Golden Sun Redux: Tolbi Chapter, Part Two
In truth, Isaac had expected much, much worse. The ship for Tolbi had been sailing for almost two full minutes and they had only been attacked by enough monsters to sink a ship. A bigger one. Close consideration of their adventures so far had given him a very pessimistic view of the Adepts' luck.
"It was probably the pepper," Isaac muttered to himself, swinging his claymore at a multi-tentacled thing trying to climb over the side of the ship. "Lucky Pepper my a-aaGH!" One of the things had just spewed a stream of burning fluid at Isaac, which quickly started corroding the ship's hull.
Around him the other Adepts were equally immersed in battle. Garet at least seemed to be enjoying himself, crushing the slithery things like soufflés under a wrecking ball. And that was just his boots. The bits left after a swing of Garet's great axe were so few and disgusting they couldn't even be called remains.
"What are these things?" yelled Ivan, whacking at one with more-or-less zero effectiveness.
"You think I know?!" Mia shouted back from an upper section of the deck. "They look sort of like cuttlefish, but… different from the ones in the waters near Imil."
"More possessed-by-vengeful-spirits than usual?" suggested Isaac.
"Cuttlefish," repeated Garet. "At last, irony that I actually find funny."
"Why's…" began Ivan. He watched in disbelief as Garet called out 'Unleash Scorch!' and carved through one like a hot knife through sucker-covered butter. "…That?" he finished weakly, and ran for the edge.
"Poor guy," said Garet, moving to cover the Jupiter Adept. "Guess he can't handle the waves."
"Speaking of which," said Isaac, as he smashed the last one into oblivion and it greyed-out, "how come you can? Mars and Mercury is what I'm getting at."
"Yeah, but at least I have an outlet for it," said Garet, wiping off his boots. He and Isaac surveyed the deck appraisingly. "I think we did a pretty good job of that." A terrible scream rang up through the boards.
Isaac snapped toward Mia. "Weren't you covering the door?" Mia didn't even take the time to say 'I thought you were'. She simply vaulted the railing, landed gracefully, and charged through, down to the lower decks. The others followed quickly except for Ivan, who finished being sick and then followed as quickly as he dared.
From the rower's deck came shouts of 'Monsters!' and the various other stunningly obvious things that people tend to scream in a crisis, like 'Look out!' The Adepts charged in and tried to take stock of the situation, except that all of them were immediately knocked to the floor by people struggling to get out. All but Isaac, of course, who could be as immovable as a megalith when he wanted to.
"What's going on?" demanded Isaac of the guy who had run into him.
"Monsters came down from the upper decks, and they got André!" yelled the guy, getting up from the floor and trying to run for it.
"Why are you shouting? I'm right here."
"There are monsters! Man O' Wars!" the rower yelled.
"Ah. Best time to stay quiet, really. Here," Isaac said, taking his old Hunter's Sword out of his pack, "keep them from getting back out." He handed the rower the sword and moved on, the other Adepts just behind.
Several of the squid things from above deck were roaming down here, lashing their tentacles at anything that moved, or looked like it might, or was in their way, or wasn't in their way.
"I guess those would be the Man O' Wars," said Ivan. The warped creatures turned toward the sound of Ivan's voice and looked as menacing as rubbery hellspawn can look. They started to swell slightly, and spat more of the burning sludge.
"Oh, not this again!"
"Unleash Granite!" At Isaac's call the Venus Djinni sprang into motion, wrapping auras around the Adepts that deflected the acid. It ricocheted neatly off and into the wood of the hull, which started to corrode unpleasantly.
"Oh, well that's just PEACHY!" yelled Garet, smashing one of the Man O' Wars angrily. "We get to choose between burning and sinking." Perhaps hearing Garet, another one of the creatures did the expanding thing. With a resigned sigh, Isaac took a flying leap and tackled the thing. There was the hiss of dissolving armor and a scream of pain.
"Why does he always have to do that?" demanded Mia in exasperation, and charged through to where her healing powers were going to be needed very soon.
'What is the sound of one warrior of Mars finding out that those squid beasts can also throw up vast quantities of immobilising goo' is not a Zen question, and has little chance of ever becoming one, but Ivan always thought he was probably unique in knowing that the answer is "Yecchh!" Garet struggled against the gelatinous bonds, but found that even his own considerable strength wasn't enough to break free of the planks.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Ivan found himself alone in combat. If Garet couldn't wrench himself free then Gust wasn't likely to either, and Breeze wasn't any help here. Zephyr was good support, but not a solution on his own. Smog… Smog would stay in reserve until Ivan knew what to do with him. Which left Ivan's newest Djinni as the last option.
(Kite, what exactly is it that you're good at again?) asked Ivan, somewhere in his mind.
