Wali’s plan was bold and foolish. It would destroy the city as surely as Jemna. The floating ramshackle town was ruined if he followed through with his plan or not. They could already see smoke rising from the city as fires began to break out. Gale would be unable to keep up its lightning and wind onslaught forever. Already the aftermath of Gale’s efforts would have long-ranging effects on the world’s climate for some time.

Wali pushed the growing black orb into the water. The sphere was a gateway into nothing. The Void was just that. It was the concept of empty space; anything that entered it was destroyed, particles scattered and consumed by the ever-hungry void. The bay’s waters poured into the orb and vanished into the nothingness. A new whirlpool began to form as the natural forces of physics and fluid dynamics acted on the water. Wali pushed it lower, completely submerging the sphere of absolute destruction.

Wali moved a short way out into the bay. The magic of the water walking spell allowed him to step on the tops of the swirling waters as if it were a rigid and motionless floor.

Wali felt the swirling waters beginning to generate a different kind of mana, and he pulled on Movement-aspected mana. It was one of the highest tiers of mana, similar to the Void and Distance Glyphs. He twisted the movement mana into his spell, further increasing the size of the hole in the world.

Ordinary pumps would be limited to how fast the motor worked to push the water. Here gravity and the volume of water were all that mattered. The circles Wali maintained would move with him as he directed. As would the rip in the fabric of reality.

The swirling whirlpool began to spread, and Wali pushed the black orb deeper. Soon enough, the orb was at its distance limit before Wali would lose control of the magic. Now all he could do was wait and maintain. He felt the water slowly begin to drop. Wali thought about things as he held the spells. The mana generated by the whirlpool was more than enough to maintain the magic now. He could hold the spells easily as long as he wasn’t disturbed.

The whirlpool swirled downward as the water was pushed into the Void. It wasn’t sucked inward. The Void did not pull things in like some vacuum. Wali had just made that section of reality permeable to the Void. Anything that touched the barrier would pass through it quickly, falling into the never-ending space that was the Void.

The water level of the bay lowered slowly, ever so slowly. The surface area was the most significant advantage of using a ball of the void. A sphere was more effective than a flat drain like a bathtub drain. The whirlpool formed due to the water above the ball pushing downward and the surrounding water rushing to fill that space.

Vinny noticed the danger this represented to the refugees and organized Yacob and Sas’cha. He saw that Wali was out of harm’s way. The whirlpool he magically stood on would carry away any threat from below. He sent Reiki and half the crew members toward the refugees along one wall. With the other half of the crew, Vinny would head toward the other side. Sas’cha was to guard Yacob, who continued to build the ice wall separating the ocean and bay.

Jemna raged through the town like a bully through a sand castle. At first, it did not notice the lowering water level. The city itself sank along with the water level, as did Jemna. It grabbed ships and barges, twisting them in its strong tentacles and rending them asunder. Ropes and wooden walkways fell away and broke. The worldly possessions of those who had lived there were tossed aside with the wreckage as the herald mindlessly raged.

Jemna was a creature of the sea, a beast originally born to help manage the world’s vast oceans. To balance the many forms of life the gods had created and spread throughout the waters. In its heyday, the herald swam the seas, escorted by whales, leviathans, and kraken. It was not feared but respected. It had once been supremely intelligent and spoke with all creatures of the sea, great and small.

When Gavo descended into madness born of futility and frustration, a depression that broke the caretaker’s mind, the madness of the master spread to his heralds. They had once been the keepers of the lifeforms of the world. The beasts had been their charge, great and small. Once a beast achieved the level of Spirit Beast, they would advance beyond the heralds and into Gavo’s personal care. The frustration that led to his madness was formed by the intelligent species that hunted his charges. He was not allowed to raise the Spirit Beasts and crush the mortal races. That was outside of the rules that governed his existence.

Now Jemna was beyond reason. It had been trapped for untold years, unable to interact with the waters and life that swirled around it. Madness was what drove the herald now. There was no reason left within the bestial demon. It lashed out with rage born from eons of entrapment. Entrapment by ground-based people, humans, elves, beastkin, and all the land-walking races. It hated them and wanted vengeance.

Stolen story; please report.

Now the infuriating storm drove it on. The lightning was killing its beloved companions. Those creatures that answered the call to protect the herald. Those who would give their lives, its precious children. The herald could feel the malice of Gale, the elemental that controlled the lightning. When it had dove beneath the waves, the lightning had stopped, but then it couldn’t kill the ground walkers.

