Chapter 15-400: Shadows at Sea

Ch. 400 is here! Another three months of daily updates have passed, and you’re still sticking with me! I honestly didn't think the story would generate so many chapters, especially given the scale of The Far Future, but there's still a couple months and more to go... (yes, that means I have finished it, and am starting on the next one!)

If you’re a Reader on Royal Road, I hope you’ll pass me a 5-star Rating or Review. If you’re truly impressed, I’m hoping you can pass me some Patreon support so I can keep up with the stories! Even a one-off is great, and shows your appreciation for what I'm doing, so I thank you in support for any donations!

There’s more to come, and stories not yet told waiting for the screen!

The second E-book for the original stories is in the editing phase, which will finish off the First Day. Then we begin on the First Week...

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I was a hundred miles off Wake Island for this meeting, sitting on the ocean out in the middle of nowhere.

I wasn’t quite alone, although they probably didn’t know I was extremely aware of them. Watersight turned the waters below me into open sky, and Devilsight removed any illumination impediments. I could see right through the waters, all the way to the depths thousands of feet below, like it was all open sky.

There was a lot of stuff swimming around about me that wasn’t animal life, looking up at me warily as the time came, suspecting a trap or something worse.

But there was just Legion, Sleipner, and I. No ships, no planes, no bloody anything around at all. Which was also very disconcerting to them, and should have been. It meant I didn’t need any support to do what I was doing.

One just didn’t meet the Dragon King (self-styled, not an actual dragon) of the South Pacific just out of the blue, and he didn’t come out of his palace in the deeps for no reason.

Thus, I’d sent an emissary, recruiting Prince Tithkianlan of the Triton Kingdom of the Mediterranean for the job. He was happy to help after Legion asked him, as Legion made just about anyone weak in the fins, and the tritons were no exceptions.

Of course, I was Legion’s Lady and Liege, and the tritons were quite aware of who I was and the things I’d been doing. Asking them to serve as diplomats and ambassadors for me to the various aquatic races was a point of honor and pride for them, and when I informed them of why, they agreed without hesitation.

This was not something we’d had to do for the Atlantic. The tritons had excellent rapport with the various independent and scattered tribes of merfolk the length of the Atlantic. They had been able to take my findings of settlements therein and cross off the places that should not be hit, and emphasize those that Must Be Blown Apart.

There was no triton presence in the Pacific, so they had no intelligence here... or in the Indian Ocean, for that matter. So, that meant contacting one of the native kingdoms here and learning what we needed to know.

Basically, who not to blow up!

Given how involved I was with the whole dispersion process of the bombs, and how Blessed and Marked were scattered in and around the whole thing, both participating and not, nobody was going to play any games with me. Using this information to get rid of ALL the aquatic races had certainly been proposed by more than one power, and my quiet reply was that it was a death sentence for all those involved... and the one thing we did not want at this time was even fewer allies in the deeps.

The Dragon King of the South Pacific was the strongest of the non-Evil monarchs of the deep. His people were plentiful and warlike, totally capable and willing to contend with the sahaug, Deep Ones, kopra eel-men, xichatl rays, the krakens, and others. The whales spoke respectfully of them, there’d been peaceful encounters with Waterbound and Druids of the Blue, and they didn’t raid the land.

That said, there were a lot of fishing boats that went missing if they didn’t heed the warnings of severed nets and stay out of merfolk territory. That could upset a lot of people, but the merfolk just didn’t care. In their eyes, it was no different from a roc flying over a ranch and deciding to make off with your cattle.

Where they had been before the Shroud came down and forced them back into the mortal realm wasn’t something I knew about, but a few miles away and hundreds of meters down, there was a realm lit up by phosphorescent shells, magic, and glowing coral, carved from the sea and the growing things there, populated by tens of thousands of merfolk spread across a massive area.

Naturally such a population required a lot of food, and they would guard it zealously. Even with magic helping, they required a lot of area to farm their food supply, and given how much they could mass, that only made the problem worse.

Naturally they were an innately magical people, like all the aquatic races, as there was no way a humanoid could exist like that underwater, or even be able to breathe properly.

No member of an official land government had managed to meet with the Dragon King, the response tepid given their interactions with individuals who were not tied to the Waters.

That didn’t mean they didn’t have sources and contacts, nor that they were unaware of the conflicts raging about them, especially in Southeast Asia. The Cultivators were beings that made their blood go cold, and they’d expended much quiet effort stymieing Cultivators of either stripe who took to the sea. The ocean, after all, was just full of endless amounts of resources and things and beings to kill, right?

The merfolk had been happy to amend that to ‘be killed by’, also, and certainly didn’t deal with them on the sly, like the other races.

For that alone, they had my respect.

The call of the horn rose around us, the very waters vibrating with its power. The ocean around us went still and calm as glass as the sea responded to the authority behind that call.

I could see the blob of figures ‘flying’ through the sea in our direction, more riding on a current than swimming, and inclined my head.

With a sirine’s control of water backed by fifteen Wrath, the water below us was politely shorn free of the control of the horn, and Sleipner sank down as a dome descended into the sea, dropping us below the waves.

I could certainly do something similar by spending Valences, but there was no need. The waters were now thrumming with Legion’s Elemental control and a Wavebound Pact, which was actually part-challenge, part-acknowledgement, and part-really-attractive flag-waving for attention. After all, we had basically just removed this section of the waters from their control and domain instantly, and without much effort.

“<THE LADY TRAVELER, MONARCH OF THE JET AND SILVER, GREETS THE DRAGON KING OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC!>” I Said calmly in Aquan.

