The Mennin Lake Bullion

The sun baked the upper deck of the Stormhaven ferry. It was the second week of July, the kind of heat that made the steel plating shimmer and warped the horizon. I dragged the heavy mop across the deck, gray water sloshing over my boots. Nineteen years old, and my life was tied to this rust bucket. My father’s medical debts weren't going to pay themselves, and the shipping company didn't care about the blisters tearing open on my palms. I leaned on the wooden handle, my chest heaving, and wiped a line of sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist.

The crystal-screens mounted above the passenger lounge flared to life. The volume was dialed up too high, the static crackling before the news anchor’s sharp voice cut through the low hum of the ferry’s engines.

"Meridian Aerodrome remains on lockdown," the anchor said. "Authorities confirm the missing cargo includes three tons of Aureate Bullion. The Imperial Guilds have issued a state-wide alert."

A few passengers stopped taking photos of the ocean to watch the screen. Aureate Bullion. Raw magic amplifier. Just a handful of the stuff was worth more than my entire neighborhood back on the mainland. Three tons was enough to buy a small country or level a large one. I went back to mopping. Rich people stealing from rich people. It didn't change the fact that I had forty more feet of deck to scrub before my shift ended.

The ferry’s horn blasted. We were midway across the strait.

I looked toward the bow, and my stomach dropped. The light shifted. It didn't fade, like a cloud passing over the sun. It just changed. The bright, blinding yellow of the summer afternoon turned a bruised, ugly violet. The wind, which had been whipping my hair into my eyes all morning, just stopped. A heavy, dead silence settled over the deck. The air felt thick, pressing down on my shoulders like a physical weight. The hair on my arms stood up. My skin prickled.

"Hey, Wenda!" the first mate yelled from the bridge stairs. "Get the boarding ramp secure. We're being hailed."

I dropped the mop. Out of the violet haze, a fast-moving interceptor boat cut through the water, pulling alongside the ferry. It shouldn't have been able to match our speed so easily.

Four men walked up the lowered boarding ramp. They wore the crisp gray uniforms of Imperial Inspectors. Silver badges gleamed on their chests. But their boots were wrong. Inspectors wore polished dress shoes. These guys wore scuffed, heavy tactical boots. And the guy in the front, the one with a jagged scar across his jaw, had a black tattoo creeping up his neck from beneath his collar. Two crossed daggers over a shattered crown.

Obsidian Syndicate.

My jaw locked. I took a slow step backward, melting into the crowd of confused tourists.

"Routine inspection," the scarred man announced. His voice was too calm. "Everyone stay where you are. Have your identification ready."

He didn't wait for the captain to come down. He nodded to the men behind him. They didn't pull out clipboards. They pulled out short, heavy repetition rifles.

The screaming started immediately.

The scarred man raised a hand, and a wall of concussive force exploded from his palm, shattering the passenger lounge windows and throwing three deckhands into the steel bulkhead.

I didn't scream. I turned and ran.

I hit the metal grating of the crew corridor hard. My boots slipped on a patch of spilled diesel, but I caught myself on the handrail, the rust biting into my palm. I needed to get down. The maintenance hatch was twenty feet away.

The ship lurched violently. The violet sky outside seemed to press against the windows, the water churning into sharp, unnatural peaks. A super-storm. They brought a storm with them to mask the hit.

I ripped the hatch cover open and practically fell down the ladder. The metal rungs dug into my hands. I slid the last ten feet, landing hard on the steel grating of Deck Four. The cargo hold.

Deck Four Maintenance

It was dark down here. The main lights were dead. The emergency bulbs kicked on, bathing the rows of parked cars in a cheap red glow. The air was heavy with the heat of cooling engines.

I crouched behind a battered sedan, my heart hammering against my ribs. I pulled a heavy steel wrench from my toolbelt. It wasn't much against a rifle or a battle-mage, but it was heavy.

I heard a wet cough.

I froze. The sound came from the center lane, wedged between a minivan and a massive, unmarked transport truck. I crept forward, keeping my head low.

Sitting against the massive tire of the transport truck was a guy about my age. He wore a dark jacket, currently soaked through on the left side. He was pressing both hands against his ribs. Dark blood leaked through his fingers, pooling on the steel deck.

I stepped out from behind the minivan, keeping the wrench raised.

He looked up. His face was pale, covered in a sheen of cold sweat. His dark hair stuck to his forehead.

"You look terrible," I said.

He let out a dry, rattling breath. "I'm shot. What's your excuse?"

"I work here. Who are you?"

