“... Twenty-one thousand civilians dead and counting,” Andres finished quietly, slamming his mantis shrimp fists onto the end of the long table as he did. “If not for the Worm God waking up and tossing every bug into the void with his wormholes, we’d all be dead already. As it stands, however, the bugs trapped in his void aren’t completely dead. The weaker ones are getting shredded by distorted space, yes, but everything about B-Rank Giant-Class will be crawling out of those wormholes one by one—including our three Insect Gods.”
Morning.
Bright and early, the sky was painted a clear and beautiful blue, clouds thin and wispy above the island. Just because the Worm God had blown ‘Black Storm’ away didn’t mean the eternal rain had stopped. A light drizzle still fell steadily across the burning city, and the air smelled of wet stone and ash. After all, the conference room at the top of Lighthouse Seven was completely exposed. The roof had been torn off sometime during the first wave of attacks yesterday. Rain soaked through everything—the long table in front of Marisol, the uniforms of the Imperators sitting and standing around her, and the broken glass shards scattered across the floor that clinked and cracked every time someone so much as shifted where they stood.
For Marisol’s part, she sat at one far end of the table, leaning against the armrest of her chair. While the Imperatrix recapped the events leading up to yesterday’s ‘Breach’, she stared at the jagged edges of the ruined lighthouse, her thoughts somewhere far away.
The fresh memory of the Worm God’s overwhelming power gripped her, still—as it did every Imperator standing or sitting with their heads hung low—because they all knew what Andres said was true.
If not for the clone of humanity’s strongest, they would’ve already lost the entire city.
[The Worm God is fighting down in the whirlpool, still,] the Archive said, [and he is probably alongside the First Lighthouse Imperator, as well as every Imperator and Guard that had been left behind in Depth Five. Most likely, he is halting the advance of the rest of the whirlpool’s leviathans and preventing them from breaching the surface.]
[There will be no new leviathans breaching the surface as long as he remains, though I am unsure how long even he can last in Depth Five, in the den of our enemy.]
Marisol pushed the Archive’s voice aside. She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t need its constant reminders of things she already knew. She clenched her fists against the table, forcing her focus back to the present.
Then it was Reina’s voice that broke the quiet.
“Confirmation reports have been sent and received via winged Moth-Class couriers,” she said clearly. She was sitting on Marisol’s right, hands resting lightly on the wet table, but her scorpion tail was evidently agitated. It was twitching, contorting, the razor-sharp stinger pointing in the direction of Eurypteria’s wormhole. “One hundred fifty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight civilians have been evacuated onto two thousand one hundred and fifteen manned warships within a thousand kilometre range of the city. Even the reserve ships hidden in the outer islands that we never told the Worm God about are now boarded with civilians. Currently, Lighthouse Five has instructed the civilian warships to pull back towards the east, heading straight for the Harbour City on the mainland.”
Hugo grimaced and leaned forward in his seat to Marisol’s left, pulling his legs off the table. “A few of my severely injured initiates from a few months ago have also been evacuated onto the warships, and they have sent me reports that there are… complications with the evacuation. Multiple Mutant-Class bugs, including what appears to be an S-Rank Mutant-Class water strider, are attacking the fleets of ships as they’re each heading towards the Harbour City on their own routes. Four fleets have already been sunk by the Mutant-Classes—that is forty-five ships and three thousand civilians already dead on the great blue.”
Marisol stiffened. This was the first time she’d heard of a water strider bug, and for it to be S-Rank Mutant-Class on top of that… It was just one rank away from becoming an Insect God.
A Water Strider God.
And she felt she knew, rather well, how it was capable of destroying those fleets of ships.
“The Hasharana are helping defend as many fleets as they can,” Victor said sternly, standing next to Andres at the far opposite end of the table, both hands clasped on his walking cane. “I’ve told all twenty-one of them to pick three fleets each and escort them to the Harbour City. That’s about seven hundred and fifty ships that’ll definitely reach the mainland unharmed.”
“The Guards sailing those warships have also been told to put the civilians’ lives over their own,” Hugo continued, nodding plainly. “Their orders are to not stop for anything or anyone. If there is even a single civilian on board, they will sail to the Harbour City no matter what.” Then he turned to raise a brow at Andres, hoping for good news. “And the reinforcements from the other Swarmsteel Fronts will arrive in… time?”
