Sylvester crashed into the black sea.

This time he didn't manage to resist, the first thing to go inside was his head. At least he managed to gather air before the crash. He could hold his breath for a while, though not too long.

Darkness.

He didn't know what he had expected to find down there, but he couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything. Except for the cold (cold, even though he was bleeding and struggling to survive) and the claws tearing at his skin.

He was already here, in his territory, but those skeletal hands still wanted to drag him lower.

What was lower than...?

He didn't want to die in a place like this, and he didn't want to find out what slept in the depths, if this black sea had an end, if it wasn't like the sea of stars, ever expanding as the universe slowly died.

He had to get out.

He had to get out, but where was the surface? Without light, without a reference point, what was up, down, left and right? Where was the difference? It was all just part of the darkness that was choking him.

Consequently, the presence of the skeletal hands clawing at him was almost comforting. Something apart from himself.

How long had it been since he had fallen into the black sea? For some reason it gave him the feeling that it had been longer than he thought. Sylvester felt a shiver as he struggled to reach the surface, only able to trust that he really was heading in the right direction. If he asked himself too many questions, indecision would paralyze him and that wouldn't help him in the least either.

He had to move forward without allowing his heavy doubts to drag him down as well.

He was already carrying enough weight on his shoulders.

As he tried to climb to the surface with all his might, painfully aware that he wasn't going to be able to hold his breath much longer (god, how his chest burned), he bumped into something hard.

Too hard.

It had to be armor. It had to be one of those giants, poor bastard had suffered the same fate as him.

Only, while Sylvester was already busy enough trying to save his life, the shiny"armored giant still had breathing room to react to the presence of an enemy. He fired his rifle and Sylvester dodged it, in all honesty, more by chance than anything else. It was such absolute darkness that it couldn't have been more than that: chance. No one could have seen the shot coming and it didn't make a sound.

But it didn't matter. Luck was also a skill, even if his was plummeting recently.

The point was that he had survived and now he had the perfect opportunity to strike back. Since the shot had illuminated the darkness. He repressed the urge to grin like a shark as his katana sliced through his armor, slipped between his ribs (or whatever the hell was in between) and plunged into his heart.

Of that last thing he was very sure. His last palpitations reached his hand through the blade of the katana.

Sylvester pulled out the katana, victorious, but his celebration was interrupted only a few seconds later. As if that wasn't enough, apart from his shoulder and back, he now had a hand to his neck as well. Much bigger. Squeezing like a bear trap.

Impossible. I went through his heart, I'm sure of it.

He couldn't take it anymore.

His only option at this point was to open his mouth or pass out from lack of oxygen, so he opened it. That wouldn't buy him much time though, he would quickly drown as the black sea entered his lungs. And that fucking bastard was strangling him.

He got a flash of inspiration, what if he has more than one heart? Of course, moron, you hadn't thought of that? Or maybe it wasn't his heart at all, just an organ in the same place as the human heart. He came not only from another world but possibly even from another universe, anything was possible.

What did it matter that he had realized it now? The mistake was already made and it was too late to regret it.

He would soon die by drowning and serve as food to creatures for which humans had no name.

No, no, no!

Sylvester gathered his strength, swinging the katana at the arm that struck him. The blade bounced off the armor, sending sparks flying that briefly illuminated his surroundings and his enemy's face. That is, the helmet of the armor. Emotionless and featureless. Like etched in stone, what emotion was it supposed to have? It was nothing more than an invading alien.

He should try to save himself before killing him, but maybe he had already accepted that that wasn't going to happen and had the suicidal determination to at least take one enemy with him.

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No!

He swung the katana again.

His vision was filling with a darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. Slightly his head was spinning.

Another blow. With identical results.

The next blow...

At last! At last, damn it! He hadn't cut it clean off, but he'd heard the man scream. He'd done just enough damage to soften his grip so he could escape.

Toward the surface, which had to be close. Just a little more, just a little more.

He had never been so desperate for a single breath of air.

Against all odds, Sylvester rose to the surface, the water of that damned sea pouring down through his hair like a black crown. He gulped the air greedily as he slowly opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a semi-transparent screen floating in front of his eyes, on which there was too much writing.

He wished it was an elaborate hallucination.

It wasn't, of course. Just an aspect of his strange powers. A new aspect, on top of it. Just now.

[Mission: Call me Ishmael]

[Objective: Kill your great white whale or die trying. Yes, that thing made of tentacles].

[Reward: Five experience points and a level up].

[Consequences of failure: Eternal suffering.]

"Don't fuck with me." Not even dying, eternal suffering "Come on, don't fuck with me."

Just when he thought his life couldn't get any crazier this happened. But he didn't even have time to lament his fate, the hands still insisted on dragging him to hell. He clicked his tongue. He'd had enough of all this. More than enough.

