“Something’s happening,” Aethe called from the front of the boat. Normally she'd be perched on it, but today she was kneeling on the deck boards, holding tight to either rail. “There are bubbles. Turn hard port.”

Marco pulled with all his weight, swinging the wheel until the rudder felt like it would rip loose. The Foolish Endeavor heaved, pulling just far enough to the side to avoid all but the edge of what looked like the roof of an entire house surfacing all at once. The ship shuddered as the roof lifted it up a bit but slid free.

The crew said nothing. They simply clung to the rails and watched the water calm again, as if a house hadn’t just almost capsized their ship.

“That’s worse than monsters.” Riv pulled himself up from the deck and shouted. "How did it get a house?"

Aethe remained crouched at the bow. ”Lots of things get blown into the sea. This must have been one of them.”

“Marco, can we get out yet?” Elisa yelled. "We need to figure out how to escape this thing, fast."

Marco missed the horizon suddenly. Down in the bowl of the whirlpool, the limits of his world were suddenly both severe and dangerous. He shook his head and veered again, dodging some unidentified wood just broken enough to be sharp. “We keep moving.”

The other ships were, against all odds, not doing that badly. Besides the ship they had seen enter the whirlpool first, there were now an uncountable mass of them plowing along after The Foolish Endeavor and somehow surviving the debris being thrown at them. As Marco pushed further and further around the circle, the addition of more and more ships was letting him do that faster and more safely.

"They are only holding themselves together because the smallest of them are dragging the biggest through the worst of it. That's making things much better for them. If you shot one…"

"No, no shooting them. No hurting them at all," Marco said.

"Why not?"

"Because if this thing is more like a beast than a natural thing, it has stamina. Has to. The system doesn't make animals that don't get tired. Right? Even the fake ones in dungeons go to sleep at some point."

"Those aren't exactly fake, Marco," Elisa said, temporarily forgetting the danger that they were in. "But yes, I see your point. So long as we can keep out of the center, we can give it a try."

"Right," he said. "Just so long as we can do that."

It was doable, but it was also getting harder by the minute. The other ships that had the capability were moving their cannons forward and at the much closer range, they were able to take some stray shots towards Marco. None hit, thanks to a combination of distance and the whirlpool’s waves, but eventually at least some would.

"They are breaking away," Aethe said. "Letting a few of the big ships fall behind. Why would they do that?"

“To increase the overall speed of the fleet,” Elisa explained. “Well, eventually the smaller ships will make a lap and rejoin. But until then…" The first of the bigger ships started firing just-technically-in-range shots at them when they finally got a good diagonal angle. Several of the cannonballs did hit this time, mostly bouncing off the ship and kicking up splinters of wood.

"I think it's okay!" Marco yelled out. "They did damage, but not much. If that's the best they have, we'll be fine!"

He had spoken too soon. The next cannonball caught him in the chest.

"Marco!" Elisa screamed.

He didn't know why. He was fine. He just needed to get out of the seawater he found himself in so he could get back to steering the ship, and then everything would be okay.

Marco had just started to recover enough of his wits to realize how much trouble they were all in when everything went black.

—

Marco woke up in a very blue room, cradled in a very wet chair. Somehow the fact that the chair was made of something very much like water did not translate into him getting wet, though, like the water was choosing not to spread to his skin and clothes. As he slowly came to terms with his environment, he began to decide that it wasn't the worst sign as far as first impressions of the afterlife went. It would be sea-themed, at least. He could see himself getting used to a sea-themed heaven or afterlife. It almost seemed appropriate given his dreams and how he spent his days just prior to arriving here.

With a start, he realized that him being dead meant his friends were probably dead, too, or about to be. There was not a single one of them that could steer the ship like he could. At this moment, they were undoubtedly careening towards the center of the whirlpool and the same fate he was facing. Just as he had begun to put together a plan to escape heaven, the chair wrapped around him, pulling him back into a seated position with a force he couldn't begin to resist.

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"Don't," a voice said. A bit of the water near his feet started to move, then form into a human-like shape. "Don't fight. I'm trying to see you."

"I have to. My people are…"

"Time is not passing." The shape waved its arm. "Out there. And we are in here."

"Right," Marco said. "If that's true, then…"

"It's true," the figure said. All the time they had been talking, it had been gaining details here and there. A nose formed. Ears popped from the side of his head. Marco could even see the beginnings of eyes. "Now be still. Let me see you."

Marco had little choice in the matter. The chair was effective in stopping him from moving. He couldn't budge from his position, even if he could wiggle a bit. If the time really wasn't passing outside of this space and it was something the water was doing on purpose, the last thing he wanted to do was change that dynamic.

