Orc And The Lastborn [Progression, Gunpowder Sword & Sorcery]

They had passed through earth and fire and water and had come to rest at the bottom of the sea. He was lying in the mud. A circle of the sky some sixty feet above. A cylinder of seawater walled him in and flushed around him in languid spirals. Foaming and spitting and threatening to crash down upon him. Over him stood Daraway, her arms out-thrust, head thrown back, eyes closed as if in great concentration.

He sat up. His lips tasted of salt. The wall of seawater sloshed and thrashed. "How long can you hold it?" he said.

She shook her head.

"Then we need to go."

She nodded. Her lip bled from where she bit it.

He was bleeding too. His elbow had split on some sort of skeletal coral reefing out of the seabed. He got up. Slogged through the mud and around a large block of stone embedded in the sea floor. Mym lay over near the anvil. One of its chains was whipping skyward, caught up in the witch's magic like a length of rope in a torrent. He knelt over the dwarf. Brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. Her eyes fluttered open. Her hand went to his. Her eyes. She squeezed his hand. He nodded and moved on.

The bosun stirred on the other side of the block. His neck bled still from where the shards of the orb had sliced it. His eyes fixed on the whitecaps frothing at the rim of the wall of water. Showering them in a briney mist. "Clapped in the locker," he said.

"We can swim it."

"And the dwarf? And the woman spinning out her bulkhead?"

Orc looked up. The circle of sky seemed to be getting smaller.

"I thought not," said the bosun.

"Just be ready to go."

"Aye."

Orc passed the block again on his way back to Daraway, the mud sucking his every step. He noticed the first stone was resting at the very center of its darkly scarred surface. It appeared to be encased in glass. He reached for it.

"Don't," said the woman.

He turned to her. The toe of his boot struck something. The skyshard alpenstock. He picked it up.

"Oy," said Mym. "What's that doin here?"

He thought she meant her da's alpenstock but she was pointing at the block.

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"What is it?" he said.

"It's where me ancestors parted their gods from their heads. Careful ye don't touch it."

"That's what held you fast."

"Aye."

"In the jungle off the sea of suns."

"Aye."

"But how'd it get here? I thought you said it couldn't be moved."

"I don't think it was."

He looked at her.

She bent and dug her fingers into the mud. She threw fistfuls of it aside. Six inches down her hands slid over a smooth black surface. A great slab of stone. She looked up at Daraway. "Did ye bring us here?"

"No," said the woman.

"Do ye know who did?"

The woman nodded at the block. "Whatever's inside there."

"The point inside a point."

"Yes."

"And it's got the first stone."

"Yes."

"Ye broke through it before."

"I did. It's much stronger now."

Mym gestured to the water swirling around them. "And so are ye."

Daraway regarded the water's face. Beads of spray or perhaps sweat ran down her forehead and off of her brow. "Not strong enough."

Orc looked up again. The circle had shrunk further. The chain now whipped in and out of the wall of seawater. "We need to get out of here."

"How ye suggest we do that?"

"Swim up the side of this thing."

"We can't leave the first stone," said Daraway.

He turned and reached for it.

"No!" shouted Mym. "It's lek te bind ye."

"I'm no dwarf."

She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him away from it. She kept pulling until they stood at the water's edge. His musette began to rise in whatever force Daraway had conjured. He tugged it back.

"What's got into you?" he said.

"The longhorn was there," said Mym.

"Where?"

"In the black heart," she said. "He was watchin."

He lifted the alpenstock as if to gesture with it and it jerked away from him suddenly, as if someone had a hold of its head and sought to wrest it from his grasp. It jerked again and it slipped through his grip and tore off directly above the first stone. It came to the center of the cylinder and it inverted in the air and it crashed down hard upon the first stone in a shower of sparks that bounced off of the block and fizzled in the mud. The first stone did not break but the block upon which it rested cracked open. All flinched from the report and for a moment the wall of seawater swayed and threatened to collapse upon them. When Orc looked again the block was wholly split in two and a man had begun to crawl out of it.

"By sluice and slide," he heard Mym whisper.

The man was enormous and wore no clothes and regarded them with no expression whatsoever. He was hairless as a scar and his black beard curled down to a chest absent nipples and navel. He must have been close to ten feet tall and he stood astride the riven block like a dreamer awoke. Like a soldier roused by the peal of first call. He stooped for the skyshard and he raised it up like a smith between blows and he smashed its pick upon the first stone. The stone exploded with a thunderclap. A thousand fragments shattered in all directions and the sea suddenly fell inward. The man rose out of the well on air alone as the collapsing sea swept up the others and crushed them into the mud.