The morning air in the Dead Island Straits was crisp and cool, tinged with the sharp, briny tang of saltwater. It was something Marisol didn’t know she’d missed back in the Whirlpool City. The air back there was always so… curated. Flowy. In a sense, because she’d only known the city while it was under the swirling ‘Black Storm’ protocol, the swirly air there had always felt a little artificial, brought about by the city’s machinations—but out here, on the great blue, it was all natural.

  She felt much more alive waking up this morning in the captain’s cabin than when she fell asleep last night.

  Now, she alone stood at the edge of the further canyon—a jagged precipice that dropped a hundred metres down to churning, violent waves.

  She tightened the straps of her shoulder satchel, her fingers brushing over its bulging contents. They were food supplies, medical kits, maps, a hefty stash of bug meat—all carved from Eurypteria, most certainly rich with points though it was uncured—and about a dozen other little survival trinkets, all courtesy of the Guards and Imperators.

  It was a far cry from her first trip across the great blue. Back then, she’d been a desperate girl skating over the waves with nothing but the clothes on her back and a stubborn will to reach the city. Now… it wasn’t even like she was going to be completely alone out there. Whenever she wanted, wherever she wanted, she could send a message via her Archive and contact Victor almost instantaneously.

  [Not instantaneously. Your messages have travel time. Past five thousand kilometres, you can count on your message getting lost somewhere along the way—]

  “So, do you actually know how to find a moving island in the middle of the great blue, or is this just another one of those ‘figure it out as you go’ kind of plan?”

  Behind her, the sound of boots crunching against rock pulled her attention. Maria, Helena, and Hana approached, their expressions a mix of concern and determination. Helena, especially, wore a heavy look of worry—neither Maria nor Hana seemed at all concerned about her solo expedition. Maybe it was because the former knew just how strong she was, and because the latter had literally seen her skating across the great blue over half a year ago, but she blanked out for a moment nevertheless, unsure how to answer Helena’s question.

  Archive. You got anything for me?

  The Archive responded with a projection next to her face: a live top-down map of the entire Deepwater Legion Front. It flickered like lightning before stabilising. Sure enough, the western expanse of the great blue was starting to become a void of black—the unmistakable advance of the Crawling Seas, the endless tidal wave of bugs devouring everything in its path—but the eastern end of the great blue still gleamed dazzlingly blue. It was untouched for now. They could outrun the Crawling Seas for now.

  [There,] the Archive murmured. The map zoomed in, pinpointing a storm-tossed dot far, far, far east of the Dead Island Straits. [Your target destination is currently in the eye of a storm, two thousand three hundred and twenty-nine kilometres away.]

  Marisol frowned. Storm? Again? Both times I stumbled onto the island, it was—

  [The horseshoe crab appears to seek shelter in storms during periods of heightened danger in the Deepwater Legion Front. This behavior has been consistent in your previous encounters, most probably because dangers are less likely to find it in the middle of a storm.]

  She shrugged slightly. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her, but if the Archive said so, then it said so. She exhaled sharply through her nose and glanced back at Helena, her confidence settling back into place.

  “Yeah, I know where it is,” she said, shooting the Imperator a thumbs-up. “It’s two thousand kilometres out. Sitting in the middle of a storm, as usual.”

  Helena raised a brow. “And you’re sure you can get there?”

  She grinned, stretching her arms above her head until her joints popped. The thought of the journey made her heart pound, but not with fear—with exhilaration. It was going to be tough, no doubt about that, but she’d made it once before. She could do it again.

  And a voice called out from behind, louder and sharper than the wind.

  “Marisol!”

  She turned once more, blinking in surprise. Reina hobbled toward her, leaning heavily on crutches, her bandaged form looking like she’d just clawed her way out of a death match. Medics trailed behind, their exasperated protests falling on deaf ears.

  “Don’t you dare die out there!” Reina shouted. “You hear me? I’m not letting you get out of our sweets night! Mari, you, me, everyone—we’re gonna have dessert again in the Harbour City, so don’t screw this up!"

  …

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  Marisol couldn’t help but laugh as Reina was dragged reluctantly back by the medics, and a moment later, her gaze shifted to another figure standing atop a massive fish skull nearby.

  With one hand on his walking cane, Victor tipped his feathered cap at her, so she smiled slightly and returned him a two-finger salute.

  Then she looked back at the open sea, the wind whipping strands of hair into her face.

  Time to go.

  Without another word, she stepped off the edge.

  The canyon walls blurred as she plummeted, the hundred-meter descent exhilarating rather than terrifying. Her heart raced in sync with the rush of air past her ears, and her legs flexed instinctively, ready to catch the surface of the waves below.

  As she neared the ocean, her wings snapped open with a violent whoosh, the air resistance yanking at her limbs as she fell. The shift was immediate: plummeting became gliding, and wind screamed past her, tugging at her satchel, her clothes, and her very skin. She held steady. Her gliding wings were streamlined—sleek and strong like a hawk's—and she caught the natural currents with ease, adjusting her trajectory with slight shifts of her legs.

