Fates Parallel Chapter 358 - Storm

As it turned out, the flow of mana throughout the world hadn’t changed much in ten thousand years—the ocean was just enormous. The ‘patterns’ that Jianmo had shared with Yoshika were vast fields of mana so large that she had trouble recognizing them in her domain.

After days of desperate searching, she’d eventually settled on a method of breaking her ‘map’ down into smaller, more easily recognized pieces. Aside from a few false positives forcing her to backtrack, it went quite well and she felt that they were making good progress.

Unfortunately, not everybody agreed with her assessment.

“This is absurd—we should never have wasted our time trusting these beastkin. They’ve probably just been stalling us this entire time while the fiends and demons beat us to the tomb.”

Bai Lin’s complaints had become a regular refrain every time Yoshika needed to stop and reorient herself. She sighed, trying to ignore it as she found the particular mana current she was looking for, and moved to confirm that it was part of the right leyline.

“We don’t want the demons getting their hands on the Sovereign’s Tear any more than you do. I’m doing my best to navigate, but in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re surrounded by an endless wasteland of saltwater. It’s not exactly easy.”

Yue grimaced as she looked out over the ocean.

“I think it’s about to get a lot more difficult—is that a storm up ahead?”

Yoshika blinked, relaxing the focus on her domain to look out in the direction that Yue indicated. Sure enough, there was a dark spot forming on the distant horizon. It only took her a moment to confirm that they were headed directly for it.

“Well, that sucks. It’s just a bit of rain, though.”

Guan Yu shook his head.

“Don’t underestimate ocean storms. They build up quickly, and move faster than you think. Without land to break up the flow of qi, massive swells of energy gather in those storms.”

“How dangerous is it? Should we go around?”

Sovereign Shen sneered at her.

“You’ve wasted enough of our time already. I shudder to imagine how long it would take you to find your path a second time. Let us handle the dangers—you just stay on course.”

“Fine.”

Yoshika was a little nervous, but Shen was right that it would probably take far too long for her to regain her bearings if they tried to avoid the storm. Besides, as it loomed ever larger on the horizon, the very notion of going around the giant storm seemed hopeless.

She shared her bearings with Ja Yun telepathically, leading them straight into the thick of the storm with another windwalking spell.

—-

“This was a mistake!”

Yoshika’s shouts were drowned out by the cacophony of wind, rain, and lightning that surrounded them, but Shen Yu responded without any trouble even as one of his flying swords cut down an attacking sky elemental.

“Enough complaining! Find the next path!”

“I can’t! The essence here is a complete fucking mess!”

The storm had been bad, but the further in they traveled, the worse it got. Wind and rain turned to hail carried on gale winds so strong that they had to shield themselves from being torn to shreds. The occasional lightning strike had been replaced by a never-ending cascade of electrical storms that provided the only light underneath the thick black clouds overhead. Towering waves and tornadoes threatened to snatch them out of the sky, and Ienaga had long-since disappeared beneath the surface—though Yoshika trusted her to take care of herself.

Worst of all, the chaotic essence of the storm had formed—or attracted—hundreds of elementals. Sky, Mist, Lightning, Water, Air, and even a few Darkness elementals swarmed them from every direction, slowing their pace to a crawl as they fought for every inch of progress.

And Yoshika couldn’t even be sure it was progress. If she was understanding Jianmo’s map correctly, then she was supposed to follow the same bearing until she reached a final leyline that would lead directly to the tomb—but how was she supposed to keep her bearings in that mess?

“Look out!”

Yue’s shout alerted Yoshika just in time for her mana shield to deflect a powerful bolt of lightning, but the lightning hadn’t been what Yue was warning her about. She pushed the power of Jia’s flight to swerve out of the way of a living chunk of ice surrounded by an orbit of viciously sharp hailstones.

The Ice elemental tried to follow her, but a lance of fire slowed it down before Yan De smashed into it like a fiery meteor.

“A tough one! Must have been hiding up in the clouds. Try not to get my daughter killed, Miss Lee.”

Yan De’s battle with the elemental carried him away before Yoshika could offer a response. All she could do was try to push forward—if she could just figure out which way forward was.

“Over there! What’s that?”

Ja Yun pointed out into the distance, where a shining beacon stood out against the black clouds. Yoshika couldn’t make out what it was, but anything was better than the blind stumbling she was otherwise stuck with—she began fighting toward the light.

Her heart almost stopped when she got close enough to make out the source—two sources. A pair of brightly glowing eyes, that were each larger than she was tall. They were attached to a massive serpent with a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth that dripped with venom.

The sea monster was the most excessive killing machine that Yoshika had ever laid eyes on, with the possible exception of the one riding it.

Ienaga Yumi stood with her feet planted on either side of the serpent’s skull, gripping a spiny fin for balance as it writhed its way toward them. Apparently, she’d found her leviathan.

“Yoshika! Fly back the way I just came and don’t stop for anything!”

“What? Why, what’s over there?”

“No time, just go!”

Ienaga’s booming voice must have annoyed the monster she was riding, because it let out a sky-piercing shriek before a tail the size of one of Songdo’s towers rose up out of the ocean and came crashing down toward her. She responded by wrenching the spine she was holding to the side and slashing up at the tail with her free hand.