Andres narrowed his eye at all of them. “It will take one month for every civilian-carrying warship to reach the Harbour City from here. We’ve already received confirmation via Victor’s Archive that reinforcements from the southern Attini Empire Front and the northwestern Plagueplain Front are on the way, but they’ll only reach the Harbour City in a month.”
Hugo clicked his tongue, making smacking noises with his lips. “So, at best, they’ll be in the Harbour City to help receive the civilians.”
“No reinforcements from any front can help us this deep out onto the great blue, anyways,” Victor murmured. “They don’t got water-type classes. They’re as good as useless the further they stray from shore. Between the Hasharana escorts, the sailing Guards, and reinforcements from the other Swarmsteel Fronts, I’d say the evacuees will be fine from here on out—those Mutant-Classes shouldn’t give them much trouble as long as they’re coordinated and prepared for attacks—but we’re still in the Whirlpool City, and we ain’t getting any help from the outside.”
Then Maria, seated further down the table on the left, picked up her feathered quill and began writing in her notebook. Her scribbles were loud. Her hand moved in a blur. Everyone’s head turned towards her, and the moment she finished writing, she held her notebook up for all of them to see.
‘That’s right.’
‘We can’t afford to care about the people outside the city right now.’
‘Here and now, we have a decision to make.’
Maria’s written words hit everyone like a hammer, but she ran out of space on her notebook, so she had to pull it back down and flip to a new page before finishing her thoughts.
‘Here and now.’
‘Do we fight the bugs that’ll crawl out of the wormholes one by one, or do we abandon the Whirlpool City and hold our ground on the mainland?’
…
And the murmurs began low and cautious, voices rising like ripples across a still pond.
“This is our home,” someone whispered, their voice tight.
“If we lose the Whirlpool City,” another muttered, “Corpsetaker will have free reign over the Deepwater Legion Front.”
“And if we lose this city, the autocannons on the western seas will fall,” someone else added, their words sharp and unsteady. “The city’s factories are constantly supplying the cannons with shells and ammunition. We stop running the factories, and the Crawling Seas will overrun the entire great blue eventually. We’ll lose the largest saltwater deposit in the entire world.”
The room, damp and battered as it was, felt too small for all the fear and frustration swirling within it. Marisol’s throat was dry, and her heart raced as she looked at the other Imperators. Most of them stood with crossed arms, leaning against the walls, their expressions carved from stone. Others were slumped or hunched, as if the weight of the decision ahead was already too much to bear.
Of course, Marisol knew what losing the city meant. They all did. But Andres, standing at the end of the table with rain dripping from the hairs of his fur coat, finally exhaled and slammed his fist on the table once again.
The sound snapped everyone out of their heads, pulling their gaze towards him.
“... Indeed, we will cede control over most of the Deepwater Legion Front if we abandon the Whirlpool City,” Andres said, his voice cutting cleanly through the rising tension as he gestured behind at the whirlpool, “but it is also true that the Worm God is still fighting down there. A clone of the Worm God. A safeguard. His only purpose is to buy us time—to make sure the civilians get out safely as he delays the rest of the leviathans from breaching the whirlpool. Do you think he can solve all our problems for us? Do you truly think he can beat Corpsetaker as he is right now?”
Even Marisol knew better than to answer that one. It was a rhetorical question, no matter how much every man and woman in the room wanted to say ‘yes’.
“He cannot,” Andres said firmly. “I will give him one month. He will be able to stave off Corpsetaker and the rest of the leviathans for one month, but then he will run out of stamina and be torn to shreds. If we do not want that to happen, we must reclaim full control of the city within a month and then reinforce him down there with the full might of the Guards and Imperators, thus stabilising the whirlpool once again—and to reclaim full control of the city, we must be able to defeat over nine thousand Giant-Classes, three hundred and forty Mutant-Classes, and three Insect Gods in a single month. How many Imperators are present in the city, Hugo?”
Hugo cracked his neck, muttering under his breath for a few moments before answering. “Three hundred and one able-bodied Imperators,” he said. “And about a thousand Guards, currently scattered across the city dealing with the wormholes. “
“Less than a thousand and five hundred humans against all of them,” Andres finished, looking all of them over slowly. “It will be a difficult battle, to say the least.”
