A status screen popped up next to Marisol's head as she screeched to a halt, facing off against the marauder captain.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Identity: Whitewhale Marauder Captain]

  [Grade: B-Rank Giant-Class]

  [Class: Whale Lice]

  [Swarmblood Art: Latchbind Mantle]

  [Aura: ~1,700]

  [Strength: ~6, Speed: ~4, Toughness: ~5, Dexterity: ~7, Perception: ~4]

  But Marisol didn’t even so much as glance at the captain’s attributes. Her eyes simply twitched as she panted for breath, let her muscles rest, and glared at him as he rambled in front of her.

  “The Imperators may have the Whirlpool City, but we marauders have the rest of the Deepwater Legion Front,” the captain said, sneering at her with cold, unabashedly violent eyes as he sharpened his cutlasses against each other. A sharp, ear-grating noise. “My whale lice are everywhere. In the depths, on the shores, tucked under every coral reef and then some more. Ye think anyone can get away with killin’ my brothers without my lice findin’ their rotten corpses sinkin’ to the bottom of the great blue?”

  His crab head and pincers gave him the look of a Blackclaw Marauder, but he had additional whale louse arms on his back as well, making him something of a fusion-crustacean. She wasn’t even sure if that was the right term to call people like him, but that was about as much thought as she wanted to give someone like him.

  She felt she didn’t have much time—neither on the giant whale, nor on her journey to the Whirlpool City.

  ‘Fate’ was catching up.

  “Oh, ‘ah saw my little brother’s corpses. Hauled ‘em up from the seabed and saw the nasty, nasty way they drowned. Last ‘ah heard of ‘em, they’d beached themselves on a little island and were supposed to rejoin us a month ago… ‘ah supposed that’s yer doin’, little lass?” the man growled, stepping forward, fanning his twelve cutlasses and one pincer in a menacing way. Bloodlust poured out his shell and slowly crawled over the fighting pit. “The cap’s arm was cut off cleanly, and ‘ah he ain’t that weak. There’s only one class on the great blue that can cut through shell as tough as his the way it was cut, so it’s gotta be ye, right? A water strider? A Hasharana, perhaps, like the one who cut off my arm a decade ago?”

  “...”

  “Come on, little lass. Let’s dance. Show me what ye got. ‘Ah promise ye ‘ah ain’t anythin’ like the Blackclaw—”

  Exhaling sharply, she willed her glaives into motion. She leaned her entire body forward. She retracted her apiclaws to make herself more streamlined. It was twenty meters to the approaching captain, but she crossed it in the blink of an eye, launching ten meters before contact as she spun, spun, and spun. Gaining momentum, she kicked outwards with a hundred and ten percent of her power. An explosion was born, centered on his chest.

  ‘Explosive grace’ backed by rage.

  She cleaved him diagonally in half with the War Jump, shoulder to waist, and screeched to a fiery halt twenty meters away.

  The Whitewhale Marauder captain didn’t even manage to finish his sentence before he fell, blood splattering everywhere.

  [Objective #9: Destroy the C-Rank Giant-Class Whitewhale Marauders on the giant whale]

  [Success: Rescue of all living slaves and Damselfly Oracles on board]

  [Grade: C-Rank Giant-Class → B-Rank Giant-Class]

  the Archive remarked.

  The Archive looked at her, sighed, and gently tapped her cheek with a single leg.

  It couldn't quite wipe the tear rolling down her cheek, but it most certainly tried.

  And, right on cue, the giant whale below her buckled. Her glaives were stabbed into the floor, but the entire wooden fortress was tilting as well, torches and effigies breaking, shrapnel and debris flying everywhere. She flailed her arms for a brief second before glaring at the closest wall. She charged towards it, bracing her arms in front of her as she smashed through to become weightless one last time.

  It was a hundred meters back to the warship. The volleys of cannon fire had stopped some time ago, though she hadn’t noticed it while she was listening to the marauder captain ramble. She heard the Guards shouting and saw them racing around the upper deck even as she glided towards them. She looked up and understood why.

