At last, the Astarne Salt Flats revealed Deepmarine, a satellite city of the capital Reefirous. It was the Kingdom of the Mermaids once more.
Many vessels were arriving from the direction of Reefirous, with people covered in ash, which fell incessantly.
The winds blurred the vision.
Still in the group's first hours in Deepmarine, it intensified, like a sandstorm of salt and ash.
There was a crowd of homeless people in the streets, and confusion in cries and laments with conflicting information.
THE NIGHT
According to reports, there was a monster in Reefirous. And it was destroying the city.
The entire army of the Kingdom of the Great Pearl was mobilized, with letters and knights departing in all directions, as well as boats and airships being gathered.
Ǣg-berend said she felt the aura of one of the monsters in the direction of the attack. At best, it was number five.
Knowing this, the Marquis of Edas used the savings he had to buy used fishing vessels. And he lent them to the Deepmarine Army.
The main objective was the rescue of those still living in the capital.
The centaur first hated the Demon King in an intrinsic way, all the misery in her life was his fault.
She longed 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, my kind tend to end up under the rubble. 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 Deepmarine Army, setting out to face the terror.
The waters of the Astarne Salt Flats were divided into vast expanses of salt, into deserts of a thin layer of water on top, and salt for kilometers below, spaced by corals and deep saltwater lakes.
This went on until the locks, with the water lifts.
The salt flats descended into a precipice revealing corals that had once been submerged, but which, with the water flow diverted for salt extraction, remained exposed.
The boats went up through the locks, with more refugees, and in the opposite direction the army descended in caravels down nearly vertical rivers, with the sails tied down so the fabric wouldn't tear.
Approaching Reefirous, with the sails open again, the capital revealed itself entirely built on iridescent corals.
Once home to twenty thousand inhabitants, it was built on the ancient floor of the Astarne Salt Flats.
Fire consumed everything, even the docks with the last ships setting sail, leaving people who threw themselves into the water, swimming to the overcrowded vessels.
The centaur identified 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 the intense heat. She was the leader of the Stunned 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 water-based.
— You don't fight. When she arrives in a territory, well, those who are there leave. Let's focus on saving the civilians. The assembled army will eventually realize they cannot face her. — the centaur decided to help, she hadn't lost her good heart, and knew how to recognize an impossible fight. That was part of what had helped her survive.
There were three main divisions of the Deepmarine Army, each led by a hero.
Hatizblāw, a black triton warrior, mounted on a white steed, carrying a bastard sword on his back. He was the admiral, and sailed on the Whore of the Tides, the most advanced caravel breaking through the salt waters.
The refugees, on the boats going opposite the Whore, begged for vengeance and justice, many emotionally watching the armor as black as the skin beneath, only the eyes visible.
Agazgrāo, a mermaid in coral armor, was light in all colors, and had active coral control magic in her hands, the coral making her armor even larger, reaching almost three meters in height.
She was the air marshal, and from the height of the airship Soot, the Hound, she watched the movement of the 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 rearguard, with the war hammer in hand, the strongest conjured levitation magic, leaving the boat he was on. He moved above the troop movement.
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, throwing the hammer.
He had long brown hair, levitating in the air.
He had been through enough battles to know that armor was of little use. And naked, he followed her movement, who dodged the hammer with its two-meter handle.
The triton Friþuzdun had a body full of 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 went past her feet, rising in all directions larger than her body.
She was a hybrid of immortal and undead, with grayish-white skin, and a serene expression on her face opened by rotting skin.
She wore her own ashes, which burned her flesh, calcined, indestructible, even when Friþuzdun punched her, and then, attracting the hammer that was falling through the skies, hearing its call, hitting her powerfully with the metal, sending her against the ground.
The impact against the corals of a six-story building brought down half of the building, and from the flames, she rose.
The Night walked, observing the port and the enemy caravels.
She closed her eyes and pointed her left hand at the distant waters.
From her own body, the ashes enveloped the air, expanding, first burning the ruined room around her, then the nearby streets, and, finally, the entire port.
When her mouth opened, there was the incantation:
— Incinerate.
The explosions of dwellings, boats, the very streets, rocks, entire blocks, buildings, she herself amidst the flames, being thrown meters away hitting the tops of Reefirous's buildings, everything was thrown upward, sinking the city's level, making water invade the streets and avenues.
