CHAPTER 463: DARK WATERS

In the waters, Amarena found darkness.

She let the orb float beside her as she swam, enhancing herself enough to keep the rate at which she swam high. Swimming still wasn’t her strongest ability, she hated to admit. But between growing up on Hell and only seeing the ocean once in her life, she felt she had a decent excuse for preferring land. Or running on top of water.

Eventually, the narrow cave opened up to a wider area, and it was here that she saw something she could barely believe.

Large, gelatinous eggs floated in the murky water, their insides glowing with light that shifted between green and blue, with the occasional spark of red. Inside each, the shrivelled, still-developing forms of the heavenbeasts twitched and bobbed, almost infinite-seeming in their variety and density as Amarena swam to avoid them.

It might have been two days after the first Hellquake that signaled the arrival of this dead tree, and yet there were already so many of these things, ready to be born.

Enough, perhaps, to overrun any city of Hell at its most powerful, if even half of them were like the armored beasts.

Between them, she saw the same dragonfly-like creatures with their wings angled backward, swimming through the water as they inspected or plucked the eggs. Those that did the latter, invariably rose until they were out of sight, perhaps even out of the water for all that Amarena could see.

She was in the middle of reorienting herself when she felt a presence from behind.

A bladed arm slashed down on her, and had she not been enhancing herself, she would not have been able to block at the last second, pushed away instead of impaled as she saw a familiar-looking profile and a head whose neck was half yellow-white...

Shit.

She shouldn’t have stayed, but it had seemed prudent to learn more about the beasts at the time. Cursing her luck at having angered one that knew how to swim, she drew her second short sword and readied herself, because there was only one trick she knew that might work underwater.

Aiming her sights behind its head, she waited as it pulsed forward, arms spreading as it reared for another strike. The moment its arms came down, she teleported behind its head and swiped, only to find her short sword had trouble clearing whatever material had been used to bond its head back to its neck.

Worse still, it began to ambulate its arms backward as she slashed furiously with her free sword, chopping below the material until the base of the creature’s neck gave way and the head severed once more. The body lost all coordination, but continued to flail for a few moments longer before it slowed, its limbs spasming at random.

As the corpse fell away, another movement drew her attention, and she looked behind her to find Orby there, still absorbing everything that flowed into it. Stowing her other blade, she pulled the head off of her sword and cast it at the orb, grateful when she saw it get drawn into the mercury-like depths of her silent companion.

Stay dead, dammit!

Her moment of reprieve didn’t last long as her lungs began to protest the lack of air. With a pulse of her tail and legs, Amarena pushed for the surface, breaking free of the water with a gasp. The surface she broke through was slightly more viscous, and it clung to her hair as she cast her gaze about to find an eerily placid surface, with no sign of eggs except for those that rose with their dragonfly-like carriers.

And then one of those dragonlies landed next to her head, its bulbous head twitching back and forth as it regarded her for a single moment before its blue-green eyes began to glow red.

"Fuck!" Amarena accelerated, managing to pierce it with her sword only for it to let out a foul odor and a screech as it perished.

The smell was enough to make Amarena want to throw up, and she hadn’t eaten anything in days. Had she not been facing the closer rim of the world tree’s inner walls, she might not have noticed the true effect of the beast’s dying cry as, from the shadows, ominous purple speckles of light began to appear in pairs as more flying beasts took notice of her kill.

Amarena watched as, almost as one, a swarm, no, a horde of beasts launched themselves towards her. She dove a moment later, swimming down with all her might as she pushed with legs and tail to gain some distance from a fight she didn’t need.

But it as a fight that found her anyway.

The first dragonfly beast to attack zipped into the back of Amarena’s head and tried to stab through the back of her breastplate with its tail. One furious roll later, and it fell in two halves as Amarena cut it through the abdomen.

But that only showed Rena that there were dozens of the beasts closing with her from above. Her goal was still far below her, and she just knew it would be at the bottom of this lake, but Amarena also knew that her record when it came to aquatic combat was abysmal, and she was no mage capable of fighting off such a mass with a single spell.

