Chương 152: Chapter 227 - Beasts of the Deep

As soon as the leviathan surfaced, the crew started moving into action.

"Leviathan off the port bow!" one of the lookouts shouted. Baracueli cutters were designed for speed, but the archipelago was full of barely-submerged rocks and small islands, so the ship had been forced to slow down. Still, despite Xipuatl's insistence the water was too shallow for leviathans, there were deeper areas they could navigate. Clearly. This cutter had a single turret, a force catapult for launching depth charges, and a spellward repellent engine.

As the crew cranked the spellward up to full power, another group manned the turret while a third started hauling ammunition up from below decks. The deck became a mad scramble as everyone ran in different directions to different stations. The chief hunter of the ship—the ranking crew in charge of myrvite attacks—burst from his quarters still buttoning his shirt.

"Hold fire until we know it's coming for us," he commanded the turret crew.

"Mages, port side, ready sonic spells. Lookouts, remember your job isn't to all stare in the same direction! Eyes out! You three—get the charges up as soon as the shells are prepped." The pilot on the bridge had her hand on the wheel, fingers gripping it like a vice. Her assistant had his hand just over the glyph to the remote voice spell engine that would communicate with the engine room. Mirian kept her hands on the railing and watched the creature. This one was especially big, about twice as long as the cutter.

As it swam along the surface, its rows of thin spines cut through the air like so many rows of knives. Flocks of gulls soared around the beast, crying out. Below the water, she could make out the bulk of it, the dozen or so pairs of fins, plus the trails of tentacles. It was too bright to see the myrvite beast's bioluminescence, but she knew from Viridian's lectures that the beast would appear at night as if a sea of stars were swimming below the surface.

"Get to the cabins," Mirian told Xipuatl.

"Help with repairs if you can."

"Repairs? We don't know if it's going to attack. You said you haven't—" As the leviathan approached, she could feel the faint edge of its aura.

"It's definitely going to attack. It's communicating with its aura. And it's… angry. Go." Xipuatl headed for the aft stairs and scrambled below decks. The spellward pulsed out mana. One of the gulls in the air was a chimeric variant that had a thin snake instead of tail feathers. It peeled away from the leviathan as the spellward repelled it, crying out as it fled in a direct path away from the cutter. The leviathan turned right for them.

"Sonic spells! Now!" the chief hunter cried. Meanwhile, the captain had joined the pilot on the aft deck, and the cutter was banking hard to starboard. Mirian felt the rumble of the sonic spells as they went off. The leviathan repellent spells were detonated under the water, the sound waves at a frequency that the leviathans hated, but that humans couldn't hear. Usually, this chased them away.

Leviathans were smart enough they seemed to know that there were morsels to eat on ships, but that the morsels were small and not very nutritious. A bit of discouragement, and they'd usually go after some other prey. Usually. Unless they were especially hungry. Or, apparently, unless they were angry. The leviathan suddenly surged forward, spines laying down flat as the water churned.

"Flank speed, beach her if you need to!" the captain cried out, and Mirian felt the ship lurch forward as the spell engines below decks pushed their force spells to maximum.

"Turret, fire at will!" In an instant, Miran's soulbound spellbook was in her hand, flipped to her page of combat spells. She gathered her mana, let it swirl and coalesce, then cast her most powerful greater lightning directly at the leviathan's head. Light flashed as the spell thundered. The leviathan thrashed in the water as the bolt struck. Violent waves smashed into the ship a moment later. Mirian cast levitation simply so she wouldn't be distracted by the rocking motion.

She summoned another full power lightning bolt. This one smashed into the bulk of the creature, and electricity danced through the waves and across its colossal body. More waves battered the cutter, and she heard shouting behind her. The leviathan dove, sending huge waves crashing out, its spines vanishing below the waves. Mirian quickly levitated higher, moving back towards the ship that was now leaving her behind.

An artillery shell smashed into the water, bursting open in lightning and force blades, but the shot had missed. Then, two tentacles burst from the water where Mirian had been and the leviathan's head breached the surface, both its inner and outer jaws open. Its head came crashing back down, and this time, the waves that followed threatened to capsize the boat. She heard the shouts of the sailors behind her.

Miran continued to fly backward, now bombarding the leviathan with flurries of force blade and force drill spells, sending up spatters of its dark oily blood. Any sane myrvite would have backed off by now. Something else was going on. A second artillery shell burst open near the leviathan, catching it in the edge of the explosion. The leviathan dove again. Mirian used force detonation spells beneath the water, hoping the pressure it caused would still do damage. She looked behind her.

