Bel Breaker by Chris Cardenas

SPSFC 2023

Water didn't flow right on Hidrin, not as it used to. It’s been like this for millennia. Rather than rest in basins or canyons, waters rise high into the sky to pierce clouds and race over continents. Bels, they are called. Mimicking the image of a yarn ball, they weave over and under one another, disrupting the already fractured view of the stars. Strange sights, but sights that people have grown comfortable and accustomed to. As the fish learned to ride them, so too did humanity. From one end of a continent to another, humans used bels for transport, trade, and of course, warfare. Now waged with machines of once impossible mobility, there are few bodies of water on Hidrin that haven't seen conflict. And those that haven’t need only wait for the next war and their turn. Unfortunately for Mint and her home of Vostoria, that turn had finally come. She just didn’t think they would be separate turns. As Vostoria becomes awash with combat, she finds herself swept elsewhere and with few options to get back. Whether the result of dumb luck, mere coincidence, or genuine fate, Mint’s course was set for both discovery and disaster.