The room became silent. The air became heavy with the Imperatrix’s matter-of-fact statement.
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Victor broke the silence with a shrug and a sigh.
“You should vote, then,” he said. “Get your voting cards out, Lighthouse Imperators.”
Scowls spread across the room like cracks in glass, but none of the standing Imperators objected outright. Instead, one by one, the Lighthouse Imperators reached into their uniforms, each pulling out a whole deck of silver-lined cards.
Marisol blinked. She’d no idea what the cards were, but before she could glance over at Reina and ask, Maria slammed a card down on the table first: a frame with a four-armed man wielding four wands. The ‘Magician’. That was what the words read at the bottom of the card, but Marisol still had no idea what it was supposed to mean.
Fortunately, Maria scribbled into her notebook harshly, backing up her card with a clear, indisputable message.
‘I will not abandon my factories.’
‘If we run, we’ll no longer be able to produce ammunition for the autocannons in the far west, and if the cannons aren't firing, screw the Whirlpool City.’
‘There'd be nothing stopping the sea of aquatic bugs from washing over the western half of the Deepwater Legion Front.’
‘We must fight.’
As Maria made her stance clear, Hugo also slapped down a voting card. The words at the bottom of the frame read the ‘Star’, and the drawing was that of a bespectacled lady with wings swirling with electricity, soaring towards the night sky. Marisol only blinked for a few more seconds before the Archive clicked its tongue in her head.
[I see.]
[They are all playing cards depicting the Arcana Hasharana, and the numbers on the back of every card likely represent how strongly the Lighthouse Imperator feels about their decision.]
[The ‘Magician’, ranked two of the Arcana Hasharana, likely means Maria wants to die fighting for the Whirlpool City, while the ‘Star’, ranked tenth of the Arcana Hasharana, likely means Hugo also feels like fighting for the Whirlpool City, but with a bit less enthusiasm.]
“I vote to fight, too,” Hugo said, his tone light but his eyes serious. “Weak as I am compared to most of you, I like to think I’m fiercely territorial. No way am I giving this city and all its history up without even trying to fight.”
Reina joined in as well, tossing her ‘Strength’ card on the table—ranked third of the Arcana Hasharana, the Archive said.
“I also vote to fight,” Reina said firmly. Her words were clipped, her voice laced with a simmering anger. “Eurypteria’s still out there, and I am not leaving this city without settling the score.”
And that was three votes. Three cards. Maria, Hugo, and Reina were the only Lighthouse Imperators in the room, because the other three were either dead, indisposed, or missing—but then Victor let out a long breath, rummaging in his coat pocket for a little while before flicking two cards into the centre of the table.
[Justice, the Mantis Class swordsman, and Temperance, the Tsetse Fly healer. Ranked sixteenth and nineteenth of the Arcana Hasharana respectively,] the Archive mumbled. [But those cards are only given to Lighthouse Imperators. How does he—]
“I went to visit Claudia and Matheo this morning for their votes,” Victor said calmly, tilting his chin at the two cards. “Claudia says no. In her own words, the people matter more than the city, and the number of Guards and Imperators we’ll have to sacrifice to hold the city won’t be worth it. We’ve already lost enough soldiers this past year. We might as well cut our losses and retreat to the mainland.”
“Claudia,” Reina breathed, “you didn’t tell me you’d—”
“I ain’t finished yet,” Victor interrupted. “Matheo, Matheo… well, I know none of you have seen him in the past year, but I have. I went out to the warship he was on this morning and got his vote. In his own words as well, he doesn’t show up for fights he doesn’t think he can win, so he doesn’t want to fight. End of story.”
A low murmur of voices echoed until Andres reached into his coat and pulled out a card as well, throwing it on top of Victor’s.
[The Fool, ranked one of the Arcana Hasharana.]
[The Imperatrix—]
“I vote no as well,” Andres said, his voice calm and unyielding. “We don’t fight.”
…
For a moment, the room was silent.
Then, like the crack of a whip, the outrage began.
“Fucking what?” Hugo’s voice rang out first, sharp and incredulous, as his spider arms swiped the cards off the table.
