Chapter 33: Wake Surfing

  The forest floor quickly became their workshop.

  Tom-Tom, Lance, and Garret crouched together with their palms pressed to the dirt as earth-aether rippled outward. Stones rose in neat chunks, and slabs locked together into a flat base while thin sheets slid inward to form sidewalls. Henry knelt beside them, coaxing his vines through every gap in the rocks causing the greenery to snake tightly around them, tying it all together until the raft held firm as a single piece.

  Thanks to magic, in less than twenty minutes, they had something roughly usable. It was an ugly rectangular cube of rock, plantlife and wood with pointed ends on either side, but it would at least float.

  “All aboard the SS Tombstone,” Garret said with cheer as he planted his shield at the prow as though it were some kind of a figurehead. Tom-Tom clambered in with his ladles clinking against his belt and muttering prayers to whatever kobold spirits they prayed to, Alex didn’t know for sure—maybe it was dragons. Peter followed them, while Allie eased herself in last, settling cross-legged as though daring the raft to tip and suffer her anger for it.

  Holly stepped forward, wind already whipping through her hair, aether collecting around her shoulders. She spread her arms, drawing air into a wide spiral and kicking up a whirlwind around them, until the entire raft shuddered against the bank like it wanted to leap free on its own.

  “Hold on,” she warned.

  Alex and Eric stood to one side, muscles tense, each ready to sprint the moment it launched. Henry and Lance had already moved in the opposite direction, making their way up and across the cliff wall. They worked together, stone cracking outward, vines wrapping around jutting slabs, and forming rough ledges over the water ahead of them. Then they formed another, and another until an uneven path clung along the face of the cliff, just wide enough for two. They had already scaled the cliffside for a couple hundred yards over the lake toward the waterfall.

  “Backup’s set,” Henry called out.

  “Good!” Alex’s eyes flicked from the raft to the waterfall. He was anxious about the whole plan, his [Aether Sight] useless against the dense curtain of liquid that fell over the cliff-face. Whatever waited behind there was invisible.

  “Now or never,” Eric said.

  Holly’s spell reached its peak. With a quick thrust of her palms, the wind howled like a cannon blast and slammed into the raft. The rocky boat cut across the lake in a spray of foam, propelled like a stone flung from a sling.

  Alex broke into motion a heartbeat after Holly let the spell loose. Eric was already at his side, the captain skimming across the water in a rush of white sparks as wind gathered under his boots. Holly moved with the same grace, her steps light and sure, air curling beneath her like invisible bridges.

  Alex, though didn’t have air aether, so he had to improvise instead. The [Flare] spell was his secret idea. He didn’t overcharge it, didn’t let the shockwave disperse in all directions like it did during a normal casting. Instead he compressed it tightly, smaller than a fist, and snapped it off his boot soles in bursts. With each cast the spell discharged with a muffled pop, jets of force kicking him forward and barely keeping him above the waterline. The impact stung his ankles and calves with each blast, but he grinned through it. It worked, it actually worked.

  They only needed to traverse a quarter mile, then they’d reach the waterfall and push through. That was the thought Alex clung to. It was a sprint, nothing more. Of course, the lake disagreed.

  The surface broke with a roiling crash as reptilian-scaled backs rose from the depths. Crocodilian shapes appeared, thick-bodied and broad-snouted, their backs bristling with aquatic reeds and jagged fronds. One surged directly up under the raft, its bulk nearly capsizing the craft and forcing Garret to slam his shield down on one side like a counter weight to stabilize it. The wood-and-stone platform jolted hard, nearly spilling Allie into the froth as she stood up.

  “Contact!” Peter roared, his spearhead already flashing downward to stab into the water.

  The beast he hit thrashed, claws whipping across the raft in an explosion of water spray. Tom-Tom was already there to assist, his stone-wrapped ladles in hand, and he began smashing rapid-fire strikes into the beast’s snapping maw. Each clang of stone against scale made the water shudder with force.

