Chapter 26: Chapter 26: What lies in the Deeps

“Say, Felix, are those boats on the horizon?” I asked, looking into the distance.

“Indeed, they are…” he said, before he trailed off, looking uneasy.

“Why are they so big? And so different from the boats we use here?” I asked, also squinting as I eyed the massive sails. I already felt that I knew the answer, but I was hoping Felix had a different answer for me. Some sort of plausible explanation that could convince me I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was seeing, even though I already knew I was looking at boats from outside the islands. 

“Those… probably aren’t from the islands.” said Felix, shattering my hopes as he tried his best to squint at the boats in the distance. “I mean, my Perception is only grade four, so I might just be having a hard time seeing things clearly, but… The island boats don’t have sails on them, because we just make boats out of floatwood and fly everywhere. And our boats are way smaller, too. We have no reason to build such a large boat. Unless one of the other villages on the islands somehow developed massive sailboats for no reason, those boats should be from somewhere else entirely.” Felix shivered as he looked into the distance, and I felt a chill creep up my spine.

Outside the Islands. I had known that there must be something outside of the islands. After all, the first time I met with Sallia and Felix one of them mentioned that our villages fled to the islands several generations ago, during a famine. Obviously, they must have fled from somewhere. However, knowing that there was a wider world beyond the islands and seeing it were two very different things. And at the same time, I felt a fear at the thought of outsiders coming to the islands. If they were technologically advanced enough to invent massive sailboats, while we had barely limped out of the stone age…

This could be very bad. If the outsiders were hostile and more technologically advanced than us, it might spell the end of our time in this world - and the end of the village as well. I loved my parents and the other villagers. I didn’t want them to all die because a group of outsiders invaded the islands and killed everyone. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down and think optimistically. Perhaps they weren’t hostile, or perhaps we could work out some sort of agreement…

Felix and I, who were waiting on the beach with many other villagers, continued to look in the distance. Meanwhile, the flying boats from our islands started to return, dropping off the kids they had been carrying so that they could investigate the new boats in peace. The other  villagers, who had heard about the strange sails, had also started to gather around the beaches. I even saw some hunters grouped up on the beach, preparing for the worst. 

Soon, Olav returned, along with Sallia and my father. After touching down on the sand, my father and Olav quickly helped Sallia out of the boat.

“Do you see them?” Asked my father, turning to me for a moment.

“I see them,” I said, looking at the slowly approaching sailboats. “It’s hard to miss at this point.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a proper sailin’ boat,” said Olav, frowning as he looked at the approaching boats. I turned to Olav in surprise, before I connected a bunch of information in my head.

Olav spoke the islander language with an accent. Most islanders had blonde hair and blue eyes, and any deviation from this was very rare. However, Olav had brown hair and green eyes. His hair was starting to turn gray, but enough strands of brown remained that it was obvious he looked different than the rest of us.

Was he also from outside the islands?

I shook my head. I would ask Olav about this later, in private. I didn’t want to push him on his past if he didn’t want to talk about it, but if he knew anything useful about the outsiders, the village needed to know. It might be a matter of life and death otherwise.

“Thanks for watching out for my friend, Olav. I appreciate you flying Sallia back first,” I said, giving him the brightest smile I could manage and doing my best to put aside my speculations for now.

“No problem. Now, we should be off,” said my father. “We need to get a closer look at the strange boats from beyond the horizon, so that we can confirm any suspicions we may have about their origin,” said my father. “We’ll see what we can confirm for the village chief. We might already know what we’re looking at, but we need to make sure we know before we say anything,” My father said as he glanced at Olav. I realized that my father had made the same connections I had, or perhaps already knew that Olav was from beyond the islands and might know more. He just didn’t want to confront Olav in public. Or perhaps Olav had already shared the story with my father, long ago? Either way, I wasn’t the only one who had realized Olav was now a vital source of information.

I nodded, feeling much more relaxed. The important thing was that the village know what was happening. If my father knew about Olav’s past, or if Olav was willing to share information with everyone else, that would mean a lot more than if Sallia, Felix and I talked about technology disparity and the potential power of whatever group we were dealing with. After all, the three of us were just children right now, and didn’t have much influence.

