The ascent continued, faster and faster, the Sea Serpent a bullet fired from a god's gun. The wind was a physical barrier, a solid wall of force that smashed against them. Rizzo, who had been clinging to the helm, was ripped from his feet and flung across the deck, a loose rag in a hurricane.
Arima acted. He didn't think. He moved. With the Sword of Triton still buried in its housing, channelling the raw power of the ship, he launched himself across the heaving deck, a blur of motion that defied the hurricane's fury. He caught the navigator before he could be swept overboard, a bone-jarring impact that sent them both crashing into the base of the mainmast. He held on, a rock against the storm, a meathead's simple, brutal solution to a complex problem of physics.
The howling gale began to subside, the violent ascent slowing as they reached the apex of the Stream's arc. They were hanging, suspended in a strange, ethereal space between the sea and the sky. Below them was a vast, swirling sea of clouds, a white, endless ocean that stretched to the horizon. Above them, impossibly high, was the other half of the island, a landmass of lush green jungle and jagged mountains that floated serenely in the brilliant blue emptiness.
"Land ho!" Rizzo yelled, his voice a hoarse, triumphant shriek, as he pointed a trembling finger at the approaching landmass. "It's real! We're really here!"
The descent was worse than the ascent. Gravity reasserted its claim with vengeance. The Sea Serpent fell, a stone dropped from the heavens, plummeting towards the cloud-sea. The wind roared back, a banshee's scream that tore at the sails and threatened to tear the ship apart.
"Brace for impact!" Takeshi's calm, steady voice cut through the chaos, a single, focused point of clarity.
The ship hit the cloud-sea. It was not a soft landing. It was a violent, shuddering crash that threw them all to the deck. But they did not sink. The clouds, dense and strangely buoyant, held them, their surface a thick, white, yielding mass that was more like a heavy snow than water. The Sea Serpent was adrift in a sea of fog, the world outside a muffled, silent white-out.
Slowly, the ship righted herself, the timbers groaning, the rigging settling. The clouds began to thin, revealing the world around them. They had landed in a vast, crater-like lake nestled in the centre of the floating island. The shores of the crater were a ring of lush, impossibly green jungle, a wall of vegetation so dense it looked like a solid, green cliff face. And rising from the centre of that jungle, dominating the entire island, were the trees.
The Ironwood trees. They were not trees. They were pillars of the world. They were colossal, their trunks wider than the mainmast of the Sea Serpent, their bark a deep, metallic grey that seemed to absorb the light. Their canopies were a tangled web of branches so high above that they formed a second, leafy ceiling, a green sky that blotted out the sun. Their sheer scale was an assault on the senses, a living, breathing embodiment of the word 'immense'.
"The codex... it's true," Kairi would have breathed, her scholar's soul overwhelmed. But she was not here. It was just Arima and his crew, a pack of terrestrial predators in a land of sky-giants.
"Status," Arima grunted, his voice a raw growl that cut through the stunned silence. He was already moving, checking the rigging, assessing the damage with a pragmatic eye. He was a Yakuza. A wrecked car was just a problem to be fixed.
"Hull's holding, Captain," Rizzo reported, his voice shaky but functional, a navigator forced to become a damage control officer. "The impact was spread out by the clouds. But the main mast... it's splintered. We'll need a new one to get back down."
Lefty and Stumps were already at the swivel gun, their faces pale, but their hands steady on the weapon. Their fear had been burned away by the sheer, overwhelming reality of the ascent, replaced by a grim, fatalistic acceptance. They were alive. That was enough for now.
"We get the wood," Takeshi said, his calm, quiet presence a single, steady note in the chaos. He was already at the prow, his gaze fixed on the colossal forest, a hunter looking at a new, untracked wilderness. "The masts are the primary objective. Everything else is a distraction."
"Rizzo, you and Lefty stay with the ship," Arima commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Stumps, you're with me. And you," he said, turning to the swordsman, "you're on point."
He went below deck to the captain's quarters. The room was a mess, maps and charts scattered across the floor, a shattered lantern leaving a smear of oil on the wall. But in a corner, curled up on a pile of discarded charts, was Kuro. She opened her obsidian eyes, let out a soft, questioning "mrrrow?", and began to purr, a low, rumbling engine of comfort in the alien world. She was an anchor to sanity, a piece of the normal in the profoundly abnormal.
Arima grunted, a non-committal acknowledgement. He picked up the cat, who settled into the crook of his arm, a warm, living shield against the strangeness. He grabbed 'Whisperwind', the mortal blade a comforting, familiar weight, and left the cabin.
