“Fuck,” Arius said, and repeated his favorite swear word a number of times. “My aura regeneration hasn’t increased enough. I can’t fight two of them at the same time.” It was sad just how disheartened he sounded, especially after he had already managed to kill the first one.

Val was not even strong enough to fight one of them. Beyond providing aura of a different color to make an alloy for him, she could do nothing.

In this moment, she determined that Keep the Peace was an entirely useless ability. It only worked on entities weaker than herself, yet the one, dire time that Val did not want to fight something was if it were stronger. Despite having the appearance of a large but simple organism, the arthropods were infinitely greater than her.

To bolster his attitude, Arius flipped the sword around in his hand and leveled it towards the bubble. “I refuse to die, by the power of this pink sword.”

The crustaceans needed to orientate themselves after awaking from their slumber on Leviathan. They had some last moments of peace before a fight for their lives would ensue.

“You don’t have to try fighting them,” Val said through her pathetic snivels. Her fingers curled around and clenched at his torn shirt. Close to his wound, she cried and begged him to stay. “Arius, just stay here. Maybe they won’t see us and will leave us alone!”

Gingerly, Arius tried to pry Val away without exacerbating his injury. “Pull yourself together,” he barked. “Not the time for this.”

She could not manage even that much. Val was crying, hysterical because she was the absolute worse soulmate—even more despicable than Evalaite was to Tavras.

Out of the kindness of his heart, Arius had come to Leviathan’s Cradle to save her. He did not deserve this.

Though Val had used Divine Judgement many times, it had always been in a negative light. Never, had she tried to use it in a positive way, evening out the scales for somebody who deserved better. Arius deserved better—so much better.

To start with, Val wanted his injury to disappear. As her tears dripped onto his chest, her vision became blurred by more than just water but also a white light. In the process of crying out some liquid drops of aura, Val centered her power for Divine Judgement and laid it across Arius.

“Val…!” he said, exasperated.

When she next opened her eyes, the wounds had disappeared. “I can heal…?” she murmured. More excited, she rushed to ask, “Will that be enough to help you?”

By the thrilled look in his eye and the way that he grinned like a child, he did not even need to say it. “Yes!”

Once more, they took their last gulps of air. Arius broke their way out of the bubble but otherwise stayed still to avoid attracting the attention of the crustaceans prematurely. His hand reached out to her, signaling her to stay until another large bubble encapsulated Val on her own.

“Arius,” she murmured, hands pressed gently against the side of the bubble.

He gazed at her, regarding her momentarily with some small bubbles trailing from his nose. While she could stay relatively safe in this bubble, Arius chose to swim as her escort—far enough away that he could intercept the enemy before they would reach her.

They did not have enough aura left to play around with shields and spears as they did originally. Arius needed to use the already-crafted sword. His newly generated aura, he needed to invest into his speed if he wanted to stand a chance against two crustaceans at once.

He was brave. Unlike Val, he did not try to shirk the tough fight before him. The least that she could do was pull her own weight. Her eyes flitted about the hazy waters as she tried to figure out what more she could do.

It was a small blessing, but they had drifted far enough away from the colony before the free-swimming crustaceans took notice of them. When they did, the arthropods charged one after another.

The energized vapor of Arius’s aura helped him dive fast enough to duck below the first oncoming crustacean.

The sword swung lengthwise and struck against its tail, just as she had originally advised. The carapace split open with a crack, though not extensively enough to make anything gush from its open circulatory system. More importantly, the tail skewed at an odd angle, the inner structure now compromised by the blow.

Arius had damaged a discrete part of the enemy, critical to its function.

The second crustacean followed with enough time to adjust to Arius’s movement. It dashed to plow straight into him.

With this one, he went for a lethal blow to the singular eye. A flash of red sent him leaping upward through the water, and his sword smote down.

Tenacious as always, the crustacean jerked upward in time for him to miss his target. Instead, the crustacean took the blow at the center of its mouth.

The sword point pierced through the back of its throat and out the other side of the exoskeleton. Its body slumped in death. Arius had killed it, but not before its jagged teeth had clamped down. In the process of killing yet another arthropod, he sustained a terrible injury.

Arius’s hand could no longer grasp the sword to pull it out, so he withdrew his broken, empty hand from the crustacean. The fingers were snapped and twisted in directions that they never should have gone. As before, the blood ceased to flow when the wound was scorched by his power. Once the blood diffused throughout the water enough to see, the white of bone was visible in his hand and wrist.

“No,” Val whispered, discovering that she trembled. An emotional cocktail of pity and wrath mixed around in her head. She just did not want Arius to be in pain.

Without any time to waste, he dove down to the slain crustacean’s sinking body. Arius snatched the remnants of the fading aura sword with his good hand.

Even though the second crustacean set its eye on him, it could not move fast enough to intercept him. The damaged tail greatly inhibited its movement, inspiring it to thrash around in erratic movements.

Arius neared, cautious in his slow approach. The unpredictability made the crustacean equally dangerous as before, now that they were unable to predict its pattern of attack.

Desperate to help, Val focused on calling forth Divine Judgement once again. Just like his last injury, he had traded bodily harm for death of the enemy. For whatever reason, she could not willingly restore his hand. She even tried letting herself cry again, as if her aura tears could magically heal him from here. The more times that she tried and failed to use Divine Judgement, the more that she realized how poor of a grasp she had on the workings of her own power.

The crustacean clipped Arius’s shoulder, thankfully on his already bad side. Bone could be heard breaking as he lurched back in the water. Rather than trying for another kill, he flipped around with the momentum and searched for the nearest bubble to replenish his lungs.

Suddenly, the crustacean directed its attention onto Val and scurried at her.

“Ah!” She screamed so that Arius could hear her.

In an attempt to save herself, Val expulsed the remainder of her aura. Rather than a Forcefield, she manipulated her aura into a last stab at a spear. Closing her eyes, she only hoped that Arius had enough aura to turn it into a stronger, pink alloy.

The crustacean did not crash into her, so Val let her eyes fly open.

Hemolymph dripped down and coated the pinkish glow of their combined auras. Finally, the crustacean had impaled itself. Its legs waggled around while its body squirmed about.

“We did it!” she cried.

Treading where he was, Arius stuck out his sword, giving a thumbs up where he held the hilt.

Despite his injury, an irresistible smile peeled to her lips. Val gave him a thumbs up in return.

“What are you doing exactly?” another person called through the water. Despite the evident anger in his tone, Val was overjoyed to hear the familiar voice.

“Tavras!” she exclaimed.

The Sea Itself had come to rescue them so that they would not have to fight any more crustaceans.