Heretical Fishing

Book 2: Chapter 29: Test and Revelation

“Fischer!”

The voice came from far away.

Not right now, I thought back. I need to rest.

“Fischer!”

I tried to roll over, but my body wouldn’t respond. Something hard smacked me in the face, followed by an angry hiss, a loud crack, and a soft eeeeeee that faded from hearing.

My eyes fluttered open—Snips was atop my chest, shaking her claw out at the ocean.

“Did…” I rubbed my face, willing my vision to focus. “Did Rocky just slap me?”

“Aye,” Peter confirmed. “Slapped the piss out of you, if you forgive my saying. I half thought your head would fly off toward the horizon like he just did.”

“Little scoundrel...” My voice came out raspy and ended in a cough. “What happened?”

I squinted and glanced down.

“Wait... what?”

I lay on a surface of dark-gray rock. It was smooth and uniform, and as I shakily got to my feet, I gazed out at the transformed scene.

“Frack me...”

A single piece of stone—around fifty meters long and three meters wide—led back to the shore. On either side, boulders tapered down at a forty-five degree angle toward the ocean. It was high tide, yet we stood a full two meters above the small waves crashing against the rocks.

I turned to take in the fishermen; sensing my attention, they looked back. When I’d met most of them for the first time last night, there had been bouts of awe and joy, but even Theo’s face had held some hesitation hidden deep within the lines of his eyes. When I studied them now, I saw neither doubt, reluctance, nor mistrust.

Hands twitched, weight shifted from foot to foot, nostrils flared, and jaws clenched and unclenched, but they weren’t agitated—they radiated anticipation. My mouth split in a grin as I realized what they were waiting for.

“So, fellas—what do you say we take this rock wall for a test spin?”

Theo swallowed and licked his lips.

“Do you mean...?”

I nodded, beaming as they seemed to lean in, waiting for me to voice the words.

“Let’s go fishing.”

***

“What the...?”

Danny punctuated his question by pulling on his fishing rod; it bent, but the line didn’t budge.

“I think the hook is stuck on something...”

I nodded.

“Yeah, looks like you’ve got a snag, mate. The bad news is I won’t let anyone cut their line and potentially hurt some sea creatures, but the good news is we have a gang of hook retrievers.

I turned to Snips. She was wedged between two rocks in the tidal zone, her eye closed in bliss as the small waves crashed over her.

“Snips, would you mind—”

“Hold that thought...” Theo said, raising a finger. “I seem to recall someone losing our race to the shore earlier.” His eyes crinkled as he turned to the side. “What was the wager again, Peter?”

The chef grinned maliciously.

“The loser was to be the volunteer for Ellis’s aerial test.”

Keith blanched, taking an involuntary step back.

“Now, just hang on one second.”

The four men had mischief in their eyes as they approached him from all sides.

“W-we can talk about this, gents. I—no! Wait!”

With Theo and Peter holding his arms, Danny and Ellis picked up a leg each.

“What are the parameters, Ellis?” Theo asked.

“I-I do not consent to this barbarity!” Keith’s eyes were panicked. “Unhand me this inst—”

“Subject is to remain rigid,” Ellis replied, ignoring Keith’s pleas. “This will allow optimal transference of energy.”

Peter raised an eyebrow.

“On three?”

“On three,” Ellis confirmed, adjusting his grip on Keith’s ankle.

If I didn’t know Danny to be Keith’s friend, I’d have assumed the smirk on his face was murderous.

Keith saw the look; his eyes went wide.

“One...” they said, lifting him.

Keith tugged his arms, trying to escape—it was ineffective.

“Two...” Again, they lifted.

Accepting his fate, Keith’s face scrunched up and a soft whimper came from his throat.

“Three!”

They wrenched upward, letting go of his limbs just as Corporal Claws appeared on Keith’s chest, a toothy grin plastered on her face and a single paw raised to wave me goodbye.

“Huh...” I said, watching them rocket toward the stratosphere.

Keith’s rather high-pitched scream was punctuated by chittering laughter, and within a second, their voices left hearing range. The royal’s limbs pinwheeled, spinning rapidly with his ascent.

“Is he gonna be alright...?”

Ellis nodded, his eyes staring skyward.

“We have been thorough in our testing. Even if he were to hit terminal velocity...” Ellis held up a hand, interrupting himself. “When he hits terminal velocity, he won’t be wounded by striking the water.”

“Huh. Neat.”

“Can you still see him?” Theo asked.

