Siren's Reach - Fallen Lands Book 3

Before we started down into the town, I wanted to scan the beach one last time for any sign of our quarry. Once we passed the town wall, I wouldn't have another chance to cast [Lore] until we were already fighting, which was less than ideal. Besides, the pause gave us a perfect chance to make any last-minute adjustments to armor and weapons before heading in.

I had a good idea of where K'thralis was. The sand along the beach was just… wrong. But that wasn't enough. I could feel that actually seeing the target was the only way I was going to get anything useful out of [Lore].

It took nearly a minute, and the others were starting to shift behind me, when I finally spotted something promising. Down by the waterfront, right where the tide was pulling back, a series of red and purple spines jutted from the sand. The moment I saw them, I recognized the color from his shell.

"Lore incoming!" I warned the others, and then, I cast.

K'thralis the Swarmcaller

Floor Boss (The Drowned Reliquary, Floor 2)

Level 38, Broodlord

Description:

Deep beneath the wave-wracked ruins of the Drowned Reliquary, where kelp-clad corridors linger from ages entombed and forgotten, lurks a leviathan with a legion. K'thralis the Swarmcaller, herald of the hive tides, lies half-buried in the trembling sands, dreaming of the day the deep will rise again.

Behavior and Abilities:

Drawn from the decayed dreams of a forsaken vault, this account arises in fractured form, pieced together from poetic echoes and the lingering memories of a dungeon long since stilled.

He is not born of nature nor nurtured by tide, but wrought of dungeon design. An ancient architect's answer to unwelcome wanderers. Though the reliquary itself is hushed and hollow, the Swarmcaller remains, faithful to a forgotten cause, ever calling, ever crawling.

Few who trespassed his tide-carved temple returned with breath or bone, but from broken echoes and scattered shells, some truths seep through:

First comes silence, still and sly

a tremble beneath, a shadow nigh.

The brave who press through shifting sands

must carve their path with ruthless hands.

Waves of smaller kin heed his unheard hymn, crabs cascading in cunning coordination to divide and devour. Those who linger or lose their path are swiftly surrounded, swept beneath in a chittering tide.

When shell breaks free from burdened bed,

His many legs shall rise instead.

Stray not where earth turns soft and slow,

Or clasping claws shall drag below.

In rising, the creature sheds the false calm of concealment. The sand churns, the floor gives way, and the battlefield itself becomes a betrayer. Slipping ground, seething spawn, and a sudden shift of scale—all serve to sunder the unready.

And when his voice shall cry too deep,

beware the ones he wakes from sleep.

The swarm will swell with forms unclean,

and floods will fall where stone has been.

It is said, by those who decipher dungeon dreams, that the final act is swift and savage. The Swarmcaller screeches, and the sea replies. Shells conjoin, monsters merge, and the very vault begins to sink back into the surf.

Should the Swarmcaller be slain, his body sinks as it rose: Slow, solemn, and unsatisfied.

I blinked. "That was different."

At the same time, Caeda nearly spun in a circle, "What was that?!"

Amélie patted her on the shoulder, "It is only Evelyn's [Lore] spell." Her eyes moved to the slowly shifting sand. "At least we know the name of the dungeon now. Do you think all of that was hints about the monster's abilities?"

I started to nod, but Sibylla had other thoughts. "That only sounds sort of right to me. The spell itself said it was only giving us part of the story. So, maybe it is telling us a little bit about his abilities, but given that everything was sequential, I think it was telling us what to expect as the fight goes on."

I blinked at her, "Uh, maybe. But then why was the last part talking about him summoning monsters when he did that right away last time? Am I missing something?"

Amélie nodded, a teasing grin on her face, "You do make that a habit… but in this case, I agree."

"Ah!" Sibylla's eyes widened with understanding. "What I meant was that it isn't talking about his bread and butter attacks and abilities, but more… well, have you ever played a video game with boss fights that change as they go on, where something will cause new phases to occur and new mechanics to take over?"

Amélie muttered a soft, "Oh, yes, that makes sense…" but I only continued to give her a blank stare.

Sibylla sighed, exasperated. "Okay. What about a cartoon where the villain suddenly declares 'This isn't even my final form!' and suddenly everything changes, they're bigger and stronger with new abilities, and now the floor is lava?"

"Right!" I said, picking up what she was talking about again. "So, uh, no clues on his abilities, just what he's going to pull as we get further into the fight to change things up."

She nodded, and Amélie added, "And maybe what we need to do to kill him, it seems."

Caeda looked between us. "I don't know where you three are getting all of this. It sounded like a creepy story warning us to stay away, if you ask me."

Sibylla nodded seriously at her. "It does have a very scary warning, you're right about that. The end is a tragedy. How are we going to eat this thing if it sinks back down after we kill it? We definitely need to take that to heart and figure out how to salvage the situation."

"Yeah..." I nodded slowly at her, "That, uh. I'll leave that one in your hands. We're… counting on you. Anyway! If we follow this logic," I said, slowly considering the Lore entry, "It sounds like first, we need to get him to come up out of the sand—"

"With violence," Sibylla interjected, and Amélie nodded her agreement.

Sighing at them, I continued, "Which will cause many crabs to come to his aid, and they'll need to be distracted, gathered, and taken care of—"

"With garlic, lemon, smoked salt, … Maybe some dill," Sibylla helpfully added, again.

"You really should just eat something," I suggested, and she grinned.

"I'm about to. Pretty sure that's why we're here."

