Heretical Fishing

“
” Paul, Toby, and Theresa yelled, their voices reverberating along the threads of their ideal. It reminded me of the way I could communicate mentally with anyone bonded to me, except they had spoken to everyone in Tropica.
The only thing that stopped me from immediately using what little chi remained in my core was the confidence—the
lacing their words. I focused on my trust in them and the rest of Tropica.
Pain prickled near my heart. I rubbed it through my suit jacket as I stepped to the side, putting myself between Ruby, Fin, Steven, and the horrifying scene.
We had a plan. We
to have a plan… right?
But the longer I stared at the bay and the hundreds of cultivators loosing blinding spears and volleys of arrows, the less sure I became. Thousands of projectiles screamed down towards the assault shrimp and recon crabs, who the enemy mages had all focused on, choosing to target the least-mobile of our forces. The golden spears loosed by the Prime Cadre and Seer Anius were particularly horrifying, making an audible hum as they tore over the ocean, whipping up droplets in their wake.
Tropica intervened. Barry, Dodge, and the Church of Carcinization countered what few attacks they could. The pelicans unleashed blasts of wind, Bill and Pelly with a dagger held in their beaks, the rest of them without. Cinnamon unleashed multiple aura attacks, each slamming through at least one projectile before hitting its intended target.
Before me, Claws cackled on the shore, shooting off thunderbolts like an unhinged gunslinger. To my side, Teddy transformed, his aura flooding out, burning away his reserves of chi at incredible speed. As his claws, canines, and the spikes covering his body quadrupled in size, he unleashed a terrible roar that shook my bones. Even Rocky had rejoined the battle. He’d requisitioned one of the coconut boats, which he used to zoom across the bay, his clackers slamming closed with the rhythm of an early 2000’s club banger, detonating scores of golden projectiles before they could reach their targets.
Together, my friends had managed to eliminate the spears of the Prime Cadre and Seer Anius. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Maria took a step forward. “No,” Toby whispered, stopping her in her tracks. “Not you.”

Why wouldn’t they let her intervene? She could help. If this was the ‘endgame’, shouldn’t she…

The clusters of crustaceans, whom the vast majority of spears and arrows were still streaking towards, had paused just before unleashing counterattacks of their own.
They started to glow from within.
Maria squeezed my hand. A seed of hope sprouted in my stomach. The world’s chi was bubbling up from the ocean, forming little pools of water essence all around the battlefield. Time slowed. The bubbles flowed down towards the crabs, sensing their need, responding to the direness of their situation. A breakthrough. It was a
My hope blossomed, flooding me with relief.
The bubbles were fast, but compared to the divine projectiles of cultivators empowered by their god-empress, they were glacial. The spears and arrows not only sped past the bubbles, but destroyed them, banishing the breakthrough and leaving Snips’s coned crustaceans defenseless.
The prickling pain stabbed into my chest. Paul cursed. Theresa cursed even louder.
Toby uttered a single syllable. Calmly, as if he had not a care in the world. “Shields.”
An aura slammed into place around me. It was so strong that if not for its defensive ideal, it would have sent me sprawling. It wasn’t just a regular aura. Like Teddy’s, it had been empowered. Teddy hadn’t been increasing his output when he transformed… he’d been lending my surrendered strength to another.
The assault shrimp and recon crabs shimmered with silvery light under Teddy’s red aura, and as countless spears and arrows struck them from every direction, the projectiles were absorbed. Nullified completely.
I turned around. A second tree had sprouted beside Lemon—her brother, the
Lemon. There were two pairs of hands pressed palm-first into his trunk. Deklan and Dom grinned at me, both tried to give me a cheeky wink, and passed the frack out. Maria rushed to their side, Slimes flinging out ahead of her, already flooding pink chi into the twins.
I turned back to the bay.
Another eight boats had been destroyed in the onslaught. Some had fallen from friendly fire, a few had sunk after the god-empress tore open their aftifacts, and the rest had become collateral damage when a dagger’s passive kicked in, redirecting an empowered stream of chi into their hulls.
The enemy forces paid no mind to their dwindling fleet. They gathered more power, which was accelerated by the god-queen, who was gathering the divine chi from the just-sunken artifacts and pouring it into her followers.
“Retreat,” said the three tacticians.
