Chapter 143: Creatures of the deep

Chapter 143: Creatures of the deep

“You shall sail the iron ship with warriors of bone,

You shall find what you seek and make it own,

But despair for your life entombed within stone

And fail without friends,

To fly home alone.”

Percy Jackson

“Can it not do anything now?” Aleera asked intrigued. Surprisingly, when she asked the youngest daughter from the diver’s family scoffed at her question. There was clearly some antagonism between the two beyond the disagreement over the pearls. Lady Acacia stopped Aleera with a look while the girl’s older sister restrained her in return.

“Just the light at the moment, Lady Silversea.” Archbishop Grigori answered openly unaffected by either the question or the quiet critique. Perhaps his use of the title was a quiet rebuke of the other family’s scorn or a warning. Politics was complicated if you thought about it too hard or read too much into every situation.

“Could you show us?” I asked unabashed and unafraid of criticism. If there was one benefit to my open, innocent and still childish face it was the ability to ask whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to. Provided I could maintain my poker-faced ignorance everything was forgiven, overlooked or misunderstood.

“Certainly Lord Silversea.” He smiled. I did not care if he was making a political point, I quite liked receiving the honorific. Made me feel a foot taller. Although I could hear the rest of my family calling me Little Lord sometime soon, which would likely last until I was taller than them. We needed to resource more of the Elvish elixir to continue to speed up my growth, or maybe that had resolved with the recalibration of my status. It had not really been enough time to tell yet.

“A light to guide the lost.” Archbishop Grigori intoned as he pressed on one of the glyphs on the stone column it began to glow.

Grandfather grumbled, “Or a lure to every monster from here to the horizon.” While the clergy did not respond to his quiet critique I could not help but notice that both knights alongside Lady Acacia seemed to have heard him and judging by their body language possibly agreed with him as well.

“That is all for today. Thank you for your support and the time you have spent . . .” he was interrupted by a roar from further up the coast. Out of a cave in the cliff face monsters spilt forth. It was a snarling, snapping tangle of eel-like monstrosities that had somehow emerged from the very Lodestone itself. Their sudden swift emergence sent some of them to their doom. The leaders of the tangle were pushed off the cliff ledge by the heaving mass behind them to fall onto the rocks or into the sea below. However, the majority of them turned without falling searching their surroundings before locking onto us and the shining stone in front of us.

He paused as we reached the top of a cliff once more.

“Ready?” he asked.

Was I? this seemed like a horrible gamble with no one to rely on but myself.

“Ready?” I asked back searching for some confirmation that he believed in me.

“You’re ready, I will be right behind you.” He confirmed. “My life before yours in the light of the Lodestar. This is the best way I promise.”

We turned to focus on our foes rapidly approaching despite the steep incline. The fact that they had completely ignored the instigators of this mess was not lost upon me. But perhaps they had always been there and were just waiting for the opportunity to spring forth. We might never know. I might never have the time to find out.

“Ready, now!” Grandfather shouted as he threw me into the air. I shot up and inland towards the inner lagoon. Strength and stats went a long way to increasing my height and distance. Travelling at least 100 ft up in the air. A child is not the easiest thing to throw. But as I went up into the air I had the opportunity to watch the monsters pause as they attempted to track my movement before turning to aim for where I would normally fall. They were now ignoring Grandfather who had . . . disappeared at some point in my flight up.

Now it was up to me and me alone.

I snapped my mana out into the cloth I was wearing manipulating the material to form my medieval flight suit turning my fall into a glide.

They continued to follow in my wake as I glided towards the lagoon. What if . . . a hundred what ifs ran through my mind but all I could do was stay in the air for as long as possible. Grandfather would do the rest. Already he had started and although I had missed the attack one corpse lay along the route they had taken. Then another. I did not have time to test my eyes and could only get a vague sense of him through my mana sense and echolocation but our plan seemed to be working. Me leading them ever onward him cleaning them up in my wake.

I threw my mana into gale not in an attempt to speed myself up but to slow my descent. It had been a long time since I had last attempted this and while I was heavier and larger now I also had a few more spells under my belt.

“Auxano aera,” I shouted the spell finally giving me enough lift to halt my descent. The monsters still charged jumping and snapping in behind me but . . . I was no longer descending and as the land dropped away due to the slope I began to feel a little more comfortable in the plan. I could do this.

But where would I go? Looking back, another corpse was lying in the tangle’s wake, but there were still plenty left to devour me. I could not go to the town the people were unprepared and they would rip right through them. I did not want to let them get to the lagoon how would we ever find them again they would decimate the stock of fish it held and if they were fixated on the mana in me possibly the pearl-bearing oyster population as well.

What to do, what to do, where should I lead them now that I was no longer falling but flying?