“Watch out!” Rylan cried.

  Soren reacted instantly, moving out of the way almost before Rylan finished speaking. At the same time, Tamina’s head snapped around, her eyes widening a fraction at the sight of the massive blue crustacean limb approaching her.

  Rylan’s heart skipped a beat as the threat drew closer to her. She’s not going to make it!

  Then light flashed beneath her feet and she sidestepped in a way that seemed impossibly fast in the floaty fog, just in time to avoid getting crushed.

  More limbs followed a split second later, forcing Rylan to jump aside as well. The light around them dimmed, then, and Rylan looked up, just barely able to make out the underside of a truly gigantic crab as it came to loom overhead in the fog.

  It didn’t seem like the crab’s attention was actually on them; they had simply gotten in its path. But still...

  “Run!” Soren yelled.

  Rylan promptly followed this excellent suggestion.

  Together, they sped forward, trying to get out from under the crab before it accidentally crushed them. However, as they passed out from underneath, a huge glowing claw came down in front of them.

  The thump as it hit the ground was bone-rattling, and Rylan found himself genuinely fogborne for a moment before his feet hit the sand again.

  The massive blue claw rose up again, leaving behind a claw-shaped indentation in the ground, the whole section of reef previously there crushed to rubble.

  As they all stumbled to a halt, a renewed, mounting sense of dread and pressure drew Rylan’s gaze upwards, just in time to witness the reason for the crab's rushed movements to reveal itself.

  An oval of aquamarine-glowing shark teeth loomed out of the fog, lighting up a maw large enough to ride a carriage through.

  F-Fog me!

  The dread seemed to press down on Rylan more and more as the nightmarish maw approached overhead. As it neared him, the fog around Rylan started to churn and flow up, his hair fluttering from the resulting breeze.

  He tried to take a step away, but his boot barely scraped the sand, as he himself was lifted off his feet. He waved his limbs in a panic, helpless to stop his slowly increasing upward momentum. He looked around for aid, but Soren and Tamina were not faring much better, flailing right beside him.

  Then there was an awful crunching sound, followed by a loud, rage-filled hiss. Shards of blue chitin rained down from above as the pulling force disappeared, and they all started dropping again.

  The second she landed, without another word, Tamina took off, running onto the flattened section of reef in front of them. Rylan wasted no time following, and neither did Soren.

  As they ran, slowly but surely, the sounds of the battle faded into the distance behind them, but they didn’t stop.

  Rylan couldn’t help but notice that neither of his companions was using a movement Skill this time, and he was quite grateful to be able to keep up. Still, even with his increased Endurance, after about ten minutes of straight running, he was ready to collapse.

  Finally, Tamina slowed down, seeming rather winded herself, for once. With a groan, Rylan came to a halt, leaning his elbows on his knees, glad Soren had been carrying the backpack.

  The young noble in question actually stumbled and fell, opting to remain flat on his stomach after his landing. “Great Spirits,” he panted into the sand. “I thought we were done for!”

  “Fog,” Rylan agreed. “Me too.”

  When Tamina didn’t add anything, he glanced over at her and found her leaning back against a piece of coral, her face kinda pale, her eyes staring off into the distance, unseeing.

  “You all right, Tammi?” he asked carefully.

  Rylan and Soren had started teasingly using the nickname a while back. She’d grumbled at first, but quickly seemed to decide not to give them the satisfaction of her reactions. Unfortunately for her, the little twitches of her eyebrow were at least as entertaining as her protestations had been, and the name had stuck.

  This time, however, her brow didn’t twitch. She blinked, seeming to come from far as her bright-green eyes shifted over to him. “Yeah... yeah, I’m fine.”

  His brows furrowed. She certainly didn’t sound fine. Wait, that shark just now had its maw open really wide... Was that a gapejaw?

  For a moment, he wondered whether it had been the very same shark that took her arm, but just as quickly discarded that notion. Aside from the astronomical odds of that being the case, the simple fact was, if it had been this shark she’d encountered before, it would have taken more than a limb.

  While he deliberated whether he should pry or not, she took a deep breath, straightened up, and shot him a curt nod. “Thanks for the warning; that was much too close for comfort.”

  “No problem,” he wound up saying. “I just felt this sense of pressure settle over me, like I couldn’t breathe, and when I turned around, I saw it coming.”

  She looked him over appraisingly. “You should pay close attention to your breathing then. You probably sensed its spirit. Your Perception is at... 3, right?”

  He blinked and nodded.

  “That explains it, then.”

  “Is that what Perception does?” he asked, intrigued.

