Chapter 263: Kaia Veyne

"Am I doing a good job being cute?" Alex asked.

I almost choked.

I put the skewer down and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked at her.

She had her chin propped on her fist, the smug face fully operational, eyebrows slightly raised in the specific way of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

"What are you talking about," I said.

"I know you like cute things." She tilted her head. "I have your memories. REEEEMEEEMBEEEER?" Drawn out, theatrical, accompanied by a little wave of her fingers.

I looked away. "I'm not answering that."

She leaned closer and poked my cheek. "Hihi. Aren't I the one who's supposed to be acting cute? Why are you doing it instead?"

I frowned.

"Sorry." She pulled back immediately. "That was, sorry."

I looked at her.

The apology had arrived fast and genuine, the smug thing gone.

I thought about…

Me in the memories she'd copied— all of it, the whole picture—

Thought about what she actually knew about why that kind of comment landed. She'd apologized before I had to say anything.

"It's fine," I said.

We went back to eating.

The rain kept coming down soft around the awning, and neither of us said much for a while, which was its own kind of comfortable.

***

It happened gradually, the way the ship settling into night mode happened gradually— not one moment but many, layered on each other.

Lanterns across the deck were lowered, their light going from working-bright to quieter.

The market stalls closed one by one, canvas coming down over the fronts of them, the last few vendors putting things away.

Hanging clothes that had been drying on lines above the lower deck disappeared through hatches.

Now that I think about it… how is it gonna dry if it's always raining… that's when I saw a faint plastic above them… drying things slowly and gradually.

I see…

Crates that had been sitting open were sealed and secured, ropes run through their handles and knotted to fixed points.

The deck crew moved through a checklist I couldn't see but could understand by watching what they touched.

***

Alex and I stood at the top of the boarding plank, watching the water below.

The water was wrong. Darkened. More than the night should make it, like the depth had come up to meet the surface.

I was looking at it and trying to decide what I was actually seeing when Alex's hand tightened around my arm.

"Oppa," she said. "Why is it doing that again?"

"Doing what."

"The rain. It's getting heavier. Isn't today supposed to be peaceful since shit happened last night… and" Thunder rolled, distant but real, and she pressed slightly closer. "The thunder. And I'm not… erm. I'm not saying the jellyfish are coming back… b—"

"You just said the jellyfish might be coming back."

"I said I'm NOT… aigo… (⁠╯⁠°⁠□⁠°⁠）⁠╯⁠︵⁠ ⁠┻⁠━⁠┻"

A knock.

Below the ship.

Against the hull— a single impact, deep and resonant, traveling up through the structure.

We both went still.

Another knock. Same location.

"Did you hear that?" Alex said.

"Yeah."

Running feet. I turned and Calvyn was already crossing the deck at full sprint, hair flying, pointing at us. "Move! Get up on deck now, both of you!"

I grabbed Alex and ran.

***

The deck was filling fast. Crew members coming up from below, from the stalls, from wherever they'd been— going to the main deck space with an organized response to something they'd trained for.

Nobody was panicking.

Nobody was shouting.

They just came, and they stood, and they faced outward.

Some held lanterns. Most held nothing. They were waiting for something.

I spotted the old man from the fish stall— the white beard, the comfortable width of him, and that big smile —and steered toward him with Alex still on my arm.

"What's happening?" I asked.

He smiled at me with a particular warmth of someone who found the question charming. "Just a small emergency. Nothing will happen that we can't manage, long as our boss isn't late."

He glanced toward the boarding plank.

Behind him, his daughter Sarah stood with her eyes half-closed, the hood of her raincoat up, clearly recently removed from sleep and unimpressed about it.

Thunder again. Closer.

I looked up.

The particles appeared in the flash of it— floating, drifting, hundreds of pale bell-shapes moving in the upper dark.

More than before.

Many more, the storm filling with them in the spaces between lightning strikes, each flash revealing another layer of them deeper in the clouds.

"What the—"

"Everyone!" Calvyn's voice cut across the deck, sharp and carrying. "Summon!"

The deck changed.

I watched it happen in pieces, each person doing the same thing in their own way— a gesture, a breath, something written on the air in light that wasn't quite visible until it was, rune-shapes appearing briefly around their hands and then resolving into whatever they'd called.