I frowned when those riding coconut boats—Barry, Dodge, Rocky, Joel, Jess, the rest of the Church of Carcinization—all turned in the opposite direction and sailed farther from shore. But their reason for doing so became clear a moment later. The assault shrimp and recon crabs leaped out into the air, where they were collected by Tropica’s naval forces, not one of the crustaceans falling into the bay.
My eyes flicked from my friends, to the god-empress, then to the hundreds of enemy mages. The god empress looked catayonic, immobilized by her own efforts. The enemy mages, however, were anything but. Their torsos swiveled, tracing the passage of the coconut boats, their arms raised towards my friends.
Any second, the next volley of spears and arrows would arrive.
“Teddy,” said the three tacticians. “Now.”
Teddy’s eyes pressed together. He hunched his shoulders, and as a deep growl rumbled from his chest, he withdrew his ideal. All across the bay, the red, offensive light surrounding Tropica’s forces flickered. Faded completely. They were defenseless. I shot a look behind me. Deklan and Dom were still unconscious. Maria stared at me, her eyes wide with the same fear coursing through me. I whirled back around, clutching at my heart, the stabbing pain feeling like it would rupture my chest at any moment.
“Paul,” I croaked. “What are you—”
He cut me off with a sharp gesture of his hand, his ideal radiating disapproval at me for speaking out of turn.
He turned to face me. So did Theresa and Toby. They were still radiating disapproval, and I expected to see it reflected in their expressions. Instead, they gave me shit-eating grins. All three of them extended a single finger, which they then pointed up at the sky.
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When I spotted what they were pointing at, I frowned, then rubbed my eyes. When I gazed upwards again, I confirmed it. There was, in fact, a boat descending from directly above. It looked like Bob the Boat, except it couldn’t be. This ship had the same gothic trim designed by Paul, but it also had five fracking cannons, two on either side of its hull, and a single, much larger one mounted at the very tip of the bow.
I could see people clinging beside the cannons, holding onto the chain-link railings so they didn’t fly away. I frowned and rubbed my eyes again. They looked like… but it couldn’t be. There was no way. Yet it
to be them. Teddy’s red aura was surrounding them. How had they—
My oldest nemesis pounced, taking advantage of my confusion and forcing me to inspect the approaching vessel.
I forced the description from my eyes. Another naval system error? Bob the Boat had become a prime vessel? And what was up with the description?
“Okay,” I yelled up at the fire cultivators clinging to Bob’s railing, unable to keep a laugh from my voice. “How the
did you guys—”
Every single one of the cannons fired as the cultivators channeled torrents of flame into them. The larger one on the prow was so loud that I felt it in my chest. Even if I hadn’t seen it, the sounds were unmistakable. Defender and attacker alike all looked up into the sky as five cannonballs came thundering down towards the bay.
Except they weren’t cannonballs at all. They were condensed balls of flame, each holding the potential of a wildfire while remaining the width of a coconut—except the one in the center, which had come from the lead cannon and was the width of a barrel.
The god-empress shrieked. Her followers redirected their focus, raising their arms towards the incoming fireballs. They unleashed a golden wall of projectiles. Six deadly spears—launched by Anius and the Prime Cadre—led the charge. Just as they’d drawn water droplets into their wake the last time they’d been released, those six spears drew the rest of the arrows and spears behind them. It looked like fifty-meter-wide shield of golden chi, from which the six spears protruding like spiked studs. I shuddered as I imagined that wall of deadly points hitting me.
The fireballs, however, felt no such apprehension.
They met that golden shield of light a hundred meters above the bay, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the resulting detonation. I turned to wrap Ruby and Fin in a hug, pulling them close and covering them with my body just in case.
But I needn’t have worried. The opposing forces of fire and divine chi had been evenly matched. I gazed up at Bob the Boat, and the bloke clinging to the railing beside the main cannon. Such unbelievable power…
Trent’s red hair was swept back by the wind of their descent. This gave me a good look at his face, which was manic with glee, mirroring the same smile I could feel on my own cheeks. Holding onto the railings beside the portside cannons were four of Gormona’s former handlers. They were similar expressions to mine. Aisa—the fifth and final handler—and Keith held on for dear life to the furthest starboard cannon, while Tryphena, the former princess, held onto the closest one.
That left only Penelope, the former queen. She was guffawing as she held onto Bob’s wheel, laughing so hard that tears streamed from her eyes and across her temples.
I sighed in relief.
