But gasped when he spotted a shark!
He kicked with great might,
In a terrible fright,
And swam like a fish out of dark!
- Goldie Honorhide.
I had only seconds to grab the shield before a very fast-moving shape entered my Void Senses aimed directly at me. I twisted and got the shield up barely in time as the shark-mer smashed into it, knocking me back. I felt its teeth gouge lines in the wooden shield, and a tooth caught on the metal rim was torn out.
The Mers' momentum carried him on, and I realised two things. Firstly, if I didn’t have the shield, I would be dead. Not from the teeth or a bite but simply from having the breath knocked out of me. I was too deep to get to the surface with no air. All this Mer had to do to kill me was to keep me underwater. I kicked off the bottom and swam for the surface. The shield hampered me, but I am not letting it go yet.
The second thing I realised from my Void Sensing was that the mer was fast but not very manoeuvrable. It took him time to come back around at me, and I spent that time swimming furiously for the surface.
I barely got a third of the way there when the Mer came back at me. He was slower this time but still much faster than me in the water. I got the shield in between us. The Mer didn’t slam into it this time but swerved and grabbed the shield with his hands while his feet propelled us sideways through the water.
I was being dragged, and he started to go deeper. I almost released the shield, which is what I think the Mer wanted me to do. However, the shield was between me and his incredibly sharp teeth. He was using both hands to hold and drag the shield, and I was holding on with one hand, which left the other hand and two feet free to claw him.
Shark Mer have some type of bone scales that are different to a fish, but serve a similar function. On top of that, he had something similar to my Tough Hide Skill. My claws didn’t go deep, but several repetitions soon had him leaking blood.
This close, I could also smell the blood from the gut wound Yoboc gave him. It was mostly healed, so he must have taken a potion or something, but it was there, and my feet and claws could reach it.
He suddenly jerked the shield back and thrust himself forward, aiming to take a bite out of my head. His teeth scraped against my scalp as I tried to twist away, and my Ice fur and Tough hide were not enough, and his teeth scraped along my skull, mixing my blood into the water.
He had let go of the shield for this manoeuvre and swam on ahead as I struck out for the surface with a lot more urgency than before. I debated dropping the shield to get there faster but decided to hang on to it.
My biggest advantage here was knowing where the Mer was attacking me from through my Void Sensing. My Hearing Aid helped, but it was still too low a level and it was still too dark for me to see properly.
I twisted and drew my legs up behind the shield as the Mer came at me again, but this time, he swerved away before engaging. I think, as his initial surprise attacks failed and we started on a longer engagement, he was now testing me for weaknesses.
My lungs were starting to burn. This was my major weakness. I kept swimming for the surface.
He would try to stop me.
I was close when he came again at speed. I got the shield between us, but he served at the last minute and went down, and I felt his teeth clamp around my left calf. His teeth went through the ice, and my Tough Hide and the top ones jammed against my leg bone and the lower ones dug deep into my calf muscle.
Half my remaining air was released due to the pain, and I was starting to be dragged sideways. I let go of the shield and curled my body down, going all out with my claws and teeth. I have a Crushing Bite I haven’t used since learning weapons, and I bit a hunk out of his flesh as my hands clawed his body, and my right foot clawed his face and empowered it with Death Strike.
I had to breathe.
His arms came up and sliced my stomach with a knife. This time, my ice fur and Tough Hide deflected it. But another strike was coming.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
I really had to breathe.
I shrunk my Cosmic Aura around us and slammed Frigid Void for all I was worth. Ice formed all around us, and I think this is what made him break away. He let go of my leg and twisted violently in the water, breaking the ice. I am sure his Cold Resistance was up to resisting the Frigid Void, so I am not sure why he suddenly broke away, but I wouldn't waste it.
I used my good leg to push off him and strike for the surface. I could sense him using his hands to brush ice off his torso as I extended my aura out again to find the surface and keep track of him.
I realised what I had done. My ice had blocked his gills, and sharks needed a constant flow of water through their gills to draw out the oxygen. I have a way to drown him, briefly, at least.
My head broke the surface, and I gulped down some air. Then, purposefully controlling my breathing, I took in a large lungful and replenished my oxygen-starved body. I reformed ice around my calf to stop the blood loss.
