NOVEL NEXT Chapter 3: The Great Wrath
Jimmy, an elderly steward on NOAH 1, often regaled the younger crew during dinner with tales of his youth before the Great Wrath. I would listen from under the table at his feet, where he occasionally dropped a fish cake or a spoonful of tuna for me to nibble on. The others would lean in close, captivated by his stories. Placing a pipe packed with a clump of dried seaweed between his lips, he began to speak of the signs.
The rain showed no sign of stopping, despite the weatherman's forecast predicting it would persist only through the night before tapering off by morning. Instead, it went on and on, flooding the streets and surging through houses, filling them to the brim and forcing people to seek refuge on their rooftops and wait desperately for help. But long before the Endless Rain began, the signs were all around us. The humans just chose to ignore them. They went on with their lives, sucking up all of Earth’s milk and honey, while giving nothing back, only leaving behind mountains of poisonous waste.
Summers grew hotter and stretched on longer, while fall and spring became little more than brief transitions. Birds plummeted from the sky, overwhelmed by the scorching heat, and perished upon impact. Winters, though short, turned brutal, marked by fierce hail, sleet, and temperatures that plunged so low that without proper gloves or boots, stepping outside for even a few minutes meant risking frostbite. People adapted to these changes, but they themselves never changed their ways. Denying the truth is to deny reality itself; no matter how brutal, the truth remains, and it is the right of all to face it, to know it, and to bear its mark.
There were other signs of an impending doom, not just in the weather. One of them I’ve seen at the beach. As I strolled along the shore, something strange was washed up on the sand. A growing crowd quickly gathered around it, snapping photographs and talking all excitedly. I made my way over to see what all the fuss was about. What I saw was unlike anything I had ever seen before!
It was a serpent. Its body, slender and impossibly long, gleamed with a metallic sheen, shades of blue and green. A fiery red crest ran the length of its spine, and its eyes were like black pits that swallowed the light. It took twenty men to lift the creature from the ground! But what did seeing an oarfish mean? I'll tell you–it was an omen. A message from an angry sea god.
Was it really a message from a sea god? Did such beings even exist? These questions churned in my mind as I found myself speaking to a sea turtle. I was aboard a fisherman’s boat, seeking a break from the monotony of life on the ship. Alan was busy with her duties as a petty officer, and the Kelping children were off with their mother in Floating City. So, on a whim, I decided to join the fishermen, hoping for a bit of adventure.
As fate would have it, a sea turtle became entangled in the fisherman’s net. The poor creature was hauled onto the deck, thrashing in panic as the fisherman carefully worked to free him. Sensing his fear—likely thinking he was about to become a meal—I crouched down beside him, speaking in soft tones. I asked him about sea gods and other mysteries of the deep, not really expecting an answer, but trying to soothe his anxiety as he lay helpless on the deck.
G-G-Gods? No, no, there are no gods—just us. Just us, who've seen it all. I've been there, I swear. The oarfish… oh, the oarfish. Such delicate, sensitive creatures. They feel everything, you know? They can feel the earth, deep, deep down in the bottom of the sea. They felt it shift. I don't know why, but it drove them up, up, up, until they flung themselves onto the shore, desperate, suicidal. It was as if they knew something, something terrible—but were too stupid to make sense of it. Or maybe... maybe it was us who were too stupid to listen.
I was just returning to the water, leaving behind the eggs I’d buried in the sand, when I saw them—dozens of them, washed up on the shore. The sight... it made me remember what my grandfather used to say. He warned me, you know. Because an oarfish, just before he flung himself up, told him that something was coming. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. Sooner than we’d think!
And then it came—the Great Wrath. I remember it vividly. I was only half the age I am now, just a youthful sea turtle, when the waves rose up and devoured the lands. I could feel the tremors, the pull of something immense and terrible. The world above was drowning, and below, everything changed.
Giant structures appeared underwater, unlike anything I had ever seen before. They were tall, rectangular, and unnatural. And then there were the strange creatures—large fish with six eyes scattered all around their heads and the most bizarre fins, fins that seemed as solid as rock. I had never seen anything like them.
They moved stiffly through the water, like they didn’t belong, like they were lost. And the bodies… Oh, the bodies. So many of them. People, thrashing in panic, their limbs flailing desperately before they went still. And then, slowly, they sank—down, down, down to the bottom of the sea, where they lay in silence.
But why did they call it the Great Wrath? To the humans, it was a disaster of unimaginable scale, but for many of my sea brothers and sisters, it was a time of plenty, of feasting. The sharks, especially—they reveled in it. To them, it was no wrath at all, but a bounty sent from above. Maybe that was proof that the sea gods exist. I don’t know. All I know is that my kind was terrified—truly, deeply worried. If the land was swallowed up by the sea, where would we lay our eggs? Where would our young begin their lives? The ocean was closing in on every side, and it seemed like there was no place left for us.
But then, as if our prayers had been heard, we found refuge. Small plots of sandy and rocky land still remained, like scattered jewels in the endless blue. Not large islands, no—sadly, nothing so grand. But enough. Just enough for us to haul ourselves ashore, to waddle up the sand and lay our eggs, to continue the cycle. We share these small sanctuaries with the seals, who laze about in the sun, basking without a care. It's not much, but it's something—one we’ve learned to cherish.
The moment the fisherman freed the turtle, it briskly slipped back into the water. The creature had witnessed the events of the Great Wrath from beneath the surface, and I couldn't help but wonder how it all appeared from above. My curiosity could only be satisfied by one other creature—the albatross. It is the only bird species I know that still survives in this water world. I met one such bird that had survived the Great Wrath and lived the time before it.
The old albatross soared high above the churning ocean. Its feathers, once pure white, were now tinged with soft grays of age, and the edges of its wings frayed like a weathered sail. Its eyes, though dulled by the years, still shined with a quiet wisdom. The albatross glided down with grace, alighting on the rail beside me. I asked it what it had witnessed during the Great Wrath.
Did you know that humans once flew in enormous metal birds, as large as whales? In the months leading up to the catastrophe, many of these machines fell from the sky, caught in violent storms or struck by lightning, only to explode in midair! Terrifying, magnificent sights.
Volcanoes filled the skies with thick black clouds and choking ash. Islands crumbled, swallowed by the depths of the sea. Then, it was as if the entire world began to drown—massive waves, towering higher than the tallest structures men had built, surged forward, sweeping away human civilization. But not all were lost, of course. Some survived. They clung to life aboard ships and small boats that had somehow weathered the storm.
NOAH 1 was such a vessel, a savior of hundreds from the gaping maw of the sea, plucking them from the brink of oblivion. This iron leviathan became my home, and its crew my family. Every soul aboard this iron ark did their part in running and maintaining it, and everyone had each other's back.
The albatross leaped off the rail and flew across the sky, its wings outstretched to their full in a graceful arc. It descended and hovered mere inches above the water’s surface. It waited then struck the water with the speed of lightning. In an instant, it seized its prey—a flash of silver in its beak—before soaring back into the sky.