The walls crashed into the Pioneers and water poured into the chamber as the soldiers were carried away by the Xenos Leviathan. Eventually, the glass further cracked, and the portion that was carrying the Pioneers fell away from the creature’s mouth. The glass container spun around, the Pioneers desperately trying not to be skewered by its edges, before things eventually began to slow down. Out of the corner of his eye, Arnold saw more movement in the distance and belted out a warning: “INCOMING!”
The soldiers manifested their Oceanglides and shot out of the chamber as quickly as possible. They narrowly avoided the creature’s second pass, the fiend’s jaws clamping down in the hallway’s remains just as they got out. In the pale sapphire light of his Codex, Arnold finally got a good look at the enemy as it swam by.
Its head was squat and triangular, like a snapping turtle’s, yet attached to a long, cylindrical body. That body sprouted twelve flat fins in three groups of four, with one group at the front, one in the middle, and one in the back. The fins of each group were equidistant from one another, creating four rows of three limbs that propelled the creature mightily through the water. Its entire body was Stygian black, besides the blood red eyes. And its tail-
Its tail was headed right toward Arnold.
He activated his Last Moment Defense as the massive bludgeon crashed into him, the Xenos’s natural weapon manifesting glowing yellow spikes as it did. Thankfully, those spikes didn’t pierce his barrier, the force of the attack only enough to catapult him further away from his allies. However, Arnold’s Oceanglide was pierced by several Psionic spikes. The pieces of the broken machine swirled around Arnold as he flew, a reminder that his mobility in the water was now severely hampered. He adopted a grim expression as he righted himself, equipped his flippers, and manifested his hammer. Arnold watched as the Leviathan’s powerful flippers swiveled, turning the beast toward him, the lone man who’d been separated from the pack. What had he ever done to earn this stupid thing’s hatred?
Arnold didn’t even get to finish that thought before the creature’s tail arched forward, pointing directly at him. With a high-pitched noise, like a well-oiled chain’s rattle, it launched the yellow spikes right at him in a quick burst. Arnold threw up his Last Moment Defense again, but it was too much. He blocked the first several spikes, only for the next several to finally shatter his shields and drill into his body. Arnold’s vision darkened as his blood clouded the water around him, pouring from several wounds around his body. His salvation came from an unexpected source.
The Kharnidd Thralls had not been watching this process idly. They had reached the destroyed portion of the hallway and swum out, determined to track down and kill the fleeing humans. The Kharnidd soon located the group, and they began jetting through the water toward the beleaguered humans. The Xenos targeted the group of eight Arnold had been separated from, ignoring the Leviathan entirely, though the same couldn’t be said in reverse. After the great beast attacked Arnold with its spikes, it sensed the Kharnidd swimming nearby and decided to show them who was king of these waters. Opening its mouth, it spewed a torrent of yellow fire in the general direction of the organized Xenos as they swam by, destroying another of the Lesser Thralls and causing the others to swim away faster. The Greater Thrall gnashed its teeth at the inconvenience, but nothing could be done about it now. It would have to make up for the loss.
The Leviathan turned back to Arnold, only to take a few blaster shots in the face. Its distraction had allowed Arnold to use his stimulants to heal. He had then manifested his blaster and taken aim at the Kharnidd. They were the most serious enemy that the Pioneers were facing, and if the Leviathan would help them destroy this enemy, then Arnold would be happy for the help. But when the monster turned back to him, he knew there would be no such luck. Instead, he'd switched targets, turning his blaster toward the Leviathan and taking a few potshots before turning around and running away. He’d need to lead this thing away from the others if they were going to have any chance of survival.
This portion of the cave was wide open, with the stone walls on either side at their narrowest near the glass tube. They quickly broadened into a much wider area where he was, presenting a large forest of Luxamar plants below and a broad expanse of open sea in front. Arnold felt a thrill of fear as he swam, realizing that there could be more predators out there. He shoved the thought out of his mind and traded his blaster for his hammer. The Leviathan behind him was catching up, but the Pioneer started spinning around with his Capacity, his body speeding up as he did. The creature’s tail glowed with spikes again, the Xenos’s natural weapon arching over and aiming at the spinning man yet again. Arnold managed to swerve to the right, dodging a stream of projectiles with a hair-point turn.
