Kael snapped the book shut and adjusted the pillow beneath his head.
The Arts of Fundamentals, volume 48.
This was one of his graver mistakes to date.
He had completely forgotten to take out more volumes before boarding the ship. By now he had read the last three parts six times each.
He sighed and let his head fall back, tapping the ceiling absently.
"I heard we're entering Leviathan's Cradle soon."
Keiran said, just as bored as the other two.
Yvette turned onto her side to look at him across the room.
"The Cradle?" She propped herself up slightly. "I heard Alfred mention it earlier actually. He said something about it being unusually quiet this year."
"Really?" Keiran sat upright. "The climate has changed quite a lot these past few centuries. Maybe that's it." He paused. "What do you think, Valerian?"
Kael rested his chin in his palm and looked at the two.
The first week had been perfectly comfortable in its quiet. But eventually, as people do when proximity becomes routine, the stiffness that came with noble status had softened into something more honest. They had dropped the performance.
"Not so much the climate." He said, looking around the cabin for something to do with his hands. "It has more to do with everything else."
"What do you mean?"
"The climate has actually become more habitable for leviathans recently, with temperatures rising. Which means better conditions not just for them but for their prey as well. Have you heard of population dynamics?"
Yvette and Keiran looked at each other.
"It's a fairly simple principle, even if it doesn't come up much in noble education." Kael continued. "When leviathans get a better habitat it doesn't just mean the water suits them more. It means their prey gets a better habitat too. More food means more offspring. The prey population grows. The leviathans have more to eat and so they breed more successfully as well. For a period everything expands."
He turned the book over in his hands.
"But it isn't sustainable. Prey animals are still prey. As the leviathan population grows it needs more food. It takes more than the prey population can replace. The prey starts declining. And because the food supply shrinks, the leviathans follow. Fertility drops. The population contracts. Eventually the prey recovers and the cycle begins again."
"So you think the leviathans are in a decline right now?" Keiran asked.
"Either that." Kael said. "Or something has appeared that considers leviathans prey."
"I suppose that makes sense. But there could be other reasons too, couldn't there?" Yvette said, watching him with a thoughtful expression.
"Of course. Anything is possible. The seagrass could have died, leaving the prey without cover. The leviathans could have migrated entirely. Both are valid possibilities. I only mentioned those two because they're the most reasonable conclusions given how little we actually know."
Both Yvette and Keiran rolled their eyes at the ceiling.
They didn't dislike Kael. Quite the opposite actually. After weeks of travelling together they had come to realise he was knowledgeable on well… everything, which had made him useful in a very specific and occasionally exhausting way. They had started to think of him as a walking encyclopaedia.
"Alright." Yvette stood up and stretched. "The evening buffet starts in abouuut—" she glanced at her wrist "—four minutes. You two coming?"
There wasn't much entertainment on a boat besides eating, drinking and sleeping, so it was no surprise to find it already packed with Luminaires when they arrived.
"I'll find us a table."
Kael said, waving a hand and moving ahead.
Almost twenty minutes later Yvette and Keiran appeared.
"That line is outrageous." She said, carefully balancing an extra plate. "Here. We'd have finished eating by the time you got through it." She set it down with some effort.
Keiran arrived a moment after with a glass. "Here."
Just as they were about to start eating, a thunderous impact hit and the entire ship lurched beneath them.
"An iceberg?"
Yvette grabbed the table with both hands.
Then another explosion.
Tables left the floor. Glasses detonated against the walls. Luminaires of every rank went airborne indiscriminately.
Kael landed in a deep crouch. Yvette and Keiran came down a moment later, punching through the bar counter in a shower of splinters, a pile of other Luminaires collapsing on top of them shortly after.
Kael's eyes snapped to the hull.
A pale hand tore through it, splintering everything in its path. The arm behind it was long. Longer than it had any right to be. Meters upon meters of it, disappearing somewhere far out in the darkness beyond the ocean's surface.
Kael brought his hand down on it expecting a crack, only a dull crunch to come. He grabbed a butter knife and drove it down in a single motion, tearing through skin and cartilage until the limb separated. A sizzle followed wherever the blood touched. Mist rose from every surface it reached.
Yvette was the second to find her footing.
A red string appeared from her fingertips and coiled around another arm reaching toward her. A symphony of sharp rings followed as it tightened gradually, sectioning the limb into countless pieces that dropped to the floor.