With a shake of my head, I continued, "I think the next passage is basically saying that after he rises, something will still be hiding in the shifting sand waiting to drag us down. We're going to have to be careful where we're standing so nothing grabs us."

Caeda paled even more, "wha… what do we do if something grabs us?!"

Sibylla patted her on the shoulder. "Probably get dragged screaming under the sand and eaten… But don't worry! We'll keep you safe."

Amélie slapped her hand away. "Cut that out! Everything will be okay, Caeda. We will be working together to stay safe."

Sibylla glared back, "That's what I just said!"

I cleared my throat, "Moving on! The next part is about him waking something up. I don't really get it. And floods where stone has been? That's a little more cryptic."

Amélie bobbed her head side to side, "I think the first part means when we do enough damage, he will summon new, more horrible crab monsters, but I agree on the second part. That is vague."

Sibylla grinned, "Maybe it means when his health is low enough, I can find a nice hot rock to put a cauldron on, and he'll crawl right in and fill it with water to boil." At our blank stares, she sighed. "Okay, fine. Bosses usually fight in a boss arena. It probably means parts of the 'arena floor' are going to actually flood, or perhaps the entire arena is supposed to fill with water at that point. We're on a solid beach, not in a dungeon, so I don't think it'll actually matter here. But that also kind of hints that his original fight wasn't underwater, just underground. So, that's good to know."

My eyes went wide with her words. "Oh yeah. Wow, I hope you're right. I don't even want to imagine the damage an actual flood would cause here. If the sea rose up to drown the entire beach, it might even destroy towns further up the coast!"

Amélie shrugged, "Like she said. We're not in the dungeon. Do not stress yourself out over something that is not going to happen."

Sibylla started walking toward the beach, calling over her shoulder, "Only one way to find out!"

I sighed, but nodded and hurried to catch up. "No use putting it off. Let's get this over with."

Caeda groaned, but Amélie stayed beside her, offering some encouragement as they followed. "You will do great. Try to keep back and stay as unnoticed as possible. Haunt knows how to stay out of trouble, and we will keep an eye on you. But call out if you have any problems, and watch out for any attempts to cut you off from the rest of us, okay?"

They continued to talk as they followed us into town, but I was too busy focusing on the beach and the lines of broken earth surrounding the town to pay much attention. It was impossible to forget how things went down the last time we were here. Just as before, when we reached the ring of broken earth, we decided not to try to walk across. It looked about as safe as quicksand, and who knew if the wall of crabs was always down there, or if they only appeared in the boss fight.

I couldn't just carry everyone across this time, so instead, I used my levitation aura, and we all ran together and jumped. With a solid gust of wind, we crossed quickly, and I even got to watch Haunt doggy paddle through the air with his giant, fluffy paws the entire way. That was worth the whole trip.

We weren't traveling on the exact same streets as before, but it was still obvious to us that the town had suffered more damage since the last time we were here. I felt a little guilty about that. It was likely due to the Blackstone soldiers led here to retake the town after we'd snuck in and claimed it. We'd never heard what happened to them, and most likely, that was because they'd charged right in and never made it back out.

That wasn't worth thinking about. We didn't ask for that fight. Instead, I shook off the chill crawling down my spine and looked to Sibylla.

"The last time we were here, the boss didn't react until we were near the manor. At least, not that I noticed. What about you?"

She shrugged, "I think anywhere that the ground is disturbed, he's somehow monitoring it. My guess is it's probably through the crabs buried there, or the ones scuttling around – and more of that kind are roaming through the town now. He might already know we're here."

Amélie looked back at her. "Why do you think he is waiting to attack then? Maybe a trap?"

She only shrugged, "So far as I could tell, the monsters and bosses in the Tower of Learning had very specific rules they had to follow. They're not automatons or anything. The dungeon magic that creates them is similar to summoning magic with its contract-like rules. They're sort of like living beings or constructs created from raw magic potential, with minds kind of like minor spirits. And just like spirits, they have rules that guide them. I figure it's at least partly the same for this big guy, but since he's somehow outside his dungeon... who knows?"

That… made sense to me. "If dungeons creating monsters is similar to summoning magic and contracts, maybe whatever caused him to be out here damaged or broke that contract. Though, wouldn't that mean he could be up to whatever he wants? Why is he even staying here?"

Sibylla shook her head, "Not really, no. It isn't actual contract or summoning magic. The dungeon does create the monsters, and in that process, it gives them their nature. Maybe they could eventually learn to change over time, at least a little, but I'm willing to bet this guy hasn't changed much at all if the first thing he did was try to recreate his boss arena."

As we talked, we made it to where the sand had begun to reclaim the streets, the beach just ahead.

Caeda began to ask, "Wait, if spirits all have rules…"

But she was cut off as the entire world seemed to shift under our feet, and we all staggered. The tremor ended almost as soon as it began, but the silence it left behind was worse. It felt like the world froze as cries of the gulls, crashing of the waves, the wind, and even the rumbling storms overhead seemed to hush, waiting for what was coming.

I opened my mouth to tell the others to get ready, but the sand ahead of us began to rise like a breath drawn too deep. A groaning, grinding rumble shook the ground, and the street ahead of us split open with a spray of crabs and stone before the crack filled behind them in a flood of sand and seawater.

Then, the beach shifted. A shard of barnacle-crusted coral slid into view, rising like a ship cresting a wave as the sand crumbled away, followed by two claws the size of large wagons that burst upward with the crack of stone and a hiss of steam. More crabs, from the mundane to the oversized monsters I knew would be rising all around the outskirts of the town, poured out in every direction. There had to be thousands of them, clawing up broken walls, scurrying through the streets and rooftops, and surging in our direction like a living tide.

