498. Storm, 9

(Myls)

We sailed for a long time. I miss land and ground around me.

What I didn’t miss from my life on land, was that feeling of terror. That shiver creeping on you as you wake up, looking everywhere around yourself in panic.

And that distasteful moment when you realised Magenta is rising in the distant sky.

And by luck or calculation, it’s now rising on its way above us or close...

We’re in the middle of an ocean. There’s nowhere to go and hide.

I’m feeling bad. Fear and anger. It itches everywhere and hurts my jaws.

It’s going to get bad.

And it does.

In the very horizon, we notice something like a tornado appearing over the ocean.

For now, Sanïssia keeps sailing in the same direction, but she’s uneasy.

Blume is evaluating what’s happening and the best course of action.

We all know blood will be lost at sea. But the best strategy for us is still unclear.

~

For a while, in the recent past, we were wondering how that god fed.

Now we know. Magenta is vacuuming in a tornado the waters of the ocean, and everything alive it contains.

The tornado is a twister of water and fishes rising high into the sky, pulled into the air by the glint of pink above us. It’s pulling an invisible bucket the size of a mountain from the ocean to it.

The closer we get, the bigger the amount removed from the ocean reveals itself to be. Millions of litres rise as a rotating column or wall, so high you don’t see the end of that liquid tower.

And we sometimes see living things trapped behind the wall, swimming around as they’re lifted to their heavenly doom.

I know what we should do.

I overcome the shock of the sight of that monumental tower of water being lifted into the air and grab Blume’s shoulder abruptly.

There’s one obvious thing to do.

~

Sanïssia swam closer to the risen wall of ocean. Like a string of honey out of a jar put upside down.

Blume grew a fleshy organ in a hurry that simply looks gross.

Sanïssia opened her mouth and regurgitated one of the nukes we entrusted to her.

Blume attached her living growth as a detonator or trigger to the nuclear device.

Then Sanïssia brushed the bomb with the tip of her tallest wing inside the volume of water glowing upward.

The machine disappeared as it sank upward into that part of the sea.

Eat this well.

If you can see my middle finger risen for your attention, that would be perfect.

Let’s hope this works.

Sanïssia stops swimming further away oddly.

It doesn’t take long to realise.

Magenta might not have expected to encounter us while it was feeding over the ocean, but now it was reacting to our presence. We already launched our strike though, so hopefully it didn’t realise it yet.

But now we’ve been noticed, and here it comes...

It was my call to try to seize the chance to strike. But now we must survive its retaliation...

We expected it. Sanïssia know what to do.

It was a dangerous bet we hadn’t rushed into blindly like Rose would though.

We chose it because Blume insured us that Magenta hadn’t yet reacted to us, and because Sanïssia insured us she would be able to break such a gravitational pull if needs to be.

We all were a little too optimistic still...

Sanïssia dives as she can’t swim anymore on surface. Swimming on surface wasn’t effective anymore.

I held my breath. Blume gets her petals open underwater.

And unfortunately for us, Sanïssia was a little overconfident in herself while we underestimated Magenta’s ability to break and counter Earth’s gravitational pull locally...

We’re fished out with a bowl of oceanic waters bigger than Sanïssia the bird herself is long...

Magenta has passed its zenith, so its distance to us will now only increase. It won’t fish us up to space. But meanwhile, we’re being lifted out of the ocean inside the great and invisible immobilising net of that god.

~

In summary, we fucked up, doing the one very Rose mistake I had sworn never to do: underestimating our enemy!

But now isn’t the time to focus on guilt.

Sanïssia gets it and begins to move around violently. We have to react and escape our cage.

Sanïssia manages to splash most of the water around us into a mist or to fall where the pull is inactive. The waters mostly escape the pull into the sky and distance. We can breathe at least.

We’re floating listless above the ocean in a large cloud of giant water droplets. They float upward like us, flowing mostly freely. Magenta is fishing us as much as it can.

Far away already above us and toward the pink star, the rest of the pillar of sea water is going to space. Faster than us, much faster.

There’s a fair chance Magenta tried to grab us but is actually struggling to keep the same hold on us. Too far, too much and too late along its path.

Good for us, we will most likely fall back in a few minutes, as we see the death star and its food heading away.

But a few minutes can make all the difference...

As we’re still floating upward, Sanïssia still a little dizzy and incapacitated by the anti-gravitational pull.

As soon as she can, we will fly away. It will only take her a few minutes...

A few minutes...

Fireballs are heading into our direction, thrown out from the sky and where Magenta was just before.

The calamities in stock are coming to meet us in less than a minute.

~

Sanïssia rolls herself around, as she floats in this wide space of low to null gravity. She rolls herself into a kind of ball with her wings as spikes ready to brush off anything getting close from any direction.

Blume and I float somewhere inside that insane structure of a hollow ball of her snake body and wings going everywhere around.

I can somewhat walk all around her body as if she was pulling me.

My handguns are wet but I know they’ll still work.

The fallen angels begin to land.

Blume uses the white enamel sword against them oddly, not the new thin one she made.

Anyway, I begin to shoot as well at what comes. If we’re as merciless as they would be, we both know these things that look like angels are not the true danger.

There’s only one.

The one true Calamity, with short hair and far meaner gaze to her.

We’re looking around mostly for her.

~

Surely enough, she arrives. Leading some of the others. Dispatching them in squads.

Raining fire upon us, burning from a distance what she can.

Sanïssia moving abruptly around herself, she manages to brush away most of that into the floating waters around us.

But that also opened the way for Calamity and her minions to her, to us.

Blume and I are facing her again. She even holds a new white sword in her hand.

I shoot the other mindless angels while Blume focuses on Calamity.

Now I get why. That thin sword had a purpose indeed...

It lasted only a second or two.

Calamity sparked her melting light on, while Blume charged seemingly blindly, the white sword in hand.

Calamity naturally blocked and deviated the twin white blade with hers.

And while she was holding that blade at bay, Blume used her other hand and other sword, to throw another attack.

Calamity still evaded, jumping or flying away. In our environment, that sent her flying out quite far from us.

Sanïssia wanted to crush her in her mouth, but thought it wouldn’t be wise with that one, and stopped herself in time. She’s a smart bird.

I shot. She dodged a lot, but not everything. Blume jumped at her again fiercely.

This time Calamity parried the long thin sword, and was caught in Blume’s trap.

The sword caught in her blaze melted on impact, rolled against her and splashed molten metal all over her.

Calamity began yelling her pain and her light soon disappeared.

Meanwhile, Blume was slashing her in pieces. What the hell was that weird sword she made? But more importantly...

M - Don’t kill her!

B - I know!

Or she will come back stronger...

Calamity is wrecked faster than she ever has been before. She’s been splashed with metal in fusion, ironically molten by her powerful burning light. Blume’s weapon was surprising but worked perfectly, incapacitating greatly the thing.

But Calamity still is holding onto her own sword.

In a last swift move and rage, she didn’t cut herself lose from Blume’s grasp nor Blume’s head, but slit her own throat open.

She tried to die. To kill herself. She knows her god will resurrect her when she dies...

Blume grabbed her before she would completely decapitate herself.

B - Here’s a trick I learnt from someone like you...

Blume spewed something into her.

She contaminated her with something dark.

A poison, or a curse...

Calamity was a wreck of bloody tissues now contaminated with fast growing brambles.

She collapsed, as if she had died.

Sanïssia caught all of us on her back, brushing away the last false angels.

She began flying away, pulling herself out of the weakening pull from the vanishing star.

And soon enough, we were rapidly flying again.

~