Well, someone else is going to become visible, I reckoned, and flicked up my Shards.

The Aquatics all instantly saw the dozen poly-colored Force Magic manifest, especially since it was wound about with several colors of magic totally anathemic to them, Banespell to Aquatics working just fine, and Holy magic being totally outside their realm of knowledge.

If I put up Bane to Aberrants and started hitting the big one with Cerulean effects, I wondered what it would think, and decided I didn’t need to cause that level of alarm. The watery red Banefire to Aquatics was hostile enough to them, even if their blood wasn’t red.

Four oversized boss remorans and one big-arse floating nautiloid thing got to eat a dozen Toppling Shards, one for each of the flying stingrays, eight for the big thing as I didn’t want that spell it was gathering mana for going off.

The instant I let them go, I also became visible, not just the Shards. Lidless eyes shifted to me, but there was no dodging what I was throwing. Shards moved very fast and if these were not auto-directed, they were still guided by thought and will, even if they weren’t bullets.

An expanded rainbow of Shards, ROYGBIV expanded to include Black, White, Gray, Cowspots and Reverse Cowspots, shot out in glittering, divergent spirals. The pack of remorans was only ten yards off, and were hit practically instantly.

The big one, eighty yards back, had an extra lidblink before a bunch of kinetic energy smacked it in the face.

Isparian magic was really hard to disrupt once it got going, and that thing and the remorans were plainly using the primogenitor version of it. It didn’t matter, as this was a contested check against my Intellect + Caster Level, and I had a functioning 25 Caster Level with Shards right now.

Even their sizes didn’t save the remorans, who were smacked out of the air like they’d run into I-beams, spiraling away and crashing into the ocean in tumbling, awkward sprays of water and wrenching wingflaps, hopefully breaking some bones at the very awkward landings.

The big thing ate the Shards on one tentacle per. I was totally aware the thing had far too much Health Qi for me to do anything to it, but the Shockwave split up among the Shards still meant it was a lot of kinetic force, aimed specifically to just knock stuff around.

The nautiloid thing was blasted spinning, and the huge green blast of magical acid it let off went sailing randomly into the sky as it spun around wildly, tentacles whipping out with inertia. One of them dragged in the water, physics did its thing, and it slammed sideways down into the surface of the sea and skidded along before going under in confusion, probably disoriented by the inexplicable turn (hah!) of events.

The remorans were thrashing feebly in the water over there, likewise stunned and confused, and Kris just motored away from them, out of range of their magic within seconds.

“Nice ambush,” the Mick muttered tersely, Markchat carrying his words clearly.

“I hope it lives there and I can hunt it down and kill it one day,” Kris said without actual words, cold and grim. The Mick just snorted at the typical reply, then his eyes narrowed at the thought of doing the exact same thing.

There were large blips ahead of us, but they seemed to be confused, and too deep to actually do anything, as if waiting for orders. I imagined the startled and panicked calls of the things behind us making them uneasy hadn’t helped matters much.

We swept above and past them without incident, Kris grim and intent as we swept past the larger creatures in the open ocean and closed in on the beach to the island of Kryst.

That was right about when the ocean in front of us vomited up a whole lot of stuff.

It was like the stuff was Summoned, although that was not what was happening. It was just random flocks of stuff normally scattered throughout the sea, now being ordered to come to the surface and intercept us.

“Now this looks inneresting,” Lord Mick observed fatalistically.

“They won’t see us the first time. Make it count, Lord Mick!” I told him, quickly making my way over the prone invisible scouts to the front, my Shards flipping up, charged with Whirling Blades this time.

Hey, with -1 Metamagic Efficiency, my Gold spells were +50% damage. Not that I was going to kill anything, but I was going to knock a LOT of stuff flying, especially since they were staying in tight packs.

They could see me up there, standing on the air, bright Shards visible in the night, even if they could only barely read Kris’ presence.

They had to get in range of us to start any spell bombardments. Isparian magic was not very good at damaging objects, but it would rapidly pound the shit out of the Wagon, which was not set up to deal with spell assaults yet.

Unfortunately for them, I had a lot more range than they did.

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Hissing streams of polythaumatic force-light shot out, and remorans and shelled Aberrant things in a scattering of colorful hides and shells went tumbling down out of the air before we got into range of their spells. They were scattered all over the place, sure, but they could converge on us and our course, even if we were moving much faster than they were.

If they drew close enough together, then I could Chain out and catch a whole lot of them, too.

Kris adjusted to me favoring the left, veering that way as I cleaned out those coming from that direction, opening up an oblique path as remorans crashed into the drink and the smaller shelled stuff spun away crazily to bounce and skip and sink into the dark waves.

“Ramming!” she announced, as one pack of remorans swung in straight ahead of us, all of them preparing to jump on her. The scouts all held on as the Mick put his hand on the dash in front of him, and then fed it some mana to manifest a Ward Wall.

