Shadow Slave

The Night Garden shook as the colossal tentacle fell from the sky, wrapping itself around it.

The invisible shield protecting the deck of the living ship from the fury of storms prevented it from wreaking havoc across the superstructures, and it avoided skewering itself on the tall masts, as well — however, the vessel still ended up captured in a dreadful embrace, the hull groaning as unimaginable pressure descended upon it. The tentacle constricted, trying to crush the Night Garden into splinters and pull it under the waves.

Jet did not seem too concerned, however. Looking at the southern horizon, where a strange haze was gathering above the sea, she frowned slightly.

”Reload the cannons. Divination team, I need a weather forecast as soon as possible.” The Chain of Nightmares had been a disaster to Awakened wielding powers of divination, who became far less capable in its wake. However, they still had their uses, and some seemed to have been affected less than others.

“Nightfall is imminent!”

Jet’s frown deepened a little.

”How imminent?”

Her question was met with silence.

...But even those who were affected less were far from precise.

The sea boiled as four gargantuan tentacles rose from it, and the hull of the Night Garden groaned as the fifth one constricted around it.

Jet pursed her lips.

‘Ah... I think I am starting to hate water, too.’ At that moment, two human figures plummeted from the great height of the living ship’s main deck, flying toward the water. The fall would have undoubtedly killed anyone below the Transcendent Rank on impact, but these two simply dove into the waves.

A heartbeat later, two massive shadows moved under the water, rushing toward the gargantuan tentacles — they were Naeve and Bloodwave, the Saints of the fallen House of Night, who had assumed their Transcendent forms.

Jet looked at her shadow. She was sure that a subtle presence was hiding in it before, but now, the shadow felt empty.

The Sovereign of Death seemed to have departed to join the battle, as well. There, below the waves, he could unleash his power without being seen... so, Jet shuddered to imagine the horror of what would happen in the depths before too long.

She glanced south.

There, far away... the mist was gathering. Far below the Night Garden, in the murky depths, Sunny was hidden in Naeve’s shadow. The water was boiling around them, and the gargantuan shapes of the black tentacles rose from the vast darkness below like long stalks of some abyssal flower, twisting and swaying as they stretched toward the surface.

Bloodwave had assumed the shape of a grotesque killer whale, his giant body moving through the water with chilling ferocity. The enormous blue eyes of the great predator suddenly ignited with an ominous red glow — in the next moment, the sea around them was painted in hues of crimson, and the frightening presence of the oldest surviving Saint of Night became even more daunting. ŖÀƝỌ₿È𝐒

As much as the shape of Bloodwave was enormous, however, Naeve almost dwarfed him. Having turned into a colossal sea serpent, he rushed toward a different tentacle with terrifying speed. It was not just that the serpent was swift — rather, water itself parted to let him pass and flowed in the direction he chose, supporting his feral charge.

Due to his Transcendent form and the nature of his Aspect, Neave reminded Sunny of the Serpent King sometimes. There were a lot of similarities between their Transformations, but there were subtle differences as well. Sunny had not noticed it before, but now that he had observed Naeve closer, he realized that the gorgeous scales of his Transcendent form... were actually formed from glacial ice.

In fact, he suspected that Neave’s entire Transcendent form was made not from flesh, but from various shapes of altered and finely controlled water. So, in a sense, the gorgeous sea serpent was not a ferocious beast — instead, it was a hydraulic death machine in the form of a mystical aquatic monster.

It did not make Naeve any less fearsome, though.

Just as his maw opened, glistening with a palisade of razor-sharp icy fangs...

Sunny judged that they were deep enough for his arrival to remain unnoticed.

He allowed himself to slide off Naeve’s azure scales and then summoned a torrent of shadows from the Shadow Lantern.

In the next moment, a gargantuan serpent forged from onyx and darkness roared under the vast mass of restless water, making the sea ripple and boil. His tenebrous form far surpassed that of both Naeve and Bloodwave in size, casting a shadow so deep that it felt darker than the lightless expanse of the abyssal depths.

And in that shape stirred.

As Sunny tore through the mass of water in the Shell of the Onyx Serpent, Soul Serpent separated from him and rushed the other way, moving with chilling grace in the crimson darkness of the Stormsea.

‘Snakes everywhere...’

Sunny felt a hint of vicious glee as he, Serpent, Naeve, and Bloodwave each tore into one of the gargantuan tentacles. The distressing violence of it all was simply beyond comprehension: the water boiled, rivers of oily black blood spilled into its depths, grotesque pieces of shredded flesh slowly sank into the darkness, and annihilating shockwaves rolled through the water, causing towering waves somewhere far above.

Well, naturally the violence was harrowing. There were two Transcendent descendants of Storm God and two Supreme Titans assaulting the unknown horror of the depths, after all — it was difficult to imagine a calamity on a larger scale than that.

The twisting tentacles were too gargantuan and tough to be torn apart, though. Even Sunny, with the prodigious size of his Shell, could not bite one in two — far from it. So, instead, he tore into his target, shredding it and ripping huge chunks of flesh out.

As black blood clouded the water around him, slowly melting the impregnable barrier of the Jade Mantle, he felt the tentacle weaken.

The goal was to deal enough damage to make it collapse under its own weight. If enough muscle tissue was torn and shredded, the horror of the depths would not be able to control the tentacle anymore, and would therefore be forced to pull it back into the abyssal depths.

The problem with that, however, was that it wasn’t easy to continuously attack the same spot on the swaying, twisting tentacle — and if they were not careful, they would be caught and crushed by the thing they were meant to hurt.

Sunny, Serpent, and the Saints of Night were managing fine, though. After all, it was not the first time the Night Garden was attacked by this particular horror — they had battled it several times before, and each time, they managed to drive it back.

The soldiers aboard the living ship had even given the terrifying depth dweller a nickname, calling it Old Tom.

Sunny was not sure about the naming sense — personally, he could have undoubtedly come up with something far superior — but it did not really matter what the terrifying dweller of the depths was called.

Today, Sunny wanted to accomplish something more than simply repelling Old Tom back into the depths from which it had come from.

As each of the four shredded tentacles retreated into the dark depths, he let out a low growl...

And then followed them down into the abyss.

Naeve, Bloodwave, and Serpent did, as well. Soon, all light disappeared from the vast expanse of cold water around them, and they found themselves in utter darkness.