“Well that’s not good,” Felix muttered. He flexed his scaled hands, tangling it within the fitful breeze. It felt thin and thick by turns, and a faint crackle traced the path of his fingers like a prismatic afterimage.

Something was wrong with the Mana.

He stood at the helm, peering beyond the shield around the Manaship. It shook, tossing more of his people off their feet as it sliced through clouds of clinging dust. Those boiled, streamers of fire coalescing across their swells and up against the ship’s shields. Lightning followed, sparks sheathing the entire ship like a wave of jagged water, but the shields held. They had taken one of the sleek Sunaran ships, and good thing—while the craftsmanship of the Ahkestrian vessels was strong, the Sunaran ships were relics of the Nymean empire. It would take more than some unstable Mana to take them down.

“Insect Type monsters! Starboard side!”

A swarm of hulking Cloud Beetles poured from the scintillating clouds, car-sized shells arcing with captured lightning. They beat their three pairs of feathered wings with a frenetic terror that even the lowest leveled Legionnaire could feel, hammering harder at them than the shields they flew headlong into.

The first few pinged hard off the ship's defenses, but dozens more followed, clinging to the spherical shell of energy as lightning arced between them and into the shield. The helmsman hauled on the wheel, pulling the ship aside from the swarm, but hundreds clung to them, driving their spindly limbs against their defenses over and over in a frenetic desire to escape whatever horrors lay within the dust cloud.

Felix reached up toward them, but paused, a faint scent hitting his nose like ozone mixed with tar and rotting leaves. His eyes widened as the legionnaires lifted their weapons in perfect coordination. They fired. Wait, no! The first Skills hit the swarm, and they exploded, the Beetles erupting into miniature bombs that set off a chain reaction among the hundreds of others. The ship careened sideways, blasted by the impact as it listed all but sideways into the storm.

More Beetles. The explosions served only to draw more Beetles, strangely, drawn somehow to their suicidal brethren. They dove into the heat and light, bursting apart themselves and forcing the shield to flicker. Wendell rushed to the gunwale, lifting his arms as yellow heat Mana gathered in his palms. The explosions dimmed, their power diverted as his Skill took effect.

"Precision Mines!"

In the depth of the swarm, well beyond the shields, more explosions erupted, setting off a new chain reaction just within the clouds themselves. Dust and lightning burst around the Beetles, the clouds swirling around the erupted minds and forcing the swarm aside.

Beef, clad in Hollow's crystalline form, fired off Razorhail bolts into the swarm. They passed through the shields harmlessly, bullseyeing insectoid heads and piercing and ripping wings to shreds to drive the creatures down out of the sky. Archie, Evie, and many others were stymied, however. They stood on the deck watching as witches hurled curses and legionnaires fired off ranged attacks.

Frost giants peeked from the hold beneath the ship. "Stay down there," Evie said. "You can't do anything yet." Their strength of arm couldn't do much against enemies that couldn't come into range. Ondine herself flew about, as did the chimera and dragoons. Wind magic was quite useful against the creatures, forming blades that sliced apart their hides before they intercepted the shields. Pit fired his tempest fugit into them, spearing one after the other on icy spears that burst into static storms that only seemed to draw more lightning from the cloying dust around them.

In a handful of seconds before Felix had to truly take action, the Beetles were eradicated. "What the hell is that?" Shadow asked, perched just below the main mast. Rolling through the cloud was the undulating length of a vast serpentine form. It was flatter than any snake that Felix had fought or encountered, tipped by sparking fins that drew lightning to it, or perhaps generated it.

Felix flared Unseen Beholder, and was granted a name.

Name: 7##$ Eel

He felt the instability in the air affecting his Skill more than any resistance from the beast itself. Still, the creature was strong, well beyond master tier, as an eel half the size of their ship rolled out of the dark. It glowed unnaturally, its form broken up by static-like glitches, while the rest of it was lit by prismatic afterimages that Felix found hard to even look at.

