrible,” he said. “Hold still.”

  He took a deep breath, and cold air slammed through my veins. My stomach lurched. The world tilted. Acid surged up my throat.

  I tore away from him, dropped to my hands and knees, and vomited.

  Black sludge splattered across the stone. Thick and oily with glittering purple grains. It steamed faintly where it hit.

  As soon as the poison left me, the fire under my skin died. My vision snapped into focus. Air moved in and out of my lungs without scraping, and my heart rate tumbled back toward normal.

  I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and spat again.

  “You’re all okay?” I asked, voice raw. “Nerida said she captured you.”

  “A liar, that one,” Kael said, standing and dusting off his hands. “She sent Igi-igi.”

  Leace spoke up now, “He was blocking the lower tunnels.”

  My hands started to sweat.

  Sora’s head snapped up. “Both of them? At once? Two Siblings?”

  “Where are Mel and the others?” I asked, looking past Rasa. No sign of Mel’s armor plates, Nanda’s extra arms, Ruriel’s spotted feet.

  “Oh I did not say?” Kael said. “They are dancing with Igi as we speak.”

  Before I could even respond, a voice bellowed up from the darkness below.

  “Keep going! He’s coming!”

  Tevin.

  He burst up into view, fully transformed into his Third Form. He had taken the TitanBeetle blood just like Al had. It suited the big man as he bacame a, shell plated tank. Zenobia ran behind him in human form, with her rope dart coiled around her arm, dripping black blood.

  Then, came Ruriel, and Nanda. The two men were also transformed. Ruriel in a Snow Leopard form, similar to what Laska had, and Nanda in an ape like form with four thick arms. Mel brought up the rear in full Pangobadger form.

  “Seal it again, old man!” she roared as she ran.

  Rasa stepped past us toward the direction they ran from. As they barreled past, he planted his feet, lifted his hands, and drew in a long, slow breath.

  A pale blue halo flared around his head, circling his temples and mouth.

  He exhaled into the tunnel and hummed.

  The stone in front of him rumbled, and in the space of five seconds, the corridor sealed itself as if it had just closed hidden doors.

  Suddenly the sound of a dozen spears slamming into stone echoed from the other side of the wall Rasa had just made.

  “Keep moving,” Kael said, slapping my back. “That will not hold Igi-igi long.”

  As if to prove his point, a thin jagged red spike punched through a crack in the wall. Another followed, trying to grind the stone to powder. The whole wall bulged.

  “Up!” Leace snarled.

  We turned and ran up the slanted corridor.

  Away from the flooding plains and the hole in the Spire, and the grinding spikes clawing through the wall.

  Nerida howled somewhere outside, the sound muffled by yards of stone and cascading water hammering the pillar. Behind us, Igi-igi clawed his way through the new wall.

  We were on the retreat, with two demigods chasing us, it all happened so quickly that my fear didn’t even have time to catch up. I just had to keep moving forward. So, we climbed.