Mark of the Magi

Chapter 3

By

Lily of Trust

Disclaimers: Go away, all of you lawyer types. If you think I'm laying claim, you obviously haven't been paying attention

(AN: Wow, lookit how fast I'm getting this out! Do not become used to it! I am tired! We have this stupid writing assessment test at my school, and my wrists and hands HURT dammit! Only massive amounts of RootBeer blocked the pain long enough for me to type this whole thing up.

And I think all my muses really need is Chicken Soup. The flu-bug caught my poor chibis, so Laura's been picking up the slack. She works well under pressure.)

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It was strange to begin with, having to adjust to the rhythmic bucking and rolling of the sea after so long on dry land. Shin adapted within a few hours, which surprised no one. Shu had a brief, but victorious bout with sea-sickness, and Touma...not quite so brief.

Two days after the confusion in Kichis, daylight found the trio at the head of the Straits of Eon. The first night out had included a great deal of fumbling around in the dark, trying to familiarize themselves with the rigging and equipment aboard their stolen craft. The skiff itself was barely twenty feet long, and worked on two sails. It had a rather deep keel, so running it in fathoms-deep water wasn't a problem. Below decks, they'd strung up makeshift hammocks, and stowed their stolen supplies away in bins made specifically for that purpose. Already they were putting together a sort of pattern of duties. Shu took care of manning the tiller, Shin kept an eye on the sails, which ere in constant need of trimming, and when Touma wasn't too green around the gills, he took care of the rigging. Even Shin was impressed by the thief's ability to shinny up the lines.

"Hey! We made it!" Touma cried, gesturing wildly towards the half-mile wide strip of sea between two sheer sided cliffs. "I thought it'd take longer than this!"

"To hear sailors talk, it's not getting to the Straits that's the tricky part. It's getting through them," Shu said darkly from his position at the stern.

"Eh?" Touma jumped down from his perch on the yardarm, hitting the deck with a light thunk. "What do you mean?"

"Some scheduled ships never show up in the harbor," Shin explained. "They just...vanish. And no one ever hears from their crews again, after they enter the Straits."

"Some people say there's a Kraken that makes it's home at the bottom of the water here," Shu locked an eye on Touma. "Personally, I'd rather not find out for certain."

The thief scoffed. "G'wan, tell me another one."

"You don't believe it's true?" Shu asked mildly.

"Hells no!" Touma crossed his arms and nodded towards the Straits. "No one's seen a Kraken in living memory. And besides, they're supposed to be deep-sea creatures, if the legends have it right. What would one be doing here?" He shook his head mournfully at Shin. "Really shrimp, spreading tales like that. I expected better out of you." He leaned casually back against the starboard railing. "Our bullheaded steersman on the other hand..."

"Who's bullheaded?!" Shu growled, abandoning his post to grab for the thief. The results were similar to trying to snatch a greased pig. Touma snickered and dodged away, taunting Shu from a distance, where it was safe.

"Bullheaded...steersman...get it? Whoa! Hey, put that down!"

Shin shook his head and took up Shu's position. He stared pensively at the looming cliffs. Let Touma scoff. He was getting a sinking feeling about the whole thing.

~

"This is..." Shu gawked up at the walls of the Straits, his voice hushed and almost awed.

"Completely unreal," Touma finished. He was nursing a sizeable bump on his skull, but the others' reaction assured him what he was seeing was no mirage.

On either side of the small craft, barriers of stone rose hundreds of feet into the air. The only horizons they could see were the thin strips to the north or south of them. The cliffs only lasted for perhaps a mile, before slowly turning into mountains whose slopes touched the water. Forests of hardwood grew up on either shore, and a few small villages scraped a living out of the mountain soil.

"It's just until we get free of the cliffs that we have to keep our eyes open," Shin said, looking over the portside rail into the enigmatic mirror surface of the water.

"What makes you say that?" Touma questioned, joining him at the side and leaning over it to follow his gaze. "You see something?"

"No," Shin replied, eyes still locked on the choppy waves. "But I can feel it. And it can see me. Distance means nothing to it."

