“What’s a cut-and-run operation?” Yax asked.

  Ingvar tried not to look annoyed by the inquiry but failed. “Thrones haul Deep Dwarf slaves in pressurized containers for their masters. So it’s easier for us to disable a Leviathan, insert a small team of Barracudas, sabotage the seals securing the slave hold to the other compartments, and then steal the whole container off the beast’s back.”

  “Sounds anything but easy,” Yax said. “I’ll go below and help.”

  Ingvar cautioned, “You’re an advisor here. You’re too valuable an asset to risk.”

  “I’ll be at plenty of risk if we linger long enough for that Throne to blow a hole in the side of this boat big enough to sink it. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather fight on the offensive than the defensive.”

  Yax started to leave the bridge without awaiting a response from the captain.

  “I could stop you,” the captain, stepping between the elf and the open door. “I’m well within my rights to do so, you know? But I do need every fighter I can get. And this Corps is a volunteer service after all. So welcome to the navy, sea rider. Do me one favor though. Don’t end up dead, or it’s my hairy arse on the line.”

  “Aye, sir! Don’t worry about me,” Yax said as Ingvar moved aside. “I can take care of myself.”

  As Yax and Dagny left the command deck for the forward bay below, the elf heard the captain’s cryptic response, “It’s not you that I’m worried about.”

  Yax tried to push the nebulous statement from his mind and focus on the task at hand, navigating a ladder made for stubby dwarven legs. He ended up sliding down it to the bottom and waited for his new friend. As the elf watched her progression, he admired the view. Perhaps if he played nice, he’d get a closer look.

  Chief Oddr and a half dozen of his fellow Barracudas, the amphibious special forces of the Naval Guild, awaited them at the doorway of the floodable airlock. Each of them carried a pneumatic spear gun fitted with a box magazine, an air pistol loaded with a barbed steel bolt, a short-handled pick or ax, and several piercing blades. The dwarven commandos wore a special pressurized suit made of the spider silk material. The helmet featured a distinct dome of the same material blown into a shape that had led to the Barracudas’ derisive nickname, Bubbleheads. However, without this spider-spun apparatus, the dwarves’ deep sea operations would be impossible for all but their Aethyr-attuned clergymen.

  For among the Free Dwarves, the aberrant few born with sensitivity to Aethyr energies ended up in the custody of the priesthood. Those who survived the rigorous training spent the rest of their lives wielding an All-Hammer. All-Hammers were ritual tool-weapons, constructed of star metals, and used to break the golden collars that bound the Deep Dwarves and others to the yoke of the Lords of the Underworld and their dark mother, Chichu’äm. Yax considered this to be yet another contradictory trait of a people that described themselves as free and fought to bring freedom to others.

  If possible, the senior petty officer looked less pleased to see them on this occasion. He stepped in front of the door and said, “No, no. This is total wormshite.”

  Indignant, Dagny responded, “This is over your head, Chief. Yax is to accompany your team to the Leviathan. Captain’s orders.”

  Oddr responded with a grunt. He sighed and stepped away from the airlock. “Go ahead,” he offered, gesturing toward the open doorway. “Be my guest. But you’ll never survive outside this boat. It’s not like we have a suit tall enough for you, Stretch.”

  “Like I told the captain, I can handle myself,” Yax responded.

  “Me too,” Dagny said, opening up a locker across the hall from the bay. To his horror, she removed a spare helmet, a set of web-footed boots, and other undersea gear.

  “You see, sea rider,” Oddr said, shaking his bubblehead. “You see what you’ve gone and done. Now I have to worry about Dags and you.”

  “She doesn’t have to go out there with me.”

  “Yes. Yes, she does. It’s her duty,” the chief explained. “She’s assigned to you. While you’re on this boat, your satisfaction and safety are part of her duty. And dwarves, we take our responsibilities seriously.”

  The Choj’Ahaw considered the situation for a moment. But realized it wasn’t his place to control Dagny’s actions or interfere with the performance of her duties. After all, if he’d let the desires of others dictate his actions, he’d still be a monastic sitting in the smoky, incense-filled interior of a temple at the top of a stepped pyramid.

