Minus the beating wings and the extra two arms jutting out their backs, the damselfly tribesmen were very much like Kuku and the crab children. The men only wore thatch shorts, the women wore loose-fitting reed dresses, and their tanned skins were blotched with intricate tattoos she couldn’t make heads or tails of from a distance. Each of them carried a blowgun with them, carved from dark wood with sharp, pointed ends. They were designed with only one purpose in mind: to fire poison darts at unsuspecting girls trying to steal their prey.

  In that sense, maybe they weren’t so much like the crab children. With metallic masks over their faces and giant, hexagonal insect eyes boring holes into her from above, they looked far, more terrifying than Kuku when she’d first met him.

  She kicked off the giant carp as they jerked their blowguns up, firing a volley of darts at her. There was no warning, no attempt at communication. She slammed glaive-first against the canyon wall and started skating up, speeding away from them as the Archive rambled off random numbers in her head.

  “Stop!” she shouted without looking behind her, throwing her arms up as she continued skating. “I ain’t here to steal your prey! I’m sorry! If you could point me to another giant carp you can spare for me, though, I promise I’ll entertain you with my speed and dance routines—”

  In the blink of an eye, six of the tribesmen blurred in front of her, their beating wings a constant annoyance in her ears as they fired darts down at her.

  She kicked and backflipped off the wall, fanning her wings out in the same motion. The winds immediately jerked her to the right, and now she was gliding away from the grotto, away from the tribesmen. She winced as she wiped a streak of blood off her cheek and glanced behind her, scowling when she saw them flying after her at breakneck speed.

  the Archive muttered, licking the wound on her face.

  she hissed, slamming into a branch and leaping off it as the first of the damselflies caught up, his clawed insectoid feet smashing through the entire branch.

  The Archive made a status screen pop up next to her face, and she gasped as she almost jumped headfirst into another slab of stone. She jerked her body down and swerved under it, her wings rippling at the abrupt change in direction. Two of the pursuing tribesmen weren’t so quick to change, though, and slammed right into the slab with pained, ear-grating howls.

  the Archive said curtly.

  Her mind raced to find a method to throw them off her heels.

  She was about to snap at the Archive when she spotted a waterfall sprouting from the side of the canyon in front of her, andshe smelled a blood trail leading into the spring tunnel.

  The Archive gave her an amused hum. it said.

  Forcing a smile onto her face, she jumped off the next piece of debris and charged straight for the mouth of the waterfall, a dozen damselflies following after her as she glided through the narrow opening.

  Suddenly, all was dark around her. The spring tunnel was at most three meters tall and five meters wide. The roaring torrent was so close beneath her that cold water sprayed onto her face, wetting her lips and revitalizing her body. The whooshing sounds of gliding in open air turned into sharp whistles in the narrow tunnel. She immediately slammed her glaives down on the water and began skating—she a water strider, of course, and her specialty was on water.

  Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and decided she wouldn’t open them until she reached the other side of the tunnel.

  The bitter scent of blood trails would guide her through.

  Gusts of wind whistled behind her as she skated through the tunnels, swirling through narrow passageways and turning deeper and deeper into the canyon. She hardly cared about skating slowly or treading lightly. Behind her, she heard shouts and screeches. Tribesmen crashed into walls—their only compass being the incredibly thin light reflecting off her glaives—so she vibrated her hydrospines and flicked her hands out, sending ripples out in every single direction.

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  The ripples bounced and echoed off the walls, throwing the tribesmen off even harder. She started chortling for a moment as she heard a whole bunch of them crashing into each other—then she tripped over what felt like a thin stone bridge. She would’ve fallen flat on her face if she hadn’t shot her wings out at the last moment to continue gliding, her tongue mere inches from the water surface.

  As she righted herself and began skating again, she gritted her teeth and opened her eyes, if only to catch the glimpses of light being reflected off her glaives. She still couldn’t see more than the occasional boulder in her way, or a sudden dip in the ceiling she had to duck under, but not cracking her skull open from sheer speed had to be good enough.

  She sensed there were twists and turns that’d take her deeper into the caves, but she wasn’t trying to skate herself into a dead end. While it was surprising the damselflies were still able to follow her—they weren’t extremely powerful flyers for nothing, after all—they’d significantly slowed down. They were probably decently injured from having been slamming into walls over and over. So she beelined straight for the end of the tunnel, following the strongest blood trail while she kept her eyes peeled for the smallest hint of sunlight.

  The whole way towards the exit where sunlight was a pure golden hole in the wall, she couldn’t stop herself from looking behind her. Four or five damselflies were still extremely hot on her heels, but their bodies were sagging, their wings weren’t beating consistently, and she couldn’t describe them in any way other than ‘drunk’. They flew like they were drunk.