  “Left side!” Allie cried, as light flashed from her palm. A radiant flare burst against a second chimera’s face, blinding it long enough for Peter’s spear to whip around and pierce one of its eyes and into its head.

  From outside the boat, Eric raised his arm. Lightning cracked down in a sweeping torrent, turning the air acrid with the taste of ozone. The bolt tore into a third chimera just breaking the water, its body convulsing before sinking back below in a plume of smoke.

  Alex cursed as he watched the lake swelling upward from yet more shadows cutting their way toward the raft. He fired a stronger [Flare] under his heel, vaulting forward with renewed speed.

  “Keep them off the boat!”

  The lake was alive with violence now, the raft little more than bait dragging every scaled monster out of the deep toward the rising chaos. The beast’s snarls mingled with the waterfall’s thunder, claws and tails crashing against shield, blade, and spell as the raid fought to stay afloat. And all the while, the wall of white water loomed ever closer.

  For Garret, Allie, Peter and Tom-Tom… the raft bucked like a living thing beneath them, water surging high as one chimera after another tried their best to slam its bulk against the side. Tom-Tom’s shrill war cry cut through the chaos as he jammed both stone-wrapped ladles into one beast’s snout, the thing retreating in pain, but not gone. Allie threw blazing light blasts around like rice at a wedding. Garret used his shield more often than his sword.

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  “We’re halfway!” Eric shouted,“Hold it together!”

  The lake didn’t care for his command. Two more hulking shapes cut the surface at once, with eyes gleaming and jaws wide. One lunged for Peter, who barely ducked in time, as teeth scraped across his shoulder. The other smashed into the back of the raft, nearly tossing Tom-Tom up into the air, before Garret managed to catch the lizard by his tail and haul him back.

  “Not today—” Eric broke into a roar as lightning snapped down his arm, streaking into the water in another large burst. The nearest dozen chimera all convulsed, smoke and steam hissing from their scales, but a few of the them only sank for a moment before thrashing back up, angrier than before.

  “Just keep them under, don’t waste time finishing them off!” Alex barked. His aether channels burned as he kicked another [Flare] under his foot, vaulting across the spray. His fist lashed down into a glowing eye, bursting it in a splash of violet-black gore. The beast howled and thrashed back into the depths.

  Another tail whipped out toward Alex. He caught it with one hand, momentum dragging him half under the waves. For a moment water blinded him, it was cold and choking until he cast another [Flare] from his palm, the spell igniting like a miniature grenade. The chimera recoiled instantly, its scales blistering, and Alex dragged himself onto the raft’s edge just as it passed him in the water, nearly having his arm ripped out of its socket for the effort.

  “Alex!” Holly shouted out, panicked.

  He looked up just in time to see her thrust her arms wide. Air spiraled into a massive gale, a wall of force slamming into the back of the raft once again. He let his [Vita-Surge Cloak] flash into existence for a split moment, long enough to grip the boat as Holly’s spell hit and it rocketed the craft forward even faster, cutting distance in a surge of spray and speed.

  Holly’s attack got the raft out of harm’s way, and now even faster toward the waterfall, but it left her wide open. Three chimeras burst from the water behind her, their jaws clacking.

  “Hold them!” Eric shouted, his gaze raising to look at Henry and Lance at the cliffside.

  Henry’s vines shot out like spears, exploding from the nearby cliff face and wrapping the chimera trio in a tangle of living green. He grit his teeth, veins bulging at his temple as he forced more growth into the bindings. “Not… letting… go!”

  The vines only held the chimera for half second before they broke free, but it was enough to let the Holly get away.

  Beside him, Lance created another ledge into the cliffside with a grunt, his boots hammering into the stone as he fought to keep pace with the rest of the team. “Almost there!” he yelled, though sweat ran down his face from the effort.

  The raft skipped over the wake, closer and closer to the curtain of the falls. The sound was deafening now, a wall of thunder swallowing every cry and every clash. And still the chimeras came, snapping, thrashing, clawing, relentless. The lake seemed to boil from the motion.

