Chapter 027

Control and timing. Everything else is for show.

“Those were cadmium ophidians.” Adhira adjusted her stance as the massive red snake opened its maw and hissed. Branching horns across its snout rattled. “Tide-Touched at best. But this…This is a beauty!”

Harker did not agree. “That’s a creeping coralsnout. Except it’s five times the size it should be.”

“Wave-Warped, at least!” She looked at him, silver eyes dancing. Her grin was wild. “It’s perfect!”

Perfect?

The coralsnout Aberrant opened its maw and a sound like a hundred women screaming issued from its quivering throat. Trees shook, branches snapping from the force of it, before the crimson serpent lunged.

Adhira leapt to meet it. Laughing.

Her axe and the coralsnout’s head met in a shower of blinding sparks. The creature bucked, heaving the girl up into the air and Adhira was flung into the trees. She smashed through a branch and sprawled against a second, but was back on her feet in a blink.

“Harker! Join in! Stab it in the eyes!”

“I’m just fine back here,” he said, barely louder than the clash of their bodies. The massive serpent was hindered by all the trunks, but that didn’t stop the top third of its body as it whipped its head about, fangs driving toward Adhira’s small form.

He had no interest in getting involved in that.

Adhira drove her axe down, smashing into the branching horns across its face. The serpent caught the blow, keeping the edge from its scales, but even so it was forced down to smash into a rocky outcropping. The coralsnout hissed again, but this time there was a warbling quality to it. Water sprang from its scales, briefly wreathing its entire length in brilliant, blue-green liquid. The Water pooled, congealing into terrible, human-like arms all across its serpentine belly.

Adhira laughed. “Disgusting!”

The coralsnout moved. The hands latched onto tree, root, and rock to hurl its bulk forward and Adhira was driven back. She swung, her axe carving glittering arcs in the air where it caught the sunlight, but it parried her attacks with its horns.

“Torpor!”

It happened too fast to catch, but a wave of Water rolled from Adhira, soaking into the serpent the moment her axe made contact. Nothing seemed to happen, however.

“Torpor!”

Again and again, Adhira struck glancing blows. Each time, another wave of Water sank into the Aberrant’s scales. After the fifth hit, Harker noticed an effect.

It’s slowing down. The Aberrant’s conjured hands weren’t quite so agile anymore, slamming heavily into trees and forcing the big serpent to twist its body in order to avoid Adhira’s attacks. She’s gonna kill it all by herself. Just a matter of time.

“Bulwark!”

Where Adhira ran, a wall of earth lifted up, pitching the serpent’s ghastly hands out of balance. It stumbled, winding to recover, but she was already on top of it. Her axe bit hard into its side, spraying dark blood across the underbrush.

Blue blood, huh? Harker stood back and fished Miriam’s notebook out of his pack. There were a number of entries on local beasts and common Aberrants in the area, and he could have sworn he saw… Yes. Coralsnouts are here.

Coralsnouts have strong scales that, when ground into powder, can be added to a poultice to draw out most venoms. Their coral-like horns are also potent reagents, useful in the production of cures for muscle fatigue. The blue blood they contain is an excellent base for its venom, which can be combined to produce a potent poison, if only I can get it to work.

Useful. Not to mention, as an Aberrant its reservoir would be worth a great deal of coin.

Adhira hurled past Harker, making him jump as she plowed through a small tree trunk. He risked a look back the way she’d come, but the coralsnout was nowhere to be seen.

“Salted serpent!” came her curse, tinged with frustration for the first time.

Wood had splintered in all directions, the trunk having fallen sideways, but Adhira was already getting back on her feet. Her silvered armor was scuffed, but Water gleamed across its wave patterns. An infusion?

Harker put away his notebook. “I believe your fun just ran off.”

“It can’t have gotten far.” She cracked her neck and the sound was sharp and loud. “I cut open its back.”

Adhira tromped forward, clearly intent on hunting the thing down, but a dozen steps later she was left spinning in circles.

“Where’d it go?” She kicked at the thin underbrush. “There’s no trace of it.”

Harker got the impression she wasn’t used to tracking her meals—it made sense, she was a noble from far bigger islands than his—and he stepped forward. “Sovereign Sight.”

His tributary felt a lot better than it had before he’d had his Stature twice improved, but he still winced as Water rolled through him. He found nothing within three feet, even as he walked the battlefield where it had last stood on those creepy hands.

Harker looked up. Could it have…?

In order to check, he had to try something new. He released his Talent, waiting for a moment for his small reservoir to refill.

Adhira looked around, unsure of what he was staring at. “Are you a tracker, Harker? Can you tell where it went?”

He lifted a finger, but his focus was elsewhere. This was a new way to release his Talent, one that he’d conceptualized but hadn’t actually attempted. Harker had no clue if it would even work.

“Sovereign Sight,” he whispered, and pulsed the Water through his palm.

Like a ripple in a pond, shallow rings rolled out from him. They spread outward quickly and dissipated only an inch from his body. Information came back, sparse and blurry, like his vision right after waking.

Further then.

There was a movement involved in manifesting one’s Talent, though it was entirely inward. A clench and release of his reservoir and tributary that goaded his Water forth even as some other uncertain element transmuted it into Talent. The details were unclear to him—something neither his mother nor anyone else could ever explain.

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He did the same now, only Harker limited his release and hauled back on the clench harder than ever. Each pulse happened in the brief instants before he clenched again, rolling outward to five inches. Then eight. A full foot. The sensory details it picked up were just as limited as before and those mysterious muscles burned within him, but there was zero disorientation.

He pushed even further.

Two feet.

Three feet. Each activation was spending only a fraction of the Water his Talent usually commanded, but there was no dazed confusion inundating his mind.

Four feet. Dizziness stole across his senses for a moment, but it passed just as swiftly.

Five feet. His max limit before blacking out, this sent his head spinning. Harker thrust a hand out, bracing himself against a tree trunk to keep from keeling over. But he didn’t black out.

Progress. If I can keep doing this, maybe—Harker jerked his head back as something crawled across his skin. No. There’s nothing. It’s…above?

A trace of Water, almost evaporated, cooling against the back just over four feet above him.

A handprint.

“You seem—are you alright?” Adhira asked, coming up beside him.