Undine had been hanging slightly behind the boat, looking at the wall of light in front of her. Thanks to the perk John had gotten after Christmas, she wasn’t tethered to his immediate surroundings, so she was able to take her time and muster herself before swimming through at her own pace. The wall was weird to her. Blind as she was, she shouldn’t have been able to experience it. She could feel the vibrations in the sea, hear the sounds emitted by the orcas that stayed away from the ephemeral leyline before her. She was aware of all of her surroundings.

But the leyline’s energy made no sound or vibration. Neither did it smell of anything. Yet, even without seeing it, she knew it was there. More than that, it was like a giant noise filter. There was no telling what was on the other side.

Carefully she swam into the edge of the light. While it drowned out all natural signals for senses she could have used for orientation with its presence, the one thing that stayed was the knowledge of her summoner’s position above. It was like swimming through a total vacuum, weightless and without anything to feel but herself, the only thing to follow a nearby star.

Even that must have been distorted, however, as Undine emerged slightly ahead of the cruise ship in the end. ‘What is going on?’ she thought as she concentrated on her surroundings. The water was still, in a way that was much more unnerving than the silence she had just left. It was like she had travelled from one plane of existence, teeming with life, into another one that was just dead.

Finally, she felt some minor movements. Five of them. Four very close to each other, the last almost diagonally opposed. There was a large area between those things that also moved.

A hand.

It was a giant hand, claw even, and it wasn’t moving so slowly now. It was moving fast. Too fast to dodge even as she attempted to move in the nick of time. Water streamed past her and numbed all her senses, made it impossible to get a clear picture. Something gargantuan moved, that was all she knew for sure. There were hands, many hands, or tails, with fins or horns or jaws or… all information was ripped away as she broke through the surface of the water.

She tried to keep herself together, but the air resistance ripped part of her away as she remained absolutely unclear as to what was going on. Something, some monster, was beneath them, she was afraid, she wasn’t supposed to be flying. Could Sylph catch her? Where was she even? Where was Undine? It hurt. It was cold. The air was cold. Colder than the ocean could have ever been to her. It all moved too fast. She couldn’t de-manifest, she was stuck in her material form. Why? She tried to put up some sort of shield at least.

An impact. Darkness.

__________________________________________________________________________

Ripped in shock out of their collective relaxation, everyone on the boat looked at the puddle of goo that had just hit the open deck of the boat. A red scar moved through an unmoving slime, quickly disintegrating. John only saw that through Sylph’s eyes, the tempest elemental had tried to move over as quickly as possible, use a gust or something to stop her sister’s fall. Too slow.

There was no time to think about that. “EVERYONE, GET READY!” John shouted at those surrounding him, letting the fury of whoever had dared to do that to Undine pump up his heartbeat. It played a subservient role to the caution, however; whatever Undine had felt at her last moments was down there, aggressive, and it was obviously strong, too strong to go at hot-headed.

An alarm soon started ringing on the ship. The people of the Abyss were more than trained in panic situations, so the evacuation would have actually gone down quite orderly. If they had the chance to.

At the head of the ship, where the bridge had been placed against standard ship designs, a hand appeared. It looked humanoid, with the large differences of being clad in navy blue scales and ending in thick claws, perfect to hook into sea monsters up to the size of school buses. A finger alone was about as tall as John, and three more arms soon joined to secure the grappling of the ship. Yet it wasn’t until the far end of a serpentine tail splashed out of the water at the side of the nose that John could estimate the absolute size of the beast that was now causing the whole ship to tilt towards it. It must have been at least fifty metres, not the most gargantuan thing John had encountered but still.

Some impressive magic mechanisms must have been in place for the tilt to undo itself as a head rose from behind the bridge on a long neck. It was elongated, scaled in the same ultramarine with a bleak white underside. Six black horns grew backwards out of the reptilian skull, two lids rolled back to reveal eyes glowing in blue, darker on the outside and finally reaching an almost white level of pale at the centre. Its lower jaw was considerably smaller with the tip of it and the entirety of the upper one being covered in extra thick scales that created a beak-esque look.

The serpentine sea dragon opened its mouth and… yawned. With such utter boredom that John wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to feel, especially with Undine still needing revival. It took two hands off the bridge, leaving clear dents and scratches all over the virgin white hull, and stretched. Wings without membrane came into view, long, thin things that couldn’t even raise a pebble from the floor.

“You got to be kidding me,” John spoke out loud as the eyes of Tilgun turned to lie on him. The higher dragon must have felt the Observe being cast on himself. Everyone stood still as Nathalia’s younger brother straightened his back and rubbed his chin. Then he suddenly turned around and vanished underneath the waves again. The only sounds were those of the continuing alarm siren.

The people that didn’t want to face a higher dragon, meaning everyone aside from John and his group, took the opportunity to quickly retreat inside. Whatever was about to go down, they didn’t want to be part of it, and the ship was pretty sturdy. John imagined they would be living it up inside, either to just have a good time or to be drunk when they started sinking under the waves.

