Eryshae

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Sam
Whirlpool

The ocean had become a crushing weight above them. Sam's world narrowed to cold, salt, and pressure; the kind that made his chest ache and his ears ring in hollow, throbbing beats. Vael was a blur in the roiling water, her dark hair fanning like ink, arms clawing for the surface that only seemed to retreat farther with every kick. Shards of their boat spun past; splintered planks, torn rope, the bent glint of a metal cleat; all tumbling toward the depths with them.

His lungs burned, each second an accusation. They wouldn't make it. Not without help. He kicked harder, fighting through the chaos to reach her. A length of sail brushed over his face like a ghost's touch, tangling briefly around his shoulder before the current tore it away. She hadn't seen him yet; her gaze was fixed upward, frantic; and he could see the panic building in the rigid line of her body.

When he caught her wrist, she jerked, almost striking him before recognition flared in her eyes. Sam shook his head, mouthed something she couldn't hear, and opened his palm between them. Even in the dim green gloom, the magic was there; faint, rippling through his skin. The center of his palm shivered, the flesh parting like silk in water, and a pale green stem began to curl free. Its growth was slow-motion beauty in the chaos, spiraling toward her like the sea itself was watching. A bud swelled, quivering before unfurling into a translucent water lily, its petals glowing faintly against the darkness.

Her eyes widened. She understood. He wasn't done. Another stem pushed through, coaxed by urgency. He held the first lily out to her. She took it without a word, though her grip trembled. The roots slid past her lips, but when they reached her lungs she froze, eyes wide in shock, body stiff with instinctive rejection.

Sam moved closer, framing her face with one hand, his other settling gently over the blossom's crown against her mouth. His thumb pressed lightly against the petals. He let her see his eyes, steady and certain, before speaking in the slow rhythm of breathing; one exhale, one inhale; "Breathe with me."

Her eyes fluttered shut. She mirrored him, breath stuttering at first, then smoothing as the roots loosened, expanding in her chest in a way that felt almost… right. Air, clean and impossibly calm, filled her lungs. The fear melted into a strange weightlessness, as though the ocean's grip had eased its hold. He plucked the second blossom, gripping it lightly by the roots, and pressed it to his lips. The fine tendrils brushed over his mouth and nose, cool as the underbelly of a wave. Without hesitation, he tipped his head back, letting the roots slip inside, trailing down the back of his throat in a silken, alien slide. His chest expanded; not with burning saltwater, but with cool, sweet air tinged with something floral and strange.

Relief rushed through him, clear-headed and bright. "There," he murmured, though his voice was swallowed by the deep. "Now we're ready." Beneath them, something moved. Not debris. Not current. A shadow the size of their ruined boat passed just below, its shape indistinct, its speed deliberate. Sam's skin prickled, the roots of the lily shifting faintly against his lungs as though they too sensed it. The water seemed to pulse, a deep vibration that reached through his bones. He tightened his hold on Vael's hand. The surface was far above, but their danger was somewhere far below; and rising.

The first lungful was the hardest. Even with the lily's roots threading cool into his lungs, Sam's instincts screamed wrong, wrong, wrong. He forced the breath in anyway; slow, deliberate; feeling the strange silkiness of water sliding where air should be. Around him, the world blurred into shifting blues and greens, light bending in ways the surface never allowed. Vael's eyes were wide, pupils dilated against the muted glow filtering from above. She gave the smallest nod, her lips still parted around the lily's stem. A trail of bubbles escaped, rising lazily toward the rippling ceiling far above.

Sound was different here; thicker, muted, like every movement was wrapped in velvet. The creak of the boat's splintered hull reached them in low groans. A plank drifted past, spinning slowly, its edges chewed with splinters. Sam turned his head and saw the rest of it; the boat's skeleton; still descending in a slow, tumbling spiral. The mast angled downward like a toppled monument, sails curling like pale shrouds. Small objects tumbled out of its hold: a coil of rope, a tin cup, one of Vael's packs that spilled an arc of clothing into the water.

The light dimmed a fraction. Not a cloud; there were no clouds down here. It was the way shadows shifted along the seafloor far below, the way a current pulled at the drifting debris and then let go. Sam's jaw tightened. He drifted closer to Vael, laying a steadying hand against her shoulder. The motion set a ripple through the water, disturbing a cloud of fish that darted away as one shimmering body. The speed with which they vanished left him uneasy.

"Stay close," his voice came as a faint vibration, carried through the magic of the lilies rather than the lack of air. They kicked slowly downward, weaving between the larger shards of wreckage. A barrel rolled end over end into the blue haze beneath them, vanishing before it touched bottom. Sam's gaze followed it into the dimness, where movement whispered at the edge of sight; something massive, keeping its distance.

