Ulla’s nostrils flared, and she bared her teeth.The man turned to flee–
And tripped over a body.
Ulla lunged for him.
He swung a dagger.Behind his glass prison, Bastion roared and threw all his effort into blocking the strike.
Ulla lifted her arm and deflected, slamming his hand to the stone floor.Surprise flashed through her as the blade bounced away.She used the pan to smash his other hand against the floor, and he jerked, his face shriveling with pain.With him distracted, she seized his face in her other hand.His jaw stretched, opening in a wide-mouthed scream.As Ulla’s claws sank into the pirate’s ruddy cheeks, he went rigid as a corpse.His eyes rolled back until only the whites showed.
A barrage of images hit Bastion, like a flock of birds dive-bombing.They flew by so furiously, he couldn’t process them.Instead, emotions struck him with bruising force.
Damning hope that he’d found a place to belong.Burning anger and fear towards a captain who at first had been charismatic, but now meted out punishment with the changing of the tides.Nervy, frenetic distrust of his crewmates, and black resentment that none of them dared fight back.
The man’s feelings swirled in a torrid hurricane.
Ulla paused, as if she’d been flipping through the pages of a book.Everything bled away, ink diluted by water, and a memory materialized.Bastion struggled to make sense of it.
They stood in the captain’s quarters of a ship, cluttered as a packrat’s burrow.Through the murky, warbled glass, weak light fell over a dozen men.Buck came forwards and dropped two items into this man’s hand.He looked down at the gleaming gold and fiery red of an Acari pendant.Next to it, a lump of yellow wax.
In the voice he used to mollify his men, Buck said, “We’ll attack at dark of moon.Don’t draw attention to yourselves between now and then.If you are caught, make sure you destroy your pendant.Otherwise, I’ll lash you to the figurehead and let you starve.”
Pride, fear, and doubt swelled in the man’s memory.There was potential for great gains here, but also pain and death.
“We’ll alert you when we’re in position,” Buck said, handing out more pendants and wax to his teams.He pointed at the wax.“Bethorough.As soon as the inhabitants fall to the weapon’s magic, lower the drawbridge.Capture Lady Nesrin.She’ll be our bargaining chip.”
Ulla sneered and turned the pirate’s head.An excess of wax protruded from his ear.Keeping a firm grasp on his face, she picked up the pendant glinting beneath the man’s shirt.
“But whatarewe looking for?”It was this man who asked, the question pulling both Ulla and Bastion back into his memory.
Buck leveled him with a malicious grin.
“Something old.Something strange.I was told that it’s black and looks like a hunk of rock, as long as a man’s arm.”
The way the crew leaned forwards made Bastion certain that until this moment, Buck hadn’t told them anything about what they were really doing.The pirates looked at each other, a ripple of skepticism racing across their faces.
“Delivering it is going to make us very,veryrich men,” Buck said, his eyes glittering.“Don’tfail.”
That word kicked them to a more recent memory.
Along the edge of the great hall, he skulked with his crew, surveying the press of bodies and the barricaded door.He bristled at the work it would take to undo it.
From his pocket, he withdrew the ball of wax and broke it into pieces.Out of the side of his mouth, he said, “Keep an eye on the Yvri bitch.If we don’t bring her back alive, Buck will string us up like that healer.”
NO!Bastion tried to scream.
Ulla reared back, alarm shooting through her limbs.Then, once again, darkness engulfed him.
He grasped blindly with hands he couldn’t sense, desperate to find the lifeline back to her consciousness.It was impossible to tell which way was up or down, and he floundered, urgency stinging him like salt in a wound.Then he caught the thread and let out a breath, only for water to pour down his throat.His grip tightened, and he hauled himself to the surface.When he landed back in Ulla’s mind, gasping like a drowned man, Minato lay at her feet amid the fallen townsfolk.
Bastion pressed against the glass, a soundless shout ripping through him in an effort to get Ulla’s attention.
Fear and distress battered at the walls of her training, but she ignored them.Devout discipline was all that stood between her and complete hysteria.
She knelt and laid a hand along Minato’s face.Power leapt to her fingers with barely a thought.Only a trickle at first, as she tested the depths of the magic that had befallen him.Then more, manifesting as a steady stream that licked at her fingers like fire.Soft blue light played across the other Yvri’s face as she searched for him beneath this strange, magical shroud.
It coated his consciousness like grave dust.Ulla swept it away, only for it to return, insistent as exhaustion.When it settled, a path lay at her feet, leading deeper into the prison of his mind.Bastion watched, awed.
A shiver of trepidation made Ulla pause.Walking through another’s mind uninvited was taboo… but what choice did she have?
