Oars were being ripped out of the hands of the Silver Servi rowers by unseen Depthdweller foes. At the same time, Krakenlings were flying out of the water, sticking themselves into the bronze painted wood of our hull and reached into the three rows of banks of rowers and ripped them out with long tentacles. The Krakenlings were color changing octopi with the ability to vault out of the water and stretch their tentacles twenty feet away from them.

One bright red Krakenling spotted with orange blotches whipped its tentacles at me and I sliced off sections of the grasping arms with my Keenblade trident.

Merfolkish Depthdwellers were jumping up on the sides of the trireme. Their top half was nude but entirely covered in grey fish scale so that it wasn’t like nudity was on display. At least we were keeping our bloodbath where we really could be brutally mauled to death and then eaten family friendly for the children. The three of us stabbed back at them with our tridents, cutting off fingers. The female Depthdwellers shrieked terribly.

The fishy Depthdwellers commanded by primordial Pontas began throwing Krakenlings at us gladiators and at the Silver sailors. I sliced tossed balls of wriggling demonic calamari into halves and pulled Krakenlings off the faces of the lesser Servi. Velias and Turias did much the same, the three of us rushing around to delay and offset a great number of foes while protecting the vulnerable rowers. I felt responsible for the Silvers. Not every man got involved in the games of the Red Sands arena willingly or uncoerced or under fair and reasonable pretenses. Many a Leonid’s prey fleeing for the raucous attention of the crowd or a foot soldier in a mock battle recreating a historical war were men who had found themselves in great debt or owing many favors. I needed to protect these poor bastards, if I could, and get them home to their families.

The Finned Leviathan knocked the trireme up out of the water and then let us slam back down, spraying water everywhere. A female Depthdweller jumped onto the ship from the artificial sea and I chased it around the deck of the trireme while it thrashed with its fish tail lower half. I cornered it eventually and I stared into its burning coal eyes and piranha teeth filled jaw chomping reflexively as it hissed at me. I reared back with perfect form and drove my three-pronged trident into her head. I heard shrieks and screams and wails from below as her kindred sensed another one of their kind die.

The dead Depthdweller was still involuntarily twitching as I wrenched my weapon out of her head, but my enhanced hearing could isolate her heartbeat from the clash and clamor of the fighting and the dying all around us. She was dead. That I was sure of.

Another Depthdweller jumped on board, a male merman rather than the monstrous mermaid I had killed, and Velias beheaded it with a single strong swing of his trident, the Keenblade’s monoatomic edge cutting off bone and flesh that could not be penetrated with mundane rifle or the swing of a steel axe, even an axe in the hand of a Gold Servi or one of the higher Paths.

Turias was going around ripping Krakenlings off of the helpless Silver sailors. He held his trident in his left hand in case of the Depthdwellers leaping over the edge of the rim and getting a jump on him and was tearing away the suction cupped, and boa constricting tentacles of the Krakenlings. They screeched at him from their undersides where their octopoidal beaks lay and they shifted their chameleon colors rapidly to show their displeasure in the brief moments before he gripped them into a pulp, a Gold’s full grip strength in his dominant hand showing.

The Finned Leviathan slammed against the right side of the trireme ship, knocking us to the side. I got a good look at it. It was a yellow-eyed giant serpent with shark fins and gills and black obsidian bull’s horns. It was big enough to swallow a person, even one of my size. I wondered why it had not simply punctured the bottom of our ship to sink us. Perhaps it was playing some kind of game. Or maybe it was simply too stupid and bestial to strategize such things with self-awareness of the full capabilities of its body.

Another Depthdweller jumped on board and I speared it through the eye. I heard more screams and screeches. It was interesting that some of the deaths of the merfolk provoked such funereal mournful wailing and others did not.

The Finned Leviathan slammed into the left side and nearly flipped the entire boat, dipping the right side of our ship into the water. When we slammed back down, the entire right bank of rowers was gone, ripped out of their seats and positions. Dammit.