Touma turned and frowned at him in concern. "...Shin? Is something the matter?" He lightly tapped the younger man's shoulder. The younger man jerked as though coming out of a daze, and blinked owlishly at him. "Dammit man, what's wrong with you?"

"His Element's water, right Shin?" Shu spoke up from the tiller. The smaller man nodded and stepped away from the side.

"It comes and goes," He said finally. "Sometimes when I'm nowhere near water, even. I just always have to hope it doesn't happen in public."

"So if he says something's down there, something's down there," Shu said grimly.

Touma took another quick glance over the side, and edged away from it. "I'll just take your word for it." His eyes suddenly lit with curiosity. "How's it work, this talent of yours? What can you do with it?"

"Shin shrugged. "There aren't any schools for this sort of thing. It's just...instinct. I've never tried to do anything with it. But sometimes things just happen" He paused, and his mouth twisted into a bitter line. "Sometimes I wonder why I ended up with it." He sat down and crossed his legs under himself.

Touma flopped down on the deck and crossed his arms behind his head. He stared blankly at the sky for a moment before saying, "I was six when the Royal Family's Magi went rogue. I can sort of remember how it used to be, before that. There were schools for elemental Magi. But those were the first places to be raided for human batteries." There was something unreadable in his voice. Shu looked to Shin over the thief's head, and shrugged. Touma wasn't telling them something, but it wasn't any of their business either way.

"I remember that too," Shu spoke up at last. "I was a little older than you, I think. There was this fire Elemental that lived on the corner of my family's street. 'Course I didn't live in Kichis then. We were closer to the border, so we didn't know about the hunt for Elementals for a while." He grinned crookedly to himself. "I never would have thought you could do much with fire, but she used to be able to do just about anything we needed. I think I was about eight or nine when they finally found her and took her away."

"Huh," Shin mumbled, turning both their stories over in his mind. He'd been too young to recall much of what had happened those twelve years ago. Touma had since stood and was pacing the deck, hands jammed into the pockets of his vests. He watched the imposing stone walls slide by, and fingered a small, smooth worry stone tucked into the cloth. Now even he was beginning to get edgy about this stretch of water.

"What've you got there?" Shu asked genially, nodding towards where the blue haired man was obviously toying with something in his pocket.

"Eh?" Touma looked at him and flashed that guileless grin again. "Nothing, just something I carry around with me to keep my hands occupied. Otherwise I might, y'know, start lifting things just to keep in practice."

"You had better not, lightfingers."

Shin just laughed and tugged at the rope that tightened the sails. They'd gone a little more slack than he liked, and he really wanted to get through the first mile of the Straits before something happened.

The skiff gave a sudden little shudder. The vibration shook the occupants of the small craft, and they all grabbed for something to steady themselves with.

"What was that?!" Touma demanded.

"It felt like we scraped over a rock or something..." Shu frowned. "There could be damage to the hull."

Shin swore softly. He hadn't seen anything, but that didn't mean nothing was there. Besides, there were reefs along the Straits of Eon; charts and maps brought in by ship Captains proved as much.

"Drop anchor. I'll go down and take a look," He offered. "If something's amiss, I can make a quick repair and we can pull up at the first likely spot we find and rig up a more permanent fix." He felt a little uneasy about doing so, given his previous feeling of being watched by something immensely old and powerful, but they couldn't afford to spring a leak now.

Shu nodded. "Touma, see if you can find a spare line. I'm not letting him go down without something to pull him back in with. Just in case."

The thief nodded and hurried below decks. He searched around for a minute or two before finding a suitable length of rope.

Up on deck, Shin shucked off his shirt and accepted one end of the rope as Touma passed it to him. He looped it around his waist and tied it tightly; you didn't spend five years of your life working on a dock and not learn how to tie sailors' knots. The other end was quickly secured to the mast while the anchor was heaved overboard and the sails were left slack.

"Tug once on it if there's anything wrong, and twice if you want to come back up," Shu instructed him.

