Our journey began well at first, like most things did. An uneventful ascent through the inky black, with Aerion’s sub’s interior lights being the only source of illumination. Even that started to disappear, as her sub ascended more quickly than ours. Probably because of our extra weight, being three people as opposed to her two.

  I even began to have hope that we’d make it topside without issue, and of course, that was the moment disaster struck.

  Disaster came in the form of a shadow in the distance, barely noticed. The problem was made worse by our exterior lights being shut off. There was hardly a morsel of illumination out there.

  “Uh, guys? Don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we’ve got company. Richard, you feel any burstable hearts nearby?”

  “Afraid not,” Richard said immediately. The mood in the sub went from tense to taut, and each of us scanned the darkness for any sign of what we’d just seen.

  “Remind me never to travel in a sub again,” I muttered as the seconds past. Each moment, we worried we might become whale fodder, or end up in the belly of one of the colossal beasts.

  We continued to rise, and yet nothing happened.

  “Did you feel that?” Philip suddenly asked.

  “What?” I said. “I don’t feel any—!?”

  This time, I did feel it. A ‘push’ against the sub, like someone had turned on a giant fan, pushing us off course.

  Then I looked up, trying to spot Aerion’s sub. That was when my stomach fell, and dread’s icy finger stroked my back.

  “Uh, guys? Aerion’s sub. It’s gone.”

  “What? What do you mean, gone?” Richard asked.

  “I mean I can’t see it anymore. No lights. No nothing. One moment, it was there, then it was just—no, wait, it’s back?”

  I frowned, confused. Aerion’s sub lights suddenly appeared, then disappeared, before reappearing again.

  “The fuck is going on?”

  And then it hit me. The cold, hard truth of the matter. A truth I never wished I’d learned.

  It wasn’t her sub lights that were flickering on and off. It was the same thing that happened when distant city lights twinkled from traffic passing in front.

  Except this was no car.

  No, it was a mile-long beast of the deep. A terror so enormous, it defied comprehension.

  “Buckle up, everyone. Think it’s interested in—oh shit!”

  I threw the sub into a hard bank to avoid the shadow that was barreling straight for us. In a split-second decision, I flipped the exterior lights on, expecting to see a massive maw, wide open.

  What I saw instead was strangely familiar to my previous ascent. A moving roof passed above me at speed, except this time, I recognized it for what it was.

  I relaxed as the thing’s tail fin passed us without issue.

  “Well, we’ve avoided being eaten. For now.”

  But just as I was about to slump back in my chair, I thought to look up, but instead of the faint interior lights of Aerion’s sub, I saw… nothing?

  I flipped my exterior lights off, wondering if that was blinding me. Then I let my eyes readjust to the dark.

  Again, nothing. No flickering or anything. No trace of the lights at all.

  That was when I saw something in the distance. Not a shadow, but a silhouette. An incomprehensibly large outline of a massive something. A faint red horizontal bar above it.

  Of course the Trial Guardian was the same colossal creature I’d encountered the first time around. Why the hell wouldn’t it be? Ever since the dragon on the fifth floor, I’d feared something like this would happen. An enemy where not one of our powers counted for shit. I swore to every god I could think of—this was the last goddamned time I was delving a Trial beneath my rank. It was like Dominion was flipping us a giant, cosmic finger.

  The whale circled around for another pass. As for why, that was obvious.

  Chills crawled up my back, and my breaths grew heavy and short.

  “What’s the matter?” Richard asked, seeing my behavior.

  “What happened?”

  “I think we just found the Trial Guardian. And I think Aerion and Rogar’s sub was just eaten.”

  The reality of the situation took several seconds to sink in. What if Aerion’s sub had just drifted high enough that I couldn’t see her? What if she’d taken evasive action like I had, and we were now both separated?

  That theory lasted all the way until I spun the sub, going full forward in the opposite direction to avoid the incoming monster. Nothing. No sign of Aerion’s sub. No, I’d seen the monster pass clearly above us. It had clearly attacked something directly above them.

  “Ideas, anyone?” I asked, trying to get my nerves under control. “Really wouldn’t mind a little help right about now.”

  “Not a chance we outrun that thing,” Richard said.

