She veered straight for Desmond, her long talons outstretched as she drew nearer towards him. He stood calmly, smiling, and she lashed out at his bindings. Everyone in the room seemed to have been paralyzed by shock, but as the Rasulka grabbed Desmond's shirt collar and started to pull him away, Ashay straightened up and shrieked, "Stop her!"

The guards, though they looked apprehensive, responded at once, swarming towards her, brandishing weapons of bone, stone, shells, and claws.

"Don't hurt the boy!" Ashay screamed. The Rasulka dropped Desmond and lunged at the advancing guards, raking her talons across one's chest so that beads of emerald blood spurted into the water, and wrapping her tail around another's neck, pressing hard as though to crush his throat. Jino began to chant; as he spoke, ice crept over his seaweed shackles and he struggled with all his might, shattering the frozen ropes and littering the stream with ice shards.

He seized Desmond by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from the scuffle, over to Arrluk, while the Rasulka continued to pummel Ashay's guards. Jino released him, seized a whale-tooth knife, and hacked at the others' bindings.

"We need to get out of here," he said urgently when he had finished.

Ashay was swimming towards them, looking furious. He raised his hand as though to perform another spell, but Duat smacked him upside the head with the shaft of his spear and he slumped unconscious to the floor.

"Hurry," he said calmly, as though there had been no interruption.

They burst through the entrance of the pillar, the Rasulka screaming in rage as her target escaped.

"You knew she was coming the whole time?" Arrluk yelled to Desmond.

"Just about!" he yelled back. "Watch out, I can feel that same — thing — hovering around again."

And he was quite right. Before they had gone more than a few feet, the invisible force that had assaulted the Neptune's Treasure only days before returned, knocking them all aside. They scattered through the water, but thankfully nobody seemed severely injured. Desmond, however, screamed.

Arrluk looked up and saw his figure being dragged through the murky water and into the distance, as though the unseen monster had hooked him somehow and was heaving him away. Jino went gliding after him, but within seconds was sent flying backwards.

"What is that thing?" Ethan demanded.

"How did you manage to get rid of it the last time?" Arrluk asked Duat quickly. "I saw you waving Hyrule at it; did that repel it?"

The guard shook his head. "It did nothing, Your Highness. It seemed to have left of its own accord, most likely because the Rasulka had been injured."

"Well, we can't just let him get taken away!" Kayla screamed. And the strangest thing happened. The moment her shrill voice rang out, another earsplitting scream pierced the gloom, so terrible they were forced to cover their ears. In the distance, Arrluk could see a cluster of odd-looking flowers, which were swaying violently, and which he recognized. Above them, Desmond halted, bobbing in the water as though the thing holding him had abruptly stopped. Then it was off again.

"Did you see that?" Ethan said.

"I did," Arrluk said, and an idea bloomed in his mind as he spoke. "Kayla, scream again, as loud as you can!"

"What? I can't just scream out at will! It hurts my th —"

"Bobby Sanders' lunchbox, first day of eighth-grade," Ethan interrupted firmly, and Kayla shrieked again with a look of utter horror on her face, as though remembering something terrifying. The flowers began to dance again, their pods bursting open as they replicated Kayla's hair-raising scream, magnifying it tenfold. The thing stopped again.

"Sound disorients it," Arrluk breathed. "Those are Sirenpods, they mirror the loudest sounds they hear at a given time!"

Kayla gasped. She turned to Duat and said, "Get me to the ship, hurry."

Though he was obviously confused, he grasped her arm anyway and hurtled up to the Neptune's Treasure. Desmond was almost out of sight by now: Arrluk was watching his already faint figure receding even further. Beside him, Ethan was muttering, "Come on, Kayla . . ."

And then they saw what she had planned — or rather, heard. The ship's trumpet, which they used for sonar, rang out. But it was unlike any other time that they had ever heard it. Before, it was like a high-pitched whistle. Now, however, it was a loud, harsh blaring, like an oversized foghorn; the intensity of the sound lashed out at the water with almost physical force, forcing them to clamp their hands over their ears.

Worse still, the Sirenpods burst open once again, adding their voices to the cacophony and filling the water with a sound so loud, so dreadful, that schools of fish fluttered away in the black water in fright.