She juked left as the remorans reared up, and then a few tons of Invisible Wagon, thoughtfully outfitted with a razor-sharp prow and a hasty Ward Wall, smashed right through the center of them.

I ducked as two remorans went tumbling overhead, one of them missing its left wing. The now-visible Wagon shuddered, but didn’t really slow down since it was tied to Kris. She took off the tail of the remoran that lashed at her, just before one of the sweeping blades on the sides of the Wagon caught its wing, sliced it off, and sent it tumbling in a bloody mess behind us.

The Mick pulled the switch that turned on the forward Lights, and the whole sea in front of us lit right up with literally eye-popping brilliance from a LOT of overlaid Eternal Lights mounted in concave reflective surfaces, with Fresnel lenses for that properly eye-blinding approach.

The shit in front of us suddenly couldn’t see anything for a damn, except for the fact that something was screaming as the Mick also opened the wind vanes to start shrieking at them very loudly. The Wagon was big and bad and had come out of nowhere. They got out of its way damn fast as it now oriented on and came directly at THEM without slowing!

Kris was forgotten and invisible in the brightness that was reaching out a long way toward the beach. The incoming flocks and pods of aquatics slowed right on down as suddenly stealthy fleeing prey became a very loud and bright oversized flying shadow with a lot of shining eyes glaring at them in the night, and incoming size and speed had their normal effects on the predator mindset.

Oh, flashes of bright magic and groups of them splashing into the drink did, too.

The Shoreward came sweeping up on us, the Wagon shifted behind us as I popped one group of sleeches that didn’t get out of the way fast enough, probably intending to shoot a few spells our way. There were crisscrossing streams of magic shooting every which way behind us, but we were out of range and they could only light up the night and not catch us as Kris juked away from them without slowing.

Her Null expanded, the Shoreward was shoved out of the way, and she glided past it into shallow waters, the hordes of creatures behind us converging as the spellcasting at us was cut off like a knife.

They couldn’t target anything past the Shoreward, it was part of the abjuration. Otherwise, they could have sniped off humans off much closer than the Ward itself was to the shore. No, we were perfectly fine.

We, on the other hand were not so constrained.

The scouts rose to their feet as Kris glided in an arc and around, presenting them to our pursuers.

Bows and crossbows lit up with Bane to Aquatics and Greater Magical Weapon. Arrows and quarrels trailing pinkish flames zipped out into the clusters of aquatic creatures floating and flapping impotently outside the Shoreward as a side-Light on the Wagon illuminated them clearly.

The things obviously had little concept of ranged combat outside spells, as missiles don’t travel in water, and naturally were taken completely by surprise by the sudden appearance of a whole company of archers.

I gave them targets by Blade Vulning pairs of targets at a time, my spells having a nice little effect of highlighting whoever they were deployed on in little sparkles, so they all knew what to shoot at.

The scouts were also pretty good shots. Streaking volleys slammed out from a dozen Weapons, one row kneeling, one standing, crossbows creaking as latent Item Magic pulled back the strings, and the first Remoran dropped almost instantly.

Mana Boost to restore reserves as I filled Valences, Vulned again, keeping pace with the volleys from the scouts as they walked down the edge of the flocks, and pinkish neo-tracer fire from just thirty feet away slammed into the furious, impotent creatures. They chittered and squealed and sqwiked, but the scouts just focused on who and what I Vulned, and pincushioned them out of life.

It took the creatures nearly twenty dead to get the idea that they couldn’t reach us through their heads, and something looming out in the distance in the deeper waters gurgled something which made the ear want to retch.

The scouts managed one last volley before the creatures of The Deep turned and dove back into the water, removing them from our line of fire.

Kris turned the Wagon fully around, spot-Lights swept out to sea, and there, a quarter-mile away, the massive shell of the boss nautiloid loomed and stared back at us.

Then it, too, turned about, retreating as it re-entered the deeper waters with a wide wake, and was gone from the bright Lights illuminating everything… especially a whole lot of dead higher-Level niffi-things and remorans.

“Break out the nets and haul in our catch, lads!” the Mick said with a smile. “We doubtless woke everyone up, so at least let us bring them some food for the inconvenience!”

There were a lot of torches igniting and moving along the beach, people woken up by the brightest Lights they’d ever seen in the night sweeping across them, like staring into a lighthouse beam.

They naturally had no idea what kind of creature was out there in the dark, emitting such lights, and likely they were all ready to panic.

I lit up Crown, clearly showing a bunch of humans out here standing atop a long vehicle of some kind beneath the glow of my Staff. Then I conjured up some silvery Disks, and the scouts bailed off onto them to grab their kills and haul them to shore for a feast and prize haul the people here would likely be very appreciative of.

They all hailed from the islands, and were used to handling seafood in one manner or another. We watched them go to it with enthusiasm and energy.

After all, they’d been the only ones to get any real kills on this trip!