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All three heads of Syn roared in unison, torching the fisherman with plumes of fire. The Dangler leapt from his perch atop the sky-high fountain and ripped the curved blade of the translucent scythe through all three necks at once. In the air he unhanded the waveglass weapon and it dissolved into drops of rain; next to him, the three decapitated heads of the dragon gnashed in vain at the fisherman and fizzled into sparks.
The Dangler aligned himself headfirst as he fell, holding his arms ahead in preparation to dive into the sea a hundred tails below, his fishing pole pointed down in front like a diviner’s rod honing in on the exact point he would hit the water. His reflection rushed up to meet him fast enough to send ripples to the surface.
With a screech like a rusty knife on glass, the purple roc flew underneath the Dangler and caught him on its badly burnt back. The fisherman balanced in a crouch, ready for anything, uncertain what purpose had prompted this unexpected ally to pluck him from the sky. The roc adjusted its wingtips ever so slightly—the Dangler recognized an attention to fine detail that he innately understood and respected—and they were suddenly flying upward again.
Syn flexed its wings back like full sails in a headlong wind. Nine furious heads of a hydra writhed like a bag of eels, flashing teeth of white fire and roaring waves of carnelian flame. The hydra flew around the erupting fountain in a wary circle, never turning its back to the jet of water.
The Dangler lowered in his stance between the roc’s wings like a man preparing to jump off a galloping horse. When they were within range of the fountain he cast his hook into the liquid column and leapt off the bird of war’s back.
The roc veered sharply away from Syn but it could not escape the notice of nine pairs of eyes. The hydra exhaled a barrage of fireballs that enveloped the purple bird in a primrose cloud as it careened toward the sea. When the cinders faded away the roc fell lifelessly out of the leftover smoke straight down fifty tails and landed with a crunch of broken bones in the bed of a rusty wheelbarrow sailing out to sea.
The Dangler’s boots touched down on the massive geyser. He unfastened his hook with a snap of his wrist and, before he fell, cast his line around the waterspout in a wide circle. He caught the hook in his free hand and attached it to the reel, securing a giant leash around the liquid column. Finally, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the spray.
The pillar of water crystallized into blue glass at the fisherman’s kiss and shot out the top of the volcano like a spring, sucking up any and all remaining power the well had to bestow. With the fisherman saddled behind the front end of the solidified fountain, holding onto the improvised reins for dear life, the frozen spout banked into a barrel roll. The Dangler whooped in excitement as he was spun around in a spiral. His hat flew off when he went upside-down but he caught it again on his next spin around. When the corkscrewing waveglass leveled out, the crystallized water had unwrapped itself into a flat-backed creature shaped like a titanic stingray with broad, turquoise wings and a barbed tail curled up like a fishing hook.
The Dangler jerked the impromptu leash to one side, steering his flying creation away from the red dragon, over the open sea. Syn bellowed with rage and gave chase, blasting streaks of fire through the sky like harpoons from the deck of a whaling ship; the stingray’s waveglass wings were perforated with cauterized holes everywhere the scarlet spears struck true. Before it ever had a chance to fly the ray was sinking fast. The Dangler checked over his shoulder—Syn had nearly caught up to them.
Thunder tolled ominously across the dark sky. The sea roiled and clashed as the almighty fire of the great dragon heated the surface of the water to a fever pitch.
One of the hydra heads lunged for the fisherman. Without compunction he delved his hand into the newly-created stingray’s back and pulled out a full-moon battleaxe made of waveglass, all as matter-of-factly as drawing a sword from a scabbard. With one heaving chop he sliced off the dragon’s head, knowing full well it would regenerate three more as easily as a spark spreading fire.
The other eight heads, emboldened by the first—and soon joined by its reignited progeny—stretched forward to rip the fisherman to shreds with their hellish teeth. The Dangler flung the melting battleaxe through the necks of three overreaching heads like it was a pinwheel, then he pulled an egregiously oversized, spiked ball and chain out of the stingray’s back, forming each individual link of the frozen chain in a split-second of single-minded focus.
