Storm Strider

Having spent the past thirty minutes skating with her head barely hovering above the surface, Marisol surprised herself with her sudden burst of speed—she managed to reach the wreckage, scoop the pregnant lady up in her arms, and skate away just as the giant remipede tore through the wreckage behind her.

There was no holding back now. Straight towards the rowboat she went, putting every last drop of her strength in her legs as she skated full speed ahead.

“Hello, miss!” she said, practically shouting over the wind and the rain as she grinned down at the lady; the Archive muttered something about ‘beginning translations’ in her ear. “What were you doing out here? Why’d you light that flare? Great Makers, couldn’t you tell that thing was still lurking under you? Did you want to die?”

For her part, the woman didn’t respond immediately, and Marisol could see why. She was a pretty lady; curly locks of hazel hair fell past her chin, and her long, flowing velvet gown with tight sleeves was richly decorated with golden embroideries, but even a blind man could tell she was pale. Her cheeks were sunken and gaunt, her lips were parched and cracked, and she was so, so light despite the heavy-looking bracelets and necklaces—she had to have been stuck out here for far longer than Marisol had been.

Still, the lady swallowed a huge gulp and mustered the strength to speak, and Marisol listened with one ear craned behind her.

“I was on… Captain Enrique’s ship,” the lady rasped, bony arms squeezing around Marisol’s neck as she looked up with teary, haggard eyes. “We were en route… to the Whirlpool City as usual… when that remo leviatan swallowed our ship. I survived, but… should I have?”

“...”

“My cielo, my husband, and my family are dead. I ran out of food four days ago. I thought… at least, if I cracked that flare, that the remo leviatan would take me quickly–”

Marisol slammed shin-first into the rowboat, coming to a complete halt as she let the lady off gently. Her eyes scanned the contents on the boat covered under half-transparent rainproof tarps: thirty casks of freshwater, a dozen boxes of hardtacks, sacks of dried beans, and what looked like jars of dried raisins, figs, and prunes.

It was a shame the crew on the ship the rowboat belonged to couldn’t evacuate in time, but now she had them to thank for the supplies. The rowboat could easily support someone for at least a month out on the seas.

“The oars are on the side of the boat, so get yourself out of this fog first, and then row every once in a while to make sure you don’t drift back in while you’re asleep,” she said hurriedly, ripping off the tarps and pointing out all the supplies to the half-conscious lady. “There’s food here, here, here, and here. I recommend working through the dried fruits before you dig into the biscuits. You can even use the seeds from the fruits as bait for fish.”

The lady sat up against the edge of the boat, groaning as she squinted up at Marisol. “Where… are you going? Aren’t you coming with me? There’s enough room… for the two of us.”

Marisol shook her head vehemently, thumbing behind her. “No can do. The giant remipede’s gonna kill us both if we’re on the same boat, so I’ll run circles around it while you row out of this fog. If you see any ships trying to sail into the same fog, yell at them to stop, okay? Don’t let them sail in no matter what.”

“You… you’re going to distract it? You’ll die if you do that! If we’re… if we’re on the same boat, then, at least–”

“There’s a saying where I come from: not one grain of the desert shall touch the mother’s flesh while a hundred men yet stand to face the pit,” she said, beaming at the lady as she kicked the boat away. “We may be on the seas, but I see no difference here.”

Maybe she could’ve kicked the boat a little harder so it’d drift away faster, but she didn’t want to risk rocking the lady too much. Only the Great Makers would know the hell the lady would have to endure until someone came to her rescue; at the very least, Marisol wanted to give her as much of a fighting chance as she could possibly have.

[... And what of your fighting chance?] the Archive muttered. [If you had simply ignored her and headed straight towards the boat, you would have been able to easily survive the night.]

She chuckled nervously and knelt, placing both palms flat against the surface.

You’re an Archive of the Altered Swarmsteel Systems—servant to the Worm God and his wandering bug-slayers, she thought. As if you’d have told me to run and leave her to die in my stead.

The Archive hummed in her ear. [True. I would have splintered your eardrums before you could even think about running away.]

