Finally, the Salina of Astarne reveals Seaside Deep, a satellite city of the capital, Reefback. It was the Kingdom of the Mermaids again.
Many vessels were arriving from the direction of Reefback, with people covered in ash that fell incessantly.
The winds made the view blurry.
Even in the group's first hours in Seaside Deep, it intensified, like a storm of sand, salt, and ash.
There was a multitude of displaced people in the streets, and confusion with weeping and lamentation amid conflicting information.
THE NIGHT
According to reports, there was a monster in Reefback. And it was destroying the city.
The entire army of the Kingdom of Great Pearl was mobilized, with letters and riders departing in all directions, as well as ships and airships being assembled.
Ǣg-berend said she sensed the aura of one of the monsters in the direction of the attack.
At best, it was number five.
Knowing this, the Marquis de Edas used the savings he had to buy used fishing vessels. And he ceded them to the Seaside Deep Army.
The primary objective was rescuing those still alive in the capital.
The centaur first hated the Demon King intrinsically, all misery in her life was his fault.
She yearned to kill the trio but restrained herself when approached by Æthelflæd, who wanted to learn more about sensing auras.
— And why do you want this?
— When the strong fight, mine tend to end up under the rubble of houses. If I can sense them, I can help everyone without abandoning anyone. — The centaur listened and touched the human's shoulder.
She was a victim too, just like the other lolis.
The trio enlisted in the Seaside Deep Army, setting out to face the terror.
The waters of the Salina of Astarne were divided into vast salt flats, with a thin layer of water on top, interspersed with corals and deep saltwater lakes. This continued until the locks, with the water elevators.
The salt pan descended into a precipice, revealing corals that were once submerged but, with the water flow diverted for salt extraction, remained exposed.
Boats ascended through the locks, with more refugees, and in the opposite direction, the army descended in caravels down near-vertical rivers, with sails secured to prevent tearing.
Approaching Reefback, with sails opened again, the capital revealed itself entirely built upon iridescent coral.
Once home to twenty thousand inhabitants, it was built at the former deepest point of the Salina of Astarne.
Fire consumed everything, even the docks with the last ships setting sail, leaving people who threw themselves into the water, swimming toward the overcrowded vessels.
The centaur felt the aura of number five.
And she explained about this monster before the burning city:
— Grōnilubō, her title is, the Night. Her powers are ashes capable of igniting what they touch, they can even melt rocks due to intense heat. She was the leader of the Drugged Butchers of the Calamity That Devoured the Sky…
— What do you mean, was? — Leofwynn tried to understand the phrasing.
— She went mad. And her faction split into three others, the worst in the entire Monster Continent.
— And how do they fight her? — Cwenburg believed she had an advantage, all the magic she knew was of water.
— You don't fight. When she arrives in a territory, well, whoever is there, leaves. Let's focus on saving civilians, the assembled army will eventually realize they can't face her.
There were three main divisions of the Seaside Deep Army, each guided by a hero.
Hatizblāw, a black triton warrior, mounted on a white steed, carrying a bastard sword on his back.
He was the admiral, sailing on the Tides' Harlot, the most advanced caravel cutting through the saltwater.
Refugees on boats going opposite the Harlot begged for vengeance and justice, many emotional, recognizing the black armor with only the eyes visible.
Agazgrāo, a mermaid in coral armor.
She was light in all colors, and in her hands activated magic of coral control, which made her armor even larger, reaching almost three meters in height.
She was the air marshal, and from the heights of the airship Soot, the Dog, she watched the movement of hundreds of caravels blown by the winds, aiming to invade the burning city in a risky strategy.
Friþuzdun, the strongest among the tritons, with skin like jasper, smoked a large pipe.
In the rear, with a war hammer in hand, the strongest conjured levitation magic, leaving the boat he was on, flying over the movement of marine troops.
Friþuzdun located the epicenter of the storm, which was among the clouds.
Surrounded by winds and ashes, the fire, a red flame, pulsed like breathing, the Night was there, and Friþuzdun flew, hurling the hammer.
He had long brown hair, levitating in the air.
And he had been through enough battles to know armor was of little use.
Naked, he followed her movement, as she dodged the hammer with its two-meter haft.
The triton Friþuzdun had a body covered in muscles, and the ashes burned him, but his magic, "Rewind", healed him at the same time he was burned, enveloping him in smoke from his own skin burning and regenerating simultaneously.
The Night's hair was black and fell past her feet, rising in all directions, larger than her feminine body.
She was a hybrid of immortal and undead, with grayish-white skin and a serene expression on a face opened by decaying skin.
She wore her own ashes, which burned her flesh, calcified, indestructible, even when Friþuzdun punched her, and then, attracting the hammer falling from the skies, hearing his call, striking her powerfully with the metal, sending her against the ground.
The impact against the coral of a six-story building brought down half the structure, and from the flames she rose.
The Night walked, observing the harbor and the enemy caravels.
She closed her eyes and pointed her left hand at the distant waters.
From within her, the ashes enveloped the air, expanding, first around the left arm, then around her body, then burning the ruined room where she was conjuring, then the nearby streets, and finally, the entire harbor. When her mouth opened, the conjuration was complete:
— Incinerate.
