Having spent the past thirty minutes skating with her head barely hovering above the surface, Marisol surprised even herself with her sudden burst of speed.

  She managed to reach the wreckage, scoop the pregnant lady up in her arms, and skate away as the giant remipede tore through the wreckage behind her.

  There was no holding back now. Straight towards the rowboat she went, putting every last drop of her strength in her legs as she skated full speed ahead.

  “... Hello, miss!” she said, practically shouting over the wind and the rain as she grinned down at the lady. The Archive muttered something about ‘beginning translations’ in her ear. “What were you doing out here? Why’d you light that flare? Great Makers, couldn’t you tell that thing was still lurking under you? Did you to die?”

  For her part, the woman didn’t respond immediately, and Marisol could see why. She was a pretty lady: curly locks of hazel hair fell past her chin, and her long, flowing velvet gown with tight sleeves was richly decorated with golden embroideries, but even a blind man could tell she was pale. Her cheeks were sunken and gaunt, her lips were parched and cracked. She was so, light despite the heavy-looking bracelets and necklaces—she had to have been stuck out here for far longer than Marisol had been.

  Still, the lady swallowed a huge gulp and mustered the strength to speak, and Marisol listened with one ear craned behind her.

  “I was on… Captain Enrique’s ship,” the lady rasped, bony arms squeezing around Marisol’s neck as she looked up with teary, haggard eyes. “We were on our way… to the Whirlpool City as usual… when that swallowed our ship. I survived, but… should I have?”

  Marisol clenched her jaw.

  “My , my husband, and my family are dead. I ran out of food four days ago. Nobody's coming to save me. I thought… at least, if I cracked that flare, that thewould take both of us quickly.”

  Without a word, Marisol lined up alongside the rowboat, coming to a complete halt as she let the lady off gently. Her eyes scanned the contents on the boat covered under half-transparent rainproof tarps: ten casks of freshwater, a dozen boxes of hardtacks, sacks of dried beans, and what looked like jars of dried raisins, figs, and prunes.

  It was a shame the crew on the ship the rowboat belonged to couldn’t evacuate in time, but now she had them to thank for the supplies. The rowboat could easily support someone for at least a month out on the seas, and there didn't seem to be any barnacles under it as well. The remipede probably didn't notice such a tiny vessel.

  “The oars are on the side of the boat, so get yourself out of this fog first, and then row every once in a while to make sure you don’t drift back in while you’re asleep,” she said hurriedly, ripping off the tarps and pointing out all the supplies to the half-conscious lady. “There’s food here, here, here, and here. I recommend working through the dried fruits before you dig into the biscuits. The Archive said you can even… uh, you can even use the seeds from the fruits as bait for fish, but just try not to move so much. Save your energy as much as possible. All you can do is tough this out and wait for someone to save you.”

  The lady sat up against the edge of the boat, groaning as she squinted up at Marisol. “Where… are you going? Aren’t you coming with me? There’s enough room… for the two of us.”

  Marisol shook her head vehemently, thumbing behind her. “No can do. The giant remipede’s gonna kill us both if we’re on the same boat, so I’ll run circles around it while you row out of this fog. If you see any ships trying to sail into the same fog, yell at them to stop, okay? Don’t let them sail in no matter what.”

  “You… you’re going to distract it? You’ll die if you do that! If we’re… if we’re on the same boat, then, at least—”

  “There’s a saying where I come from: not one grain of the desert shall touch the mother’s flesh while a hundred men yet stand to face the pit,” she said, beaming at the lady as she kicked the boat away. “We may be on the seas, but I see no difference here.”

  Maybe she could’ve kicked the boat a harder so it’d drift away faster, but she didn’t want to risk rocking the lady too much. Only the Great Makers would know the hell the lady would have to endure until someone came to her rescue. At the very least, Marisol wanted to give her as much of a fighting chance as she could possibly have.

  the Archive muttered.

  She chuckled nervously and knelt, placing both palms flat against the surface.

  she thought.

  The Archive hummed in her ear.

  Vibrating the hydrospines on her palms, she flicked her hands out and sent out a massive, throbbing ripple that made the waves undulate around her in circles. Sure, the rowboat carving across the surface and the lady screaming at her to come back may be loud, but the giant remipede could clearly tell which was the juicer prey—it knew Marisol was the one who’d been toying with it with fake ripples for the past half an hour, and it wasn’t going to be toyed with anymore.

  The shadow of the remipede changed targets, its gargantuan head whipping away from the rowboat to charge at her instead.