Legionnaires and the rest fired Skills at the eel, but their aim was fouled, the strikes going wide again and again, perhaps only ten percent landing, and those that did barely gouged a fistful of health from its wide bulk. This, at least, required Felix. He rose up, stepping upon platforms of air before he seized the heat from the lingering Beetle explosions and the crushing dark around them, shaping them into bursts of opposing forces.

Heat burned across the eel's flesh, and the cold immobilized, driving deep chill spikes into its flickering form. The eel screeched, and it was the sound of thunder as lightning coursed across its body. Felix pressed harder, reaching towards the core that he could sense inside of it, its flesh sizzled and buckled until he had it.

Empyrean Embrace!

All at once, its form collapsed into a conflagration of incandescent light and dark smoke that poured into Felix—and immediately doubled him over in pain.

“Oofffuck,” he breathed, jamming his hand to his gut.

Vile, Untethered Bilge!

Excise This Rot!

The Mana and Essence he’d torn from the Eel was wrong. It rioted inside of Felix like sour milk and weekold deviled eggs while also stabbing outward into his Aspects, dragging through them like a belly against a broken window.

Eat it!

It Is The Offal Of A Creature Unmoored From This Realm! Instability Runs Riot Through Its Flesh!

Felix clenched his teeth so hard he felt several molars crack. Will it kill you?

No, Scion.

Then eat it!

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Dark teeth rose from the abyss within his center and snapped shut around the Eel’s remnants. Immediately the pain vanished, though the aftertaste lingered like a bad smell.

Felix straightened. Thank you.

The Beast did not speak, but the abyss shuddered once before settling into swirling placidity.

“Felix! Are you okay?” Pit landed beside him at the helm and put his giant head down into Felix’s face. Golden irises blinked liquidly at him. “You seemed sick.”

“I’m good now. That Eel thing was…bad.” His head whipped back up, focusing on the portside. “And here comes more.”

More glitchy Eels undulated through the dark clouds, casting dust around them in spreading waves. Their bodies phased in and out of reality, parts skittering like TV static before joining back into a whole creature, even as lightning coursed across their dorsal fins.

Wait…

Ahead of the cluster of Eels, the air…cracked.

“That’s also not good.”

Webs of hairline fissures split the sky—black on black and nearly invisible. Only the waves of fire and lightning cast them into relief enough to spot, but apparently that wasn’t enough for even the Eels. They flew unseeing into them, and their flesh split like overripe cheese.

“Eugh,” Kevin said. “I didn’t need to see its insides.”

A familiar dread seized Felix, entirely separate from seeing the inner workings of the Eel. It was the same dread he’d felt when gazing in this direction from afar; unnamable, indescribable, and a punch right to the gut.

The fissures spread, splintering the world like a pane of glass. Turbulence shook them, tossing the Manaship into the air as if it were cresting a mighty wave. Several soldiers were thrown overboard and Felix jerked his hands up, marshaling his power—but he needed’t have bothered. The Legionnaires caught themselves with chains of shadow, braided vine whips, and hooks of ice.

The cracks spread again with a jittery jump, leaping toward them like breaking ice. Felix grabbed the soldier next to him and pushed him to the wheel. “Get us out of here!”

“Y-yes sir!”

They plunged forward and down, through the burning clouds. More cracks appeared, bursting from the dark dust like the branches of a twisted tree and the Legionnaire hauled on the wheel frantically. It sliced right through their shields, which flickered in immediate distress, before it cut off one of the upper yards on the mizzenmast. It flung free, but Wendell caught it in an overlarge hand only for it to dissolve swiftly into greasy smoke.

“Gah!” The big Lizard hurled the remnants from himself, but the dissolution didn’t continue.

“More Eels!” Shadow howled from just beneath the mainsail.

More of the glitchy monstrosities swam into view as the clouds split, revealing a squirming knot of the prismatic lightning lures. They snapped at them, their teeth skittering off their broken shield, which sent the entire ship rolling to port.