“Yeah, mate. His spinning has slowed, but he’s still going up.”

“Marvelous...” Ellis replied, scratching away at his notepad.

Just as his flight was about to turn into a freefall, Corporal Claws hunched her limbs and electricity sparked from her joints.

“Oh—that’s not great.”

“What isn’t?” Ellis asked, still scrawling.

As if in answer, Claws’s muscled legs kicked off of Keith’s chest. She went soaring higher yet, lightning wreathing her limbs as she rocketed upward. Unfortunately for Keith, the law of equivalent exchange appeared to be active in this world; he was sent spiraling down toward the ocean’s surface at startling speed.

“Claws just used him as a springboard,” I answered, not taking my eyes off the human missile hurtling toward us.

Keith spread his limbs out wide, trying to slow himself. I let out a relieved breath; she hadn’t shocked him unconscious.

“Is that him...?” Peter asked, squinting up at the rapidly descending cultivator.

Danny grunted.

“Definitely him.”

Despite his best efforts at wind resistance, Keith approached with terrible speed.

I raised an eyebrow at Ellis.

“Is he still going to be okay?”

“Hmm?” Ellis asked, looking up.

I pointed at Keith.

“Do you want me to catch him, or is he alright?”

“Oh. No, he should be fine.”

Keith started flapping his arms, trying to his posture, but fast as he was going, he’d mistimed the landing.

“aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAH—”

Slap.

He belly-flopped with a clap like thunder. A crater formed on the surface at the impact site, and I held up a hand to block the torrent of saltwater that sprayed up. A collective groan escaped us as we cringed at the hit. With a synchronized step forward, we all leaned out and stared down at the ocean.

Keith’s head breached the surface and he took deep breaths, treading water.

I squinted at his body, seeing no injuries.

“You, uh… you alright, man?”

He let out a laugh, more surprised than joyous.

“I think so. I just need to rest a moment—my nerves are frayed.”

His torso lifted upward, and he floated on his back with his eyes closed.

I looked up, down at Keith, then glanced at Ellis.

“Should we tell him?”

Ellis returned the glance, his eyes sparkling and a smile barely hidden beneath an indifferent facade.

“Tell him what, Fischer?”

I grinned, returning my attention skyward.

Other than Ellis, no one had noticed, but that changed when they heard the high-pitched squeal of one Corporal Claws, mischief incarnate.

Wreathed in lightning and giving a malevolently toothy grin, she spiraled directly down, her predatory gaze locked onto her target.

At the sound, Keith’s eyes snapped open and his body jolted, his limbs not working cohesively to get him out of the way.

“N—” was all he had time to get out.

Claws slammed down into him, flattening her body to reduce the impact.

“Oof!” Keith grunted, his body folding in half like the layers of a croissant.

He reappeared at the surface a moment later with an entirely too happy otter lifting him by the armpit.

Theo gave a full-faced cringe and hissed in a breath.

“You, uhhh, alright, Keith?”

He shook his head as Claws lifted him up onto the rocks. Theo and I went down and grabbed a hand each to haul him up. He collapsed on the walkway, wheezing breaths and clearly winded.

Claws reached into a pocket and rummaged around, then held out an opalescent rock.

Peter cocked his head at it.

“Is she saying sorry?”

“Sorry?” I asked, laughing. “No—she doesn’t say sorry. She’s saying thank you for the fun, I’m guessing?”

Claws chirped and grinned at me, content I knew her so well.

Keith opened a shaky palm, and she placed the stone atop it, pushing it further toward him with little nudges of her padded paws.

“Thanks,” Keith croaked, his face colorless.

Ellis, who hadn’t stopped furiously scribbling since Keith’s orbital strike, flipped his notepad closed.

“All right. The Aeriel test was a success. Shall we get on with fish—oh, are you well, Keith?”

The royal gave a thumbs up, still looking anything but okay.

***

The shifting current tugged at my line, pulling and pushing it back and forth every few breaths. I swayed with the motion, my body reflecting the tide’s relentless movement. The day’s light was just fading as the sun descended in the western sky, heading for the mountains it would soon set behind.

A deep calm washed over me and I let out a sigh.

“I can’t believe fishing is so frowned on here—how do people enjoy life without it?”

“It is truly a shame,” Ellis said, his face calm as he held a finger to his line. “But such was the weight of the water god’s betrayal.”

I turned toward him, raising an eyebrow—as did Theo, Peter, and Danny.

“... what?” I asked.