The Finned Leviathan reared up out of the water, its serpentine form pure muscle. It had three rows of giant shark teeth that moved like six chainsaws in its mouth. It struck and myself and bearded Velias slashed at its face and throat. We each left eight marks made in the fraction of an instant. Emerald blood spewed from the Leviathan’s wounds, and it immediately started a green blaze of unnatural, unholy fire on the wooden ship. The demonic fire was filled with toxins in its smoke and it released a greenish haze that made me cough up blood and Velias collapse to his knees. The Leviathan struck again and Velias returned fire with his trident but ricocheted his blow against the bone in its jaw. His Keenblade weapon was knocked out of his weakening hand, the gasses from the fire sapping his hold.

The Finned Leviathan struck yet again and this time it clamped down on Velias’s arm. There was a whir and a spray of bloodmist and then Velias hung free, armless, on the deck as the sea serpent retracted back.

I had learned about the limits of the regenerative capabilities of Copper Imperators and Gold Servi through discussion with Gaias after overhearing conversations from others in the Brazen Chains ludus. There was a flaw. A limit. A barrier to complete recovery that triggered when total limb loss or total destruction of a complete organ like the heart or the liver occurred. It would grow back in time and if it was the heart, the other organs would acclimate to passive blood flow until it regrew, but whatever regrew would always be inferior to the original organ or limb. If we got out of this with our lives, Velias would regain his right arm in a week or two, but that right arm would be weaker, less durable, less reactive, less touch and temperature sensitive, slower to heal. Unlike the Teitan Prometheas, we could not regrow our livers each day for eternity. Cut off a limb enough times and it would only form a gnarled stump. Carve a wound into the flesh enough times and a scar would form on our perfect human bodies.

The Leviathan struck from beneath, sending us up into the air flipping. My beating heart was in my throat. We were going into the waters. The trireme boat landed, capsized. In the water my vision was perfectly clear, I could make out details like it was glass even though when looking at the dark, deep water from above the surface of the artificial sea on the trireme I was unable to. Perhaps it was the same mechanic that let me see with no source of light in Gaias’s tunnel to his office back at the ludus. All around me was an undersea hell of dying, scared Silvers and vicious Infernal Beasts swarming the struggling boatsmen.

A female Depthdweller dragged me to the bottom, her grey scaled face leering at me. I decided I didn’t like her very much and punched her in the face. She reeled and then whipped her clawed fingertips at me. I turned so that she didn’t get me in the eye and then brought my head into her nose, breaking it. I ripped off her right ear with a wrenching twist and pull and then put both sides of my hands on her head and began crushing. One of her eyes popped out and then Krakenlings latched onto me, coming to the monstrous mermaid’s aid.

The Depthdweller, leaking black plumes of blood, bit me on the wrist with her piranha teeth and in rage I managed to crush her head with my singular right hand. I smashed and pulled the swarms of devilish octopi off me just in time for me to get an awful feeling and turn around to see the Finned Leviathan speeding towards me with its mouth opened all the way up.

I was swallowed, sucked in with great force. Lucky in that I had been pulled in so quickly that I hadn’t been chomped on by its chainsaw shark teeth but unlucky in that it had happened at all. I tried to force my way back up the mouth but was unable to move. Instead, I decided to go out the cloaca, the back end of the serpent. I forced my way past muscular sphincters and down the fleshy length of the interior of the Finned Leviathan. Moving past the Leviathan’s dissolving lunch and burning stomach acids, I forced my way out of the cloaca in a plume of emerald blood and serpent meat chunks.

The Finned Leviathan immediately circled around back at me and I narrowly swam out of its mouth and grabbed onto one of its obsidian bullhorns. It thrashed and bobbed in the water but I kept a tight grip on my hold of it.

I reached down to its face and started scraping out its left eye and then working on puncturing past the socket into its brain. I tore the brain apart and it shuddered and the great Finned Leviathan died.

I went around after that, ripping apart Krakenlings with my bare hands and breaking the necks of Depthdwellers and recovering the bodies of the still living Silver Servi rowers and Velias and Turias and brought them onto the upside down, capsized ship.

My lungs were burning, I had forgotten to breathe, and I drew in a gasp of oxygen. The first I had taken since being dragged down into the water by a Depthdweller after the Leviathan had flipped the ship.

I climbed to the top of the bottom of the trireme, raised a fist in triumph and victory and then promptly passed out.