Chương 34: Wind and Water

Ultán grit his teeth against the sting of the rain as he flew up towards the clouds, Eoin Daithi in hand. He was angrier than he'd been in a very long time. It wasn't so much how difficult the chase had been - he specialized in hunting upper ring interlopers. He was used to some challenges. He had realized why this bounty had vexed him so much while standing on the prow of his ship, throwing daggers into the darkness it had taken him years to learn how to see through. It was Cormac's smug face. Born Third Ring.

Took a Nature almost no one even knew existed and had been coasting through life ever since. Ultán could imagine how easy he must have had it, lucking his way into every advantage - somehow living both on the streets and in the lap of luxury. Cormac had a casual way about him that seemed to expect that things would just go his way. It wasn't an unusual trait to find in children, but at least then you had the satisfaction of seeing their own invulnerability crumble when the world failed to bow to their expectations.

Except the world did bow to Cormac's expectations. There was nothing worse than a know-it-all who actually did know it all, but a close second was a lucky man who never got his comeuppance. Well, Ultán was here to be that comeuppance today. First, he needed to rid himself of Eoin Daithi. The ragged Selkie seemed to be watching Ultán with interest. The moment Eoin's feet left the deck of the ship he had breathed a sigh of relief, even as Ultán's Wind carried them both upwards. The vampire ship, Ultán realized.

Eoin was free of its draining. It wouldn't replenish any fórsa he'd lost, but it would allow him to keep more in this fight. Separating him from the ship might have been a mistake. Ultán had an Analysis technique he called Mark Your Prey. He used it on Eoin and found exactly what he thought he would. He was Fifth Ring, like Ultán himself. Though if he had to guess, Ultán would say born Fifth, unlike him, who had been born Second almost a thousand years ago.

Still, Ultán never made it beyond Lower Fifth - this man was undoubtedly Upper. That would have made beating him more difficult - not impossible, but challenging - had Eoin not been in the most pitiful state in which Ultán had ever seen a Fifth. Ascension to Fifth Ring came with a lot of regenerative benefits, so even as old as Ultán was, he wasn't nearly as tired after the chase as anyone lower ring would have been thanks to the Material Wind fórsa he had absorbed. But Eoin looked…

soul weary, was what came to mind. He looked hollowed out and squeezed dry. Ultán had no idea how long he'd been in the cage of the vampire ship, but it seemed it wasn't that easy to bounce back from. Ultán was confident he could at least get Eoin out of the fight and go back for Cormac and Róise. They broke the surface of the clouds, the sky erupting into a blaze of stars, the lopsided eyes of the twin moons filling the cloudscape with pale light.

Here Ultán stopped - in the rain, over the ocean, Eoin would have an advantage. But here, this was the domain of the wind.

"Much quieter up here than I would have thought," Eoin remarked, looking down. Below them was a vast carpet of billowing black clouds, lightning dancing among them like foxfire.

"I find it soothing myself," Ultán agreed, letting Eoin go. The Selkie began to fall. Immediately Ultán unleashed a technique: Path of the Desert Sands. His fórsa coalesced into thousands of grains of crystal sand, slicing towards Eoin like a giant scythe. This was a standard Fifth Ring Wind technique - originally called Desert Sand Blade - but Ultán had put his own spin on it. Each tiny grain erupted into tangles of golden lines as they each found a Path to the most optimal place to cut. Ultán nodded.

That had taken a lot of fórsa, but best to make sure the job was done against a threat like Eoin. Had Cormac been Fifth Ring, he could probably have found a way to avoid the sand - his luck would have found him an out - but Eoin likely had no such probabilistic defenses. The common version of this technique could be blocked by Water, but it required a large wave to block out all the grains of sand.

Ultán had made sure Eoin no longer had access to enough water to create such a wave - not even Fifth Ring fórsa could craft enough from nothing. Suddenly, the golden lines all started falling apart, flaking away like burned paper. Ultán's brow furrowed. That made no sense… Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. His sand stopped its forward movement completely - met, each of the thousand of them, by a tiny droplet of water.

Eoin grinned, three lenses of blue light over his right eye.

"Your Pathfinding is very impressive," he said, still falling.

"But if there is no path for your sand to reach me, it's kind of pointless, isn't it?" Ultán cursed. Eoin was trained, and trained extremely well. He might not have Sixth Ring fórsa density, but he was incredibly smart. Whatever technique those lenses were had allowed him to target each grain of sand individually and his control over water fórsa enabled him to block without needing a large volume of water. He spun up a tornado under Eoin.

