Chapter 64: The Leviathan’s Trial[1]

Their footsteps echoed strangely in the submerged corridors, at times their voices seemed to answer themselves, bouncing back warped. Shadows shifted and not always matching their movements.

The first guardians appeared without warning. It was a mermen, or what once they had been. Their scales were dulled, fins tattered and eyes clouded white.

Coral had fused into their flesh. Their tridents glowed with an unnatural light. “They’re corrupted,” Meeka whispered.

“They’re in our way,” Becca snapped back as she readied to swing her blade.

The fight was harsh, the strikes landed with little resistance. Becca cleaved through a trident’s shaft as Xior’s claw tore through scaled flesh.

The guardians fell down, their bones cracked and they dissolved into black foam.

The corridors shifted as they pressed on, the walls slid silently as openings closed behind them and stairways bent in directions that defied logic.

It was less a maze and more of a living thing rearranging itself as it watched them move through it.

In one chamber, webs stretched across the ceiling, sea spiders the size of wolves descended, their bodies were translucent, veins glowing faintly as they scuttled across the walls.

Alice snarled, stabbed her spear through one’s eye. Becca met another head on and slashed the legs off in one swing. Xior caught a spider mid pounce and crushed its exoskeleton with his strength as it made a sickening cracking sound.

The deeper they went the more oppressive the labyrinth became. Blind eels slithered through cracks with jaws wide enough to swallow a man whole. Wraiths wrapped in kelp drifted through walls.

The group fought, bled and pressed forward, the air grew heavier with each encounter. At times, they came upon sealed doors inscribed with runes. Becca, Alice and Xior tried to channel their elemental runes into them but nothing happened.

Until Meeka stepped forward and touched the stone with her glowing hands. The runes shone and the sliding door opened.

The others watched as Meeka turned to them a smiled as a bead of sweat ran down her cheek.

Becca muttered something under her breath but no one could hear it. At last they entered a wider chamber.

Coral pillars rose like ribs and the floor was littered with bones of sailors and beasts alike. The walls pulsed with a steady rhythm, faint and slow making it seem like the labyrinth had a heartbeat of its own.

The runes along the wall glowed again and this time without Meeka’s light. Alice hissed. “What are you?”

The pulse of the wall quickened and from the far end of the chamber the sound of shifting stone rumbled. A new passage opened. The trial was only beginning.

*****

They descended the endless stairs, the water pressed against them. A faint blue light seeped through cracks in the coral walls but it was now tainted, streaked with sickly green and violet veins that pulsed like blood vessels.

The enemies changed too, no long half rotten mermen that had stumbled through the halls. These were warriors, towering figures clad in barnacle encrusted armor with glowing tridents.

Each strike of their weapons churned the water itself into a weapon, the waves slammed into the group with a crushing force but Xior stopped it with his body.

The pressurized water caved his chest in but he endured as it popped right back. Becca’s sword met a trident head on, she used her full force behind that swing but the trident didn’t budge.

“These ones aren’t breaking!” she snarled as her muscles strained under the pressure.

Xior drove his gauntlet through a gap in an armor, the claws shredded through the flesh and coral alike leaving black ichor in the water.

Behind them the sound of chitin scraping stone made Alice’s stomach sink. A giant armored crab crawled from the side corridor, its carapace glimmered with shards of coral fused into its shell.

Its claws snapped shut sending a shockwave through the water. Alice gritted her teeth, her wind magic, her biggest strength was useless here. The water stole its freedom, slowed it to a crawl.

But she refused to be helpless, her wove her mana differently, she compressed air bubbles around her limbs.

They hissed with pressure and when she kicked off the stone floor she surged forward like a dart her spear plunging into the crab’s softer joints.

Xior caught her eyes briefly and he nodded, a gesture of approval across his otherwise unreadable expression.

The battles dragged on, their bodies ached but they pushed forward. A trident nearly pierced Beatrice but Becca threw herself in front of her and deflected the blow with her sword.

Meeka’s holy power became stronger with every step. Whenever they encountered the runic doors her hands glowed with golden light and when she touched them, they opened secret paths.

*****

They stepped into a vast chamber, one so large the ceiling disappeared into darkness. Coral pillars rose like drowned towers, and in the center a throne carved from black stone, barnacles and shells clung to its surface.

Upon it sat a figure, a merman of colossal size, armored in barnacle encrusted plates, he had a broken brown crown on his head, his eyes glowed a violet color, indicating corruption.

It was the corrupted Sea King. He rose from his throne and grabbed his staff in his hand. The chamber trembled with his movement.

“Unworthy and you dare come here. You will drown here like all before you who dared to enter my chamber.”

Then the water surged, the Sea King slammed his staff into the ground, and a tidal wave erupted within the chamber itself and crashed into the group.

They were flung back, their bodies slammed against the coral walls. The throne room was filled with spirals of currents.

The Sea King sat down again on his throne and looked at the group who lay on the ground, bleeding all over.

The Sea King thought it was over, but then Xior’s body twitched as he once again shielded the others against the pressure of the water.

He slowly got up and so did the others behind him, they were bleeding but they would die than to give up easily.

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