Sonata of Dominance!

A rampart of air Mana hardened to their left, bouncing the Manaship off its sides with a boneshaking impact. Legionnaires scattered across the deck, but every one of them was now tied to a safety line and they dangled in tangled clumps against the masts and gunwales. Sparks jumped up, lightning chasing across their fractured shields as they cut through the Eels and into the last cloudbank.

Straight into a nightmare.

The land of Amaranth was gray and lifeless, choked by the clouds above, even more than any night would produce. Worse yet, the countryside itself bucked, swelling into literal waves as the yellowed fields rose up into random eruptions of sediment. Rock and dirt sprayed as high as their hull, clattering against them as they pulled upward out of their dive.

Felix stared over the railing, his Affinity all but screaming at him. “How the hell is this possible?”

“It did say ‘instability,’” Evie muttered, but she was pale.

“This is more than an anomaly,” Elowen said. Below, shadows of things squirmed across the rolling landscape, like shapes beneath the water. “My god.”

The Eels screamed, chasing after them out of the cloud cover.

“Or for—” Elowen muscled through the Legionnaires and took the helm. “I’ll drive. Core Manifestion: Tome of the Witness!”

The Theron's body ignited as crystalline Mana poured out of her Gates, congealing above her into the shape of a massive book. Easily the size of a car, it was made of translucent purple and gold light. The pages within gleamed with an oppressive power that fired off into the sky, punching through the nearest dust clouds.

“Hold tight!” She seized the helm and the ship plunged forward. Felix tilted his body weight, as did Pit, but many Witches and Claw members were swept from their feet by sheer acceleration.

The Eels gave chase, but they couldn’t do more than keep pace—that made them far easier to obliterate.

Felix tore through some, ripping their heads off with tethers of lightning as the others endured a bath of incandescent flame. The Eels were many, however, too many to kill quickly. Felix groaned. He was going to have to jump overboard and clear their pursuers the hard way.

WARNING!

An Anomalous Entity Approaches!

“What now?” Archie groaned.

The nearest Eels jerked in surprise and were swiftly left behind as the ship raced ahead. Felix stared after them, however, as the enormous creatures shook and writhed in the sky, their far ends dissolving into abyssal dust. Their wide mouths snapped on nothing as the prismatic light was dimmed to dull particulate.

They were replaced by a new radiance.

Lights bobbed through the clouds like eyes, concentrating across a shape that was almost Eel-like but humped like the Beetles, and with strange appendages formed of more clouds.

An Anomalous Entity…?

They were massive, composed of dust and debris and glowing with a light that skittered across their flesh. They weren’t a single shape, but constantly morphed like living clouds, and they surged toward the ship like sharks after chum.

Unseen Beholder!

ERROR!

Territorial Instability!

Anomalous Entity Unidentifiable!

“Use the arrays!” The pale tenku Scylla ran to the gunwales on the starboard side. She shoved her paws into the inscribed orbs set into the railing and sigaldry lit up around her in a series of concentric circles. Green-white and deep blue radiance rippled around her and flickered out in liquid-thick bolts—they tore into the dusty anomalies.

They screeched and reared back as if in pain.

“Right!” Evie ran up, followed closely by Witches, Legionnaires, and the other Unbound. All of them took up a post around one of the inscribed orbs, activating the arrays one by one.

Felix remembered them. Pit had told him that the Sunaran ships had arrays that could take their Skills and amplify it through the Manaship’s hull. Ice chains, explosive heat, hexes, and bolts of a half-dozen different elemental types ripped outward—a volley of violence struck the dust. They broke apart, but only for a moment. All too soon, their dust fell inward, forcing several to reconstitute as one, its amorphous form congealing into something far larger.

WARNING!

An Anomalous Entity Approaches!

WARNING!

An Anomalous—

WARNING!

WARNING

WARNING!

The entire sky rippled, and the clouds fell upon them.