Ninety-seven steps to the top. The first thing Gavin noticed as he came around the corner was that he could see the White Mist from here. The mist, and the reef it hid, was legendary. Tales of its exact location varied, but all agreed it was somewhere in the middle of the Cerulean Sea. Maybe at its exact center, like a spider in the middle of its web.
What the hell was this floating island doing so close to White Mist Reef?
It could be a coincidence. Lots of those, recently.
Then his eyes fell on the pillar that shared the top of the spire with him. It was filled with bubbling water and churning gases—gray to Gavin’s eyes, so he had to believe it was blue. There was something inside, but he couldn’t see what it was. He leaned close. The sun, nearing its zenith, cut through the roiling gases. Gavin saw a curve at his eye level.
Oh no.
The sun reached the peak of the heavens and its pure light illumined the pillar fully. That curve at Gavin’s eye level was a shoulder.
It was noon.
A tremor passed through the entire blue island. The ground cracked, shooting splinters of crystal into the air at high speed. Only the pillar itself didn’t shake. In each of the twelve pillars surrounding him, Gavin saw movement. But he fixed his eyes on the one central pillar in front of him.
A huge figure was forming inside the pillar. Gavin was watching the birth of a god.
He drafted a yellow luxin sword, painfully slowly sealing it as the half-formed god’s eyes flicked open, focused far away, then noticed Gavin all in a rush. Light swelled within the pillar, and finally the sword was sealed. Gavin rammed it through the pillar under the god’s chin and out the back of its head.
Its eyes flared and exploded goo onto the glass.
Well, that was easy.
Gavin twisted the sword hard with both hands, feeling bones grind and yield. Then he drew the sword out. Goo slopped onto the ground at his feet. He pulled in intense sub-reds and red into his hand, set it afire, and punched his fist through the broken luxin. He found the creature’s neck, grabbed it, and ripped the figure out of the pillar.
This was no wight. This was Mot himself. Human flesh becoming one with luxin, even the human skeleton distending, yielding to this new, larger shape. This giant was imperfect, not wholly formed. It had been coalescing, and Gavin had aborted it.
Gavin hacked off the god’s head. He hacked off its skeletal arms, hacked off its legs—calves wholly formed, thighs still bony. He cut the spine—all in quick succession. There would be no resurrection. He picked up a gold necklace the creature had been wearing, adorned with a single black jewel, tucked it away, and sprayed the creature with pyrejelly, coating every limb. He set it aflame, stoking it with such deep sub-reds that it would be consumed utterly.
Mot melted, puddled, evaporated, burned completely away.
Only then did Gavin let his attention shift to what was happening on the island, to the island. Something was shrieking, distant, inhuman. The air was warmer. The triangle-birds were diving—no, falling, lifeless. The sun overhead had regained its normal hue. The tornadoes had turned to mist, and were everywhere blowing away.
Half of the twelve pillars had shattered. From one of them, a perfect blue wight was breaking free. The whole of the island seemed to be melting, and water was standing on the surface. The stench of released luxin was everywhere.
And in the distance, Gavin could see hundreds of blue wights standing from their pools, screaming.
Not least, he realized too late, the spire on which he stood was cracking.
Not good.
The spire split, and the chunk on which he stood sheared off to one side. It slid and then dropped fifteen feet, its jagged point stabbing into the island. For one second, Gavin thought he was just that lucky, and it was going to hold. Then the spire cracked again, and this time the fragment on which he stood leaned over crazily and threw him off.
Throwing jets of red luxin and fire downward worked only if you could find “downward.” Gavin was tossed upside down, twisting, flipping. He barely found down and threw flames that direction before he splashed at high speed into the ground. High speed sideways, fortunately, and the luxin ground was evaporating, leaving water. Soft, glorious, nonlethal water. He plowed through the water for what seemed like forever.
When he came to a stop he found himself staring into the eyes of one of the perfect wights. Its head was cocked to one side. It was very much awake.
Blue wights are bad at acting before they understand a thing. Gavin had never shared that flaw. He came up out of the water and skewered the blue bastard. He splattered a ball of flame over its face, then decapitated the monster. He began running through the knee-deep water. He came out of the water and over a slight rise and found himself facing thirty howling blue wights. They raised their hands in unison, light flooding into their palms, projectiles forming in a fraction of second.
The whistling of dozens of flechettes passed over his head as he hit the ground. A moment later, he was up, sweeping his hand, bringing up a huge green shield in front of his body. He charged. The woody shield jumped and shivered in his hand as dozens of projectiles hit it and stuck.
Then some of the wights started shooting longer, larger projectiles at Gavin. Then all of them copied the first in a moment. Damn giists, always understood what other giists were thinking in an instant. Gavin took a second longer, his body understanding before his brain did.
The huge shield was getting heavier by the second, and the big projectiles put that much more mass on Gavin’s arms.
Gavin’s brain had almost figured it out before the shield dipped dangerously low. Too late. The bottom edge of the shield hit the ground at his feet and stopped abruptly, and he ran right over himself, flipping forward, exposed, dropping the shield. He splashed in ankle-deep water, caught his shoulder, and rolled.
He came up in fire. His arms swept left and right in great billows of flame. He dropped as the stronger of the blue wights still managed to get their blades through the wall of flame.
There was no way to keep this up forever, though. In about two seconds, they were all going to realize that he was lying down, and they’d aim their missiles at the source of the flame.
Then Gavin got incredibly, ridiculously, mercifully lucky. The ground dissolved fully beneath them, dumping them all into the ocean.
Gavin got one good breath in before he went under.
He never thought he’d thank a sea demon, but his little fight by his fleet had taught him how to make himself move through the water like a fish. Gavin put his hands down at his waist, opened his palms, and began shooting out disks of green, each shot propelling him through the water.
Steering around the mechanically swimming blue wights was simple, and in thirty seconds Gavin found his skimmer, still floating. He shot himself up out of the water, took a huge gasping breath, and then shielded himself. A few lonely missiles thunked into his shield, but in moments he was up manning the reeds, picking up speed. He could hear the wights’ keening shrieks. Fury, from the depths of the supposedly purely rational blues. Fury that a man could best their blue perfection, fury that they could be wrong.
He circled the island as it broke up and sank, and divined from the wake even as it dissolved that the whole thing had been headed toward White Mist Reef, moving like a vast ship. Why?
But he didn’t have time to think about that. Even now, some of the blue wights were trying to draft boats to escape. One would figure out how, then the others would copy it. Gavin couldn’t let that happen.