Blood swirled through the water deep below the ship. Wali saw through Neferu’s eyes as Rags coughed and laughed. He was not genuinely unconscious. He spat more blood into the water and grinned as he dissipated into the black soul smoke once again.
It was then that Wali realized what they had just done.
A colossal shark swam through the orb of light. The monster could have eaten a great white for a snack. Several smaller sharks, each as large as Neferu, followed in its wake. Wali’s eyes grew wide as he saw them pass into the cloud of blood in the water.
Noodle sank into the sand at the bottom of the water, laying as still and flat as possible. Another creature swam into the area as Neferu also descended to the seafloor. This creature could only be described as an ichthyosaur from hell. The scales along its flank scintillated as it circled the sharks. It had four pectoral fins and a series of fins circling its elongated serpentine body. Wali thought it had been what they had caught a glimpse of on the descent.
Rags’ blood was spreading as the smaller sharks began to eat the relatively smaller fish that had started to congregate in the area.
More monsters of the deep began to arrive as the feeding frenzy escalated. Four giant creatures, glowing with internal lights, jetted in like squid. They were kin to jellyfish, the shining glasslike tendrils far more active and aggressive than that mindless cousin. They moved like darting squid and would billow out a wide mantle to stop and shift directions quickly. They grabbed and stung anything near them. Only the sea serpent was unbothered by the jellyfish-squid things.
On deck, Wali got a feeling of dread. They had been tricked. The monsters below were all Spirit Beasts, and they would bleed in the area of the pillar. The blood would weaken the bonds that held the herald below. His own thoughtlessness had just enacted everything they were here to prevent.
Wali shouted to Reiki, “Captain Reiki, it’s a blood frenzy down below!”
If Reiki could have been paler, she would have paled. Instead, her eyes fluttered as her brain processed the words. She turned and yelled, “Full Sail! ALL HANDS FULL SAIL!”
She turned to Wali, “What of Rags?”
Wali replied, “Destroyed again, but his skin skirt is down to a few. I don’t think we’ll see him again for some time.”
Reiki shook her head, “So he sacrificed his body to get a full blood frenzy going down in the depths.”
Wali nodded. “He fought Neferu, my crocodilian friend, as she broke apart the circle Rags was building. It must have been a part of his plan all along. Either gather blood via the circle and then free Jemna or trigger a blood frenzy of the ancient beasts of the deep and do it that way.”
I don’t think he wanted to use his blood, but I guess you use whatever you have at hand.”
Wali felt a lance of pain through Neferu. She was under attack. He felt the pull on his mana dissipate, and the spirit returned to him. Noodle followed a moment later.
“More creatures came; eels and leviathans. Blood flows in the water.” Neferu told him, “They began to strike at anything and everything.”
“You did well, my friend,” Wali told her.
Captain Reiki opened a sea chest bolted to the rail near him. She pulled from it a wide staff banded in painted colors, a band each of red, yellow, and blue. She took one end under the arm and aimed the banded end out over the sea. She infused it with mana as the others watched. The red band glowed, and the entire staff shot out from under her arm like an oversized bottle rocket. It arced high in the air and exploded in a burst of red smoke half a kilometer wide. Moments later, green smoke plumed off the sides of the other ships in the bay.
“What was that?” Yacob asked.
“Signal burst, Dangerous Monsters is what red means. The other colors mean pirates or send help. Those other ships will head out to sea. Green smoke means you received the warning.” She looked across the water towards the town and saw a plume of green smoke from a large barge in the center. “See there.” She pointed, “Now, at least the city knows there is danger. It is widely known that the sort of creatures that live below come into this bay to breed and feed.
Wali looked out to the mouth of the bay, thinking hard. “Can we close the bay? Trap Jemna in here with us?”
Reiki looked out at the mouth of the bay. “It is maybe possible, but then the townsfolk would not be able to flee either. The cliffside has maybe a tenth the capacity of the floating city.”
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Wali kept thinking.
A thousand meters below him in the darkness, a bloody war was happening between the sea's most ancient and powerful creatures. These emperors of the oceans typically avoided one another, but there was a spell wrought into the water. The blood of the herald known as Rags the Skintaker had been enchanted on his discorporation. A primal frenzy, a hunger born of the deepest parts of their animal souls drove them to feed.
A sea serpent was missing several fins, and large patches of its scales had been ripped away. Blood poured into the cold, salty water around it. The gigantic megalodon had been the first to be killed. Its corpse had been ripped to pieces by the leviathan.
The massive whale-like leviathan was covered in huge bony plates and looked more like an old Ironsides steamship than a creature of nature. When it opened its massive jaws, the suction pulled in the smaller animals around it. It had consumed the jellyfish and was currently entangled by a hundred-meter-long moray eel.