The adults boarded the boat again and began flying back across the ocean.

Tense minutes passed by, as the foreign boats continued to sail towards us.

Finally, they got close enough that I could see them clearly. The boats weren’t quite as magnificent as I had first thought. There were seven ships in total, but all of them were damaged. Four of them were barely afloat, with parts of the ships dragging through the water as if they would sink or collapse at any moment. I could see that one of the ships had a massive hole in its side, though it appeared that the undersides of the ships were ribbed and thus the boat hadn’t sunk. The other boats were also in poor shape. 

Even the three boats that weren’t dragging in the water had massive damage to the hull and mast of the ships. Not a single boat was totally free of damage.

Flying boats from the island started to return to land again. The adults hopped off the boat, ignoring the kids entirely as they started speaking with the other adults of the village. I snuck a bit closer to some of the groups, moving around and eavesdropping to see if I could pick up any information before my father and Olav returned.

“-Can’t figure it out at all! There are a bunch of people on the ship, and the ship is massive compared to ours! We didn’t get close enough to talk to the people on the ship, but it’s just so strange-”

“-Outside the village? I thought it was just endless ocean. Are these people messengers from the Ocean Mother? But they don’t seem very connected to the water…”

“-Can’t tell if this is good news or bad news. We just don’t know enough-”

“-Village chief is getting on one of the other flying boats, so I can’t tell you anything right now. For now, a lot of my fellow hunters are still guarding the forest, but if need be they’ll come back and prepare to fight. For now, every fishing boat needs to take at least one hunter with them. Boats with more experienced fishermen can take two instead…”

I picked up snatches of information here and there, but most of the other villagers seemed confused and worried. I did notice the village chief boarding one of the other fishing boats nearby, showing just how seriously he and the villagers took the foreign boats.

Finally, my father and Olav returned for a second time. 

“We’re back,” said my father, alighting from the boat. He took a moment to ruffle my hair, before giving me a smile and a peck on the forehead. “The Village Chief is being flown to the strange vessels right now, so you don’t have to worry about anything. We’re going to figure out what’s going on, and the adults will make plans from there. There are lots and lots of people on each boat, though, so be careful. Olav and I will talk with the village chief later and we’ll make plans from there.” When I heard my father emphasize Olav and I, I relaxed a bit. At the very least, the island would be guaranteed to have some useful information.

“I’ve never seen those giant cloth things before,” I said, letting my nervousness bleed into my voice. “It must have taken a lot of people to put together something so big, but there are only a few ships here. I wonder how big their village is?” 

Olav turned to me, and his face contained a mixture of amusement and concern. “Bigger’n you can probably imagine, Little Miria. They come from someth’n called an empire. But I don’t know if they still think the people livin’ here are supposed to be subjects of the Megailia Theuku Uftokraturia…” Olav sighed, sounded worn out and stressed. “We’ll talk ‘bout it with the village chief.”

My father sighed, before giving Sallia and Felix a look. “Take your friends back to our house for now, and listen to your mother after that. The village chief isn’t going to talk to the outsiders until they land on our island, since they might take it as a provocation if we disembark directly on their ship. For now, that means we’re just going to be observing the foreign ships. If something goes wrong, your mother will know what to do.” I nodded. My father relaxed a bit, and gave me a nervous grin. “Don’t worry: your father and the other villagers will keep you safe, no matter what.” After that, my father and Olav made a couple hand signals towards some hunters. The hunters gave their weapons one last check, before they followed my father. The adults hopped onto Olav’s boat, and began flying back towards the foreign vessels.

“All right. Let’s go,” I said, beckoning to Felix and Sallia. For now, there was nothing we could do about the situation, so staying safe seemed reasonable. We began walking back to my house.

I felt nerves and anxiety thrum through my chest as I told my mother what was going on.

“Don’t worry sweetie. The Village chief and the hunters of the village will take care of things,” she said, sounding as if she almost believed her own words. Then she cooked a few small strips of fish meat, before handing it to the three of us.“Here. Share some with your friends.” My mother continuously bustled around the house, working off her nervous energy. Sometimes, she would grab strips of fish meat and make us another snack for no reason at all, sometimes she cleaned corners of the house for the third time in a row… my mother seemed to cope with her nerves by doing utterly pointless housework. Meanwhile, all of us waited.