(I told you already. I can let you move so fast between two positions that you're as good as your own backup. Ready to try it?) asked the Jupiter Djinni.
"I'm not sure about this………" But the one thing he had learned for sure on the journey back fom Vale was that if he could trust any Djinni's judgment in battle, it was hers. "Here goes. Unleash Kite!" The Djinni's power flooded through him, and Ivan did a flip through the air on a sheer power high.
He realised a moment after landing that he had jumped in two different directions. His vision was blurry, like quickly flipping between two pages of a book. And he could clearly see the remaining Man O' Wars from two different angles.
Ivan smiled the smile of a Jupiter Adept with new power. (The closest equivalent in our world would be a thirteen year old boy who just woke up to find a tank on the front lawn.)
With a strangely reverberating voice, he raised a hand -or two- and called out "Tornado!"
Mia had just enough time to say 'Not in here!' before the room was a maelstrom of Jupiter power. The rowers and Adepts were all far enough away that they could avoid being pulled in, though the Ivans stood at the edge of the storm and felt the rush of wind with joy.
By the time the winds died down the Man O' Wars were long greyed. Ivan had gone back to being a single Adept, standing wild-eyed in the middle of a large space and breathing heavily.
"I've got a serious headache and I think I'm going to be sick again, but that was so cool," he said, exultantly.
"Yeah, and we really needed the pressure in here to change a lot as fast as possible, Ivan," said Mia, jumping up and rushing over to the most heavily burned part of the deck, where water was starting to seep in after the storm.
"Aw, hell no," said Garet, still trapped. "I've been to Mercury Lighthouse and the secret core of Sol Sanctum, I'm not going to drown in a boat in the middle of some place that isn't even an ocean."
"I'm not sure what we can do. There's no Mercury or Venus Psynergy I've ever heard of that lets you repair wood!"
"Wha 'bout both?" mumbled Isaac, now seriously regretting the tackling strategy. Mia's eyes went wide. Some people might have mistaken this as a revelation, but the Adepts knew Mia well enough to know that that was what she looked like when she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of that first. She snapped a hand out and grabbed Isaac's.
"Ground, switch over to me or you're going to spend the rest of your existence at the bottom of a lake." Power flickered, an arc of Psynergy from Isaac's hand to hers. Mia turned quickly back to the ever-weakening hull, searching her mind for the right Psynergy. "Ah. Here goes: Growth!" Sparks of Psynergy sprayed from her hand, and where they touched the wood it sprouted shoots that intertwined into a sort of watertight mesh.
There was a collective sigh of relief from the rowers, who the Adepts had completely forgotten about until now. "The captain is never going to believe this," said Kaja, in awe.
"Hey, aren't you supposed to be helping Ouranos and Sean on deck?" asked Isaac, still in a thick mental haze but aware that something was wrong. Oddly enough, the feeling didn't go away when Kaja had said 'Oh, that's right,' and headed up the stairs.
The next few events happened so fast that no one was sure what the order was. Isaac wondered to himself "Why haven't we heard any sound from above decks in a while?" Kaja opened the cabin door and managed to call out before getting smashed back into the gathered passengers. And a terrible, wet roar sounded out from the top deck, shaking the cabins below.
"Well, naturally," said Garet, who was trying to pull his axe over with his feet so he could try to cut through the sludge, which had hardened quite a lot. Kaja ran back down the stairs.
"Kraken!" he shouted.
"Kraken?" repeated Isaac.
"Kraken," he confirmed fearfully.
"Kraken?" Ivan asked of Mia.
"Kraken," she explained, darkly.
Isaac staggered slightly as he pulled himself upright and cut Garet free. "Ground, back over here." The Psynergy arc occurred again, backwards. "Let's get up there before something serious happens to Sean and Ouranos."
"Something serious has happened, Isaac! A Kraken!" said Kaja.
"Monsters don't happen, Kaja. They just get in the way for a while." He headed up determinedly.
Garet shook his head. "Don't worry. He just gets like that on bad days. Let's break something, Isaac!" he called, and charged up after his friend.
"I…" said Ivan, "…am going to get back up there before I'm sick again."
"And I'm going to get back up there before either of those two do something stupid," said Mia, and whirled after them.
The Kraken was about as huge and ugly as Mia had said. It was like a Man O' War on a huge scale, with vast pink tentacles that reached over the edges of the ship and trailed lazily in the water. Well, most of them. One was wrapped around Ouranos, and the Kraken seemed to be observing the effects of ever-greater pressure around the warrior's lungs with its monstrous eyes.
"Drop him, you overgrown presashimi freak!" yelled Isaac, leaping over the railing to the upper section of the deck. The others surged up the stairs, and the Kraken threw Ouranos onto the lower deck, their presence having caught its attention.
