About thirty minutes later, back on the ship, John was waiting for Tilgun after the higher dragon had dived away. Soon thereafter, he saw an orca get catapulted into the air, slamming back into the water. That spot of the ocean quickly turned red with blood.

If that attack didn’t kill the target outright, so Tilgun, it at least disoriented every seaborn creature too much to react to his further attacks. He had attacked Undine in nothing but a sleepy fit of hunger. The strong magic she radiated had identified her as potential food. It wasn’t until he had flung her into the air that he had been awake enough to note his ‘mistake’ and the potential other food source in the shape of the cruise.

The elder dragon didn’t feel sorry for any of that. Like any other predator, he spent no time thinking about the right of his victims. They were food and it just so happened that nature made him the boss. The only respect he had was for Metra, who he saw as his equal, and John by extension, as long as she kept their contract. Everyone else was food.

He was more patient than Nathalia, but by no means were they not related.

With a panicked snapping for air, Undine popped back into existence. ‘John, what happened, is everyone fine? Who needs to be healed?’ she automatically went ahead and assumed that whatever killed her had been fought.

“Well, you won’t exactly think any of this is likely,” John began in a dry tone and then laid down the latest happenings. At the end of the explanation, Undine listened to the waves below, blind eyes directed at the ocean.

“The ocean is scary,” she whispered, evidently not that keen about getting back in there. “Why was only that part of this barrier empty of all other life?”

“Personal guess? Tilgun sleepwalks,” the Gamer presented without a hint of sarcasm, “and unlike Nathalia, you can’t calm him down by giving him a nice welcoming fuck. Ironically, despite being easier to reason with, Tilgun might be more dangerous for the general population.”

“I am not sure I want to go swimming again,” Undine mumbled.

Metra laughed mockingly, “Don’t be a bitch, the ocean is awesome. Lots and lots of things you can’t predict, and in the darkness waits opportunity for awesome fights. If you think Tilgun is scary, wait until you find the Leviathan… if that THING is still alive.”

“I actually have to wonder about something,” John said to the berserker babe, trying to change topics as he waited for Tilgun to return. The Maw of Souls wanted to be here for what came next. “You can refuse or even break contracts, why the hell did you stay inside Eliza’s brain for all those years.”

“Why not?” Metra asked in return and got a growl from the blood mage.

“Because you had me hang like a potato in a jar of water, with giant fucking nails rammed into my body, for 70 fucking years, you massive cunt?” she asked.

Metra just shrugged. “I am not a moral actor,” she just answered.

“The fuck does that even mean?” Eliza returned.

“It means,” Metra spelled out, “that me keeping my contracts is more important to me than acting according to some ethical code you have.”

“You were working for the fucking NAZIS!” the blood mage screamed. “THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ‘SOME ETHICAL CODE’?!”

Metra just rolled her eyes, “I don’t even know what is so bad about Nazis, literally, I don’t know what they did generally and neither do I care. I am a weapon, the wrath of her excellency Tiamat, one of twenty-one Metracanas, the first one, I didn’t work for anyone, I was used by anyone and I would never break a contract.”

“That’s your honest, shit-eating defence?” Eliza wanted to know, “You are a tool?”

“Yes,” the dirty blonde crossed her arms, “live with it or don’t, either way is fine by me.”

The crazy little psycho’s fingers twitched and she stomped her way over, dots in her eyes spinning. John stepped between them. “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” he made a calming gesture with his hands. “Obviously Metra isn’t operating under any set of moral principles, and so I am not exactly in approval of her words, but now she is under my quote-unquote control, so we better do the best with it.”

“Totally,” the berserker babe agreed. “As long as he is my master, I will operate by his principles.”

Salamander cackled her way into the conversation and glanced over to Siena, “Which is more than what we can say for everyone here.”

“Make fun of my decisions again, and I know I have found my next victim,” the shadow spirit, lying in the shade of a building, answered in a tranquil voice. “That aside, don’t you have a suicide to plan?”

“Yes, yes,” Tilgun’s deep voice chimed in as he came up on a pillar of water. Why he didn’t do this in the first place instead of causing property damage in the hundreds of thousands all over the ship, John concluded quite easily that he hadn’t cared the first time around. Dealing with higher dragons was a giant headache. What was more was the higher he rose, the further Undine inched away from the railing. “A marvellous suicide indeed. I love this, I do so very much, the cause is delightful.”

The higher dragon didn’t even care about the obviously afraid water spirit. For him, the whole affair had ended when he apologized to her summoner, John.

Gnome looked between Tilgun and Metra, “C-can we talk about this whole chaos thing you two keep going on about?”

“It is quite easily put a religion,” Tilgun explained. “You see, the goddess of chaos and the first dragon of the oceans, and perhaps the first dragon period, is our true deity, not Gaia and her endless rules.”

“Okay, so where is Tiamat now?” John asked; he knew pretty much nothing about that figure aside from the fact that the name was often used in video games. A quick google search at the side revealed her to be an ancient Mesopotamian goddess who got killed during the Enuma Elis, the world’s oldest creation myth.