Caeda cast in panic, remembering her role, but wasting mana as she summoned her distracting illusions, only to be ignored by the swarm already fixated on us. The impossible wave of monsters scuttling toward us was far larger than anything we'd expected. It was as if K'thralis had been building up the swarm in anticipation of our return, ready to open with an unimaginable, unavoidable killing blow.

And that was fair, because I'd been working on my opening strike from the moment we chose to come here. I'd poured my magic and every scrap of focus I could spare into the roiling storm above. A constant, silent tug-of-war with the flighty spirits flowing through it, coaxing and bargaining for every shred of power my [Control Weather] spell could gather. I'd wanted to hold all that potential for a single, overwhelming blow to blast K'thralis out of the sand and start the fight with him as damaged as possible. Now, it looked like I had no choice but to use it early to carve a hole through that swarm before we were overrun.

As I sent my magic into the sky, the world shook with a roaring boom. I'd meant to summon a strike. One, powerful, arcing bolt, possibly close enough to help flush out the boss, but with the intention to fry the worst of the oversized crabs charging our way. But the moment I reached for the storm, the sky answered like it had been waiting.

My skin prickled as the air throughout the entire waterfront went electric. My hair lifted as small pops of lightning sparked away from my Devil's Crown. Rain began to fall in thick, urgent sheets, as if the clouds couldn't hold it back any longer. I didn't even have to coax the lightning. It was already clawing at the underside of the storm, begging to be released. And at my call, it came with a scream.

A massive bolt ripped down from the clouds, slamming into the sand with a sound like the world being torn in half. The wet earth exploded in steam, arcing electricity, and broken shell. A dozen massive crabs were flung skyward, their bodies crisped mid-flight. The smell hit a second later: Salt, ozone, and... grilled seafood?

"Is that—" Sibylla ducked as another flash lit the beach, then blinked at the aftermath, turning an ecstatic grin my way. "Are you cooking them?"

I didn't answer. My focus was entirely drawn into the storm, and I was barely holding the reins. The lightning didn't stop, not that I wanted it to. When I felt how it was drawing on my mana and felt the intent of the storm, I pushed harder, building pathways from the sky to the beach and town below, eagerly letting my mana flood out like turning a tap.

More bolts followed, each crashing down faster than before, and each clap of thunder echoing in my ears like a roar of hunger and rage. They crashed down in chaotic bursts, arcing between rooftops, dancing along flooded alleys, lashing out at anything that moved… and there was a lot moving. Every impact sent a webwork of arcing electricity into anything nearby. Still, the thousands of crabs surged like a living carpet, and the lightning was all too eager to play.

I had wanted to draw the boss out. But this? I had no idea what this would have done to a single target. This was a massacre, and I did nothing to stop the wild grin spreading across my face as I fueled it. A thrill pulsed through me, hot and intoxicating. It was the Power. Not the steady strength I was used to, not the careful pressure of a spell being shaped or the pulse of magic I'd fire into my enemies. This was raw, wild, primal worship. The storm spirits weren't just responding to my call. They were celebrating. They surged through the sky, eager, joyful, delighting in the destruction. And they were listening to me.

Something in the back of my mind was screaming that maybe this was too much. As if to punctuate the thought, a bolt forked too close, sending the ground beneath Sibylla and Amélie exploding in a shower of glass, sand, and sparks. They dove for cover, and my heart jumped with them.

"No!" I slammed my will into my Lightning Control, forcing the magic to bend. I'd been so caught up in the magic and slaughter that I'd nearly forgotten I wasn't alone. The spirits fought me, but not out of malice. They were still caught in the momentum. They were in full gallop, drunk on the dance of death. I had to pour everything I had into that control. Not with just a command, I knew better than that, but a plea. I reached out with my Spiritual Communion, whispering my feelings into the wind. My heart sang with my panic, urgency, and caution, the core of my message clear: "Protect them!"

I didn't have to wait to know if I'd been heard. The storm shifted in an instant. Lightning curved in the sky like a blade being drawn. The next bolt didn't strike near us. It veered hard, snapping into a distant rooftop swarming with monsters. Crabs burst like firecrackers. Another bolt chased along a flooded gutter, leaping crab to crab like a demented chain of dominoes. Every flash lit the world in blue-white agony.

I breathed an exhausted sigh of relief, and I felt them breathe, too, in their own metaphysical way… Only for the spirits, it was from excitement, exhaustion, and amusement in equal measure. Below, the swarm thinned. Fried shells smoked across the street. Steam rose in lazy curls. The sharp, greasy smell of roasted crab clung to the air like a guilty confession.

Sibylla coughed, waving away the smoke with a giant, steaming pincer she'd caught at some point. "So," she said, dragging her voice out like a critic at a gallery opening, "when exactly did you become a seafood-themed goddess of death?"

I exhaled, my arms trembling. "That was... not how I planned it."

Amélie looked up from where she'd shielded Caeda, eyes wide. "Well, it worked!"

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My eyes shifted to the storm still boiling above, a little quieter now as I slowly began to rebuild its power, "I guess it did." I wiped a bead of rain off my cheek and looked toward the beach, where the sand still churned. "I guess that's one problem down."

Sibylla tossed down the claw in her hands, an obvious bite missing out of the white meat at its end, and said, "Now let's go meet the main course."

We didn't waste any time. We could feel the eyes of K'thralis on us from beneath the sand, and already more crabs were moving in our direction. The tremors didn't stop, but they did change into something more akin to a constant low rumble beneath the sand, almost like something massive stirring in slow, deliberate circles just under the surface.