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Within an hour, Sallia’s parents came to our house, chatting animatedly as they discussed the sails that were becoming larger by the minute. Felix’s mother, who I expected to show up, never did. Sallia’s parents mentioned that the woman had grabbed her old hunting gear and hopped on one of the flying boats, demanding to be taken along. As a former hunter, she was still able to be one of the village’s primary fighters, even if she was seriously injured. She seemed to take this role of a backup fighter very seriously, now that the village was in a potential crisis.

Sallia’s parents shared my mother’s nervous energy. They talked too loudly, but they glanced at the horizon, over and over again every few minutes. Eventually, Sallia’s parents convinced my mother that we should at least be able to see what was happening. If a fight broke out, it would be best if we knew who initiated the fight, and more importantly, who was winning, so that they could take steps to keep the children safe, if the worst came to pass. Thus, the six of us ended up back on the beach, staring in the distance and watching the foreign sails creep closer.

Together, all of us waited.

* * *

Finally, the daylight began to fade into sunset. Hours crept by as the foreign ships grew closer. I couldn’t see any sign of the foreign ships fighting with our own, thankfully. 

Shortly afterwards, one of the foreign boats finally gave out. With a dying creak, the boat began to disintegrate, finally collapsing from all of the damage it had sustained. I could see the ships from the village circling around the sinking ship. I frowned, feeling my muscles tense as my runes began glowing. Were they fighting? Was the village about to prepare for a battle with a powerful and unknown foreign entity?

It took me a few minutes of nervous squinting to realize what was happening. The flying boats from our island were working to grab the drowning men from the boat, and carry them away from the ocean. It looked like we were trying to help them. I relaxed, my runes disappearing as I stopped feeding my body mana. I still had no idea what had damaged all of the foreign ships so badly in the first place, and Olav’s hint that the outsiders might have bad intentions towards us remained in my thoughts. However, at least for now we weren’t about to start to fight.

Just as I was relaxing, something else appeared on the ocean.

A giant tentacle erupted from the deeps. It was… wrong somehow. The geometry of the surface shifted as I looked at it, and my head started to hurt when I stared at it. It was almost exactly like looking at the Market – the continuously blending and shifting geometry, the inky black surface of the tentacle, the sheer enormity of what I was looking at. It reminded me of the first time I had seen the Market, and been overwhelmed by the thought of what I was looking at.

However, unlike the Market, when I saw the giant tentacle I felt something I hadn’t felt for years.

Terror. Sheer, overwhelming terror that I would die soon.

The giant tentacle reached out of the water, and with a mighty crash, it fell back upon the surface of the ocean. With a crash akin to a god slamming a meteor upon the waves, the ocean churned. Water and chunks of wood alike were flung at their surroundings like flotsam in a tsunami. I even saw a few of the giant fish flying in midair, before they slammed into the water with dazed expressions and fled beneath the waves. The outsider boats fared even worse, and were tossed around like toy boats in a kid’s bathtub.

Another one of the outsider boats shattered into splinters after crashing back into the water. The waves crashed against each other as the water madly danced, heralding the arrival of a true creature of the deeps.

I saw several spears and arrows shoot out from the ships in our village, along with a wave of magical projectiles. Several of them pierced the massive tentacle. although they were the size of toothpicks compared to the massive creature. I heard a mighty roar, one that caused my mind to go blank, and suddenly my awareness of the world around me disappeared. I suddenly realized that everything was so very wrong! Shapes were illusions! The reality that I saw, that I understood, was so limited compared to the truth! All that I knew, all that I understood was a tiny fragment of what was really there. If I simply threw away my pathetic, mortal eyes, and learned the true nature of things, I knew that I would be able to understand the underlying truth of space, reality, and the ocean. If I could simply grasp the nature of space that underlay everything, the secrets of the ocean would be as simple to learn as opening a textbook and taking a look…

I snapped out my temporary state of ‘realization,’ and finally realized that I had been under the influence of some sort of mental attack. The creature’s roar was like the Call of the Ocean, but magnified dozens of times. However, instead of lure me into the water where I would never return, the creature’s roar made me see reality in a strange, twisted way. I suspected it was somehow tied to the way the creature saw the world, but I didn’t understand a thing about what I had seen while in a daze.

