Breathing Water: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Magic of Nasci Book 2) Read online

  Breathing Water

  Magic of Nasci, Book #2

  DM Fike

  Avalon Labs LLC

  Copyright © 2020 DM Fike

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ASIN: B0879DJQG2

  Cover design by: Avalon Labs LLC

  For Jennifer. You were right about the black boots.

  CHAPTER 1

  I WOULD HAVE banished the kappa no problem if my phone hadn’t rung at the worst possible moment.

  If you have no idea what a kappa is, don’t sweat it. I only know because my father gave me a book on Japanese folklore as a teenager. The gift was his odd way of passing his heritage on to me. While I would have preferred something cooler like aikido lessons, I still read the book from cover to cover.

  Little did my dad realize that the disgusting monsters were real.

  As I stalked the creature’s misshapen shell across the beach, it occurred to me that the book didn’t do the kappa justice. Kappas are humanoid amphibians, not a pleasant hybrid. Its froggy head scrutinized the sea, webbed feet planted on top of tide pool rocks. Instead of having a normal scalp, a cavity of rotting mildewy water splashed around where its brain should have been, surrounded by seaweed-like strands of hair to keep drops from escaping. It crouched forward, eager to snatch its next victim in the deeper waters beyond.

  At only three feet tall, I’d banished much larger monsters, but none had made me want to gag like this dude. Fighting it felt less like slaying a dragon and more like squashing an overgrown slug.

  But that’s my job. I’m Ina, a shepherd of Nasci. I may not look like much—a scraggly 20-something dressed in a hoodie, shorts, and hiking boots—but I can control Mother Nature as if I popped straight out of a comic book. I get rid of otherworldly vaetturs like this kappa in Olympic National Park for breakfast. These monsters bust into our world to hunt and feed, draining the power of our earth. Shepherds stop that from happening so the world stays in balance. That means you personally can continue to do important stuff like breathe and argue on the Internet.

  Like most predators, vaetturs tend to hunt specific creatures that they find delicious. Kappa prefer the giant red octopi that live along the Pacific Northwest coastal waters. This particular one had already sucked the life out of several octopi, and I’d been sent to exterminate it.

  I crept out onto the rocks, careful not to slip into the shallow pool. I paused within a hundred feet of the putrid punk, planning to knock it out in one swift surprise attack. Generally, water-based creatures aren’t too fond of fire. The kappa kept its gaze on the water as I clasped my fire charm, one of five hanging from my necklace. I absorbed fire pith from its thin metal surface. It flowed through my pithways and increased my body temperature a few degrees. The fire pith popped and crackled inside my body as I slowly drew a five-pointed star in the air, the sigil for banishment. Time to send this jerk back to where it belonged.

  That’s when a sudden flurry of duck quacking sliced through the silence.

  We both froze—the kappa in confusion, me in embarrassment. The quacking was my phone’s ringtone. As the kappa frantically searched the sky for waterfowl, I hastily scribbled the rest of the sigil, hoping to finish before it saw me.

  Too late. The kappa swerved around to find me instead of ducks, its oval frog eyes widening in surprise.

  I threw my fire pith toward it anyway. “Sayounara!” I yelled as a burst of fire shot out from my hand.

  But the kappa now had advance warning. It veered off to one side so the fire only grazed its shoulder. Still, it should have been enough to send the thing packing.

  Instead, it only squawked like a startled sea gull, injured perhaps, but not even losing its footing.

  Then the kappa lunged toward me in a menacing zombie-like fashion. The murderous expression in its gaze said something to the effect of (and I’m paraphrasing here): Ouch! Kill you!

  Kappa may be small, but they can rip you to shreds with their nasty claws. Not wanting to become a scratching post, I dashed back toward the sand in an effort to create distance before mounting a counterattack.

  Wet rocks, however, make for a terrible running surface. I only made it a few steps before I slipped and fell, one leg plunging into a tide pool. The rest of me followed, my entire right side immersed into knee-high water. I winced as sharp barnacles scraped my shin, creating thin lines of blood.

