Queens of Mana (ebook)

The cacophony of a collapsing city drowned out even the screams of its citizens. The ground undulated, roiling beneath their feet as Nu‘u raced through the streets, forcing his way against the throng of the crowd fleeing the sea, desperately clutching his wife’s hand. The crowds ran from the shadow rising up from the depths, engulfing their World. A wave the size of a mountain, closing inward, seeming almost possessed by apathy the way it lurched ever closer, visible for miles out.
The World bucked, not like some mere earthquake, but as if a colossal god had kicked the ground, heaving it all in a single direction. Just ahead, the main plaza ruptured down the centre, one side lunging up a half dozen feet above the other. The colonnade rimming it toppled like a child’s blocks, one mighty stone pillar crashing into the next, a cascade of destruction.
He watched in horror as the splitting ground swallowed up whole families. As a woman tumbled into a newly opened void, leaving her shrieking man behind. Not that Nu‘u could hear a damn thing anyone said.
He yanked his wife around to the side of the plaza, pulling her harder when she stood gaping at the ruin of Pahulu’s palatial estate, balking at the hole now opened in its heart.
They had no time!
Panting, he pulled her onward. They had to vault over the collapsed breezeway now filled with debris. Beyond, the harbour had already flooded. Ships were hurled about like models, and only the roofs of the buildings remained above water. But all this was but preamble.
Wincing, Nu‘u glanced up at the emerging shadow within that wave. At the abomination that had risen from the depths of the sea. The wave formed a veil around it, mercifully obscuring the behemoth, though he saw more than he might have wished. His breath caught in his throat even as he tried to murmur some primal, inarticulate prayer to any who might be listening.
The saurian head, that, even within the shroud of water, seemed to gleam with a dozen glowing eyes. The mass of writhing tentacles each large enough to rip mountains out by their roots. The rising arms, reaching for Mu, ready to sweep away whatever the cataclysmic quakes and flooding might leave behind.
He stared—he knew with ineffable certainty—at the very end of the World.
Now it was Lilinoe shoving him onward, his wife drawing him from the trance seeing this Elder God had induced within him. His gaze turned, beyond the city proper, to the highlands where the rest of the people fled, wondering if the peaks would shelter them from such an eldritch horror. The roar only redoubled, then, for the mountain range ripped itself in half, the very land torn like a scroll such that the sea might rush in and fill the gap.
Everywhere his gaze turned, the landscape recoiled in agony, as horrified by what transpired as he himself was. Broken, shattered, and swallowed by the sea. Was this what the Queens of Mu had wrought? Was this delirium their final fool’s gambit?
There would be nowhere to run. Even if he made it to his ship, there would be nowhere to sail to, would there? This thing the queens had unleashed would consume the World. They had no doubt meant something like this fate for Kumari Kandam, never imagining it would befall Mu as well.
But still, Lilinoe guided him onward. They leapt onto a rooftop, daring not risk trying to swim the floodwaters, then took a running start to jump to the next. A double-hulled canoe streamed by, caught in the currents. They jumped to it, giving over the hope of reaching Nu‘u’s vessel.
Across the gap of waters, someone waved to them, beckoning them. A cluster of a handful of survivors. Maybe the last of Mankind, for all he knew.
Nu‘u exchanged glances with his wife, then yanked the till until he could come around, wincing as the hull clipped the edge of a building. Only in drawing near did he recognise Pokoharau, one of the other queens, and by then it was too late to turn away. Instead, Nu‘u laced his gaze with scorn, for her hand had unmade the World.
Pointedly, he looked up at the closing Elder God, surging ever nearer, then back at the fallen queen.
“There is no escape!” he spat at her.
“There is my penance!” she shouted, voice almost swallowed by the cataclysm unfolding around them.
It settled upon him, then. Her intent. She, who could influence the waves themselves, would feed her Mana into the surging kai e‘e. Feed it all, even as it destroyed her body. As if saving a handful of survivors would absolve her of the death of continents.
But Lilinoe helped her aboard, and—against all logic—Nu‘u guided the canoe toward the approaching apocalypse, wondering, in the end, if anyone would ever remember them. If anyone would be left to remember.