The lake had gone dark. A half-translucent barrier shaped like a massive oyster closed over the surface.

Nic kicked off of the rusting car, shooting for the broken windows of a department store as the enormous shapes lifted up. Mud poured away from slimy skin in enormous drifting clouds, filling the town with a wave of dust and muck that billowed through the lake water. He dove into the hollowed-out store and the dark. A keening, hissing cry filled the air as he sheltered behind a shelf.

An enormous yellow eye passed in front of the windows. The water was still thick with mud, and the shape of the creature was a silhouette in the cloud. It was long, slippery, limbless. An eel of enormous size passed in front of the store, its swollen eye gazing in, the pupil a dark blot that flickered to take in the broken mannequins and rotten lumps of waterlogged food.

Nic stayed very, very still until it passed on.

Simply the movement of the goliath made the waters ripple with force, sending tattered bits of cloth and plastic drifting up from the surface.

A sylph landed on the shelf above him, staring down. Its body was made of dark water, and its head was covered in feather-like membranes that expanded out in a halo, like a tiny jellyfish angel. She stared down at Nic and waved.

He waved back as he kicked off, navigating through the drowned store. It was tilted towards the back, algae creeping through the broken floor to rise into a short jungle of rippling black strands, and Nic found the emergency exit still intact. The door was jammed and he had to brace himself and kick it open with his feet.

Outside…

Outside the world was ruled by goliaths.

Nic watched as a flock of silver fish fled upwards from the rooftops, chased by the massive sea-green body of an eel. Its enormous mouth yawned open, exposing countless jagged teeth, and it scooped the school of fish up with ease. Its jaws crashed shut and Nic shuddered.

They were everywhere.

The smallest were the size of busses, wriggling and yellow with beady, lightless eyes. The biggest were so massive they could barely fit into the city - their bodies had to glide down the streets, endless trains of blue-green skin and slime.

Nic was in for very bad times if they caught him.

Shadow Unagi. E-Class // Undead. Born from the souls of the drowned dead, these vicious, bloated eels live to feed and to guard the sites of their demise. They fear holy light and the ringing of bells, but nothing else. Woe will befall those who steal from their graves.

Like always, there were no free lunches. Stealing the pearl had awakened these monsters.

Nic was in an alleyway at the back of the store, connecting to a parking lot and a concrete row of buildings. Streetlamps flickered on and off beneath the water, finding power from somewhere to cast haloes of hazy light.

He swam slowly through the bottom of the city, searching through cars, peering through the broken doors of houses, ducking behind anything he could when one of the massive eels slid by. Despite the horror of their jagged mouths and the tension of the moment, Nic held his calm. The depths were home to him.

But if he was a human, struggling to hold his breath? This would be crushingly terrifying.

He kicked his way into houses and swam up the stairs, sweeping each drowned room in turn. Searching for a spark of golden scales. He didn’t know why, but he knew how the System worked-

And it was set up to be understood by murderous oafs. See a shiny, catch a shiny was as deep as the logic went.

He found two more pearls. The first was clutched in the grasp of a pale corpse, blonde hair drifting from her head in the weightlessness of the water. The second was in a broken streetlamp, hidden among a row of glowing lampposts- Nic would have missed the prize if he couldn’t see the sylphs circling around it.

Twice, he was nearly caught as eels circled unexpectedly around the house, searching for him. Eyes gliding past the broken glass. Teeth emerging into the lower floors as they squirmed through the doorways, filling up the houses with their twisting bodies.

Both times Nic managed to escape out a break in the house, jumping to the next before the beast could see him.

And then he saw it.

Circling around a lion-headed statue in the town’s park was a golden carp. Long whiskers and a trailing tail of see-through membranes adorned scales the color of sun. A faint halo of light surrounded it.

But it was in the center of the park.

The tree had long since died, leaving skeletons of rotten driftwood. There was barely any cover for the entire stretch, and eels floated above, massive, circling the ruins searching for the one brave enough to steal from their tomb.

Nic sighed. It was too early to use the Ring of Day-into-Night to slip past the giants.

Taking out his trusty cloak he rolled it in lake mud and adhesive aura, and began to climb along the base of the earth like a drifting patch of dirt. He moved slowly, trying to escape the notice of both the eels and the golden carp, crawling towards the fountain inch by inch. Small shrimp and slimy insects writhed in the soft sediment under his hands and feet.

The carp wasn’t fooled for a second.

As soon as Nic approached within a few feet, it began to shoot away, the halo of light surrounding it receding. The eel halted suddenly, jerking back to follow the motion with its weak, watery eye.

Nic grimaced and kicked off. ‘Afraid of holy light’ was a big hint from the System to follow whatever light he could in the underwater labyrinth, and right now, that was the golden fish leaving a blur as it streaked away from him.

He rotated power into his cultivation base and shot after the carp, pushing as hard as he could to stay within the golden halo that surrounded it. The eel was turning, starting to ripple after them as its long body squiggled through the water. Its mouth cracked open to bare long teeth.

The carp was racing for the open mouth of a library, a huge building like a temple at the top of marble steps. Nic was seconds behind as it dove through the double doors.

