Storm Strider

Twilight. Six hours after he captured the last of the tribesmen and had the boy tossed in a cage. The Marauder Captain sat atop his throne of crab shells in the harbour outpost, tapping his feet impatiently as he watched his crew toss the weak and injured Marauders onto their ship.

… So slow.

What a useless bunch.

They’d been stuck on this island for long enough. Their encounter with a patrolling Harbour Imperator ship a year ago had ended in their devastation, forcing them to sail through a storm and beach their own ship just to throw the Imperators off. Sure, they were lucky there were tribesmen already living on this island—and plenty of resources to harvest—that significantly hastened their repairs, but it’d been a year since they razed that mangrove to the ground. The fun of the first pillage was long over, and he wanted nothing more than to sail off and resume his–

“Captain,” one of his crew interrupted, coming up from behind. He turned around and glared at the short crab-headed man. “About that Hasharana girl ye let tossed to the waters… what about her? What we doin’ about her? Can’t very well let her be off, eh–”

He clamped the man’s neck with a giant pincer, throwing him twenty metres across the outpost and straight through one of the ship’s upper gunports. The man crashed through wood and barrels with a loud bang. The rest of his crew and the tribesmen children they were loading onto the ship turned to look at him—he glowered at all of them in turn, making them jolt and resume their normal activities.

They forget their place.

I make the decisions. My word’s absolute.

It didn’t matter one single bit whether the girl he’d dropped off the cliff survived the fall or not. She may have one of those ‘Altered Swarmsteel Systems’ in her neck, but she was no Hasharana. He’d had his suspicions when she first said she was one, but he should’ve immediately known—there was no such thing as a weak and young Hasharana. If she really was a wandering bug-slayer, she would’ve slaughtered the lot of them in the forest right there and then; it was more likely she was just some castaway caught up in a freak accident and ended up on this island, just like them.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t valuable; that Altered Swarmsteel System would sell for several fleets’ worth of silvers if extracted correctly. It just meant nobody would be coming to her aid while they marooned her on this island, and they could come back for her whenever they wanted. There was no rush to capture her as long as she was stuck here, but he had to report to his boss after he’d seemingly disappeared from the maps for so long. One matter was decidedly more urgent than the other.

So, he’d begrudgingly let his walking silvers run around a bit longer. He’d be back in a month, maybe two, and drag her out of the forest kicking and screaming like the bug she was.

Her kicks ain’t half-bad, though.

He rubbed his chest chitin as he watched the last of the cages being loaded into the slave galleys. The girl may not be a Hasharana—lacking in ferocity and killer instinct, for sure—but she definitely had the makings of one. The grande creador knew just how tough his first ‘battle’ on the open seas was: he’d been a nervous wreck, barely able to keep his cutlass from falling out of his hands as he faced down a Marauder boarding his simple trading carrack. That day, ten years ago, was when he’d killed his first man and joined the Marauders in order to survive. Since then, he’d…

…

… He didn’t remember much else about his human life.

Maybe he did a few dozen raids with his boys in the first few years after he joined, but the day they’d all shared flesh from a giant lightfoot crab they trawled up from the ocean floor was the first day he mutated: chitin over his chest, one claw over his left hand, and bulging arm muscles to boot. The rest of them quickly realised they’d come upon an incredible power and plunged in. By the end of the day, they’d all set foot on the path of no return. Their human instincts became weaker and weaker as the years went by, and the more crab they devoured, the stronger they became—the stronger their beastly yearnings, the less they remembered.

He was the ‘Captain’.

His boys were his ‘Crew’.

Together, they were the ‘Blackclaw Marauders’, and those were the only names he remembered.

…

Did he feel like remembering more?

Absolutely not.

Would he go back to being a pure-blooded human if he had a chance?

Absolutely not.

There was fun that could only be had as a Blackclaw Marauder, and he wouldn’t give up his strength for anything.