We moved together, step by cautious step, and I led from the front, sparking like a stolen memory of the sky above. [Channel Lightning] roared through me, electricity crackling across my skin and glaive, as the excitement from moments before still played in the back of my mind. I thrust it forward with both hands as a dog-sized crab lunged from a shattered window. Lightning chained from my body, into the blade, and out through the crab, arcing into the half-dozen smaller ones swarming behind it. They dropped like puppets with severed strings, steam pouring from the burst joins in their carapace.

Behind me, the others moved as one. My sisters and Haunt had plenty of practice keeping pace, and Caeda managed it by the simple expedient of riding on his back. Not that we looked anything like soldiers marching in formation.

Sibylla was a blur in the shadows, a wraith drifting through the chaos. One moment, she perched atop a roof beam, casting a slow, curling curse that made a crab's shell bubble and crack from within. The next, she was slicing a monstrous claw clean off with her not-katana, her stolen scythe glinting across her back like it was watching for its cue, and a quiet mantra that sounded suspiciously like a recipe for crab rangoon on her lips.

Amélie flowed like fire and water combined; her stance shifted between striking like a hammer and weaving like a stream. She ducked under a claw swipe, then retaliated with a glowing palm strike that knocked a crab the size of a horse cart end over end. Her shielding spells and auras shimmered around us, flickering between bursts of impact and soft pulses of healing light. I couldn't count how many times her magic caught a blow that would've staggered one of us. She never moved far from Caeda's side, determined to keep her safe and let her focus on her spells.

Caeda's illusions scattered across the sand like panicked prey. Every time a new group of crabs appeared, they were met by tiny deer, scampering foxes, even flocks of screaming gulls—all glowing with shifting light and moving erratically, drawing the attention of the less intelligent monsters. From her perch on Haunt's back, she kept her distance, flinging light bolts that ricocheted like flare shots into clusters of swarming enemies. Haunt darted and danced through the chaos with eerie precision, fangs snapping at anything that got too close, and not even trying to be subtle about it when he caught a snack.

And still, they kept coming. They crawled up from the dunes, poured down from rooftops. They crawled out from beneath collapsed buildings and shattered carts. Crabs of every shape and size, some with crazed mutations like extra claws or wicked spines growing at every angle. Others were weird and fantastical, with oddities like rusted harpoons and hooks fused into their shells, looking almost like they'd grafted shipwrecks to themselves.

We carved our way through group after group, and each time I felt like we'd earned a moment to breathe, another bulge in the sand would rise and split, and more would come. Our plan was working. Everyone was doing their job. But I could feel it in the way my legs were slowing between leaps, the sluggish way the next arc of lightning crawled from my shoulder instead of snapping free. I could hear Amélie's breathing change. I could see the flicker of hesitation in Haunt's steps, the way Caeda's eyes kept darting back toward the nearest escape route. This couldn't last.

We were burning mana, stamina, and time. I wasn't sure how much of that last one, but it had to have been several minutes of combat already without end. It was painful to think that the real fight hadn't even begun yet, but every step had been one closer to K'thralis. When I saw the shadow of a massive claw moving in my direction, I grinned.

The grin didn't last long. I tensed up, ready to respond, but the claw didn't attack. It just hovered there, mockingly. I watched until, half-buried in the sand, the massive pincer scraped the earth in a lazy circle, stirring up another wave of chittering spawn. He wasn't charging. He didn't even bother to snap his claws in our general direction, or even give us a feinting attack. He just watched.

I narrowed my eyes. "That's not normal, right?"

Sibylla's voice popped in from a rooftop shadow, dry as salted driftwood. "It's a flex. He's waiting."

"For what?" Caeda asked, her voice tight with nerves.

"To see if we will tire ourselves out or try something stupid," Amélie said calmly, shifting her stance and casting a fresh ward over Sibylla. "I did not think monsters could plan like that."

"They do if they're part dungeon boss, part delicious eldritch beach deity," Sibylla said, already prepping another curse. "Also, we are about to do something stupid, right?"

"Obviously," I said, spinning my glaive and letting more sparks dance along the haft. "We're out of time. We either end this swarm, or it ends us. His claw is right there. We just need to figure out where he is under the sand."

"I can smell him," Sibylla muttered, eyes narrowing. "Like… fresh crab… with steaming potential."

"What's the plan?" Caeda asked over the sound of Sibylla's stomach growling.

I turned toward the others. "We pull him out. The more damage we do, the more it interrupts his summoning. We're not stopping the crabs unless we make him fight."

Amélie nodded, "It is either that, or we die tired."

Sibylla dropped into the sand beside me, her blade practically glowing with some alchemical concoction. "I'll mark weak spots in the shell-line. Watch for purple spines where he's close to the surface. Blasting near them is the only way we're going to hurt him through this sand."

I blinked at her, "Shell-line? That's not a real term. You just made that up!"

She shrugged, winked, and vanished again into a shadow, only to reappear near a crumbling house where the sand shifted oddly. A whispered curse lit the ground beneath her feet, and she vanished again, reappearing farther along with a showy flick of her wrist as a timed hex detonated behind her in a fizz of violet flame and skittering limbs.

The sand almost seemed to crumble under the detonation, and I saw the side effect of her attack at the same time she did. It wasn't only that we could hurt the boss where its shell was near the surface. With those detonations, we could collapse his cover. We shared a grin across the distance before she vanished, moving to a new target.