The current shifted again, this time warmer, laced with an earthy scent even underwater. Vael's head snapped toward the source, but there was only the same endless expanse. The debris kept sinking, but now it seemed to be… encouraged, drawn along a certain path as if gravity had shifted. Sam's fingers found Vael's, squeezing once in silent warning.

They kicked around the last jagged remnant of the hull; and the boat's keel appeared in full, tumbling lazily toward a darker patch of water. The light there seemed thicker, less willing to let go of what entered. Above them, somewhere far out of sight, something moved. The water carried the faintest thrum, deep enough that it could've been felt in bone rather than heard. Sam's breath came steady through the lily, but every instinct told him they weren't alone.

The lilies kept their breath steady, but the water pressed in from all sides, a crushing weight that bent the ribs and made every joint ache. Sam's ears rang faintly, a soundless pressure that seemed to hum from the depths themselves.

The wreck of their boat still listed around them, timbers groaning as the hull cracked apart in slow motion. Planks drifted lazily downward, their nails and iron fixtures catching the faint shimmer of what little light reached this far. A blanket of bubbles frothed upward from the split keel, glittering like a swarm of silver insects.

Vael pointed; a sharp movement in the sluggish weight of the water. Beyond the falling debris, the shadows deepened unnaturally, as though something vast was blotting out what little light there was.

It moved.

At first, Sam thought it was just a trick of the dark; currents twisting sediment into phantom shapes. But then the water heaved, and the shadow rippled with a serpentine undulation. His chest tightened; not from the lily roots, he could feel it in his chest, the recognition of one apex predator to another.

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An Abyssal Leviathan was here.

It wasn't just moving; it was struggling. The current itself seemed alive, coiling and tightening around the great beast. Whole bands of water shifted direction in unnatural, grinding pulls. Debris spiraled away in jagged, spinning vortices. The deeper layers churned with dark foam, and in its folds something gaped; an opening in the current itself, lined with teeth of coral and stone, snapping at the Leviathan's flanks.

The Maw Current. A predator in its own right, a ribbon of water with a hunger that never ended.

The Leviathan's flank caught the faintest gleam of light; scale plates the size of shields, scraped and bleeding. It twisted violently, and the resulting pulse of water slammed into Sam and Vael, rolling them sideways through a tangle of rope and a shattered beam.

The lilies kept air in their lungs, but the panic was harder to contain. A sound reached them even here; a resonant, bone-deep bellow that rattled through the water and their own ribcages. It was answered by a grinding, grinding roar from the current itself, a sound like an ocean cliff tearing apart. Sam grabbed Vael's wrist, pulling her toward the cover of the sinking hull's skeleton. He risked a glance down into the dark where the two titans writhed; each movement sending shockwaves through the deep. It wasn't a matter of if they'd be noticed. It was a matter of when.

The lilies' magic wrapped like a second skin around Vael's lungs, each breath sweet but trembling with the knowledge that it could be her last. Sam's hand never loosened on hers, his grip a lifeline in the cold, lightless void. Far above, faint shafts of light shimmered in warped ribbons through the churn of sediment. Their boat; a pale, skeletal silhouette, drifted lower still, its mast like a crooked finger reaching toward them before snapping away into the black.

The Abyssal Leviathan's vast shadow swept across the silt below, an undulating wall of ridged scales and lanterned eyes, each one glimmering with ancient malice. Opposite it, the Maw Current coiled like a living storm, its vortexed tendrils snapping and curling in currents so strong Vael felt them tug faintly at her ankles. The two forces moved in slow, terrible circles, the way predators measure each other before the kill.

Pressure built in the water, a deep, throbbing hum that resonated in the bones. Small fish scattered in frantic bursts, streaking past their faces as if the very water had turned hostile. The darkness thickened, pressing in from all sides, and for every heartbeat they lingered, it felt as though the ocean itself was urging them downward.

Sam's Amber Heart flared in his chest; once, then again; its glow burning brighter than he realized, refracting through the water like a molten beacon. Vael's eyes widened, the flicker of awe chased immediately by fear.

The first turn of the Leviathan's head toward them was subtle, almost imagined. But then came the slow dilation of its abyssal pupils. The ocean floor shuddered beneath the weight of its movement.

Sam felt something primal tighten in his chest. Without thinking, his skin rippled, wood-grain blooming across his arms and shoulders. Bark thickened, rough and solid, locking in around muscle. It should have been a comfort; his Druidic armor; but the moment it took hold, his buoyancy vanished.