The noise swelled. Voices overlapped, rising in pitch and anger. The three Lighthouse Imperators at the table leaned forward, their faces twisted in disbelief, while the high-ranking Imperators standing along the walls exchanged dark glances. One of them stepped forward, his voice cutting through the din.
“You’re giving up, Andres? You’ve fought in worse battles than this!”
Andres didn’t flinch under the scrutiny. His gaze swept the room, pausing briefly on each face before he answered, measured but heavy. “You think this is just another ‘battle’?” He gestured at the broken wall behind them, out at the distant fires Guards were still struggling to extinguish across the city. “We’ve just crawled out of Depth Five, bruised, battered, barely holding ourselves together, and now we must fight three Insect Gods, over three hundred Mutant-Classes, and over nine thousand Giant-Classes with less than a thousand and five hundred able-bodied soldiers?”
“But the city! It’s the bastion of the Deepwater Legion Front! We abandon this place, and—”
“If we fight, many will die. Even if we win, it’ll be a pyrrhic victory with death so numerous the Imperators may never be able to recover as a bug-slaying organisation—let alone reinforce the Worm God down in the whirlpool so we can stabilise the city,” Andres snapped. “Let me be clear: we won’t be able to stabilise the city fast enough to reinforce the Worm God. My honest opinion is that this city is already lost. I don't believe we can hold this losing ground any longer.”
His words hung in the air like a funeral bell tolling over their hopes. Maria, who’d been furiously scribbling in her notebook since Andres cast his vote, slammed her written message onto the table again
‘You’re the Imperatrix. The Lord of the Whirlpool City.’
‘You would dare give up your domain?’
Bandaged as her lower jaw was, Maria’s glare could have melted steel. Around the room, other high-ranking Imperators—mostly from Lighthouse One, Two and Three—muttered in agreement, their faces a mixture of anger and disbelief.
But Andres let out a dry laugh, the sound hollow and bitter. “This is the first time you’ve called me ‘Imperatrix’, Maria. Do you think the title is a badge of honour?”
Maria tried to scribble something again, but Andres slammed his fist down on the table for the third time today, and the entire lighthouse rumbled. Marisol almost fell out of her seat, though Victor, standing by his side, barely even faltered.
“I hold the title of ‘Imperatrix’ only because I have lived longer than most of you. Nothing more. Nothing less.” Then Andres pointed straight ahead, out at the great blue, towards the direction of the mainland continent. “Some of you younger folk here may not know this, but let me remind you: Victor and I fought in the old war against the Swarm God alongside the Worm God, the Thousand Tongue, the Empress of the Attini Empire, and the first generation of wandering bug-slayers you now know and revere as the ‘Hasharana’. Back when the Swarm God and Corpsetaker threatened to sink the entire Deepwater Legion Front, do you know what we did? Have any of you taken to the history books I’m sure Claudia has made you read back when you were trainees in the Harbour Guard Academy?”
Hugo clenched his jaw. Reina lowered her head. The Imperators around the room took nervous steps back—and it wasn’t just Andres they were backing away from.
Nobody could see Victor’s face, but the old man with the walking cane was humming quietly to himself.
“... We gave up islands,” Andres continued. “We gave up entire coastal towns, cities, and hundreds upon thousands of warships with much, much richer history than the Whirlpool City. We fought and ran away at the same time, patience our greatest virtue, and we waited until there was an opportunity to strike back—until we located a certain volcano island we could trap Corpsetaker in. We bid our time. We bit our tongues and swallowed our pride. And we made those decisions back then while we were evacuating people from the Deepwater Legion Front, so look at us now. We don’t even have to worry about evacuating civilians anymore, because the Worm God has already done that for us. With no lives at immediate stake right now, why are we still considering holding onto weak ground?
“We can retreat to the mainland. Rebuild our wall of cannons. We may be conceding half of the Deepwater Legion Front to Corpsetaker, yes, but the war is not yet lost.
“If we retreat, we can definitely hold at least our eastern half of the Deepwater Legion Front.
“But if we fight here and lose, the entire Deepwater Legion Front is over.”
“...”
More silence.
More tension in the air.