They lowered the longboat into the placid, white sea of clouds. The descent into the thick, white mist was disorienting, a plunge into a blind, silent world. The boat didn't so much row as it pushed, the oars sinking deep into the dense, yielding cloud-matter. It was like rowing through thick, wet cotton.
They emerged from the mist, the longboat's keel scraping against the ground. They had landed on a shore of soft, springy moss, a carpet of electric green that seemed to hum with a faint, internal energy. The air was clean and thin, tasting of damp earth and something else... something sweet and vaguely metallic, like blood after a lightning strike.
The wall of jungle was before them. It was not a collection of trees. It was a single, solid entity of life. The colossal Ironwood trunks were like the pillars of a ruined temple, their sheer scale making the men feel like insects. Vines as thick as a man's waist coiled around the trunks, and above them, the canopy was a dense, tangled ceiling that blocked out all but the most filtered, ethereal rays of sunlight. The silence was profound, a deep, resonant quiet broken only by a strange, faint, rhythmic clicking sound that seemed to come from all directions at once.
Takeshi moved first, a single, fluid step from the boat onto the mossy ground. He drew his katana, not with a threatening flourish, but with a simple, practical efficiency. The blade was a sliver of pure light in the dim, green gloom. He closed his eyes for a moment, a single, focused point of stillness in the alien world.
"It is quiet," Takeshi said, opening his eyes. "Too quiet. The clicking is the sound of scavengers. Small ones. They are feeding. But the hunters... they are waiting. They are above us." He pointed the katana towards the dense, leafy ceiling, a hundred feet above. "This is a vertical ecosystem. The ground is for the dead and the things that eat the dead. The living... they live in the sky."
Stumps swallowed hard, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet. He gripped the repeating crossbow, the familiar, solid wood and steel a flimsy comfort against the alien landscape.
Arima put Kuro down. The cat, instead of cowering, took a few deliberate steps forward. Her tail, a perfectly straight, black line, began to twitch. Her ears swivelled, pinpointing sources of sound that were inaudible to human ears. She was a living, breathing sensor array.
"Stay close," Arima grunted, a command to both men and cat. He drew 'Whisperwind', the mortal blade a familiar, solid weight. The Sword of Triton was for ships and armies; this was a place for a scalpel.
They moved into the jungle, or rather, into the forest's floor. The ground was a spongy carpet of moss and decay, thousands of years of fallen leaves compacted into a soft, silent floor that muffled their footsteps. The light was a perpetual, ethereal twilight, filtered through the impossibly high canopy into shifting, green-tinged shafts. The rhythmic clicking was a constant, unsettling background pulse, a soundtrack to their slow, deliberate advance.
Takeshi moved with a liquid grace that seemed almost supernatural, his feet finding purchase on the uneven ground without a sound. He was the point, the antenna of their expedition. Stumps followed, a lumbering bundle of nerves, the repeating crossbow held at a high ready, his head swivelling constantly, trying to watch the canopy, the trunks, and the ground all at once.
They found the source of the clicking. It was a clearing, dominated by the carcass of a bird. The word 'bird' was a pathetic understatement. The creature was the size of the longboat, its feathers a magnificent, iridescent blue that seemed to glow with a soft, inner light. Its neck was long and serpentine, its beak a cruel, hooked scythe of black bone. One of its immense, multi-jointed legs was shattered, the bone protruding through the scaled flesh in a mess of blood and white marrow. It must have fallen from the canopy, a giant shot from the sky.
Covering the carcass was a carpet of beetles. Thousands of them. They were each the size of a man's fist, their carapaces a shimmering, oily black, like polished obsidian. They moved with a strange, jerky synchronicity, their mandibles clicking in a constant, hungry chorus as they stripped the flesh from the fallen giant, their work methodical and terrifyingly efficient.
They did not look up as the men passed. They were too absorbed in their feast, a single, focused organism of consumption.
Takeshi held up a hand, a gesture of absolute stillness. He pointed not at the beetles, but at the ground just beyond them. A footprint. It was not human. It was a wide, three-toed print, pressed deep into the spongy moss. Each toe ended in a claw mark a foot long. Whatever made it was big. And heavy.
Stumps let out a low, wet gasp, the sound of a man whose worst nightmares had just been given claws and a three-ton body. His knuckles were white on the stock of the crossbow.
