Cor was awake when Hudson walked into the cave they were using for shelter. He was busy cleaning and polishing already cleaned and polished equipment.

Hudson passed him Ix’s ring. Without it, Cor was still subject to the voices of silicate consciousnesses projected into his mind from the attack he had survived on the trial planet. Ix could suppress those voices with their own cultivation, but until Cor could advance his own far enough (or even start his own), he wouldn’t be able to cleanse them completely.

“I think I saw something out on the ocean. Come check it out.”

“It’s about time the welcome party arrived,” Cor said before quickly gathering his rifle and pulling on his tactical vest.

They hustled back to the outcropping where Hudson had been meditating. The two smudges – one brownish, one gray – had grown larger, so they were definitely coming closer.

“Is that… a sail?” Hudson asked, squinting at the horizon.

“Beats me,” Cor shrugged. “They ain’t within Ix’s perception range yet.”

Hudson’s sharp eyes were starting to make out a few details. The large brown smudge appeared to be a set of large sails, secured to a small catamaran beneath them. The sails were full, despite the lack of a significant wind over the island, and Hudson realized that the small boat was likely going very, very fast over the water.

The gray-colored smudge was larger, but was behind the sailboat. It was also moving quickly, and appeared to be chasing the small boat.

“Do you see that gray thing as well?” Hudson asked. “It looks like a storm cloud. Maybe the boat is sailing in front of that storm.”

“If it was a storm, wouldn’t it be bigger?” Cor said. “Stretching across the horizon, instead of being clumped up like that?”

“Yeah… you’re probably right,” Hudson said.

“Yup. I usually am.”

Hudson squinted and wished he had a pair of binoculars, or a telescope. Or a qi technique that improved his vision, and the facility with his qi channels to use it.

As the brown and gray entities drew closer and closer to their island, Hudson felt a growing sense of foreboding. First, it became clear that while the sailboat was traveling closer towards them, it didn’t intend to stop at the island and would instead only pass it by.

Secondly, he had a hypothesis about what the small gray cloud was, and after a few more minutes, he saw clearly enough to verify his hypothesis was correct.

“That’s a cloud of flying silicates,” Hudson said. “Has to be. They’re not exactly like what I saw on the trial world, but I’m seeing floaty tentacle things.”

“And they’re chasing that boat because they’re looking for breakfast,” Cor added.

The unspoken question lay between them. Should they try to help? Or now that they had confirmed without a doubt that silicates were indeed on this planet, should they ask Ix to open a rift and leave this world immediately?

“For a swarm of silicates, it seems small. For what that’s worth,” Hudson offered up.

“The buggers don’t like water, and it seems we’re on a water planet,” Cor added. “Plus, I’ve already been infected. Kinda like getting a vaccine, I reckon.”

“We’re not heroes,” Hudson said.

“Speak for yourself,” Cor replied. “I’m a hero in every bar I’ve ever been in, and don’t plan on changing that now.”

Hudson snorted.

“Can you make out who or what is on the boat?” Cor asked.

The boat fleeing from the cloud of silicates was actually quite small compared to its large sails. Hudson could only make out a single humanoid figure manning the catamaran, sitting towards the back.

“Looks like just one person. Guess I can’t assume they’re human? I’ve never met any aliens before…Besides Ix, I guess. Or Sal. And I guess the Sage, too? Since he’s probably not from Earth. And all those other participants we saw at the top of the mountain but didn’t talk to during the sigil challenge…”

“You’re ramblin’,” Cor interrupted.

“You’re right,” Hudson said with a sigh. “Fine, fine. Let’s just do this. What’s the plan?”

“The plan? Are you actually looking for something sane and tactically sound?” Cor asked. “Well I’ll be. Miracles never cease.”

Hudson refused to rise to the bait. Cor was in rare form this morning.

“Alright. In about a minute, that boat will pass close enough to the island for Ix to be within portal range,” Cor said. Ix would open rifts to either places where there were pre-existing anchors, or to areas within his sphere of perception. He could technically open rifts to anywhere, but doing so could very easily end poorly for everyone involved.

“We teleport on top of the boat. Any silicates show up, knock ‘em in the water with that sledge of yours, then slice and dice. I think that’ll work better than Big Momma over here.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Big Momma was the giant claw taken from the silverine queen.

“What if I can’t reach them?” Hudson asked. The silicates could easily fly around him.

“You’ll be able to reach ‘em. Just react fast enough, and you’ll be fine.” Hudson was confused and started to open his mouth to ask more questions, but Cor cut him off. “Don’t worry, we got this. I know what you can do and I’ll be backing you up. I still have about a clip and a half, and a coupla fat hogs in case any level threes show up. I am trying to save the ammo though.

“The biggest worry with the level twos – those are the flyers – is letting them touch ya, but we ain’t got that problem anymore, do we? Been there, done that.”

Fat hogs? Level twos and level threes? Hudson was reminded again that Cor had years of tactical engagement experience against silicates. They also had Ix, an enormous trump card. He wondered if the former trial director could do more than just open rifts, and wasn’t letting on. A question for another time.

Cor had jury-rigged the queen’s core to hang below the barrel of his rifle, so that he could hold the rifle with both hands and still maintain contact between Ix and the core. He wore the ring on his left hand, and squeezed it between the forward grip and the silverine core, leaving his trigger hand free.

“Get ready. Weapons hot. Rift opening in three…”

Hudson pulled the sledgehammer over his shoulder, and ramped up his breathing technique. He’d rigged himself a sling for the sledgehammer to go over his back for easy transport.

