Open water swallowed the last of the harbor's lantern glow, and the Nightshatter's wake widened behind it in two clean trails, almost peaceful from the bridge. The ocean ahead refused to play along. Distant shapes broke the surface in slow arcs, dark backs rising and sinking with a rhythm that read like coordination.
Leaning forward over the main screens, one hand braced on the console edge, Maelara studied the map view and the exterior cameras the way she read a sparring partner's shoulders. A swarm spread in a loose crescent, bodies ranging from massive to obscene, all moving like someone had arranged them.
"So ugly… even from here," Grifftin said, voice low with disgust. At this distance, his eyes tracked them with ease. "If that's what they look like from this far away, I don't want to see them up close."
Siren's eyes were fixed on the waterline. A faint, almost sympathetic curve touched the corner of his mouth as he spoke, seemingly unable to stop himself.
"Not as ugly as you, I know."
"Shut up," Grifftin snapped, immediate and reflexive.
"Touchy," Siren murmured.
A short sound escaped Mizzien, halfway between a laugh and an exhale, out before he could stop it. The moment he realized he'd made noise, his shoulders tightened and his gaze fixed on the sea as if the water had done it, as if the ocean could be blamed for the way the bridge felt like a living room where everyone had knives.
"Both of you save that for later. Serenity, what's our timing?" Maelara yelled.
Serenity's presence filled the bridge, emanating from her enclosure. Though her face was hidden behind multiple holographic screens, the spinning, contained light on the glass screens made her feel real. The rest of the bridge remained a structure of metal and screens, punctuated by the hull's steady vibration.
"Pre-launched missile barrage is almost complete," she said. "The forward batteries are already walking the line and we're keeping steady pressure on them. Drones are out front. Some are feeding targeting data and watching for pattern changes. The rest are striking wherever the armor looks stressed. We'll be alongside in a few minutes, close enough that you'll see the seams, and close enough that they'll see us."
On the forward camera, streaks of smoke already arced toward the swarm, and distant blossoms of impact flashed against shells that looked like armored ridges wrapped around living mass. The first wave of hits did real damage. A few isopods jerked, cracked, then went limp in the water with an ugly slowness, as if even dying took effort.
A second group answered in a way that made the bridge go quiet.
Jets of energy cut upward from ridge lines in sharp bursts that met incoming missiles and turned them into premature flashes. Some still got through, but the pattern had shifted midstream, and the coordination tightened as the swarm adjusted. Learning, right in front of them.
One isopod surged up and snapped at a missile with a mouth built for chewing through stone. It swallowed, held for a beat, and then the water around it erupted as fragments of shell and meat flew outward in a brief storm of debris that slapped back down into the sea.
Maelara laughed, loud and delighted, the sound of someone enjoying a mistake she didn't make.
Siren's eyes flicked toward her and returned to the fight. Grifftin answered with a grunt. Mizzien stared, fascinated and unsettled at once, like his brain hadn't agreed on whether this was terrifying or the coolest thing he had ever seen.
New marks updated on the map, and the line toward the dungeon remained fixed, stubborn, accusing, a reminder that the isopods were a layer, not the center.
A low hum built through the ship as systems spun up for close engagement. Out on the outer walkway, sea air hit cold and hard, spray rising in thin sheets and falling back as the Nightshatter closed the gap. Farther ahead, bodies rose higher, and the spacing between them tightened until the formation looked less like wildlife and more like a gate.
"Ready on forward batteries," a Presidroid reported over the internal channel, calm and clipped.
"Fire," Serenity answered without ceremony.
A physical shove ran through the deck before the sound arrived, as though the ship had shifted its weight under them. A heartbeat later, the boom rolled back along the hull and punched out over the water.
Instinct snapped through Mizzien and made him flinch, eyes widening before he forced his face still, jaw set, trying to erase the reaction by sheer stubbornness.
A shell, arcing forward, sliced through the air and struck an isopod as it rose from the mass, sending a spray of water high and knocking the creature off balance. Though a painful gouge was carved into its armor, the blow wasn't fatal, and the isopod quickly recovered. The next shell inflicted similar punishment on another target, a brute force assault that failed to shatter the swarm's resilience.
With his jaw set, Grifftin watched the impacts and spoke through his teeth. "That should have done more."
On the screen, a missile hit dead center on a shell ridge and blew outward in a full bloom of fire. Smoke swallowed the isopod and, when it emerged again, the armor remained intact and the body kept moving as if it hadn't noticed the attempt to kill it.
