Tides from the Deep - Blood Devourer

“Under arrest?” Akua laughed nervously. “I don’t think you realize the situation you’re in. Lani, restrain this idiot child and put her on the boat.”

Talia watched expectantly as Akua went through various emotions at once.

She was extremely pleased with herself for having guessed exactly what had happened and prepared for it.

Not only that, but she couldn’t wait to show the criminal in front of her just how prepared she had come into this.

“I know that Lani is Initiated, among other things,” Talia smirked.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” the teenage girl continued. “The sigil on the beach was left to attract monsters here. And even though I don’t know why you did it, I know that Lani must be Initiated to be able to dive and retrieve herbs this potent,” Talia slapped the bag of herbs she was still carrying with her. “It’s actually surprising I was the only one who figured this out.”

“Oh, you think you know everything?” Akua frowned, increasingly nervous.

“No, not everything, but I’m not done,” Talia said, tightening the grip on her glaive.

“I know that you’re blackmailing Lani,” the girl explained.

“And if I had to make an educated guess, I would say that Lani was involved in her husband’s activities, who, in turn, was somehow involved with you, which would explain how you know about her secret. Now, if she was involved in some unsavory activities, it would easily explain why she doesn’t want her secret out, choosing instead to stay on an island where the Water Riders never come to sniff around, instead of going to any other place on the Four Seas, where she could probably make a better living.”

“How do you—” Lani looked flabbergasted, which only confirmed Talia’s wild guesses.

“If you know all of this,” Akua frowned, “why did you come here? You’re about to be abducted since Lani knows I have her future in my palm.”

“About that,” Talia smiled, “Lani, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I had to tell you everything to Noelo, who’s currently keeping Takai in custody until you and I return. If we don’t, he will be tried for your crimes.”

Lani and Akua’s eyes went wide.

“How could you?!” Lani shouted. “My son—and he’s your friend, too!”

“I asked Takai—that’s how I could. I told him that his mother would keep suffering through a terrible life if he didn’t accept to act as a temporary hostage. And believe it or not, he was more than willing to put his life at stake for yours. Plus, if we come back with Akua, I’ve got Noelo’s word that you’ll be treated fairly. We’re talking about very old crimes here, and I’ve worked out that, in exchange for saving the island and delivering Akua to justice, you’ll only have to keep doing what you’re doing – dive for rare herbs – and use the profit to help out the island.”

Talia saw Lani shaken to the core after she fell silent.

It hadn’t been an easy choice to put her own friend in the middle of this, but what she hadn’t told Lani was that Takai wasn’t actually at risk.

The Water Riders did not consider the children of criminals guilty – it was in their honor codes. Fortunately, Talia had had enough time in her life to study the laws of the Water Riders to a T, which allowed her to make several calls that, if everything played out like she imagined, would allow Lani to live a free life without having to succumb to the blackmail of this nasty merchant.

But in order for this to work, Lani had to accept her offer first.

And from the looks of it, she was still conflicted.

“I don’t trust Noelo,” Lani said, almost growling, “they don’t know what I had to do to survive! They don’t know what my husband put me through! They’ll just judge me! They’ll just see me as a monster! What kind of life do I have to look forward to even if the Water Riders forgive me for my crimes?!”

Those were all fair questions.

“So, little girl, do you have a good answer? Or do you really think that the Water Riders and your dear villagers will play fair and square?” Akua taunted Talia, trying to sway Lani into siding with her.

“No, they’re terrible people,” Talia laughed, unlocking the thick golden bracelets on her wrists and letting them fall to the ground, showcasing the infamous tentacle marks she had had since the day she was born. “I had to plan for months in order to escape my hut and take the Initiation Test just because these people are afraid of my marks,” she pointed at her wrists. “They tried extremely hard to take that away from me and more. People have come to my hut at night, drunk, shouting insults, and, a couple of times, trying to burn it down. And their punishment was nothing more than a slap on the wrist.”

“Is that supposed to be a convincing argument?” Akua snickered.

“It is,” Talia nodded, “because the alternative is to kill a bunch of drunks in retaliation: drunk idiots who come bother you at night, trying to set fire to your tent. You can exchange hate with hate, but that only goes so far. There’s a better alternative than becoming the monster that people see in you: to choose to do the right thing, no matter what.

“So, Lani, what do you choose?"

“Will you be the monster Akua saw in you, or will you be Takai’s mother?”

The merchant, now seeing how rounded Talia’s argument was, tried hard to convince Lani not to follow the girl.

“Don’t listen to her!” Akua shrieked. “They’ll take everything away from you, Lani! Including Takai! Let’s take this stupid girl away, and we’ll get your child back at night! You know who the real monsters are – those disgusting Water Riders that don’t understand what we have to do to survive!”

Those words seemed to put a crack in Lani’s countenance.

She looked conflicted.

Lani had been hiding herself for so long that she didn’t even contemplate what it would mean not to hide anymore. She had spent so long thinking how, if the villagers knew about her real identity, they would turn her into the Water Riders that now, she couldn’t imagine living normally among them, especially with her son becoming a Water Rider himself. And it was exactly the last thought that drove her to make a decision.

With Takai on his way to becoming a Water Rider, she couldn’t jeopardize his future with her egoism anymore.