  I didn’t have the luxury of worrying about minor scrapes as the kappa barreled toward me, a whole new source of potential pain. It exposed awful jagged teeth, decaying from lack of dental hygiene. As it towered over me, I grabbed my air charm and drew a sideways S sigil. A wind gust burst out of my fingertips and into the kappa’s slimy green chest, sending it sprawling away.

  Scrambling back to my feet, I found the kappa flailing with arms and legs in the air, temporarily immobilized as it rocked back and forth on its shell. It would have been funny except it would be back upright after just a few swings.

  This was my moment. I had the kappa dead to rights. But how to banish it? The fire attack hadn’t worked, and the air blast did minimal damage. That left earth and water, but neither seemed useful for banishing an aquatic vaettur. I was also only an eyas-level shepherd, which—as much as I hated to admit it—meant I was still a newb. The sigils I could pull off were pretty low-level, and I had a ways to go before mastering all four elements.

  My mind scrambled for what Guntram would do. Guntram was my mentor, an augur shepherd two levels above me. He’s the one who sent me out on this solo mission. Guntram reassured me I could handle the kappa. “As easy as shelling peas” were his exact words. Knowing him, he had just taught me some trick on how to defeat this gross vaettur, but with adrenaline coursing through my veins in a fight-or-flight flurry, I couldn’t figure out what that could be.

  My stupid phone quacked again. I shoved my hand into my pocket, forcing open the magical waterproof pouch that held my burner phone and some AA batteries I always kept on hand. As my fingers brushed the batteries, an electrical current surged through my pithways.

  Oh yeah. I’d forgotten about my big guns.

  I may have stood on the bottom rung of the shepherd hierarchy, but I also had something no other shepherd had: the ability to wield lightning. I’d used it a month ago to save Guntram and me from certain death against an ugly chicken lizard with a Medusa gaze. I felt I was born to bring on the thunder.

  But Guntram disagreed vehemently. “Lightning is an unknown element,” he’s told me at least five thousand times. “There are no guidelines on usage practices or whether it should even be wielded at all. We need to monitor its use carefully, ease our way up to designing the proper sigils to contain it. Maybe then, and only then, should you attempt to harness its potential power.”

  He had more to say about the matter, but at that point in the lecture, I generally blocked out his droning and wondered when I’d get to eat my next hamburger.

  As the kappa regained its footing, I had three options: draw an earth sigil, rely on my weak water skills, or take my chances with lightning.

  It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to figure out what I chose.

  I snatched the batteries and phone into my fist, allowing m
y skin to absorb the lightning pith from within all of them. My arm sizzled with a familiar numbness, the pins and needles of letting a limb fall asleep. My eyesight flickered on and off like a strobe as the kappa ran toward me, claws outstretched to slash.

  I drew a banishment sigil. “Eat this!” I cried as I let it fly.

  The sky above the inlet exploded in a shower of blue-white light as the lightning zapped the kappa. We both flew backward with the force of the blow. The kappa sailed over the tide pools and plunked down like a rock into the ocean, while I thudded onto the beach.

  It took several seconds for my full vision to return, partly from the release of the lightning pith and partly from landing so hard on my backside. Tailbone aching, I cursed as I hobbled to my feet, sand falling from cracks in my body I didn’t know I had.

  So much for looking cool.

  “At least I got rid of the bastard,” I mumbled to myself.

  I gazed toward the kappa’s trajectory, fully expecting to find a plume of smoke where it had settled. Instead, its cup-head bobbed in the waves as it swam back to shore, froggy face exposed only from the nostrils upward.

  How in the hell had lightning not banished that thing?

  “Shelling peas, my ass,” I grumbled at the smug Guntram in my head.

