[”What Goes Up…”]

  It wasn’t until I saw her that I realized where I was running.

  Mei. Locked in battle.

  Or rather, locked in the grotesque mockery of battle, one sorcerer’s lifeless body still jerking on its feet, a dagger buried to the hilt in its neck. Their companions had turned the corpse into a puppet, moving it with deft, malevolent precision.

  And then, if only for a heartbeat, the scene froze under the weight of the merchant ship’s impact with their black vessel. It was a brief pause, suspended in time, the violence of the collision echoing in the gut of the ship. Everything tilted and rocked.

  One of the still living sorcerers managed to cling to a splintering railing, another fell, barely breaking their own fall against a groaning cage. The third, the marionetted corpse Mei had been fighting, crumpled as if its strings had been cut, tumbling down into the river’s black waters with a distant splash.

  Not that Mei was faring much better because of it. She was barely holding on to heavy coffin that had slid halfway across the deck, its iron reinforcements scraping against the wood with a wailing screech. Everything was groaning and cracking. The entire ship had nearly rolled over in the river’s grasp, and I—well, I had just slammed the bow of the merchant ship into its side, cracking the hull wide open. Both vessels now ground against each other, locked together now as the current pulled them further downstream.

  The Jiangshi that had been scrambling up the gangplank, desperate to join the fray, had now either tumbled into the river, dragged under by the churning water, or clung mindlessly to its side.

  I only had an instant to take it all in before the merchant vessel heaved beneath me. Something deep in its bones caught, something it shouldn’t have. Too much momentum had been stolen by the black vessel, leaving me no time to think as the deck buckled sharply upward. I didn’t so much jump as let the motion hurl me into the air.

  For a single breath, I was weightless, suspended against the chaos like a painting. Then instinct—foolish, reckless instinct—took over. I twisted mid-air, locking eyes on one of the hooded figures, the one clinging precariously to the cracked railing. There wasn’t much of a decision to make, not really. My trajectory was already set.

  So I leaned into it, tucking and bracing for impact.

  I slammed into the figure with all the force I could muster, a collision of limbs and curses as we tumbled across the deck. The wood beneath us tilted violently, the entire ship keening in protest as the river claimed its balance second by second.

  The stench hit me first—a sour, putrid miasma baked into the black fabric of their robes. It clawed at my throat, my lungs, filling me with the rot of things long dead. Then I caught a glimpse of their face—or what passed for a face. Sickly eyes glared from deep within the shadow of the hood, skin pallid and slack, the color of spoiled milk left too long in the sun. They hissed something sharp and venomous, but whatever they meant to say was cut short as I drove their back into the rusted bars of a cage, the impact ringing like a bell.

  The deck beneath us was less a floor now and more a slope, tilting and groaning as the river claimed more and more of its prize. I didn’t pause to consider the angle or the danger—or the look of hate etched on their deathly features. My fist acted first, driven by instinct.

  I’d never punched anyone before. Not properly. I’d imagined it, of course, as boys often do. But reality had none of the satisfaction I’d envisioned. The sensation was grotesque—mushy, wet, and strangely yielding, like striking a sack of spoiled fruit. Something cracked beneath my knuckles, and I knew it wasn’t wood. There was blood, though whether it was mine or theirs I couldn’t tell.

  I didn’t have time for a second punch. The deck tilted further, groaning in protest as the cage beneath us tore free of its moorings with a sound like splintering bones. It tilted, wrenched loose by gravity, and together we plunged into the dark waters below.

  The river was everywhere at once, crushing, freezing, merciless. Its cold fingers wrapped around me, pulling me under, dragging me back into its suffocating depths. Only this time, I wasn’t alone.

  Even as the light above dimmed, stolen by the surging water, the sorcerer’s eyes burned. A pale, greenish glow seared through the darkness, venomous and unrelenting. It was as if their hatred for me could keep them alight, a lantern carried deep into the belly of the river.

  Then came the jab—a sharp thrust of their staff into my side. It shouldn’t have been much. The water dulled the force of the blow. But the pain that followed was electric, searing through me as if I’d been run through with molten iron. Whatever power lingered in that staff, it bit with a hunger steel never could.

  My body convulsed, air erupting from my lungs in a stream of panicked bubbles. And still, those glowing eyes bore into me, filled with curses I couldn’t hear but felt all the same.

  My fingers found the haft of the staff before they could pull it free, my grip a vise fueled by panic and fury. I used it to haul myself forward, closing the distance between us in the dark, surging water. Their hands tightened at the other end, unrelenting, but I had leverage now.

  With startling speed, my foot lashed out, finding the midpoint of their glowing eyes even in the river’s black embrace. The impact was sickening—soft and brittle at the same time. Something cracked beneath my heel, and though I couldn’t hear it, I felt their scream. The stream of bubbles erupting from their mouth surged around me, frantic and broken.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Their grip on the staff loosened, and I didn’t wait to see the end of them. Kicking upward, the weight of the river fought to drag me back, but I broke the surface, gasping for air as the sorcerer vanished into the dark depths below.

  The world above was chaos. Firelight reflected off the churning waves, and the acrid smoke of burning wood and oil clung to the air. The river had become a graveyard of splinters and shattered vessels.

  I grabbed the first thing within reach—the railing of a black deck that jutted nearly vertical from the water’s surface. The merchant ship’s impact had cracked the hull wide open, leaving the sorcerer’s vessel tilted precariously, half-sunken but not yet gone.

  Around me, whatever Jiangshi had managed to scramble aboard tumbled from the listing deck like snarling, gurgling stones, their undead hands clawing at the water as they were pulled under.

