Soren knew, in some distant, academic way, what drowning to death was supposed to feel like. He’d undergone training in the military. He’d learned to float, sink, swim—fight hand to hand against an opponent trying to drag him under. But nothing could have prepared him for the fresh hell that was the reality of Davey Jones’ locker.

  He had briefly tapped into the power long enough to hold the water back and force them all out of the tunnel. But it was a reflexive action, not a conscious one, and it flickered out as quickly as it had ignited. The ocean crushed him like a solid wall.

  The pressure was instantaneous. It felt more like the weight of a planet trying to crush through him than just squeeze all around. Searing cold water forced its way into his lungs, an invasive violation that made every cell in his body scream in protest. His body fought for a breath on instinct, but there was no air to take. He could only mount a futile struggle against the inevitable.

  But he didn't die.

  His Aether Dust infused body refused to break. The pain, however, was infinite. He was a conscious thought trapped with no air to scream, lost to crushing blackness.

  And then, a new pain.

  Aurania’s presence sliced through the void, her mind touching his through the link. Then he felt her recoil, felt her fall to her knees and scream in agony as she perceived what he endured.

  What are you doing? he thought desperately. You're only hurting yourself by checking on me. Get out.

  Her response was a fierce whisper in the back of his skull. You have to get out of there. We're not leaving you behind.

  He felt like a lead statue at the bottom of the world. I don't know if I can move.

  Her voice touched his mind again, far softer than it had ever touched his ears. I know I've been a bitch to you, and I'm sorry. But over and over, ever since we left Nox, you keep saving my life—keep pulling my ass out of the fire. I need you to know I'm grateful.

  Her presence grew stronger. I believe in you, Soren. I know you can move through that water if you try hard enough.

  Why did that make him feel warm? He held onto the feeling, using it as an anchor of light. He forced his perceptions inward, looking for the only thing that could help now, suspended in a different kind of black void.

  He found it there, his strange ball of light.

  It radiated silvery-green, held captive by swirling, curved shards of gold. He had only ever observed it before. But now, he reached out. He focused on a single golden shard, pulling at one end and willing it to budge free. It resisted, then obeyed, unfurling like a single flower petal. A surge of heat and strength pulsed through him. He reached for another.

  Something wrapped around his physical body. A long tentacle from the Gitaxan, thicker than his forearm, constricted his torso. It squeezed the seawater from his lungs, only for more to rush back in as he gasped. The Gitaxan dragged him through the water like a helpless doll, then hurled him downward. He impacted the seafloor at an alarming speed for one moving through so much water.

  He lay there in some invisible crater, every inch of his body throbbing. He must have been emitting light, because he could just hardly make out the multitude of lurking tentacles and sea creatures around him.

  Aurania’s voice rang in his mind again. It was louder than before, almost like she was speaking right next to him. “Soren. You can do this. I need you to believe in yourself. Don't do it for Nox, do it for yourself.”

  A bitter thought formed in his mind. “I don't need some speech about loving myself, Aurania. I spent eight thousand years alone in the void. I think I know myself pretty well.”

  There was a pause.

  Then she countered, “We both know 8,000 years passed more like a blink for you than anything else.”

  “You're doing great at this motivational speech.”

  She laughed. It was short, and it was just a mental thought, but it was real. “What if I asked you to do it for me?”

  This time, he laughed. Not some mental note, his body actually forced water out of his lungs in a single bark of amusement. Her audacity was astounding. “You're some piece of work, Aurania.”

  He screamed the water from his lungs like it was air, forcing it out through pure willpower. At the same time, he reached inward and grabbed hold of the golden shards caging his power. When he pulled, they struggled against him. But slowly, they partially unfurled, until the entire swirling cage barely bloomed like a golden rose freshly touched by morning sun.

  Silvery-green light burst forth.

  Soren gasped.

  What re-entered his lungs was not cold seawater. He felt like he was inhaling the surface of the sun. It was both invigorating and pure hellfire.

  His senses exploded.

