Storm Strider

… Marisol was born and raised in a desert. She’d never been wrapped in water before, but sinking deep into the basin gave her the feeling of being swaddled in her mama’s blanket as a child. Water was all-encompassing; it held her gently and let her down even more so. Falling asleep had never been easier despite the Archive yelling in her ear to snap out of it.

The only thing that made it slightly difficult to fall asleep was the crab helmet that’d been slapped over her head. Sharp edges pressed into her throat. The fact that the back of the helmet hit the bottom before the rest of her body made it so it was like she had a pillow under her head, but not a comfortable one.

If it weren’t the only thing keeping her from drowning, she’d have found some strength to rip it off already.

…

She was afraid.

She didn’t want to swim back up.

She didn’t want to face the Marauders again.

She wanted to close her eyes, look away, and–

She dreamed of a brighter, happier world.

She was standing on an iron sand beach, facing the calm, open seas. She looked down; her limbs were shorter, she was wearing a pair of plain reed shorts, there was a pretty flower tucked in her hair. It was the body of a little boy, and it wasn’t hers.

Right now, ‘she’ was a ‘he’.

A dream?

Whose dream?

Whooping and clapping behind him caught his attention. He whirled and saw a hundred children dancing, twirling, and capering to a beat of drums. They were all like him: short, tattooed, white lily flowers in their hair. He felt himself smiling and joining the fun, picking an empty drum and sitting on it, adding his own beat to the rhythm. It was early in the morning, but they played until it was noon and someone blew a horn in the far distance. Their mamas were calling them home for lunch.

This is… the island I'm on?

Who am I?

He felt himself skittering through the forest with the rest of the children. They wove along giant roots, swung across chasms on rope-like vines, and travelled through the dense canopies until they returned to their village in the middle of a mangrove. The straw houses were built two metres above shallow waters, rope bridges connecting each house door to door. Elders whittled wood on mats, mothers dismantled mountains of crabs into edible chunks, and everyone else manned the giant boiling pots with wooden rods and fishing nets. For lunch, they always dumped hundreds of people's worth of crabs into the pots to feed everyone all at once, and he loved them for it. Crabs were best eaten steaming hot and shared.

So, he plucked four steaming crab legs from the giant pot and sprinted back home, jumping through the window. On the upper bunk bed, laying on her stomach with her legs kicking back and forth, was a young girl nearly twice his size: wearing a one-piece reed dress, two flowers in her hair, and she was probably a fair few years older than him.

‘Older sister’.

The girl was his older sister.

He felt himself waving his steam crab legs over his head, and his sister looked back at him, lips parting into a wide smile. Just as usual, she'd been crafting something out of discarded crab parts, but the crab legs smelled really nice; they both dropped what they were doing and shared the legs on the lower bunk. Laughing, chatting, poking and playing with each other—his older sister was a ‘Swarmsteel Maker’, and he loved the little crab trinkets she always made for everyone.

And today was just like any other day.

Peaceful, quiet, but not lonely. He had everyone he loved on the island, and–

There was fire.

There were metal bombs slamming into the island.

There was a broken black ship drifting ashore, and the men on board jumped off with giant blades in hand, cutting down the children who couldn’t run away with their legs blown off by the metal bombs. The men were ‘Plagas An Mar’—bugs of the great seas—and true to their name, they tore through the forest in search of more riches to plunder and more crabs to devour. Fighting back was useless. The fathers of the village opened the waterfall’s floodgates, but they were pushed back only a few hours. The mothers dumped boiling water on them, but they shrugged it off and advanced. Knives were ineffective, rocks and slings bounced off their garish orange chitin; the mangrove village was razed, the earth tasting fresh human blood. All the adults were slain.

He could smell sour air. He wanted to puke. Just looking at the mound of corpses made his eyes burn, but even with fear in his throat, he didn’t falter. His sister pulled him deeper into the island as the surviving children and elders scattered, and, on one occasion, the two of them had to leap down a twenty-metre-tall cliff to get away from the crab men. His sister didn’t hesitate. She made the first jump and turned around to look up, shouting at him to do the same.

“I can’t!” he shouted, hugging himself, shivering from head to toe. It was hot and humid and the sun was right over his head; his sweat was cold nevertheless.

“I’ll catch you!” his sister shouted back, opening her arms. “It doesn’t matter how you jump! Just trust me! I’ll be here!”

“... Promise?”

“I will!”

His sister thumped her heart with a fist, baring a toothy grin at him. He gulped hard and looked behind him; the crab men were hacking through the forest, chasing down the survivors. He had to jump now, or his mama and papa’s deaths would’ve been in vain.