So, he’d done a lot of ‘reflecting’ this past year. That was a human thing, and the last he’d ever engage in. His plan was simple: he’d meet the boss, tell him what he saw, and the moment the boss loses interest and stops paying attention, he’d run his pincers through and take control of the larger Blackwhale Marauders. That’d put his power and reach up there with the Five Marauder Fleets, which meant he could start raiding in their territories as well without significant push-back–

When, all of a sudden, he heard something coming up behind him.

He whirled, pincer snapping back preemptively to grab another one of his crew’s neck, but there was nobody standing right behind him. There was only his crew of about twenty healthy men, rolling barrels up ramps and dragging crates along the floorboards—none of them were moving, either. They’d all heard the same sound and were staring back at the forest, trying to squint through the gargantuan trees, but twilights were dark on the open seas. The sun was just about to set behind them on the distant horizon; the only source of light they had were the few torches they’d stabbed into the giant walls surrounding the harbour outpost.

… I didn’t mishear.

This sound is…

He rose from his throne of shells, lifting his head and staring deep into the shadows of the forest. He closed his eyes. He listened. It was… the sound of giant roots wriggling. It was the sound of canopies rustling, earth softening, the ground quaking and rumbling beneath the footsteps of a titan. The twilight gales howled through the forest, washing down the beach, making their rags ruffle and his crew brace their heads against the cold winds—it was the sound of rushing water, and lots of it at the same time.

Then, there was a roar.

The gargantuan trees at the edge of the forest were kicked down, and a massive tidal wave of water washed out of the island. Birds took flight. The ground trembled with might. The behemoth of a wave surged across the beach and slammed into the walls of the harbour outpost before the Captain could even bellow at his crew to hurry up with the last of the loading.

Decimation.

The harbour outpost was a fragile thing of wood, reeds, and rope. The timbers supporting the harbour snapped under the onslaught. The wooden walls splintered and shattered under the weight of water. It was hard to tell from afar, but up close, the wave was a ten-metre-tall monstrosity that devoured everything in its way, and as it washed over the Captain and his crew, too, all sounds became muffled. All light became void. There was darkness in that split second between being on land while being crushed underwater—then the Captain was slammed onto his back, grunting hard as the wave washed out onto the open seas behind him.

…

It was one minute. Maybe even two. Eventually, the crest of the wave moved past the harbour and left only debris floating on the flooded beach. The whole outpost was destroyed in an instant; the ship was the only construct that had survived somewhat, though in obvious disrepair with the mast broken and more holes in the hull than when they’d beached it a year ago. The air hung with a tang of crystalline fresh water as his crew rose from the shallow water one by one, injured, but not dead. He was completely fine as well—it’d take more than a wave that size to hurt him through his chitin.

More important than both his crew and his ship, though, was the girl who’d rode the wave out of the forest; standing atop the water now in the centre of where the harbour outpost once stood, surrounded by him and his crew in every conceivable direction.

Twilight gleamed off her glaives for legs like the sun, and while she was spinning slowly around to look them all in the eye, it was his face that she lingered on for the longest.

There was ferocity in her eyes.

… If Marisol were stronger, one single stab would’ve been enough to shatter the floodgates, but multiple consecutive stabs did the trick just as well.

She’d spent more hours roaming the forest and trying to figure out if she could control the wave’s direction than she did preparing to ride it, but, in all honesty, she knew there was a rat’s chance in hell she could control where the wave would go after she broke the floodgates. The flow of water wasn’t something she could determine—she knew that much from skating through the storm—and still she had full confidence the massive wave would flow towards the harbour outpost, because she wasn’t alone in this battle.

The island’s Great Crab God was on her side, whatever he was, wherever he was—and now she stood in the middle of two dozen standing Marauders, iron sand crunching beneath the shallow waters of the flooded beach.

…

Strangely, she didn’t really feel nervous at all.

Three Marauders on the left jumped the gun and spit water at her, but she dodged and blitzed—less friction on shallow waters meant she could skate nearly twice as fast and four times as hard. Their ribs cracked as she kicked them all in the chest, sending them flying back several metres.