  The lightning storm was horribly powerful. It hovered ominously a hundred meters ahead of them. A demarcation where the Dead Island Straits ended and the storm began. The moment they crossed that invisible boundary, both the giant whale and the warship plummeted to the sea. The giant whale could probably endure the impact with its thick and leathery skin, but the warship? Not so much. Much less onto a sea in stormy turmoil.

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  Pressing her arms against her sides, she crash landed on the ship’s middle mast and slid down the wooden beam. She glanced only briefly at the crumbling marauder town atop the giant whale. She’d no idea what the whale was going to do from now on, but… she sensed maybe it, too, had been a slave to the marauders. She was glad she could do something for it. Now she had to do something for the rest of them, because the moment she touched down on the upper deck, the entire warship started lurching.

  The Guards only barely acknowledged her return as they continued racing around, securing everything to the ship with ropes, chains, and hooks. Captain Enrique bellowed orders for everyone to hammer more planks on the inside of the hull, reinforcing the ship. Marisol, on the other hand, didn’t have time for any of that. She skated straight into the captain’s cabin, spotted Catrina wincing and groaning in the corner behind a bunch of empty barrels, and immediately dashed in to scoop the lady up.

  A great surge of strength flowed through her veins as she skated back out the cabin. She fanned her wings out, just in time. The warship plummeted beneath her. Catrina squeezed her eyes shut and held onto Marisol for dear life. Marisol couldn’t avert her eyes. The two of them were airborne, gliding safely down to the stormy great blue, but the warship was free falling. It was a hundred meters straight down, and…

  Her senses flared, making her whirl just in time to see a horde of emerald wings shooting past her, crowding under the warship like a swarm of desert locusts. It didn’t matter if rain was pouring like a flood. It didn’t matter if streaks of blue and purple lightning flashed on the horizon every five or so seconds, splitting her eardrums apart—the hundred or so Damselfly Oracles charged on, uncaring. The sound of their wings almost drowned out the storm as they slowed the warship’s descent.

  What had seemed like a certain disaster shifted as the Damselfly Oracles swarmed beneath the plummeting warship, their wings forming a shimmering net of light and motion. They latched onto the hull, their collective strength pulling the ship’s descent under control. Half a minute after Marisol had scooped up Catrina, the vessel struck the storm-churned sea with a resounding splash, sending towering waves rolling outward.

  The Damselfly Oracles immediately retreated, zipping back towards the Dead Island Straits as Marisol glided slowly down… and she she saw Hana amongst the horde of them, nodding gratefully while simultaneously glaring at Catrina in her arms.

  Then, the swarm of beating emerald wings disappeared from her line of sight.

  the Archive muttered.

  Marisol was too busy concentrating on vibrating her hydrospines to give the Archive a proper response, but as she glided slowly down to the warship, the Guards were already cheering and bumping chests with each other. They’d survived another life or death situation, after all—and that was when Catrina groaned and clutched at her belly. Her body spasmed madly, and Marisol had to hold her tighter to prevent the two of them from pitching over.

  Marisol looked worriedly down at the lady’s pale, ghoulish face, and she felt the kick in Catrina’s belly though she wasn’t even touching it directly.

  She didn’t need telling twice. She folded her wings and landed hard on the upper deck, surprising Enrique and the Guards, but before any of them could rope her into their celebrations, she skated back into the captain’s cabin. The mattress was still there, but the dim lantern over her head was swaying, and creaking. The warship was in the middle of a nasty lightning storm. She slipped off her glaives as she lay Catrina down on the mattress, kneeling next to the pregnant lady.

  When the Guards rushed in to see what the hurry was all about, the captain in the lead, she barked at them the Archive’s instructions.

  “I want fresh and hot water! Boiled!” she snapped, her voice hoarse but commanding, cutting through the thunder like a whip. “Find lanterns, clean rags, blankets! Anything to keep her warm! She’s going into labor!”

  And the Guards, who’d been so boisterous just a moment ago, suddenly looked like lost little boys. The brave men who were fearless in the face of bugs and marauders now looked at her with fear and uncertainty, but there was no time to indulge their cluelessness. She snapped them out of their daze with a sharp whistle, bringing them to attention.

  “Come on, boys! Move!”

  There was only one more moment of hesitation, a heartbeat of indecision—the Guards scattered like ants, clambering over each other as their heavy boots pounded against the deck outside.