“...two…one…”

Inky, cold blackness descended and then they were dropping through the air, wet spray from the ocean soaking through their clothes immediately.

Ix had teleported them onto the widest part of the swift-sailing boat. There were two long, thin hulls that, up close, gleamed a matte bone-white in the rising sun. The two separate hulls ran parallel to each other, and were connected by thinner supports, drilled into the solid hulls and arching like rib bones. The supports were covered with a thin, stretchy fabric in the middle. The enormous sails were also made from this same brown fabric.

A human-like figure crouched at the back, next to tie-offs for ropes connecting to the sails. She appeared female, with high cheekbones, a narrow face, and tight-fitting brown clothes, but the gills on the side of her neck were certainly not human.

She had one hand on a rope, and the other held before her in a strange gesture. Her cheeks were puffed out, and she was looking up at the sails above her. When Cor and Hudson appeared out of a rift just a few feet away, the owner of the boat startled badly and pointed her hand, fingers circled together, at the two of them.

A strong wind knocked them off of the boat and out over the ocean. Cor kept a hand on Hudson, and Ix teleported them again, this time depositing them on the boat, but further away from the alien woman.

The boat had slowed down, and the silicates were catching up quickly. The technique she’d used to knock Cor and Hudson off of her boat had been keeping wind in the sales and her boat ahead of the silicates. Hudson and Cor had inadvertently slowed her down.

She looked back at the silicates, then back at Hudson and Cor and yelled something unintelligible at them. The exact specifics of the words were lost, but Hudson didn’t need to understand the sibilant alien language to know that she was both quite angry and quite sure they were all dead.

“Cor! What now?” Hudson yelled, nervously looking at the mass of flying, tentacled monsters less than a hundred yards away and closing fast. “There’s a whole lot of them.”

Cor pointed up at the sail and yelled at the alien woman. “Get this ship going! Yeah, yeah, there you go, and don’t give me that look. Save it for someone who cares!”

He turned to slap Hudson on the back and said, “Go get ‘em tiger!”

The familiar, cold inky blackness and electric buzz of a rift was over and gone, and Hudson realized he was falling. Ix had portalled him high into the air, behind the boat and above the silicates. The air whipped past him, ruffling his clothes as he stared below him at the mass of silicates.

These fliers were similar to the ones that had chased them through the tunnel on the trial world, but subtly different. Same overall shape – bulbous head, trailing tentacle, approximately two meters in length. But instead of multiple tentacles, they had a single appendage that was slightly shorter and stubbier. Their skin was a darker gray, and harder – closer to a leathery texture, perhaps, or a dolphin’s skin, and covered in wrinkles around the head. None had any eyes, either, at least that Hudson could see.

The swarm of silicates reacted to Hudson’s appearance directly above them, jerking upwards. There were hundreds of them, too many to count. Flying in close formation, they eerily mimicked a school of fish.

Hudson swung his sledgehammer awkwardly at the first one as it reached out its tentacle towards him. He missed, and its tentacle slammed into his torso, gripping tightly. Meanwhile, the head of the sledgehammer connected with the next silicate in line behind the first.

The silicate’s bulbous head exploded in a burst of qi and a shower of gray sand, some of which landed directly in Hudson’s eyes. He blinked fiercely, trying to see as he was pummeled by silicate tentacles slapping into him. He swung his hammer wildly once more, and connected loosely with another one.

A few more wild swings and he was through the swarm of silicates and hitting the surface of the ocean, feet first. Five of them were still clinging to his torso, and falling into the water with him. In the water, their shrunken heads expanded, the wrinkles in the leathery skin smoothing out. Extra folds of skin separated from the main heads and began undulating like jellyfish.

Hudson felt a pull on the qi in his body. The touch of the tentacles felt like a burning cold, whereas the qi being sucked out of his body felt abnormally hot. He could hear strange noises, clicks and deep groans, as well as flashes of watery visions through his connection with the silicates as well. The consciousnesses of the silicates were trying to impinge on his own and cover his senses with their own, but he easily resisted.

Unable to breathe under the water, Hudson couldn’t replenish the qi in his body through his breathing technique. The water resistance was also too great to swing his hammer quickly.

Not panicking, Hudson pulled a silverine claw from the pouch at his waist and slashed at the tentacles overlapping his torso. In just a few seconds, the razor sharp chitin had severed all of the tentacles that were stuck to him, and he swam quickly for the surface.

Despite looking leathery and tough, the outer skin of the tentacles had split open easily enough. Hudson had just wanted to get the silicates off of him, but cutting through their skin and exposing them to the water in the ocean had had a much greater effect than he’d thought.

The surface of the cut had bubbled fiercely in contact with the water, like dropping a batch of frozen french fries in hot oil, or hydrogen peroxide on an open wound. That bubbling reaction quickly spread under the skin of the tentacle, causing a chain reaction that ravaged the insides of each silicate, until only husks of the outer, leathery skin remained.

Hudson breached the surface of the water and gasped for air. A rift descended and Ix portalled him back onto the boat, splattering wet and breathing deep.

“Some quick feedback,” Cor said, slapping Hudson on the back a few times. “Try and collect a few more on the way down before you hit the surface of the water – then a few quick cuts under the surface and you got ‘em, easy as pie. Just don’t drop your weapons in the drink, understand?

“Here they come…Looks like they got your scent good! Off you go again.”

“Wait–” Hudson sputtered out before he was flying through the air, once again dive-bombing through the swarm of silicates, glowing sledgehammer in one hand and insect claw in the other.