3-65. Sureya Asuega

Otter wasn’t a hateful person. It wasn’t her vibe. She just had better places to put her energy than that kind of negativity. But as she took a punch to the jaw from Sureya, she was really beginning to think maybe that aspect of her character maybe needed some reworking.

It wasn’t just that. It was the bond. Otter could feel everything Sureya did, and while it was more muted with Rua, and a near void with Vex, everything Sureya felt was on full blast, all the time. She was just so filled with rage, hot like lava, melting everything in its path. There wasn’t room for anything else beyond the anger and the grief and the hate. 

Otter recoiled away from it. She could feel it in her mind, searing away at who she was. Sureya’s own anger was infecting her, a burning miasma that had no release.

“You forgave her!” Sureya screamed.

Otter dodged another right hook, bobbing her head like a boxer. Melee combat wasn’t her forte, but Sami had kicked her ass enough times for her to learn to be better than average at it. 

Sureya was incensed, probably more than she had been before. Which was probably good. Otter knew that Sureya had access to Vex’s Lifecrafting. If she were in her right mind, now that Otter’s Tenacity was down, one skin-to-skin touch would be enough to end her. 

“Foul!” Soorong called, but Sureya ignored her.

Otter looped a Thread of the Scourge between her two hands, and when Sureya swung again, Otter looped it around her wrist, the thread pulsing as she empowered it, burning Sureya. But even as she bound Sureya, there was a flicker, and suddenly Otter’s Thread vanished.

That would be Il-Su’s Shelter of the Void, a new ability of his. An ability that was the entire reason he’d been able to get free from Kir. It allowed him to negate any Pact power that was either directly touching him or affecting him in some way. But it had a steep Will cost. It was also the third time she’d used Il-Su’s abilities. She’d now run that well dry.

“You’re doing so well,” Otter taunted, and Sureya didn’t even flinch, seeming to feed off the pain of the lie.

“When I beat you,” Sureya snarled, “you’ll be mine. My weapon. My slave.”

Otter blanched at that. Death was preferable to that. For a moment, she could feel the despair setting in. Her heart felt dark and heavy.

Maybe it’d be better to just throw herself onto one of these nearby spears. She just felt so tired. Darkness tinged the edge of her vision.

“The fight’s to the death!” Juala shouted. “Ignore this cunt and just kill her already!”

Otter shook her head, trying to wipe away the despair, and couldn’t shake it. She felt a surge of triumph from Sureya through their link. And that more than anything made Otter realize what was happening.

This was an attack. Some other Pact ability from a person she didn’t know, something she hadn’t encountered before. Or maybe it was a mental attack from Yurgein’s Pact. Whatever this was, it wasn’t natural. She didn’t actually feel this way.

Otter couldn’t summon up her own anger to counter it. She heaved at the turmoil in her heart, at the desire to give up. She threw everything she had at it, and couldn’t bring it up enough. 

That was fine.

Sureya was bleeding enough anger for the both of them.

Otter focused on that ball of snarled hatred in her head, on the miasma that was the poisoned well of Sureya’s self, and let it suffuse her. 

It tasted like filth. Like the dregs of three day old convenience store coffee that someone had used as an ashtray.

Otter’s eyes shot open, and she summoned another Thread. Her Will was about half. But she was pretty sure Sureya’s was lower. She had started off with a higher amount, but she’d been throwing around one disposable skill after another. She had to have burned through most of it by now. 

That gave Otter a glimmer of hope. But she was running low on it. She’d run out of ideas. Sureya was sticking to the parts of the deck that were made from stone and metal, and staying away from the wood. She wasn’t able to copy Otter’s Woodweaving, but she seemed to have an understanding of it now after having seen it a few times. The ocean water was too large and heavy for Otter to effectively manipulate, and there was no line of sight. Too many people were in the way. Maybe if she could get them both into it, she’d have a chance, but that’d involve getting them both outside the ring of warriors surrounding them. 

Her Pact just felt so useless in a stand-up fight against someone with a more combat focused one. Her Thread of the Scourge just lacked an offensive punch, and all her other skills were defensive or utility. She didn’t even have a good movement skill to her name. 

No. She couldn’t think like that. She was the woman who’d brought down Black Rime Citadel. She was the one who looked at problems sideways, who mapped her outs and went for the craziest, most insane plan.

Wait. Black Rime Citadel. That was it.

She just needed to do the tropical version of that.

Sureya held out one hand, and a disc of what looked like swirling air formed in it, a large buzzsaw of wind. 

“Squeak!” Otter called, already doing the mathematical calculations in her head. This was some really dirty math. It’d been years since she’d done something like this. 

It was small work. Very small work. But it was a lot of it. 

Squeak began to flit about Otter’s head, making a cheery noise, and shot up into the air, into the clouds above.

Sureya threw her disc, and at the same time, Otter managed to rip a piece of planking free from the deck with a Woodweaving and get it in the way all while dodging. 

The buzzsaw cleaved through the wood, but it was diverted slightly off course, narrowly saving Otter from getting bisected. The saw cut through the side of her shirt and pants, lightly scoring her hip and causing blood to fly. 

Otter didn’t let it distract her. She focused. She had to increase the motion of water droplets inside the cloud, while also decreasing it in others. She had to make chaos, all in a large area, but on a simultaneously small scale. 

If she hadn’t spent months Waterweaving something similar at Black Rime Citadel all those years ago, she’d never be able to do this on the fly. 

