Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

Watawa scoffed. You speak as though we have already lost, Red Water, yet you claimed not moments ago our people were not to lose this fight to come. Which is it, then? Do you claim we are to fail or win?

Is it still called winning when you annihilate your opponent? Ishmael asked in continued self-reflective mockery. When none would answer, he continued on with his speech. Truly, I thought our history would be repeated with every failed attack. An endless cycle I should never hope to see broken. His smile returned. But my dream had not yet ended in our being repelled . . . for when we swam against the walls a final time, we were not the lone people to fall upon the city.

Who then to join us in war against the Orcs and Merrows? Atsidi jeered. Selkies? You think to enlist their aid in the coming war?

Aye, said Ishmael. I would have the Selkies also.

Watawa laughed. Also? Have you other allies already?

Ishmael nodded. In my dream, I saw the Selkies rise with us against the Orcs and Merrows too. Yet even as I watched them rage against their former owners, I understood our combined numbers were not enough to bring down the city, let alone the world thereafter.

Short-Shore snickered. Perhaps we ought to deal with the city first then, brother. Aye, and leave the world to another day.

No. Ishmael smiled as he swam toward the center of the council. For in my dream, I saw our conquest as one and the same. The Merrow city and the world swallowed in Salt, both lost in a tidal wave of darkness. Then, in recognition of our loyalty and service, each were gifted back to us in rightful ownership to swim and rule over the five oceans as was always meant to be.

Given us? Watawa raised an eyebrow. By whom? Who then to offer such a cursed gift of death and woe?

The same as he who gave the dream unto me, said Ishmael, his hands rising in offer as if he meant to make a summons. The same who whispered unto me a greater promise also.

Garrett shuddered then, the water feeling colder and darker all around him. At first, he believed it a trick of his own mind. He knew it for a reality when the others in the council made notice of it too. The lot of them turned to fear and doubt as the already twilit waters around them seemed to belch more darkness still. The blackness around them reached for those quickly joining Ishmael at the center and huddling around the council lanterns’ bioluminescent lights.

For all that Garrett had seen since coming into the Salt world, his voice was lost with all the others when the shadows gave birth to what he first imagined as a giant, slinking dragon’s tail bursting forth from the darkness around him. He flinched as the seeming tail slithered around one of the rock face and boulders. The hooks lining its fleshy interior found a purchasing hold among the rocks, the seeming tail turned taut as the appendage pulled their owner free of the black water in grand reveal of a mammoth and ancient monster from the deep.

Aye, Ishmael went on, his voice a reverent mixture of glee and horror, as if he too were surprised at his words made true. Who else to save us but the same as he who whispered unto me in my dreams and asked that I deliver you all here tonight?

Sancul . . . Watawa choked the word, his tone carrying with an icy fear that threatened to freeze Garrett too.

He had scarcely heard Ishmael’s words, his pulse racing at the sight of still more monsters revealing themselves from the shadows. The first were a wizened, Sancul elder. Alongside him, there came a pale-faced and young she-squid also, her hair as black as the surrounding darkness, her eyes like two deep wells without end.

An older, motherly she-squid appeared next, her white-blond hair streaming about her deathly face, beautiful and cruel. For a moment, Garrett swore he recognized the motherly she-squid, despite being unable to place a name to her, or where he would have ever seen such a creature before.

And then his blood well and truly turned to ice when the last of them slunk free of the darkened depths, the monster staring back at him being one that Garrett had no trouble at all remembering from his former life ashore. For all the excuses and argument his conscience made as to why and how their situation could not be, what little doubt Garrett Weaver held within him vanished when his former classmate, Kellen Winstel, appeared and looked back on him with likewise surprise.

* * *

Part II

The Salt Alliance

7

GARRETT

Garrett shuddered at the monstrous and hulking shadow creatures that surrounded him and the Nomad council of tribal leaders. He found it difficult to discern where one of the creatures began and the others ended. Their tentacle numbers and the length of each surrounded the Nomads trapped within their boundaries like ropes to define the fighters inside a boxing ring.

Garrett winced when the fastest of all the Nomad chieftains, the Mako Shark leader, gave a flick of his tail and sprinted for the above.

For half a heartbeat, Garrett thought to follow with the hope of escaping the squid-creatures. The moment he looked up, he discovered another of the monsters lurking above them also.

Blocking their escape there too, a scarred demon of uncommon size loomed larger and brawnier than any of his Sancul fellows. In contrast to the other companions of Kellen Winstel, the demon above held no fairness, nor hint of handsome quality in face or body. The darkness in his pale and haunted gaze found Garrett for a moment, then moved on in search of greater threats. The monster’s tentacles fanned over the Nomads, the tips of each moving and curling like they were casting spells over an