We charged back into the fight, but every opportunity I had between kills, I checked for her markers. If I saw one where the sand hadn't collapsed, I drew a Flameburst Scroll from my belt and detonated the spell in the space.

Amélie stayed close to the line, shielding Sibylla and me both as we pushed on, clearing a long crescent along the beach. Then, her foresight flared in time to shove me aside just as a tidal wave of buried crabs exploded upward. "Left!" she cried, and I ducked, swinging my glaive in a low arc that carved a crackling swath through the emerging monstrosities.

Caeda let loose another pulse of dancing lights, this time a swarm of glowing jellyfish that drifted low to the sand, blinking erratically and drawing dozens of smaller crabs away like moths to flame. From Haunt's back, she hurled a glowing ball overhead. It exploded midair, casting a blinding nova across the beach that staggered another cluster of advancing carapace horrors.

"Did it work?!" she called, shielding her eyes.

Sibylla popped up next to her and casually stabbed a crab that was trying to flank Haunt. "Define 'work.'"

This wasn't working. At least, not fast enough. Ignoring their banter, I took advantage of the moment she'd bought us and leapt away from the others, landing on a spot Sibylla had marked. With a deep breath, I dropped to one knee, thrusting my glaive into the wet sand, and sent my magic reaching into the sky. With a thundering boom, lightning crashed into me, pouring down the haft of my weapon as I directed it deep into the earth beneath us. The sand surged under my feet, leaving behind a spiderweb of cracks and glass on the beach below.

Another piece of shell surfaced. A coral spine the length of a tree rose slowly from the sand, followed by a writhing leg, then another, twitching as if disturbed mid-rest.

"Uh, I think he's coming up!" I called to the others as I backpedaled to rejoin the group.

Sibylla gave a savage grin. "Took him long enough."

"Brace yourselves," Amélie murmured. "The floor is about to try to kill us."

Even as she spoke, a huge ridge of coral burst through the surface, and the whole beach jumped. The ground began to groan and vibrate beneath our feet, as if the world itself was grinding its teeth. And then, the ground sank. It wasn't like the collapses and cracks we'd seen up to this point, but rather, the beach just melted away. The buildings closest to the beach creaked and snapped as their foundations suddenly disappeared, what little was left of the town's southern wall collapsed and disappeared, and a whole stretch of the ruined street behind us slid into itself, moving like batter poured into a mold.

Amélie's voice called out over the cacophony, her warning much louder this time, "Move! The floor has decided to join the conversation!"

I stumbled sideways as a half-dissolved wall tipped forward and crashed into the sludge where we'd been standing. "What does that mean?!"

"It means the terrain is now very interested in your survival," she said, almost serenely, shielding Caeda with a fresh spell.

Sibylla reappeared on a rooftop, smirking. "I understood all of that and still hated it."

Her weird idioms aside, Amélie's warning worked, and with our minds back in the game, we scattered just ahead of the spreading destruction. Sibylla vanished back into the nearest shadow with a delighted laugh, while Haunt launched himself sideways with Caeda still clutching his scruff like a saddle pommel. Amélie was hot on their heels, and I flung myself straight up.

It was just in time, too. A great hissing sound rose from the growing pit, and before we could think to worry about it, he came. K'thralis didn't burst out like some monster lunging from cover. He rose up like a mountain, deciding it was time to stand. Coral, shipwreck debris, barnacle-caked armor, and the twitching legs of a hundred smaller crabs pushed upward in horrible unity. He didn't just break the surface. He broke the beach.

"I sure hope you have insurance," Sibylla quipped from somewhere, but I didn't bother with a response.

I was caught up in taking in the massive creature before me. The collapse of the waterfront was even worse with the shifting of so much weight despite his legs still being half-submerged in the sand. Water sluiced down from somewhere unseen, plummeting to the beach and churning everything into so much quicksand. My eyes drifted to the top of his immense shell, where I found rows of living crabs clinging on in what felt somehow like worship, though my rational mind was trying to insist it was only symbiosis. Guardians, parasites, or maybe even some kind of creepy crustacean priests. I didn't want to know which.

When we'd first arrived at Darkwater Downs, I'd estimated that the path of destruction leading to the manor was around a hundred meters wide. Seeing the monster in front of me, his shell only looked to reach two-thirds that size… but that really didn't matter when the sound of a gale accompanied his massive claw crashing down toward us!

I looked back to the others, calling out, "Incoming!", but my warning wasn't needed. They were already moving, and the time I'd wasted on stating the obvious almost caused me to be smashed flat. Before I could even turn back toward the incoming attack, I felt the air being pushed aside as the claw closed in and cast a frantic [Squall Step] to appear with the rest of my party, who were still running. I took a step to join them when the shockwave hit.

It was like a bomb had gone off behind us. Sand and seawater detonated out, causing the few remaining structures nearby to crumble like a house of cards. The air itself felt like it popped, and we were all sent flying. I caught a glimpse of Amélie twisting midair, barely catching Haunt with a quickly cast shield as he was flung sideways. Caeda shrieked, vanished from the saddle, and reappeared upside-down in a pile of twitching, shattered crab limbs, sputtering water, and coughing. Sibylla had vanished, leaving only a lingering echo of her shadow behind on a rooftop that no longer existed.

Covered in salt, sand, and shattered crabs, I foxed, shook myself off, and jumped to my feet as I shifted back just in time to feel the ground rumble beneath my feet again. Everyone ran to regroup, but before we got far, another claw tore a trench through the battlefield, looking almost as if he were unzipping the world between him and us. The sand across the entire beach rippled in a pulse, shifting with the movement, before swelling under K'thralis like it was taking a deep breath.

