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The queasiness in my stomach churned, increased with every minute we waited. Part of me wanted this to be over, while another told me that right now, Myles was still safe at the bottom of the ocean. Once the fighting began there would be no turning back.
“Your brother is arriving,” Kyle approached us, nodding at me.
“Horn is here?” I asked.
He nodded patiently.
I should have went down to the docks, taken a ship and welcomed him, but the idea of leaving the situation room and not knowing what was happening kept me rooted to the spot.
Nathan would be alright on Horn, there were many things that needed to be organized if the floating city stayed anchored here for a while, I told myself.
“I will go see him after the battle is over,” I informed Kyle, fighting against the ice cold hand reaching into my stomach and flipping my intestines over. After the battle is over… there were so many different future scenarios, they made me dizzy and swallow against the rising bile.
I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t entertain the idea of something happening to Myles, but the possibilities were endless. Out in space, one small hit could implode his entire ship in the blink of an eye.
Oh Myles, please don’t take any risks, I prayed. We had just found each other, would the gods be this merciless and separate us now? I couldn’t believe it, but all this was still new to me and as someone who had never before implored the gods for anything I felt a bit of a hypocrite.
I looked at the faces of the other vissies around me and found the same, tenseness about their features that I was sure was mirrored on mine. Saskia held my right hand and Thalia my left, both were clenched just as tightly as I clenched theirs and I was sure Kyra did on her side, who gave me a small, grim wink.
“There!” Kyle shouted out excitedly.
Instantly the four of us turned our attention back to the screens, where now, one by one, more colorful dots became visible, rising from the depths of the deep. Soon there were so many, this quarter of Oceanus looked like it had been dipped in glitter.
The first ships broke through the surface and by the way the red dots, representing the Chrymphten moved into a formation I realized that they too, were seeing the approaching fleet now.
Counting the dots was futile, not only because they constantly moved, but because there were so many of them.
Leandar had sent three quarters of their fleet for this battle, yet, they seemed to barely outnumber the Chrymphten.
“Is their empire this large?” I asked breathlessly not explaining who I meant with they.
“This is the largest fleet they have organized yet,” Kyle agreed, “which is why this will be a huge blow to them.”
I wished I shared his confidence, or maybe I did, because all the dots were closing in on the Chrymphten now and they clearly outnumbered our enemy, still, Myles’s ship could be just as easily shot down as any of the others.
Anxiously I watched as our fleets broke through the atmosphere where the Chrymphten had already aligned themselves into battle position. Thalia’s hand was ice cold in mine and Saskia’s hot and sweaty. Intermittently we squeezed each other’s fingers as blinking light after blinking light turned into a black nothing. Red, purple, blue, white, all alike. I had no idea which of the blinking dots was Myles’s ship and afraid to ask Kyle.
With my heart stuck in my throat I stared at the screen, willing the orange, yellow and green dots to move, to enter the battle, but they remained hovering just outside the edges. What were they waiting for?
I wanted to scream at Kyle and demand to know why they hadn’t entered the battle yet, but bit my lower lip instead. I had promised I wouldn’t make a scene or interfere, and from the looks of it, Kyle was busy thundering orders into his comm.
Just as Thalia let go of my hand, bending over moaning, the orange, yellow and green dots moved in. I was momentarily too elated to notice Thalia’s discomfort, but a moan from her brought me back.
The ground underneath her was wet, drenched wet. Thalia looked up, “Ups, I think my water broke.”
“You think?” Kyra asked with a nervous giggle.
A new worry pierced me. As the Vissy of Oceanus, it was up to me, to take charge now. I had helped with births before, but that had been on Horn, where everything was familiar to me. Here, I hadn’t even finished touring the entire city yet.
“Alright, let’s get you back to your quarters first,” I decided.
There were no women here besides us four humans, I didn’t have a maid, and I hadn’t paid any attention to any servants who had brought Myles and my food so far.
Saskia and Kyra grabbed Thalia underneath her arms and I the first dragoon unlucky enough to cross my path.
“I need a healer, hot water, towels.” I ordered him, praying they even had a healer here, because Thyres didn’t usually get sick. They had to have someone in case a dragoon chopped off his fingers or something, though, right?
“Zyn, Vissy,” the dragoon nodded and I breathed a slight sigh of relief.
