“Careful, Thar Tamina!” Rylan yelled at the whale’s flank as he unsheathed his dagger—which had thankfully not gotten lost during his brief flight. “I’m going to cut you out!”

  “Oh fog, she’s still inside?” Soren asked as Rylan dug his blade into the rubbery skin. “Hang in there; we’re coming!”

  Soren first reached for the hilt of his rapier, but quickly seemed to think better of it and grabbed the dagger off his own belt. Stepping up next to Rylan, he started carving as well.

  Even together, it took them a good two minutes to get through the thick outer layer of foamy blubber. When they’d finally breached the interior, Rylan stepped forward to reach inside. He grimaced as his arm slid into the fogwhale’s greasy, airy flesh, but persevered. However, even with his arm in up to the shoulder, he still couldn’t find anything.

  “I can’t reach her like this,” he said as he drew back. “I’m going in there. If I kick my right foot twice, pull me out, all right?”

  “You got it, Ryles. Good luck!”

  “I’m coming in, Tamina!” Rylan shouted. Then he took a deep breath, and plunged his upper body into the side of a whale carcass.

  His glowband was useless inside so he kept his eyes closed and his ears perked for Tamina’s muffled shouting, and tried to reach out towards her through the lightweight viscera, but his hands found no purchase.

  Any creature that could float in the cloudsea was by necessity low-density. If not for that—and the floatiness provided by the fog—the weight of all the tissue above Rylan would likely have made what he was trying impossible, but as it was, he felt kinda like he’d plunged himself into a tub of sturdy, greasy foam. As long as he angled his head right, he found he could even breathe some air let through by the permeable tissue, though it tasted funky in his mouth.

  Rylan forced himself not to think about how the syrupy liquid that covered him was basically the fogwhale’s equivalent to blood, and pushed deeper. However, that quickly became significantly harder, as he lost his purchase on the sandy cloudbed.

  Soren said something, his voice muffled, and he felt his former friend grab his ankles, and start to push.

  Rylan quickly slid in deeper, trying not to panic at the claustrophobic sensation of being more and more enclosed in a pitch-black space as he angled his arms towards the source of the muffled noises. His hips went in, then his thighs, then his knees...

  Finally, when he was nearly up to his ankles inside, he touched something different, something a little sturdier.

  A hand snatched his wrist in a painfully tight grip, which he quickly returned. He kicked his right foot twice.

  Soren started to pull, his grunts muffled through the thick layers of viscera. It took a moment, but then Rylan started to slide inexorably backwards.

  Inch by inch, he was being dragged out, and Tamina with him.

  Her grip on his wrist was truly bone-grinding, but he just endured it, relying on the accelerated recovery from Ethereon to soothe the pain.

  He felt a little lightheaded when his head finally exited the whale, but he wasted no time in getting to his feet and pulling Tamina the rest of the way out.

  When her own head exited, she gulped in a deep breath, before immediately flying into a fit of coughs, some of the gunk dripping down her face getting sprayed onto Rylan. He just kept pulling, sinking to his knees only when she was all the way out.

  She similarly collapsed, clutching onto him with her head on his shoulder, as her body started wrecking with sobs.

  Rylan held onto her one-armed, his other arm still completely numb from her stranglehold, and just let her cry. He’d experienced about twenty seconds of being inside, and shuddered to think of what actually being stuck in there would have been like.

  Like being buried alive, inside a corpse.

  Soren sat down next to them, blew out a relieved breath, and patted Tamina on the back.

  For a minute or two, none of them spoke a word.

  Finally, Tamina’s sobs faded, and she drew back.

  “You, ehm, you all right?” Rylan asked carefully as she staggered to her feet and started wiping the worst of the various whale fluids off her once-yellow surcoat.

  “Yup,” she replied hoarsely, keeping her eyes lowered and sounding very much the opposite of all right. “A little bruised, but otherwise fine. Thank you... for getting me out.”

  “I hate to ask,” Soren started, “but did you happen to see a backpack in there? We think it might still be around here, as it got torn off Rylan’s back during the crash.”

  “Couldn’t see much of anything, actually,” she replied, the tremor in her voice belying her dry tone as she continued to avoid their eyes. “But I didn’t feel anything I would describe as a backpack.”

  “There’s a fog condenser in there,” Rylan explained, standing up as well, and shaking some greasy stuff from his fingers. “We need to find it if we don’t want to go thirsty.”

  “And I think we better hurry,” Soren added, looking up with a tense expression, “because this carcass is attracting a lot of attention.”

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  Rylan followed his gaze, and swallowed as he saw several long shapes floating overhead. More sharks. Great.

  Tamina nodded fervently as she wrung out her black braid. “Sounds like a plan. I guess we better—”

  She was interrupted by a sudden burst of bright blue light from nearby, which was immediately followed by a flash of heat.

  They all turned towards it. Rylan lifted a hand over his brow and squinted against the sudden glare coming off what looked like a stream of blue fire.

  The oddly coloured flames swiftly died down, but the light they’d provided was immediately replaced by a spreading orange glow originating from none other than the bottom half of the whale. Somehow, it was on fire, and the warm light spread by the crackling flames helped illuminate their surroundings.

  On one side of the burning lower half stood a truly huge armadon, easily twelve feet long and five feet tall. One of its pointy, armoured ears was torn clean off, the scar extending onto its armoured cheek, and half of its tail was missing, but the quadruped looked no less imposing for it, thanks in no small part to the ominous orange glow coming off its razor-sharp teeth.

  On the other side floated a nightmarish creature: a massive octopus with deep-blue tentacles and bulging eyes. Flows of white mana buzzed around its prehensile limbs in circular motions, and as Rylan watched, it used one of said limbs to lash out in a whip-like motion.