"Jared," he said, his head dropping back against the tire. "And unless you want to end up like me, you need to get off this boat."

"We're in the middle of the ocean," I pointed out. "And there's a magical super-storm outside. So leaving isn't really an option right now. Why did the syndicate shoot you?"

"Because I was driving that," he said, jerking his chin toward the unmarked truck.

I looked at the massive vehicle. "The decoy truck. You're smuggling the Aureate Bullion."

"Was," Jared corrected, wincing as he shifted his weight. "The syndicate got wind of the route. They want the gold. But the boss didn't tell them the catch."

"What catch?"

"The gold is raw. Unstable," Jared said. "It reacts to active magic. That storm outside? It's bleeding raw energy into the air. If they open those doors and expose the bullion to the storm's ambient magic, it's going to detonate. It'll blow this ferry in half."

My mouth went dry. "They don't know that?"

"They're thugs," Jared said, coughing again. Blood speckled his lips. "They just want the payday. They're going to take the gold, sink the ship to cover their tracks, and leave everyone to drown. Assuming the explosion doesn't vaporize us first."

Heavy footsteps echoed on the metal stairs above us. Two sets of boots.

"Check the hold," a rough voice barked. "Make sure nobody is hiding down here. The boss wants total control before he breaches the truck."

Jared looked at me. "Run. I'll distract them."

"You can't even stand up," I whispered.

I looked at the two syndicate guards moving down the aisle. They wore heavy kinetic armor and held their rifles ready. I couldn't fight them with a wrench. And I couldn't let them find Jared.

I closed my eyes. I hadn't used it in three years. Not since I ran away. The Imperial Guilds hunted unregistered mages, throwing them into labor camps or worse. But I didn't have a choice.

I reached out with my mind, feeling for the moisture in the air. The cargo hold was humid, thick with the heat of the summer day and the dampness of the ocean. I felt the water molecules, vibrating, heavy.

I stepped out into the aisle.

The guards snapped their rifles toward me. "Hey! Put your hands on your head!"

I didn't raise my hands. I clenched my fists.

I pulled the ambient moisture from the air, condensing it in a split second. The water formed into two thick, dense rings around their throats. I snapped my wrists backward. The water hardened like concrete, choking off their air instantly.

They dropped their rifles, clawing at their own throats. Their eyes bulged. I didn't let go. My nose started to bleed, the physical strain of the magic tearing at my blood vessels. I squeezed my hands tighter. The men collapsed to the deck, unconscious.

I let the water dissipate. It splashed onto the metal floor, completely ordinary.

I wiped the blood from my upper lip and turned back to Jared. He was staring at me, his mouth slightly open.

"You're an unregistered water-mage," he said.

"Astute observation," I said, grabbing his uninjured arm. "Get up. We have to move."

The Decoy Truck

The ferry lurched violently again, throwing us both against the side of a rusted pickup truck. The floor tilted at a harsh twenty-degree angle and stayed there.

"They stopped the engines," Jared grunted, leaning heavily against my shoulder. His breathing was getting shallow.

"They're flooding the ballast tanks," I said. "They really are trying to sink us."

"I told you," he said.

We moved down the corridor, sticking to the shadows. Every step was a battle against gravity. The emergency lights flickered, casting long, jerky shadows across the vehicles. My muscles burned from holding his weight, but I didn't stop.

The air was getting hot. Unnaturally hot. It felt like walking into an oven. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes. The humidity I usually relied on was burning away, leaving the air dry and suffocating.

"Pyromancer," Jared muttered, coughing. "The syndicate leader. He's going for the truck."

We rounded the corner at the far end of the hold.

The massive steel doors of the transport truck were glowing cherry red. Standing in front of them was the scarred man. Fire rolled off his shoulders, shedding harsh, violent light across the dark hold. He pressed his bare hands against the locking mechanism of the truck. The steel hissed and bubbled under his touch.

"He's melting the locks," I whispered.

"If he breaches that plating, the storm magic will hit the gold," Jared said. He grabbed my shirt. "You have to stop him."

"He's a master-class pyromancer," I said. "I'm a deckhand who can barely lift a puddle without getting a nosebleed. What do you want me to do?"

"You choked out two heavy guards in three seconds," Jared said. "Stop holding back."

The metal of the truck groaned. A massive crack split down the center of the doors.

Golden light spilled out into the hold. It wasn't a soft, pretty glow. It was blinding, aggressive, and volatile. The air around the crack began to warp and vibrate. The sheer magical density of the Aureate Bullion was leaking into the atmosphere, reacting instantly with the violent energy of the super-storm outside.