"Good," the water said, resolving into someone who, all things considered, looked a lot like Marco did. "You might be able to do it."

"Do what?" Marco said. "And why do you look like me?"

"Help me. I look like you to understand you. You might be able to do it."

“Who are you then?”

The figure looked back at itself. “I guess you can call me a water spirit.”

The chair let him go suddenly. Or, if it didn't let him go exactly, it did stop existing, sinking back into the floor so quickly Marco plopped down into the level water at his feet. He didn't sink, which he reluctantly accepted like all other things in this place. "Come. Follow."

The water figure turned and, without looking back, started to walk in a direction in the undefined blue and seemed to expect Marco to follow. He supposed he could have run, but there didn't seem to be a place to run to. He followed.

Twenty minutes of walking later, he hoped with everything he had that the water spirit was telling the truth. If he wasn't, his friends were long gone. He put the thought out of his mind and tried to focus on what he could control.

The water spirit said nothing and changed nothing in its manner for the next few hours, just plodding on peacefully, slowly duplicating more and more details of Marco's appearance until at last there was no difference between them but color and transparency. Finally, it stopped.

"Yes," it said. "You are capable of doing it. Please do."

"I still have no idea what it is," Marco said. "I can't do it unless you tell me. I don't even know if I want to. Are you paying me?"

"I might," the spirit said. "Something that's enough.”

Marco just barely resisted cursing under his breath at how right the water spirit was. "Fine, then. What's the job?"

"Kill a parasite."

"You have a parasite?"

"I do," the spirit said. "I want you to kill it. I've said this."

"I'm just trying to make sure I understand. Why don't you kill it?"

"Because it comes back," it said. "It can't be killed. It feeds off what should make me grow."

"You seem to eat plenty."

"I must eat that much just to survive," the spirit said.

That put a new spin on things. If Marco didn't exactly want to try to fight something this water creature couldn't kill, there was at least an altruistic reason to give it a go.

"And you'll let me free?"

"I might." The water spirit waved its arm, and the space in front of it split like falling water, flowing to either side. "Go now. Don't lose."

Marco stepped forward and immediately felt the space change. The blue world he had been in, the one bright enough to see clearly and calm enough to lull him into a bored sense of quasi-safety, fell away. He stumbled into a new place, one that was immediately darker and heavier than what he had just left. The same watery substance formed the ground, the walls, and the ceiling, but here it all carried a sort of unhealthy thickness. The air itself was fine, but the water that made up the unofficial, everchanging borders of the place seemed stagnant. It smelled of damp stone and something left too long to rot.

He took a cautious step into the room. The floor undulated faintly, as if the water wanted to remind him that holding him up was a choice, not a compelled thing. The brightness he had left behind was nowhere to be seen. Here, faint, variable gray light came from no clear source, and at its very best it was just enough to make out the emptiness ahead of him. The entire space seemed intent on reminding him that while he had been permitted to enter, he was not welcome.

Worse, if that was true, it meant this space wasn't under the control of the neutral, non-aggressive water spirit. It was under the control of whatever made places like this much less pleasant, and there was no predicting how bad something like that could be.

For a while after that there was nothing but the sound of his own footsteps and the faint slosh of water shifting under the soles of his boots. He’d been in dungeons before, but this felt different. There was no order here. There was no anything, really, but the need to walk on until something showed itself, probably by attacking him, and then to survive it.

Finally, after an amount of time he couldn't even estimate, something moved. It was subtle, and Marco would have never noticed it in the outside world surrounded by distractions.. The water rippled, slightly. The light cast shadows that for the first time in hours weren't his own. Minutes passed afterwards with no other signs, until it happened again, over a much larger section of the world in front of him.

No. Not larger, Marco thought. Closer.

He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. Whatever this parasite was, it wasn’t hiding from him in the traditional sense. He could feel that much. He had a strong sense of being hunted. This thing wasn't afraid. It was just waiting for a good time to strike.

The water stirred again. Finally, a shape rose out of the stagnant surface. At first, it was nothing more specific than a bulge in the floor. Then it grew, stretching into something vaguely human-sized but possessing none of its shape. When it finally steadied, Marco saw the lack of details and guessed it had no true form at all. It was water, content to be water, and was, if anything, only visible to him against the rest of the water in this place because it was separate and moving.

Somehow, despite what his eyes were telling him, this still reminded him of an animal he knew. As it pulsed slowly, it reminded him of other wriggling things he had seen in still, dirty water back on Gulf Isle. It didn’t have eyes or even a head, but he could tell it shared more in common with a leech than he would have guessed.

The thing regarded him for just a moment before slithering forward, leaving no wake as it moved.

The system took that long to figure what the thing was. Marco had just a moment to read the notification that popped up after that before he was in the thick of it.