“Ok,” Lani said to Talia. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so, too,” Talia winked at the woman and turned to Akua.

“So, was what you said about monsters being attracted to your wares true?” The girl asked the merchant.

Akua refused to respond until Lani, with her resolve hardened, went over to her and twisted her arm behind her back.

“Yes, yes! It was true! If you have destroyed the sigil on the Northern shore, not only would the monsters start dispersing soon, but they would also fiend for the herbs I have.”

That revelation made Talia sigh in relief.

They really needed that part of the plan to actually be real.

Without the herbs, she didn’t know if they could hold out long enough to avoid any further casualties.

“Well, how do I deactivate the spell?” Talia asked, walking toward the warehouse.

“Fuck you—AHH!” Akua screamed when Lani twisted her arm viciously. “Just open the stupid door and take out the protective artifact! I have the key here!”

Lani looked at Akua’s belt and ripped the key from it, tossing it to Talia.

“Alright,” Talia smiled to herself, “later, you’ll also tell us why you called all these monsters to the island. For now, though, we need to give everyone some time to escape.”

The shipyard was on the opposite side of the river they were currently at, meaning once the monsters swarmed here, the villagers would have it fairly easy to reach it from the other side. Talia would then take a longer road, together with Lani and Akua, trying to dodge as many monsters as possible, and reach the shipyard to escape with the others.

It was a foolproof plan.

Or at least Talia thought so.

However, when she got close to the warehouse, which faced the river and not them, she turned the corner to find a massive, wet hole in the wall.

She frowned as she examined what looked like a very recent opening that, for some reason, was dripping water.

It was oddly smooth as if it had been blasted by energy instead of a physical object.

And as Talia tried to peek inside, her heart stopped in her throat.

A monstrosity she had never seen was crouched there, consuming heaps of rare herbs that were kept inside the warehouse.

“Fuck,” Talia swore under her breath as the monster suddenly turned on its many legs and stared at Talia with two big eyes – as big as her head.

[Abyssal Scuttler {Boss} – Lv. 21]

Talia took a few steps back, flabbergasted at the monster's level and grade.

Monsters marked as {Boss} could only come from a recently-destroyed Dungeon whose destruction hadn’t included clearing out its Boss. Most importantly, a Boss monster was significantly stronger than its average counterparts, with very little limit on how high its level could get since Dungeons were naturally formed Mana-gathering locations. This meant that a Boss, a monster that emerged victorious in the intra-species fighting for the control of the Dungeon, could absorb as much Mana as it wanted.

Unfortunately for Talia, this meant that despite being the rarest oddity in the South Deep, she had just encountered a foe she had no hope of defeating.

The gigantic Abyssal Scuttler, three times her height, looked maliciously at her and started summoning jets of water that coalesced in front of him into a gigantic orb.

“Damn it!” Talia swore, diving back around the corner as the giant ball of water destroyed the ground where she had been standing just a second ago.

“There’s a Boss!” She shouted at the top of her lungs.

But that wasn’t all.

Suddenly, Talia, who had kept [Eyes of the Abyss] activated, felt a ripple of energy coming from behind.

The attack the Boss had just unleashed had hit the artifact that suppressed the herbs’ Mana, which is exactly what they had come here to do: signal to every other monster on the island to come there.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Talia scrambled away and ran toward Lani. “There’s a Level 21 Boss!”

But she didn’t really need to tell her.

The gigantic Abyssal Scuttler came out of the warehouse releasing a heart-stopping shriek and agitating two massive claws as big as the humans in front of it.

When Lani saw it, she was so stunned her grip on Akua relented, and the merchant bolted away.

The strangest thing was that Akua ran in the monster’s direction.

“What are you doing?!” Talia screamed, her whole body trembling as she and Lani faced the monster.

But what was most unbelievable was that when Akua ran a few paces behind the monster and toward the boat anchored to the river, the giant Abyssal Scuttler didn’t even glance at her.

It was as if Akua had been fully invisible to it.

Which meant the monster was fully focused on Talia and Lani.

“Can you take it?!” Talia asked desperately. She had to ignore Akua’s escape, given the huge killing machine in front of them.

“What?! Alone?! I’m Level 23!” Lani shouted.

That was truly bad news.

Boss monsters were on a whole different level – while a person could usually kill a monster their level and slightly above, as a rule of thumb, it took an entire team of five-levels-above the Boss to clear it safely. That put Talia and Lani in a terrible situation. There was no way to face the monster without a high chance of losing their lives.

“You run! I’ll keep it occupied!”

“No!” Talia refused.

She had brought Lani here, thinking that she had it all figured out, that she would not only catch a criminal that had brought monsters on the island but also allow Lani to live a better life. Even though she could not have imagined a Boss monster making its way into the spell-protected warehouse, she had still put Lani’s life in mortal danger. Leaving her to face the monster alone was simply out of the question.

Not even if that meant putting her own life at stake.

“Dodge!” Lani shouted, tackling Talia to the ground after the giant Abyssal Scuttler summoned another stone-cutting jet of water, obliterating a sizable patch of ground.

With Lani by her side on the ground, looking back at the monster in abject fear, something went off in Talia’s head.

“I’ve got an idea!”