Rise Against the Tide

The animals beneath her all roared to life, and began to stumble towards the group.

“Mmmmpph!” Camellia tried to speak, her face muffled by fur.

This time, it was Lynn who took charge, commanding, “Damos, can you be the front line? Give me and Phoebe some room to get this thing off Camellia.”

“On it!” Damos nodded, jumping around the bear and stepping forward to meet the animals.

“Phoebe, see if you can pry its arms off of Camellia. I’ll send this bastard into next week with a punch.”

“I love it when you talk like that,” Phoebe laughed.

Phoebe closed her eyes and focused, summoning her tentacles. But something was off — they seemed thinner and floppier than usual, as if Phoebe had only learned how to use them yesterday. “What the hell?”

Damos raised his arm, willing his blade into existence, but it flickered, sickly and weak. “My sword?” he cried.

“Guys, what’s going on?” Lynn nervously demanded, keeping an eye on the slowly approaching animals which were apparently still disoriented from their birth moments ago.

“My aspect feels off. Like, super weak,” Phoebe replied, holding one ineffectual tentacle in her hands.

“Same,” Damos wailed.

Lynn tried summoning her own godly power. Just like the other two’s, it lazily wobbled into existence. “Not good,” Lynn bit her lip. “Oh goddess.”

All the while, Camellia struggled against the mass of pure muscle imprisoning her. She writhed, trying to break free, but only managed to get a part of her face out open to the fresh air. Good enough, she thought, taking a gulp of fresh, un-fuzzed air.

She screamed out to her friends, “It’s like mine! Just remember your connection. To the water, to your deity. Become its vesselmmmmmmphhhhphph,” she urged before a heavy, furry arm covered her face once more.

“Oh, is this what happened with the eels?” Phoebe wondered aloud. “Damn, Cammy, respect. This sucks.” She stretched her arms. “Alright guys, you heard her. We ain’t stopping here.”

The three of them closed their eyes and focused hard. The water lapped around their legs, as they, on Camellia’s advice, tried to recall their own fateful interactions with their deities. At once, Phoebe, Damos, and Lynn all glowed with a surge of power, returning closer to form.

“There!” Damos closed his fist tightly around his sword, now bright and sharp. He thrust it out at the lumbering army, jabbing at breakneck speed, summoning a wave of swordfish projections.

Phoebe bellowed again, blasting away some of the water around her and Lynn. Only, when the tentacles slithered out from behind her back, they numbered not two, but four. “Whoa!”

A little quieter and reserved, Lynn simply opened her eyes once she felt her power strengthen. Wordlessly, she held her hand close to her heart, and poured all the godly magic into it that she could, charging up a knockout blast. Phoebe grabbed a hold of the bear with all four tentacles, giving Lynn the all clear. She wound her fist back, paused, and closed her eyes. In the blink of an eye, she snapped it forward, landing a blow right in the side of the bear’s ribcage. The initial impact rippled through its muscles, and the bear let go of Camellia; then, the full force of the blast launched the bear into the air, sending it flying, limp, dozens of meters away. Camellia, left safely behind, coughed a few tufts of fur out of her mouth.

“Nice, guys,” she choked out.

Their nemesis atop the earthen tower groaned. “Good job making it out, I suppose. But just so you know, if you try to use those wings again, I’ll send you straight back to The Bed without a second thought. Instant fail.” She clapped her hands once. “Now, show me something interesting!”

“Alright, now it’s time.” Lynn asserted. “Phoebe, you think you can land a Crescent Rush all the way up to the top of that thing without Camellia’s wings?”

“With how I’m feeling right now? I could chuck Cammy halfway across The Bed without breaking a sweat,” Phoebe said with a grin, flexing.

“Excellent. Then Damos and I will clear the way and get you two close. Good?”

“Good.”

Thus began Team Phoebe and Friends’ assault on the earthen tower. Camellia quickly barked some cursory information about the predators in front of them to Damos and Lynn — namely, what to watch out for and which parts were weakest.