  Enrique stayed behind. He slid forward, gripping Catrina’s hand with incredibly creased brows, Marisol glared out the porthole and bit her lip. It was only supposed to be a little bit past twilight, but the storm outside was the nastiest she’d ever seen. Pure black clouds scudded over an oily sea, gargantuan waves smashed into the side of the ship. The ship dipped and swayed with the motion. The men were probably doing everything they could to gather supplies from the lower decks, but even if they get everything to her within the next few minutes, could she really offer any help to Catrina?

  She’d only seen midwives do their jobs once or twice back in the desert town. She’d never participated, she’d never helped. There was a good chance Enrique knew more about delivering a child than she did, so what was there for her to do?

  the Archive said.

  So she did. Quietly. Captain Enrique gave her a questioning look, but seeing Catrina clawing at the sheets and Marisol nodding at him to move, he merely nodded back.

  While he strode out of the cabin a few Guards filed in with a bunch of hot rags, buckets, and blankets. Marisol stayed by Catrina’s side and forced a smile onto her face, refusing to let go of the lady’s hand even once.

  “Hold on just a little longer,” she whispered, dabbing Catrina’s sweaty face with a rag as she did. “We’re almost there. The Whirlpool City’s right there. I can see it outside the door—”

  Catrina suddenly grabbed the back of her head, pulling her in.

  “... It’s being eaten,” Catrina breathed.

  Marisol blinked as the ship rocked hard left and made everyone stumble behind her.

  “It’s okay, Catrina,” she said. “Just… breathe. I think. Calm down, think happy thoughts, and the moment we dock, I swear I’ll rush in and—”

  “—there’s no time—”

  “There time. We’re late. Your papa said it was going to take a month to repair the ship in the Dead Island Straits, but look at us! We’re out on the second day! You’ll get to the Whirlpool City, I’ll get to the Whirlpool City, and everything will be—”

  “That night,” Catrina hissed, gritting her teeth so hard Marisol heard her jaw creaking, “I… when you came for me… I didn’t… I didn’t always have this scar on my belly. That night… I don't really know what happened, and I thought it was just a hallucination at first, but I… I think I saw a ghost—”

  And the sound of cannon fire cut Catrina off mid-sentence, making Marisol whirl in fright.

  They hadn’t fired that shot.

  “Stay with her, some of you,” she said, looking at the closest Guards before nodding at Catrina. She did her best to give the lady a bright, steady smile. “I’ll be back really quick, okay? I’m just gonna see what's going on outside. Drink some water if you need to.”

  She didn't wait for Catrina's response. By the time she skated outside into the pouring rain, a second shot had been fired, slamming into the stormy waves before the warship. Captain Enrique was already shouting at his men to drop anchors and halt the ship. Marisol raced to the bowsprit and squinted past the railings to see what they were stopping for, and .

  True to the Archive’s words, the Whirlpool City was incredibly close—it was a massive city built around a giant volcano island. She could only see its shadow and silhouette through the storm, but she could spot the tiered buildings climbing up the sides of the volcano, the towering spires built at the very top of the volcano, and the incredibly steep streets illuminated by dim blue lamps.

  It was the legendary city she’d read about and seen in textbooks so, so, many times as a child, but anchored a hundred meters in front of them—four hundred meters from the docks of the harbour city—was a fleet of a dozen giant warships.

  Positioned like a physical wall, the warships were flanked by two colossal lighthouses, and the moment the lighthouses shone their giant white beams on her, she winced and recoiled. She hadn’t been prepared to be blinded, but the fleet of warships anchored in front of them seemed to have no concerns for their safety.

  Then she heard a third cannon shot firing from one of the lighthouses, and the projectile smashed into the sea just a few meters away from their hull.

  Marisol flinched again.

  If that wasn’t a warning shot, she didn’t know what was.

  “Stop where you are!” a voice from the lighthouse roared. It was deep and distorted, piercing through the rain and thunder like a horn. “Identify yourselves within one minute, or by the decree of the Harbor Imperatrix, we fire and sink your vessel!”

  following/rating/reviewing! Four more chapters until the end of Volume One!