The System Seas

“Woohoo!” Elisa shouted. “I thought so! It hates it!” The attack had made the monster grind to a near stop, rearing back from the chaos the bolt left on its stomach. “It’s not fully formed! Everything in my bolts is disruptive! Keep steering, Marco! I’ll keep making it flinch!”

The tactic worked for a surprisingly long time. Every time one of Elisa’s bolts hit, the monster would treat it as a much larger form of damage, covering itself and ignoring the ship for a moment as the power wreaked havoc within it. Aethe had joined in by pelting it with various arrows, which seemed to each have an effect about a tenth of what Elisa was doing. After a few minutes, the damage they had dealt would have been enough to sink an armada, but the monster was barely showing the damage. Worse, it was starting to adjust.

“It’s attacking!” Elisa yelled. “I can’t make it flinch!”

The monster ignored any further provocations from Elisa as it raised its mighty arm almost to the sky, then brought it down in a smash that would have destroyed a town. Marco steered as far from the center of the impact as he could as Elisa and Aethe pumped everything they could into slowing down the arm, but as it neared the ocean’s surface, it was still going to hit them. It would have taken a massive explosion on par with anything their ship could have produced plus some to deflect the arm, and they just didn’t have it to give.

Frisk, it turned out, did. A barrage that felt a lot like a last-ditch, all-or-nothing skill hit the arm, shredding it around the elbow and pushing it back just enough to send Marco’s vessel reeling in the wake of the impact rather than sinking. Frisk’s messenger illusion arrived a moment later, visibly sweating.

“Quite a situation you’ve made for yourself. I’m assuming you need help?”

“We do.” Marco gritted his teeth as he avoided a follow-up smash from the monster’s shredded arm. “Anything you can give.”

“We can’t dodge like you. I’ll do what I can to distract it from outside its range. Just try not to get too far.” Frisk saluted. “Give ‘em hell, Marco.”

Marco nodded in respect. Of all the things he had ever expected, he expected to find himself considering Frisk a friend the least. Yet here they were, and he was glad for it. Frisk’s firepower was never up to the standards of that first big shot again, but the sheer fleet-clearing power his ship could output simply couldn’t miss the huge target, and every volley staggered the huge monster just enough for Marco to avoid the latest attempt to ram him, to smash him, or to capsize his boat.

When the monster adapted next, it was unsurprisingly to get rid of Frisk. It maneuvered between them, taking advantage of the smallest mistake in Marco’s planning. Once Frisk was to its back, it was free to drive Marco back towards the capital, keeping him reined in with smashes, rams, and strikes. Frisk gave everything he could for a while, but soon enough the monster had outdistanced him and was pressing The Foolish Endeavor to her very limits.

“It’s not enough,” Marco yelled. “We’re in trouble.”

“Not for long, boy. Help is incoming.” Tatric, of all people, noticed it first. “Looks like you made some friends.”

Marco turned his head to see a small army of System Priests on the docks, recovered and raising their staffs to exude power. Unlike the sickening force from before, this felt as healthy as a new sprout poking through the soil. It felt like growth. Most importantly, it felt like power. With dozens of priests present, the buffs that could reach him added up fast. He felt the battery swelling with power as the ship sped up beyond anything Marco had seen from any craft before. Dodging was no longer a problem. Shooting full-powered bolts was no longer an issue. They were strong with the strength of an entire network of islands, and it showed.

Conventional defenses from the shoreline began to come alive, peppering the monster with normal, average cannonballs. None of them seemed to do much, but between the ship’s new capabilities and the distraction, it found itself unable to respond to anything that was happening. It took a dozen unanswered shots and for the first time in the fight, it started to look like it might actually be feeling the hurt.

And then it became very still.

“What’s it doing?” Marco yelled. “Elisa, what’s it doing?”

“I’m not sure! It looks like it’s going to change again.” Another bolt slammed into the beast, devastating and yet ignored. “Get ready.”

The change ended up being the last thing Marco expected. Rather than growing, it shrunk. The form of the enemy drew in on itself, compacting into a concentrated fog of dread Marco could barely look at before reforming into the same shape, if a quarter the size.

It didn’t take much time to know why. The monster was immediately faster. Its first strike was only dodged because it had yet to realize how much smaller its new arms were, and the second and third because the others gave it their all to distract it mid-strike. Smaller or not, though, Marco knew the enemy only needed one good hit to end the fight.

He needed more power, but all sources of it he could imagine were gone. Jane was good for one burst of effectiveness, but that was far from enough to win the fight. The only real source of power he could count on was his own, and most of that was locked behind the system’s stupid insistence that he set his course.

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Tatric had known what that meant, but he hadn’t clarified, and now things were moving too fast to ask him. Even before the temples forced the issue, Marco had been thinking about something like this. He could go as far as any human had ever gone, but that would mean abandoning the last few vestiges of home he had. He had never felt ready for that. He could go home, but that would mean abandoning his freedom, even if the temples weren’t forcing the issues.

But would it?

His mind raced as the beast prepared for another burst of strikes. Elisa had said that so long as they moved around, they might have years before the temples became stagnant and problems arose again. Adding more temples to the network would probably only help that. The Foolish Endeavor was only getting faster, and taking little stabs into the unknown would take less and less time as they got stronger. They could draw a circle, he thought, and sail it before coming home, then a bigger one, then a bigger one.

It wouldn’t last forever, but neither would home. Eventually, Tatric would pass. Old connections would weaken. People would have time to come to terms with the idea of leaving, on both sides of every relationship.

But until then, there were no limits. They could go or stay as they pleased, just so long as they were always willing to move where the system pointed them every now and again.

“That’s the course,” Marco said. “I choose freedom.”

The gold glow was so strong it actually cracked like thunder as it spread out from the ship. The beast’s arms came down only to hit a barrier so strong it bounced off like a child trying to break a boulder. Under their feet, the ship lost all distinct form, gathering and changing into something different faster than it ever had before. There was no shortage of energy for that, Marco supposed. He had been saving it for a while now.