Namaka glowered out over the sea, just after twilight. She knew where the taniwha was. The monster was coming back around the east side of Vai‘i. The sea spoke to her as never before and she could feel everything in it, for miles upon miles. Power coursed through her, more Mana than she had ever come close to holding. It was temporary, of course. Her body could not contain such vast amounts of energy and it would bleed off, lost if not used soon.
But Namaka intended to use it.
She strode into the ocean, her face grim, surfboard under her arm. Such power had come with the most terrible price imaginable. Milolii should not have done this, should not have had to do this. Now, the only way left she had to honor her dragon was to kill this one.
Pele had wanted to do this on the south shore, as close to Mount Kīlauea as the coastline allowed Namaka to bring the dragon.
Rather than dive beneath the waves, Namaka mounted her board and used her power to jet her forward. She needed to be up here, where Pele could see her and ready herself for the dragon. Powerful as she was, Namaka wasn’t sure she could kill the taniwha without her sister. One hand forward, guiding her, the other jutting out behind her, her board leapt forward faster than she had ever ridden. She could not savor the feeling, could not enjoy the rush. Not this time.
And it was nearing. It had probably destroyed many other coastal villages in the time she’d been away in Avaiki. She would make the dragon pay for that, too.
Its massive presence disrupted the currents, made its own currents in violation of her waters. And she was going to put a stop to that. As its monstrous shadow passed beneath her, Namaka leapt off her board and dove beneath the waves, instantly assuming her tail.
* * *
The dragon paid Nyi Rara no mind even as she approached, and she needed to use her water jets just to match its speed. It was coming around the island, back toward Puna. Maybe the he‘e had directed it to focus there, to focus on her people. To draw Pele out.
They needn’t have bothered.
But Nyi Rara needed it to follow her farther, past Puna, closer to the volcano.
She swam up beside its eye, a mere handful of feet away. The orb had no iris, only an incandescent pupil like flowing magma. It watched her for an instant. Wondering if she was the prey it had been summoned for? Nyi Rara was going to make certain it knew the answer. She launched a lance of water right at the eye. The monster didn’t have time to blink before the spear-like pulse ripped through its lens. The eye exploded in a shower of gore and steam, blurring the water as though actual lava had lurked within the dragon.
Its bellow of pain drowned out all other sound, deafening her and disrupting her ability to detect the movement of waters around herself. Screaming, Nyi Rara spiraled out of control, clutching her ears as she plummeted into the seabed.
The dragon’s wild thrashing slammed it into a reef, pulverizing coral beneath it. It flailed a moment before focusing its remaining eye on her, radiating a palpable rage that left Nyi Rara feeling like a minnow before a shark. Her ears were ringing. Everything felt off. Despite it all, she launched another narrow pulse at the dragon.
Now she had its attention. The pulse glanced off its head, barely slowing it. It sprang forward with speed and agility a creature of its size should never have managed. Nyi Rara launched a stream of water off to her side, flinging herself in the opposite direction just as the taniwha’s jaws crunched down on coral where she had been.
Nyi Rara twisted around and took off swimming, but with her disrupted equilibrium, she collided with the reef, tearing a gash along her arm. She darted into a crevice, swimming as fast as she could, taking every hiding place. Instinct guided her every movement, told her exactly where she could fit. Instants after each turn the taniwha crashed into the space where she had been, obliterating the reef into nothing but a cloud of dust and debris floating in the waters.
All right. So she’d succeeded in making it mad. Really mad. She shot another jet of water from her hands, propelling herself away with as much force as she could. Away, toward Kīlauea.
She could be fairly certain the taniwha would follow her now.
Water streamed behind her as she soared toward the surface. She spared a glance over her shoulder and was met with the rapidly approaching maw of the dragon. It could have swallowed her whole. Dozens of fangs lined its mouth in multiple rows, all hungering for her blood.
Nyi Rara breached the surface, a spout of water flinging her high into the air. The next moment the taniwha erupted from the waters beneath her, half the length of its body flying skyward. She could barely hear her own scream over the ringing in her ears. On instinct, she twisted the waterspout she rode and had it fling her out far to the side.
The dragon’s jaws snapped shut over thin air and it crashed back into the sea, sending a wave washing over her. The current spun her around, and by the time her vision cleared, the taniwha was already swimming for her again.
Nyi Rara swept her hands apart, then clapped them together, creating an undersea wave that slammed into the dragon and stalled its momentum, but only for an instant. Damn it. She didn’t have a good enough weapon against such a foe.
She had to give Pele a line on the dragon.