  “Perception increases the acuity of all of your senses,” Soren explained without moving from his prone position, still breathing heavily. “But especially your sensitivity to mana and Quintessence.”

  “So that pressure, that sense of dread...”

  “Came from the shark’s spirit,” Tamina agreed. “That, I could sense too. No wonder, either. That was a Ruby-Grade Malequint.”

  “Ruby?” he repeated, incredulous. “For real?”

  “Well, it was definitely using tinted mana; no other way it could’ve created that strange suction force.”

  Rylan glanced at Soren, who’d turned his head at least enough to be able to see them.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Tinted mana,” Soren started, taking a moment for another deep inhale, “also known as affinity mana, is mana that’s gained unique properties, from interacting with a Divine Metal. Like Aetherium, Ignium, Undium... and so forth.”

  I see! Aetherium is the fancy name for skymetal, Ignium for firemetal... “What’s Undium?”

  “Seametal,” Soren answered, taking off the backpack and pushing himself up onto his knees with a groan.

  Rylan just stared at him.

  Soren caught his look and smiled. “It attracts water. It’s pretty rare, and not very sought-after, as using cloudmetal to gather and condense fog is far more convenient than trying to use Undium to draw water out of the ground or something.”

  That sounded reasonable enough. Still, it had to be pretty rare if Rylan had never even heard of it.

  “The light coming from its teeth was aquamarine,” he mused. “Aquamarine-tinted mana... Does that mean it was creating affinity mana using cloudmetal as a medium?”

  “Probably,” Tamina replied, sounding a bit more like herself.

  “No,” Soren said at the same time, before turning to her, “What? No, that can’t be right; cloudmetal is not one of the six Divine Metals!”

  Tamina raised a brow at him. “Sure sounds like one. It’s a metal you can pour mana in to get some kind of effect. Isn’t that what the Divine Metals are?”

  “But there are only six,” Soren argued. “Aetherium, Ignium, Undium, Petrium, Aurorium, and Obsidium! There are no Quinthar with a cloudmetal affinity; it doesn’t exist!”

  Tamina shrugged. “Tell that to the massive shark. Speaking of, let’s keep moving. I’m sick and tired of this reef.”

  Rylan sighed, but grabbed the backpack and slung it on his back.

  “Come on, Ryles,” Soren pleaded as they started walking. “Back me up here. I mean, which of the Great Spirits is cloudmetal even supposed to have given birth to?”

  “Zenithism was never really my cup of tea,” Rylan replied apologetically. “The only being I’ve ever prayed to is Ethereon.”

  Well, apart from Zeph, of course. But he wasn’t about to admit that he used to pray to the Great Spirit of the Storm for freedom.

  “Although...” he continued instead. “Isn’t Amane, the Spirit of the Clouds, linked to cloudmetal?”

  “Amane is a Lesser Spirit, lesser I tell you! Don’t listen to the New Zenites, she is not part of the Zenith!”

  “Maybe don’t yell that too hard,” Tamina dryly remarked from up ahead. “We’re in the cloudsea, after all. She might just hear you.”

  Soren cringed, hunching up his shoulders as he glowered at her back, muttering something about heretics.

  Rylan patted him on the shoulder in commiseration as they continued to slog through the sand, trying to find a way out of the maze-like reef.

  Zeph knew they could use one.

  That night, at dinner, they unanimously decided that they would stop trying to move ‘up,’ and would instead simply try to keep the same bearing and just get out of the reef first.

  It was impractically hard to judge the overall slope of the area anyway.

  Rylan kind of wanted to bring up Tamina’s reaction to the shark earlier that day, but he wasn’t sure how or if it would even be wise.

  Maybe he’d better just... let her be, for a bit.

  So instead, he asked a question about something else he’d been wondering about. “How do Ruby-Grade Malequints even come to be? I mean, the shark clearly had... some kind of element in its teeth—so did the armadon, actually—but how does that even happen? What did it eat?”

  Soren sat up a little straighter, his eyes lighting up. “An excellent question! So, first of all, all armadons have traces of firemetal in their bones, and particularly their teeth. They actually live in burrows, and it turns out their burrows are usually located in ground that’s rich in firemetal—in fact, tracking down armadon burrows is a proven method of searching for suitable firemetal mining locations. I’ve even heard of mining companies training armadons to sniff out veins or firemetal ore! And guess what armadons like to do with that ore?”

  Rylan frowned. “Eat it?”

  “That’s right! Not big lumps, or anything, but they will lick at those, and gobble up any loose soil around it like candy.”

  Huh. That made a kind of sense. However, it also begged a rather intriguing question.