Arima didn't look at the print. He looked up. At the ceiling of green, a hundred feet above. "The hunters are in the sky," he repeated Takeshi's earlier assessment. "So don't look at the ground. Look for the shadow."
They moved on, deeper into the colossal forest. The light grew dimmer, the green gloom more profound. The rhythmic clicking of the beetles faded behind them, replaced by a new, more unsettling silence. A silence that was not empty, but waiting.
Then, Takeshi stopped again. He didn't point. He simply looked up. Arima and Stumps followed his gaze.
Coiled around the trunk of one of the immense Ironwood trees, a hundred feet above them, was the hunter. It was a creature of nightmare, a perfect killing machine sculpted by an alien world. Its body was long and serpentine, a sinuous fusion of reptile and insect, covered in a mottled, green-and-brown carapace that blended perfectly with the bark of the tree. Its head was a wedge of armored plates, with multiple, faceted eyes that glittered like black diamonds in the dim light. From its jaw, a pair of massive, curved fangs, as long as a man's forearm, dripped a thick, clear venom that sizzled when it hit the moss below.
It hadn't seen them. It was sleeping, or maybe just waiting, its slow, rhythmic breathing barely disturbing the leaves around its colossal form.
Stumps made a small, strangled sound, a trapped animal's cry of pure terror. He took an involuntary step back, his heel catching on a root, and stumbled, the heavy repeating crossbow clattering against the Ironwood trunk.
The sound was a thunderclap in the profound silence.
The creature's head snapped up. All of its glittering, black-diamond eyes focused on them. It did not roar. It did not hiss. It simply moved. A liquid, impossible blur of motion.
It didn't climb down. It launched itself. Its powerful tail uncoiled from the tree, a living bungee cord, and it dropped, a fifteen-foot-long missile of scales, venom, and pure, predatory intent. It fell towards them, a shadow blotting out the filtered green light, its fanged jaws open in a silent scream of death.
"Stumps, the shot! Takeshi, the left!" Arima's command was a raw, guttural roar, a split-second allocation of impossible tasks.
He didn't wait to see if they obeyed. He met the charge. He didn't raise 'Whisperwind' to block or parry. He did the opposite. He ducked.
The creature, expecting to smash into a standing man, overshot its mark, its massive body passing over Arima's head with a rush of wind and the acrid stench of venom. In that microsecond, as the monster's vulnerable, softer underbelly was exposed, Arima acted. He drove 'Whisperwind' upwards, not a slash, but a punch. The mortal blade, a tool of absolute precision, sank deep into the softer joint where the torso met the tail, a perfect, brutal puncture.
Hot, foul-smelling ichor, the colour of rust and pus, sprayed across his back, a searing, acidic burn that ate through the fabric of his coat and into the skin. He ignored it. He twisted the blade, a brutal, wrenching motion meant to cripple, not to kill.
The creature let out a piercing, unearthly shriek, a sound of pure, violated agony that vibrated through the entire forest. Its body thrashed wildly, a blind, panicked lashing of immense power. The tip of its tail, a bony club studded with spikes, whipped around and caught Stumps square in the chest.
There was a sickening, wet crunch of bone and cartilage. Stumps flew backwards as if hit by a cannonball, the heavy repeating crossbow torn from his hands, and he smashed into the base of an Ironwood tree with a force that made the entire trunk shudder. He slid to the ground in a heap, a silent, broken doll.
At the same instant, Takeshi moved. He was not there, then he was. A blur of dark fabric and flashing steel. He had targeted the left flank, the creature's blind spot as it focused its rage on the man who had wounded it. He didn't aim for the armoured carapace. He aimed for the joint. His katana, a sliver of perfected light, struck the soft, exposed flesh of the creature's armpit, a precise, surgical cut that severed a bundle of nerves and arteries.
The creature's left foreleg went limp, hanging uselessly, a dead weight. It staggered, its shriek changing from one of rage to one of panicked confusion. It was crippled. It was bleeding. It was no longer the perfect hunter.
"Stumps!" Arima roared, ripping 'Whisperwind' free from the creature's tail in a shower of foul ichor. The burn on his back was a searing, white-hot agony, but he pushed the pain down, burying it under a tide of cold, murderous rage. He was not just fighting for his life; he was fighting for the life of his man. That was an insult that could not go unanswered. "Takeshi, the neck!"
He didn't wait for a response. He charged, a frontal assault against a mortally wounded monster. The creature, its senses overwhelmed by pain and blood loss, swiped at him with its good forelimb, a clawed hand the size of a manhole cover.
