Chapter 100: Rescuing the Heroine

The water was freezing.

It closed over my head, and for a second I couldn’t tell which way was up. I kicked hard, broke the surface, and gasped, and then I realized I couldn’t see anything at all. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the sea around me was completely black.

[Weasel! Weasel, I need you right now!]

Something small and wet landed on top of my head and dug its claws into my scalp. It let out an angry little squeak, as if I’d pulled it out of bed.

"LIGHT! Everything you’ve got!"

The weasel lit up.

It was so bright that I had to squint, and for about twenty feet in every direction, the sea turned white. I saw the rowboat floating upside down. I saw Lily, thrashing in the water beside it, her head going under and coming back up again.

Then, I saw what was between us.

It was rising out of the water, slowly. First came a smooth grey back as wide as the boat, and then a head with no eyes that I could find, just a mouth. The mouth kept opening, wider and wider, with rows and rows of thin white teeth going all the way back into its throat.

[Holy shit, I did NOT write that. Teenage me was into dragons and pretty boys, not THAT!]

The mouth turned toward Lily.

I grabbed the weasel off my head.

"Sorry, buddy!"

I threw it as hard as I could. It sailed over the water, squealing the whole way, and landed on the bottom of the upturned boat with its claws scrabbling on the wood.

"TAUNT!"

The weasel puffed up, glowing even brighter, and let out a shriek. The monster’s head swung away from Lily and toward the boat.

I had a few seconds at most.

I pulled Tide down into my legs and kicked. It hurt, the same way it always hurt, but I shot forward through the water faster than I’d ever swum in my life. All that practice in the shallows was paying off.

I reached Lily just as she went under again.

I grabbed her by the collar and hauled her up, and the second her face broke the surface, she panicked. Her arms went around my neck, and she climbed right on top of me, and we both went under.

[She’s going to drown us both!]

Lily was one of the strongest people alive, and right now she was using every bit of that strength to hold me underwater. I couldn’t pull her arms off, and I couldn’t even move my head.

My lungs were on fire. I clawed at her wrists, kicked, twisted, and none of it did anything.

Then, all at once, her arms went slack.

I twisted, got behind her, wrapped one arm across her chest, and kicked us both back up to the surface.

"Lily! Lily, it’s me! I’ve got you!"

She didn’t answer. Her head fell back against my shoulder, and her eyes were closed. She wasn’t coughing, and she wasn’t moving. The only part of her that still had any strength in it was her right hand, which was balled up into a tight fist.

Behind us, the shrieking stopped.

I looked back. The weasel’s light was flickering on top of the boat, and the monster was turning away from it, back toward us.

[Weasel, come back!]

The light blinked out on the boat and flared up again on my shoulder. The weasel was panting.

I swam.

I pushed Tide down into my legs and held it for as long as I could, then let it drop, then pushed it down again. Every time it came back, it hurt more. My arm burned from holding Lily. I swallowed seawater with every other breath. The shore was a line of pale sand that never seemed to get any closer, and behind me, I could hear something big moving through the water.

Then, my feet hit sand.

I stumbled, fell, got up again, and dragged Lily out of the surf by the back of her shirt. My legs gave out halfway up the beach, and we both dropped onto the wet sand.

I rolled her onto her back. Her lips were blue, and her chest wasn’t moving.

"Lily? Hey, Lily, come on! Wake up!"

She didn’t.

Behind us, the water started to churn.

I turned around. The monster’s head came up out of the surf, then its back, and then, underneath it, something else. A long row of thin, jointed legs unfolded from its sides, and one by one, they planted themselves on the sand.

It stood up, and then it started walking toward us.

[... Since when do you have LEGS!?]

I looked up and down the beach. There were no lamps, no teachers, and no students. Everybody else was asleep, or at the tavern, or smart enough to stay away from the water at night.

It was just me, a half-dead weasel, and Lily on the sand behind me.

[Alright, Kohaku, you can do this.]

I got up. My legs were shaking so hard I almost went back down. The closest thing to a weapon was an oar lying at the end of the dock, so I ran for it, grabbed it with both hands, and turned around.

The monster was already coming.

It moved fast on those legs, scuttling sideways across the sand. I dove, rolled, and felt the wind as one of its legs stabbed down into the spot where my head had been. Sand sprayed across my face.