The deck beneath our feet vibrated. A high-pitched whining sound filled the hold, like a turbine spinning out of control.

"It's going critical," Jared yelled over the noise.

The pyromancer stepped back, shielding his eyes from the blinding golden light. He realized too late what was happening. He yelled an order to his men, but the sound was drowned out by the roar of the unstable magic. The heat radiating from the truck was so intense it began melting the paint off the cars parked nearby.

The hull of the ferry, already strained by the storm and the tilting angle, began to buckle. A massive section of the exterior steel wall next to the truck glowed red, then white, as the volatile gold melted straight through the ship's armor.

Seawater began to spray through the weakening steel.

I dropped my wrench. I stepped away from Jared and walked out into the open aisle. The heat blistered my skin. My clothes clung to my back.

I didn't look at the pyromancer. I looked at the wall of the ship. I looked at the ocean churning just behind the melting steel.

I reached out with both hands.

Pier 89

The pyromancer turned and saw me. He raised a hand, a ball of condensed white fire forming in his palm.

"Don't," I said.

I pulled. I didn't pull from the air. I pulled from the ocean itself.

The physical strain hit me like a truck. My vision went white at the edges. Blood poured from my nose and tears streamed down my face. My muscles screamed as if they were tearing off the bone.

The weakened section of the hull ripped outward. A massive, towering wall of cold, black ocean water surged into the cargo hold. It answered my pull, crashing over the cars, tearing the deck grating loose.

I directed the wave straight at the open doors of the transport truck.

The freezing seawater slammed into the boiling, volatile gold.

The resulting steam explosion was deafening. A shockwave of pure thermal energy and pressurized steam ripped through the hold. I was thrown backward, crashing hard against the side of a minivan. My head bounced off the metal, and the world went dark for a split second.

When I opened my eyes, the hold was filled with thick, blinding white steam. The golden light was gone. The water had rapidly cooled the bullion, neutralizing the chain reaction.

But the hull was open. A massive, jagged hole led straight out into the churning violet storm. The ferry was taking on thousands of gallons of water a minute. We were going down.

I saw movement in the steam. The pyromancer. He was staggered, his clothes burned, but he was still standing. He raised his hands toward me, his eyes wide with rage.

Before he could ignite a spark, a dark shape slammed into him from the side.

Jared.

He had dragged himself off the floor, using the last of his strength to tackle the syndicate leader. The momentum carried them both across the wet, tilted deck.

"Jared!" I screamed.

He didn't look back. He drove his shoulder into the pyromancer's chest, and they both tumbled out through the jagged breach in the hull, disappearing into the freezing, violent waves below.

I scrambled forward, grabbing the edge of the torn metal. I looked down into the black water. Nothing. They were gone.

The ship groaned, tilting further.

I didn't have time to grieve for a guy I knew for ten minutes. I planted my feet on the deck. I raised my arms, gritting my teeth against the agonizing pain in my head. I grabbed the water flooding into the hold and forced it back. I created a solid wall of dense, pressurized water, plugging the hole in the hull.

I held it. I held it as the emergency alarms blared. I held it as the ferry's backup engines finally kicked in, slowly righting the ship. I held it for what felt like hours, my body shaking, blood dripping off my chin, until the violent rocking stopped and the deep blast of the docking horn echoed through the hold.

We hit the pier.

I let the water drop. I collapsed to my knees, gasping for air. The hold was a disaster zone of crushed cars, steam, and twisted metal.

Heavy boots pounded down the stairs. Not syndicate. Imperial Guild Enforcers. The authorities had swarmed the docks.

I forced myself to stand. My legs felt like lead. I moved toward the shadows near the back of the hold, slipping behind a stack of shipping crates. I found a service hatch that led to the lower bilges and popped it open.

Before I climbed down, I looked back at the ruined transport truck. One of the heavy steel doors had blown completely off. Laying on the deck, gleaming dully in the red emergency light, was a single brick of Aureate Bullion.

I walked over, picked it up, and shoved it into the deep pocket of my jacket. It was heavy. It felt like trouble.

I slipped into the bilges just as the Enforcers breached the hold. The rain had started to fall outside, a cold, heavy downpour that washed the violet tint from the sky. I climbed out through a drainage pipe and dropped into the dark, wet alley behind Pier 89.

I pulled my collar up against the rain and started walking. I saved the ship, but I used high-tier magic in front of witnesses. The syndicate knew my face. The Guilds would be looking for the rogue water-mage who blew a hole in a commercial ferry. The real hunt had just begun.