Captain Soren tightened his grip on the helm at the head of the colossal whale. The chill of the wintry sea wind gnawed at his scarred face, and his single eye scanned the horizon, locked on the tiny ship ahead. It was just a three-mast trawler helmed by a single man—a speck of insolence against the endless, churning blue of the open sea, but he’d be damned as the Fleet Captain of the Whitewhale Marauders if he let a thief get away from right under his nose.

  “That’s the one!” he shouted, his voice like crushed gravel as he drew his blade and pointed it straight ahead. “That little wretch stole half our fortune! Ain’t no one does that to the Whitewhale Marauders and gets to live to tell the tale!”

  His crew pounded the drums. The ramshackle towns came to life. The Whitewhales under their feet groaned, their massive bodies cutting through the waves. Each lash of their massive tails sent them surging forward, and with all ten of them charging forward in a wall formation, the small vessel ahead didn’t stand a chance… or so Soren thought.

  Without warning, the Whitewhales stopped. All ten of them. The Brine Sovereign Town lurched forward, the sudden halt sending hundreds of men sprawling all across the bridges. Soren himself staggered, his heavy boots slamming against the planks as he steadied himself. He’d have been thrown off the head of the whale were he not already holding onto the helm.

  “What in the depths are ye doin’?” he growled, stomping the wooden platform beneath him. “Move, ye fuckin’ whale! And what are the lot of ye doin’ downstairs? Give the lugger the big ‘ol prod already!”

  “We’re pokin’ the whale, cap!” one man shouted from behind. “It just ain’t movin’ for some reason! It ain’t us—”

  Soren grabbed a musket from the side of the helm and fired backwards, shooting the man who’d dared to shout at him. The rest of the crew in the steering quarters at the head of the whale stiffened up. Even still, the fleet of Whitewhales hung motionless in the water, their bodies rigid. Their dark, swirly eyes stared westward, unblinking and empty, like they’d seen something beyond mortal comprehension—so Soren tossed his musket away and followed their gaze, his eye burning with dark fury.

  What is it?

  What do they see with those dreamy eyes of theirs?

  His crew continued jabbing the whale with sharpened sticks all across the town, all across its back. The creature didn’t react. Not even a flinch. Instead, a low, mournful sound rumbled from its throat.

  Soren felt it then.

  A cold tingle crawled up his spine, settling like a weight on his shoulders as his gaze was drawn far, far, far to the west, towards that detestable Whirlpool City, the lair of their enemies.

  Just as usual, the storm clouds above and around the city churned violently, dark tendrils spiraling downward like a sea god’s wrath made manifest. Lightning flickered within the black mass, casting fleeting, jagged shadows over the sea. It wasn’t anything special to see the city oftentimes shrouded in the worst tempest known to man, but… this one was a little different.

  It felt a little different.

  Soren’s throat tightened. He’d seen his fair share of storms before—he’d battled through tempests that would turn lesser men to cowards—but that was not a storm. Storms had wills of their own. They were free, unshackled spirits. They could strike whenever they wanted, destroy whatever they wanted. Unbridled chaos. Anger incarnate. Even still, they could be reasoned with; men could drain the blood of sacrificial lambs by the deep docks before setting sail for a distant shore, and children could fold paper dragonflies and throw them out onto the sea as peace offerings. Storms were fickle like that. There was always a chance, no matter how slight, that anyone could push through one and come out utterly unharmed.

  But that, swirling around the Whirlpool City, was ordered, controlled chaos.

  It wasn’t alive.

  And all it would do was kill.

  The Whitewhales groaned again, louder this time, and Soren stepped back from the helm as if the sound itself could pull him into the depths.

  “... Turn us around,” he ordered, his voice quieter now, heavy with unease. “We’re done here.”

  One of his men raised his voice. “But, cap! The thief! Our plunder! We let him get away now, and we’ll never—”

  He picked up a second musket and fired straight into the man’s head without looking.

  The rest of his crew didn’t argue.