I came up swinging. The oar hit one of its legs dead-on and bounced right off with a loud, hollow clunk. The whole thing shook in my hands so hard that my fingers went numb.

"LIGHT!"

The weasel flared on my shoulder, bright enough to blind anything at close range. The monster didn’t even slow down.

[... Right. It doesn’t have any eyes. Great. Good job, me.]

Two legs came at me at once. I pulled Coat over my arms, blocked one with the oar, and took the other one in the ribs. The layer held for exactly one hit, then tore off, and I went flying across the sand and landed on my back.

When I looked up, the monster was turning toward Lily.

"HEY! Over here, you ugly bastard!"

I didn’t have Taunt anymore. The cooldown was nowhere close to done. So, I pushed a chunk of mana into my knee, Snapped it, and launched myself across the sand in one step, and I slammed the oar into the side of its head as hard as I could.

It turned back to me, which was exactly what I wanted.

For the next minute, I didn’t think about anything except staying alive. I ran Tide through my legs to dodge and Coated my arms to block, and when neither of those worked, I got hit, got up, and got hit again. Every time it tried to turn toward Lily, I ran back in and smacked it with the oar until it remembered I existed. My mana was draining fast, and Tide kept flickering out on me. One of its legs caught the edge of my thigh and opened up a long, shallow cut.

Then, my foot slipped on the wet sand.

I went down hard. The monster stood over me, and that huge mouth started opening, wider and wider, all those teeth pointed right at my face.

[Oh, shit. This is it.]

A white blur went past me.

The leg closest to my head fell off. So did the next one, and the one after that. The monster screamed and toppled sideways, and Serena landed on the sand between us with Dawnlight shining in her hand.

"You IDIOT!" she yelled, without even looking at me. "Where is she!?"

"Behind me! She’s not breathing!"

Serena’s face went pale. She spun around and swung Dawnlight down into the monster’s back. The blade cut deep, but the shell was thick, and it got stuck halfway. The monster thrashed, rolling onto its side, and its soft white underbelly flipped up into the air.

"Sakana!" Serena braced her feet and held it down with both hands on the hilt. "NOW!"

I got up on one knee and pointed the oar at it.

The flat end of an oar was technically called a blade, and I was out of options. I took every last bit of mana I had left and packed it into the wood, and the oar started to glow.

[Please land. Please, please, please land.]

I swung.

A flat line of light tore off the end of the oar. It pulled low, the way it always did, and that was exactly where I needed it. It hit the monster right in the belly and went straight through it. At the same moment, the oar exploded into splinters in my hands.

The monster twitched once, and then it didn’t move again.

I dropped what was left of the oar and ran.

Lily was lying exactly where I’d left her. I dropped to my knees beside her, tilted her head back, lifted her chin, and put my ear by her mouth. There was nothing.

Back on Earth, I had spent three whole days researching CPR for one Chapter of a medical romance novel. That Chapter got four comments. I had never been more grateful for anything in my life.

I put the heel of one hand on the center of her chest, laid the other one on top, locked my elbows, and pushed.

"One, two, three, four..."

I counted out thirty compressions, hard and fast. Then, I pinched her nose shut, sealed my mouth over hers, and gave her two long breaths, watching her chest rise each time. Then, I did it all again.

"Come on, Lily. Come on, come on, come on!"

On the fourth round, she coughed.

Seawater came up out of her mouth. I rolled her onto her side right away, and she coughed, gagged, and threw up what looked like half the ocean onto the sand. Then, she took a deep, ragged breath.

I grabbed her and hugged her so tight she squeaked.

"K-Kohaku?" Lily’s voice was hoarse. She blinked up at me, completely lost. "What... What happened? Why are we on the beach?"

"You DROWNED!" My voice cracked in half. "You drowned, you idiot, and I had to SAVE you!"

Then, I started crying.

It was ugly. My face scrunched up, snot ran out of my nose, and I made a loud, awful, honking noise that I did not know my body could make. I pressed my face into her wet hair and sobbed into it.

Lily slowly put her arms around me.

"... There, there?"

Behind us, Serena pulled Dawnlight out of the monster and looked away to give us some privacy.