  Her pulse was racing in a painful staccato. She unfurled her wings and prepared to glide out. She pushed through the final stretch, skating as fast as she could, and the moment she burst out into the canyon on the opposite side of the cave she’d just skated through—

  She was met with the bloodshot eye of a giant white whale, a whole town of marauders strapped to its back.

  Her exit from the waterfall tunnel was a flashy one. Her glaives reflected bright sunlight in every direction. The marauders on the floating whale’s back spotted her. The whale itself spotted her. There was only a brief second where she soared peacefully over the wooden town on its back—and by the time she glided over to the other side of the whale, the marauders were already banging their war drums, training their dozens upon dozens of cannons on her.

  The marauders didn’t fire at her, though. A few damselfly tribesmen exploded out the tunnel after her, with a dozen more to follow, and all of them immediately changed targets. She wasn’t their juicy prey anymore. They swooped down on the fourteen-armed men manning the cannons and loading their muskets. Shots fired into the air and shouting swelled. Marisol fell under the floating whale with her back to the ground as she looked up at the fighting.

  the Archive said, sighing a breath of relief.

  She glided into the side of the canyon and clung to the walls, looking up at the battle between the tribesmen and the marauders with her brows furrowed.

  The tribesmen weren’t winning, and not by a long shot. There were hundreds of marauders equipped with rifles and heavy armor on that whale. The tribesmen’s poison darts were as ineffective as rubber balls against a metal wall, and the marauders were even starting to shoot nets into the sky, catching them right out of the air.

  The Archive sighed and shook its head.

  She nodded firmly back and kicked off the wall, gliding under and up the giant whale.

  Now, she remembered all too well how powerful the Blackclaw Marauders were when she’d fought them unprepared, so she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could take on a hundred higher-rank marauders on their home territory like this. No. She’d do nothing of the sort. If she wanted to beat down the marauders, she’d need the help of the Guards… and however many damselfly tribesmen she could tear away from the fight above.

  If she could bring even of them to safety, then she had to try.

  There was one damselfly tribesman still uncaptured by the countless nets and bullets the marauders were shooting into the sky, so before the unmasked girl with one bleeding wing could get shot down as well, Marisol tackled her from below and dragged her up the canyon.

  The marauders roared and fired after them, of course—a dozen cannonballs exploded around her as she skated up the wall. Somehow, she managed to muster enough strength to drag both of them over the edge of the canyon, throwing them into a giant bone forest two hundred meters above the sea.

  Marisol let go of the damselfly girl as they tumbled into a roll, groaning with exhaustion. She didn’t know about the girl, but she’d overworked her wings far too much. She’d just learned how to glide less than an hour ago, and she was already swooping and swerving through cannon fire like she knew what she was doing. It was a damned miracle she still found the strength to stand and pick up the girl in her arms, skating straight into the forest of bones.

  She didn’t need the Archive to tell her that, but she just vaulted over a giant fish skull for cover as the marauders rose after them. The damselfly girl tried to snap at her finger, but she managed to wrangle four arms with one as she clamped her other hand over the girl’s mouth, shushing at both of them to stay quiet.

  The giant whale was over the forest of bones, its gargantuan body casting a great shadow over them as it swam through the air, searching for them.

  Marisol counted thirty seconds, cold beads of sweat dripping down her forehead, before the whale suddenly stopped fifty meters overhead in the center of the forest.

  A dozen anchors dropped from the wooden town, and she spotted fifty or so marauders sliding down the chains.

  “Get off me, ”

  The girl bit her palm and made her wince, loosening her grip just enough for the girl to break out and slide across to the other side of the fish skull.

  Marisol's immediate reaction was to throw her hands into the air and them raised. Her bleeding hand hurt like hell, but the girl was bleeding from one of her wings, too, and breathing just as hard as she was.

  They couldn’t afford to be fighting each other now.

  “... Wait,” she breathed, smiling softly, only hoping her words were getting translated right. “‘Plagas del mar’… that’s what you tribesmen call the marauders, right? I ain’t no marauder. I’m with… uh, I’m with the people in that city right outside your strait. I ain’t here to—”

  “No!” the girl snarled, and her brilliant green irises flared with anger. “Mama told Hana! All outsiders You, too—marred with no color! You are danger! Something bad will happen to Whirlpool City if Hana let you go, so Hana must eat you!”

  Marisol dropped her smile and narrowed her eyes, her face dark as a pond on a moonless night.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked in a low, quiet voice. “What… who are you—”

  the Archive said, a sliver of uncertainty in its voice.