Are you sure you’re even on my side?

[I am on humanity’s side. Make of that what you will.]

Vibrating the hydrofuge spines on her palms, she sent out a massive, throbbing ripple that made the waves undulate around her in circles. Sure, the rowboat carving across the surface and the lady screaming at her to come back may be loud, but the giant remipede could clearly tell which was the juicer prey—it knew Marisol was the one who’d been toying with it with fake ripples the entire past half an hour, and it wasn’t going to be toyed with anymore.

The shadow of the leviathan changed targets, its gargantuan head whipping away from the rowboat to charge at her instead.

She yanked her palms off the surface and started skating, darting towards the wreckages she’d snuck past earlier.

… Alright, Archive, she thought, gnashing her teeth together as she glanced behind at her, scowling at the giant shadow. I didn’t think this through. What do I do? What are my chances of beating that thing head-on?

[One hundred percent chance of failure. Please refrain.]

Then what? I just try to skate forward through the fog? Try to outrun it?

[There is no telling what else is residing deeper in the fog. This is the giant remipede’s territory, so as long as you stay here, the giant remipede will be the only bug you face.]

She was about to counter with a retort when she felt vibrations underfoot. Something was flying up at her. She jerked to the side as a massive chunk of waterlogged debris soared out from beneath the surface, like bony spikes stabbing out of the desert, and there were more to follow. Moving in zig-zags, she twirled and capered and weaved across the rainy sea, scrambling to dodge every sunken debris the remipede was grabbing with its antennae and tossing at her.

[Indeed, remipede antennae are ‘prehensile’, which means they are appendages adapted for grasping and holding. In fact, many water-based bugs and arthropods possess prehensile antennae, including the fairy shrimp you slayed–]

Okay, so I can’t skate deeper into the fog, but I’ll eventually run out of steam if I just keep skating around in circles here! she snapped, hissing as the remipede threw a giant mast at her from underneath; she barely dodged it by jumping out of the way. There has to be a way to hurt it, right? You knew what it was the moment you saw it, and you had its information in your database—what did the last guy do to kill one?

[The last two people to have a recorded kill on a giant remipede were the Worm God and the Thousand-Tongue of the Long March, and that happened twenty-nine years ago.]

Oh god. I’m dead–

[They quickly came to the realisation that neither their rifles nor their wands had the necessary power to shatter its chitin… back then, anyways. I am quite sure the Worm God can lift this giant remipede with a single hand now, but I digress,] the Archive interrupted. [When they realised it was too heavily armoured on the outside, they decided to bait it into devouring their rowboat. Once they survived the initial acidic flood that melted everything around them, they blew it open from the inside out. It was messy cleanup work for the Harbour Imperators that arrived on scene later, but they did manage to kill it.]

… What? Why were they sailing across the great blue in a tiny rowboat?

[Irrelevant. My point is: search the wreckage around you for anything flammable and explosive—most explosives in the Deepwater Legion Front can detonate even when they are wet—so gather them all and light the fuse.]

Got it!

Sending ripples away from her left, right, and back, she did her best to throw the giant remipede off by just a few seconds each time as she jumped onto what looked like a half-sunken warship, much like her own—there were crates of wet sponges floating around it and cannons sticking out of gunports, so if any ship would be carrying barrels of gunpowder, it would be this one.

She had less than a minute to get everything set up.

Scurrying around the upper deck, she kicked a glaive out and dragged it along every crate, barrel, and cannon in the way, letting their contents spill onto the wooden floorboards. Most were dried cabbages and straw and other unimportant stuff, but there were glints of moonlight reflecting off mounds of gunpowder here and there. Then she found a fuse cord and skated all the way around, dropping it along the gunpowder as she snatched up an unlit candle as well, sparking a flame by jumping and clicking her glaives mid-air.

That’s it, right? She thought, cupping a hand over the flame to keep it from going out in the rain. Now I just light the fuse and let the ship blow up? With me still standing on top of it?

[You need the giant remipede to swallow the rest of the ship first, and then detonate the explosives. You cannot jump off now.]