And instants later a billowing wave of force slammed through the waters as the eel crashed into the library, tearing the doors from the walls as its huge, thrashing body wriggled to slip inside. Nic dove between the shelves and kicked off from the floor, racing along beside the fish as it wove through the maze of rotten, waterlogged books. The eel arched overhead, searching-

Nic’s hands clamped down on the carp. The glow of its scales surrounded him like a lamp as it wriggled and fought in his hands.

The eel stared down directly at him. Its blunt, slimy nose was aimed towards him, and its teeth hung above him like rows of thin stalactites and stalagmites. The fish was desperately trying to escape and Nic curled his body in tight to hold it.

The eel hissed- its voice shaking the water- and retreated. It slid back out of the library, leaving settling dust and floating pages of ruined paper behind in the dark.

Nic gasped silently, releasing a tense breath. “Thanks,” he mumbled to the fish in his hands.

It didn’t seem very welcoming.

Holding onto his protective light, Nic floated through the library. There was something more to this place. He was still searching for the Node, and the golden carp were his only hint where it could be.

Sylphs danced along the tops of the bookshelves, their bodies bright in the gloom.

Sitting on the central desk of the library something gleamed. Nic kicked down towards it and saw a square pillar of jade sized for a human palm sitting on the desk. An ancient seal. Squiggling, tendril-like carvings of rough black stone covered the surface, grasping it like the hands of some underwater terror.

Nic reached down, grasping the cold stone in his hand-

And the carp wriggled and broke free of his one-handed grip. His adhesive stuck it to his fingers for a moment- but with a heroic kick and a powerful wriggle it wrenched out of his hand and shot for the back of the library, and Nic glubbed out a shout of fury as he kicked off the desk and tried desperately to swim after.

The trail of light the carp left hanging in the air was his only guide as he swam through a window, out into the dark of the streets. He wove after, holding his cape overhead to try to escape notice from the eels, but they were wise to him now. A dozen enormous bodies circled like stormclouds over the top of the library’s broad roof.

One of the smaller yellow-orange ones broke away, diving after Nic as he bounced from wall to wall, using powerful kicks to build up speed as he followed the fleeting light of the golden fish. Its whole body flailed and squirmed to propel it through the water, a twisting corkscrew aimed for Nic’s back like a missile. He desperately pushed his cultivation base to the limit and thrust the energy into his legs and tail for raw speed.

And the eel was still gaining. He could see it in the water like a black arrow shot towards him.

“Get back here!” He called to the golden light ahead of him.

The carp was heading for the church at the city’s center, and Nic ricocheted through an alley and leapt up to chase it through a thin gap in the rooftop.

Inside, the water was full of shards of colored glass from the enormous stained window that had been broken apart. Bronze statues and crosses were covered in rust and drifting kelp. There was a calm horror to the scene, like the church had been frozen in time mid-explosion, the fragments of colorful glass still drifting outwards from the impact.

And then the eel slammed into the breach in the ceiling. Dust exploded outwards, and timber fractured. It was forcing its way inside, ripping the whole apart as it wriggled and pushed, and Nic was caught, trapped in the tiny chapel. His eyes swept the room, searching for the golden carp-

The trail of light disappeared down a tiny hole beneath the altar. Nic glubbed out in frustration and rushed for the too-small gap, beginning to rip at it with his bare hands to widen the breach as above, thrashing about, the eel did the same.

Nic was ripping up the floorboards. They were soft and rotten with water damage, and he could see a tunnel lined in glowing blue coral beneath.

He was almost there, almost ready to dive through, when with a massive crash the roof caved in and the eel dove through the cloud of debris with a terrible shriek, maw opening wide to crush Nic between its teeth.

Nic kicked off and barely escaped as the eel’s mouth slammed shut on the flow of bubbles left where he’d been. He shot upwards, desperate, heading up the church’s belltower.

The eel was behind him, its body slamming against the walls and threatening to bring the whole church down as it climbed up the steeple-

And it was faster than Nic. With every second, as he rose towards the rusted brass bell above, the eel was gaining. Its mouth was yawning open, an abyss crooked teeth waiting to swallow him.

With a final shout Nic threw the seal from his hand upwards just before the eel reached him, split seconds from biting him in two.

The ring of the bell swept through the waters as the seal smashed into it like a comet, thrown with all the force Nic could muster.

And the eel flinched back. Its head slammed against the narrow walls of the belltower, and with a pained screech, it tore its way through. The whole tower came apart as the too-big leviathan wedged inside threw itself against the walls until they were nothing but floating rubble. The bell rang again and again as it fell in slow motion through the waters.

Nic breathed a sigh of relief as the eel ran away, screaming.

He found the seal and dove back down, landing amidst the rubble and pulling a beam aside, finding the tunnel the carp had disappeared down. Digging his way in he descended through the glowing passageway…

Down to a submerged chamber full of beautiful, rainbow shelves of coral. At the center sat a chair of pearlescent bone, sized for a giant, the back split open by some ancient blow.

You have discovered Dominus Node ae32c7

‘The Throne of Tides’

200 Essence awarded.

This is a Fortune Type node. Unique treasures and opportunities will occur here, gathering over time.

Current Ruler - None