Storm Strider

The Whitewhale Marauders vaulted over the railings and jumped on board with torches ablaze, fourteen arms wielding fourteen cutlasses.

Shouts tore into the air. The Harbour Guards charged the Marauders with their own cutlasses, keeping the dozen or so invaders at bay by the railings, and Captain Enrique bellowed for the anchor to be raised. The sails were dropped, oars shot out the galleys to propel the warship forward, and then they were off into the storm.

Six giant whales groaned far behind them, cannons roaring into the sky as the pursuit began.

[Marisol! Do not kick any of them overboard!]

She stopped just as she was about to skate straight into a Marauder, ready to knock him over the railings.

What? Why? They’re–

[The Whitewhale Marauders are the parent faction of the Blackclaw Marauders, and just like those crabs, they use slaves as their boarding forces.]

[Look at them.]

She looked, she listened, and she gritted her teeth in the rain; sounds of metal clashing against metal filled the air, but it was obvious no blood was being drawn on either side. The Harbour Guards were shouting at each other to hold back on actually killing the Marauders, while the humans who were strapped to the ‘Marauders’ were doing their best to stumble back, trying to jerk their twelve extra arms away from swinging at the Harbour Guards.

Now, Marisol could see their extra arms weren’t actually part of their bodies; they were the arms of a parasitic crab wrapped around their backs.

The humans… are slaves?

[And the actual ‘Marauders’ are the arms,] the Archive said. [The Whitewhale Marauders have the ‘Whale Louse’ insect class, which are parasitic crustaceans that infest whales, dolphins, and all sorts of other marine mammals. However, they also tame actual whale lice and attach them to the backs of their slaves, then fire the slaves onto ships so the whale lice can kill everyone while the real Marauders watch from atop their giant whales. Do not kill or kick any of the ‘Marauders’ off the ship—they will not be rescued by the real Marauders.]

The warship lurched, making everyone stumble for a short second, and Marisol picked up Catrina as she skated down to the captain’s cabin.

What do I do, then? If I can’t hit them and I can’t kick them overboard–

[Kill only the whale lice on their backs, and the human will be freed.]

She let Catrina gently off on the only mattress in the cabin and whirled to stare out the door; the fighting outside was fierce, Captain Enrique was still shouting orders at everyone to stay their blades, but she could see the sails weren’t fully let loose. Two of the three sails were still strapped to the masts, and the Harbour Guards needed to be free to cut them loose—if they weren’t moving at full speed, the giant whales behind them would catch up incredibly soon.

She had to help.

Her glaives moved forward in blinding arcs, making the very air scream as she blurred out of the captain’s cabin and skated straight at a Marauder. The man strapped to the whale louse was dirty, unshaven, and more frail and bony than even Catrina when she’d first found the pregnant lady drifting on a plank of wood. Anger gripped her chest as she skated around him—dodging past his fourteen cutlasses swishing at her—and she kicked upwards, making sure not to overextend her glaive and cut into his back.

The whale louse peeled off his back with a horrendous screech, and she grabbed its squishy frame before throwing it overboard. It tried to swipe at her on its way out, but she ducked and immediately skated forward to check on the man, her heart thumping in her chest.

He was alive, breathing and well; before he could even lift his head and mutter a word of thanks, she skated away to beeline straight for the other Marauders.

How many of them, Archive?

[Eleven left.]

She sucked in a sharp breath, forcing a grin onto her face.

Check this out, then!

She moved nimbly despite carving through wooden floorboards; her cloak fluttered after her as she kicked in swift, precise blows, zigzagging through the horde of Marauders and splicing the whale lice down in half with her glaives. The cutlasses that swung at her were too slow. She barely felt like she needed to dodge, though a few blades grazed the side of her cheeks and the pouring rain made it a bit hard to focus. The Harbour Guards were stalwart, but they weren’t fast—they couldn’t get behind the Marauders and free the slaves, so the only one who could was her.

And she’d eaten a lot of remipede flesh the better part of the past week, despite the Archive’s warnings that she would feel the effects of point poisoning really soon.

Increase my speed level to eight!

[Speed: 6 (+2) → 8 (+2)]

[Unallocated Points: 240 → 155]

She closed the distance between her and the last Marauder in a flash, and in another moment she had the man knocked onto his stomach, stabbing her glaive through the whale louse and throwing it overboard.

“That’s the last of them, cap!” she shouted, flicking wet hair out of her face as she whirled to face Enrique at the helm. “What’s the strategy here? We’re just gonna outrun the rest of them on the whales?”