  Everywhere Alex looked, another scaled shape rose in the froth, jaws gaping wide, tails lashing, claws scrabbling for purchase against raft and cliff and air. Garret braced at the prow, shield smashed into one maw only for another to slam into his side and tossing him back into the boat on his back. Tom-Tom shrieked defiance, ladles pounding again and again into eyes and teeth, purple blood spraying like foul rain.

  Allie’s voice traveled on the wind and cut through the thunder of water, harsh syllables of a spell burst light across the deck, dazzling the beasts that had nearly surrounded Peter. The older man used the heartbeat of reprieve to drive his spear deep into a snout, before tearing it free as the raft bucked again. He then released a spell of his own, creating illusionary shadows over the top of the water, mimicking the boats shape, no doubt hoping to distract at least a few of the beasts.

  By this time, Holly had crossed at immense speed and now stood on the stern of the boat, her martial robes and hair whipping behind her, eyes blazing as wind howled in her hands. She flung another storm-gust into the lake, hurling three chimera back under, but the dungeon—and by extension the System—struck back harder.

  A tail longer than a tree slammed the side of the craft, nearly capsizing them, Allie crying out as she clung to the slick edge.

  “Stay on it!” Alex bellowed, hurling himself past the ship’s sidewall. [Flare] blasted from his soles once more, kicking him high across the water. He landed on a chimera’s head, his fist driving a smaller [Flare] directly into its eye socket. The blast popped the eye in a wet explosion. The beast screamed as it sank under the surface, and Alex jumped away.

  Another came for Henry and Lance as the traversed the cliff, its body breaching the water in an impressive leap, maw wide. Eric’s lightning caught it mid-air, the smell of burnt flesh filling their nostrils as it belly flopped back down.

  They were holding out, barely, but it wasn’t going to be enough. There were too many beasts.

  The spray thickened as they got ever closer, the shadow of the waterfall rising like a wall of white fury before them. They were close, so close.

  “Push it!” Alex shouted.

  Holly obeyed. She flung both arms wide, calling every thread of her wind, a gale so violent it split the mist around them into streamers. The raft lurched, skimming the water like an arrow loosed from a bow, and crashing through the curtain of falling water. Alex shielded his eyes from the torrent, just catching a glimpse of the raft as it cut through the sheet of water.

  “Keep going!” Eric bellowed. Lightning streamed from his hands in crackling arcs that splashed across the water. A dozen beasts writhed and flopped from the attack, but none died. They didn’t need to—the only goal was distance now, just to make it through and survive.

  Alex hit the surface with another [Flare] burst from his heel, spraying steam into the air as he vaulted up and hurled a [Wind Lance]. The spell slammed into a chimera just as it went for Eric. The captain nodded to him in acknowledgment just before he ducked under the spray of the falls after the boat, air swirling at his heels.

  “We’re almost there!” Henry shouted at Alex, both arms stretched as vines wriggled from his forearms, lashing out to bind a chimera’s snout shut. The creature twisted and sank, dragging the vines deep. Henry didn’t let go until the beast vanished.

  “Go!” Alex fired another [Wind Lance] into a throng of chimeras to cut open the path. “Get behind the fall!”

  One after the other the two men dove forward, kicking off the cliffside they’d been carving across and plunged through the mist. Then, Alex was left alone.

  The lake roiled below him.

  Something massive surged upward, larger than the others. Its scales glistened dark green, jaws stretched wide enough to swallow a horse whole. Its eyes locked on to Alex with terrible clarity, the water rolling off its back in waves.

  Alex braced as one final spell cycled through his aether channels. His whole body erupted in agony as he pushed every drop of energy in his body that he could muster, forcing it down and condensing it into his foot. The chimera burst from the lake in a spray of foam, tail whipping behind it like a battering ram.

  “Too late motherfucker, you lose,” Alex chuckled. He kicked down with everything he had, casting a [Flare] at full-power.

  Alex’s heel connected square with the chimera’s skull, the massive resulting shockwave stopping the beast outright, but also launching Alex through the air and into the misty froth of the waterfall behind him.