Another deep-pitched gong stretched out through the water, then a series of higher-pitched whines from their left, near the stern of the reef.

The gun crews on the end of the reef had started firing. Hudson strained to see through the dark waters, but didn’t see a sign of the silicates until the swarm was almost on top of the reef.

A massive wall of squirming, writhing tentacles appeared out of the dark waters, like an underwater tsunami. It stretched hundreds of feet across, as high as the surface of the ocean or higher, and extended down below the reef, out of sight. Thousands of the swimmers with a single tentacle – what Cor had called level twos – were joined by hundreds of the shark-like level threes.

The reef jerked downwards in an emergency dive, and Hudson was thankful he was tied securely to the surface of the platform. As the swarm of silicates still drew closer and closer, more gun placements on the reef began to open fire, the dull whine of cavitating projectiles powered by hydraulic pressure growing to a dull roar around them.

The ocean was stained dark gray with the remains of exploding silicates and the shreds of their husks.

“Ready yourselves!” Xith’le’so commanded. The silicate swarm, while decimated under the concentrated fire, was not completely eliminated, and the remainder was closing fast on the surface of the reef.

When the thinned-out horde approached within thirty feet of the reef’s surface, the bone spears surrounding each gunning platform suddenly changed their form.

Each spear shot out an additional twenty feet, and from within it extruded smaller bone spurs to catch the fast-swimming silicates. Cages of bone spears formed into place around each gun platform, protecting them from the impact of the silicates.

Along the outside surface of the reef from the stern up towards the bow, Hudson watched as the wave of silicates crashed down on the platforms now protected by cages of bone spurs. Clouds of gray burst into the water as the silicates slammed onto the defenses, killing themselves and muddying the waters in the process.

Hudson braced himself as the wave of dark gray silicates smashed into their position. The bone spurs snapped into position above them, skewering the majority of the enemy. The bones had a secondary purpose, as Hudson saw many silicate husks caught on the spurs, making it easier to collect them after the battle.

The defenses were not perfect, however, and a few squirmed through the gaps.

Hudson jumped upwards, slashing with the silverine claw on his palm. The vibrating chitin slashed through two of the silicates with ease, while the third latched onto his left arm. A quick cut and the third silicate burst into gray bubbles.

Cor pulled him back to the platform by his tether, where Hudson found a hostile welcome. The officer in charge of the platform had his spear pointing towards Hudson, ready to spear him at a moment’s notice.

“Wait,” Xith’le’so said, slowly positioning himself between the officer and Hudson. She then reached out and grasped his left hand, and Hudson felt the same deep pulse, or subsonic frequency that Xith’le’so had sounded out his mindscape with. She didn’t pull him into his mindscape, though – she couldn’t. Hudson had used the waiting period before the battle to put a Mind Gate technique in place.

“He’s fine, I vouch for him,” Xith’le’so said, and the officer nodded without a word and swam swiftly back to her post.

“I’d say be less aggressive, until you know where you stand within the defenses,” Xith’le’so said, pointing at the soldiers standing ready with long spears to catch any silicates that slipped through the cage. “And don’t expose yourself needlessly. No one can fault you for wanting to kill the abominations, but you should learn how to use a spear – that knife lets them get too close.”

“Understood,” Hudson said, settling into place next to Cor. His immediate reaction, without thinking, was to dive in and attack when he saw an opportunity. Had he been wrong in responding the way he had?

“Good job,” Cor said to him quietly. “And don’t let Boaty McBoatface get you down. Keep that razor-edge sharp. I feel rusty just watching you go to town and not hopping in myself.”

“You don’t mean the claw edge, do you?” Hudson asked, raising up his hand with the claw in it.

“It is always important to maintain your weapons,” Cor replied sagely, “but no. I meant ‘keep your instincts sharp.’ You’ve done a lot to get ‘em to where they are, just to go and purposefully dull them.”

Hudson nodded. Xith’le’so had swam to the other end of the platform and was talking again to the officer in charge.

He’d been fighting hard for his life for what felt like a long time, even if it wasn’t. Just sitting back and watching others fight felt wrong, and ran against the instincts he was developing.

There was a lull in the action and the gun batteries fell silent. The water around them was clearing of the murky gray as the reef continued diving lower. There did not appear to be another wave of silicates swarming towards their position.

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Hudson saw that one platform close to them had been too late in activating its bone cage defenses, and was overrun with squirming silicates. He pointed at the platform and said to Cor, “Send me in?”

Xith’le’so and the officer were busy chatting on the other end of the platform. Hudson quickly untied his tether to the platform.

“Copy that – in two… one…” Cor gave him a countdown, and then the cold blackness of a rift transported him instantaneously.