  But the kappa hadn’t just survived. As it hiked back up to the shore, I could tell it had caught something in its webbed hands. White suction cups on red tentacles coiled around the kappa’s arm. A lopsided smile twisted the vaettur’s face as it squeezed its octopus victim, sucking out the poor cephalopod’s water pith. All living creatures on this planet hold a certain amount of elemental pith, and just like blood, if we lose too much of it, we die.

  My muscles clenched in anger. Not only had my lightning banishment completely failed, but I’d also managed to fling the kappa right toward the very creature I wanted to protect.

  “No!” I cried, jumping into the foam. “Let him go!”

  The kappa chuckled and squeezed harder. The octopus reacted by squiggling even more frantically, a death struggle.

  I couldn’t reach the kappa fast enough to physically save the octopus. Grabbing my water charm, I drew a series of Vs with a slash through them, the sigil for redirecting a nearby water source. I thought to douse the octopus with water, thinking that would give him some extra pith until I could get there to punch the kappa in the face.

  But then the octopus managed to get one tentacle wrapped near the kappa’s crown. He jerked the kappa’s head downward, causing a trickle of its cloudy brain water to spill. The kappa howled in pain and nearly lost its grip on the octopus as it flinched out of the suckers’ range.

  That’s when I knew how to defeat it. I aimed my water sigil not on the ocean, but on the murky liquid in the kappa’s crown. Then, I grit my teeth and let my water pith fly.

  The sigil struck right on target, slamming into the kappa’s brain water. It sloshed straight out of the crown, the world’s most disgusting waterfall. Like a robot suddenly deprived of its battery, the kappa stiffened, dropping the octopus back into the waves. A high-pitched whistle filled the air as a foul cloud of green mist emitted from the kappa’s head cavity, and its skin bubbled from the eyeballs downward.

  I’d crippled the kappa, but it remained standing. I needed to finish the job. I ran the last few steps toward it, gagging through the gassy fog. I absorbed water pith from the ocean swirling at my ankles for one last five-pointed star.

  The kappa stumbled toward me, shrieking in pain.

  “Go away!” I cried at the melting kappa, its rotting taste in my mouth. Then I executed the sigil.

  This time, the banishment dissolved the kappa instantly. He burst into an even larger cloud of noxious fumes.

  I stumbled away from it, the worst over, but retching into the ocean just the same. Did anyone ever tell you that magic is glamorous? They lie. Straight up perjury in a court of law. Because magic is about life.

  And life is always messy and complicated.

  CHAPTER 2

  AFTER DRY HEAVING for the last time, I focused on the kappa’s breach. Vaetturs aren’t from this world, but another realm called Letum. I’ve never been there, but given the vile visitors they send, I’m not in a rush to a get a passport. They come to our world via breaches, which shepherds seal before more fun serial killers decide to turn our world into a buffet.

  A light suction at my leg momentarily distracted me, though. The octopus I’d rescued curled two of his tentacles around my calf. His bumpy skin shifted from a soft brown to a burnt orange before finally settling on a fiery red. As he continued to cuddle up my side, he squinted, like a cat mewing around his owner’s ankles.

  “Glad I could help,” I rubbed him on the head, “although you helped too. If you hadn’t spilled the water in the kappa’s crown, I might not have defeated it.”

  He wound one loose string of suction cups around my thigh and pulled hard. I giggled in spite of myself, sure I’d have a hickey later.

  Much as I wished to play with my new friend, I had work to do. “You don’t happen to know where the breach is, do you?”

  The octopus climbed slowly back into the water. He rolled his tentacles toward the north side of the beach, pointing.

  I glanced in that direction. “Thanks. You take care of yourself, okay?”

  The octopus bobbed in affirmation before drifting out of sight. I waved as he left. My tense shoulders relaxed with pride. I’d saved an innocent life today.

  It wasn’t too hard to pinpoint the kappa’s breach. Being a fairly unsophisticated creature, the kappa had ripped an interdimensional hole only a few hundred yards away. The kappa hadn’t even tried to hide the breach like most sophisticated vaetturs do, leaving it so exposed on the beach that an elderly couple strolled right toward it.