  Yax offered the yeoman a loophole instead. “The moment I volunteered for this mission, I joined the crew. And since I’m no longer a visitor, you don’t have to accompany me out there. You’re relieved of this duty as far as I’m concerned.”

  Dagny shook her head, “Sorry, but that’s not how it works. The captain relieves me of my duties, no one else. Until then, you’re stuck with me.”

  “Figures,” the elf muttered once he realized this fight wasn’t one he could win. He’d fare better fighting an Ophanim than arguing with a woman as stubborn as himself.

  As the yeoman prepared for action alongside her charge, she smiled up at him. She was the only one smiling. Yax and the other Barracudas stared at each other without speaking while Dagny fitted the brass and rubber collar around her neck. As she did so, he realized that the duty uniform of every submariner doubled as wetsuit, a garment used by the divers of his own navy, albeit one constructed of eel skin.

  “You may not need the suit, but you will need this,” Dagny said, offering a thick canvas belt fitted with a pouch and what looked to be a bulky steel and brass fishing reel.

  “No offense, but I don’t plan on doing any fishing out there,” Yax replied.

  “Trust me.”

  She belted the apparatus around his waist and gave him a slight hug. Though he blushed, she seemed unashamed to do it in full view of her fellow crewmen. Oddr locked eyes with Yax for a brief moment but averted his gaze when the elf refused.

  “You’ll thank me later,” Dagny said with a mercurial grin.

  “We’re not guaranteed later,” Yax responded. “So I’d rather thank you now.”

  Leaning down, the elf kissed the dwarven woman on the lips lightly. She blushed.

  He fitted her domed helmet into place and said, “You accepted me without bias and made me one of your own. I’ll never forget your kindness.” Turning to the Barracudas encircling them, he added, “You lot could learn loads from this one. She’s got more heart than all of you combined. Now flood it.”

  With a sour expression on his face, the Barracuda’s chief turned a large valve. Seawater rushed into the sealed chamber. Dagny’s pulse quickened as she watched water flow over the elf’s exposed legs. She took his hand and squeezed. He could not feel her heat due to the icy water and the thickness of her gloves, but her presence warmed him all the same. He hoped to return the favor and fuel her inner fire upon their return.

  To quell the dwarven woman’s fears, Yax winked and then mouthed, “Trust me.”

  As the water reached his chest, he prepared the familiar rote he’d been taught long ago during his arduous training to become a Choj’Ahaw, one of the wand-bearing Lords of War. He stilled himself for the changes to come.

  The Unen’ek and their Winaq’che kin on the mainland possessed the same pressure bladder and internal gills as the Deep Elves, their aquatic cousins that lived below the surface of Faltyr’s warm seas south of the equator. The surface elves had lost their amphibious abilities sometime before they’d come to this world from the stars. However, Aethyr users such as the Choj’Ahaw manipulated their own bodies, reactivating these dormant organs whenever the situation demanded it.

  While water poured into the airlock to equalize the pressure, Yax harnessed the elements of Air and Water to reactivate his dormant organs. He took his last gulp of air and then prepared to breathe water. The weave would last until he reentered the vessel or disappeared into depths so deep that the specialized organs inside the elf could not save him. As water crested his head, covering his wild mane of black hair, he swallowed lungful after lungful of the briny fluid.

  The dwarves watched in a mixture of fear and amazement, humbled to be in the presence of a wild, untamed Aethyr user, unbound by the strict tenets of their society. Bubbles rose from their domed helmets, a byproduct of their suits’ interchange ability. It allowed them to breathe air extracted from the seawater around them. Although a nice trick learned from nature and mimicked by technology, it was not magic. And it would not save them in the event of a cracked or punctured dome.

  Once the pressure equalized in the chamber, Chief Oddr pulled a lever beside the exterior bulkhead. The mechanism activated two aeolipiles, rotary steam turbines, hidden on either side of the bay door in the hollows between the sub’s multilayered hulls. Yax heard the devices whirl louder and louder as they spun faster and faster. After reaching a certain pressure, they triggered a gearing system that wrenched the weighty exterior airlock doors apart in a herky-jerky fashion. A cloud of bubbles created by the release of compressed air and steam obscured whatever lay beyond the door.