Damos and Lynn surged forward with renewed vigor, the tide splashing around their legs as they emerged out of the water, now at their calves. The first animal to feel their wrath, a charging wild boar, squealed as a spectral swordfish projection sprouted from right between its eyes. It shook its head, and Lynn took the opportunity to thunk it right on the top of its skull, and it crumpled. Damos took care of another boar, deftly slicing off one of its tusks just as he had with the leviathan under the waves not a moment before.

“Haha! This isn’t so different from the Crags, is it?” he laughed.

Following the cavalry, Camellia and Phoebe trudged through the water, now murky with swirling sand from the commotion. They lurched forward at a slower pace, the tide pushing against their weaker muscles and smaller stature. “We just have to touch her, right? That’s all she said,” Phoebe panted through heavy breaths.

“Yeah, what’s your angle?” Camellia heaved back.

“So we don’t gotta kill all these things, right? Just the biggest ones.”

Camellia wheezed out, “Oh, I see. Good call,” before stopping to take a breath.

“Focus the big ones!” Phoebe yelled forward.

Damos and Lynn nodded in acknowledgement and continued slashing and punching their way through the wildlife in the waters. They finished clearing the last of all of the boars, and Camellia didn’t see the crocodiles, so she supposed they had killed those, too.

Only a few bears and the hippo remained. The bears, perturbed by the commotion, stayed on the white sands of the beach, refusing to engage. The hippo, however, was more than happy to start charging towards the trespassers on its territory.

Camellia remembered a video she had once seen of a hippo crushing a whole watermelon in one bite, and shuddered at the thought. “Watch the bite on that thing!” she cried out as she saw it approach her friends.

But Lynn and Damos were a well-oiled machine. Damos fired two projections forward, aimed directly at its eyes. Right before the fattened beast opened its mouth, the projections gouged its vision clean out, and it roared in pain. That maw really was frightening. It shook its head, panicking, and Lynn took the opportunity to dart next to it and toss out a one-two combo of powerful blows on its thick, rough-hide neck.

A loud crack echoed above the water, and the hippo collapsed on one side. As it flailed, Damos jumped on top of its head and plunged his sword down into it, silencing it. Camellia almost felt bad for the creature, but remembered how the lady on the dirt had summoned these things from sand itself, and convinced herself they weren’t real, anyway.

“Looks like it’s time, Cammy,” Phoebe said with a grin as the two ran forward.

“Crescent Rush!”

“Wingless version!” Phoebe added, offering her tentacles for the lift.

Camellia hopped into them, and Phoebe windmilled her tentacles up and over, chucking Camellia like a baseball to the tower on the shore.

As she soared through the air, Camellia thought she heard Phoebe scream something at her, but the wind rushing through her hair blocked most noise out. She opened her arms wide as she sailed towards the woman, and nailed her in a tackle thanks to Phoebe’s perfect aim.

“Ugh, fine, fine, you pass,” the lady groaned, pushing Camellia off of her. “Just go, get out of here.”

Camellia cheered, “Haha— Whoa!” The world around her lurched, interrupting her celebration. It was as if space itself was stretching and warping around her: the sand, the pillar, the water, it all pulled out like taffy. Camellia swallowed her lunch, clutching her stomach and squeezing her eyes shut.

Then, as soon as it began, it was over. She blinked, slowly, finding herself not high atop a throne of dirt but on a crystalline white-sand beach, level with the earth. She groaned, almost in unison with Damos and Lynn, who she noticed next to her. Pushing herself off the ground, Camellia realized they were actually on the island proper now.

Only, before she could jump around in happiness, a harrowing wail pierced her ears. She spun around, on edge.

There, on the ground. Phoebe.

Wait.

“Phoebe!”

Camellia wildly stumbled over to her friend, falling to her knees next to Phoebe — who lay in the sand shrieking, groaning, and stricken in pain.

Tears streamed down Phoebe’s face. “Guys… H- H- Help…”

Something else was off. The color of the sand was all wrong. Rather than pearly, sparkling white, the sand surrounding Phoebe was stained a deep, dark red.

There, beneath her hands, which were desperately clutching her leg.

A gushing cascade of blood.