The rest of the grunt Marauders were disoriented, and didn’t bother waiting for orders from their captain. She dodged and spun and danced in a wide circle, slicing through steel cutlasses with her glaives and smashing through weak crab chitin with her knees, throwing them to the ground one by one before finishing her routine at exactly the same spot she started.

Twenty-one Marauders down; only one remaining.

While the captain glared at her, she glanced over at the ship sitting off to the side and felt a little relieved. There were dozens of tattooed children peeking out the gunports of the slave galleys, staring at her with weary, beady black eyes. Under normal circumstances, she’d be a bit unnerved knowing she was being stared at by so many children, but… it wasn’t like she had no practice entertaining a crowd before.

Without a word, she skated in and jumped, launching a double-spin kick into the captain’s chest. Her glaives didn’t cut. Her attack did zero damage. While he simply frowned and watched her skid back, she clenched her jaw and held onto that rippling pain in her glaives; she let herself feel the pain through her entire body, vibrating every muscle in her body.

This was just the warmup.

“... Yer some sort of ‘water strider’, aren’t ye?” the captain grunted, popping his shoulder as he stretched his arms, advancing slowly towards her. “A useless class. I’ve seen men twice yer size fall twice as hard with legs made of blades. Watchin’ ye dance through my crew was pretty, I’ll admit, but that’s about it. Yer barely even able to scratch–”

She darted back in, twenty metres away, and launched off the ground ten metres in.

Clench every muscle in your body.

When she launched off the water, she became weightless. Air escaped her lungs, the world around her turned into blurry lines of light.

Don’t fear the spin.

Her arms were crossed over her torso. Her glaives were crossed over each other. The winds, the light, the overload of sensations, the speed carving circles around her skin as she spun, spun, and spun—what was there to fear, after all?

Don’t fear the speed.

She was a Sand-Dancer, and she loved this speed. This exhilaration. The feeling of dancing on the very edge of her life, where no misstep could be allowed—it was the pride and joy of a Sand-Dancer to be graceful on this edge where most men would falter.

There was nothing to fear.

Dance, and spin, and kick with one hundred and ten percent of your power–

She kicked her glaive out at the moment before landing, bladed-edge aimed straight at the captain’s bicep, and jerked her glaive forward.

The attack was a loud clang, and it split a massive crack in his chitin as she skated past him, slowing to a complete halt ten metres away.

“... ‘And there is no wall that can stand in your way,’” she finished reciting under her breath, pulling one glaive back as she leaned her body forward again, narrowing her eyes on the panicking captain clutching his half-broken arm in surprise.

“What… in the creador’s name did ye do?” the captain growled, raising his other pincer as he glared at her. “A fuckin’ water strider, barely able to walk straight on rough land, chargin’ like that into me? Captain of the Blackclaw Marauders? Fuck off. I’ll show ye–”

‘It is an explosive jump, Marisol’.

Exhaling sharply, she darted forward and launched into a triple-spin, turning faster and harder and stronger than she’d ever turned before, and for a brief second it was like even light faded from the world. There was a void around her. Dark and cold. Empty and quiet. For a brief second, the only thing she could see was an inhuman-shaped ghost spinning around her, and the only thing she could hear was her heart pounding in her chest as fear took hold… but she remembered that word again. ‘Explosive grace’. What came to mind when she thought of the word ‘explosion’?

She thought of rage, defiance, desperation, all of it—she thought of fire, pure and simple, and she aimed it at the captain with the intent to hurt as she kicked her glaive out again at the moment of landing.

This time, her glaive cleaved through his right arm, the shock of the blow rippling through the rest of his body and making him crumble.

… ‘Explosive grace’.

‘Finish the routine, Marisol’.

She landed on one glaive, pivoted, held her kicking leg perpendicular to the water though it hurt her burning muscles incredibly so, and then bowed—not to the captain who was falling to his knees, no, but to the children in the slave galley cheering for her victory. They were the voices she wanted to hear, not whatever the captain had been rambling on about before she jumped on him.

After all was said and done, she hadn’t heard a single word he said.

[Objective #7 Completed: Destroy the Blackclaw Marauders]

[Reward: A promise fulfilled]