"Oh no," I muttered, just before it exhaled.

A cone of chittering, hissing, fist-sized crabs launched from K'thralis's undercarriage in a living flood. They struck the ground in waves, pinning anything they touched in place. I jumped, barely clearing the worst of it, and spun my glaive downward, crackling with lightning to scorch a hole in the swarm. The others took advantage of the gap I created, diving into it to avoid the attack, but even with my strike, I couldn't stop all of the vicious little monsters from getting through.

I spun in the air, my wide eyes tracking the dozens that slipped past, flying toward where the others had landed. Fortunately, that was when Sibylla chose to reappear, stepping from my shadow to the sand ahead of them, a wall of stolen Blackstone Keep furniture snapping into place just in time to catch the remaining barrage.

The moment my feet touched the ground, I sprinted to the others, glancing at the heap of furniture to see barbed, jagged crab shells stuck fast in the mess, limbs kicking uselessly in the air. Amélie was helping Caeda back onto Haunt's back and called out as I reached them.

"We need to split up so he cannot target us all at once with that attack!"

Caeda, looking shaken but determined, nodded, "That is not how crabs are supposed to fight!"

"Tell him that," Sibylla answered, amused. "He is not armored like a normal crab, either. Look at the breaks and moving parts in his shell. He shed parts of it entirely when he broke free of the beach."

That gave me an idea, "I'll go up top and look for weaknesses—"

But I didn't get to finish. A low, rumbling roar rolled through the sand, vibrating up through my boots like a storm trapped underground. K'thralis moved, each of his legs lifting and plunging back through the sand in an alternating rhythm. Each step was careful and deliberate, but with his incredible size, there was nothing slow about it. He didn't charge; he only turned slightly, but the dozens of massive steps he took completely rearranged the battlefield yet again.

The sand began collapsing in moving canyons across the beach, each flooding with water and sand in their wake. We all saw the danger and moved. Haunt, Amélie, and Caeda ran and jumped to an island of stable sand nearby, Sibylla fell into her own shadow, and I leapt directly up. It gave me a good view of the beach, and I levitated to watch the similar ripples that flowed through it, the islands of safety shifting until the movement stopped.

As soon as I realized what I was watching, I began marking the safe spots with orbs of [Fox Fire] before they were hidden in the sea of quicksand… but that brought K'thralis's attention back on me. I felt the warning in the wind a heartbeat too late. I dropped my Levitation Aura and fell straight down, dodging the worst of it, but not all. His claw snapped shut right where I'd been, and though I wasn't caught between the jagged pincers, the momentum of the grab still slammed his claw into the back of my head.

Amélie's shields flared and shattered. They nullified the damage, but I was still sent tumbling through the air. The world spun around me as I tried to orient myself, but all I knew for sure was I was about to crash into the sand, and I didn't see any of the safe markers I'd put down anywhere nearby. In a dizzying crash, my side impacted the ground with a spray of sand and water, and I skipped like a stone on a lake, losing much of my momentum.

I saw the sand rippling like water beneath me for the sliver of time I had in a rotation, and I knew I wasn't going to skip again. With Sibylla's words about being dragged below and eaten ringing in my head, I did the first thing that came to mind that would keep me from sinking. I foxed. This time, when I hit the ground, I slid across the liquid sand's surface for several meters and even managed to pop to my feet at the end.

I quickly shook off as much of the muck as I could and gave myself a quick mental check. As usual, the fall didn't seem to have any negative impact on my health, and surprisingly, my fur had done a great job on its own of protecting me from the slide. If I excluded the loss of Amélie's protective spells, the whole thing seemed to have been a net positive. My [Windbound Resilience] had turned the rushing air into stamina, bringing me back over fifty percent, and forcing his attention away for a physical attack meant that he wasn't summoning.

I could hear the explosive spells cracking in the distance and snarky shouting from the others trying to coordinate, but before I could rush back to join them, I felt the surface below my paws begin to bulge and bounded to the side, narrowly dodging a pincer larger than myself. It snapped shut before being yanked back below the surface, but I could feel more coming and immediately started racing back toward the others. One glance over my shoulder was enough to see claws from a dozen oversized crabs snapping only feet behind me. I snapped an insight at the nearest one before focusing on my sprint and rushing on.

[Tide Reaver – Drowned Lurker, level 27.]

A slight moment of relief hit me with the notification when I saw it was eleven levels below that of K'thralis, but I couldn't let my guard down. That was still very close to my own, and for all I knew, there were thousands of them down there. And then another thought hit me. They were real monsters, and more and more seemed to be chasing me. If I ran back to the others, were they going to follow me back on land?

Apparently, the others were thinking something similar, because only a few seconds later, Sibylla appeared on an island far away from the others, waving her arms wildly while calling my name.

"Evelyn! ..Evie! ..Hey Dummy! Stop dragging that crab train right toward everyone else! Come this way!"

Seeing the logic in her words, I turned sharply and picked up the pace just a little.

She waited only long enough to make sure the monsters had changed direction to follow me before yelling, "Why aren't you using [Wind Walking]? I guess we can let the giant monster know that aiming for your head is a waste of time!"

I growled, but I couldn't be too angry. She was right – this was a perfect opportunity to use the skill. I jumped high on my next step as if I were going to run up a short flight of stairs, and my paws landed on a sea breeze as solid as stone. It was even easier in my fox form, and once I started going up, I realized I was on course to reach the bosses back, so I kept right on going.

