Brother, I need you. Laurence sent to Yun as he left the engine. He had no confidence that he could fight against the giant snake on his own, but with Yun and Louisa there he was almost certain of his victory.

Brother. He heard in response. Mate and I follow. Direct us. It had taken months for Laurence to get used to the mental communication that Yun had gifted him, but now they could talk together no matter how far away from each other they were.

He had originally thought it was to do with the tattoos that had bound the two of them, but Yun thought otherwise. The wolf-boy had a certain amount of innate knowledge, things that would be considered instinctual if they were simpler, and he knew from his birth that there was a certain kind of bond that could be formed between two people. It gave Yun an increase in potential and the ability to speak the human language of the tower, while Laurence it gave increased mana and the ability to converse like a tigerwolf.

Outside. We hunt snake. His grasp on the grammar of the wolf was lacking to say the least, but the speed that he was picking it up was faster than he expected. The language itself was one of experiences and imagery, less structured words and more impulses through sense data. It meant that each sentence was beautiful and clear but retaining knowledge in the language was nigh on impossible.

Walking up each step to the roof of the ship, Laurence could not help but begin to get excited. The rush of adrenaline, the fear, the excitement, it all bubbled up to a point in him then stopped. It was a fever pitch that never quite broke the surface. There was something in him that seemed to cut him off from the world when he got too excited about combat. He had seen it time and time again in himself since that fight with the orik on the first floor, but it was not something he could stop. In the end he had begun to become numb to the sensation of the cut off. It no longer worried him or confused him, he was numb to that too.

Each step he took towards the coming battle allowed him to transform from the inquisitive child he was normally into the heartless killer he became out of necessity. The switch over always seemed quick to the people around Laurence, but it always felt like an age to him. His pulse slowed down and the adrenaline ceased rushing. Colours became muted and almost greyed out entirely to the boy. His emotions began to quieten until they were basically nothing more than widowers in the wind. He was one with his self preservation instinct, his sight was clear and sharp but uncluttered. He was ready for war.

He took the last step out into the daylight and emerged from his transformation with his small smile that never quite reached the eyes. The wind whipped by and pressed his long hair forwards as he looked at the wyrm riding the air currents behind the ship. It was far larger than he thought, simply dwarfing the ship Laurence stood on. From end to end it was about five times the size of its child, coloured pitch black and sheathed in blue lightning.

When the maelstrom snake saw Laurence come out of the ship, it could not help but let out a bellowing, guttural laugh. It sounded like sheet metal being pushed through a wood chipper and was so loud that even Sleepy and Xuchi in the engine could hear it unaided. It could not help but let out the sound, seeing the man-child come out as if to fight it.

When it saw another boy and a girl come out and stand beside the first boy it felt a strange sense of impending danger. Somewhere in the deep recesses of the wyrm’s mind there was a memory of a memory, something likely inherited, that warned against harming or fighting children that gave off the aura that those did. There was something truly uncanny about the children, but it was not enough to deter the snake. They had hurt its child, and now had to pay.

The beast sped up once more, nearing the ship. It intended to finish this in one swift action, ramming through the ship itself. If the ship was destroyed then unless the children could fly out defy gravity they would fall to their deaths. It would be hit by debris but that was inconsequential. They had to pay.

The three Saints watched as the beast edged closer and closer. Its maximum speed was not much faster than the ship was going, but it was faster. They only had a minute to prepare before the wyrm was upon them, but their preparations only took seconds. Yun called out to his needle, Onyx, and immediately grew it into the length of a sword while Louisa bergen shrinking and growing wings. By the time she was finished she was barely bigger than Yun’s palm and hovered above the wolf-boy's head, her foot long gauze wings flickering just faster than the human eye could catch. They were a mismatched little group but still managed to produce an unimaginable pressure and sense of danger towards the snake.

The snake screamed once more and dove towards the children, sending multiple sonic booms in its wake. It moved uninhibited until Laurence raised his left hand and let out a flash of light. Inklight span out of his hand and sped towards the beast, the rope of light undulating like a serpent towards the snake. Within an instant inklight had reached its target and pierced into the maelstrom snake’s eye. It was the one spot that Laurence could see which was not covered by the creature's thick scales, so he naturally aimed for it. Even if the creature blinked he assumed that the beam of light could just about puncture the skin. The wyrm writhed at the sharp pain coming from the beam of light that had struck its eye. It writhed in pain at the feeling of the incision into its eye and nearly threw the smaller snake off its back in the process.

The snake let out a deafening high pitched screech before trying to pull the rope of solid light out of its eye but inklight would not budge. Even when Laurence covered his ears from the cry of pain from the snake the tension did not lessen. The rope was stuck fast.

The boy took a chance and tried to pull the snake in by its eye. He heaved and pulled but to no avail. The combination of the weight of the eye and the different speeds that the ship and snake were moving at made actually pulling the snake closer nigh on impossible. To add insult to injury, the snake had closed its eyelid and was gripping on to it for dear life. It could not bear either option it had been dealt, but in its pain addled state saw an opportunity. It pulled as Laurence pulled and with its monstrous strength, the boy was pulled into the air.

Laurence felt his body suddenly leave the ground of the ship and arc into the air. He gasped in shock as the ship quickly moved away from him. For a moment there was nothing but space below the boy. Thousands and thousands of miles of yellow stretched from and to either end of the horizon. The only colours other than the yellow of the sand was the soft blue of the sky and the deep purple-black that made up the snake's storm.

As the ship sped further away, Laurence shook himself from his stupor. The void descended once more and he finally saw a single way out. He severed the flow of mana to the beam of inklight pulling him away and fired off a second tendril. The ship was fast, but inklight was faster. It hooked round the railing that stood normally stopping people from doing what Laurence just did, and the boy began pulling himself out of the abyss.

Laurence was not out of the woods that quickly, however. In the second and a half that Laurence had been off the ship it had travelled almost four hundred meters away from him, which meant he had to climb that in high winds to get back to safety.

Just behind him the snake raged and roiled. It was in pain, worried about its child and angry at the ship before it, so brazen as to harm the great beast and yet still able to survive after doing so. In the end it screamed out and tried to eat Laurence. If it could not quite get the ship, it would take the life of the child that managed to injure it. It dove towards the boy and opened its mouth, bearing a deep red tongue and lightning sheathed teeth to the world.