The vessels were sucked into the colossal crater just opened, and crashed against what remained of the destroyed buildings in the port.
In the air, the bodies of the homeless flew, exploding, dismembered, with viscera coloring the air, burning on contact with the ashes, among the debris.
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 thousands of bodies in the air while preparing the 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 around her the weapon's shrapnel spread.
Friþuzdun kicked and then kicked higher, with the Night dodging, jumping and initiating an exchange of punches and kicks, sometimes hitting, throwing the triton through buildings penetrated in sequence, and, as the edifices collapsed, she crossed the debris also being hit, opening new craters, with the flood advancing along with the shipwrecked navy.
Among the boats, bubbles appeared, each with a person inside, and, walking with difficulty, with hands open, and a determined gaze, with her horn pointed towards Hope, was Cwenburg, protecting hundreds of the thousands of allies.
The bubbles had colorful reflections, and in one of them, Edas, upside down, looked at his wife with admiration.
The bubbles burst and everyone fell without serious injuries.
Even so, there were many wounded in the distance, and even more were the bodies floating, dead, in the flood invading the buildings and destroyed residences.
THE THREE HEROES
Hatizblāw was the strategist.
He had prepared the vessels with supplies for repairs.
Still in the first hour, his soldiers restored two of the largest galleons, and on these, nearly a thousand civilians set sail.
Æthelflæd had lost her friends and awoke fallen inside an open residence with half the walls collapsed, besides her, on one of the standing walls, there were six corpses piled up, impaled by construction rods.
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 had once learned, her hand on the human's chest, and the human's hand on her chest.
After the first hours, the sound of the pulse transformed into an image, something small in the soldiers, and like a greenish, bright cloak on the centaur.
Leofwynn's aura was entirely black, in the darkest shade of red.
Cwenburg had all colors around her, emanating from the horn, identical to Edas's aura, in the same symmetry.
In turn, upon seeing herself, closing her eyes, Æthelflæd perceived herself as the flame of a miserable candle, about to go out.
And these were the flames around the darkness through which she walked, after smelling one of the alchemies kept for difficult occasions.
Through the streets, Æthelflæd dove, and from the rubble, she freed a young mermaid trapped. She swam with her long tail and did not look back.
From one of the fallen houses, a family was guided to the port, to one of the crowded boats, returning to Deepmarine.
The sound attracted everyone, and Friþuzdun, paralyzed, above one of the buildings, had his body, in a single second, transformed into fire, and then into a corpse with a final terrifying expression, with no more aura to conjure his own regenerative magics.
Agazgrāo, the mermaid, had shell armor even on her tail. She ordered and harpoons were fired from all the airships.
They did not penetrate the Night's skin, but were used as a net, to drag her out of the city, to the deeper waters.
The fire incinerated the ropes and chains of the harpoons, and obeying the Night's hands, ignited the machines, exploding the airships.
From the Hound, burning, Agazgrāo jumped towards the Night, and with punches they fought in free fall, with a slight advantage for the mermaid when they fell into the water. She used her tail to accelerate her submerged movements.
Grōnilubō's fire did not leave her, it only created more and more incandescent trails on her own body, which was being punched in the face, taken deeper and deeper into the crater's depths.
Agazgrāo's expression distorted, with her arms 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 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 that she grabbed her by the head, descending over the buildings, smashing the mermaid's head against the ruins.
The headless corpse of Agazgrāo fell before the Temple of Hope, where a twenty-meter statue of the Goddess of the Sea, the mermaid Endiblak, no longer had one of its arms.
Admiral Hatizblāw had sent the last boats, as the others were too damaged for any kind of repair. He could go, but chose to stay, even before the last caravel.
He grabbed a loli who returned hour after hour 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 that only he can see…
Æthelflæd, held by the waist, humiliated at being mistaken for a boy again, didn't reply only because she was too drunk. On the contrary, she cried out for her friends:
— Save me! — and Godwyna grabbed her with her claws, taking her to the top of one of the buildings. There were Leofwynn and Cwenburg. Facing the 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 the height of her chest, with Ǣg-berend hitting her, sending the monster's body against the buildings on the opposite side exploding in fire, and from the top of the building jumped Edas, aiming to crush the Night's head.