Explosions of dwellings, boats, the streets themselves, rocks, entire blocks, buildings, she herself amid the flames, thrown meters away, crashing against the tops of Reefback's buildings.
With the explosions, everything was thrown in all directions, sinking the city's level, letting water invade the streets and avenues.
The vessels were sucked into the colossal crater formed by the destruction, crashing against what remained of the ruined edifices in the harbor.
In the air, the bodies of the displaced flew, exploding, dismembered, with viscera coloring the air, burning upon contact with the ashes, among debris being hurled against structures even farther away.
From the sky descended Friþuzdun, aiming for the Night, who was dragging herself down the street where she had fallen.
Friþuzdun's flight speed accelerated him to such an absurd level that he still saw the bodies in the air while preparing his attack, the hammer blow to Grōnilubō's head, who merely raised her left arm.
The metal exploded against the monster's skin, and she opened her mouth, suffering the pain while thousands of weapon shards scattered around.
Friþuzdun delivered a kick and another higher one, with the Night dodging, initiating an exchange of punches and kicks, sometimes hitting, throwing the triton through buildings penetrated in sequence.
And as the edifices collapsed, she also traversed the debris, being struck, opening new craters, with the flooding advancing alongside the shipwrecked navy.
Among the boats, bubbles appeared, each with a person inside, and, walking with difficulty, hands open, determined gaze, horn pointed toward safety, was Cwenburg, protecting her allies.
The bubbles had colorful reflections, and in one of them, Edas, upside down, looked at his wife with admiration.
The bubbles popped, and everyone fell without serious injury.
Even so, there were many wounded in the distance, and even more were the bodies floating, dead, in the floodwaters invading and even moving entire buildings against the ruined residences.
THE THREE HEROES
Hatizblāw was the strategist.
He had prepared the vessels with supplies for repairs.
Within the first hour, his soldiers restored two of the largest galleons, and nearly a thousand civilians set sail on them.
Æthelflæd got separated from her friends and woke up fallen inside an open residence, with half the walls collapsed.
Besides her, on one of the walls, were six corpses piled up, impaled by construction irons.
She got up, remembering Ǣg-berend's lessons during the journey.
The aura was a pulse, like hearing someone's heartbeat, the centaur taught the human as she once learned, her hand on the human's chest, and the human's hand on hers.
After the first few hours, the sound of the pulse transformed into an image, something small in the soldiers, and like a greenish, bright mantle in the centaur.
Leofwynn's aura was entirely black, in the darkest shade of red. And Cwenburg had all colors around her, seeming to emanate from her horn, identical to Edas's aura, in the same symmetry.
In turn, looking at herself, closing her eyes, Æthelflæd perceived herself as the flame of a candle, about to go out.
And these were the flames around the darkness she walked through, after sniffing one of the alchemies saved for difficult occasions.
Through the lanes, Æthelflæd dove, and from the rubble, she freed a young mermaid trapped, she swam with her long tail and didn't look back.
From one of the fallen houses, a family was guided to the harbor, to one of the overcrowded boats, returning toward Seaside Deep.
The sound attracted everyone, and Friþuzdun, paralyzed atop one of the buildings, had his body, in a single second, transformed into fire, then into a corpse in a final terrifying expression, with no more aura to conjure his regenerative magics.
Agazgrāo, the mermaid, had shell armor even on her tail, and leaped above the Night, dragging her out of the city, into the deep waters, where they fought with punches, with a slight advantage for the mermaid, who used her tail to accelerate movements underwater.
Grōnilubō's fire didn't leave her, only creating more and more incandescent trails on her own body, which was punched in the face, taken deeper and deeper into the crater's depths.
Agazgrāo's expression distorted, her arms moving, seeming like many, creating waves that altered even the surface of the saltwater, with each blow to the Night's face, crushing her against the depths' seabed.
Grōnilubō's body exploded, and the waters rose hundreds of meters above the surface.
The mermaid Agazgrāo was thrown over the capital, and she saw when the Night emerged from the water explosion, so fast she grabbed her by the head, descending over the buildings, crushing the mermaid's skull against the ruins.
The headless corpse of Agazgrāo fell before the Temple of Hope, where a twenty-meter statue of the Sea Goddess, the mermaid Endiblak, no longer had arms.
Admiral Hatizblāw sent the last boats, as the others were too damaged for any kind of repair.
He could leave, but chose to stay, even before the last caravel.
He grabbed a loli, who returned hourly guiding more and more wounded, and held her by the waist:
— You've done enough, boy, for a man's victory sometimes hides in the strong gesture only he can see…
Æthelflæd, held by the waist, humiliated at being mistaken for a boy again, didn't respond only because she was too high, on the contrary, she screamed for her friends:
— Save me! — And Godwyna grabbed her with his claws, taking her atop one of the buildings, where Leofwynn and Cwenburg were. Faced with absences, the alchemist inquired tearfully. — Where are the horses?
And from the ashes forming, from the firestorm like lines drawing death in the air, the Night turned, too slow to dodge the hooves at chest height, with Ǣg-berend striking her, sending the monster's body against the opposite shell-concrete building exploding in fire, and from atop the building leaped Edas, aiming to crush the Night's head.