“Aye, lass!” he shouted back, and the Harbour Guards got to work carrying the freed slaves to the lower decks; the groaning, ailing men needed medical care. “Get herself down there as well, will ye? The quarterdeck ain’t no place for a pretty lady! We’re headin’ straight for the Whirlpool City and prayin’ the guards at the walls are paying enough attention to lend us a few dozen cannonballs–”

[That is a mistake,] the Archive interrupted, speaking over Enrique’s voice and confusing her ears. [The Whitewhale Marauders are brilliant at pursuit, and we are still well over a day away from the Whirlpool City. They will catch up to us within four hours. Tell him to change course for the Dead Island Straits.]

Marisol blinked. The what?

[Tell him. He is a Harbour Guard. He will know–]

“Cap! The bug in my ear says we ain’t making it to the Whirlpool City, so it wants you to route to some place called the Dead Island Straits!”

She was at the front of the ship, but Enrique was tall enough to peek over the helm, the railings on the quarterdeck, and then give her a nasty scowl.

“Yer Archive told ye that?”

“Yes!”

“Is it fuckin’ sure?”

[Repeat after me–]

“Of the six Whitewhales, only one of them’s small and light enough to follow us through the strait!” she shouted. “If it's all six, we ain't beating or running away from them, but if it's just one, we can find somewhere to hide while we make repairs!”

Enrique still looked unconvinced, but then he looked back at the giant white whales and grimaced—jerking the helm hard left to swerve the entire warship off-course.

“Ah, ye ‘artificial intelligence’ of the Worm God! I ain't know what sort of calculations it even did in yer head!” he snapped. “Tell my boys to ignore the slaves for a moment! I need ye lot to unfurl full sails if we're goin’ through that place!”

Marisol didn't do exactly as told; if it was just unfurling the other two sails, she could do it by herself. She jumped glaive-first onto the closest mast and started skating up with no comment, her segmented setae helping her defy gravity as she aimed for the ropes keeping the sails tied up—she backflipped once she was ten metres off the ground, kicked out at the ropes as she did, and landed on the tip of her glaives with the second sails falling loudly over her head.

… Huh.

That was a lot easier than I–

“Third sail, lass!” Enrique shouted, and she immediately snapped out of it; repeating the same process with the final mast before landing next to him.

Whirling around, she saw the six giant whales still charging full speed ahead at them, but at least the distance between them wasn’t closing so rapidly anymore. The winds were strong and the sails were unfurled. Right now, they were evenly matched in speed, but how long would that last?

Not very long, she thought, if the Archive thought they had to shake the Marauders off in a place as ominous-sounding as the ‘Dead Island Straits’.

What the hell are you making us sail into, anyways?

[Look in front of you.]

The Archive pointed behind her, so she raced to the railings and poked her head out, squinting through the dark storm.

In the distance, giant monoliths loomed—just a bit away from the silhouette of the Whirlpool City—and they were an archipelago with jagged, uneven peaks, like the teeth of some ancient beast. Between the mountainous islands were deep and narrow chasms, just wide enough for their warship to sail through, but they promised nothing but darkness beyond. Marisol certainly couldn’t see into the chasms even with enormous shafts of moonlight falling on top of them.

Something that ominous is so close to the Whirlpool City?

[The Dead Island Straits are very well-documented in the Hasharana’s database. It is hardly a threat to anyone if you do not venture inside unprepared.]

And… we’re prepared?

[Well.] The Archive shrugged nonchalantly. [There is a one hundred percent chance the Whitewhale Marauders are unprepared, too.]

If the fact that their pursuers might not want to follow them into the narrow chasms was supposed to be reassuring, Marisol didn’t feel it, but she didn’t have time to feel it. As they neared the islands, strange bubbles began to drift around the warship, their round surfaces glimmering faintly in moonlight.

The warship started creaking and groaning. The rain droplets that fell around them no longer splashed against the wood, and instead, where they touched the bubbles, they became suspended mid-air as though defying gravity themselves. She glanced at Enrique nervously, but the captain seemed just as nervous, knuckles white and tight as he kept the helm steady.

Then, just as they were about to sail through the closest chasm, Marisol’s eyes grew wide at the sight of a giant bubble hovering in front of their ship. It shimmered with an oily sheen so thin it seemed like it’d pop at the slightest touch, but instead, it swallowed the ship whole—enveloping all of them in a sudden, abrupt world of silence.

The roar of the storm vanished. The bellow of the giant whales faded. The world outside was a watery blur, the colours smudged and distorted. No longer anchored to any sense of gravity, the warship began flying, lifted off the sea by the giant bubble, and even Marisol almost lurched off the railings as Enrique started steering them through the chasm.

Behind them, five of the six giant whales bellowed to a halt; only one kept charging at them, sailing through a giant bubble itself to begin swimming through the air as well.