The crew was readying a proper depth charge near the aft of the ship, putting it on a force catapult to fling towards the leviathan. Meanwhile, the cutter was aiming towards the nearest island, passing dangerously close to the spits of rock. They need more time, she thought. This time, as the leviathan began to surface again, Mirian felt a shift in the ambient mana. Oh shit, she thought. She had time to raise prismatic shield, and then the wave of force smashed into her.

Her shield shattered and she was sent careening through the air. She gasped for air and everything hurt. Bursts of light splashed through the air, blinding and disorienting her. As she stabilized her levitation spell and recast her shield, Mirian thought the blasts didn't even feel like proper natural spells, but more like raw spells. What leviathans lacked in spell control, they made up for in power.

She'd heard of them using light spells to daze and blind sea serpents they were hunting, but not of the force blasts. She drew soul energy to heal her wounds. The aches and pains she felt died down as she cast another spell to shield her eyes from the blinding light bursts the creature was putting out. Mirian let loose more spells as she ascended, peppering the parts of the leviathan she could see. It was diving again, this time, heading for the cutter. She looked back.

The cutter had also taken part of the raw force blast. The starboard railings near the rear had been smashed apart and several sailors and mages were lying sprawled out on the deck, possibly dead. Worse, the ship had taken damage below the waterline. That, and it was rocking back and forth violently, the powerful waves battering it. The depth charge they'd been preparing had been knocked off the launcher. The glyphs on the force catapult had also been damaged and were sparking. The ship slowed to a crawl.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Another hit like that and it sinks, Mirian realized. And it seemed the colossal myrvite had the same idea. The leviathan charged forward, leaving a massive wake behind it. The artillery piece landed a miraculous shot directly on the beast's back. Black ichor fountained in the air. Mirian cast the most powerful hold beast she could manage, but her grasping claws of force simply shattered.

She might be able to wear down this creature given enough time, but there was simply no way of stopping it quickly enough. They hadn't even slowed it down. There was a thundering CRACK! as the leviathan rammed the ship. The center of the hull was smashed, the wood splintering out in an explosion of boards, and sailors went flying in every direction. The ship rolled over onto its side, rapidly taking on water. Fuck!

Mirian thought, and dove down, casting detect life so she could try and find Xipuatl in the wreckage, hoping he wasn't already dead. That was when she saw the soul of a second leviathan approaching. Her eyes widened and she stopped her descent. The second leviathan was coming up from the depths just below the cutter, and its huge maw burst from the water, smashing into the bow and snatching up a mouthful of wood and sailors. More of the ship splintered and exploded outward.

The second leviathan's tendrils whipped out from the depths, snatching anyone who'd fallen into the water up in an instant. Mirian needed a way to get the myrvites to back off, and fast. She could see what remained of the crew and passengers in the aft part of the ship, and the first leviathan was circling back around to hit that part of the ship. Xipuatl had been below decks somewhere in the rear of the ship.

Grabbing Xipuatl from the wreckage would only take a moment, but first she needed to find him in the chaos, and then she needed an entire moment. Greater lightning had hurt the beasts, but it had barely slowed them. Gaius had worked with her to train on several necromantic spells and curses that worked well against the strong souls of myrvites. She couldn't reach the same kind of spell intensity that she could with her arcane spells, but even at a lower power, they might do more. A new tactic was her only hope.

She cast necromantic sunder, smashing a hammer of soul energy directly into the first leviathan. As the edges of its soul distorted from the incursion of incompatible energy, she followed up with soul piercer. A black line of energy sliced through the sky, hitting the leviathan in the place she'd weakened it. Then, she began to siphon where the soul was most wounded to help replenish her own mana. As the beast let out a bellow, she followed up with dull senses, then dove in.

It was the last curse that proved the most useful. Despite being the least flashy of the spells, it did the most to disorient the leviathan, which began to snap and lash out erratically, hitting the other leviathan as it did. Sailors clung to the split deck, while others had been caught below. Mirian cast a divination spell that would detect low-energy forms of soul magic.

The most prominent flare in her vision became the nearby leviathan as it tore at the curse binding it, but she caught a glimpse of soul magic deep inside the ship. There! Xipuatl was attempting to do something with the wooden hull, but he was trapped in one of the cabins; the door had been blocked by a thick beam as the ship broke. The ship shuttered and rolled as the leviathan smashed into it. Diving in immediately would bring her too close to the tentacles.