  Now the ocean spread beneath her like an endless sapphire canvas, glittering under bright sunlight from a cloudless sky.

  She grinned, adrenaline singing in her veins. The great blue. You stupid, dangerous, beautiful thing.

  The first hour and the first hundred kilometres passed in a blur. Up here, the world was quieter, save for the distant rumble of the Crawling Seas consuming the west. She could almost trick herself into believing it was peaceful. Almost.

  Then she saw it: a storm churning ahead, dark clouds swirling like the maw of a beast. The air thickened, charged with electricity, and her wings began to struggle against the shifting winds as she smeared the storm.

  “Of course,” she muttered.

  There was no way through it in the air, so she folded her wings and descended sharply toward the surface. The moment her glaives skimmed the water, they sliced into the waves like knives—and the transition was smooth, seamless. Lightning crackled around them as she started skating across the churning sea with a speed that left froth in her wake.

  Rain battered her face, stinging like tiny needles, and the wind whipped her hair into a soaked, tangled mess. Vibrating her hydrospines to repel water would only be a waste of stamina. Thunder cracked above her, the sky splitting open with veins of light, but none of it fazed her. Not this time.

  Eleven months ago, this would’ve terrified her. Back then, every wave had felt like a mountain, every gust of wind a fight for her life. Now? She was faster, stronger, and sharper. She had hydrodynamic chitin. She had rapid rehydration. She had mastered all of her mama’s sand-dancing techniques. Hydrokinetic redirection blunted the impact of most of the heavy droplets slamming into her body, and though nine hundred kilometres wasn’t anything to scoff at… she wasn’t exactly afraid of the great blue anymore.

  [This is your natural element, after all.]

  [After eight months, you have finally returned to the sea.]

  She leaned further forward, cutting through the storm like a blade, and when a massive tidal wave rose in front of her, she skated up it just for good measure.

  A twirl, a flourish, and then a spinning jump—her first proper ‘dance’ since she arrived at the Whirlpool City.

  Minutes bled into hours, hours bled into days. The Archive kept close track of time, but she lost it completely. She scaled tidal waves like they were ramps, caught fleeting glimpses of the horizon at the crest, before plunging down the other side with the momentum carrying her faster than ever.

  Sometimes, the sea offered brief respites. She found herself resting on broken ships every six hours or so, remnants of the evacuating warships that’d tried—and failed—to outrun their crustacean pursuers. She stood among the wreckage, her glaives silent as she bowed her head for the dead, their bodies floating like pale specters in the water. She wished she could at least turn their bodies over so her Archive could memorise their faces and record their deaths, but where there was debris, there were enemies.

  Always enemies.

  The Giant-Class crustaceans came at her in endless waves—giant claws snapping, armoured bodies gleaming under lightning flashes. There were dozens and hundreds of them lingering near every wreckage, so she fought them off over and over, dancing across their shells and pushing her way through their bodies. Sometimes, she’d stop to feast on their legs. Other times, she’d book for the nearest wind current and hightail it from the wreckages, because getting caught on the open sea without any stamina was a death sentence, even in her current state.

  If I get hurt, Claudia won’t be here to patch me up.

  If I lose my balance even once, I’ll slip and fall and get dragged down by the leviathans.

  Just keep going.

  Just keep going.

  The storms blurred together after a while, their fury a constant companion. Each one seemed worse than the last the further east she went, but she danced through them all, one after another after another—and then, finally, she saw it.

  The horizon shifted, and there it was in the nastiest storm she’d ever skated through: the horseshoe crab island. Its forested back rose like a small continent, and tiny mountains jutted out, their peaks shrouded in mist. The sight of it stole the breath from her lungs.

  She was close.

  Her body screamed in protest as she pushed through the final stretch. Her legs felt like lead, her glaives, but she couldn’t stop now. Not when the black sand beach was within reach.

  Her glaives hit the shore with a jarring crunch, and she staggered forward, her momentum carrying her a few more steps before her knees buckled. She fell face-first into the black sand, her soaked body sinking into its gritty embrace.

  “... Oh, this is familiar,” she muttered, her voice muffled by the sand. She coughed, spitting out grains. “I did this exact same thing eleven months ago.”

  The Archive’s voice chimed in her head, calm as ever. [It only took you six days to arrive this time.]

  “Has it really… been that long?” She groaned, her face still pressed into the sand. “Thanks for the update, though,” she mumbled, “now send the old man a message. Let him know I’ve found the island.”

  [I sent it five minutes ago.]

  “You didn’t think I’d fall and drown in the last five minutes?”

  [There was a zero percent chance of that happening.]

  “Good,” she whispered. “Now I’m just gonna… sleep for a bit.”

  Her eyelids fluttered shut, her body giving in to the exhaustion that’d been building for days. The last thing she saw before darkness claimed her was a blur of movement from the edge of the forest—a group of crab-headed children running toward her.

  And then, nothing.

  Chapters remaining: 16

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