  They hadn’t survived this long on the great blue by not trusting his instincts.

  Kuku and the children of the crab island played without care, their laughter ringing out over the vast seafaring forest they called ‘home’.

  It’d been well over half a year since Kuku last saw any other ship, island, or seaside town. They may be the ones living above the sea, but the giant horseshoe crab had its own senses, its own unique brand of perception. Just because they couldn’t see its eyes or its dozens of smarmy legs paddling underneath didn’t mean it didn't know exactly how to swerve out of harm’s way—so the last time they talked to an outsider was half a year ago.

  Since then, they’d backed off from the far west and returned to their usual nomadic life. They rebuilt their mangrove village, began recultivating the earth for plantations, and the crab population on the island was starting to replenish steadily. Of course, they’d pick out and devour the crabs before any of them could become too big—before they could become dangerous plagas del mar, plagues of the sea—but sometimes, Kuku felt like there were too many crabs and too few mouths to feed. They were just children, after all. It wouldn’t hurt to have one big adult feasting alongside them just to keep the crab population controlled.

  Today, like most sunny days, Kuku sat cross-legged on the black sand beach, his fingers deftly weaving a net from washed-up seaweed strands. Children played ball and tag around him. The salty breeze tugged at his skin, and he hummed a soft tune under his breath. If Marisol were ever to visit again, he wanted to have fish prepared for her alongside crabs, if not only to make their dishes more varied so she’d want to stay here longer.

  But today wasn’t most sunny days.

  Before he could finish tying up a knot, the giant horseshoe crab shuddered. The sound was low and guttural, a deep groan that resonated through the carapace, making the entire forest tremble.

  Kuku’s heart skipped a beat. The younger children playing in the sand around him froze, their games forgotten as the ancient beast groaned again. This time, it stopped paddling aimlessly forward so abruptly that almost all of them standing fell flat onto their faces.

  “What’s wrong with her?” a small boy asked, his voice quivering.

  “Is she sick?” another boy asked, kneeling and rapping the ground gently with his knuckles. “Are you okay? Do you have to stop to rest for a bit?”

  While the rest of the children put on their worried faces and gave the giant horseshoe crab their concerns, Kuku stood, his gaze fixed on the wintry blue skyline. There weren’t any storms as far as his eyes could see, but though he didn’t have a map, a compass, or anything of the sort people of the outside world used to orient themselves, he found himself staring in one particular direction off the left of the island.

  He couldn’t explain to the younger children how he knew, but left was where they’d come from half a year ago—from that dark, stormy city in the middle of the great blue.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “... She’s scared,” Kuku murmured.

  Another groan, louder this time, sent the children scrambling away from the beach and deeper onto the island. Kuku stayed where he was, his hands clenched into fists.

  He’d always felt safe on the giant horseshoe crab’s back. Its immense size and strength was an invincible shield against the dangers of the great blue, but now… for the first time, he felt even the giant horseshoe crab was uncertain about what was going to happen to the great blue.

  Something was happening inside the stormy city, but what?

  There was just no way for him to find out.

  They were too far away. It’d take them an entire month just to get to the city, and however much he wanted to see Marisol again, he couldn’t be selfish and tell the others to head towards the city again. They had to protect themselves right now.

  So he turned to the others, his voice steady despite the fear gnawing at his chest. “We need to move! Into a storm!”

  “But the storm—” a girl started, her voice breaking.

  “It’s safer than staying here!” Kuku said firmly, thumping his chest with a fist. “When in danger, find and head into a storm! That’s what we did when the plagas de mar came to us, right?”

  Hana was older now. She had more responsibilities now. Apart from taking care of the young and training them to be good Damselfly Oracles, she was also given her own island in the archipelago to guard and patrol, and she took pride in her duty as a small, small tribe leader—but since the day she was given the role two months ago, she’d been nothing short of ‘slow’ whenever plagas en mar rolled into the archipelago and needed dealing with.