My thoughts were interrupted by an arc of golden energy flying out of one of the outsider’s boats. It sliced away the tip of the giant tentacle, which fell back towards the ocean. Inky blood poured from the sky. The tentacle writhed in agony, and a much louder screech rattled the world.

The shapes of the world start swirling like a kaleidoscope again. I was besieged by another wave of understanding - an awful understanding that tore at my thoughts and made it hard for me to think straight. When I regained my senses, I was curled on the sand in the fetal position, clasping my hands over my ears to shut out the awful sound. 

During my daze, the boats of the outsiders had been fleeing towards our island at top speed. The giant tentacle was still rampaging across the ocean like an angry giant, and was now accompanied by multiple other tentacles. However, the creature seemed afraid of our island. For whatever reason, it refused to directly reach into a bubble of space surrounding our village, meaning that we were mostly safe from its mad rampage. Those with water-related abilities were barely keeping the tsunamis and crashing waves from flooding the village, but they had the situation under control for now.

Luckily, the creature didn’t seem interested in sticking around, now that the outsiders were close to our island. Since it wasn’t willing to encroach upon our home, the tentacles slapped the ocean a few more times, as if to vent its anger. Then, with a final madness-inducing bellow, the creature retreated back below the waves. With its departure, the world fell silent.

Sallia and Felix were both still dazed, staring at the world around them with enraptured expressions, as if feasting upon the mad visions of twisted and incomplete geometries each sound made by the giant creature left behind. I snapped my fingers in front of their faces a few times, hoping they would recover. Felix snapped out of it barely ten seconds after I did, before shuddering a few times. Sallia… didn’t respond, but that was probably due to her low Willpower. 

“What the fuck was that?” asked Felix, his facade of being an ordinary seven year old child disappearing completely. “I’ve never seen anything like that. No wonder the people who respond to the Call of the Ocean never fucking return - if they run into that thing, even the village chief would die almost instantly. Asaira’s tears, what the actual-” Felix cut himself off, before shuddering again.

“I don’t know. It was… so…” I was at a loss for words, groping with the reality of what I had just seen. The fish, which I had previously thought were practically mammoths in size, suddenly felt so small. The villagers and trees that we lived next to were like ants in comparison to the massive sea creature that had never bothered showing itself to the islanders before. The ocean that had always seemed weird and interesting suddenly felt as threatening as the forest.

“Are you all right?” I asked, as I took a deep breath. I looked at my friends for any further signs of madness. The first thing to do was see if my friends and family were okay. I could figure out the rest later.

Sallia was still out of it, but it looked like she was starting to come back to her senses. Her swimming eyes were slowly starting to focus again, and she was no longer waving her arms around like a drunk chicken. 

“I… What?” Sallia shuddered, before sucking in a great gulp of air. “I was… I could see, but I couldn’t understand. It was so… I just…” She seemed dazed, before she pointed at her ears.

“Hello? I can’t hear! What’s going on?”

Finally, I realized that there was blood coming out of Sallia’s ears. The unearthly screeching sound had been incredibly loud, but my supernatural physique was able to cope with it. Sallia, however, had started with a Fortitude of Grade 3, and with two runes had only reached the physique of a normal human being, at Grade 5. It seemed like the loud sound had broken something inside of her ears.

“I got it,” said Felix before he turned around, probably going to find a healer. I moved closer to Sallia and hugged her while I looked back at the waves.

Whatever that creature was, it had retreated for now. But I knew it was under the water’s surface somewhere. Lurking.

The ocean that I had spent my life near seemed dangerous like never before. The Forest was terrifying, but… I was beset by the sudden realization that the deep ocean might not be any better.

I turned back towards the foreign ships, who were now only a few minutes away from the village. I felt a different kind of nervousness start to rush across my spine. Right after the attack of the sea creature, we needed to deal with these strange people from outside the islands.

As Felix returned with a healer and Sallia’s eardrums were patched up by a healer, I stewed alone in my thoughts, watching as the ships of the outsiders finally reached our shores.