“Got offed by Gaia when she tried to kill her with a magic circle the size of the tower of Babel,” Metra said. “Very sad times, but she asked for it. Also killed all of the other gods I knew.”

“So you believe in a goddess that couldn’t hold a candle to who actually governs reality?” John asked. “That sounds stupid.”

“Ah, ah,” Tilgun clicked his tongue and wiggled and oversized finger, “Lady Tiamat’s true wisdom didn’t lie in her existence but in her principle. She was simply chaos incarnate, for that is what we follow, the principle of chaos, the endless sea of opportunity that is which hasn’t been ordered yet.” The higher dragon’s head reared, looked over to Salamander, “Which is why I find facing the first foe in such a stupid a manner so interesting.”

John just realized that he could ask Tilgun all sorts of things that Metra was secretive about. “Why do you call the Lorylim the first foe?”

“Because they are?” Tilgun tilted his head, “Are their origins unknown to you?”

“More like partly lost to time,” Metra said, “like most things about my homeland, that’s what happens when there are repeated cleanses in the same general area.”

“I thought you didn’t know either,” John asked her.

“I don’t, but I could have known if I wanted to,” she informed him, “I just didn’t care to find out. Do you care about the exact reason why moose have antlers?”

“Aaaaaaah, such a shame, such a shame indeed,” Tilgun rolled on his side, laying down in a comfortable position, “but I don’t have anything to gain by explaining this.” Reaching in the water below him he pulled up a dismembered orca and tore a giant chunk of meat out of the muscular creature. For a civilized human, it was a disgusting sight, but John only made a displeased face. He had seen worse, much worse, than this. After taking another bite, Tilgun dropped the orca back into the wave he was controlling to stay at the ship’s side. The ‘snack’ travelled with him. “Now, I would be ready. You may perform your, hopefully entertaining, mistake.”

John sighed and looked to Salamander. “Are we ready?”

“No,” she answered, “but I am going to do it anyway.”

While that was the correct answer, it was also an unsatisfying one. Everyone who couldn’t fly or swim got into the safety boat that Tilgun had left on the VIP deck.

“You have fun,” Maximillian waved the goodbye while shaking his head profusely. “How the hell did Lydia ever get along with this bunch of chaotic people? I swear, she must have had a constant headache,” John heard him mutter before they were all carried out into the open sea.

______________________________________________________________________

While saying they were safe now was perhaps a bit of a stretch, it was safe to say that, if anything stronger than Tilgun attacked them, they were fucked in every case. Therefore, Salamander had decided that her stance of ‘as soon as possible’ sprang into action.

While John had hoped that he would have, frankly, A LOT more time than one day after the proposal (more like blackmail) had been raised to his attention, there was no better time than the present. If anything went wrong, Tilgun had agreed to take care of the matter and that would at least make this matter end quickly.

‘Undine, just in case, I would like for you to remain incorporeal and inside my soul,’ John told the ocean elemental. ‘You know why.’

‘I understand,’ Undine, who was already incorporeal together with Gnome, just so they had an easier time following them, answered mentally. She was actually forcing herself to get closer to Tilgun again; there was no use in being afraid of the dragon that was going to stick with them for the next few days.

Gnome also stayed incorporeal for the moment, simply because she wasn’t going to be much use where they were. Really, most of them were kind of unnecessary, the only people who really needed to be here were Tilgun, Nia and Salamander herself. Everyone else, sitting around Salamander in the somewhat cramped security vessel, was here to either watch or try their best to help if things went south. Maybe they would actually get in the way more than they would help, but John didn’t have it in his heart to just stay on the ship and watch for the result from the distance. He assumed it was the same for everyone else.

Just waiting for the good or bad news regarding a treasured friend was not a thing that anyone should go through if they didn’t have to.

Tilgun wound his serpentine body around the boat until he formed a tight ring, his head raised and looking keenly. Of course, he didn’t care how this ended, he just wanted to see how it happened. John stared at his hands, the SEP still sealed behind a mental barrier. This was about the best conditions for this experiment that he could ask for. Salamander’s level wasn’t so far above Nia’s that the blank couldn’t affect whatever was going to take hold of the fire spirit. If they ultimately failed, there was nowhere Salamander could flee to, being in the literal middle of the ocean, if she even managed to escape Tilgun, which was doubtful.

All in all, the bed was made. Now he only had to lie in it.

He lowered the mental barriers against which Salamander was already pressing with the eagerness of someone wishing to finally rip off an itchy band-aid. The momentary pain could never have been worse than the itching. John wasn’t sure he agreed to that.

There was a moment of silence, a sting of pain as even the allowed taking of the two SEP went against the natural way these things were supposed to be handled. It was only a flicker of the vast mass of torture Undine had subjected him to but still as deep.

“Well, here goes nothing,” the blaze elemental joked, her trademark cackle ringing through the air as her wide smile and all other features were consumed in a tornado of fire, only contained by Tilgun working some protective magic.

Windows started rolling in, as expected.

That last window left John majorly confused. What was different? Had the Lorylim actually anticipated or bet on this happening and laid some sort of inter-dimensional trap? If yes, that was not just bad but incredibly bad. For the moment he could do nothing but stare at the firestorm above them.