  Instinct screamed at me to get out of there, to climb, to leave the water behind before one caught me by accident. My arms hooked around the railing, the lantern-staff still clutched in my grasp. Some other instinct—more cunning and less panicked—told me to hold onto it. Letting go of my only weapon seemed a poor idea, and I was starting to trust that voice more and more.

  I’d barely managed to haul my right leg over the edge, the cold sting of air rushing into my lungs as I coughed up whatever gallon of water I’d swallowed. And then, somewhere above me, a thunderous crash shattered my brief struggle, a noise so massive it made the very air tremble. Though I never saw the blow that ripped the merchant vessel free from the jagged hole in the black ship’s hull, I felt it. The aftermath was a shockwave, an invisible force that ripped through the boat like the snap of a taut string.

  It was like a see-saw, the balance shattered.

  The ship pitched violently, jerking to the other side, throwing me so far up the incline I was nearly thirty feet above the river’s surface before I knew it. The world spun.

  And then, gravity did what it always does.

  The drop was brutal. I felt it in every bone, every joint, as if the ship itself had decided to punish me for having the audacity to hold on to it. The precious air I’d stolen was expelled from my lungs with a gasp as I slammed into the deck, still clutching the lantern-staff like a lifeline as I rolled across the dark planks.

  I got a weak knee beneath me, chipping for breath as the black ship settled into something vaguely resembling equilibrium.

  In the moments that followed, all I knew was that a strange stillness seemed to settle over the world. The tumult of the river, the crash of splintering wood, the clamor of death—it all receded, leaving only the whisper of the wind and the faint groan of tortured timbers. I blinked the haze from my eyes, my senses slowly knitting themselves back together, and as I raised my pounding head, a new scene unfolded before me, as if I’d stepped into a different kind of nightmare.

  The metal cages that had once lined the deck, their bars slick with rust and blood, were now mostly gone—thrown overboard or destroyed in the chaos. A few remained, their twisted frames jutting out from the dark planks like the remains of some twisted, forgotten thing. The deck was scarred with a deep, jagged crack where the merchant ship had torn into the hull of the black vessel. The hole gaped wide, its edges still raw and bleeding seawater, steadily pulling the ship down into the river’s maw with a violence all its own. But that wasn’t my concern—not yet.

  Six of us stood on this dying deck. One was me, winded, aching, my body still screaming with the memory of impact and cold. I clung to the lantern-staff, unsure how to wield it, but certain I would need this lone weapon of mine if I were to survive whatever came next. Another was Mei, her face set in grim determination, balancing precariously atop one of the few cages that hadn’t been ripped free during the violent rocking.

  The third figure was the remaining sorcerer, their face a mask of hatred, their eyes burning with an intensity that could have set the world alight. They were no longer just an enemy; they were a living flame, stoking the fire of my own fury. And the remaining three? Soldiers, clad in black armor, their visors dark and empty, their forms as unfeeling as the ship’s hull. They stood like statues, unmoving, watching us with that eerie silence of death itself.

  In their empty stares, I saw nothing but certain doom, the weight of inevitability pressing down on my chest. There was no escape. No hope. The world had already decided our fate.

  And then, deep within the bowels of the ship, something stirred.

  I felt it first—a subtle shift, a tremor in the bones of the black vessel. The balance of the ship seemed to change, as if something vast and terrible had awakened beneath us. And before any of us could react, a massive, rotting hand reached up from the jagged wound in the ship’s side. It was a grotesque thing, its fingers thick with decay, joints too large, too disjointed, as though it had never meant to be. The very air seemed to recoil from it.

  Without warning, one of the armored soldiers was yanked from her feet, her body swept up with a speed that defied reason. The fingers curled around her like a child’s hand grasping a doll—effortless, absolute. She didn’t even have time to scream before she was pulled under, swallowed by the gaping wound in the ship’s side.

  All that remained was silence—a thick, suffocating silence, like the world itself had held its breath. It had happened so fast, so violently, that my mind barely had time to grasp it. But even so, the image of that monstrous, decaying hand, its rotting flesh stitched together in a grotesque parody of life, stayed with me. It burned itself into my memory, a brand I couldn’t escape.

  If death hadn’t become so familiar by now, if it hadn’t been a constant companion, maybe the dread that followed that thing’s grasp would have taken hold of me. But it didn’t.

  The moment passed the nearest of the soldiers snapped his head toward the sorcerer, his voice cold and sharp as the frost of a mountain morning. “Control that thing!”

  The command was a whip-crack, and the sorcerer seemed to flinch, spinning their staff with a swift, practiced motion. The third soldier moved as well, rushing across the battered deck, coming straight for me.

  But I was already on my feet, twirling my own staff with lazy grace. Or maybe it was Liang—hard to say, the lines between us had blurred again. All I knew was that, before the third soldier could even reach the deck's midpoint, the planks at his feet exploded in a rain of splinters and shattering wood. That same massive, rotting hand shot through the deck for a second time, like some monstrous killer-whale breaching to claim their prey.

  It took the soldier before I even had a chance to register what had happened. One moment, there, moving with deadly precision, and the next, gone. Nothing but the echoes of his presence as the ship’s dark interiors swallowed him whole.

  My heart raced in my chest, a war drum crashing with every beat. But even so, the words that slipped from my lips carried an eerie confidence, “I can buy you a few seconds at most,” Liang Feng said. “Don’t waste them.”

  “And what the hell am I supposed to do?” I wanted to yell, but the armored leader was already charging toward us, his movements as swift and deadly as any predator’s.

  In that moment, it didn’t matter that my notifications were broken. I could feel them, as sure as if they were still flashing before my eyes. A simple message:

  [Boss Battle: Begin!]