So he jumped, screamed all the way down, and his sister caught him in both arms.

That day, the crab men captured one less child than they should’ve. All of them returned to their broken ship by the beach, adamant on making a temporary outpost while they repaired the only vessel they had off the island. They didn’t stop hunting for the survivors, of course—for two months, they hounded him and his sister across the island, searching every nook and cranny for any brats hiding in the dark. Any elders found were elders slain. The children were taken to work in the outpost, and would likely serve them in the slave galleys after their ship was repaired.

Unlike him, his sister had no intention of sitting still and waiting for the crab men to sail off with the surviving children in tow.

Two more months passed. The two of them scurried from shadow to shadow, gathering the survivors and mounting small resistances against the crab men. They pelted the men with arrows, ensnared them with vines and pitfall traps, and even managed to kill two of the men on accident by dropping entire logs on their heads. After that, the crab men became enraged and started hunting them again. No effort was spared. One by one, they were picked off and their bodies hung to dry on their broken ship—by the fifth month since the crab men arrived, only two of them were left. Him, and his sister.

Unlike him, his sister never gave up hope.

One night, while they went to bed in a cave, he woke up to the sound of tinkering. He rolled around on his mat to see his sister hunched over their small bonfire. Her shadow was cast on the wall, her back was turned towards him; she freaked when he tapped her over the shoulder, peering down at her latest creation.

It was a silly, ridiculous-looking full-body crab armour, finished off by a crab helmet with two protruded eye stalks.

“Don’t laugh,” his sister grumbled, pushing him slightly back as she slammed the helmet over her head and strapped the armour over her bony frame. “Watch this.”

She sounded serious enough, but he would’ve never expected his serious older sister to break into a strange, silly dance. She clicked her pincer gauntlet in one hand and slapped the top of her helmet like a drum with the other. She skittered from side to side, clicking her heels, stomping to the rhythm of her beat. He sat on his haunches, entranced, but he wasn’t looking straight at her—his eyes were aglow as he stared at her shadow on the wall, and there was nothing anyone could say to convince him that wasn’t the Crab God they all worshipped in the crystal coral cavern.

As she finished her dance and took off her helmet, wiping sweat off her brows, he clapped. Hard. Like he’d never clapped before, his own legs kicking and dancing to the beat that’d already passed. She quickly tackled him and pressed a finger to her lips, shushing him to be quiet—and they waited, hearts beating together until the crab men outside the cave eventually passed them by.

“... Whoever wears the carcass of our Great Crab God becomes the indomitable lord of the island,” she whispered, giggling in his ear as she rolled over back to sleep, slipping her helmet under his head to serve as a pillow. “The mainlanders on the continent call it ‘Swarmsteel’, but don’t be fooled by what complicated names they give their carcasses—as long as I am wearing the carcass of our Great Crab God, strength flows through the armour and enters my blood. I am now a half-god.”

She shuffled over to hug him in his sleep, and while her armour was prickly and spiky in more places than one, she was more than warm enough to make up for it.

He hugged her back, burying his face in her chest.

“As long as I wear this armour, I am invincible,” she breathes, squeezing the back of his head. “I won’t let you down. We’ll kick the Plagas An Mar off the island and rebuild. The island of the Crab God won’t fall here.”

And he felt relieved hearing that.

He felt he believed her.

He wanted to believe her more than anything else in the world.

So when they next stumbled across a crab men patrol group in the forest, they launched an ambush. His sister leaped out of the bushes in full armour, pincer gauntlet matching the crab men’s own, and he smashed boulders in the back of their heads as she held them down with her superior strength. They managed to kill two, but the last man was big, burly, and twice the size of his sister.

One punch with his pincer, and her stomach was gouged through even with the indomitable armour standing in its way.

He didn’t remember much of what immediately happened after that. He felt he remembered his sister carrying him on her back, sprinting through the forest as the rest of the men pursued. He felt he remembered them climbing down vines, climbing up canopies, swinging across branches and chasms, but the only thing he truly remembered was his sister dropping the moment they returned to their hideout cave, blood pooling across the cold stone.

He remembered frantically propping her up against the wall, sobbing and utterly hysteric. He remembered begging for her to stay. He remembered trying to peel off her armour, trying to examine her wound, but the only thing she did was pry her helmet off and push it into his chest.

He remembered her head lolling up to smile at him, her eyes deathly bleary.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered. “Our Great Crab God hears our plight, and he will do everything in his power to get you through this.”

He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t looking at her. He was too busy sobbing, sniffling, and desperately trying to wipe his tears to look—she yanked him into a hug and caressed the back of his head, resting her cheek against his hair.