  “To the sleds, boys!” Oddr cried inside his helmet.

  The distorted order sounded like “beds” instead of “sleds” when it reached the elf’s ears through the watery medium. Neither option made sense to Yax, but he followed the school of Barracudas like a good soldier. Once outside the bow bay doors, the swimmers clung to a railing alongside the hull and worked their way toward a set of lockers built into boat itself. Marveling at the scene, he trailed behind them.

  X. Unto the Breach, Into the Abyss

  The Leviathan stretched out beneath the submarine. Energy arcing from the eels attacking its flanks and flippers flickered in the inky waters of the Abyss. As it fought in vain to rid itself of the persistent buggers, the beast churned the seawater around it. The bubbles created by its tantrum obscured its struggle from view but did nothing to conceal the pain evident in its high-pitched squeals.

  Yax admired the speed and efficiency of the Barracudas as they clambered to the lockers. Who knew dwarves could swim, he thought, much less swim like armored fish. The school opened the closest array of storage containers in concert and entered them. He peeked inside Dagny’s bin, and what he saw surprised him.

  The dwarven undersea sled consisted primarily of two cylindrical metal tanks held together with a frame of eel skin, brass, and chromed steel. Its mad designers had mounted a third tank on top of the first two with a nozzle protruding from the end. A series of hoses, gauges, and pressure regulators completed the apparatus. Dagny lay down on the device and fitted her shoulders behind two curved supports that resembled dorsal fins. She reached and grabbed a hold of a brass handle connected to a sturdy chain.

  “Sorry, handsome, you’ll have to get your own,” Dagny called out to him.

  “How in the Nine do I work this blasted contraption?”

  “Pull the chain and hold on tight. Let go of the chain to stop. You steer the rudder with your feet so don’t get your legs burned to a crisp by the nozzle stream.”

  “Is it safe? Because it sounds like I’m strapping myself to a torpedo.”

  “Yes and yes,” Dagny replied.

  Yax sighed. When he did, he created bubbles of his own. “Trust you, huh?”

  The dwarven woman smiled and pointed over the elf’s shoulder. As he watched, the other Barracudas shot away from the side of the submarine. The nozzles of their sleds projected jets of superheated steam behind them that left behind countless bubbles.

  As Dagny trailed after them, Yax climbed onto a sled in an adjacent locker. Realizing that it too was not made for his proportions, he settled himself into an awkward crouch, using the shoulder supports as handholds. When the elf reached for the chain, something reached for him. And the blur of motion saved his life.

  The tapered end of a fat tentacle missed him by inches as he recoiled from the attack. Scampering toward the back of the closet, Yax drew Demon Queller and stabbed. The vicious blade nicked the enemy appendage and caused it to recoil. The elf pressed the attack and swung the short blade back and forth in a chopping motion. The end of the tentacle floated free before being obscured by blood and ink.

  Having triggered the octopus’s defensive mechanism, Yax had no desire to wait around for it to counterattack. Sheathing his sword, he crawled back onto the sled. He grabbed a shoulder support with one clawed hand and yanked the chain with the other.

  The elf rocketed away from the submarine in a frothing sea of bubbles. After he lost sight of enemies both fore and aft, Yax lamented that he’d never consider them a frivolity again. From now on, bubbles were to be considered battlefield hazards and avoided at all costs. As he emerged from the effervescent cloud, he jetted toward the school of Barracudas. Laying sight on them as they closed on the stunned Leviathan, he considered one possible exception to that rule: beer. He could sure use a pint about now.

  But beer would have to wait, for the octopus decided to become a persistent pest. It propelled itself away from the hull of the boat and swam toward him at frightening speed. The muscular mass of tentacles pushed it faster than the little sled could carry him. As the creature closed the gap, Yax wrapped the chain around the starboard shoulder support, turned in a crouch, and seized the opposite support. He drew Starkiller from his belt and leveled the gold-tipped jade wand at his pursuer.

