“Activate the shields!” Yu Chen yelled out as he dove overboard, Lue She wrapped tightly around his bicep.

  He entered with a splash, diving deep into the swirling waters. Disoriented, he tried to find his bearings when something powerful brushed past him, sending him spinning through the waters once more.

  A primal fear shot through him at the touch and he kicked away, desperate to escape. The feeling threatened to overwhelm him but he tamped down on it, orienting himself before shooting towards the surface. A few kicks later and his head burst through the waves, taking deep breaths to fill his lungs.

  The sound of violence filled his ears, shouts and screams ringing out across the waves as the other boys fought back against the strange thing that had attacked the ship.

  Yu Chen swallowed, bobbing up and down in the disturbed water, another wave of terror shooting through him as he watched a massive tentacle unfurl from the depths. It towered in his vision, rising high into the air before slapping down at the spirit vessel. A glimmering shield sprung to life before it could connect, shuddering under the weight of the heavy blow.

  His mind was a blubbering mess, watching in horror as the writhing flesh, impossibly large, reared back before slamming down again. Strange runes flared to life as it struck, shining with a dark light from within its rubbery skin.

  In that moment he would have given anything to be out of the water, but there was still something he had to do.

  He turned his head, looking at the girl floating nearby. Piercing screams filled the air as Xue Lan thrashed about in the waves, her eyes white with panic. He cursed, hoping she hadn’t drawn the creature's attention. He kicked through the water, desperately trying to get closer to her.

  Another tentacle unfurled nearby, pushing Yu Chen back as it displaced the water around him. Fighting through it, he surged towards Xue Lan and wrapped an arm around her before dragging her back towards the ship.

  A ship that was currently being tossed about on the waves like a child’s plaything. Three or four tentacles rose up around it to wail on the vessel, but the cultivators aboard didn’t simply take the attack.

  Yu Chen watched as a thick bolt of lightning shot out from near the prow, piercing through one of the rubbery tentacles with a well-placed shot. It shuddered, dark viscous fluids pouring forth as Serbo au Serbo spun the ballista around, shooting at another. It was like blood, only thick and purple, with an acrid scent that sizzled as it hit the water.

  Another bolt of lightning struck the beast. This time the world shuddered, the waters around him frothing as the tentacles retracted beneath the waves. Yu Chen kicked harder, dragging the girl towards the spirit vessel as she wrestled against him, mad with fear. Behind them a vortex appeared, swirling in place as a massive, razor filled maw broke appeared in the center.

  A wail sounded out, the creature feeling pain for the first time in a millennia.

  The keening noise continued to rise until it disappeared, until, with a sharp pop, Yu Chen could hear nothing at all. Blood stained the water around him, trickling from his ears, but he paid it no mind as he struggled to drag the half-panicked woman back to the ship.

  He cast a glance up as he broke through a wave, seeing Xiao Jian watching them in worry as he hung over the side of the ship.

  The other boy waved his hand, shouting something, but Yu Chen couldn’t hear what he said. He kicked harder, nearly at the ship when all of a sudden, his forward momentum halted as an intense force began pulling him backwards.

  Yu Chen kicked his feet, desperate to escape from, from - He cast a glance over his shoulder at the gnashing maw that was half above the water, inhaling it in at a prodigious rate. One massive eye rolled open as he watched, full of malevolence as it turned to stare at him.

  It gleamed with a dark intelligence that promised violence. It narrowed, the creature opening its mouth wider to suck them in, but it disappeared forever as a streak of blue lightning obliterated it from existence. Another keening scream rose up, and though Yu Chen couldn’t hear it he could feel it, his bones rattling in his body as they vibrated at a frequency that wasn’t fit for man.

  The suction disappeared and Yu Chen kicked, pushing through the waves that rose and fell around him as they were thrown about by the raging beast. Tentacles rose out of the water before whistling through the air and crashing against the spirit vessel in revenge.

  Yu Chen’s heartbeat against his chest as the massive ropes of flesh lashed through the air, any one of which would have spelt his end.