  “I agree. We have those siege bolts. I say we use them,” Philip replied. Both of them were awfully calm, considering the bombshell I’d just dropped. So was I, for some weird reason. I felt nothing. Just a cold calmness, draped over me like an icy blanket. Was this what Aerion felt like under [Reave]? She had Siege bolts too. She could punch her way out, right? But then, why hadn’t she? Was she injured? What if their sub had already imploded? Was Aerion suffocating as we spoke?

  Something suddenly welled up in my throat, but I swallowed it down. Panicking right now would do Aerion no favors. Especially not if she was in trouble.

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  “Tubes one and two are already loaded,” I said. “Here goes nothing.”

  I reached for the right lever and yanked it back, spinning the sub around. At the same time, I pulled the lever for the floodlights. This time, I did see pretty much exactly what I’d expected.

  An enormous mouth, at least ten stories tall, opened wide. So wide, the sub’s floodlights couldn’t make out the top or the bottom. This felt less like being swallowed, and more like entering a massive cave.

  A cave with weak, fleshy walls.

  “Eyes peeled people. Anyone see any sign of Aerion’s sub?”

  “Negative,” Richard said. “Can’t see a damn thing out there. Or, in there, rather.”

  “What about its heart?” I asked, wondering if we might’ve had a chance of ending this whole thing right here and now.

  “Nothing,” Richard replied. “Wherever its heart is, it’s out of my range.”

  Philip looked a little confused at our conversation, but didn’t comment on it. “I don’t see anything either, I’m afraid,” he said.

  The panic once again threatened to take control, and once again, I fought it down. With a deep breath, I made my decision.

  “Launching torpedo one,” I said, yanking the rightmost lever.

  A whooshing sound and a slight rocking of the sub was all we heard as the torpedo fired. Being a siege bolt, it didn’t have the propeller on the back I was used to, so its range was extremely limited. That was alright. It wasn’t going far.

  We saw the impact before we heard it. One moment, the sub’s lights shone on a cavern-like wall of flesh, and the next, it had a perfect O-shaped hole, leading out to the ocean.

  A low bass rumble reverberated through our sub.

  “Uh, what’s that?” Richard asked.

  “Hell if I know!” I grabbed the thrust lever and threw it full forward. Our sub lurched, and I fired the second torpedo for good measure.

  Augmented by our own speed, the torp shot out and ate another clean hole in the thing’s flesh.

  “Reload!” I said, yanking the torpedo loading levers back, which opened the tubes for loading. All while maneuvering the sub through the freshly expanded opening. I couldn’t exactly brag, but I’d gotten a lot more familiar with piloting this thing. I had to wonder if that was on account of my Grace stat, or something else.

  As if on cue, I got a welcome message.

  Congratulations! Grace has increased from 70 to 71. (Max: 74)

  The bass drone redoubled in volume just as our sub made it out. Philip worked the right tube, loading the Aural Siege Bolt into its slot, while Richard did the left.

  The moment they finished, I pushed both loading levers forward and fired the right torp as the gigantic whale-worm-thing passed us, waiting about ten seconds before firing the other. If I launched both at the same time, the blast from the first would annihilate the second, rendering it useless.

  Luckily, there was no chance of missing—this thing was gigantic.

  Each torpedo punched its own little hole, and yet, the boss’ health overlay remained pegged in the green.

  “What’s the matter?” Richard asked, seeing my frown.

  “We’re not hurting it,” I replied.

  “What do you mean? We just opened four bloody massive holes in that thing!” Richard said incredulously.

  “Sure. It’s not especially tough, and our torpedoes do heavy damage, but with how massive this guy is? They might as well be mosquito bites. We’d need hundreds, maybe thousands, of torpedoes to whittle this thing down. I’m pretty sure those stripped down bolt cores won’t function very well if we tried to shoot them out the torpedo tubes.”

  “Then we go for its heart,” Philip said.

  “Or its head,” I muttered. “At least we know where that is.”

  The biggest problem with that plan, of course, was the danger it put us in. Not to mention that I still had no clue where Aerion’s sub had gone, a fact that lingered at the back of my mind, slowly eating away at my sanity. I could suppress it. I could ignore it. But eventually, I’d crack and do something stupid. My only hope was that we killed this motherfucker before that happened.

