Page 7 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Instead, she struck.

A barbed foot pierced my hip. She leaned in with giant fangs, snapping as I shoved the blade against her mandibles. And watched as they gripped on, curving around the blue steel like clawed finger bones. Her maw opened around them, lunging for me.

I pushed back. And felt her skin begin to slice under the sharp edge.

Focusing on the center of her body, I searched for a heart to attack. But the Abyssi seemed made of joint and bone alone, not a drop of blood to be found.

A click just beyond my face, as loud as lightning in my ears. It shuddered through me, disorienting my thoughts, and I felt myself sag. Sound dropped into silence, a distant white ringing somewhere in the back of my head.

Mandibles snapped inches from my eyes, but I couldn’t hear them. The ringing had taken over, sharp and endless, growing louder and louder, until it was all I could do to not cover my ears and scream the sound away. The Abyssi’s pincers wriggled against my blade, her blood drifting from the seam of skin and steel, murky in the water.

There was no freeing Kye’s sword from her grip.

The ringing began to eddy away, soft clicking returning. I shook clarity back to my mind, heaving the sword over my head—or more accurately, heaving myself under the towering ribcage, abandoning the sword to the Abyssi’s jaws.

She spun to follow, sword dropping to the muck below. A nest of soft silk and wasted bone. The Abyssi leapt after me, spearing the water behind every flourish of my tail.

Frantic ideas ran like wildfire. One spear of her claws, and she would have me. She was too fast to try and attack. Every move I made was locked in the defensive. Escape or die.

How to stop her—or even slow her down? I’d burned her with boiling water months before, but she’d recovered just as quickly.

A hooked leg swiped under me, and I vaulted to the side, rolling just in time to avoid being stabbed. The moon-damned thing had too many legs.

My thoughts caught like heat along a wire, driving me to an answer that burned bright.

Its legs.

I swerved, plummeting into its sticky nest below. The knife at my hip wouldn’t be enough. I needed Kye’s sword.

Ironically, the nest slowed the Abyssi. She followed me through the strands, creeping on quick feet. Unfortunately, the webbed mire slowed me as well, fixing to my limbs like strings of tar. I floated over it, pressing my fingers into thick snare where I’d dropped the sword, searching for the firm body of a steel blade below, each glance over my shoulder sending waves of panic to my bones.

Wherewherewherewhere—there.

Fibers of the nest tore like a seam-ripper through thread as I hoisted the sword up and slashed.

Just as the Abyssi had reached to pin me with a barbed foot.

She squealed as her leg severed at a bony joint, springing back. Then lurched forward, twice as fast and angry.

I swiped again, landing a lucky stroke in what should have been her neck. Then rolled out of the way of an oncoming attack, her leg jabbing at my chest. The Abyssi’s loss of one limb offered me a fraction of a second—

Tuck. Spin. Swing.

I forced my weight into the arc of my arm, fingers numb at the pull of long steel through dense saltwater. Bones cleaved under the force of my blow. Pop. Pop. Pop.

The Abyssi fell to its side, four limbs severed under its weight. It scrambled to flee, barbed feet franticly churning through the water.

Thank Mihauna. My lungs were ready to burst under the weight of my held breath.

Water stirred as I rose over her, aiming for her face. Or lack of one.

Her mandibles spread as she clicked angrily at me.

Rest, I told her, though I doubted she understood. After all, it was merely a thought in my head.

Then I sank Kye’s blade deep into the Abyssi’s open maw.

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