"Plans?" asked Isaac, standing on guard against the monster.
"Why do you always charge in without a plan?" demanded Mia.
"Driven by emotion. Okay, here's the plan." They waited for a moment, ready for anything. "Rush it!"
"That's your plan?! Unleash Gust!" yelled Ivan, but despite his protest he followed.
"Unleash Forge!" "Unleash Flint!" "Unleash Mist!" Despite the extra power afforded by the flames of Forge, none of the Djinn were able to do much more than scar the hide of the monster an uglier shade of raw pink. By the time Isaac could deal with the concept of the thing getting any uglier, it had struck back.
It might have interested Ivan, if he had not been busy dodging it at the time, that ancient explorers had made considerable studies on the beasts known as Krakens. They had unusual hunting habits, certainly. For example, as Garet was experiencing at that moment, they had an unusual snapping movement that the end of a tentacle strike that flung the target into the air without sending it away from the Kraken.
The Spinning Beat, or so it was called, was of particular effectiveness when used repeatedly in a short period of time, especially against multiple foes (or, from the Kraken's perspective, meals).
"Shouldn't it be tiring out? The thing looks like it's trying to play the xylophone!" yelled Mia at the Kraken whipped viciously at the deck. A strike hit Isaac, who managed to roll away form the blow enough that it simply sent him sprawling.
Bending backwards over the railing painfully, Isaac still saw the tentacle ready to follow up on its first shot. He vaulted backwards, swinging around and hanging onto the rail. The tentacle stabbed outwards, straight as a spear, and the courage of Venus that Isaac still hadn't realised was not always a good thing kicked in. He reached up, grabbed the flailing arm, and when the Kraken retracted its tentacle Isaac came with it, blade first.
The Book of the Mariner, as the most authoritative of these studies is titled, has this to say about Krakens: "Under no circumstances, if one has no choice but to do battle with one of these Watchers of the Deep, should one come within close range of the beast. One should approach the situation with the attitude that one would rather blow one's self up with acidic dynamite fish heads than get within ten feet of the ancient monsters called Krakens. Especially if they are angry."
The reason for this became clear very quickly. His sword stuck in the beast, Isaac was immediately wrapped up by the tentacles. The Kraken's body, or perhaps head, leaned back slightly, exposing the vast beak-shaped mouth. Isaac had the distinct feeling it was about to eat him.
As if he would be that lucky. The Book of the Mariner also notes that Krakens naturally build up toxins in their blood. Possibly from eating every single thing that fits into their beak or can be broken into small enough pieces. And these pathogens are gathered, and refined into another weapon.
From the gaping maw of the creature came the Dark Blessing. It was a cloud of blackness, of death and plague. It sucked the light out of the air, and given a few more moments it would have sucked the life out of Isaac. Fortunately, Garet wasn't the type to let that kind of thing happen.
"Unleash Fever!" He couldn't see anything, but Isaac could hear Fever's psychotic laughter. The great axe emerged from the darkness surrounded by the power of Mars, and carved through the Kraken's tentacles. Isaac leapt away, landed badly on the lower deck, and spent some time trying to focus enough to cast Cure Well.
Garet rolled out of the cloud, stood, and was immediately smacked in the stomach by another vengeful tentacle. He flew into the wall of the ship, tried and failed to duck another arm, and ended up in a heap against a stack of barrels.
"Ouch!" said the barrel.
Garet's head snapped up, painfully. "Ivan?"
"What? No! …Who's Ivan?"
"Who are you?' Garet demanded, leaping to his feet. One of the Kraken's arms swept by, and he leaned out of the way without even thinking about it. Another flew, and he dodged the other way.
"Hey, not bad," commented the barrel. Red light flickered and a Mars Djinni appeared on Garet's shoulder, also staring into the barrel. Garet looked up.
"Hoo-ha! Garet, you know I'm all in favour of water-"
"Fever, you're a nutcase."
"-but don't you think we should be doing something really soon? Like before we sink?" Fever blinked in his unusual way, one eye after the other.
"If you think a Heat Wave will bring that thing down I'll be glad to try it, but somehow I think even you don't hallucinate that much," Garet said to the Djinni.
"A LITTLE HELP!?!" shouted Ivan from about ten feet above the planks of the deck. The Kraken was tossing him contemplatively between two tentacles.
"Duh," said Fever. "That's why we need this guy." He pointed with a foot towards the barrel. Garet didn't bother with disbelief or anything else. He simply took on an expression of complete resignation to whatever reality had in store, and yanked out of the barrel whatever was inside.
"Who are you?"
"Ember, Mars Djinni extrordinaire," it said. "You?"
