Human, but not quite human.

  Marisol didn’t think she’d describe the Worm God the same way she’d describe the Insect Gods, but his aura—his killing pressure so thick and twisting it seemed to warp and distort the sky above the city—bore so much resemblance to Rhizocapala, Eurypteria, and Kalakos’ combined that she couldn’t help but shudder at just the sight of him.

  For a brief, brief second, a dark and horrible thought took over her. What if the Worm God wasn’t humanity’s champion? What if he found this entire siege too bothersome to deal with? What could anyone do if he decided to just smite the island and be done with this?

  … But that was a thought as absurd as the sun being out at night.

  He was humanity’s champion.

  The strongest.

  From three corners of the city, three Insect Gods leapt up at the Worm God with the force of roaring thunder. Rhizocapala threw himself up alongside a hundred giant barnacles, all clicking and clacking and ready to vomit mouthfuls of spines. Eurypteria, so close yet so far away, hurled herself up using her tail as a spring, and the air seemed to shimmer around her stinger as Marisol rubbed her eyes. There was Kalakos, too. No way Marisol could miss her. The colossal remipede was darting straight up at the Worm God, fangs pulled apart, mouth pried open and letting loose a low, tremendous rumble. No doubt both Eurypteria and Kalakos were ready to use their Swarmblood Arts, but the three of them simply weren’t fast enough.

  The gently falling snowflakes seemed to freeze in place. The air became deathly cold, then it felt like nothing at all. Marisol couldn’t feel her skin, her limbs, and the dying specks of lightning still crackling around her glaives. It was like time itself slowed to a crawl, and even the three Insect Gods became suspended mid-air, just inches before their claws, tails, and fangs could reach the Worm God.

  Then three things happened in quick succession, in this world of frozen time.

  [Swarmblood Art,] the Worm God whispered, [Worm Maw.]

  One. Marisol couldn’t turn her head to look behind her, below the city, but the hundreds and thousands of civilians running down the main street above her fell through wormholes. There were exactly as many wormholes as there were civilians to be evacuated, and immediately, the main street became a lot less crowded. A lot less chaotic.

  Two. Even more wormholes opened right next to every Giant-Class and Mutant-Class, and these wormholes weren’t the gentle, soft-swirling ones that’d protected the civilians. No, these ones were violent. Living, hungry jaws. They connected to a bright, colourfully splendid place she couldn’t make heads or tails of—she couldn’t even comprehend what she was looking at as she stared straight into one of the wormholes—and that was most likely the intended effect. The wormholes weren’t meant for humans to stare at. They distorted, sucked in, and absorbed every bug they opened next to, and some wormholes ate up only a single bug. Others ate up five. A few of the larger wormholes ate up to fifty bugs, and it wasn’t like the bugs were crushed and destroyed as the wormholes distorted them.

  Their killing pressures simply became… muted, once they were sucked in and their colours mixed with the ones in their wormholes.

  Three.

  The Worm God cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and smacked the Insect Gods away.

  Unlike many Marisol knew to be very strong, the Worm God only had two arms. And there were three bugs to smack away. So he used his fists for the two human-like gods and one leg for Kalakos' head. It was hard to tell just how much force he put into those strikes in a world of seemingly frozen time, but luckily, she didn't have to imagine.

  Snow began falling gently again.

  Marisol felt dying lightning crackling around her glaives again.

  The wind returned. The sound of waves crashing against the shores returned. The low thrums of every wormhole across the city filled the air.

  Between the Insect Gods pouncing at the Worm God and them being knocked back the way they came—the three of them flying straight into giant wormholes in separate corners of the city—time may only have been frozen for less than a second, and Marisol was none the wiser about how much time had actually passed.

  Then, there was silence as the Imperators and Guards still left behind in the city looked up at him.

  He regarded all of them with a stoic gaze before snapping his fingers. It was just a simple snap to Marisol's ears, crystal clear, but she whirled when she felt a disturbance in the seas surrounding the city.

  For the longest time—ever since she set foot on the island, really—the city had been surrounded by dark, stormy rings of clouds. ‘Black Storm’ was activated to prevent bugs from reaching the harbour, after all, but no amount of bright and relatively sunny days inside the city had ever made her forget that hundreds of warships and thousands of Harbour Guards were marooned outside the city, separated from their families. The longer it took for the Imperators to lift ‘Black Storm’, the worse it'd be for people who needed something they could only get inside the city. People who needed intensive care like Catrina. People who needed a vial of healing seawater like her.

  The Worm God decided to lift ‘Black Storm’ himself.

  In one, single snap, a circular gust of wind blew away the dark clouds. The storm was swept away. The snap affected the clouds and only the clouds—the distant warships docked in a solid line around the city didn't even so much as wobble, let alone break formation.

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  And when all was said and done, the only thing left for the Worm God to do was look straight down at the Whirlpool he was hovering over, eyes still closed.

  [... The rest is up to you,] he said, in an even, metallic tone of voice, but everyone heard him loud and clear. His voice didn't ripple across the city or shatter windows or scatter debris or anything. He was just loud without being deafening, commanding without being overbearing. Like the Archive's voice. [All one hundred fifty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight civilians have been evacuated across two thousand one hundred and fifteen manned warships within a thousand kilometre range of the city. The only humans left on the island are able-bodied Imperators and Guards, as well as any auxiliary support staff vital to maintaining the base city infrastructure.]

  Marisol blinked. So did Reina. Maybe Victor did, too, but it was hard to tell under the bandages. The Worm God raised hand and pointed in three directions: north, east, and south, where the largest wormholes sat in their own corners of the city, warbling and thrumming like giant multi-coloured eggs just waiting to be hatched.