  One last push took him through the ship's shield. Thankfully, he was one of the few people keyed to pass its warding properties. He scrabbled against the hull for something, anything to grip onto and pull himself up, but his hand found no purchase on the smooth metal. The hull rose as the ship bucked, the water churning beneath it as Yu Chen tried uselessly to climb the ship.

  Just as he began to lose hope a rope splashed into the water beside him.

  Relief ran through Yu Chen as he grabbed it, clinging to it as tightly as he clung to Xue Lan. A sharp tug lifted both of them into the air, but before he could celebrate, he was slammed against the hull of the ship as it shifted in the waves.

  He groaned, his head spinning, but a few sharp tugs later they were hauled onto the ship and deposited onto the deck in a wet puddle.

  Xiao Jian ignored Yu Chen, dropping the rope he was holding to gather up Xue Lan who was still shaking with fear. He cradled her gently, opening his mouth to say something Yu Chen couldn’t hear.

  Yu Chen pushed himself to his feet, water dripping from his robes. Xiao Jian shot him a look of gratitude, saying something but he paid it no mind, not that he could hear it anyway.

  He turned, surveying the situation aboard the Sleeping Lady.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  “Retreat!” He yelled at Sun Yuan, pointing back the way they came, but the other boy was already on it, spinning the spirit vessel in a tight circle on a path back towards the city.

  Unfortunately, the vindictive beast wasn’t willing to simply let them go.

  Another roar shook his bones as the water rose up around them, blending into the inky blackness.

  The creature rose with it, a horror beyond his comprehension.

  It was a massive… thing, a thick bulbous head writhing with intricate runes that gleamed in the darkness with a darkness all their own. It was somehow similar to the darkness around them, but different, stranger.

  Oddly… more.

  He listened as the runes whispered to him, bypassing his ruined ears.

  Incomprehensible mysteries forced their way into Yu Chen’s mind. His head heated up as his brain worked overtime, struggling to process what it was seeing, to parse the impenetrable secrets thrust upon him. He grappled with the esoteric Concepts, his synapses firing far faster than normal as they attempted, somehow, to eff the ineffable.

  His mind strained, twisting near to breaking until he tore his eyes away.

  Even so, his mind still struggled to comprehend it.

  Water was there, he’d recognized that, and… darkness? Darkness, darkness, darkness, a part of his own mind whispered back. Water and darkness, the world the creature had lived in, but tinged with a dozen other concepts. Depth and pressure, loneliness and violence, life and death, pain and…

  The word escaped him, dodging his grasp. And the word that summed that all up? Was there a single Concept that touched on all of those?

  Yes. His mind whispered back, saying the word, a word that he couldn’t comprehend, a word that caused blood to build in the corners of his eyes and pour from his nose.

  He looked back at the creature, focusing on its eyes in a desperate gambit to avoid the runes writhing across its flesh. One was a bloody ruin, but the other still gleamed with a malevolent fury, glaring at them as it lashed out with a storm of tentacles.

  Serbo au Serbo continued to fire as Sun Yuan pushed the ship hard, sailing beyond the edge of the False Domain it had nearly formed. It wasn’t quite complete. The creature was still a Stage III beast but just barely so, as near to Stage IV as a beast could possibly be.

  Beads of dark water swirled through the air before shooting forward to pelt the ship as they sailed away. The rain battered against the shield, but it held, protecting them until they escaped its range.

  Awe filled Yu Chen as he regarded the beast.

  How old, how ancient was this creature? How long had it lurked in these depths, and how close was it to stepping into the next stage? A year or two? Ten, or twenty? It was impossible to tell, but its power continued to grow along with a crackling energy that spread across the sky.

  And then they were past it. Sun Yuan sent energy to empower the sails, the mast flickering dangerously low as they fled away.

  Yu Chen breathed a sigh of relief as they left the malevolent being behind. The spirit beast kept its gaze on them, its one eye following them as they went, and for one brief moment Yu Chen had the luxury of believing they were safe.

  That they’d somehow managed to escape.

  Then the beast pushed, its bulbous form flowing through the air as it raced after them, abandoning the water entirely. The creature's body was about half the size of the Sleeping Lady, some 50 or 60 feet, but its tentacles trailed out many times beyond that. They writhed through the air, twirling about as the creature propelled itself along.