  The light beat back the darkness of the deep, revealing all manner of alien sea creatures. Most chose to flee his presence, but one was drawn towards it. His senses were dialed up to eleven again, and he saw the Gitaxan's massive tentacle swinging down at him.

  He raised his hands up to meet it.

  He wielded inhuman power, but the sheer scale of the ancient creature was a force of its own. The tentacle was a hammer the size of a building, and it drove Soren into the seabed like a nail. He went from being surrounded by water to being surrounded by stone.

  As he lay fused to the planet's crust, he realized that his mind was reaching out, feeling the rage of the sea creatures around him. It was a boiling cauldron of fury. But at the center, he sensed the Gitaxan.

  The ancient beast's aggression was only directed at him by association. Its true quarrel was with the harvester. The foreign object had disrupted the habitat of the Gitaxan's children, and so it had been drawn like a protective mother.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The ball of cosmic fire inside him was tremoring, chaotic light shining out in a vibrating inferno. If he didn't contain it soon, he may not be able to again.

  So he reached for it.

  Rock and sediment exploded outward as he clawed his way out of the seabed. He was bright enough that most of the creatures were blinded. In the distance, he spotted the monstrous piece of industrial hardware. Towering, interconnected pylons and drilling apparatuses clung to the reef like a parasitic metal fungus.

  He had a target, now he just had to reach it. He tried to swim, but his body was so dense that it became a slow, clumsy struggle. So he just started placing one foot in front of the other, sluggishly trudging against the crushing pressure like moving through molasses.

  A pyrexian shark slammed into him from the side, its massive jaws clamping around his torso. The impact should have torn him in half. Instead, he felt a grating crunch as the shark's serrated teeth punched through the remnants of his armor and scraped uselessly against his body. As it swam, he noticed it struggling, his immense weight making the shark strain.

  They were moving parallel to the harvester, and an idea formed. He looked around and saw one of the euchilles nearby. He timed it, then pried the shark's jaws open just enough to get his feet braced against its lower jaw. Then he kicked off—hard.

  The shark was knocked back, and Soren launched out of its mouth like a torpedo. He almost missed, his fingers just barely closing around the trailing tip of one of the euchilles's long, sinewy tentacles.

  The creature instantly convulsed, its other tentacles whipping around to batter him and dislodge the foreign object. But in its panicked, flailing flight, it was still moving—and it was moving in the general direction of the harvester, much faster than he could ever have walked. He held on, enduring the relentless, pummeling blows.

  When he was close enough, he kicked off the euchilles, using its own momentum to launch himself the final distance. He landed on a metal platform embedded in the rock near the base of the harvester. When he looked up at the massive structure, he saw that the Gitaxan had already tried to destroy it. The surface was dented and scarred with massive impact craters, but the entire structure was made of a dark metal that Soren recognized.

  Karsanite—the incredibly durable metal that Riza used as sniper cannon slugs. An ancient sea monster hadn’t been able to break it, but maybe the man from a black hole could.

  He found a spot between a massive support pylon and the primary housing for the drills where he could wedge himself inside at a tight angle. With his back against one structure and feet braced against the other, he began applying pressure. More and more, Soren pushed and the structure groaned. He felt something buck.

  It was working.

  But the power was growing more unstable, the barely-bloomed rose of light threatening to burst into a supernova. He had to destroy this thing and then lock his power back down before he turned this planet into a black hole like Mandachor.

  The support beam gave way—one small wound.

  He began tearing at the harvester, channeling the roiling power into raw strength. He ripped away plating, bent support beams as thick as his own body, and maimed the superstructure as the entire thing bellowed in protest.

  With every act of destruction, he felt the power inside swell, the pressure in his skull building until he felt like his eyeballs were about to burst.

  Hurry. Lock it back down. Hurry.

  The machinery was falling apart in chunks all on its own now, but Soren was already internal, focusing his willpower on the golden shards. One by one, he pulled the unfurling petals back to a close, wrestling the supernova back into its cage. It did not want to go down without a fight, but he had no choice but to endure the searing pain of holding it together.

  The silvery-green finally dimmed, calming to a more quelled, shining orb. He left a single shard partially unfurled, just enough to keep himself alight, to be able to see all that was around him.