  “We need to recalibrate,” I said, smashing the ballast lever, causing the sub to jerk upward once more.

  “What do you mean?” Philip asked.

  I pointed at our sub’s bulbous glass window. “Right now, we’re flying blind. Our flashlight only penetrates so far. Past that, or anything outside its field of view, and we can’t see it. We need to take this fight to the surface. Or, if that proves impossible, getting to brighter water will allow us to see the whale before it attacks us. That thing is massive. Hard for it to sneak up on—oh, fuck!”

  Fate had to have a sense of irony, for the damn whale to attack us the instant I said that line.

  Except this time, it didn’t attack from the side. No, it came from below us. From one of our blind spots.

  The column of flesh rushed up vertically—the water inside its maw actually pushing us up faster than before.

  This time, we fell deeper into it than before. Far deeper, reaching what I guessed was its gut, when we hit something solid. Or, semi-solid.

  Tentacles reached up all around us, whacking the sub. Green venom oozed off their tips, sizzling against the sub’s hull.

  “Mate, think we’ve found ourselves in a pickle,” Richard said, staring up at the hull.

  “Tell me about it,” I grunted, reaching for the torpedo lever, but stopped. If that Siege Bolt went off at point-blank range, we’d basically be deleting ourselves from existence. I couldn’t fire it. Not until we were clear of the tentacles.

  “Richard? Hearts?”

  “Think I… Yes! I think I can help!”

  Richard closed his eyes and concentrated. A couple of seconds later, the thumping stopped, leaving us in silence.

  A few seconds after that, the tentacles drifted down into view. Dead.

  “I don’t know what’s more disgusting,” I said. “The fact that there are massive writhing tentacles in this thing’s gut, or that they have hearts.”

  “Almost feels like separate organisms, doesn’t it?” Richard said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

  I didn’t even want to ponder the implications of that as I had the sub ascend. Turned out there was a whole mountain of flesh all around us. Flesh and bones. Lots and lots of bones.

  “Guess this might be part of the whale’s digestive system,” I muttered, turning the sub.

  I was about to angle for the far wall when I saw something. A glimmer. Partially buried in flesh, but still clearly visible.

  “Aerion!” Richard and I shouted the moment we saw it. Then reality hit, and that panic that I’d suppressed until now came out in full force.

  “Oh, no…” Richard muttered.

  To say their sub wasn’t in good condition was, well, it’d be the understatement of the century. The hull had caved in. The glass window had shattered, forming a spiderweb of cracks. All while a half-dozen tentacles beat down upon it.

  “Are they…?” Philip trailed off.

  “Alive,” I said, glancing at Aerion’s status screen. No change. So she, at least, was still alive. And if she was, chances were decent she’d kept Rogar alive as well.

  I got a bit closer. Close enough to see that Aerion’s health might very well not last long.

  “Their sub’s integrity’s failed,” I said. “Looks to be about half-full with water, and we don’t know when the thing will fail completely. If they get exposed to the water pressure at this depth, they’re toast.”

  My mind flew into overdrive, and I came up with a game plan. As crazy as it sounded, this was where I operated best. High stakes and high pressure tended to bring out the best in me.

  “Richard? I’m going to do a high-speed pass by. I want you to take those things out. Philip? You come up with a way to rescue them.”

  “Understood,” Richard said, focusing on the tentacles ahead of us, while Philip just nodded.

  I urged the sub forward, and we accelerated, heading straight for the center of the tentacles, just above Aerion’s sub.

  I didn’t bother slowing—I knew from the cog carts how fast Richard’s ability could activate, and so I kept going to the other end of the whale’s innards before spinning the sub around.

  “Gottem!” Richard said.

  Sure enough, the tentacles drifted idly around.

  “Alright, that’s problem one solved,” I said. “Philip? Got any ideas how we can rescue them?”

  “Perhaps one,” Philip said. “Though I fear you’re not going to like it.”

  YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? THAT'S RIGHT EVERYBODY, IT'S COVER REVEAL TIME!