Arima didn't dodge. He met it. He threw up his left arm, the thick muscle and bone a desperate, meatheaded shield. The claws, each a razor-sharp scythe, raked across his forearm, tearing through the tough fabric of his coat and sinking deep into the flesh beneath. There was a spray of blood, a shocking, brilliant red against the green gloom of the forest. The pain was a white-hot explosion, a fire that threatened to consume him. But he held, his feet planted, a stubborn, unyielding rock. The regeneration, a slow, creeping warmth, was already at work, a desperate race against the venom and the blood loss.
He drove forward, inside the creature's guard, his body a battering ram. With a roar that was half pain, half fury, he shoved 'Whisperwind' upwards again, this time aiming for the soft, vulnerable flesh under its jaw. The blade sank home, a wet, grating slide of steel against cartilage.
The monster's head snapped back, a final, convulsive spasm. A torrent of the clear, sizzling venom poured from its jaw, drenching Arima's shoulder and chest. The acid burned through his coat, hissing as it ate into the leather and the skin beneath, a far more potent agony than the claws.
And then, Takeshi was there. As the creature's head was thrown back, its long, serpentine neck exposed, the swordsman moved. It was not a grand, dramatic flourish. It was a single, economical, perfect cut. He flowed under the creature's thrashing head, his katana a whisper of light that traced a line across the throat.
There was no blood. Not at first. There was just a deep, clean line that appeared on the creature's neck, as if it had been drawn with a pen. Then, with a wet, tearing sound, the head separated from the body, a slow, almost graceful detaching. The colossal, serpentine corpse, its momentum and rage finally spent, crashed to the spongy forest floor with a ground-shaking thud that shook loose a shower of leaves and moss from the canopy above.
Silence. A deep, profound, ringing silence descended on the clearing, broken only by the dripping of venom and the harsh, ragged sound of Arima's breathing.
He stood over the carcass of the monster, a statue of a man painted in blood and ichor. His left arm was a mangled ruin of shredded flesh and exposed bone, the veins blackening with the creeping spread of venom. His back and shoulder were a bubbling, corrosive mess of burned fabric and sizzling skin. He was a wreck, a butcher's diagram of catastrophic injuries.
And he was angry. A cold, bottomless fury that was a perfect counterpoint to the white-hot agony. He had let one of his men get hurt. He had let a monster draw blood. Unacceptable.
He turned, his movements stiff and pained, and walked towards Stumps. The big man was a crumpled heap against the base of the Ironwood tree, his chest a caved-in mess of shattered bone and ruptured flesh. He wasn't breathing. His eyes, wide and unseeing, stared up at the green canopy, a final, silent accusation.
"He's gone," Takeshi's calm, quiet voice stated, a simple statement of fact from where he stood, meticulously cleaning the monster's blood from his katana with a scrap of clean cloth. He hadn't even gone to check. He had known from the sound the impact made, from the way the body had folded.
Arima grunted, a raw, guttural sound of pure, unadulterated rage. He knelt, ignoring the screaming protest of his own injuries, and closed Stumps's eyes. It was a perfunctory, meaningless gesture, a piece of old-world politeness he dredged up from a life he no longer lived. He was not a man for eulogies.
A wave of searing, white-hot fire washed over him, a symphony of agony that threatened to drown his consciousness. The regeneration was not a gentle healing. It was a violent, warlike reconstruction. He could feel the venom and the acid fighting against the strange power in his blood, and the power was fighting back, a brutal, visceral battle raging under his skin. His mangled forearm began to twitch, the shredded fibres of muscle writhing like a bag of worms as they fought to reconnect. The acid burns on his back and chest bubbled, the healthy skin underneath growing like a fungus over the charred, dead tissue. He bit down on a scream, the sound a choked, animalistic growl that rumbled in his chest. He would not give this pain the satisfaction of a voice.
He stood up, his body a screaming monument to violence. "We're not leaving him here," he grunted, the words a challenge to the world, to the monster, to the pain itself.
"We will carry him back to the ship," Takeshi said, sheathing his perfectly clean katana. He did not look at the body of the monster or the mangled body of their crewmate. He was already focused on the next problem, the next logistical impossibility. "The objective remains. We will collect the wood."
They couldn't carry him. Not through the jungle. Takeshi, with a practicality that was as cold as it was efficient, found two thick, fallen branches. He took a coil of rope from Stumps's shattered pack and, with a series of quick, efficient knots, constructed a crude litter. They placed the big man's body on it, a final, heavy burden.