So she turned, and flickered away, spending precious mana to gain distance as she swam for the deep.

Three teleports later she turned to find many dull red lights still swarming for her, so she redoubled her physical efforts as she enhanced her body as much as she could, fighting against the water for every measure of distance.

She expected more darkness the deeper she got, but after an unseen point, things began to glow with an eerie, omnipresent red as she felt the call in her head rising in both pain and pressure.

And then she saw it.

A heartstone so large, it had to be at least half her height and twice her width. Its red surface bore cracks of purple that matched the stone on her forehead, and it called to her with the certainty that it was hers and it was her.

Leviathan.

But wrapped around and above her mother’s soulstone was a beast unlike any before.

It towered, even above the mantis-like beast she’d slain first. Its body was long and spindly, where it wasn’t bulbous and fat at the back. It was as if three of the armored heavenbeasts had split open and joined to become this thing, one each for thorax, abdomen, and head. And from its rear, eggs floated out and up, dense with mana that could only have come from one source...

It’s feeding on Leviathan...

And even at this distance, its eyes were red.

Perhaps that was why no other beasts were near, though many of their corpses littered the floor. As when she’d fought a jormagr, the wrath of Leviathan tainted those who could not control it, including this beast... and likely also the eggs it made.

But her goal was beneath it, and so Amarena used her precious mana to teleport right to Leviathan’s stone, eager to avoid a fight and claim-

The moment she reached for the stone, a segmented limb kicked her, sending her backward into a metal structure that resembled a squarish tube.

A tentacle lashed out at her a moment later, but she dodged, pushing off of the structure and swimming under the grasp of the lashing limb.

Again and again, it thrashed for her as she neared, its movements becoming more precise the closer she got.

It was just when she thought she was past the first tentacle that a second came from out of her sight, battering her into the floor and wrapping around her with crushing strength. She screamed, releasing precious air as she felt her armor start to buckle beneath its strength. Though she’d tried to eschew it in the past to keep a clear head, Amarena called on her war form now.

Sharp, chitinous armor flooded into existence through her flesh, the expansion of her form shredding into the tentacle as she pushed enough pain into the beast to force it to let go. She landed on the floor with a heavy thud, and knew that the mana cost of pushing herself into this form meant she could not teleport as she had before.

But she still had her swords, and so she drew them, flowing her armor over them as she pushed herself into her battle meditation, recalling a tune that was slow and flowing. A training tune, her sometimes lover- a Valrian knight -had called it. And yet, it seemed to fit her aquatic circumstances.

She took a step as the wounded tentacle pulled away, only to be replaced by three others, assuming the beginning form as she locked her swords in the reaching angle and pushed herself to see the flow of the world and her opponent.

And with another step forward, Rena began to dance.

The form she used, called The Approaching Flow, was not meant for heavy combat. It was meant to train, but also to teach that it took very little to pierce and cut with a sword. As the tentacles approached, she angled herself away enough to let the first one slice itself against her blade.

The second tried to get within her guard, but as the first tentacle withdrew, Amarena brought her blades across her body for the moment, the next tried to wrap around her, pushing out just a bit against the slimy flesh as it constricted until she left it shredded in pieces around herself.

A push off the floor brought her in a slow arc above the third, and as she fell, she crossed her blades together, scissoring through the last and rolling to a stand before she resumed her swim towards Leviathan’s soulstone.

She needed her hands to go faster, and so she stowed her swords and swam with all her might, her lungs burning.

A monstrous screech resounded through the water as the giant beast roared its fury.

Amarena was measures away from her goal when something slammed into her arm and bit down.

The dragonfly creatures had arrived.

As if obeying the rage-filled roar, they slammed into her one by one, biting and clawing, stabbing with the stinger-probes on their tails. They found the gaps in her armor. The places where she needed to bend and move.

I’m so close...

She needed to move.

She needed to be there, not here.

She landed, and she ground forward half a step, ignoring as much as she could the stabbing, searing pain in her body as the beasts tore her armor off in pieces. She reached.

And reached...

And then her blood touched the stone.