  She took a deep breath and started skating, darting towards the wreckages she’d snuck past earlier.

  she thought, gnashing her teeth together as she glanced behind at her, scowling at the giant shadow.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She was about to counter with a retort when she felt vibrations underfoot. Something was flying up at her. She jerked to the side as a massive chunk of waterlogged debris soared out from beneath the surface, like bony spikes stabbing out of the desert. More followed right after. Moving in zig-zags, she twirled, capered and weaved across the rainy sea. She scrambled to dodge every debris the remipede grabbed with its antennae and tossed at her.

  she snapped, hissing as the remipede threw a giant mast at her from underneath. She barely dodged it by jumping out of the way.

  the Archive interrupted.

  Sending ripples away from her left, right, and back, she did her best to throw the giant remipede off by just a few seconds each time as she jumped onto what like a half-sunken warship. Much like her own, there were crates of wet sponges floating around it and cannons sticking out of gunports, so if any ship would be carrying barrels of gunpowder, it would be this one.

  She had less than a minute to get everything set up.

  Scurrying around the upper deck, she kicked a glaive out and dragged it along every crate, barrel, and cannon in the way, letting their contents spill onto the wooden floorboards. Most were dried cabbages and straw and other unimportant stuff, but there were glints of moonlight reflecting off mounds of gunpowder here and there. Then she found a fuse cord and skated all the way around, dropping it along the gunpowder as she snatched up an unlit candle as well, sparking a tiny flame by jumping and clicking her glaives mid-air.

  She thought, cupping a hand over the candle flame to keep it from going out in the rain.

  The little water strider on her shoulder pointed towards the captain’s cabin above her—the warship was slightly tilted, after all—and she immediately snapped her head up, noticing a giant white conch at the back of the cabin with a heavy steel door sealed around the opening.

  Without hesitation, she skated up, up, and up as the ship tilted even further down. The giant remipede rose beneath her. Bubbles frothed on the surface, a massive whirlpool started churning to drag the ship down. Before any of the gunpowder could slide off the deck, she flicked her candle at the nearest fuse and listened to the cord hiss—sparks snaking towards the explosives as she leaped into the pitch-black conch.

  The last thing she saw as she yanked the heavy steel door shut was the movement of the conch as it started tumbling down was the giant remipede. It unhinged its massive fifty-meter wide jaw, belched, and swallowed the ship whole.

  Then the explosives rocked her into the other end of the conch as the door bolted shut automatically.

  Immediately, her world became a churning maelstrom. There was no light inside the shell—only the oppressive weight of darkness, thick as tar, pressing against her eyes. Each violent toss sent her slamming into the ridged walls, aches blooming across her entire body as she cried out in pain. The sounds outside were a cacophony of groans and deep, guttural roars that vibrated through every fiber of her being.

  Just as she thought she’d never stop being tossed around, the world stilled without warning. The shell no longer spun. She slammed spine-first into the back of the heavy steel door one last time before falling slump on the ground, moaning in agony.

  All was quiet inside the shell for a few seconds.

  she grumbled, pushing to her feet and feeling the walls with her hands, trying to find the door.

  the Archive countered plainly.

  Her hands found the latch on the back of the door, but she leaned forward with her weight just a too much, and the entire thing snapped off its hinges. The door fell outwards. So did she. Landing flat on her stomach one more time, she groaned and curled into a ball, clutching her shuddering limbs as though that did anything to soothe the pain.

  Clawing to her feet, she quickly realized she wasn’t bobbing on the sea’s surface. A rush of warm, fetid air greeted her face as she lifted her head and looked around—her brows furrowed as she did.

  The ‘cavern’ was fifty meters wide, fifty meters tall, all pulsating and glistening flesh. She was standing ankle-deep in a murky blue liquid that stung her glaives. The deep, iridescent purple walls of the giant remipede’s insides undulated in rhythmic waves as it slithered through the sea. It shimmered with an oily sheen that reflected the faintest glimmers of phosphorescent light. All around, the remnants of the remipede’s previous meals lay scattered like offerings in a forgotten temple: shipwrecks, giant fish bones, and chunks of corals dulled by the caustic environment.

  Everything was cast in the same faint, alien-purple glow—it was almost like she’d jumped into a fairy book world with its own magical ecosystem.

  She jumped on top of the conch and looked at the far end of the stomach. It was two hundred meters to the front of the giant remipede, the mouth where all the giant teeth and mandibles were. Then she whipped around and looked at the far, far end that was the tail, and it was three hundred meters to the back where more swallowed wreckage lay.

  The ground rumbled—a heavy, gurgling sound, punctuated by the distant echo of the remipede’s heartbeat.

  [Objective #7 Completed: Evacuate from the warship and survive the giant remipede]

  [Reward: Temporary survival]

  [Objective #8: Escape the giant remipede before you get digested]

  [Time Limit: 1 month]

  [Reward: Survival]

  [Failure: Slow, acidic death]

  do have to eat, they typically go for small amphipods (shrimps), copepods (uhh), and isopods (cute water pillbugs)!