The eel was pulsing pure lightning into the water around it and the leviathan. Its two-meter fangs scraped against the plating, trying to find a seam to inject its venom. The eels were typically reclusive ambush predators, but Rags’ blood had driven them out of the deepwater sands and to the battle.
Ancient Mantis Crabs crawled along the bottom, snapping out stabbing claws with the force of a cruise missile in less time than it takes to blink. They scavenged the fallen carcasses and did battle with glowing flatworms who were hungry for the same.
All the while, the stone obelisk at the center drank it all in. The bindings that held Jemna, the Terror of the Depths, grew weaker by the moment as the blood of beasts as old as time itself corrupted the stone like acid. Jemna was aware of all of this; it had been aware of everything since it had been bound. The demon pushed against the bindings, feeling them crack slowly. It could exercise its power through those cracks.
A wave of power flowed out from the stone. Like Aquaman calling his fishy friends, Jemna called out to all of the creatures of the sea. The smell of the blood frenzy was one thing. The blood of a herald driving the animals insane was on an entirely different echelon of power. The command of Jemna to gather to him went out beyond the seawall. Some creatures that had been asleep for centuries woke to the call. Others instantly turned from whatever they were doing to answer.
The blood bath continued around the stone, and Jemna pulled on the seawater itself. First, a swirl of power within the water. Then a pull of the current, a cyclone, began to form within the waters surrounding the stone prison. A rolling circular tube pulled the blood from the surroundings and washed it against the stone. Most of the blood was just that. There was enough blood of the Ancient Spirit Beasts within the waters to act as a corrosive force on the runes.
The runes had once been carved using the blood of Spirit beasts who had freely given themselves to create these prisons. Creatures like Sas’cha, who were intelligent and powerful, had bled for the seven Lumin sisters and helped create these obelisks.
Now the great sea serpent battled the leviathan above the stone, trapped by swirling waters. They were all that remained of suitable sea creatures in the bay. Their blood was pulled from their very bodies by the swirling waters and power of Jemna.
On the surface, the Storm Dancer flew across the bay, headed for the mouth of the bay like every other ship that could put on sail. The center of the bay changed. Water flowed up from the depths in a red churn. Parts of sea creatures came up with the blood from below. From the mast, Vinny looked out and saw a large whirlpool forming. He called down to the deck and captain, informing them of the development.
“If Jemna is not free now, it soon will be,” Reiki said.
“You said the herald pulled the bodies of live creatures to itself and added to its body?” Wali asked, thinking, still staring out at the mouth of the bay and the great ocean beyond.
Reiki nodded and looked out toward the approaching ocean. Beyond the stone seawall, they saw something that chilled them to the core.
Fish leaped from the water, dolphins skimmed on the surface, shark fins alongside them. Thousands of creatures born in the sea had turned to answer Jemna’s call. And they were coming in number and at their maximum rate of speed. Yacob goggled at the sight. Sas’cha hissed as she clutched to the rail of the ship. A whale spouted behind the enormous mixed school of fish.
Wali turned to Yacob and Vinny, calling the elf down from his perch in the mastheads. He told Reiki to pull parallel to the channel. While the captain began giving orders to the crew and the ship started to shift course, Wali outlined the beginnings of a plan.
He told Yacob and Vinny what to do and how he wanted it done. He then cast several spells on them. They ran and leaped over the side, landing on the water as if it was as hard as packed earth. They sprinted for the approaching sea wall.
Wali then turned to Sas’cha and asked her, “Can you do this?”
She gave him a fierce look, “I have fought and killed in the water long before your grandparents started walking. I dislike it, but I can do it.”
“Remember, you have your hood if things go sideways.” He said with concern.
“I’ll be fine. You need to care for yourself.” She said, prickling his hand with her claws as she gripped it.
He stood and again called Neferu into being off the ship’s side. The great crocodilian floated in the water, and Sas’cha leaped onto his back.
Wali nodded to Reiki and said, “It is now or never. Are you ready?”
She nodded and shouted orders, the anchors were dropped, and the sails dropped slack. The ship lurched and slowed. All forward impetus stopped.
Wali sat down on the deck, spear across his knees, and began to channel mana. Drawing from the great depths of the seawater below and pushing it through his magic glyph and then into the spear. He moved his mind deep into the spearhead and called out to the bound spirit there.
“Gale, it is time for you to redeem yourself. I need a storm that shatters mountains and shakes the sea itself.” He pushed power into the elemental through his contracted bond.
The elemental stirred and rose to face Wali, “I can be your storm. I will drain the seas and crumble the mountain. Free me and see my fury!”