"Any more than that and we'll assume something with lots of teeth thought you looked tasty," Touma joked, and instinctively ducked the cuff Shu threw his way.

"I thought you didn't believe in all that Kraken stuff?" He said mockingly.

"I don't, but it's fun to watch you two go all pale. Besides, Krakens don't have teeth. I was thinking more along the lines of giant sharks."

Shin rolled his eyes and knifed off the railing into the water. A cloud of silvery bubbles followed him downward; he opened his eyes to watch them drift back upwards, and wasn't bothered in the least by the sting of the salt. This felt good. Right. The water slid around his skin like wet silk as he allowed himself to sink a little deeper to inspect the hull of the skiff.

Beneath his slowly kicking feet was an endless chasm of slowly darkening shades of blue. He could actually see the colors graduate from cornflower to sapphire, to midnight velvet, and finally into gradients of black. He shivered suddenly, and forced his mind away from thinking about all that empty space. There was a limit to how long he could stay underwater. After all, even water Elementals had to breathe.

A quick look at the keel showed nothing more than a little barnacle accumulation. Shin frowned to himself and ducked under the boat to take a look at the other side. Again, nothing. There was no strain on his lungs yet, but no matter how much he'd like to have stayed in the water just a while longer, he'd better get back topside and tell the other two it was safe to get a move on.

Some alarm in the back of his head suddenly went on red alert, blaring and flashing in a manner that could only mean incredible danger. Shin looked about himself, but saw nothing. Not a fish in sight. Which, now that he thought about it, was a little strange...

The dark pit beneath him began to surge upwards. Bubbles the size of the skiff billowed upward towards the surface. Shin decided rather quickly that it would be in his best interests to follow them. He pushed away from the hull of the craft and kicked out to head back to the world above. The core of blackness screamed, quite loud enough that he could hear it even below the water. Something uncoiled from the darkness with all the speed of a bullwhip. It lashed around his ankle and held him firm. He tugged urgently at the rope around his waist, but there was no response from above; not even a pull. Two pools of blood red opened up from the pit. Black slits split them widthwise from top to bottom. Very slowly, they blinked. He yanked on the rope again, but there was still no reaction. What the hell was going on up there?!

The keening cry tore through the water again, and the two red floodlights rushed upwards at a terrifying speed. Shin caught a brief flash of a beaked mouth opening, and the ridiculously tiny tongue inside of it, before a mass of writing tentacles wrapped their way around his body and began to drag him back down to the depths. He opened his mouth involuntarily to cry out, and the air in his lungs escaped in a mass of bubbles that hung around his head for a moment like a halo. The line about his waist snapped taut as it reached its limits, and for a heart-stopping second, Shin thought the entire skiff would be dragged under along with him. Then another of the tentacles whipped right through the rope, and he felt it go slack.

Shin tried to push back against the constraining limbs, but found that they were wrapped far too tight around his body. He scraped his palms raw on the Kraken's abrasive skin, and it did little good. His lungs were screaming and suffocating themselves as they tried to draw air from his bloodstream. His head pounded and rang with the noise of a dozen bells, and the world was slowly evaporating into a violet-laced cloud of black.

From deep within him, something roiled and snapped. It ripped loose from the bindings he'd imposed upon it, and came roaring forward with all the force of a tidal wave. The water surrounding his body began to whirl and froth. The miniature whirlpool picked up speed and momentum, until the tentacles wrapped around the young man were viciously torn from the Kraken's body by the sheer velocity. It screamed again, and surged forward to snatch at its prey. The ocean refused to give him up. Violent under-toes pounded the Kraken back towards the depths, creating more and more eddies that ripped away its limbs and skin. The water went cloudy with black blood, and the Straits appeared more like an inkwell than a strip of sea.

Shin wasted no time wondering at the strange turn of events. He pushed himself towards the light and air as quickly as he could.

~During the same time period, topside~

Silence had descended shortly after Shin disappeared from sight. The other two men peered anxiously over the side.

"You think he's okay?" Touma asked after a short period of quiet.

"Why wouldn't he be?"

"...All that talk about Krakens..."