John heard some mechanical voice in the distance, but before he could turn to check out what it was about, the noises of the sea dragon crawling up the side of the ship, breaking windows and scratching the hull in the process, were a bit more pressing. The head of Tilgun appeared over the edge of the railing. “Now, now, this is interesting,” the voice was incredibly deep and husky. It seemed the higher dragon had the mind to speak quietly; John was left in the dark how he could even do that with a head big enough that one bite would cause an orca to be separated into three parts. “Not only do you have a spell that can see me, you also wear that,” a giant claw pointed at the Necklace of the World Ender. “I was just surfacing to eat you fools, but now you have me intrigued. I haven’t seen that energy for over 600 years. You may begin explaining who you are.”

John swallowed his anger. This thing was level 341. While he had beaten something around that level before, the Grey Golem at 384, that had been under vastly better circumstances, with a larger group and with the help of their own giant robot. Not to mention that the Grey Golems were just huge balls of brutish strength. This thing was a higher dragon, not only could John easily expect him to have more than a few spells up his ancient sleeve, he was also vastly more intelligent. Although it was funny to see that (according to the stats anyway) this dragon was physically weaker than Aclysia.

There was no way that engaging a sea dragon in the middle of the ocean was a good idea. Especially with their healer already dead. Still, that arrogant tone did have John miffed, to say the least.

“What part of me do you want me to explain: who I am generally, how I know your older sister or my recent history?” John asked in a more dismissive voice than was perhaps adequate. The death of his slimegirl did put him in a non-talking mood.

Surprisingly, Tilgun didn’t get annoyed by that. Neither did he act to the reveal that John knew who he was in such detail. Instead he just looked at John with even greater interest. Then he actually went ahead and inspected everyone else around. “I see so many interesting auras here… I will hear your general history. Make it entertaining, lest I sink this whole ship.” He reared his head a little. “Also tell whoever controls this ship to stop aiming that thing at me.” Another one of his four arms was pointing at the space between the VIP apartments. John turned to realize the earlier source of mechanical sounds, in the shape of the previously inexplicably tall teleportation station having turned into a giant energy cannon on a swivel. “Otherwise I can’t guarantee that I won’t just give into the demands of my stomach.”

“Sylph, if you could?” John requested.

“No!” the tempest elemental answered with puffed up cheeks. “He hurt Undine, I am not doing that! He is a big eely meany!”

“Un-what?” Tilgun cocked his enormous head. After a second he had it figured out, “Ah, that thing I mistook for potential breakfast.” That was all he had to say about the subject matter of why he attacked her in the first place. There was very little doubt about whether or not he thought himself as better as the lifeforms before him. “But fine, if you won’t take care of it…” the giant hand threatened to just rip the cannon off its base.

Metra shouted something in an unknown language up to the higher dragon, and he stopped. He returned something in the same language, an act that stunned John. Nathalia had, for the whole time he had known her, always spoken draconic. Thanks to some global translation spell Romulus had put in place, that wasn’t a problem. Tilgun, as far as John could notice, also only spoke draconic. So why would he speak some ancient language right now. Better question, why was he bowing his head by the end of the conversation.

“You could have just told me that you have the Eternal Priestess of Tiamat under your command,” Tilgun finally said, dropping all hostile acts whatsoever together with all signs of arrogance. “A giver to the fallen mother of chaos is an ally to me. I do so apologize for damaging your possession.”

There was a big part inside John that wanted to scream at him to never refer to Undine as a possession, but the rest of him was just happy he could relax. Although this put some new questions into place about Metra.

‘Oh no,’ John thought as he saw the reward. The appearance of this guy really put a dent in a whole line of things. Including the hull of the ship. “Would you mind if we continue this conversation with you shrinking or something? You are slowing down the whole cruise.”

“I am not a god like my sister became,” Tilgun informed him, “I only possess this body and I have no knowledge about casting a shrinking spell. Although there is an easy solution.” He plucked a safety boat from the side of the cruise. An act John was halfway afraid would tempt the captain to finally give the order to fire and cause a rather messy break in diplomacy. However, captain Sealy proved to be a man-seal of good judgement. Either that or he had fainted. Whatever it was, nothing happened when the higher dragon placed that little boat on the deck. “Get in, we can have our talk without me needing to jump and crawl myself up this oversized swimming building.”

That was sadly the only solution on John’s mind as well. Save flying or freezing the water, unsustainable und unavailable respectively. “Aclysia, could you go inform the bridge what is happening?”

“At once,” Aclysia bowed, hooking her mind into his the second she had her back turned. She wasn’t going to have a repeat of the arena situation where she teleported later than she had to. Rave was ready to jump into the boat with him when Tilgun decisively blocked her.

“I only want to speak with this one and maybe her excellency,” the higher dragon reprimanded, right back in his arrogant tone. “You are…”

“Yo, ya not gonna go and abduct my boyfriend to have some talk, ya oversized lizard.” There was just something inherently wonderful about seeing someone who he loved doing something as stupid as talking back to a creature that could have just flicked her off the ship without even thinking about it.

“I would really prefer it if you would let her come with,” John weighed in. Tilgun, deciding this was not worth the hassle, allowed it after all. As two, they got into the boat. “You are not interested?” he asked Metra.

“Tilgun is boring,” she just answered. “Way too reasonable.”

“I am a bad follower of the chaotic principle,” Tilgun mused before grabbing the boat between two hands and climbing back down.

The last thing John noted was the knowing smile of Salamander.