“... Our Great Crab God hears our plight,” she whispered again, her voice cracking, her arms shaking. “He will move this island. He will look for a warrior. He will search the great blue, and he will wade through even the mightiest of storms until he hears the dying screech of a leviathan, ravaged by a single bug-slayer—and when that bug-slayer washes ashore, you must be there to help them, because I promise they will help you in return.”

“...”

When he didn’t answer immediately, she smacked the top of his head and spoke again.

“You must be there to help them,” she said, pleading with him. “They may not speak our tongue. They may not know this island and its people. They may find you irritating or annoying to hang around with, and grande creador knows how hard it is to tire you out when you get excited, but by the time they arrive, you will have known them longer than they will know you. Can you trust them with your life, Kuku?”

“...”

He nodded.

And that was good enough for her.

So he stayed there in her embrace until dawn—until the birds started chirping, until the morning winds licked gentle breezes across the forest—and he stood up, slamming the Crab God’s helmet over his head.

He felt his senses expanding.

He felt his strength renewing.

He felt himself running out of the cave, hopping across the canopy, attracting the crab men’s attention. Metal bombs blew at his feet. Water streams whizzed past his head. He taunted them, soared over their heads, and for the next two months he played the role of the pesky observer. Every day, he climbed the highest cliff and peered around the island, scouting the great blue for any storms on the horizon. Every day, he practised catching crabs in the crystal coral cavern for the awaited bug-slayer. He built a new hut in a clearing next to the waterfall and made sure to know everything there was to know about the island… just in case the bug-slayer did know how to speak his tongue.

So he ran and waited and prayed until one day, through the beady eye holes in his helmet, he spotted a nasty storm on the far horizon.

He didn’t wait anymore.

He put on his pincer gauntlet for the last time, jumped down the cliff, and–

The crab helmet split in half while Marisol’s eyes shot open, lying on her back at the bottom of the basin, and she felt tears streaming down her cheeks.

It was a strange, strange feeling, crying underwater—but she knew it was no dream, and Kuku had to be alive up there.

[... Marisol. Marisol. Marisol–]

I hear you.

The Archive sighed a huge breath of relief. [I detected intense brainwave activity from you just now. You must have biologically ‘melded’ with the Swarmsteel for a brief moment. Swarmsteel are made of bug parts, after all, so if one is particularly well-made, it is possible for a user to inherit the memories of the previous user.]

…

[Are you alright, Marisol?]

[You must surface for air–]

I know.

Her eyes brimmed with cold fury as she stared at the broken helmet next to her for a second. It must’ve split in half because it didn’t want her lying down here until she died, and for that—she willed herself to stand, kicking off the bottom with the tip of her glaives.

Surfacing with a gasp, she paddled until she reached the edge of the basin, climbing onto the wooden floodgate keeping the water contained. Her arms ached. Her muscles burned. It felt like she’d spent hours underwater, but in reality, it must’ve been less than a minute.

But it didn’t feel like a minute, and that was what was most important.

That’s why Kuku jumped off that tree.

He ‘knew’ me for far, far longer than three days.

And I…

She shook water out of her hair and thought back to her sand-dancing training. It didn’t happen very often, but whenever her mama had time to oversee her training, she’d always be made to do the hardest spin jumps at maximum power—none of them were at the level required for the War Jump, but without a doubt, her mama had been drilling the weaker forms of it since she was strong enough to jump.

How many years was that, then?

Two years?

Five years?

Maybe even ten?

… ‘Fearless’, huh?

And now that she felt she finally understood the ‘core’ of the War Jump, she needed a target to use it on.

She looked down at the creaky wooden floodgate she was standing on, and remembered—the tribesmen of the island had opened them in an attempt to wash out the Marauders with a flood of water, but back then, there wasn’t a lot of water in the basin. The tribesmen must’ve been opening the floodgates periodically to make sure the basin wouldn’t overflow, but it’d been nearly a year since they were last opened; if she cut through the locks with her glaives and stomped really, really hard now, just how powerful would the resulting flood be?

More importantly, could she skate across the forest with the flood under her glaives?

Archive.

[Yes?]

I’m going.

A flash of anger went through her eyes as she raised a knee, preparing to stab a glaive down into the floodgate.

She’d never been quite as pissed off as she was right now.

[... Understood, Marisol Vellamira.]

[Overriding previous objective.]

[Objective #7: Defeat the Blackclaw Marauders]

[Objective #7: Destroy the Blackclaw Marauders]

[Time Limit: 6 hours]

[Reward: A promise fulfilled]

[Failure: Death]