  “Ehm,” Rylan started, shifting his weight. “Then what about Ruby-Grade Quinthar? Do they also...?”

  Tamina snorted.

  Soren stared at him for a moment, blinking, then started to laugh. “Oh man! Can you imagine Duke Talon eating dirt—or the King?! Haah... No, unfortunately—or thankfully, rather—you don’t need to consume soil to become a Ruby-Grade Quinthar. Actually, the only way to become one, is to get an Affinity through a specific Dungeon reward. There are six different Affinities, each linked to a different Divine Metal”—he shot Tamina a meaningful look, upon which she rolled her eyes—“and after gaining one, your body will start to absorb that Divine Metal from... somewhere. Actually, I’m a little hazy on the details. I know an Affinity isn’t complete until your bones contain a high concentration of the associated Divine Metal, but I’m not sure where Quinthar get it from. Perhaps you do need to eat soil...”

  He looked rather perturbed at this revelation, making it Rylan’s turn to snigger and glance at Tamina.

  She met his look with a wry smile. “He really likes explaining stuff, doesn’t he? What do you think, Ry, is it a superiority thing, or does he just like the sound of his own voice?”

  Rylan’s mouth twitched, but he managed to keep a straight face. Tamina had started shortening his name a while ago in an attempt to get him back for calling her ‘Tammi,’ but he secretly kinda liked the nickname. It reminded him of Zahra, who had also called him that sometimes. “You know, I think you may be on to something with the superiority angle...”

  “What? No!” Soren protested heatedly. “Look, my grandmother made me spend hours listening to tutors and reading dusty tomes to cram all this stuff in my head, and now I finally get to do something with it other than fill out her fogging quizzes—oh spirits, how I hated her quizzes!”

  “I don’t know,” Rylan said slowly, squinting at him suspiciously. “You seem awfully pleased with yourself whenever you explain something...”

  “That’s—it’s not—that’s because I enjoy being helpful, you absolute clodpoll!”

  Rylan finally couldn’t hold back the laughter bubbling up anymore, and Tamina was quick to follow.

  Soren turned a bit red, but seemed to take their amusement in stride, grumbling that Rylan should just see if he explained something ever again.

  It was the emptiest threat Rylan had ever heard, and it just set him off again.

  Eventually, he managed to calm down. “Seriously, Soren, I really appreciate all the explaining you’ve been doing,” he said earnestly. “You’re actually pretty good at it; you’d make a great teacher.”

  Soren smiled at him, seeming surprised at the compliment.

  Tamina chose that time to clap her hands and get up. “All right, enough chitchat; time to clean up and train!”

  Rylan and Soren groaned in unison, but complied.

  Later that night, during Tamina’s watch, Rylan lay back to back with Soren, trying to sleep.

  However, the young noble kept shifting behind him, sighing, until he eventually rolled over onto his back and spoke. “Hey Ryles... D’you really think I’d make a good teacher?”

  “I mean, yeah?” Rylan mumbled, keeping his eyes closed. “If that’s something you’d really want, I’m sure you could get a job teaching in a free city somewhere. Honestly, they’d be lucky to have you.”

  “Hah, right... Like my grandmother would let me.”

  Rylan’s brows drew together. “You know, it’s your life, Soren. If she doesn’t like what you want to do with it, you can always just tell her to take a long walk on a short dock.”

  Soren snorted, then stopped. “You’re serious about that, aren’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Soren was silent for a moment, so Rylan finally opened his eyes. There wasn’t enough room in the bedroll for both of them to lie on their backs, so he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. “Seriously Soren, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You make it sound so simple,” Soren said wistfully, shaking his head at the ceiling. “My family expects certain things from me, and I...”

  “And you what? Would rather make them happy than be happy yourself?”

  Soren remained silent.

  Rylan sighed, turning back as his neck was starting to cramp. “Look, I know you believe in the Great Spirits and their Spiritvale and all, but... the way I see it, the only thing we know for sure we’ll get, is this life. One day—spirits willing—we’ll be old. I think all we can do is try to make choices that we’re going to be happy about when we look back over our lives.”

  “That simple, huh?” Soren replied wistfully.

  Rylan shrugged. “I’ll admit, I’m not entirely unbiased about doing what your family wants... But that’s how I see it. I don’t know, I hope that’s helpful.”

  Soren remained silent for a little longer. “It is. Thanks. I don’t have any answers yet, but I think I understand the questions better now.”

  “Anytime,” Rylan replied with a yawn, before his eyes drifted shut and sleep took him.

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  : Unnatural Laws

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