… I’d love to hear your explanation this time–

[Low-gravity strait due to an abundance of shedding damselflies scales in the air. The low gravity manifests in the form of these bubbles that can only be found around this archipelago,] the Archive said, poking her cheek and making her turn around so she could see how close the pursuing whale was. [Tell the captain to make random turns through the chasms and islands. All we need is to find a particularly dark cove to dock in, and that Whitewhale should not be able to find us–]

She relayed the message to Enrique, got a mumbling ‘I know’ as an answer, and immediately returned to scowling at the Archive.

Don’t just say it’s a ‘low-gravity strait’ and move on like it ain’t nothing special. This is magic, ain’t it?

The rocks and vegetation by the sides of the chasm were sharp and dense. There was no rain here. Shafts of moonlight could only fall on the deck here and there, shrouding them in darkness. She heard the Whitewhale Marauders behind them shouting, probably trying to get their whale to speed up, but a few decisive turns by Captain Enrique and they were weaving through the winding chasms—she let herself sit down against the railings and breathe out a heavy sigh, figuring they were probably out of the woods for now.

The Whitewhale Marauders shouldn’t be able to track them through the chasms.

[It is not magic,] the Archive said pointedly. [Three decades ago, after escaping from the giant remipede, the Worm God and the Thousand-Tongue passed through this archipelago on a rowboat. It was a normal archipelago back then but for one single anomaly: there was a giant damselfly residing here—a Lesser Great Mutant by the name of Venosa—with wings so powerful it could hover and kick up the sea around the archipelago as though gravity did not exist.]

[Anyways, the two of them overkilled it and accidentally sent its body parts flying everywhere. Its giant wings then sank beneath the islands and began shedding its gravity-defying scales slowly, but because destroying the wings completely would take too much time, they elected to ignore the low-gravity phenomenon. Currently, the Hasharana estimate the low-gravity phenomenon will naturally cease to exist in another two decades or so, once the scales are fully shed—does this explanation satisfy you?]

No.

[What would you like further elaboration on?]

Why were they still on a rowboat?

[Irrelevant.]

She grumbled under her breath as they sailed under a canopy of vines strung between two mountainous islands, and Enrique swerved the warship into a large grotto just barely hidden behind a wall of foliage; she had no idea how their bubble didn’t pop as they passed through.

Inside the grotto, the air was cool and thick with moisture. Dimly glowing moss lined the large rock walls, casting soft blue and pink light on the tiny hidden ecosystem—it was a cave with strange, luminous ferns growing across the ground, and there was an opening in the ceiling above to let just a single shaft of moonlight fall through. The faint sounds of dripping water echoed throughout, a rhythmic tip-tap that starkly contrasted the ship’s screeching to a halt on dry soil and land.

With a final, low groan, the warship trembled as the bubble popped and let it fall onto the bed of ferns. The whole thing swayed slightly, and for a second Marisol worried they’d all tip over sideways… but then its weight settled, the hull stopped shuddering, and she let out yet another quiet breath of relief.

Outside, past the wall of foliage, she spotted what seemed like the shadow of a white whale swimming through the chasm. She and Enrique held their breaths then, but only for another second. The Marauders didn’t notice them and swam right by.

“... We gotta lay low for a while until we get the ship fixed,” Enrique muttered, as a few Harbour Guards slowly climbed onto the upper deck to see what was going on. Catrina wobbled up the stairs to the quarterdeck as well, a worried frown stricken on her pale face.

Marisol was worried, too; now that they were all allowed to take a breather, she could see just how damaged the hull and sails were where the slaves were fired into them.

“How long do we gotta stay here for?” she asked, scowling up at the torn sails as Enrique left the helm.

“We ain’t got the spare parts to fix everything, so we gotta scrounge some up from this strait before thinkin’ about how we’re gonna swerve past those whale pests,” Enrique said, stumbling down the stairs to meet with the rest of his men in the lower decks. “I reckon… two weeks. Maybe a whole month. Depends on how many parts we can get, and how fast we get them—give us some help with that, lass?”

“...”

Her lips twisted as she heard the timeline; she couldn’t stay here for another month.

Maybe it was just because of the nightmares she’d been having recently, or maybe it was because the reality of the situation was finally sinking in, but… if delays kept coming one after another, it could easily be another two or three months before she could get home to her mama. She was already supposed to be back home, and now she had to be late for another whole month?

No.

She gritted her teeth and whirled to face the wall of foliage, determined to find the parts they needed as soon as possible.

[... It will be dangerous navigating these low-gravity chasms, but they are called the ‘Dead Island Straits’ because lots of leviathans are known to perish here as they are dragged up from the water,] the Archive said. [If you are able to jump and fly across the chasms faster than everyone else, you may be able to find high-quality leviathan parts just floating around.]

Marisol glanced at the Archive, frowning slightly.

I was thinking I’d just skate around on the walls. What do you mean ‘fly’ around the chasms?

The Archive stared back at her pointedly.

[This is a low-gravity strait, and you have a wing mutation to unlock, do you not?]