The heads of the hydra surrounded the fisherman in a ring of fire. He swung the spiked ball in a wide circle, plowing through every outstretched neck in sight. The chain burned away after one rotation and he let the rest of the weapon leak away in his hand. Ripping on his fishing pole, he steered the flying leviathan in a tight circle, but the sky was ablaze at all turns, a burning barn cutting off every avenue of escape.
The body of Syn flashed like a bolt of lightning and split apart into three sections, a devil’s trident of scarlet torches, each with nine long necks with nine roaring heads of their own. Forked tails and smoking wings thrashed and beat without mercy. The ring of fire around the fisherman folded, expanded, flexed into a sphere, a globe of enclosed flame, trapping the cerulean ray and its rider in the middle.
The fire began to constrict. The scarlet flames condensed into a sparkling garnet, packing all Syn’s wrath inward to fry the fisherman alive.
Thunder tolled again and with it the clouds tore open and rain fell so thick that the sea and sky were indistinguishable. The torrential downpour glanced off the sphere of Syn’s carmine fire like brittle teeth off a turtle shell.
A green blur with white wings flew down with the water from the stars above, sheathed in a cocoon of driving rain as a meteorite is wreathed in fire. The Oldest Fish in the Sea blasted through the dragon’s diamond armor, the red sphere shattered like a crystal chandelier, but shards of a flame are quick to reunite.
In the brief instant before Syn coalesced, the Dangler spurred his flying steed out to clear skies.
The crystalline shrapnel of the dragon’s broken body evaporated from its condensed form to fill the sky with sheets of gaseous fire. The unholy hydra, raw flame and red light, was completely unharmed but mindlessly, vengefully enraged.
The Dangler dipped his waveglass steed’s reins, allowing the stingray to swoop low and skim over the tumultuous sea. With a side-armed throw the fisherman flung the Oldest Fish in the Sea’s limp body into the water. The river-guardian’s white wings had been burned away to a pair of smoking stumps—the Dangler had barely caught him in time. The not-quite-so-dead fish glanced along the surface of the water like a skipping stone, lifeless.
Breezing low over the waves on his waveglass steed, the fisherman held his chin high as if he could feel his beloved’s fingertips brushing his face in the cold spray of the clashing sea, then he dipped the depleted ray down into the water, cutting through the crests of the storm-ridden surface. The leaking leviathan absorbed every drop of water it came in contact with, refilling the holes in its wings and replenishing what volume had bled away. Reanimated, the Dangler pulled his steed into a steep ascent, ready for another round with immortal Syn.
III. Three More
Astray nudged the fallen roc awake. Its massive body was far too big for the wheelbarrow. Its broad wings hung limply to either side, dipping into the sea. Singed feathers and drops of plum blood fell into the water. A ring of silent, shaggy fins closed in, drawn to the undefended flesh.
The cub pounced on the roc’s chest, forcing it to breathe. Its body shook in a wretched spasm. Astray bit the final petal off his necklace, stuck his head between the roc’s beak, and dropped the petal down its throat. He pulled his head back just before the deadly beak snapped shut. The bird of war gasped and jolted upright as if shocked awake in the middle of a gripping dream.
Balanced precariously on the front lip of the floating cart, Astray looked apprehensively at the circling fins in the water, then he turned up to the roc and roar
ed like a fully grown lion. The great bird pumped its wings, using the surge from the cub’s bellow to gain the height to fly, but the downward thrust it reciprocated as it lifted off drove the bed of the wheelbarrow underwater. The roc coasted away into the east. The iron cart sank.
Wool fish closed in from all quarters, drawn to the bright white cub like moths to the light. Sensing a rare beast and a fine feast, they bared their teeth—row after row as sharp as rusty knives—and swarmed.