He began to sink. Water rushed past his ears as gravity reclaimed him, and the surprise of it clawed through his focus. His grip on Vael tightened instinctively, dragging her with him into the cold depths. The water lily's enchantment kept the water from flooding their lungs, but the sudden plunge cut like a knife through their fragile calm.

Above them, the two titans finally collided. The water convulsed with a force that rattled their teeth, and the light from Sam's Amber Heart seemed to flare brighter, brighter still; until both the Leviathan's massive head and the Maw Current's swirling, fanged vortex pivoted sharply toward them.

The glowing pulse of Sam's Amber Heart throbbed like a war drum in the heavy silence, casting long, fractured beams through the murky water. Around them, the abyss twisted and churned, an ever-tightening cage of shadows and crushing pressure. The Leviathan's immense head swayed into view; a nightmare forged from scaled darkness, jagged rows of teeth glinting even in the gloom.

Vael's fingers clenched Sam's barked arm, her nails biting in a wordless plea as the other force; the Maw Current; unfurled with a thunderous roar. Its swirling vortex, rimmed with razor-sharp tendrils and phosphorescent eyes, pulsed like the beating heart of some unholy storm.

The two apex predators locked eyes; cold, calculating, filled with a bloodline of blood and hunger; and then, impossibly, they turned as one toward the fragile light source that was Sam's Amber Heart.

Time dilated into agonizing slowness. The water vibrated with the Leviathan's immense power, ripples colliding with the eddies of the Maw Current's furious swirl. Sand and debris whipped past their faces, the ocean floor trembling beneath the cosmic storm of nature's wrath.

Sam felt his breath catch beneath the lilies' enchantment, each inhale a measured miracle against the choking dark. The bark creeping over his skin creaked faintly with every motion, a living armor growing heavier by the second. His gaze locked with Vael's, eyes wide with shared terror and fierce determination. They had no choice but to face the coming storm.

The Leviathan's head snapped forward, jaws parting wide enough to swallow whole. Its glowing, labyrinthine eyes bored into them with a sick, ancient hunger. The Maw Current responded in kind, coiling tighter, its fangs snapping inches from Sam's leg.

Cold water surged past, dragging at their limbs as the vortex expanded, an unstoppable force converging with the monstrous leviathan's strike. Sam tightened his grip on Vael, planting his feet against the sediment-strewn ground beneath them. His Amber Heart flared brighter still, pulsing wildly as if in defiance of the encroaching darkness. But the light only painted a bigger target.

Vael's heart pounded, every nerve alive with electric dread. The looming silhouettes of death closed in, and for a fractured heartbeat, all she could hear was the rushing roar of water, the labored beating of her own chest, and the sharp intake of Sam's breath as he prepared to defend them both. The water seemed to constrict, pressing in from every side. Their sanctuary of air and light shrank to a pinprick.

The Leviathan snapped its massive jaws mere inches from Sam's glowing arm, water exploding around them in a frenzy of teeth and thrashing tail. The Maw Current's serrated tendrils whipped with deadly precision, slicing through the dark water where Vael had just floated, sending shards of coral and sand swirling in every direction.

Sam's bark-hardened skin cracked and splintered under the onslaught, but his grip on Vael remained unyielding; bark against flesh, their tether in the drowning abyss. His Amber Heart blazed brighter, a furious beacon in the encroaching darkness, but the light only seemed to enrage the monstrous predators further. With a desperate surge, Sam twisted his body and hauled Vael toward a shadowed fissure in the cavern wall; a narrow, jagged crevice just barely wide enough to slip inside.

"Here!" he gasped, voice raw but urgent. Vael's heart hammered as they darted toward the opening, muscles burning against the crushing pressure. The cavern seemed to pulse and breathe around them, the echoes of distant roars chasing their frantic movements. They slipped into the jagged tunnel, water squeezing tight around their bodies, chilling and unforgiving. The walls scraped their skin, sharp and unforgiving, but it was the only sanctuary they had.

Behind them, the roar of the Leviathan crashed against stone and water alike, followed by the eerie hum of the Maw Current's swirl, as if the abyss itself sought to swallow them whole. Sam led the way, his glowing Amber Heart lighting the narrow passage, the only thing between them and total oblivion. Vael followed close, every instinct screaming to keep moving, to not look back; but the weight of the predators' hunger pressed heavy in her chest.

The tunnel twisted and narrowed, each breath a desperate prayer. Finally, gasping and scraped raw, they found a small cavern, just wide enough to huddle together, hidden in the deep silence beneath the sea. For a moment, only the sound of their ragged breathing filled the dark, cold space; the faint pulse of Sam's glowing heart their sole reminder that they were still alive. But even in that fleeting quiet, the sense of watching eyes and lurking shadows lingered.