The Leviathan held pace with him for a while before he began to pull away, hammer emitting a blinding light as he spun faster and faster. Once the Leviathan realized Arnold was getting away, it let out a low groan. It opened its mouth and all twelve of its fins began to shine with more Psionic light. With a single, powerful stroke, the creature propelled itself through the water at a blinding speed, biting down on the Pioneer with ruthless accuracy as it rapidly approached. Arnold barely managed to react, shifting gradually out of the way of a descending tooth. In slow motion, the hammer crashed into the fang with a resounding CRACK, jarring Arnold’s whole body and sending him streaking away from the predator.
The Pioneer shook like a leaf as he flew through the water, but his enemy wasn’t unscathed either. It let out a groan of pain as it sailed past him impotently, the noise reverberating unsettlingly in Arnold’s chest. Yet, when he finally righted himself and got over his disorientation, he found himself staring back into livid crimson eyes again. The Leviathan had gotten over its pain and was gunning for him with renewed fury. Arnold activated his ability again and went back on the run.
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Up ahead, he spied a few rock formations where the ceiling of the underwater chamber was attached to the floor by long, thin pieces of basalt. Arnold made for these formations, hoping they would hinder the beast’s ability to pursue him. He’d just reached the first of these when the Leviathan seemed to teleport behind him, the beast suddenly shooting through the water with the power of its movement ability. Rather than bite at him, the Leviathan opened its mouth and spewed an enormous quantity of yellow fire at the spinning Pioneer. Arnold thought fast, hiding behind a basalt column as the fire nipped at his heels.
One of the demerits of the Spinning Strike was that Arnold couldn’t easily stop it while he was in motion. He couldn’t hover in one place behind the pillar, given the need to constantly keep moving. Hiding wouldn’t save him anyway. So, he counterattacked. He shot toward the pillar, striking the rock with a great BOOM and sending a huge chunk right into the Leviathan’s open mouth. The creature hurriedly cut off its attack and bit down on the projectile, shattering it totally, but Arnold was already flying away yet again.
While this might’ve seemed like another triumph, Arnold saw something in the Xenos’s expression that troubled him. Those eyes looked like they’d had enough of this little minnow making a fool of it. Arnold was spinning quickly, but the Xenos was hot in pursuit. It launched itself through several rock columns, crashing through them with little regard for safety and catching up with Arnold in the blink of an eye, before its fins glowed ominously once more. They swiveled and performed a horizontal sweep, spinning the creature 360 degrees and swinging its tail around in a heart-stoppingly mighty strike. The bludgeon glistened with yellow spikes, and Arnold only activated his Last Moment Defense in time because he’d realized what the creature was doing before it committed to the attack. Despite that quick thinking, his whole body crackled under the force of the attack. In a blur, Arnold shot through the water, crashing into the rock wall with apparently deadly finality.
Fortunately, Arnold managed to cheat death with his Last Moment Defense yet again, activating it just before he hit the wall, though he felt his mental energy dip to dangerous lows. He was running out of steam, his body was thoroughly battered, and he’d coughed up blood from the force of the impact. Exhaustion screamed at the forefront of Arnold’s mind, but he forced it down, eyes looking around frantically for some salvation.
Help came in the form of a small opening on the ceiling that seemed to be a cave, and the Pioneer activated his Spinning Strike while aiming for that. The Xenos shot more spikes at him, though they fell short of their mark as Arnold bolted toward the ceiling.
As he shot into the cave, the Leviathan appeared below, shooting fire into the opening. The Psionic blaze poured into the tight confines, gaining on Arnold and forcing him to think fast again. He drifted over to the wall, allowing his hammer to clip a ridge of the rock and sending a large torrent of debris against the fire coming up at him. The Pioneer continued shooting upward as the dirt suppressed the fire, giving him just enough time to get out of the attack’s range. The Pioneer breathed heavily, blowing out large quantities of bubbles as he slowed to a stop and bumped gently into the cave’s end. There were no branching caves, nowhere to run, and only a limited distance between him and his enemy. A single red eye glared up at him from below, before the Leviathan eventually withdrew. Soon afterward, however, another stream of fire shot back up, coming closer and melting more rock in front of him. It fell short, but Arnold suspected that a third attack would finally get to him.