Sibylla stayed right where she was, hurling spell after spell in the direction of K'thralis, despite the train of snapping crab pincers continuing to head right for her. I was almost worried about that enough to miss the fact that she wasn't actually targeting the boss himself. Rather, she seemed to be making some kind of gaseous bursts appear near his face, eyes, and the base of his front legs. Each smoking bolt of magic burst into sparkling green and purple clouds, drifting on the wind toward the gaps in his shell, where soft, wet things probably didn't appreciate the poisons and acids I could practically taste in the air.

At first, I thought she was covering my approach. The clouds were quickly engulfing his eyestalks, making them twitch away on instinct. But that also stopped him from doing much else, as he started swinging his claws wildly, trying to find the source of his torment. As I closed in, careful to dodge the clouds myself, the boss finally spotted Sibylla. Not that it mattered, because the swarm of Tide Reavers was about to slam into her little island, anyway.

Still, he furiously raised one claw after the other, and then slammed them down repeatedly. I nearly froze in the air as Sibylla's island was swarmed by a forest of car-sized crabs right as the boss's claws began raining down. Just before the first crab tackled her and the first impact hit, Sibylla seemed to vanish in a cloud of smoke, a log flipping to the ground where she'd been standing. K'thralis must have missed that because his claws rained down over and over, destroying the island completely, along with the swarm of crabs that were climbing onto it.

I nearly lost focus, but turned back in time to land on top of his shell to find Sibylla sword fighting two of his crab guardians. Or, rather, sword-claw fighting? Whatever, it was a duel. Ready to even the odds, I shifted back to my foxgirl form as I cast [Squall Step] and appeared beside her in a burst of wind, my glaive already swinging to separate one of her opponents.

"What, no nature stick today?" She asked as we forced them apart. "I thought you were trying to work on your fantasy wizard image!"

I grunted, parrying and stepping around a strike to force an opening on a joint, "Not today!" Severing a claw, I explained, "I really like magic and I need the practical experience…. but this is serious! I have to fight for real!"

She flipped over my head, a smug look on her face as she landed sword first on my crab, skewering it. "You could have had a wizard beard."

I snorted, spinning to intercept her crab, and slammed a lightning-infused glaive directly through its face. "Probably best that I didn't, then." I ripped my glaive clear, taking in our surroundings and the distant crabs moving in our direction. "I like eating too much messy food. It would be awful."

She grinned, "Okay, speaking of messy food, I think the big guy is actually spawning his guards from the random features on its shell, like that broken shipwreck over there."

Following her pointing hand, I turned and then squinted. "Why is it surrounded by red barrels?"

"No reason. Think you could hit it with lightning from here?"

I rolled my eyes. "I don't think that's possible to miss."

With a thought and a dramatically raised hand, I snapped my fingers and reached into the storm above, carving a perfect path for the lightning to follow. It only took a second to cast. Just long enough to catch Sibylla's eyes going wide as she threw up a warding gesture a moment too late.

In that moment, lightning roared down from the storm above, and three things happened.

First, as expected, the shipwreck was obliterated by nature's fury. A bolt of raw power — about ninety million joules of electric murder, or roughly forty-eight pounds of TNT — slammed into it, turning the entire mess into flaming kindling. Which was important because as the ship shattered, the bolt kept going. As physics demanded, it grounded straight through K'thralis.

Second, his shell shimmered, and in an effect I'd never seen before, the spell reflected. His new defensive feature had done exactly what I'd done: created a path. Only now, it connected back to me, and the lightning followed it.

And third, I took that bolt full to the chest. To be fair, it still grounded through him, so it was a net win. But it also launched me like a firework across the battlefield. Which, in hindsight, I probably should've expected. Especially since I'd ignored Sibylla's sarcastic, mischievous tone when she said there was no reason for the barrels.

Like a literal punchline to her joke, the alchemical explosion accelerated my flight, its shockwave hitting me only a fraction of a second after the lightning. It wasn't a long flight, at least. My back slammed into one of the approaching crab guardians, who was then smashed into another structure on the shell not too far away, a mass grave of crabs, clams, and other shelled creatures. Fortunately, this one wasn't surrounded by exploding barrels, but the impact was enough to jam a pair of crab shell spines punching into my lower back and drain my Ghost Helm enchantment completely.

Before I'd gotten a chance to fully bounce away from the wall I'd slammed into, Sibylla rolled across the ground, sliding to a stop in front of me. I really appreciated that, because I was too stunned to catch myself as I fell, and her stomach was a much better place for my face to land than the rough shell of the boss.

She let out a "Oof!" as I landed, but a couple of seconds later, clarified, "Ugh, I meant hit the barrels with a zap from channel lightning! The boss has spell reflect!"

Doing my best to suck in a breath, I answered, "Next time, be slightly more specific.… ow!"

She tossed away the spine she's pulled out, then reached for the other, "Too late now. I guess this works too." I yelped when she ripped out the second spine, and she snorted at me, "Stop being such a baby. We need to rig this one with explosives, too. There are at least four more after it."

She punctuated her words by dumping a potion across my back that sent a shock of relief through me, the muscles around the former wounds immediately relaxing.

I croaked out a "Thanks" as I popped up to my feet, only then realizing with the slowly spinning sky and surprisingly subtle vibrations that the boss was moving again. "I guess I'll watch your back while you set up more fireworks... How the heck were people supposed to do this normally? This is crazy!"

