Between Moments
Orion’s Birth
Midday shone a gloomy light over Orion’s Birth’s currents on the third day after Meridia’s siege. It had been only three days.
And yet to Anna, somehow her family already seemed so far distant, lost from her life. Ages seemed to have passed since her father had last hugged her in his strong arms. Why was it so impossible to remember the way his fingers felt against her hair as he comforted her? What she would give to have her father with her now.
Archa bobbed her nose against Anna’s arms, attempting to console the girl whose tears invisibly webbed from her eyes within the water before her.
Anna often found herself here, in the company of the riding companions, since Maanta had left to find Sift’s realm. She was torn between sadness for the loss of her family and emptiness in her heart because of the feelings that were growing in her for Maanta. She found it odd to explain, but he had begun to feel like a member of a new family for her.
Archa bit playfully at her arm and tugged it in the waters, aiming to receive some of the spiced kelp Anna twisted methodically between her fingertips. “Here you are, girl.”
She released small pieces of kelp into the currents and smiled while watching the dolphin bob and swirl before her to catch its lunch meal. “What does Maanta usually feed you I wonder?” She stared off through the deep blue water, lost in ponderous thought for a moment. “I wish you could speak. There are so many things I’d like to know about Maanta and surely if you knew how to tell me you’d have something intriguing to say.”
“Aaaahoooo!” Archa sang.
It was funny, Anna thought, that Archa possibly had understood her and was trying to communicate back.
“Aaaahoooo!”
And then suddenly it wasn’t so cute anymore. Anna spotted dark shadows sweeping toward the main encampment of Meridians, and realized that Archa might be attempting to communicate something entirely different. The shadows massed in groups and swarmed in from all directions. Were those tailfins she saw whipping upon their backsides?
“Shhhh!” she whispered harshly to Archa. But it was useless; all of the riding fish about her nervously wailed out their aquatic songs. Thank goodness that at least Archa had caught the hint and quieted down. “Archa, we must hide.”
The dolphin bobbed its head knowingly as Anna wrapped her arms around its neck. She hugged close to its form and the two swept low. Where was she going to hide? And then she surprised herself while remembering something Maanta had said. Orion’s inner walls produced the poisonous fluid, air, and that is why her fellow Meridians were afraid to take shelter there. Would the tailfinned race also have fear of this place? Would they be afraid to search there?
She saw it as her only hope and steered Archa toward the one place near the shimmering walls that the tailfinned ones had not yet come. They swept within the darkness of Orion’s Birth’s inner ring, ducking under an outstretched ledge, and peered from a crack in the shadowy darkness. Archa’s smooth body shivered tentatively beside her.
She watched her people scurrying frantically as the Meridian encampment prepared for the attack. Sift eluded the tailfinned beings’ eyes as they approached, moving close to the sands and stealthily within a mass of vegetation. Where is he going? Anna wondered. Isn’t he supposed to be defending our people? Surely there was something she was missing here.
“Don’t scatter!” bellowed the elderly but stern looking Amaranth, his garb flapping in the currents. “They’ll only pick us off with their quickness. Grab your defenses and gather here in a group. If we gather in a mass, then they’ll have to come at all of us at once. We’ll have a chance to make them fight more than one of us at a time.”
Desperation played itself out with evidence upon the façades of the exhausted Meridians’ bodies. They had lost so much sleep in the past nights while mourning their dead.
But now, men and women alike nervously clamored, wielding shabby weaponry brought in the flight from Meridia and makeshift shields recently forged from the shell plates of crimson crustaceans.
Two whale lengths before her Anna witnessed a man swiftly harpooned in the back by an approaching tailfinned being. The man’s jaw bucked upwards as his body was pinned to the ocean floor. Grotesque gurgling noises popped outwards from his lips as his eyes filled with blood and rolled upwards.
“They are upon us! Come quickly!” Amaranth called again with panic.
Many other of Anna’s fellow Meridians were beheaded or harpooned upon the surrounding sands and against Orion’s Birth’s walls before the remaining group came together in a spherical group about Amaranth. The finned creatures’ swarming reminded her of a giant serpent.
A foul taste churned in her throat.
“Come at us then!” Amaranth taunted the intruders forward. “You’ve come to finish us off, so do so! You’ll lose a good many of your number in doing it though, I promise you!”
“Allacaristan!” Amaranth shouted from the mass of weakened Meridians. Dust leapt forth from his fingertips and frothed about the group, forming a hard shell-like substance upon their weaponry and flesh.
Evanshade emerged, whipping swiftly from his army as he watched this. “If you surrender now, old man, we’ll let you live but you must come with and work under us. You will be fed and provided shelter.”
“Provided a shelter which is rightfully ours? We will be no-one’s slaves, you disillusioned creature. We would rather die a noble death than work as minions for a dark-souled race. Why couldn’t you just be content to remain in your realm and live out your lives in peace? What pleasure can there be in tormenting us?”
Evanshade fixed an ominous look at Amaranth. “It is not in our right to question the lord of all darkness. We are here because he commands us to be here. As you will come with us, as he commands you to do, also. Otherwise, here you will perish a horrid death in these waters.”