  [I have also sealed all twelve thousand three hundred and twenty-three Giant-Classes, three hundred and forty Mutant-Classes, and the three Insect Gods inside wormholes connected to a different space,] he continued, rattling numbers off like he was one hundred percent confident about them. [Inside the 'In-Between' space, they will be tossed, twirled, shredded, and be continuously unmade and remade. I estimate about a third of the Giant-Classes will not emerge from their wormholes, but the rest will be able to claw their way out within a few hours to within a few weeks. Once they do so, you must be ready to confront them.]

  Then he looked pointedly at the three largest wormholes again, as though trying to place extra emphasis on them.

  [The Mutant-Classes and Insect Gods will stagger out of their wormholes one by one. Ignoring the Mutant-Classes, the order of their reappearance should be Rhizocapala first, then Eurypteria, and finally Kalakos,] he said, pointing north, east, and south in that order. [Beware Rhizocapala and Kalakos the most. I can already sense the two of them trying to break out of their wormholes. Does anyone have any questions they would like to ask before I depart for the abyss?]

  … Marisol almost wanted to laugh. He said that so plainly as if anybody would dare speak up to him, especially when he was so damned far away—

  “Hey, Enki!”

  Marisol perked her ears. She immediately turned to see Victor cupping his hands around his mouth, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  The Worm God heard, turned his head slightly, and immediately frowned with distaste.

  [What do you want, man? I’m not... racing you... again....]

  But the Worm God trailed off as Victor crossed his cane over his chest, giving humanity’s champion the most solemn salute Marisol had ever seen him give.

  In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time he’d done the Imperators’ salute, if ever at all.

  [... Good luck, Whirlpool City.]

  [In the worst case scenario where I do not emerge from the whirlpool after two months, it is reasonable to abandon the city.]

  [It may be the Deepwater Legion Front’s first and foremost bastion, but the city is not the end all be all.]

  With that, the Worm God dove straight down, shooting into the whirlpool with a massive, island-rumbling splash. Marisol couldn’t immediately see what he was doing down there, but then there was another rumble, another low bellow, and a horrifying image formed in her mind: she recalled the Archive telling her the whirlpool was made out of the Worm God’s hollow carcass, so maybe the Worm God was doing it again. Abandoning his human form and taking his colossal worm form to dive straight down to Depth Nine.

  What would he even do down there?

  Rescue the trapped Imperators?

  Fight Corpsetaker alone?

  Even if she had all the time in the world to think, she probably wouldn’t be able to figure out the answer. She didn’t have the time, in any case. A few dozen wormholes sealing Mutant-Classes were still surrounding her and Reina, and if they could collapse at any moment, they had to be ready.

  Apparently, Andres agreed.

  Scattered all across the ravaged city, giant conch shells buried in rubble started to crackle. Marisol heard a small voice coming from the left, under a mound of burning debris, then she heard the same voice from the right, down the street, inside a caved-in building, and more. She’d heard the conch shells used once before—back when Captain Enrique traded shouts with the lighthouses on their way into the city—and now it was being used again, broadcasting Andres’ voice all across the city.

  “Every Guard and Imperator, break into groups of five and report to either me, the Second, or the Fourth Lighthouse Imperator!” he shouted, his voice echoing out here and there, delayed in some places, garbled and incomprehensible in others. “Right now, we are receiving reports from the Guards stationed outside the city that the civilians have all been warped and dropped onto the warships! We are free to ignore them! We’ll deal with the Giant-Classes and Mutant-Classes that’ll be staggering out of their wormholes over the next few weeks, so every time a wormhole is showing signs of collapse, I want soldiers there ready to respond!”

  Hearing confirmation that the civilians really had been evacuated was a huge weight off Marisol’s chest. That meant she wouldn’t have to run herself ragged trying to protect people and kill the bugs, because down the main street, just a few dozen metres away, she already spotted a few relatively small wormholes wavering. The glowing blue circles were dimming now and again. If that wasn’t a sign the bugs inside were starting to claw their way out, she didn’t know what was.

  So she immediately scrambled onto her glaives, clutched her broken ribs, wiped dried blood off her lips, and prepared to skate down at the collapsing wormholes—

  Only to have her neck yanked back by the handle of Victor’s cane.

  “... The hell are you going, lass?” he muttered, shaking his head as she glared back at him, hissing in pain. “You too, Reina. Get your asses down to Claudia in the Harbour Guard Academy. You fought Eurypteria, then a bunch of Mutant-Classes, and now you want to keep on going? Get some rest. There’s a reason why Andres didn’t tell anyone to report to you two.”

  Marisol clicked her tongue in irritation. The Archive rambled something similar in her head, but she tuned both of them out as she slipped under Victor’s cane, drawing on her stamina once again.

  This time, though, it wasn’t Victor who stopped her. Reina’s scorpion tail wrapped around her wrist and jerked her to a halt the moment she tried skating down, and the two of them were locked in an awkward standstill as they both stared at each other, frowning for completely different reasons.

  Marisol wanted to go down and deal with the collapsing wormholes, but one look at Reina’s worried, weary eyes made her soften almost immediately.

  They were tired.

  They needed rest.

  So she looked between Reina and the wavering wormholes, biting her lip, before deciding to shrug Reina’s tail off and skate down towards the Harbour Guard Academy. She didn’t look Victor in the eye. She didn’t respond to the Archive. She listened as Andres’ voice continued echoing through the conch shells as he dolled out more orders, watched as Imperators and Guards scrambled up and down the city to report to their nearest Lighthouse Imperator, and gritted her teeth as she passed by bloody limbs sticking out from mountains of snowy rubble.

  She only made sure to hold onto Reina’s hand the entire way down, because she wouldn’t know what she’d do if she lost a real friend to the Swarm.

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