Nyi Rara felt her surfboard floating some distance away. She still needed to be up where Pele could see her. As the taniwha closed in again, she launched herself upward, out of the sea to land on her board, resuming her legs.
* * *
The board rocked on Namaka’s landing and she spread her arms to steady herself, then immediately stirred up the waters beneath her, flinging herself forward so quickly it felt like she was flying across the sea.
As expected, the taniwha was less than a heartbeat behind her, though it began losing ground to her incredible speed. But she didn’t need to escape from the monster. She needed to beat it. She glanced to the beach and saw Pele there, like a massive torch holding back the evening, her whole body ablaze.
One chance was probably all they’d get—so she had to pray to the ‘aumākua one chance would be enough. She turned her board, circling the dragon, letting it draw a little closer.
Everything she had done, all the mistakes she had made, the price those she loved had paid—they had been to give her this one chance. If she failed them now, then Milolii’s death, her sacrifice, all the deaths of her people, they meant nothing.
Namaka jumped off the board and dove beneath the waves, pulling them along behind her as she did so.
* * *
All the Mana Nyi Rara had absorbed from Milolii’s loving heart she poured out into the sea, calling it. Demanding it bow before her. Her Mana, her very life force surged around her until she hit the seabed. Then she spun, launching herself straight at the taniwha.
It had created a small kai e‘e when it rose to attack her people.
That wave was nothing compared to the one she summoned now. Anyone not in the mountains, not in the valleys, they’d be hurt by this maneuver. But she couldn’t think of that now. Couldn’t think of anything save ending this monster once and for all.
The dragon snapped at her, but a beat of her tail and the surge of the waves carried her beneath it. Carried her, and caught the dragon in the current’s irresistible embrace, sucking the behemoth up in its wake. Nyi Rara surged upward in an arc that pulled that current into a single massive wave that rushed straight for the beach with Nyi Rara riding high above it. Looking beneath her, the taniwha tumbled about, end over end, visible only as a giant shadow through the curtain of water they rode.
Nyi Rara roared defiance at the creature the instant the wave broke over the shore. She wrapped herself in a bubble and flew forward, ahead of the destruction. The kai e‘e swarmed over the beach, sweeping through trees and ripping out their roots, carrying away boulders in a cascade of devastation.
The taniwha slapped the beach and rolled several times, crushing what rocks and trees the wave had not immediately swept aside.
* * *
Namaka rolled over, having to use her power to help herself stand against the rushing current. The last of that power she poured into the sea, pushing it back, turning the tide as she’d done when the taniwha first attacked here. It burned through her veins until fire became ice and she grew cold from draining herself of such Mana.
The waters receded, turning back, leaving the taniwha stranded. It rolled over, pushing itself up on its clumsy legs, then shook its head. Looking back and forth between her and the retreating sea. Deciding whether to close the distance and consume her or return to its point of strength.
Namaka fell to her knees as the water slipped away from the shore. Her arms dropped to her side. She had almost nothing left. All the Mana she had absorbed from Milolii, all she could call upon from her own soul or Nyi Rara’s, all had fled. To push more might kill her. The taniwha must have seen it, because it began to slowly tread in her direction, pulling itself forward with legs not meant for walking ashore. But capable enough of doing so when forced to it.
And then the beach erupted into a succession of steam geysers beneath the taniwha. Its roar deafened Namaka, even before the ground ruptured completely, engulfing the flailing dragon in a torrent of magma spewed a hundred feet into the sky.
The beach around the taniwha exploded in a shower of sand and dust and blood, scales flying free and landing all around her. The sound of the eruption was drowned out by another pained bellow from the monster.
A flow of lava billowed down from Kīlauea in an unstoppable tide. It swept toward her, and it took all Namaka could do just to escape back into the sea. Lava hit ocean with a sizzle she felt more than heard, her ears still ringing tremendously.
* * *
Nyi Rara dove under the scorching waters, beating her tail furiously to bring herself further out to sea. Then she turned, taking in the fallen taniwha. Its flesh had melted and flowed away, leaving a charred, blistered husk that somehow had not yet given in to death.
It had been nearly as majestic as it was horrible, and to see it brought to such an end almost made her sad. For all the destruction it had wrought, she’d had no choice. None of them did. But really, it was the he‘e and Hiyoya who had done this.
As the haze cleared, she saw the creature, now reduced to a bloody mess. Its intact eye was now swollen shut, its jaw unhinged and trailing behind its head as though ready to rip off.
Panting, Nyi Rara sank down into the waters, pulling on what little Mana lurked in them just to keep herself awake. ‘Aumākua! She needed to get back somewhere more flush in Mana, to absorb it and regain her strength.
But first, just a few moments of rest down here …