Though I didn’t yet know exactly what Bob the Boat had become, it was clear that he and the fire cultivators hanging from him were an even match for the enemy forces. The god-empress had spread her power across the invading army, and with her will split evenly between our hundreds of enemies, she could no longer unleash another spear like the one that had almost annihilated Corporal Claws.
If she reached for more of the condensed chi within the containers attached to her fleet, she would only end up hurting herself. Her body was barely handling the power she already wielded.
It felt as though two giant boulders of worry rolled off of my back, and I relaxed my shoulders, letting the relief wash through me. The stabbing pain in my chest agreed, the sensation vanishing entirely for the first time since I’d regained my trust in Tropica’s forces.
Someone cleared their throat. I glanced over to my left and found Maria with her arms crossed, giving me a pointed look. One of her eyebrows was raised so high that it threatened to merge with her sand-colored hair. Her gaze flicked down to my torse, then back up to my face. Her other eyebrow rose to join the first one.
I abruptly remembered that I’d used my body to shield Ruby and Fin. That was fine. What wasn’t fine was that my arms were still wrapped around them, and I was tenderly stroking Ruby’s back, my body subconsciously trying to comfort her and Fin. I sprang away like a startled cat.
“Oh—er—my bad.”
“Your bad?” Steven somehow looked even less impressed than my wife. “You pushed me away!
I only just managed to avoid slamming into Maria!”
Well, that sure explained the looks I was getting me.
“I thought it was sweet,” Ruby said, patting my shoulder. Her barely concealed smirk told me she was intentionally trying to make things worse.
“Uhhhh…”
“Fire!” Trent yelled, his voice echoing across Paul, Toby, and Theresa’s ideal.
Having closed half the distance to the bay, Bob the Boat’s guns were even louder this time, and I gazed up towards them.
“Woah!” I yelled, perhaps a little too excitedly. “Another round of cannon—”
The god-empress screeched again, and her forces released the same studded wall of divine projectiles. I rushed to shield Ruby and Fin again, but this time, I made sure to bring Steven in as well. He elbowed me in the side, the cheeky prick, but there was no real force in it. I called for Maria to help me, and she did. She positioned herself so I couldn’t avoid her questioning look, but just like Steven, she didn’t really mean it. We grinned at each other as the divine and fire-based projectiles collided, creating a red and gold plume only fifty meters above the bay.
When I turned back to see the aftermath—only after taking a good three steps away from Ruby and Fin—I realized I’d been wrong. The border of the explosion hadn’t ended fifty meters above the bay.
I let out a soft whistle.
Most of the enemy mages were singed and smoking, as were the sails of a few of their ships. The god-empress was apoplectic. Though her body remained immobile where she floated above the deck of Theoris, her lip twitched, and her face seemed locked in a permanent snarl as she stared up at the incoming boat.
I grinned in response, matching the expressions of all those clinging to Bob the Boat, who…
I frowned at the bloke I spotted through the open door of Bob’s cabin. He was puffing on a pipe that was longer than his torso. “Is that…?”
“Dad?” Maria yelled, also spotting Roger.
As shocked as we were, Corporal Claws’s reaction was even more visceral. She wiggled on the spot, her paws dancing a little tippy-tapped beat when she spotted the sword-chi cultivator. She raised one forepaw high, striking a grandiose pose, then shoved it down into her right pocket.
It removed holding something silver, System-made, and much larger than the daggers she’d prepared for this battle. It had the same multifaceted blade as her other creations, but this was no dagger. It was a fracking two-handed
My eyes were drawn into it.
I shook my head to clear my vision, already sending the description across to Maria. Before I could question the boosted amplification or the apparently variable chance of striking a random enemy, Claws hurled the sword through the air.
Roger raced forward like he’d been shot from a longbow. In one smooth and annoyingly cool movement, he ashed his pipe and slung it at his belt, then caught Claws’s bastard sword. He channeled his chi into it.
Roger wasn’t a Maker. If he inspected the sword, all he would see was its name and an error message. By the dangerous glint in his eye, however, I could tell his chi perfectly understood how powerful the blade was. He landed on the broken hull of a ship, somehow keeping his balance as it skidded along the ocean towards the Prime Vessel Theoris and the woman suspended above it.
He drew the sword back over his shoulder, and when he thrusted it forward a moment later, a column of blades carved its way through the air.
Directly towards the god-empress.