His vision was a swarm of tentacles, frantic Lurill’shan soldiers, and swirling waters. One soldier, two silicates sucking on her back, thrust her spear at Hudson’s chest.

Hudson slid past the spear, its head missing his chest barely. The water was making the attacks slower, but his movements were also a bit slower. The practice fighting silicates on the way to the reef had helped him considerably, though, and he had adjusted enough to fighting underwater to not be skewered entirely.

He quickly landed a knee to the soldier’s abdomen, while simultaneously slicing through the tentacles attached to her back. He then kicked off and into the water above the platform, which was thicker with the bodies of the silicates.

He went to work slashing and nicking as many of the silicates as he could reach, mowing through the small swarm until none were left.

He felt the annoying buzzing in his mind that let him know his Mind Gate technique had worn off, and he had mind parasites gnawing on a portion of his psyche. He pushed it down as there were wounded and fighting soldiers littering the platform, and he didn’t have the time to renew the technique.

Hudson swam over to where two soldiers were fighting each other unarmed. Despite succumbing to the silicates’ mental intrusions, they moved gracefully and sinuously through the water, born to it and studied in martial arts and techniques adapted to it. He briefly marveled at the impressive techniques before grappling the first from behind.

The whole fight on the platform he had accelerated the tempo of his breathing technique in order to improve his speed, strength, and reaction time. The water-breathing helmet he wore allowed him to cultivate seamlessly underwater. So while the soldiers were skilled in their martial forms, they were not cultivators – neither body or qi – and Hudson was easily able to subdue them.

He secured the two soldiers by tying them up with the slack in their safety tethers. He quickly moved through the rest of the platform, attempting to triage what he could do to help. Several others were unconscious, floating at the end of their tethers, but the last one was stuck beneath a collapsed gun placement.

He flared his cultivation technique and pushed, heaving the heavy gun off of the soldiers’ trapped leg. It immediately began bleeding profusely into the water, and Hudson secured a tourniquet above the wound to try and stem the blood loss.

The buzzing in his head was a furious distraction. The battle had ended; it appeared that all of the silicate swarm had been defeated. There were medic teams and quick reaction teams moving about the other platforms on the reef. He’d done all he could for the time being for these soldiers.

He’d left his tether behind on the previous platform, when he had portalled over to this one, and he didn’t see any spares floating around. Desperately wanting to enter his mindscape and clear out the noise – but not wanting to float off into the ocean if the reef moved suddenly – he decided to wedge himself between one of the soldiers he’d tied up and the floor of the platform.

He sat down with his back to the soldier, wrapped his legs around the remaining tether, and then closed his eyes. He slowed his cultivation technique to a trickle, and focused on the patterns of his Mind Gate technique.

When he entered his mindscape, the racket was deafening. He hurried around the back of his house and saw the slimy, screaming slugs swarming around the branch planted in his annex.

He quickly grabbed a bucket from his outbuilding and began dousing the disgusting slugs with water from his lotus pond. The noise lessened considerably; but didn’t dissipate entirely. He only saw puddles of gray mud, though.

The noise was still coming from inside of his annex, and as he walked through he saw something very strange on the wall. The white mist was slightly less dense in one section, and darker in color, like a splotch or stain on the wall, approximately three feet in diameter.

Hudson walked closer, attempting to peer through the hole in the wall of his mindscape and see more details, but it was difficult to see. He could make out what looked like light blue water with streams of different colors swimming around inside of the water. Dark shapes that could have been mind slugs swam around in those waters.

That must be the mindscape of the soldier, Hudson realized. He had wedged his back against her back, and perhaps because they were physically touching, he could see and interact with her mind as well.

It’s so small, he thought to himself. Compared to his mindscape, the mindscape of the soldier was tiny. And very different from both his own and the vast wasteland that had been Sal’s.

As he was watching, silicate mind slugs crawled through this hole and plopped down into his mindscape.

Horrified, he quickly ran back to fill his bucket with the lotus water, but while he was doing so, another sound impinged on his mindscape – a deep, subsonic knell that he’d heard before.

The far wall of his mindscape changed from a white mist to a wall of deep blue water.

“You are poisoned, follower of the Disciples,” the voice said. It wasn’t Xith’le’so’s voice – it was someone else.

“Who are you?” Hudson said. “And I know about the silicates, obviously, and I’m taking care of it. Just give me a moment!”

The voice didn’t acknowledge Hudson or his response, and continued speaking.

“These waters will cleanse your soul, and should you sink beneath the final wave to your rest below, may you find solace in the deep of deeps,” the voice said once more. Her tone had a sad finality to it, but also a tired, rote quality from repeating the ritualistic phrase many times.

“What?” Hudson asked, pausing to turn and look in the direction of the voice speaking into his mindscape, just as a deluge of water poured out of the far wall.