Strength and determination took a stand in Amaranth’s eyes. “We would welcome death over whatever your dark lord plans for us. Our Lord will rescue our souls in the afterlife. If this is to be our final stand, then we will make it here.”
“You are a stubborn old man.” Pivoting in the currents, Evanshade turned to face his men. “The Meridians choose their destiny. Slay them.”
A flurry of harpoons hummed toward the floating Meridians, released from the fists of the men of Sangfoul. Many raised shields or shifted in effort to dodge the projectiles. A woman with flowing locks dove before her child to protect the young boy.
Though, to her and all but Amaranth’s surprise, whatever he had used on them caused the harpoons to ricochet from their shields and flesh. “Do not move,” he whispered to them. “If you do your bodies will be exposed once more.” His fingertips flicked in the waters while sending several black spheres toward the tailfinned creatures who were now rushing at them to kill them with close contact.
Octopus oils spewed forth from the balls, singeing the attackers’ corneas and temporarily blinding their sight.
“Leave them be, Evanshade, servant of darkness!” Sift called while rapidly approaching upon Lisaly’s back, a trident poised within his fist. “Your people owe me a battle, and I will not allow you through to them.”
“Sift, my old foe.” Evanshade tightly grasped his own trident. “I was wondering when you would resurface after fleeing me in Meridia. Would you too wish to return to servant-hood with these people?”
“You will pay!” Sift solemnly spoke, before moving Lisaly toward Evanshade and thrusting his trident into the other man’s weapon. Orange and crimson sparks fizzled in the currents as the weapons ground across each other. The two locked in a squealing metallic embrace, their bodies contorting in all directions as they attempted to outwit each other, getting the better of their opponent, but nothing halted the tension-filled display.
Long moments passed as each man gasped for breath, searching for a weakness in the other’s battle strategy.
As Evanshade dislod
ged his trident, lunging it at Sift’s skull, Sift slipped a sharpened shell from his garments and slashed it into his opponent’s chest with his free hand. Blood spewed from the gash in Evanshade’s body, but as the man writhed in pain he managed to strike Lisaly with his trident, sending the riding companion to the aquatic depths and squirming toward inevitable death.
Anna shielded her eyes. All was lost. What was worse was that she had promised herself when Illala was taken that she would protect Lisaly from harm. It was impossible that the fish would survive the spearing.
When Anna took her hands from her eyes to look once more on what was happening, she saw Evanshade nursing his wounds, three muscular tailfinned beings holding Sift captive and the remaining Meridians surrounded.
Her heart stood still as she noticed a distraught look lurking in Amaranth’s eyes. When would Maanta return with the men of Sift’s realm? Would they be able to help, or falter and be slain themselves?
Evanshade’s group and the Meridians were at a standstill now. The beings of Sangfoul wandered in a serpentine whirl about the mass of Meridians, unable to pierce their bodies due to whatever Amaranth had covered them with. But the enemy remained relentless, and unwilling to allow the group to escape.
“We originally didn’t wish to kill them, anyway,” Evanshade spoke in hushed tones with one of his men, while blood colored his fingertips from where he clasped his side. “And our sorcerers in Meridia surely can reverse whatever spell this old man has cast upon his people. Let us prod them along on a journey to their homewaters. It will be tedious but there we can un-cast this spell and do with them whatever we will.”
The man whom Evanshade had just spoken to swished off to inform his fellows. Soon the Meridians were netted in kelp, forced to swim to Meridia and their uncertain futures. Some found their arms tangling to the net’s outer sides as they swam.
Sift was strapped with whale hide behind the kelp prison, his arms bound to his legs behind him, his mouth clasped open in a clattering metal contraption. As the group moved away his twitching wide eyes caught Anna’s own.
“I can’t tell if he’s more afraid for himself or for me, left here alone,” Anna whispered to Archa. “I don’t know who I’m more afraid for. If Maanta returns, we have to find a way to rescue them.” She turned away and curled in the fetus position, her long crimson locks clinging to Orion’s Birth’s inner wall behind her. Moments passed; the silence maddening.
But at least this madness salvaged her soul from the death, which is eternal despair. All about her she searched, certain that at an unexpected moment a tailfinned being would swoop down and murder her.
Eventually after what seemed like an hour, something beautiful appeared above her eyes. A multicolored sphere, looking like a massive bubble, glistened and quickly rushed by. Inside the massive orb, like illusions, dark skinned men and women rode upon large shimmering fish. Their eyes appeared transfixed on the waters before them. Some bore masks of twisted bone that frightened her, but she was warmed by the hope that these might be Sift’s fellows.
The waters hummed as the sphere crossed above. She smiled as deep within the orb she noticed Maanta’s slim, pale body perched upon Lola’s slender one. She waved at him but couldn’t tell if he himself had taken notice of her. It would be another moment before the sphere had passed above. Its speed slowed as it did so and by the time it had passed, Anna had perched upon Archa and swept off in the waters, following the orb to the place where it would end its journey.