“The gods’ betrayal,” Ellis replied, still relaxed.

“What do you mean, ‘the gods’ betrayal?” Theo questioned, lowering his fishing rod. “Last we spoke of it, you knew nothing about why anything related to water is seen as heretical.”

Ellis’s eyes popped open, and he blinked at all of us.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you? I must have forgotten with all the excitement of arriving.”

“Tell us what?” Theo demanded, exasperated.

“About the division in the pantheon. I have known for quite some time, but when I was still a royal archivist...” He shrugged. “It went against my oaths. Now that we have abandoned such things, I no longer feel the need to keep it a secret.”

We waited for him to continue, but as the silence stretched on, Peter’s patience ended.

“For the love of—” He cut himself off, taking a calming breath. “What happened, Ellis? What are the details?”

“Ah, of course. My apologies.” He opened his eyes, smiling out at the ocean. “Though the details are uncertain, one thing is clear: the gods aligned with water betrayed the other gods, humanity, and the world at large. A war broke out that encompassed the entire globe.”

As I considered the scope of such a war, we fell into silence. I pictured battlefields of cultivators fighting, the carnage it must have wrought, and the countless lives that must have been lost. A breeze kicked up, and a shiver ran down my spine.

“A holy war with cultivators...” I shook my head. “That’s horrific.”

“Just so,” Ellis agreed. “Eventually, the non-water aligned gods, what are known as the ‘allied gods’, formed a pact. As their final gambit, they fled from this world. With their departure, there wasn’t enough power to sustain the treacherous gods, so they were dragged away too—banished forever to another realm.”

“So the allied gods sacrificed themselves?” Theo asked, rubbing his chin.

“So it would appear. Only a god could truly comprehend how many lives they saved in doing so, but as a result, they left our world unpowered—barren.”

“That’s all it said?”

“That’s all?” Ellis asked, raising both eyebrows at me. “That was information hidden within the depths of the royal archive, most of which were almost desolate, which I suspect is the only reason they survived being purged.”

“Purged? You mean the information was destroyed?”

“Just so,” Ellis replied, and for the first time, I saw a hint of fury in the calm archivist’s features. “At some point in the millennia past, a ruler - or an archivist - saw fit to scrub the records. Luckily for us, they were as useless as they are stupid for attempting such a thing in the first place.”

I shook my head.

“What’s a monarchy without a bit of censorship and oppression?”

Ellis sighed

“I wish it weren’t so.”

A silence stretched between us as everyone became lost in their own thoughts.

“F-fish on!”

Theo’s voice was shrill; it cut through the outward melody of crashing waves and the inward musings of revelation both.

“Onya, Theo!” I called back, leaning into the fortunate distraction.

Theo reeled it in, easily handling what appeared to be a small fish on the other end of the line. Its scales flashed at the water’s surface, and with a flick of his rod, he lifted it up to the walkway.

My eyes were drawn into it.

Juvenile Shore Fish

Common

Found along the ocean shores of the Kallis Realm, this fish is a staple source of both food and bait.

I dismissed the message and darted a glance at the men.

Peter’s eyes cleared first.

“What...?”

“Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that detail. We can kind of inspect stuff—especially fish.”

Theo was the last to return his attention from the screen he was no doubt watching, and a broad grin spread over his face.

“I got three levels in fishing!”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Not bad, mate—I wonder if it took past experience into account…?”

Ellis nodded his agreement as he scribbled away in his notepad.

I peered down at the fish and cocked my head to the side—the hook was nowhere to be seen. I picked it up and looked into its mouth.

“Ah, shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Theo asked.

“It swallowed the hook. I don’t feel good about eating fish this size unless it’s necessary, but there’s little to no chance of it surviving.”

Already, its life was leaking away, so I dispatched it with a swift movement.

“Sorry, little fella.”

“It’s probably my fault.” Theo winced and shook his head. “I was listening to Ellis speak, then I got distracted by my thoughts—I didn’t notice the first bite.”

“All we can do is learn from it, I guess. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t feel good about bringing unnecessary pain or suffering.”

They all nodded, and Theo hung his head.

“It’s all right, man. You didn’t do it intention... ally...” I trailed off as a winged form glided down onto the walkway beside us.

Covered in white feathers with accents of black on its sides, the Pelican stretched its wings out and took a hesitant step forward, peering at the fish with one eye, its head sideways and neck outstretched.

I looked at the fish, then back up at the pelican as a smile lit my features.