She glanced over the side of our host, watching the illusions scurrying in every direction, crabs in hot pursuit, while Amélie, Haunt, and Caeda hopped from one shifting island to the next, then shrugged. "They probably brought a lot more people and used the boss arena mechanics to do a lot of the work for them. Maybe they dropped the roof on the sections up here to break the shell? Who knows."

While she explained and began pulling out chemicals and powders, I stepped forward, intercepting the groups of crabs beginning to arrive. I glided through their numbers, my [Channel Lightning] constantly snapping out in controlled arcs to help me keep their attention while I worked to cleave claws off at the joints and crush shells.

Still a little out of breath, I said, "I guess I should remember that next time! I'm so used to small groups!"

She scoffed behind me, "That seems unnecessary. We're [Heroes]. Besides, we'd get less experience and have to split the loot."

I sighed, "Of course."

We continued on like this for a few minutes, her working on her alchemical bombs while I played defense, and both of us looking from time to time to check on the others below. I thought the movement of the boss was slowing down her careful measurements; however, when I finally had a break to check on her, I turned to find that not only was she completely done, but all of the giant crab claws that had been littering the ground were now missing, too.

"Were you using me to farm more crab meat?!"

She gave me an innocent look, "What would give you that idea? Also, I'm finished here. We shouldn't fight so close to these explosives, it's not safe."

I think I sprained something rolling my eyes, but then we were off, sprinting to the next formation – a large chunk of coral. As soon as we neared the limit I thought I could manage, I snapped out at the closest of her barrels with a charge from [Channel Lightning]. The detonation was far more controlled, sending its force into the crustacean graveyard and the shell below rather than out at us.

With our next target in sight, we began pushing through the onrushing waves of minions, killing and disabling them with strikes to any weakness they left open. There were a lot of them, and avoiding hits ourselves was impossible, but with our level difference, our armor took most of the damage, leaving only superficial wounds behind, and before I knew it, I was once again defending Sibylla from the waves of spawning enemies.

We continued on like this for the rest of the formations, each with thematic mutations to the minions they spawned. After the coral reef, we destroyed a crumbling shrine to a militaristic-looking crab with an eyepatch, a spire of interlocked seashells and metal wreckage, and finally, a great fleshy growth hosting an abyssal maw of teeth and tentacles.

Their spawn came at us in waves, forcing us to cut and burn our way through them. At first, every one of the things was coming at us together in a confusing swarm full of unnatural limbs, mutated shells, and a spectrum of skills and powerful magic. None of it was enough. We tore through them in an overpowering whirlwind of blades, lightning, curses, and explosions. I dragged them in with my channeled wind and lightning, forcing them together where we could burn them down together. Any time their powerful casters would begin channeling, Sibylla would ambush them from the shadows.

It was obvious that they were never intended to be engaged so directly. If they were able to stand along the edge of the boss and fire down at its enemies, they'd be a terror. Maybe even if they managed to swell their numbers enough to rush down all at once, they could even overwhelm an army. In the end, whatever their original purpose was didn't matter. We weren't allowing them to do anything like that. They were dying as quickly as they could spawn and rush at us, and worse for them, every time we destroyed one of their spawn points, their numbers thinned even further.

K'thralis wasn't fairing well, either. The explosions were sending a webwork of cracks across his shell, and his movements became noticeably less steady with each one. As we were sprinting away from the final formation, the horrible, slimy tentacle maw, he was even at the point where he needed to stop and rest every few steps.

I spun around and swung my glaive, sending an arc of power crashing into the disgusting flesh mound behind us, revulsion dripping from my voice. "Crabs do not need tentacles!"

The final explosion hit like a hammer to the chest, launching me backward. Okay, maybe I'd been standing a little too close. But the faster that thing was erased from existence, the better.

I landed hard, skidding a few feet before coming to rest at Sibylla's boots, blinking up into her amused eyes.

I shuddered, but nodded. "Much."

I reached for her hand, let her pull me up, and gestured toward the shell's edge closest to where Amélie and Caeda waited below.

"Shall we get back to it?"

She just turned and started running, calling back, "Probably would be best not to be separated from the others for whatever this phase change is going to be."

I sprinted to catch up and run at her side, "Yeah. I feel like this was a little too easy. Almost like the calm before the storm." She raised an eyebrow, glancing up, and I sighed. "You know what I mean!"

With a grin, she agreed, "I guess so. But you are covered in blood. I think if you didn't have whatever that regeneration is, you'd have bled out. It's a good thing that gown mends itself."

I looked down at myself and groaned. "This gown is great, but I think next time we're going to a fight with monsters, I should invest in some more solid armor."

"Oh! Good idea!" she called out excitedly. "If we add some armored plates to the gown, we'll get into some real anime warrior princess territory!"

I nearly stumbled a step, recovering just in time to see a massive pincer rising up in front of us. We both came to a staggering stop, still a dozen meters from the edge of the shell.

"Crabs can't reach their backs, right?" Sibylla asked as we both readied ourselves to dodge.

"No.. well, not normally. This thing isn't exactly a normal crab, though."

To prove my point, the claw snapped open far wider than it would need to crush the both of us, then came rushing in our direction. We both began to move, but we could see the angle was wrong almost right away. Instead, it slammed shut on the edge of its own shell, shattering it.

Shards of carapace, salt, and sand flew in every direction as the shell under our feet began to tear apart along the cracks we'd made with deafening snaps, filling the air with the scent of brine and rot. We both flailed for balance as we were tossed about in the earthquake of crumbling chitin and snapping sinews.

Then, he pulled. The entire shell ripped apart, massive chunks flying out in every direction, and we were sent flying with it.