Something rumbled in the air, and Otter smiled a wide smile.

“Time’s up,” she said, quoting one of the best TV shows to ever be made. “Rules change.”

Sureya moved her hands as if to ready another attack, but by then it was too late.

It started to rain.

It’d been raining on and off for days in the Silayan Islands. It was the season for it. And those clouds above had just needed a little nudge. A nudge Otter was only too happy to provide. 

It didn’t start off small or subtle. It became an instant downpour. 

“I’m sorry,” Otter said. “You said before it was the greatest shame a Silayan can face, to die by drowning.”

And then, as the rain fell down on their ship, Otter snapped her fingers, and poured every last remaining bit of Will at her disposal, and seized control of as much water as she could, and focused it all on Sureya’s head.

A globe of water formed around her as it rained, jamming its way into her nostrils, her mouth, her ears, everything. Sureya grabbed at the globe, but there was nothing to hold onto. Her hands broke the surface tension of the water, and even as she tried to plug her mouth and nose with her hands, it just wasn’t enough. 

People tended to overlook water as an element. Otter included. But the thing about water was, it always found a way in. Any seam, any crack. Water was just inevitable. Any fire could be doused. Any mountain eroded. Water just needed time. 

And time was just something Sureya didn’t have anymore.

Otter could feel Sureya’s panic, her fear, her terror. Something like gills formed around her neck. She was probably trying to use Vex’s Lifecrafting to force an evolution. But she just didn’t have the knowledge of how gills functioned, how they supported breathing. All she did was make fancy slits in her throat, another area for the water to get inside.

Sureya fell to her knees and clawed at her own face, and she made the worst mistake she could. She opened her mouth and screamed. 

And through the water suffocating her, over the rain, no one could even give her the dignity of hearing it.

Otter could feel Sureya drowning, could feel it like it was herself. And she did the only thing she could. She held Sureya in her arms, guiding them both to the ground, and apologized.

“I’m sorry it had to end this way,” Otter said. “I’m sorry about Kuani. I’ll remember her. For you. And if I find a way… I’ll kill Rovarra for you.”

Sureya jerked. And then clawed one hand at her belt, and drew a knife.

Otter managed a desperate block, but the knife went into her hand, her already wounded one, stabbing into the flesh, and she swore, but held on, trying to give what comfort she could to a woman dying of grief, of someone who felt like a sister to her, even if it was one she’d never asked for. 

It didn’t take much longer for Sureya to pass. The crowd around them went silent as she died. When she did, the last of the fight going out of her, her lungs filled with water, her skin gone pale and blue and her eyes very much dead, grief hit Otter like a wave.

She didn’t have a joke, a deflection. A clever little witticism that let everyone know she was okay. She just wanted to curl into a ball and die. 

But she couldn’t. She’d made Kir a promise, as well as Rua. She’d protect their homes, their peoples. And right now, Otter had to make sure everyone turned around and went home.

Still, she took a moment. She looked up at the skies as the rain came down, and let the falling droplets hide her tears. And after she’d allowed herself this small moment, Otter got back to work.

She stood, ripping the knife out of her hand. And then looked at the wound. 

“Huh,” she said.

It looked inflamed and angry. 

Otter held up the knife, and nearby, Juala swore.

“She’s been poisoned,” she barked. “That’s the same type of knife that limpdick used to stab me!”

Otter opened her mouth to ask what she was talking about, and instead coughed. It was a short, sharp thing. She was woozy for a second.

And then she was fine.

Everything felt weird, like she’d been a ship about to capsize, and then suddenly she was right again. 

“I think… I think I’m fine,” Otter said, unsure.

Soorong was at her side, and pulled the knife from her grip. She gave it a quick inspection and swore.

“The blade’s laced with something. There’s more than just your blood on it. Someone get the…”

Otter held up her hand. The visible sign of infection was already gone. The wound looked like it was just a standard cut.

“Dreamer below,” Soorong said, looking at the injury. “You should be dead.”

“Probably,” Otter said numbly. She was too tired to care. Too tired to figure it out. She just wanted to grieve. “Go home, Soorong. Take everyone with you. I’ll deal with… with all this.”

“We still need to drive these Mikovians from our Islands!” someone called. Probably one of Sureya’s supporters.

Anger slammed into Otter’s heart, hot and fresh, and not entirely her own. Sureya’s rage was still there, still burning. It hadn’t vanished with her death. Some part of Otter feared it would never go away, that she was now cursed with it.

“Sureya fucking lied to you! About everything! She wanted to save everyone from a problem they don’t need saving from, and all she did was kill her own people to do it! There are more bodies at her feet than there are at any Mikovian’s! Worse, she’s apparently just fine with using your own enemy’s weapon to poison people.”

The woman who’d spoken looked like she was about to say something, but another woman at her side grabbed her shoulder and shook her head. 

They’d all seen it. Even if everything Otter had said wasn’t true, they’d seen Sureya draw a knife during a duel where only magic was permitted. They’d seen her violate the rules of custom just for her own spite in her final moments.

They didn’t need a better metaphor than that.

“Let’s go, Juala,” Otter said. “Can you teleport us to Pruana from here?”

Juala paused for a moment, considering. “I’ll need to sit down. Make sure I get the math right. That’s a pretty big jump.”

“Do what you need to do,” Otter said.

She flexed her wounded hand, not bothering to wrap the new injury. She just let it bleed.