Ahead of them, Desmond was struggling too. Writhing in the water, he tried to block out the ear-splitting sound, but between the noise and the creature holding him he seemed unable to move. His captor was slowly fading in and out of sight, screeching in anguish.

After a few seconds it solidified completely. It looked like a massive worm, horribly pale and slimy, with no discernible head, though there was a mouth filled with rows upon rows of jagged, mossy teeth, between which were fixed Desmond's leg. He kicked out hard at the monster's mouth and, miraculously, managed to extricate itself from the creature's clutches.

The ship's trumpet died out, and Arrluk looked up. "Erebyth!" he said, motioning at Desmond; it was the same locomotion spell he had used on the squids on the day he had been called to visit the Oracle, and though he felt a stab of trepidation, he reassured himself through the knowledge that Desmond was rather sturdier than a few squids and much less likely to explode if he made a mistake. As he hoped, the spell worked: Desmond zoomed backwards through the water as though another invisible beast were pulling him in their direction.

He came to a halt right in front of them, looking nauseous. "Can you people stop dragging me all over the place, I feel like the constant spinning is stirring up things I haven't eaten since kindergarten!" he panted, massaging his stomach.

"Sorry," said Arrluk.

"It's waking up," Ethan said urgently from behind them. They glanced up and saw that the worm was indeed recovering. Jino, who had also regained himself earlier, summoned a ball of Hyrule, causing an abrupt drop in the temperature of the water around them, and extended the glowing substance into a rearing plume that shot up through the gloom.

"What are you doing?" Ethan said, shivering.

"Signaling them to hurry," Jino muttered. It seemed to have worked. As the worm plunged towards them the enormous sea urchins anchoring the ship were retracted into the port holes, and the Neptune's Treasure wheeled around, facing the creature. Huge projectiles burst out of the holes on either side of the ship: they streaked towards the creature, and moment later they exploded.

"Cannonballs?" Ethan asked curiously.

"Chunks of whale meat, actually," Arrluk said. "The gas built up inside the carcasses is preserved so that they could be used as bombs another time."

"Nice," Ethan said, nodding appreciatively.

As the monster disappeared behind a cloud of smoke, the Neptune's Treasure came gliding down towards them. They stopped a short distance away and the seaweed plank rolled down in their direction. There was a bellow of rage from behind them and they turned to see the Rasulka, victorious against Ashay's men, soaring towards them.

"Hurry!" Arrluk said. He and Jino swam up to the deck while Desmond and Ethan hurtled up along the plank.

"What're we going to do now?" Desmond asked, when they had reached the safety of the deck and the seaweed plank furled back inside. "He's not going to want to let us through now."

Arrluk hesitated. "Well . . ." he said, shifting uncomfortably.

"Prince Arrluk," Jino said, looking at him as though he could not believe his eyes, "you cannot possibly be considering —"

"What other choice do we have?" Arrluk snapped.

"That could start a war —"

"Hey, we're already not on the best of terms with him, and besides, he's going to have his hands full with rebuilding anyway," Desmond said brightly, pointing down at the crumbling stone structure below. "I say we go for it!"

"Well, whatever we're going to do, can we do it fast?" Ethan said urgently.

Arrluk paused again. Then he shook his head, coming to his decision. "Take us forward," he said to Jino.

"Prince Arrluk, I know this may not be my place, but I believe —"

"This is a direct order from your Prince, and the captain of this ship, Jino," Arrluk said coolly. "Take — us — forward."

It was the first time in as far back as Arrluk could remember that he had needed to invoke his "Prince" status with Jino. The guard looked as shocked as he himself felt, beneath the cold exterior, but he quickly nodded and turned away, grasping the steering wheel and veering the ship forward. They flew over Ashay's crumbling abode, leaving the Rasulka as a tiny, bobbing speck in the distance, and sailed forward, over the remaining expanse of the city, and towards their destination.

Arrluk's mind was still reeling from what he had done minutes before. But he gave himself pause in reminding himself that they were on a tight schedule. They needed to get to Amphitrite's Star before the First Tide shifted. They couldn't afford to waste time.