  Not to worry though. Like most people, the retirees were completely oblivious to the breach’s presence. It takes ken, or Nasci’s sight, to sense magic. Humans can’t just fall through the portal to the other side, either. Crossworlds travel takes a massive amount of internal pith, something I’m not even sure shepherds can do. The pair walked right through the shimmering mirror-thin disc, never breaking their hobbled stride.

  As I waited for them to shuffle out of sight, I removed my hiking boots and waded knee deep into the ocean to absorb water pith for the task ahead. I also made sure to gather air pith from the breeze and dig my toes into the mud for earth. I then combined all three—water, air, and earth—to create fire in my pithways. As the couple disappeared over a ridge, I completed my refill of all four elemental flavors.

  I’d never sealed a breach by myself, but I’d done it several dozen times with Guntram. The breach emitted a weak aura, one I could handle solo as long as I tread carefully. I sat down cross-legged before the portal, visualizing the steps to heal this wound of Nasci. Once I began, I would not be able to stop until I sealed the breach. One false move could lead to a number of catastrophic events, including snapping me halfway inside Letum like a guillotine.

  “Here goes,” I said.

  I closed my eyes, concentrating only on the breach. Although I was meditative like a yoga instructor, my fingers twitched on top of my knees, drawing a series of complex sigils. I connected the unsettling pith strands of the portal to the energy in my pithways. This wove my essence inside the breach, allowing me to thread the wound shut. I chanted an incantation, not a spell exactly, but it provided instructions to remind me what to do next. I became the needle, braiding both piths together in a complex weave that wrapped around the entire structure. Then, after I’d created a tight enough mesh, I took the plunge and flung all that pith toward the center of the abyss.

  The dizzying sensation of stretching between two worlds washed over me. I let my fingers dance their rhythm, mumbling under my breath so I wouldn’t miss a single beat. Flames shot out in random sparks around me, followed by bursts of wind, splashes of water, and crumbling bits of rock and sand. I was nearly at the end of my mental maratho
n.

  Just before I finished the last sigils, the ground trembled beneath my crossed legs. A strange jolt of all four elements rippled like a wave over me, its pith weaving with mine. It gave me an energy boost, which I redirected into the breach itself.

  The shaking stopped as the breach sealed shut for good.

  Was that an earthquake? I wasn’t sure as I re-opened my eyes. The faint shimmer of Letum’s world had dissolved, replaced by a quiet stretch of beach underneath a cloudy April sky. I’d felt earthquakes before in the woods, but never accompanied by that much extra pith.

  A sharp raven’s caw cut through my tired thoughts.

  Fechin. Guntram’s favorite kidama raven, with whom he could communicate his thoughts. The henchbird squawked at me before flying off toward the southern horizon. I knew without any telepathic imprint that Guntram wanted me back at Sipho’s homestead immediately to report on the kappa.

  Except I couldn’t. I was too close to home, and this kind of opportunity didn’t present itself often. I stood up and brushed the sand off my shorts. I tried to check the hour on my phone, but I must have drained all its juice along with the batteries because it refused to turn on. Oh well. I’d already called ahead to say I’d drop by.

  Sorry, Guntram. Time to check up on my folks.

  CHAPTER 3

  MY PARENTS CALL the Seattle suburb of Lynnwood home. It used to be pretty nondescript until every tech company and their dog decided to build an office in the area. House prices skyrocketed, which ballooned my parents’ sacred equity since they bought their house in the 80s, well before online shopping was a thing.

  While Lynwood’s not rural by any stretch of the imagination, it lies far enough from city skyscrapers that it has natural preserves within its borders. One such park, Mill Creek, boasts a wisp channel, one of the many that shepherds of the Talol Wilds use to travel across the Pacific Northwest. After teleporting through the will o’ the wisps, I hiked out of the preserve right to a city bus stop. A bus transfer took me within a 5-minute walk of my folks’ place.