One Word Prompts 2020

Fish - An Unwanted Fight

She stood on the dock, the sea as still as glass below her, a sky of stars above. Behind her, the town settled into an anxious sleep, the lights of the residents dimming as one after another they resigned themselves to their impending fate. Ahead of her, on the distant horizon, the lights of foreign ships waited for the dawn.

It was a clear night. Bright and crisp. Perfect for the magic she had planned. The full moon above shone down, reflected in the slow surf, surrounded above and below by twinkling stars, as if the heavens approved wholeheartedly with the perversion she was about to wreck on man and nature.

Yet she hesitated. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared out at the distant shipborne fires.

How many aboard those towering hulls dreamt even now of their own homes? Of their own families? How many had been conscripted into a war they didn't want? How many had been coerced into their uniforms by unlivable civilian conditions? How many foolishly believed the tales of glory their lords and fathers had spun to them? How many didn't yet know better?

But how little did it change anything?

An unwilling man could load cannon just as quickly under threat of the whip. A regretful sword cut just as deep in the frenzy of battle. The unintended fire spread just as quickly through an old dockside.

There was no choice. And she knew that.

She took a step forward, so her bare feet touched the very edge of the dock. She forced a deep breath through her lungs. The night wind gusted around her as if the night itself breathed out with her. It ruffled her white skirts and blew her curling locks from her face.

She didn't have to look over her shoulder to see the silhouette of her little town behind her in her mind's eye. Didn't have to look to see the church tower or the mayor's mansion cutting a black shadow out of the starry night sky. She didn't need to look to see the last of the firelights, stubbornly burning into the night, their owners futilely putting off sleep and by extension the undoubtedly crimson dawn.

They wanted this no more than she did. No more than the men sleeping in the distant ship's hulls. But the kingdom's forces were not yet here to defend them and the enemy waited for the dawn winds to bring them to land.

They hadn't chosen to be invaded. Hadn't asked for the first blow of this war to land here. Hadn't the slightest understanding of why war even loomed over their shores.

Without looking down, she took a step forward, a step down. Her bare feet left the rotting wood, alighting on the water's glassy surface. It was cold beneath her feet. Not hard, but undoubtedly sturdy.

She cast aside her doubt. There was no room for it if she wanted to remain above the waves as she strode calmly over the dark waters. Her every footstep sent ripples out in perfect circles over the star-studded surf.

As she walked away from her home, her family, her people she began singing. As she stepped closer and closer to the enemy at the horizon, her song rose in volume, filling the depths of the night, echoing through the depths of the sea below her.

It was an ancient song, deep and endless. A call to the world and the world beyond.

And with every step she took, a light blossomed in her wake. It was a glowing blue, bioluminescent and ethereal. It radiated out into the sea around her in the wake of her ripples, cast out behind her on the crest of the surf.

This was wrong. This was not what this power was for. She thought this even as she called the power to her. Magic was a force of life. A force for growth, for creation.

There was a price for using magic this way.

But it was too late to stop.

And it was a price she would pay.

Already, fish of every size and shape had grouped around her ankles. They flocked to her and her light, eagerly gulping up the light. And she wasn't done.

She called deeper. Called further. Wishing she could stop even as she knew she could not.

So she walked out into the night, over the ocean's depths as if they were a path of stone through her garden. So she walked to the foreign lights, great beasts circling beneath her, eagerly awaiting her next command.

So she came to stand before the towering warships of an enemy she did not choose. They swayed in their moorings, their sails stowed tight, their masts and spars crisscrossing the starry sky above like impossible trees.

They'd seen her coming.

There had been no avoiding that. Not with the trail of glowing water behind her and the train of sea life escorting her.

They shouted from their high decks. Screams of alarm. Arrows rained down around her.

She raised a hand, her song unbroken, unfazed by the deadly rain around her. With a single finger, she pointed at the nearest ship.

A rumble shook the very sea. The ships before her swayed violently upon the suddenly tumultuous sea. A light rose from the depths, the same luminescent blue that followed her. The light became scales, each larger than a dinner plate alone. Each covering an unspeakably small piece of a leviathan unlike any seen for millennia.

Its great head cropped up over the waves, its mouth encircling the first ship.

Men screamed. Bows turned to the inside of the beast's maw. Cannon echoed through the night.

Had it been just the one beast, the foreign armada might have survived.

But she began the next verse of her song, her finger drifting across the horizon before her, sweeping over each and every ship. And the sea erupted with countless leviathans, each as hungry as the first.

The foreign armada stood no chance. Cannon rang through the night, again and again, one after another.

She hadn't chosen this battle. She doubted greatly the men her summoned sea creatures devoured had chosen it either. She took no joy in the carnage before her. Found no delight in the sight of broken masts and pieces of hull floating in the dark sea.

No, she hadn't chosen this battle.

But as dawn broke behind her, and she looked over her shoulder to the sleepy town which lay undisturbed in the distance beneath that gold sky, she felt indescribable relief.

As she did, her song ended. It died on her lips, haunting and cold. And as that music within her fell, so too did she slip into the water becoming nothing but foam.