Sylvester emerged from the sea of black, propelling himself upward with another shot of energy. In midair he made the [Infernal Wings] disappear and re"activated the skill, deeming the cost worth it because of the result: clean wings, free from the weight of the black sea.

He looked around.

It was a mess. The black sea had carried everything away. The Lunar Remnants, the agents of the syndicate, he saw more than one struggling to survive. The otherworldly giants, the trees in the way and even buildings, and it was still spreading endlessly. That mass of tentacles, the white whale and he its Ahab, was like a natural disaster all on its own.

At least his power had had the decency to explain what the mission was about or he would be looking for a whale-shaped alien creature right now, though of course the biggest threat and the enemy that had to be destroyed first of all was that damn thing.

Cynthia. Ryan. Maybe he should have priorities, but they were his team and surely they needed his help now.

If they weren't dead already.

Heather was fighting that mass of tentacles, getting too close with her sword, slashing at it and then pulling back again, dodging its tentacles by the skin of her teeth. Her efforts didn't seem to be doing much. He wasn't too surprised to see that she'd gotten out already, without help or at least that he knew of. Since he'd been able to, the truly strange thing would have been to discover that she was still down there.

He approached her, taking a chance, and surprised her by placing a hand on her shoulder and wordlessly asking her to step back to a safe distance.

"Can you set up that alternate dimension again and put whoever I want?"

"I've been thinking the same thing myself, but it wouldn't work with this thing."

"I don't mean that. So you can? Well, follow me."

"What are you...?"

"I don't have time! Just follow me. Please."

Heather fell silent and heeded him. They flew away from the center of the battlefield, if you could call the kilometer engulfed by the black sea that way. Away from their white whale.

Fortunately it wasn't hard to find those two. Ryan leapt into view, thanks to his size. Like two castaways, they floated at the mercy of an inclement sea on a life preserver.

Few castaways used the corpses of the enemies they had killed as life preservers, although, well, when the need arose....

"Ah, I see. You seem harsh, but at the end of the day you care about your friends."

He didn't deny it. Why should he?

They came down. They should have heard his message, but after seeing the Lunar Princess approaching them at high speed it was inevitable that they would react as they did. Tensing up even more, they pulled back so fast they almost fell out of the life preserver.

"Relax," Sylvester said. "We're really cooperating."

"Boss, I don't know what you're thinking," said Cynthia.

"I don't have time to explain anything to you, just let her do her thing. You'll be safe."

Cynthia arched an eyebrow.

"What are you talking about? Ah, no. Wait, you son of a bitch, don't even think about..."

Too late. The air swallowed her words, as well as the two of them. They disappeared in front of his eyes as if they had never been there.

"Will it last?" Sylvester asked.

"For a while. It depends on how quickly we can resolve this."

"Then let's get to work."

***

Gone was his boss and the monster that accompanied him like the demon on his shoulder.

Gone was the death and destruction: the trees uprooted as if a whirlwind had passed by, the corpses and the people who desperately struggled not to drown.

Gone was the terrible black sea and the creature that produced it, which did nothing but spit out that substance.

The only one who didn't disappear was Ryan.

Of course, because they were the only two who had been benched. A strange place where everything was the same as it had been before this madness began, not that of the Lunar Remnants but that of the black sea. It was the ruined city, without a drop of that sea, but made of glass.

They were safe, if you could call it that when what was at stake in this fight was the entire planet.

It was no comfort at all. The guillotine still hung over their heads and if that wasn't enough now they couldn't even do anything to change their destinies. They could only stand here trembling with helplessness, waiting for the verdict. Waiting for their fate to be declared, along with the fate of the entire human race.

She would be lying if she said she didn't know why Sylvester had done this, but she didn't have to like it.

Cynthia felt like throwing up.

It wouldn't be forever, she told herself.

When they were done with the giant, monstrous tangle of tentacles, riding the black sea that stretched out in its wake, they would get them out of here. They would be allowed to fight and risk their lives, because they were here for a reason. There was a reason they had trained so hard.

If the end came with her on the sidelines, then why had she taken the step to join the syndicate?

How would she be any different from the civilians who could only hope their heroes succeeded?

"It's for the best," Ryan said. He was learning to read her mind, though she supposed it wasn't too difficult in this case. "You know as well as I do that we were about to fuck up. If they'd taken a little longer, we would have ended up in that sea. We were running out of time. Out of options."

"I know. But it just really pisses me off."

"Me too. I mean, this is my life now, right? Whatever I do, I'll never be safe."

Ryan was doing what he could, but that's precisely why he didn't understand. He hadn't had a choice, fate had fallen on his head like the wrath of God.

But she had chosen this.

The Defense of Kaleidoscope (2): END