"What is that?" Kayla gasped. He snapped out of his reverie and whirled around to see what she was indicating. The water was so dark that for a moment he could not make out what she was referring to . . . then he saw a gigantic silhouette moving through the water, visible because its shadowy figure was darker than the water around it. Arrluk's mind immediately drifted to horrible images of titanic sea monsters . . . but then, to his horror, he saw that it was a ship. A gigantic mass of obsidian-black rock, with a masthead of a huge, evil-looking serpent. It was in the shape of an ancient trireme, at least three times larger than the Neptune's Treasure, and it was gaining fast. Now they knew why the Rasulka had disappeared.

"Holy . . ." Ethan muttered, aghast, taking a step back.

Arrluk looked around at the rest of the crew, all as shocked as he was. This was his moment to act, as captain of the ship. He should take chage, assess the situation, find a way to steer them out of danger . . . but his mind was oddly blank, the slate wiped clean with fear, just as in Ashay's throne room. Fear at the shapes now emerging from within the slowly opening hull of that horrid ship, which were actual sea monsters, illuminated by the feeble light of the large blobs of Hyrule still hovering above.

Hordes of all manner of sea-dwellers, at the forefront of which stood several Nogards, enormous, crocodile-like creatures with gigantic, scaly, horribly enhanced bodies with huge clawed hands and large fins sprouting from either side of their backs, like wings.

"Are those dragons?" Desmond gasped.

"No, they're Nogards," Duat said. "This is bad. Very bad. Jino, faster!"

"The ship is doing all it can!"

But unfortunately, all it could was nowhere near enough. The herd of creatures was advancing quickly, their roars and hisses becoming audible as they drew closer.

"If they catch us they'll chew the ship apart and use us as toothpicks!" Ethan said. "There has to be something we can do! The cannons, or —" He looked at Arrluk, clearly waiting for some declaration of affirmation. But Arrluk merely stared at him.

"What are you —?"

Ethan was cut off as a tremendous boom! rang out from above. The entire ship rocked to right, causing them to lose balance. Several more hits struck them from the rear, then a bubbling, hissing sound reached their ears as they finally managed to straighten up; some form of acid was melting through the ceiling.

"Nogard venom," Duat said. It had melted a hole straight through the bubble barrier and was now dissolving the ceiling. The other creatures were swarming around the hole, all fighting to dive in and swoop down upon them at the same time.

"Any more of those gas bombs, are there?" Desmond shouted, and Arrluk tore his gaze away from the struggling creatures and looked at his companion, who looked shaken, yet determined.

Jino shouted out, and the floor of the deck contorted; a second later, a hole had opened up at Desmond's feet and several pods floated up from the depths of the ship. There was a split second's pause, then Desmond yelled, "Well? What are you waiting for?"

He dove towards the floating bombs, seized one, and tossed it through the melted gap and towards the overhead creatures. Their horrid faces registered something like shock as it rose through the water — then it exploded, blasting them all away. Jino, Kayla, Ethan, and Duat grabbed as well, launching the pods at every opening the creatures were gouging into the ship's hull, sending them flying.

"Over there!" Desmond shouted, pointing at a Nogard trying to force itself through a hole near the steering wheel. Ethan lobbed a chunk of the whale carcass in its direction with an almost admirable casualness, and the explosion cleared the area of the Nogard.

Arrluk watched as Desmond took charge, leading them in rebellion against their assailants. He was watching him so fixedly, still frozen in place, that it was a second before he registered that Duat had spoken.

"There they are!"

He whirled around again and he saw immediately what Duat was pointing at: the Oxidaze Tunnels could not have been more out of place in an area like Baikuana. It was a huge structure comprised entirely of ice, larger, even, than his father's palace, and delicately carved as though chiseled by an enormous, highly experienced hand. Dozens of vast holes were carved into the surface, all running with channels of magical water ready to deposit travellers in various parts of the sea.

"Which one do we take?" Jino yelled.

Arrluk opened his mouth to respond, but he wasn't given the chance to speak. An entire group of monsters slammed into the ship in unison, and they went spiraling towards the Tunnels. Jino tried valiantly to steady them, to avoid the ice, but he succeeded in only one aspect. The ship narrowly avoided destruction by swerving away from the ice face just in time, but they crashed into a hole without registering whether or not it was the right one, and the miraculous water in the passage gushed them along so fast that sight and sound became a blur, and Arrluk lost all sense of direction.