Once again, the herald sunk beneath the waves. It did not go far, just enough to protect itself from the lightning. It still reached up its long tentacles to break and destroy the people’s toys. It was then that it noticed that there were no more of its children larger than a lobster approaching. Where were the leviathans? The kraken? The ones like the great sea serpent who had died to free Jemna? Surely they had heard its call. Why had they not answered?

Around this time, Reiki and the crew members pulled people out of boats and onto the seawall. Likewise, Vinny and the other half of the crew were doing the same. The bay was significantly lower now, Wali’s vortex slurping away as much water as possible. They tied the boats to rocks and whatever they could find. When the water returned, as it surely would, they would need the vessels to rebuild. If it was even possible.

Yacob sat on a rock next to the dam of ice. More than ten meters thick and as solid as a rock, the barrier was as strong as Yacob could make it. He was exhausted. Every drip of mana he could use was used. Everything he could squeeze from the environment was gone. He sat and watched Wali work his magic as the sun began to set. It had been hours of labor, and Yacob could see the white-blue ice shot through with stone and planks. He could see it would hold or hoped it would hold.

Yacob didn’t understand why Wali was trying to drain the bay. To what goal was his friend, his brother, trying to achieve?

Sas’cha paced the shore. She, too, was tired. She was covered in delicious fish bits and had not truly eaten this well in a very long time. She held a tuna that had leaped from the ocean onto the seawall. She ate it like it was a turkey leg at the state fair. She had stopped trying to keep the critters from getting over the seawall. The tide of crawling crabs, lobsters, and squishy disgusting things with tentacles was too much for one set of claws. She poked Yacob in the ribs, and he looked at her. She offered the raw fish, and the young man shook his head. He looked a little green from the offer. “You have no taste in food, Yacob.”

“It is not food yet. Needs to be cooked.” He replied dryly.

“Bah. you humans and your cooking.” She said with a laugh.

Out on the water, Wali maintained the sphere of Void. The whirlpool was half a kilometer across and moving very swiftly. He was tired and low on mana despite continually drawing on the mana generated by the whirlpool’s movement.

Trickster said to him, “Just what sort of shenanigan are you doing here? I can see you want to drain the bay, but why?”

Wali replied as he mentally leaned on his other totems. “I need to stab it with the dagger, remember? We have to kill all of the sea life on its body. The easiest way to kill fish is to hit or drown them.” Neferu had retreated from the battle and discorporated an hour ago. The pull of the whirlpool, stray bolts from Gale, and an increasingly dangerous herald were too much for her to want to continue.

“Drown them? How do you drown a fish?” Trickster asked suspiciously.

“Drowning is just asphyxiation. Take away the water, and fish can’t breathe,” Wali replied.

“That’s not all, though.” Trickster said. The Wily One knew there was more to it than just that.

“We can’t get to it if it can submerge itself. Nor if it can get away to the ocean. If that happens, we are well and truly fucked.” Wali said, adjusting the position of the sphere some.

“Shrink the arena of battle, “Trickster said. “I like it.”

“Let’s hope it works. I can only maintain this for so long. This isn’t easy to maintain.” Wali said. “I have to get the water level below the level of the ice dam at least. We can’t allow the herald to destroy the ice wall.” Wali said, looking over at Yacob and Sas’cha, who waved at him. He nodded in response and turned back to the task at hand.

Gale reveled in power and frustration. The sea was littered with dead fish, and thousands of sea creatures floated in the waves around the herald. Gale knew it was effective. Death floated below, but it was like Wali said. For a storm to break a mountain was not an easy task. Gale would not fail before the monstrous creature below. Even when the beast ineffectually threw parts of a ship at Gale, it only encouraged the storm elemental to keep going.

When the herald submerged and moved away from the city, Gale sighed in relief. It took time to pull in more power from the skies. In any case, there was only so much power one could drag in. That’s why storms moved across the land or sea, airborne mana was thin, and you needed to gather it on the move.

Jemna examined its surroundings when the city was nothing more than burning wreckage floating on the sea. It killed many land walkers, but there should have been more. Like there should be massive sea monsters coming to its aid. The waters moved strangely. The bottom of the bay was suspiciously close. It turned and spread its vision across the bay now. In a moment, it sensed that the basin was being drained somehow.

Jemna abandoned the remnants of the town to go and deal with the interloper trying to drain the bay. The sheet of ice that blocked the ocean was another problem. The swirling waters of the vortex would be nothing to the power of the herald. The seas were it’s own to command. Each moment more of its children came and attached themselves to the herald’s shell. To protect it and share its life force with its own.

The bay’s surface rippled as the herald jetted through the waves to attack.