At one point, Marisol may have been excited to know she played a big role in bringing down the giant remipede, but now it was dead in the middle of the day. Four whole hours since they exploded onto the open sea. There were no clouds overhead to provide any shade, and so the midday sun was scorching her back.

  She had half a mind to tell everyone to just leave the giant remipede carcass floating where it was, because right now, about thirty of them were walking on the giant carcass while the warship was docked next to its bloody head, and they were having a tough time harvesting the parts they could harvest.

  Wiping a bead of sweat off her brow, she hollered at the top of her lungs and relayed the Archive’s exact words to all of the Harbor Guards… but she had no clue how many of them actually heard her. The thirty of them were all scattered across the five-hundred-meter long carcass doing their own thing—cutting flesh and severing legs and tossing everything onto the warship with rope pulleys and buckets—so she had no hope even half of them heard her instructions.

  Sighing, she simply lowered her head and focused on her task at hand: kneeling on top of the giant remipede’s smooth head with two small chisels in her hands.

  she grumbled, getting down on all fours and rapping the remipede’s chitin with the handle of her chisels.

  the Archive said, jabbing a pointy leg into her cheek.

  The Archive hummed as she continued crawling over the giant head, tapping her chisels against the chitin to listen for hollow spaces underneath.

  The Archive paused as it listened to her groaning and shaking her head.

  the Archive finished, sighing and shaking its head.

  She grinned at the Archive as she started tapping the chitin with renewed vigor. More bug parts she could turn into Symbiosteel sounded sweet, so she’d break her back for as long as she needed until she found them. Yet, she felt so, incredibly stupid as thirty Guards walked past her over and over, hauling their harvests back onto the warship, while frowning at her tapping the chitin like a child digging for earthworms.

  Hours passed like this.

  , she comforted herself.

  She hit something slightly hollow underneath with her chisel, and she didn’t need telling twice from the Archive. She jammed both chisels into the chitin and started carving away, the little water strider tracing a circle with its legs to show her where she needed to cut. It may have taken her ten minutes, twenty minutes, maybe even thirty minutes—eventually, she carved out a delicate chunk of chitin and tossed it away, peeking inside to see a hole made out of blue, wobbling flesh.

  Her eyes caught the glint of something shiny inside, so she looked away and grimaced as she reached in, rummaging around the squishy flesh with her fingers until she felt them: something small and round between her fingertips.

  Translucent fibers ripped from the little spheres as she yanked them out, and with a wide grin, she raised them over her head to let sunlight burn off the remnant strands of flesh. They were such small, small things for such a giant bug; the Archive really hadn’t been lying when it said they were about the size of her nails.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Her eyes lit up as she twirled the pearls around, her mind wandering off to places she could possibly wear them over.

  Right on cue, the water around the giant remipede started to bubble, and she jumped to her glaives completely startled. The Guards yelled at her to quickly jump on board before the carcass could sink, so she clutched the pearls tightly and skated down the side of the chitin, jumping and jamming her glaives straight into the hull of the ship.

  Someone tossed a rope down at her, and she climbed up as she glanced at the carcass behind her, sinking not-so-quietly into the depths of the great blue—she hadn’t noticed it while she was busy looking for the pearls, but it was nearly sundown now, and the same thing had happened to the fairy shrimp. The buoyancy of giant bug carcasses would naturally disappear after a while.

  As two Guards helped her over the railings, she scanned the busy upper deck for all of their spoils of war: about two dozen remipede legs were stacked on top of each other like logs, four giant curved mandibles were wrapped in thick fabrics to prevent any venom from leaking out, and she assumed the dozens upon dozens of crates being hauled to the lower decks were filled with remipede flesh… as much as they could harvest within half a day, anyways. They certainly didn’t manage to harvest three thousand points’ worth of flesh, but there were probably one or two thousand points on the ship. Maybe even two and a half.

  She puckered her lip and frowned at the little water strider on her shoulder.

  Once the giant remipede bubbled and completely sank beneath the surface, Captain Enrique shouted at his Guards to raise the anchors and unfurl the sails. His daughter—the pregnant lady they’d pulled up from the rowboat half a day ago—sat on a crate by his side, giving Marisol a tired little wave as their eyes met for a brief moment.

  Marisol had gotten a brief explanation for why a pregnant lady was on their warship from the Guards earlier. Apparently, Captain Enrique’s daughter and son-in-law had been living on the mainland continent, but then decided to hitch a ride with him and his men on their way back to the Whirlpool City for a vial of healing seawater. It was to ensure the safety of childbirth, she was told; it was just that none of them could’ve ever imagined encountering a giant remipede attack of that scale, much less against a warship flying the Guards’ emblem.

  To that end, a few Guards had also been rowing around the field of wreckages the past few hours, trying to fish up flags and emblems to identify the ships that’d been sunk by the giant remipede. They were going to continue towards the Whirlpool City, so as soldiers of the city, they had to report what’d happened here in full detail. No doubt Marisol was going to be caught up in the questioning as well, but that was just a problem future her would have to swiftly deal with.

  The fish scale sails billowed at full strength as the warship started moving again, and now they were headed once more for the Whirlpool City.

  she asked, leaning against the railings as the Guards scurried around behind her. Planting her chin in her hands, she gazed sluggishly out at the vast, open seas—the dim orange sun was just about to fall over the horizon, and she felt like laying down to sleep for a long, long time.

  And for the first time in a while, she felt she had the luxury to just stand there and do nothing but think.

  Recall.

  Remember.

  she eventually thought, narrowing her eyes at the dusking sun.

  She clenched her jaw and scowled down at the little water strider on her shoulder.

  she thought.

  The Archive shook its head lightly.

  She sighed begrudgingly and let herself lean fully against the railings, hoping it wouldn’t snap under her weight.

  the Archive said.