The Mer was coming back, so I retracted my aura and formed a platform of ice to get me out of the water. It was not complete when the Mer smashed into it, but it did slow him down. I took a deep breath and launched myself at him with my claws.
I had a moment to regret this as I saw his smile widen, and two knives came up and stabbed me in the shoulder, one in each shoulder. I think it was a skilled attack, as they both went deep, and my arms went weak. He left the knives in place. He must have cut something in my shoulder. I could bend my elbows and move my hands, but moving my arms from the shoulder was not working.
I crashed into the water, and the Mer circled to come in to finish with a bite. I had reduced my aura to try to cocoon myself in Ice as armour, so my senses were withdrawn, but my Hearing Aid picked up the sound of rushing water. I was underwater again, so the sound of rushing water made no sense, and I wondered if my mind was dying.
As the Mer came in, he was suddenly jerked to the side, and a spear poked through him from an angle behind him. It must have been a massive strike as the spear had gone through his whole body. It didn’t stop there as the spear twisted, and his body twisted. I saw a hand with a knife come down and pierce his eye, and the sea itself seemed to stop flowing around him like everything paused.
The knife continued to stab the Mer until he stopped moving.
I needed to breathe, so I shaped my aura into the shape of an iceberg and froze the sea, gently raising me to the surface. I wasn’t deep, so it didn’t take long. When I rose above the surface, I took several long, slow breaths.
Somebody else had killed the Mer and there was no vessel on the surface, so I am thinking it was another Mer. I noted I was a long way from my ice platform of gear, and Yobocs pack had a first aid kit. I am not sure how I was going to get there yet as I was very low on energy.
I needed to get the knives out and get movement in my arms again, as Mer didn’t seem to be able to be trusted. I reached to my shoulder with my teeth and painfully worked a knife out. Blood gushed out with it. I collapsed back on my unstable ice and put my shoulder under the water. The sting of the salt in the wound didn’t add a lot to the pain at this point. I froze the ice and blood to seal the wound.
It didn’t enable me to move my shoulder, though. I also needed a moment before I tried to get the other knife out.
As I was taking a moment a head surfaced next to my iceberg. It was a head that looked very similar to the Mer that had attacked me with the same facial features, too wide of a mouth, and shark teeth. Next to the face, a spear rose out of the water, still embedded in the body of the Mer.
“Can I come up? You look like you need some help.” The voice was higher pitched than the other mer’s, but not by much.
“I am not sure I can stop you if you wanted to finish me off,” I said.
“I am not sure it would be that easy,” it said, “You obviously have an ice affinity, which does counter my water affinity reasonably effectively. I can help with the knife wound, and I have a medium health potion.”
I wasn’t going to correct it about my affinity, and I was surprised that they admitted to having a water affinity. That was probably where the sound of rushing water came from. They were using it to move.
“You are willing to let me use the potion?” I said in surprise.
“You saved me a lot of trouble. This scumbag was my bounty, and he was a slippery little eel and fucking killed my partner. I am Makara, a registered Bounty Hunter out of the Asasaga Mercenary Guild.”
“I am Ivan from nowhere in particular. I am happy you arrived. Come aboard if you will.”
The water around stirred, and Makara rose gracefully out of the ocean, seemingly through water manipulation alone. My Spiritual Senses saw that only the water around the Shark mer was being used by whatever skill that was. I enlarged the iceberg to make it float with both of us.
Makara was wearing a series of belts with streamlined pouches. Several knives were in sheaths. A murky green potion was pulled from one pouch and handed to me. “I will pull the knives, then you drink the potion. Are the knives poisoned?” The knife I had already extracted was there and Makara examined it, “It doesn’t look like it, can you feel any poison?”
I shook my head. There was just knife pain, as far as I can tell, not that I would know what poison felt like.
“Pulling in 1… 2… Pull!” and then ripped the knife out and held the wound closed. I skulled the weird-looking potion. “Ok, you can close this with your ice.”
“Um, I need it covered in water first,” I said.
“I thought you had an ice affinity?” Makara said, looking at the iceberg we were standing on.
“It is more complicated than that.” I shaped my aura around my shoulder.
Makara looked at me funny but then flooded the area with water, and I froze a bandage on my shoulder. “That’s interesting,” Makara said.
Patreon is 15 chapters ahead if you want to support the story. You don't need to support the story, as it will be free here.