Siren's fingers flexed once and stilled, the faint tremor returning just long enough to earn a fist. On the bridge, Serenity's screens shifted in a quick cascade, and the pitch of the railgun's charge climbed into something almost musical, a rising tone that promised something nastier than steel. The note held, tightened, then caught on a rough edge and broke, collapsing into a flat whine that belonged to ordinary machinery.
Grifftin watched the exterior feed, jaw set. "That sounded like it was about to end the whole argument."
Maelara didn't look away. "It should."
A standard shot fired anyway, and the projectile struck a larger isopod hard enough to change the way it moved, breaking its advance into a heavy sag and then a listless drift as it began to lag behind the formation.
Grifftin's expression barely shifted, approval arriving with irritation attached. "Okay. That hit, sure, but I was expecting more."
"It didn't hold," Serenity said, and she didn't dress it up. "The arcane charge failed."
Tranquility's voice slid in a beat later, calm and precise. "Distance from Roy, most likely. Without an anchor, the charge loses coherence, and at this range it collapses before it can fully take."
Closer now, the isopods' details became unavoidable: shell segments layered in thick plates, jagged ridges, wet seams between armor pieces that looked too much like joints. Their movement carried a blunt determination, the kind that didn't bother with grace because it didn't need to.
A massive one rose higher than the rest, water spilling off it in sheets, and opened its mouth to do something disgusting, a wet expulsion that splashed back over its own shell like a declaration.
"That's foul," Harmony gasped over the comms.
Regardless, a moment later, Serenity issued the command, as if the ship itself now knew the drill.
"Laser. Blind it."
Light stabbed outward, a hard line cutting across the water and pinning the beam's focus where it needed to be. The isopod recoiled at once, head wrenching aside as limbs flailed in a frantic attempt to turn away, and the sudden lurch carried it into a second body, the collision breaking their spacing and denting the formation for a crucial moment.
Leaning over the rail, Mizzien tracked the beam's point with hungry curiosity, taking in the smooth handoff between systems, the timing, the way each order landed and became motion. The whole engagement ran with a ruthless clarity, as if the ship and crew shared one set of instincts.
A shout came from the sea side as Grifftin stepped up onto the rail.
Siren turned his head slightly. "Don't be stupid."
Grifftin grinned. "I'm being helpful."
He launched, and spray slapped the hull as he hit the first isopod's back, boots finding purchase between plates. A hand slammed down, fingers digging into a seam, and he yanked until a segment tore loose under brute force, exposing flesh beneath that looked raw and angry.
Serenity's voice cut across the comm line to him. "Don't try to kill one at a time. Strip the armor, move on, and give the guns openings."
Grifftin grunted his acknowledgement and jumped again, moving from target to target with blunt purpose, hands finding seams and edges on instinct. Behind him, the Nightshatter's boosted shells began to bite, a faint shimmer riding certain rounds as impacts turned harsher and plates that had held a moment ago started failing under repeated hits. Deflections still came, but less often, and the rhythm of the fight shifted as gaps stayed open long enough for the next strike to matter, prompting the trailing isopods to tighten their spacing and angle their ridges differently as they adjusted to the new pressure.
The isopods began to harden themselves, the sheen across their shells turning unnatural, like a layer of force pressed into the ridges. Enhanced small rounds started glancing off more often. Heavy hits still bit, but slower.
"That isn't mana as we know it," Siren quickly reported, his eyes fixed on the trailing shells. A thickening layer, which looked applied rather than organic, was forming as a sheen crept across them.
A slight turn from Maelara carried the question like a blade testing an edge. "Then what is it?"
"Adjacent," Siren said. "Old, the way the goblins used to work their hexes. It runs on sacrifice."
Confusion tightened the set of Mizzien's face as his brow furrowed. "Sacrifice of what?"
Eyes fixed on the waterline, Siren answered, "Most often blood. It won't hold forever."
Boots struck chitin as Grifftin landed on another isopod, hands already working the seams, and two plates tore free in quick succession to open a raw channel down its side. Clinical timing followed from the ship, a shell finding the gap the moment it existed, and the creature folded and collapsed into the sea in a rolling surge of foam.
A shape surged up near the ship, closer than the others, and Siren stepped forward on instinct before catching himself, his body going briefly rigid with the urge to move. The rail won instead. A hand planted on it as if he were bracing for wind, and the gesture carried restraint sharp enough to cut.
Mizzien noticed the small tremor in Siren's fingers and looked away, letting the moment pass without commentary.
As the Nightshatter closed in, more bodies surfaced, forming an increasingly dense and tightly packed swarm around the center. At that point, the water's movement began to change. Deep below the surface, something massive shifted, and the sea surrounding the distant middle started to pull inward, as if a gravitational force were drawing the surface down into its hidden maw.