"Garet, Mars Adept in serious need of a new ally."
"If I help you, will you take me as far away from this lake as physically possible and never make me look at a boat again?"
"Deal."
"Ember Allies with Garet!"
Garet was getting used to this feeling now, but it was still as exhilarating as the day he met Forge. Ember exploded in a fountain of fireballs that shot into the sky, trailing sparks. Then they came swirling down, flying into him as the very air flashed with red light.
Garet turned to face the Kraken, and the power of Mars radiated from him so strongly that it actually seemed at a loss for roars. The Kraken lashed out with an arm, so straight and muscle-bound that it would likely have skewered an unprepared fighter.
"Unleash Corona!!" Instead it struck the Mars Psynergy shield and bent unpleasantly at a perfect right angle. "Heat Wave!" Not one to let opportunities pass by, Garet followed up with the fiery equivalent of a battering ram, which crashed into the Kraken and scorched it. (What do you do, anyway?)
(Me?) said Ember, inside his head. (I harness the awesome fires of passion to stoke your Psynergy into a raging conflagration of power!)
"I can tell you and I are going to get along well. Unleash Ember!" Some of Garet strength returned as the Djinni flew, but the part Garet was really looking forward to came next.
"TAKE COVER!" suggested Isaac.
"Fire Power Rise! Garet Summons Tiamat!" The words he spoke came from nowhere, as they always did when a new power made itself known, but Garet was very happy with the results. A tremendous creature crashed upon the deck, the queen of dragons. Around her burned flames of pure Psynergy, flames that did not consume the wood but still gave warmth and light. Her mouth opened and a great storm of flames burst forth, burning the Kraken until her flames grew so hot they turned white.
In a shower of sparks, Tiamat vanished. The Kraken in turn turned grey and disintegrated.
In the silence that followed, as the weight of the power expended feel upon Garet, Ivan commented "Sheesh. Not even enough time to get the breadcrumbs."
As the sun neared the horizon behind them, the ship and all its passengers reached the Tolbi Docks. Most of them were a bit annoyed but otherwise quite satisfied with the journey, except for the ones who had been forced to make up for injured rowers during the belowdecks battle.
"I still don't understand why you were hiding in a barrel," said Garet, leaning against the edge of the ship and watching people disembark. "I mean, stowing away so you could see more of the world, okay. And it's not your fault you ended up on a ferry instead of a trading ship either. But why stay?"
"Because getting off the ship would require getting close to the water, or at least going over it again. At least on deck I was well out of it," Ember explained.
"Right," said Ivan. "I take it all back, Garet. You just got stuck with an element that doesn't think ahead."
"I might point out that with Ember I now match you with Djinn, Jupiter Boy."
"I'm not worried yet, Garet. All I have to do is shove you over the edge and you'll be begging me to save you."
Mia turned to Isaac. "Aside from Imil, my experience with other people is rather limited. Are all males this competitive all the time?"
"Of course not," said Isaac. "I myself- yaaaAAAAGH!" There was a splash from far below, and Garet wandered away like he was competing in the Hundred-Metre Nonchalant Walk.
"Now that's what Ivan's talking about when he says you don't think ahead, Garet," said Mia, leaning backwards against the rail.
"What do you mean?" Instead of replying, Mia simply showed him, and vaulted back. A moment later there was another splash as she completed her graceful dive. Garet gave this due consideration. Then he grinned at Ivan.
"Come on, Jupiter Boy. We all have to face our fears some time."
"What are you doing down here?" asked Isaac, trying in vain to get his normally wild hair out of his eyes.
"I enjoy the atmosphere," Mia replied. "And the company." If he hadn't been busy freezing, Isaac would have blushed mightily. A moment later a scream came from over head. They looked up to see Garet and Ivan -clearly unwilling, since Garet had him in a headlock- hurtling down from above. Fever was on Garet's head, looking for all the world like a surfer.
"Wahoo! Let's do that again!" yelled Fever.
"You know what I think? I think he's permanently delirious," said Garet. He surveyed the water around him like he was trying not to think about it. "Well, this was obviously a good learning experience. Now let's get the hell out."
"Agreed. And then on to Tolbi," said Isaac.
"I don't know why," said Ivan, "but I'm getting a weird feeling about that place." The other Adepts considered the potential meaning behind a Jupiter Adept's predictions, and held him underwater until he took it back.
[Notes] Before I forget, credit goes to Terry Pratchett, the astonishing author of the Discworld books, for the Nonchalant Walk line. Further credit goes to Phoenix, commonly known here as Vilya, for playing the part of muse in this chapter and solving the italics/bold problem. No promises on what the next part will be, but expect it with my usual dismal punctuality. And if you like the series, look out for my Digimon fic coming soon…