Guns materialized in a dozen hands at once, the metal of them catching the lantern light.

Bows appeared on shoulders, arrows already nocked— those were the most of them, maybe 30, 40 people, the archers spreading toward the railings with practiced spacing.

Spears came up in clusters of 5 or 6 crew members who moved together like they'd drilled it.

2 massive cannons, one on each side of the deck, suddenly with people at them, the weapons themselves having appeared from wherever they'd been stored in whatever form they took when not needed.

Calvyn stood in the middle of it all with a sword.

Just a sword.

Single blade, nothing ornate about it— but the way she held it said everything about how many times she'd held it before.

Then the old man's hands glowed.

Not the subtle glow of the rune-shapes. Bright, building, the light coming up from the center of both palms and spreading outward, and then the axe appeared— massive, the head of it wider than his shoulders, the handle long enough that he held it one-handed with the ease of something that weighed nothing to him.

He rested it against his shoulder and looked at the sky.

Sarah, beside him, yawned.

"Ready!" Calvyn shouted.

They were already ready.

Had been ready before she said it.

Above us the jellyfish came down in their thousands, the storm carrying them, the rain being used by them, and the space between the ship and the cloud base was filling with pale translucent shapes and trailing curtains of tentacles, the red cores of them beginning their rotation—

"Fire!"

The deck erupted.

The bows went first— thirty-something glowing trajectories arcing upward, hitting the jellyfish at the lower edge of the formation, each impact producing a flash-burst that lit the surrounding sky for a second before fading.

Then the guns, rapid and overlapping, the sound of them combining into something continuous.

A cannon ball left the port side and hit something enormous near the center of the formation and the explosion it produced was brighter than lightning, the shockwave of it moving outward through the swarm and scattering the nearest ones sideways.

Alex and I stood at the edge of it and watched.

It wasn't enough.

I could see that even without being able to count them— the front line fell or scattered, and more came through behind, the sky still full of them, the formation pressing down despite the fire.

The crew kept shooting.

Footsteps on the boarding plank.

Measured. Not rushing.

Kaia Veyne walked onto the deck.

She didn't look at the sky. She looked at the crew— swept her eyes across them once, quick, the way you checked a map before moving —and then she stopped in the center of the deck and closed her eyes.

Something gathered behind her.

Not visibly, not at first— but I felt it.

And then the glows appeared: dozens of them, small and distinct, hovering in a loose formation behind her like they'd been called from the space around her, each one the color of something between gold and white.

They moved.

Not toward the sky— toward the crew first.

Each glow found someone, settled, and their body responded: a brief flash, and then a faint luminescence tracing along their arms, their hands, into whatever weapon they held.

Alex looked down at her own arms.

The light was there too, and mine, working its way through both of us standing at the edge of the deck.

Kaia opened her eyes.

She looked at the sky properly for the first time. The swarm above us, still pressing down, the ones the crew had dropped already replaced by those behind them.

She spread her arms.

"Finish it," she said. Not loud. Just certain.

Every bow released.

The arrows went up glowing, and where they hit, the explosion was 3times what it had been before, 4times, the sky lighting up in a sequence of detonations that moved across the swarm from front to back, each one consuming what was in range and scattering the rest.

The cannons fired simultaneously and the impact of both at once produced a shockwave visible to the eye, a wave moving outward through the formation and taking everything it touched.

It was over in 40 seconds.

The sky cleared.

Not gradually— the remaining jellyfish retreating upward, back into the clouds, the storm losing its payload.

The rain kept falling, but it fell on empty air and the surface of the water and the deck of the ship, and nothing else.

Kaia stood with her arms still spread, the last of the glow fading from the deck around her.

She hadn't looked behind her once.

Not during the volleys, not during the detonations, not as the sky emptied.

She had looked at me.

Once, at the beginning, when she said finish it.

I stood there with Alex's hand still tight on my arm and the warmth of whatever she'd sent through us fading, and I watched Kaia lower her arms.

The old man nearby set his axe against his shoulder and rolled his neck.

Sarah, beside him, had fallen asleep standing up.

"Oh, there's one last thing that's coming." the old man said.