The waters chimed. Magic hummed. The Sublime Chord pulsed through the deeps, and the waters shimmered at its touch for a mile around. The oncoming school of merfolk wobbled for a moment as the sound and power swept through them... and it continued to chime and hum subliminally in the background.

Any spellcaster there, and there were several present, would know that they had best be very respectful right about now, because that was a BIG Caster Level check.

Mutual respect was always the best way to start a beneficial diplomatic event on... although being in the superior position certainly didn’t hurt my position. After all, I wasn’t doing this for me.

I got off Sleipner and stood there above the surface of the bubble in the water as the merfolk came closer.

They were all tauroids, half-fish with humanoid upper bodies. While their eyes were somewhat different with a second membrane, they still had thick hair, noses, and normal jaws, not streamlined for water movement. Skin tones tended to be on the pale side, accented with scales on the upper bodies here and there, and many of them wore little other than gold or coral jewelry.

I studied the way the water got out of their way, easing their passage and allowing them to swim with less effort than a fish. Useful for speed and conserving energy, and they likely actually broke down the water when extracting oxygen, and released it back far more efficiently than mere gills, like a continuous paramagical Water Breathing spell.

They varied in sizes, often related to their lower halves, which were all fish.

There were no fish-men here, anthropomorphic aquatics. Those were the likes of locathah, Deep Ones, Sahaug, Eel-men, Crab-men, and the like. The merfolk warred with all of them for whatever reason; religion and resources were probably both equally responsible, or maybe they just found the sight of one another horrifically ugly.

It probably didn’t help that many of those races were demon or devil worshippers, and so treated their undersea neighbors as meals and sacrifices.

There were different bloodlines among the merfolk, and their fish halves made it plain. The incoming armor was dominated by bigger fish who were powerful swimmers, their lower halves resembling swordfish, groupers, tuna, sturgeon, and various types of sharks dominating the group. Larger fish made larger merfolk, too, which made the leaders and officers stand out.

No dolphinoids, though, just fish and... what had to be the king.

Sea serpent...

Legion nodded, able to feel the presence of a pseudo-draconic bloodline. The Serpent, Lizard, Crocodilian, and Dragon Bloodlines were all related to some extent, with all of the former able to evolve into some form of the latter with sufficient time and magic.

The King was the size of a Jotun with his upper body, with long streaming dark golden hair, pale greenish skin, and a fifty-foot lower body of a jade-and-golden sea serpent. Some of the merfolk were scaled, but he had a partial frill around his hair, almost shell-like horns that displayed his lineage, wound about with chains bearing plaques adorned with gems and pearls that radiated magic, and the symbolism of a King.

A true and proper King of the Sea. I could feel the waves of his Prestige reaching out to press against my own. I was still in his territory, so he had Kingly dominance to back him... but I had numbers and Levels at this point, i.e., Quantity AND Quality.

I also noted that he very amusingly was having trouble deciding which of us to look at. That couldn’t be by design, could it?

Legion in full glory was demon, dragon, and nereid all wrapped up in a-duh drool-worthiness, and could have walked right through this entire army, neither the males nor females able to do anything to stop them except get Consumed.

Yes, Legion was that dangerous. Humanoidish living enemies were not dangerous to them. Unless you had an Astral Ward that could screen out that Nereid Aura effect, you were literally harmless to them. Even if you did have one, like the one worked into his Crown there, you still had to deal with that fact that Legion just looked unbearably, incredibly hot-hot-hot.

He noticed his troops were starting to stare and get a little slack-jawed. The great golden trident in his hand swirled, and I watched with interest as bubbles materialized all around, interrupting the view of his lessers and shaking them out of their staring.

He was also wise enough to realize that this grand escort of his was not a threat to us. “Withdraw to a safe distance,” he told his people in a firm voice, brooking no refusal. His escort, a bit ashamed at how easily they’d been ensorcelled, stopped their forward advance, and retreated in the wash of bubbles to a distance where they couldn’t make out Legion, the perfect curve of their horns, the gleaming of their dark silver-edged scales, the way the sun danced off their skin with all sorts of promises, the bewitching Tat-Mask on their face, the slow and seductive motion of nine draconic tails tipped with ruby light behind her...

Nope, couldn’t see any of that, although they definitely wanted to.

Legion did not, however, broadcast any of the Prestige of a Ruler. What people had Sworn under Master Fred were Heavenbound sworn to a higher Cause, and they were merely a conduit in the path, First Among Equals, not a true Monarch, because the Pacts had first claim.

However, it was no exaggeration to say that below their Pacts, Legion could command their everything with very little effort, bearing a level of Duty that was absolutely crushing to anyone who could feel it. Warlocks, and anyone else, swearing in under Legion had almost ridiculous levels of Loyalty spikes.

It probably didn’t hurt that Legion was literally thousands of people, and always had time for everyone. Sure, serious intellectual business had an Intelligence cap, as they were all using the same brain, but simple conversation? Legion was literally their own Allegiance at this point... or the operating bureaucracy for one, with active connections that spanned the whole Allegiance. Just the number of families of the Cohort souls rescued from other Consuming Warlocks was in the dozens, after all...

Of course, that same relationship existed with Shvaughn among other families, most of whom were not innocent, common-born, or weak. Shvaughn had been Consuming their ancestors, whether they knew it or not, for a good two centuries, after all, and was plenty willing to continue doing so into the future, giving her blood ties to a whole lot of powerful people.

But, I digress. Legion didn’t radiate Prestige, because they were subsidiary to me here, and the Prestige I emitted took all of theirs and added it to my own.