  The armadon jumped aside, but was still hit on its flank, and to Rylan’s surprise, the tentacle actually slashed through its protective plates and left a bleeding gash on the creature’s thick hide, causing it to hiss and back off a little.

  By this point, some of the smoke from the earlier blue flames had wafted over, and Rylan had to force himself not to retch at the overwhelming scent of rotten gull eggs.

  “Malequints!” Tamina hissed, reaching for the sticky shield on her back.

  “Fog!” Soren cursed. “We better get out of here!”

  “No, wait!” Rylan said, his mouth going dry and a slight tremor moving up his arm as he lifted it to point at something. “Look...”

  Right there, behind the two fighting Malequints, from a jagged broken rib sticking out of the burning carcass... hung his backpack.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tamina said with a sigh.

  “Maybe we can come back for it later?” Soren suggested hesitantly.

  Rylan scoffed. The shoulder straps were torn, and the pack appeared to be hanging from the bedroll, supported only by the leather straps it was attached with. Moreover, the flames were already licking its bottom. “There’s not going to be anything to come back to, we have to grab it now!”

  Soren scratched his neck. “Well, we just need the condenser, right?”

  Tamina shook her head. “Rylan’s right,” her voice growing a little firmer, more sure. “Even if we could find the condenser after this whole mess is over, it’ll probably be melted to slag by then, and possibly trampled. Or swallowed whole. It’s already a small miracle that we’ve spotted it; we can’t risk losing sight of it again.”

  Soren let out a sigh. “All right... then I guess we need a plan.”

  As they had no time to come up with anything complicated, the plan remained simple. Soren—the only one not completely covered in highly flammable whale-grease—would try to snatch the backpack. And if he ended up attracting the attention of the Malequints in the process, Tamina and Rylan would distract them.

  The three of them crouch-ran closer, avoiding various other scavengers that were moving in for the feast as best they could, before Soren split off to move around the raging battle.

  Tamina had her shield out and latched onto the metal covering her left arm, but Rylan played with the hilt of his dagger uncertainly. There were more knives in the backpack, of course, but the dagger and letter opener were the only ones he had on him.

  Throwing his dagger seemed like a great way to lose it, but, well, that was how his Skill worked. What else was he supposed to do?

  Tamina glanced at him, and seemed to immediately grasp his dilemma. “Don’t,” she spoke softly. “Someday you’ll be able to take down creatures like these with just your knives, but right now, you’re not likely to even hurt them, and we’re only a distraction anyway. Just grab a rock or something.”

  Rylan sighed, but nodded, and started looking for a suitable projectile. After he’d found and grabbed a nice fist-sized piece, he turned back to her. “You really think so?”

  “Do I really think what?”

  “That I’ll be able to kill huge creatures like these with my knives someday?”

  She shrugged. “Crazier things have happened. But to be honest, I don’t think we have great odds of surviving down here long enough for you to experience that kind of growth.”

  Rylan tried not to dwell on that, focusing instead on watching Soren pick his way closer to the burning mass of whale. Despite the fog constantly being pulled into the roaring flames, the fire was definitely not dying down. If anything, it was growing bigger and hotter, which was a problem, as the backpack hung about ten feet back into the conflagration.

  Soren was trying to get closer, but as Rylan watched, a nearby piece of bloated whale skin burst open, releasing a gout of flame that had Soren backing off with his arm in front of his face.

  “Fog,” Tamina cursed. “Maybe this wasn’t the best idea... what Skills does Soren even have?”

  “As far as I know, he only has one: Dancing,” Rylan replied.

  “Dancing?!” Tamina repeated, incredulous. “So he doesn’t have a combat Skill yet?”

  Before Rylan could reply, the battle between the Malequints reached a fever pitch. The armadon leapt up, straight at the giant octopus, and bit down at the base of one of its tentacles.

  In response, the floating monstrosity lashed it with its limbs, leaving shallow cuts all over the armadon, but it refused to let go. In the end, the octopus undulated its body to move over the burning whale, and proceeded to rip its own tentacle clean off, before disappearing in the mist.

  The armadon, still with the tentacle in its mouth, fell straight down, into the edge of the fire.

  Right in front of Soren.

  For a brief moment, Rylan feared the hulking creature would land on top of his former friend—or almost as bad, on top of the backpack.

  It didn’t, however, instead falling right in between.

  Soren flinched back upon its landing, half-turning to run, but then stopped.

  Rylan realised what his former friend was planning a mere moment before it happened, and had no time to do anything but drop his jaw as white light flashed underneath Soren’s feet and he leapt forward, onto the flailing armadon.

  Three swift, rhythmic strides with glowing boot soles brought Soren up along the length of the armadon, to its head, where he promptly kicked off to soar towards the broken rib.

  “Well, damn,” Tamina muttered.

  The moment Soren landed on the rib, the thing started to topple over, but he handily snatched the backpack off, then leapt again, pirouetting over the armadon and the expanding sea of flames below him before sticking his landing in the sand.

  “Did that twirl seem necessary to you?” Tamina asked, doubt colouring her voice.

  Rylan shrugged. “Maybe his Skill required it?”

  Soren, meanwhile, triumphantly held up the lightly singed backpack, bedroll and all. To Rylan’s relief, it looked relatively unharmed, all things considered. He’d have to fix the straps, of course, but that’s why Zahra had packed him a sewing—

  The massive armadon emerged from the flames behind Soren, covered in burning grease, and its beady black eyes focused murderously on the young nobleman’s back.

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  The Whispering Crystals is available on KU, Audible, and in print:

  : Unnatural Laws

  : Unusual Enemies

  : Unimagined Adventures

  : Unchained Potential

  : Untamed Spirit

  : Undivided Worlds

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