  It was hard to focus on flying straight when the distant Whirlpool City had been darkening steadily over the past two months, and all she could see whenever she flew above the Dead Island Straits was the colour of every human living on that volcano island.

  Today, she left her little alcove in the cliffs and soared above the Dead Island Straits with a basket of fruits in her arms as usual. She loved hand-picking fruits the night before so she could distribute them around to the children under her care the next morning, but ten seconds after she left her cosy alcove, she noticed the colours of the Whirlpool City were darker than usual.

  A lot darker than usual.

  She hovered mid-air, the fruits slipping from her basket as whispers of unease gnawed at her head, telling her to talk to someone about the city. An elder would do. Her parents would do. The island she was tasked to guard and patrol was the closest one to the city, so maybe the others didn’t care, or maybe they simply didn’t notice, but she’d been paying attention to the city’s colours every single day for the better part of the past two months.

  Today, the black tendrils swirled in her vision, vivid and chaotic, twisting into silhouettes of colossal bugs she couldn’t really recognise. Couldn’t really comprehend in full.

  But there was going to be death in the city.

  Lots of death.

  “... Hana?” one of the children called, noticing her clutching at her temples as she hovered mid-air. In an instant, thirty Damselfly Oracles fluttered out from their alcoves and joined her in the air, their wings fluttering and beating noisily as they surrounded her out of worry.

  Then they, too, noticed the cyclone of pure black in the distance, and all they could do was stare.

  Wonder.

  Pray, and pray, and pray for the humans of the Whirlpool City.

  One hundred and sixteen warships, all loaded to the brim with anti-chitin cannons, harpoon ballistas, and half a dozen highly advanced bioarcanic machinery built, sealed, and imported from the Rampaging Hinterland Front.

  That was how many warships were docked right outside the Whirlpool City.

  All in total, there had to be around ten, twenty thousand Harbour Guards marooned just beyond the city’s docks. That was including the Guards stationed in lighthouses, diving bells, and smaller fleets of ships that couldn’t enter the city through ‘Black Storm’. Their anchors were dropped, and they certainly weren’t isolated from the rest of the world—they had plenty of food, water, and tasks to accomplish every single day—but at this point, it’d been well over half a year since most of them saw their families inside the city. They could see the slanted streets, the clear blue sky, and the sparkling lighthouses inside the city where they were docked, and that was the cruelest thing. Home was just… right out of reach.

  For Captain Enrique, home didn’t matter so much anymore.

  Below the deck of the Harbinger Caralonia, the old man sat alone on a crate, dim lantern light castling flickering shadows across the damp wooden walls. It was still early in the morning, but his fingers traced the edges of a worn pocket watch, its bronze surface smudged with salt and oil.

  He flipped it open. He flipped it close. He flipped it open. He flipped it close.

  He flipped it open.

  Inside, a small drawing of his daughter stared back at him, her smile frozen in time. She’d drawn it herself—this was years, maybe even a whole decade ago—so he could have something to remember her by while he was sailing great blue as a captain of a warship, but now, it was every bit as cruel as the city just a thousand metres beyond their sails.

  … Catrina.

  The memory of her death was a weight he carried every day, a wound that refused to heal. She’d lost her husband, her mother, and then she gave birth to an evil sea god. They were his family, too. His wife. His son-in-law. All of them taken by the Swarm—and he’d been powerless to save her.

  He’d done nothing but let that water strider lass take the lead.

  Some captain I am—

  The deck above groaned, and the sound jolted him from his thoughts. He snapped the watch shut and slipped it into his coat pocket, his hand lingering there as if to anchor himself. The warship’s bell rang suddenly as well, shattering the heavy quiet, and the sharp peal carried an urgency that made his heart leap.

  “Cap!” a voice called from above. “Somethins’ wrong! Come up and take a look!”

  He didn’t need to hear it twice. Enrique stood, his movements brisk despite the weight in his chest. He climbed the ladder to the upper deck, cold wind and dark rain slapping his face as he emerged. The air was thick with tension, but it always was. They were so close to ‘Black Storm’, after all. Stormy seas and violent rain were unavoidable things.