The young Pioneer fought for composure as he stared at the inferno, the heat threatening to steal his breath away. It was clear now that Arnold couldn’t get away from this thing. He’d been hoping to circle back to the facility or find a tunnel he could permanently hide in, yet he’d failed in both tasks. Arnold would love to kill this thing, but he definitely couldn’t do it alone.
That thought made him pause for a second, a memory and an idea suddenly surfacing. He wasn’t exactly alone, was he? Even if the other Pioneers were dealing with the Kharnidd, there were some allies he could enlist to his cause, weren’t there?
As the Leviathan circled below, Arnold used another stimulant and shot out of hiding, angling down toward the sea floor. The Xenos was on him immediately, closing within striking range without even needing to use its movement Capacity. Arnold had shot away from the wall and into more open waters, giving the Leviathan a clear shot. Its fins glowed again, preparing to bludgeon the man for the final time. Yet, something strange happened. The moment the creature channeled this power, the man changed his angle and trajectory. Rather than spinning horizontally, he shifted to spin vertically and altered his movement vector. In an unexpected twist, he rose and shot backward in an arc toward his pursuer. At the same time, the Leviathan whipped around, tail blasting through the water at incredible speed. It flew underneath the Pioneer in a narrow miss, the displaced water causing him to shudder but not enough to knock him off course. The Leviathan’s attack made the Xenos do a full three-sixty, its head returning to its original position right in time for Arnold’s hammer to crack down on its skull.
The blow wasn’t overwhelming. It simply forced the Xenos to dip downward a bit, eliciting a groan of pain and indignation from the massive creature. Exactly what the Pioneer was hoping for.
Arnold’s return to open water had brought him over many Luxamar plants. The Leviathan had been forced down into their range, and its cry alerted the plants to its presence. In the blink of an eye, the forest whipped out collectively and latched onto the massive creature, wrapping around its fins, body, and head. The Leviathan’s physical power and momentum tore up numerous plants, but their attacks only encouraged the beast to yell with greater anger and cause more vegetation to attack it. Usually, this Leviathan wouldn’t deign to remain silent before these lesser creatures. Its body was powerful enough to eventually free it from their clutches, no matter how many of them there were. Today, however, there was another factor at play.
With a loud CRACK, Arnold came spinning in from out of nowhere, clobbering the Leviathan in the head once more. He bounced off and activated the ability again, shooting back at the beast and delivering another powerful blow. The Xenos’s eyes rolled around, dazed and confused from the blunt force trauma. It was too discombobulated to channel its power, though it would recover quickly if Arnold gave it the chance. He wouldn’t. The Pioneer continually activated his ability, hammering the Xenos in a desperate barrage. His vision blurred with exhaustion as he squeezed everything out, but the beast refused to go down. He launched himself further upward, giving himself more room to gather momentum before crashing downward again, hammer glowing with the light of a violet sun.
BOOOOOMMM
The blow kicked up a large dust cloud, snapping the beast’s jaws closed. Its eyelids flickered, then closed, the Leviathan still alive but knocked unconscious. Arnold had never planned on killing the beast with this kind of power, but he was confident he could knock it out. The Luxamar plants crushed the unconscious body with little resistance, beginning to glow blue and draw energy from the fallen creature. It wasn’t dead yet, but the energy draw should keep it asleep until it was. Below Arnold, a carpet of sapphire spread out in a brilliant swath, a whole legion of plants supping on the sudden feast. The beautiful light cut through the underwater darkness, illuminating the Pioneer’s body as he floated there. Arnold’s warhammer fell from limp fingers as his mind shut down, the mental fatigue too much to handle. Falling asleep here was stupid. His friends needed his help, not to mention the possibility that other predators might be nearby. And yet, he had no choice.
Like the beast below, Arnold’s eyes were now beyond his control. They closed, sending him off to dreamland.