  Serbo shouted something in his guttural language as he spun the ballista around, firing on the creature as it approached. Bolt after bolt of bright blue lighting lanced out, but none of them found their mark.

  Yu Chen cursed under his breath as the creature approached. He turned, watching as Xiao Jian rushed Xue Lan below deck while Yan Ziqi stood by the mast, imbuing it with what energy he could.

  Sun Yuan stood at the wheel, holding it in a tight grip as he pressed the ship as fast as he could. The Lady responded, leaping across the waves with surprising alacrity now that the waters beneath the vessel had calmed. The beast had left for the skies, allowing them to make good time as they pressed through the darkness.

  Until the spirit beast caught back up with them at least. Serbo au Serbo held it off for some time, the creature treating the weapon with respect after it ruined its eye, but it wasn’t long before it gave up on avoiding them. It burnt its qi, slapping the bolts out of the sky with abandon as it recklessly spent the deep reservoirs it had built up.

  Then it was upon them, looming above them in the sky as a dark aura erupted, stifling the lights that hung from the ship. It was different from the darkness before, somehow more, filled with a Concept so esoteric that blood had poured from Yu Chen’s orifices at the sight of it.

  Yan Ziqi ran below decks as he watched, before running back up and pouring spirit stones into the furnace beside the mast. The light in it flickered, dangerously low, cracks spreading across the shield as the creature above lashed out at them again.

  Yu Chen joined him, the two of them racing back and forth as they fought desperately to keep the spirit vessel from running out of energy. Slowly, the shield firmed, the energy in the mast stabilizing a bit above halfway full.

  Already, a good deal of their profit from the ship they’d sold had been burnt, but money was worthless to a dead man.

  The creature continued its attacks, but something changed as a tiny light appeared in the distance, a faint flicker of hope appearing in the strange darkness surrounding them. The beast seemed to recoil at the sight, erupting with a deep hiss of indignation as it reared back, letting out another keening roar.

  A bolt of energy smashed into its gullet, Serbo au Serbo seizing the moment to strike a deadly blow.

  The keening roar grew another octave, or so Yu Chen assumed as his bones vibrated at a higher frequency. Purple blood, thick and viscous, poured between the shattered remnants of its maw it spun in a tight circle above them, furious and helpless.

  The world pulsed as it pulled at reality, droplets of dense water forming in the air around it. They Conceptually reeked, emitting an aura that spoke of a dozen things, but Yu Chen didn’t have time to reflect as the creature sent them spinning through the air with a roar.

  The first few raindrops of darkness and death struck the shield as the rain gradually built building into a ferocious storm that harried them on their way back to the city. The shield above them flickered, the faintest of holes appearing as it was suffused with attacks.

  There was still power in the mast, but the sheer number of attacks was overwhelming. The shield simply couldn’t regenerate fast enough, and one by one the attacks began to slip through. They were weakened from piercing the shield but they still carried an unspeakable danger, drilling holes through the deck of a vessel crafted by Elder Ming.

  A piece of railing cracked, falling to the deck, and the sails fared no better, first becoming pockmarked and then becoming useless, falling slack as the energy destroyed enough of the inscriptions to break the spell.

  The wind pushing the ship faded, but they were almost there, close enough for Yu Chen to see the bright stonework of the city shining in the distance.

  And then they were through, the beast’s darkness cutting off as they passed some invisible marker, leaving the creature behind.

  A keening roar rose up behind them, filled with reluctance and rage as they sailed within range of the city. Yu Chen turned, fear filling him as he saw the creature floating in the air behind them, its one rage filled eye watching them escape.

  Its aura spiked as the dark energy surrounding it condensed, twirling together to form a massive shard of watery energy. With a last roar of rage is shot the attack forward, crashing through the invisible marker between them and smashing apart the flickering shield protecting the vessel.

  The giant shard missed the deck, but it smashed into the mast, snapping it in half and sending it crashing down onto the ship. The deck beneath it, already structurally weakened from the rain, shattered beneath its weight, causing the ship to list as it ran aground on the muddy banks of the sunken city.

  Yu Chen stared behind them, watching those dark waters where the strange creature had fled.