  But his first mate was at the rails—so was the entire crew of Harbinger Caralonia, for that matter—and he was gripping the wood so tightly his knuckles were pale.

  “Look,” the man said, his voice low and uneasy as he pointed at the Whirlpool City.

  Enrique followed his gaze.

  The Whirlpool City loomed like a malevolent shadow, its towering lighthouses flickering with erratic light. The storm clouds above it churned violently, their dark mass roiling like a living thing. Lightning arced within the black, illuminating the city in flashes that felt more like warnings than natural phenomena.

  That much wasn’t anything special, again, but then there was the water.

  Around them.

  Around all of them.

  The sea surrounding the warships was boiling. Steam hissed and rose in ghostly tendrils, the heat distorting the air. The warships themselves swayed as though the ocean itself was restless, alive with some malevolent force.

  A cold knot of dread formed in Enrique’s stomach.

  “... Lad. Have we received any sort of information from the Imperators?” he asked.

  “N-nothin’ so far,” the first mate stammered. “It only started minutes ago, but we didn’t think anythin’ strange of it until the sea started bubblin’ and poppin’. Should we raise our anchors and sail a bit further away from the city? I can relay your command to the nearby ships as well—”

  “Load the cannons.”

  The first mate blinked. “S-sorry, sir?”

  “Load the cannons,” he ordered, his voice sharp and commanding. “Now.”

  And his crew didn’t need telling twice, either. They scrambled into action, rang every bell, their boots pounding against the deck as they prepared for battle. Enrique himself trudged up to the stern and gripped the helm, his knuckles white as he steered the ship to face the city.

  He’d never seen this ‘bubbling sea’ phenomenon before, but he knew this cold, sickening coiling in the pit of his stomach.

  Another evil sea god was coming, and this one had its sights set on something far, far larger than just the blood of his kin.

  … And in the black, crushing abyss of the whirlpool—nine thousand metres below the surface—the Greater Crab God sat in silence.

  The endless abyss around him was cold. Quiet. It was a void where even the faintest glimmer of light dared not intrude, but for the faint glow nine thousand metres above: the surface. ‘Sunlight’. It’d been decades since he last saw sunlight in full, but at this point, he found he didn’t miss it so much as he hated it taunting him like an unreachable dream. Like a distant memory. The Harbour Imperators could’ve certainly built a wall between Depth Eight and Nine to keep him fully in the dark, but they didn’t—because they wanted him to see what he was missing out on?

  Maybe that was true a decade ago, but he missed sunlight no longer.

  He’d been down here so long, stewing in nothing but his thoughts, that he could live through his children. He could feel them, their minds brushing against his like whispers in the void.

  Rhizocapala. Eurypteria. Kalakos.

  Their plan had come to fruition.

  They were going to breach the whirlpool with an army of leviathans.

  So Corpsetaker sighed, the sound a deep, resonant rumble that echoed through the abyss. He loved his children. Every bug in the whirlpool was precious to him, and their very existence in this prison of an ocean was a testament to the resilience of life in the face of unrelenting hardship—and the thought of sending them up to the surface for slaughter still twisted his insides. He’d raised them. Nurtured them. Watched them grow. To lose even one would be a wound he could hardly bear.

  But what else could they do?

  There were only two types of living beings in the world: bugs being crushed underfoot, and those who did the crushing.

  They couldn’t be the only ones getting speared and bombarded for the rest of eternity now, could they?

  “... Go,” he said finally, raising an arm and pointing straight up. “Remind humanity what we are.”

  And a thousand abyssal leviathans surged upward, their forms shrouded in darkness. They’d be the hammer to Rhizocapala’s nail. It’d take them an hour, maybe even two to reach the surface and reinforce the vanguard, but he had high hopes, nevertheless, that his three most courageous children would return to him safe and sound.

  They were Insect Gods, after all.

  The dark stars that fell.

  The heralds of war.