  His perception returned to the physical world, and while his plan to keep seeing had succeeded, the loss of all other power came at a price. White hellfire receded from his lungs, only to be replaced by crushing ice water. He drowned all over again, becoming a leaden weight once more trapped on the seafloor.

  A faint whisper touched his mind. “Soren? Are you okay?” Aurania’s voice sounded so fragile and distant. “We're on our way back to the surface. All the creatures left us alone. Can you hear me?”

  The link was weakened, perhaps from the use of his power, perhaps the distance, he couldn’t be sure. “I'm glad you're safe,” he managed to answer, though it was a monumental effort to send the thought through.

  He felt her try to respond, but whatever she said, it didn’t make it to him. All he felt was a garbled mess of emotion, and then nothing. Once more, he was cold, he was alone, and he was trapped in a crushing darkness.

  He lay there for what felt like an eternity, wondering if this was his curse. He seemed to be invincible, perhaps he was immortal as well. Perhaps he was meant to outlive any meaningful connections he established, routinely finding himself trapped in various forms of black abyss.

  Or maybe he would simply lie at the bottom of this alien ocean until the end of time.

  Then, a form was in front of him.

  It was massive, the shadow only cast because of the residual light he still emitted. A tentacle wrapped around him, lifting him from the seafloor with a force that was almost… gentle. It pulled him through the dark water until he found himself floating directly in front of a single, colossal eye.

  The orb was the size of a shuttle, a dark pupil surrounded by a bloody, orange iris. With his power now contained, it was hard to tell what the great beast was feeling. But as he stared into that ancient, alien eye, their minds connected again. A single emotion slipped through the veil.

  The Gitaxan was afraid of him.

  It hurled him toward the surface.

  The crushing pressure faded as he ascended, a man made projectile from the depths. The oppressive blackness gave way to deep indigo, then a brighter blue. Light grew all around him as he sailed higher and higher, but his momentum was fading. The powerful thrust that had launched him was bleeding away into the vastness of the ocean, and he could feel himself slowing.

  He was pretty sure he wasn't going to make it all the way up.

  He stalled out, floating in what felt like neutral buoyancy. He wasn’t sure if he was still rising or beginning to sink back into the abyss. He was suspended, still alone, just in a world of blue this time instead of black.

  A familiar pressure entered his mind.

  Aurania. No clear words came through, but he could feel her proximity, that unique presence he always felt when she was near.

  A shape materialized beneath him. The submersible rose up, its smooth hull catching him gently and becoming a platform that pushed him toward the surface. He pushed the final golden shard fully closed, and let the last of the burning light fade from his hair and eyes.

  He wasn’t sure if it was possible to cry this deep underwater, but he felt like he was.

  They breached the surface in a spray of mist and white foam. The sun shone down bright and beautiful, an incredibly warm sensation that felt too good to be true. It was refreshing and beautiful, the picture of paradise.

  Soren rolled onto his side and began coughing, spewing cold saltwater from his lungs. The coughing was interrupted by a violent fit of vomiting seawater out of his stomach. He retched and heaved and choked until tears were in his eyes, the salt burning and itching.

  Finally, he collapsed onto his back, gulping deep breaths of air.

  “Fuck!” he gasped. It felt good to be alive.

  The hatch hissed open and everyone stood up. They all stared down at him with a mixture of awe, relief, and dumbfounded disbelief.

  "Damn, dude," Violet breathed, eyes wide.

  Soren looked at her, then at all of them, then past them. His gaze swept the horizon. "We're not in Shelkar City."

  "Yeah," Aurania shrugged. "We're a couple miles outside the border. Figured it was best to avoid a scene."

  Soren took a few more gasping breaths, his eyes glued to her beautiful face. Then he finally looked at Elias and said, "It would probably raise a lot of questions if we surfaced with me out in the water." He took another ragged breath. "And we already have to explain Garrin."

  Elias glanced at their unconscious commander and shrugged. "Eh, we'll just say he hit his head and knocked himself out." Then he smirked.

  "You know, like in the movies."