Mirian cast another divination spell targeting the jul glyph. That helped her sense the artillery shells. Most of them had spilled into the water and were sinking. Perfect. The shells were too far to see the glyphs of, but Mirian was now a master artificer. Every spellfire shell had a trigger sequence. Usually, they were primed by the force blast from the launch, but with pinpoint precision, she could replicate the primer and then trigger the sequence. She targeted four of the shells and cast.

The sea flashed with frantic light as the spellfire shells detonated, sending huge gouts of water upward. The first leviathan was caught in the middle of it. The beast's black ichor bubbled up, coating the violent waves in ink. The second leviathan had also been wounded, and peeled away from the ship. She felt, but couldn't hear, the terrible roar that followed. It vibrated her bones. But now she had a moment.

Mirian flew into the decks through a hole in the ship, then used a series of force detonation spells to clear a straight path through the walls and debris.

"Mirian!" Xipuatl called. He had one arm wrapped around a hammock to keep himself from falling as the ship rocked, and one hand clutching his focus. His forehead was bleeding, and there was a piece of wood sticking out of his arm. Mirian used lift person to snatch him up, then her eyes widened as her soul sight caught a glimpse of something coming towards them fast. She cast force barrier —just in time.

The second leviathan had circled back around and one of its tentacles smashed right through the upper deck, threatening to crush them. Her shield shattered as the tendril bounced off of it. At least it had opened a quicker way out. Mirian switched to accelerated levitation to get them both out of harm's way, rocketing upward. She put another force barrier below them in case the beast tried to smash them out of the air with a wave of force.

Only when the sea was far below them and the air had taken on a chill did she dismiss her protective spells.

"Blood hells," Xipuatl said. He was shaking. Mirian pulled the shard of wood out of his arm, then healed him.

"I can see why she wanted to send in battleships now," she muttered to herself. She started flying them over to the island that the cutter had been making for. Below, she could see the distant churn of the ocean where the two leviathans had struck. The ship was rapidly disappearing as it was pulled below the waves. They landed on the island a short while later. It was a small thing, barely a hundred meters across.

"I thought Viridian said leviathans were solitary," Xipuatl said as he hunched over to stare at the beach, still breathing heavily.

"Either you got that wrong on the test, or he did." Mirian scanned the island for any threats. The spit of land was mostly made up of jagged rocks that made up tide pools and a small central lump where several trees and shrubs clung to to the sandy soil. There were a few creatures with souls strong enough they could be myrvites, but they were hiding out among the tide pools. Her former study partner was looking back the way they'd come.

"Spirits… they're all… I can't believe how fast it all happened." Mirian let him calm down. She supposed before the loop she would have been shaken up by an entire boat getting sunk and the crew devoured.

"New plan," Mirian said.

"I levitate us the rest of the way." Xipuatl's eyes widened.

"It's… you can do that? It's a long way. We've only just hit the tip of the archipelago."

"Yes. Does Tlaxhuaco have any bans on levitation?"

"Uh… well they have bans on all unregulated spellcasting."

"Hmph. Well, no other way to get there anymore. They really don't believe in the exception of the law of Prophets?"

"No." He glanced back towards where the ship had gone down. Mirian could tell he wanted to talk about what had just happened, but she wanted to keep them focused on the task at hand.

"I'll just have to make my argument, then." She tapped her chin.

"It should go better. After all, there's not an entrenched industry supporting spell engines. Remind me of the main religious differences you have with the Luminates again?"

"The Elder Gods are just… the term really doesn't translate. What we worship—the bodies we depict—are artificial representations. The true nature of the Elder Gods are incomprehensible. The best way to understand them is to master the language of spirits."

"Soul magic?"

"Spirits aren't souls. They're made up of… soul amalgams, I guess? But it's not like they're fused together. Like, if you want to commune with a spirit, you have to understand a place. Understand the souls in it. Talk with the souls in it. By understanding the parts, you can begin to understand the whole." He paused.

"I'm not explaining it right."

"I'll understand it eventually," Mirian said, mind already on the next steps. She began to bind the souls of the myrvites she could detect to her siphon spell. Then, with mass reap, a spell designed to kill weaker souled creatures, she slaughtered them and gathered the mana. With Gaius's help, the mana flows were much easier to efficiently direct, and the soul instability, much more manageable. With breaks to rest and restabilize her soul, It should only take two or three days to reach Tlaxhuaco.

"Ready?" she asked.

"What? Now?" Seeing she was serious, Xipuatl said, "I guess." She picked him up with a spell, and they flew south.