Keiran barely twisted in time to avoid a third. In the same motion he grabbed the pale arm with both hands. Colour returned to it briefly, then drained to blue, then to black, the flesh decomposing so completely that even the cartilage crumbled apart before it hit the ground.
Then the rest of the Luminaires found their feet.
One arm. Two. Three. Ten. Pale limbs tore through the hull from every angle, reaching for whatever they could close around. A beer bottle vanished into the darkness. A plate followed. Then a Luminaire, caught mid-step, was pulled toward a hole far too small for them. The sound they made going through it stopped almost immediately.
What followed was pure chaos.
Techniques from every pathway imaginable tore through the space in every direction, cutting, frying, melting arms as they came. Screams and gurgles filled what remained of the air, thickened by smoke rising from the blood.
As the fight raged on, less and less ground remained to stand on.
'It's getting overwhelming.' Kael thought, deflecting an arm.
He watched with cold eyes as the number of Luminaires around him dwindled with each passing moment. He caught an arm just before it closed around him and tore it apart. Black blood washed over him like a breaking wave.
He dropped into a crouch, clenched his jaw, and launched himself straight up.
He punched through the top deck and soared dozens of meters into the open air above.
When he reached the apex, the ship had shrunk significantly beneath him. He turned to look out.
Endless.
Not a patch of open water visible in any direction. The ocean itself looked almost luminescent, with pale arms stretching upward toward the sky as far as he could see in every direction, reaching for something above them that wasn't there.
Kael stood suspended in the air, shaking his hand.
The eye's healing was remarkable but not flawless. Something corrosive like the black blood persisted, grinding away at flesh until it diluted enough in blood to lose its potency.
Then the entire ocean of arms shuddered simultaneously. Without warning every one of them redirected upward toward Kael.
He deactivated the Datum mote and entered freefall. The arms collapsed into each other mindlessly, grasping at the space where he had been.
He cursed under his breath and activated the Datum mote inverted. One more launch, this time straight down.
He hit the upper deck like a bullet and punched back through into the restaurant, the impact tilting the ship so violently it nearly capsized.
Yvette and Keiran both lost their footing and stumbled forward.
Kael caught them both.
"Defensive mote. Now."
The military cape groaned under the force as he hurled Yvette forward. She went through one Luminaire before hitting the wall. A thunderclap as she punched through it and disappeared into some distant cabin.
Then Keiran. Three beams in a streak before he came to rest in a storage room several walls away.
Then it came down.
Like the shadow of something that had no name for itself. A sea of black blood from every limb that had chased Kael, falling all at once. The restaurant vanished into fumes in an instant. Screams and pleas filled what remained of the air as the acid found Luminaire after Luminaire, eating downward through the floor, through the cargo hold, until it reached the bilge. There the blood met water, diluted, and finally lost the strength to go further.
A rumble so low it affected the heartbeat rather than the ears sounded across the ocean, shaking the water itself. Handed and handless arms alike retracted with the sound, slithering and slopping away into the dark.
Until only Kael remained in the restaurant.
He stood with his head tilted back.
It hurt. Like hell.
The blood had taken not just his clothes but the skin beneath them, leaving him raw. Tendrils moved across every exposed surface, weaving and stitching, burning through Thoughts in exchange for flesh.
The world was blurry when he opened his eyes. But he was still there.
The fumes stung his lungs as he made his way to Yvette and Keiran, stepping through the hole she had made in the wall.
"You alright?"
He grabbed a blanket from somewhere and wrapped it around himself.
Both of them were still catching their breath. He left them to it and climbed back up to the main deck.
One last look around. Then he launched himself upward again.
Standing high above the masts, Kael extended his hand. A new military cape appeared, along with fresh clothes.
The last time he had lost his cape it had been an oversight. Why hadn't he thought of keeping a replica for situations exactly like this? If he was ever accused of forgery he could simply produce the real one, with the crest made by the Royal Noble family, and the matter would resolve itself. He didn't know what had taken him so long to think of it. But he had made sure not to make the same mistake twice.
He wrapped the real cape around himself and reached out again. A silver coin appeared in his palm.
This was the actual reason he had launched himself this high. Not the coin specifically, but the act of summoning it and his clothes.
His most recent achievement.
Using the inscription pathway he had created, he had managed to apply it to the Stone Coffin, allowing him to dismiss and retrieve items without summoning the coffin itself. It was far from perfect, with soul pathway aura still leaking when he used it, which made it unusable around other people. But it was considerably more convenient than anything he'd had before.
Kael deactivated the Datum mote and dropped back down before the ship drifted too far.