Heirs of Mana Omnibus by Matt Larkin

Author:Matt Larkin [Larkin, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Incandescent Phoenix Books
Published: 2019-12-25T22:00:00+00:00

Dawn was near when someone pushed the tapa aside. Lonomakua slipped inside, obvious concern on his face. Pele’s legs ached from sitting for over an hour, keeping vigil with torches to ward against the ghost of Pu‘u-hele. And she could feel it, lingering on the edges of the light, clinging to the shadows. Waiting for the chance to possess her new brother.

The swell of frustration, grief, and regret finally broke on seeing her teacher, and she rose. For a moment she hesitated, then extinguished one of her flames and threw that arm around Lonomakua. The other flame she kept lit to ward off the ghost. “Thank the ‘aumākua you got my signal.”

“It was hard to miss. But I had to send for Kapo to attend to Hi‘iaka before I could come, and she was off in the woods.” The kahuna turned his gaze to Milohai and mumbled some prayer or invocation under his breath. He knelt by the boy’s side, put a hand on her brother’s head.

“Can you do anything for him?”

The kahuna frowned. “I don’t know.”

Pele scowled. As the kahuna tended to her brother, she recounted her suspicions about the ghost. Lonomakua nodded as she spoke, but didn’t take his eyes off Milohai. The tension in his shoulders told her he couldn’t do much. Of course, he couldn’t. Why would he be able to do what every other kahuna had failed to? Even kāhuna didn’t know everything and if they tried too hard to learn the unknowable, they paid for it.

“Damn it,” she mumbled. Heat coursed through her face as her hair lit with flame. She didn’t bother to extinguish it, though Naia and Lonomakua both turned to stare, her sister with fear and Lonomakua with an unreadable expression. “Damn it!” Why couldn’t things ever work out properly? Why were so many people suffering and she, their queen, helpless to aid them?

The fires from her hair caught in the grass roof, sparking it aflame in an instant. Pele extinguished those fires with a wave of her hand and stormed outside. She wanted to unleash the great volcano. Wanted to bury her problems in immeasurable tons of molten rock. The mental image set her chest trembling, a rumble that surged through her legs and into the Earth, bringing up another quake.

The village would be terrified, just as her sister was. Let them fear. She, daughter of Kū-Waha-Ilo, was not their savior. Oh, she had tried. But she had nothing to give these people. Nothing but fire and destruction.

A firm grip on her arm stilled her. She turned to see Lonomakua shaking his head. “Are you giving up so easily?”

“Easily? I tried to force Kū-Waha-Ilo to help us. I tried to force Makua to help. Every time ended in disaster. The prophet was serving Kū-Waha-Ilo all along.”

A faraway look came over the kahuna then, a distress so profound it snuffed the fires in her hair and left her feeling a pang of guilt for her outburst. She couldn’t say exactly what

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