"Ah HAH! I knew you were just as superstitious as the rest of us!"

"Oh why don't you just-" Touma halted mid-retort and cocked his head to the side. "Do you hear anything?"

Shu paused and frowned, straining his ears. "No, not a thing. Maybe there's something wrong with you after all."

"Har har har. Shut your mouth for a few minutes and listen."

Growling quietly under his breath, Shu did as he was told, and fell entirely silent as he realized that there was, in fact, something out there. It sounded almost like someone was...singing?

"What is that?" He asked aloud.

"Wind through the rocks, maybe?" Touma suggested hesitantly. He was fiddling with the worry stone again.

"No...no that's definitely a voice. Someone's out there."

"But singing?!" The thief snorted incredulously. "Who would be standing on a cliff-top, singing at the top of their lungs?" Shu just shrugged, not really knowing either.

The voice grew even louder, filling their ears with a sweet, soprano that rose and fell in time with the waves. It became almost hypnotic, drowning out the sound of the surf pounding against the cliffs without ever seeming to increase in volume. Both young men stood frozen, held in place by the bonds of music.

A figure seemed to melt out of the rock face. A young woman stood atop an outcropping stone, mouth open in song. She smiled serenely down at the boat, wearing nothing much other than that smile. A strand of kelp wound about the significant part of her torso, and another hung from her waist as a very basic kind of skirt. Bracelets of shell-studded braided seaweed hung from her wrists and ankles. Tangled ebon dark hair streamed down her back and clung to her shoulders and arms. Cerulean blue eyes glinted with something akin to hunger as she laughed, and the laugh wove its way into the music.

Touma found his eyes locked on the woman, and his body moved without any conscious trigger from him. His hands closed around the portside railing, and he was just bracing one foot against it, poised to dive off, when the song shattered into a shriek of pure rage.

The woman on the rock shelf screamed and the water of the Straits began to heave and churn. The sea took on a night-black cast, and something else added its voice to the woman's. She turned her furious gaze on the small craft, and her features twisted and blurred until she was hardly beautiful any longer. She hissed at them, and vanished back into the stone, leaving two very mystified men behind.

Touma looked over at Shu, and found the other man also about ready to jump into the sea. He yelped and leapt back down to the deck, reaching out to pull Shu with him.

"What the hell were we doing?!" He asked rhetorically, his eyes wide and startled.

"That's what I'd like to know!" Shin's voice came from behind them. He was just hauling himself over the starboard railing onto the skiff. He was covered in the brackish water, and very short of breath.

"What happened to you?!" Shu gasped, kneeling next to the sprawled teen to help him back to his feet.

"Kraken," Came the short reply. "Came up from beneath me."

"Why aren't you dead?" Touma asked incredulously. "How could you have escaped a Kraken?!"

"Don't think I did on my own," Shin replied, turning his head to spit out a mouthful of fishy tasting water. "Something happened...I don't know." He turned troubled eyes on the both of them. "What about you two?"

Shu looked to Touma, still mystified. "We saw a woman...singing..."

"A Siren!" Shin exclaimed.

Touma rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. "A Siren and a Kraken strike us simultaneously? That can't be coincidence."

"Sure it wasn't," Shu said, struck by a sudden flash of insight. "They were partners. The Siren distracts the passengers of a ship long enough for the Kraken to sink it, and then they split the goods."

Shin shuddered. "And it nearly worked. Part of the Kraken's role must have been to get the ship in question to stop long enough for the Siren to work her magic. That was no rock we scraped up against."

"A nearly flawless plan," Touma nodded in grudging admiration. "They forgot one possibility though. That one of their victims might be a water Elemental." He grinned brightly at Shin.

Shu helped the exhausted young man to his feet, still looking slightly disturbed. "But still...a Siren and a Kraken? Not exactly a well matched pair."

Touma shrugged. "Survival makes for strange companions, I guess."

All Shin really wanted was to collapse into his hammock and sleep for a week, fish smell or no, but he smiled tiredly at Touma's words and looked back and forth between his two friends.

"It does indeed."