Not trying to hurt him - he saw that would be futile in open space like this - but to prevent him from falling back into the clouds where he would literally be in his element. Ultán now saw that while the environment gave him advantage, it also added complications. Eoin didn't care if he fell - it would only be to his benefit if he did. Now Ultán had to keep him aloft and fight at the same time. Eoin wasn't going to let him take all the swings, it seemed.

The bedraggled Selkie made gestures as if plucking violin strings pizzicato and Ultán felt a dozen tiny needles stab him in the back. Ultán roared, slashing Wind all around himself. Eoin was plucking water from the clouds from a dozen different directions, spinning it at high pressure, and launching each one into Ultán's flesh. His range must be enormous, Ultán thought. Still, the damage was relatively low - nothing incapacitating. Ultán shot forward, closing the distance between him and Eoin.

Strapped to Ultán's back he always carried a full bandolier of daggers. With a quick forming of a new technique, Death on the Wind, his Wind fórsa unsheathed all six of them and hurled them in invisible arcs towards Eoin. They did not move in predictable ways, zigzagging so quickly that even Ultán's pathfinding wouldn't have been able to keep up. Eoin's right eye darted around like he was having a seizure, attempting to track them all.

Ultán had no illusions that a man who could perfectly block a thousand grains of sand would have any trouble doing the same for six daggers, but they were just a distraction. As they hurtled as one towards a place right at the back of Eoin's neck, Ultán made a gesture as if he were upending a table - Path of the Desert Scythe. A golden scythe of compressed wind arced up from slightly below Eoin.

This time he could see places where his attack would connect through his Paths - Eoin's reaction speed couldn't be so good as to block both attacks at once from such a close distance - especially when he was being held in place by Ultán's tornado. The scythe sliced completely through as the daggers pierced his neck.

"You have nice technique," Eoin said from behind Ultán. The Eoin caught in Ultán's tornado faded into mist as the daggers spun out into the air.

"Illusions?" Ultán spat, spinning to look at Eoin. The Selkie was standing on a thin blue cloud just out of dagger reach.

"You have trained some versatile techniques from such a basic Nature." Eoin shrugged.

"I am forever a student. I try to take the opportunity to learn whenever I can." Suddenly Eoin's eyes darted down to the sea below them, growing wide with surprise. Ultán decided to change his approach. After all, his goal wasn't to defeat Eoin. He couldn't care less if the Selkie prisoner got away. That wasn't his job. Right now he suspected the vampire ship was doing his job for him without Eoin on board to soak up the drain. Cormac and Róise wouldn't long survive a Long Si calibrated for someone of Eoin's level.

So he pivoted his strategy from attack to delay. Golden lines radiated from Eoin's body this time, showing him exactly how to expect the Selkie to strike. Once again, the lines burned and faded to ash.

"Oh," Eoin said.

"I'm not planning to attack you."

"You don't want to go save your friends?" Ultán gestured downwards.

"If you want to just float up here while the ship does my work for me, I am more than willing to do that." Eoin smiled.

"I think something rather extraordinary is happening, and I'm honestly more interested in seeing the results than saving anyone."

"Extraordinary?" Ultán looked down, seeing nothing but clouds.

"My technique gives me a lot of ways to see different things," Eoin said, gesturing to the lenses in front of his eye.

"Most particularly, it allows me to tag water to basically spy for me. So while you may have no visibility as to what's happening below, I have a bird's eye view, so to speak."

"Huh," Ultán said.

"And you're not afraid for your friends. Let me guess - did that smug Bodac luck his way into the ritual that seals the ship's fórsa drain or something?" Eoin laughed.

"I could see that happening. But no. Something much more interesting." He began to float in lazy circles around Ultán, who had quietly palmed a pair of throwing knives.

"My dear friend Miriam lied to me about something. If I'm being honest with you, it's a huge relief. She was getting to be a bit stifling with all the judgement she was passing down. She told me she broke something I very much wanted to get my hands on, but it turns out she simply just kept it for herself."

"You're petty enough to abandon them just for that?"

"No, no," Eoin said, settling to a position slightly above Ultán's.

"But it will make all the conversations we have later maybe a little easier to stomach. For now though, I just have to say… I'm sorry. You were just doing your job, after all." The clouds exploded as a giant wooden sea dragon climbed into the air directly behind Ultán.