Then, what do I–

[Find a crate. A barrel. Something sturdy that can withstand the explosion, like… that conch shelter over there.]

The little water strider on her shoulder pointed towards the captain’s cabin above her—the warship was slightly tilted, after all—and she immediately snapped her head up, noticing a giant white conch with a heavy steel door sealed around the opening.

That thing?

[It is an emergency shelter designed by the Harbour Imperators of the Whirlpool City. The conch itself is nigh-impenetrable, and it floats by itself, too. Your safety is all but assured if you jump inside and hold the door really, really firmly.]

I’ll take your word for it!

Without hesitation, she skated up, up, and up as the ship tilted even further down. The giant shadow of the leviathan rose beneath her. Bubbles frothed on the surface, a massive whirlpool started churning to drag the ship down. Before any of the gunpowder could slide off the deck, she flicked her candle at the nearest fuse and listened to the cord hiss—sparks snaking towards the explosives as she leaped into the pitch-black conch.

The last thing she saw as she yanked the heavy steel door shut and the conch started tumbling down was the giant remipede unhinging its massive fifty-metre wide jaw, swallowing the ship whole–

Then the explosives rocked her into the other end of the conch as the door bolted shut automatically.

Immediately, her world became a churning maelstrom. There was no light inside the shell—only the oppressive weight of darkness, thick as tar, pressing against her eyes. Each violent toss sent her slamming into the ridged walls, aches blooming across her entire body as she cried out in pain. The sounds outside were a cacophony of groans and deep, guttural roars that vibrated through every fibre of her being.

Just as she thought she’d never stop being tossed around, the world stilled without warning. The shell no longer spun; she slammed spine-first into the back of the heavy steel door one last time before falling slump on the ground, moaning in agony.

All was quiet inside the shell for a few seconds.

… Speed is fine, she grumbled, pushing to her feet and feeling the walls with her hands, trying to find the door. That… was not speed.

[By definition, it was,] the Archive countered plainly. [I cannot detect wave motion outside the shell. Please gently push the door open and confirm if you are floating on the sea’s surface–]

Her hands found the latch on the back of the door, but she leaned forward with her weight just a bit too much, and the entire thing snapped off its hinges. The door fell outwards. So did she. Landing flat on her stomach one more time, she groaned and curled into a ball, clutching her shuddering limbs as though that did anything to soothe the pain.

[Well.]

[Now there is no door.]

How helpful you are.

Clawing to her feet, she quickly realised she wasn’t bobbling on the sea’s surface. A rush of warm, foetid air greeted her face as she lifted her head and looked around—her brows furrowing as she did.

And where… in the Great Makers’ good name… am…

…

The ‘cavern’ was fifty metres wide, fifty metres tall, all pulsating and glistening flesh. She was standing ankle-deep in a murky blue liquid that stung her chitin. The deep, iridescent purple walls of the giant remipede’s insides undulated in rhythmic waves as it slithered through the sea, shimmering with an oily sheen that reflected the faintest glimmers of phosphorescent light. All around, the remnants of the remipede’s previous meals lay scattered like offerings in a forgotten temple: shipwrecks, giant fish bones, and chunks of corals dulled by the caustic environment. Everything was cast in the same faint, alien-purple glow—it was almost like she’d jumped into a fairy book world with its own magical ecosystem.

She jumped on top of the conch and looked at the far, far end of the stomach. It was two hundred metres to the front of the giant remipede, the mouth where all the teeth and mandibles were. Then she whipped around and looked at the other far, far end of the stomach, and it was three hundred metres to the back where more swallowed wreckage lay.

The ground rumbled—a heavy, gurgling sound, punctuated by the distant echo of the remipede’s heartbeat.

… Welp.

The explosion didn’t work.

[Objective #8 Completed: Evacuate from the warship and survive the giant remipede]

[Reward: Temporary survival]

[Objective #9: Escape the giant remipede before you get digested]

[Time Limit: 1 Month]

[Reward: Survival]

[Failure: Slow, acidic death]