  Channeling the ambient energies around him into the Aethyr device, Yax fired one golden blast of energy after another at the octopus. His initial shots streaked by it, but the rest found their mark. The magic missiles impacted the bulbous mass of the Abyssal creature, causing its skin to bubble and blister as if burned by the sun itself.

  The panicked octopus disappeared into a fresh ink bloom and out of Yax’s mind for the time being. He knew that a warrior should never leave an enemy behind him; but in the distance, his dwarven allies were already surrounded by them. Spear gun toting Kappa swam from the back of the Leviathan to meet them in the waters of the sea trench. The gray-skinned sea goblins had short, grotesque bodies, long limbs with webbed hands and feet, and mossy hair resembling seaweed. But their most fearsome feature was the distended toothy maw located below their unblinking black eyes and exaggerated noses.

  The Barracuda met overwhelming resistance with the speed and efficiency of blitzkrieg tactics. As the metal darts from their repeating pneumatic guns speared goblin after goblin, the dwarves steered through gaps in the enemy’s zone defense. The slower loading, less accurate spear guns used by the Kappa filled the water with lethal bolts but none skewered the intrepid commandos of the Silent Service.

  Using Starkiller with lethal efficiency, Yax targeted one Kappa after another as he closed on their position. The enemy responded by tightening their perimeter around the lame Leviathan. Reinforcements swam to aid their cause.

  Yax reached out with his mind and seized the foot controls for the sled’s rudder. Jamming them into the descent position, he held on tight as the tiny craft dove below the enemy’s perimeter. Once clear of the goblin skirmishers, his mind pushed the pedals in the opposite direction. The sled shot upward and avoided a collision with one of the beast’s colossal flippers. The Kappa scrambled to swim after him as he closed on the Barracudas. But as they crossed the beast’s back, the dwarves abandoned their craft.

  Yax followed suit but not before adapting his tactics. He turned his sled into the enemy before leaping from its back. As he floated down toward the occupied dorsal section of the Leviathan, he pointed the jade wand at the craft. He waited until it passed into the swarm of goblins swimming toward him and fired. The white hot blast ruptured the tanks, mixing the remaining propellants in the open water. The resulting explosion erupted with enough concussive force to push the water from the elf’s lungs.

  Yax crashed into the roof of one of the structures anchored to the dorsal section of the Leviathan. The water slowed his momentum, but the impact coupled with the inability to breathe befuddled him. He lay there gasping for water, gulping at the fluid as if it were air, until he relaxed and stopped hyperventilating.

  With his ears still ringing, he dragged himself to his feet. Yax drank in the scene around him from his position on the rooftop. The blast’s effect on him had been noisome and unpleasant, but it had devastated the ranks of the Kappa skirmishers. Bits of the dead and dying floated in a translucent cloud of goblin blood. Those not killed swam about in endless circles, deaf to their howls of pain and confusion.

  The dizzying array of modular structures used in the Leviathan-mounted harness surprised the elf. The buildings formed a twisting network of unlit alleys, narrow pathways, and blind corners that rivaled any urban center. They would be a nightmare to navigate unless he swam rooftop to rooftop until he located the Barracudas. That part should be easy. All he had to do was look for trouble; he’d find the dwarven commandos there.

  Placing his hand against the roof, Yax burbled a chant in his native tongue. He watched as his skin and clothing shifted to take on the appearance of the alien metal. The elf swam in the direction he’d last seen the dwarves. He kept a wary eye on the tallest structure, a spiraling, cone-shaped tower resembling a seashell mounted at the base of the beast’s neck. Fooling a goblin with an illusion was one thing, but avoiding the all-seeing eyes of a Throne would be difficult, despite the active camouflage provided by the spell.

  As it turned out, the Leviathan’s captain had eyes on a bigger prize. The living orb lay in wait until the dwarven submarine maneuvered into position over the Leviathan. And then it struck. Ray after colorful ray lanced out from the top of the conical tower. The Many-Eyed One blasted hole after hole in the bottom of the sub. The rays that didn’t burn holes in the exterior hull turned the area affected from steel to stone.