Everyone looked discreetly between the Lighthouse Imperators and the Imperatrix, just praying for someone to break the silence—to break the three-versus-three tie with an additional vote—but at some point, people started looking at Victor. Even the Lighthouse Imperators did. Even Andres did, throwing a glance over his shoulder.
For his part, though, Victor simply stretched lazily, as though the weight of the conversation hadn’t touched him at all.
“Why’s everyone looking at me?” he muttered. “I’m half-retired. I aint’ got no horse in this race.”
His declaration of non-interference, delivered with such casual indifference, drew sharp looks from several Imperators—but Victor only smirked, tugging the bandages over his lips. Then he tapped his cane against the floor, grabbing everyone’s attention again before pointing it straight at Marisol.
“Ask her,” he said simply. “What does the ‘Storm Strider’ think?”
Marisol froze. She’d been trying to sink into her chair, but now, every eye in the room was on her.
Her stomach churned, her palms damp as she instinctively clasped her hands together.
“... What?” she managed to whisper.
Andres tilted his head back, his expression unreadable. “I could use my veto power as the Imperatrix and force everyone to leave,” he said, “but I won’t. This is a vote, after all, and Marisol Vellamira has proven herself time and time again to be one who prioritises others over herself. You’ve taken massive risks these past eight months, and those risks have all culminated in you being here today, sitting in that chair. If you had made even one wrong decision, you wouldn’t be here in front of me right now.”
Then Andres reached into his uniform and pulled out his deck of cards, tossing it onto the table. The deck slid to a perfect stop directly in front of her, not a single card flying off the stack.
“Fight or run,” Andres said curtly. “Your call, Storm Strider.”
…
Marisol stared at the cards, her heart pounding in her chest. The room blurred at the edges as panic clawed its way up her throat. Her hands trembled as she bit her nails—an old habit she hadn’t indulged in years—but it was still suffocating in the room. Too little noise. Too much stillness. Her breathing hitched as she tried to steady herself.
[The decision is yours,] the Archive whispered, calm and emotionless.
That just made it worse.
She looked around the room, searching for reassurance. Maria’s fiery gaze burned into her, unrelenting. Reina’s expression was taut, her lips pressed into a thin line. She hadn’t noticed them before, but Helena, Aidan, Bruno also stood near the back, behind Hugo, and all of their arms were crossed, their faces taut with determination.
Their expressions were loud enough.
‘Don’t run’, they seemed to say.
And then she thought of her bed-bound mama, still sick and waiting for her.
She didn't really care about the greater war between humanity and the Swarm. The stories of legends interested her, but she wasn't a born and bred warrior. She could only care about the people she could see with her own two eyes.
She didn't really care whether the Whirlpool City itself could survive this siege or not, either, as long as the people were already evacuated. Buildings could be rebuilt. History could be remade. People couldn't come back from the dead. If they could all set up their new headquarters in the Harbour City and make that their safe play, then she was all for it.
… But her chest ached at the thought of returning to her little desert town empty-handed—telling her mama there was no healing seawater, no medicine, no dancing with her on two bare feet ever again—and without her even noticing it, her fingers were brushing against the stack of cards.
The silver-lined edges were rough against her skin.
…
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, forcing the room to fade away for just a moment.
She thought of her mama again. She thought of the people who’d died, and the blood already bled into the very earth of the island.
At the very least, she couldn't let her mama join that pile of corpses.
Not her mama.
Her heart pounded in her ears as she pulled a card from the deck, and when she opened her eyes, the ‘Chariot’ stared back at her. Ranked seventh of the Arcana Hasharana. The drawing within the frame was that of a man with a feathered cap, perched atop the mast of a warship with one hand on a walking cane.
Victor snorted as she threw the card over Andres’, her voice barely above a whisper.
“We fight,” she said, “and we hold the city.”
Most of the Imperators exhaled as one. Relief spread across most of their faces, though a few of the older Imperators still looked grim. Maria’s glare softened, and Reina nodded faintly at her, though their expressions remained tight.
Andres dipped his head, his lips pressing into a thin line.
He wasn't a tyrant who'd force everyone to go along with his plan, but somewhere in the deepest, darkest corners of her head, Marisol couldn't help but wonder if he should've.
“... Very well,” he said plainly. “Let us plan our defensive strategy, then.”
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