The fiend screeched again as an enormous cut opened up on its tail, and the attack was aborted while it writhed in pain. Every twist of its giant body sent splashes of water high enough to hit the clouds, and Yoshika decided to stop gawking and follow Ienaga’s orders.

Gathering behind Ja Yun’s shield, Yoshika piled on her own defenses and charged forward, the rest of the group following behind her. Guan Yu, Yan De, and Sovereign Shen worked to remove the threats around her while Bai Renshu protected the others from the storm itself. Master Ienaga was kept busy wrestling the leviathan.

The storm got even more intense as Yoshika flew, and more elementals emerged from above and below to swarm them. It felt like hours, slogging through the storm as the sky and sea seemed to close down on them—as though the world itself was trying to swallow them whole.

Then everything stopped. Like passing through a curtain, the storm just ended. Clear skies revealed a bright, sunny day, even as the storm raged on angrily behind them.

The mana was unbearably intense. Yoshika had never felt anything like it, even at the peak of Geumji—the single most powerful confluence of leylines on the entire mainland. Her domain was being oppressed by the weight of the world, untethered from any sort of will. Just raw, untamed power pressing against her from every direction.

On the horizon, another storm darkened the sky ahead, and Yoshika was about to groan when she came to a chilling realization. It wasn’t another storm—it was the same storm. A thick wall of clouds on every horizon—the eye of an impossibly huge cyclone of destruction.

The elementals didn’t try to follow them into the eye, and there was no sign of Ienaga or her leviathan either.

“Ancestors, is every ocean storm like that?”

Shen Yu scoffed at Yoshika’s question.

“No. This is not a natural phenomenon—the essence here is warped and chaotic. We must be getting close.”

Yoshika wasn’t sure that she could even find the next leyline, the way her domain was being suppressed. She could still sense a lot of the world around her, but exerting her domain was like trying to lift weights—there was a limit to how far she could push, and how long she could keep it up.

It didn’t matter, though. She could see where they needed to go. There was an enormous maelstrom of water in the center of the eye, practically mirroring the cyclone surrounding it.

They weren’t just close—they had arrived.

Yoshika tried to stay calm as she assessed the situation. She didn’t see any immediate sign of Longyan or the dragons, which meant that either they’d arrived far too early or late, or they were already waiting at the ocean floor.

She had no idea how deep the ocean was or what sort of dangers would await them within the maelstrom, but with only Guan Yu present to back them up, she was far more worried about her own allies turning on her once they realized just how close the tomb was.

Had Ienaga defeated that fiend and recovered its core? Was it the right kind? Yoshika’s mind swam with possibilities and scenarios, but there was nowhere for her to go but forward. She’d just have to deal with whatever fate had in store.

As she flew towards the maelstrom, she reached out with her domain to touch her friends’ auras.

“Ja Yun, Yue, can you hear us?”

During the trip, Yoshika had been communicating telepathically with Ja Yun, using the communication style of elementals—who shared their thoughts directly. With practice, they’d tried to refine it into a less intense form of mental communication.

Yue winced a bit.

“Loud and clear. Too loud, in fact—I thought this was meant to be gentler?”

“This was the best we could do. The only alternative was Melody of the Dreaming Moon, but I think breaking out into song would be a little too conspicuous.”

Ja Yun gave them the mental equivalent of a sigh, her own mental communications much more refined than Yue or Yoshika’s.

“Yoshika’s improved a lot, actually. When I first taught her how to talk like this, Jia practically blew my brain out of my ears. You get used to it after a while.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’ve all taken a perfectly good method of instant communication and ruined it by turning it into these impossibly long-winded whispers. Why even bother?”

Yue blinked, furrowing her brows.

“Who was that? I’m having a hard time distinguishing voices like this.”

“It’s me, Iseul. Did you forget I was here?”

“No, I just didn’t expect you to be so...eloquent.”

Yoshika felt a mental eyeroll from Iseul, who had to have learned it from Ja Yun.

“‘Eloquent’ isn’t the word I’d use. Because I wouldn’t use any words. It’s so much faster to just go—”

Iseul blasted them with a comprehensive breakdown of the advantages of mental communication, and all of the ways that they had thrown away those advantages for the sake of emulating pointless human conversation.

Yue cringed and rubbed her temples.

“Ow...”

Ja Yun smacked the chestplate of her armor, drawing confused glances from some of their escorts. She ignored them as she admonished the little elemental.

“Iseul, no! Yue can’t understand you like that, and the rest of us have to spend more time trying to make sense of it than if you’d just translated it into words!”

“Not Yoshika!”

“Yoshika’s a monster! She doesn’t count.”

Yoshika smiled wryly.

“Ouch. We’re two monsters, thank you very much. But seriously, please stop bickering, I’m talking to you like this for a reason.”

The girls quickly sobered, giving Yoshika their full attention as she went on.

“Shen is right—we’re getting close. Really close. I have to trust that Ienaga is going to catch up, but right now there’s a very real chance that we make it to the tomb before she does, and that Longyan and the dragons will be waiting for us.”

Yue frowned.

“I don’t like our chances in that scenario. Any chance we can stall?”

“Shen is already starting to suspect us. He’s been staring us down ever since we started moving again, and I think he knows how close we are.”

“So he’s weighing his options. Turn on us now, while we’re missing a protector, and risk weakening himself for the upcoming confrontation, or wait for confirmation and risk losing the opportunity.”

Yoshika gave a mental shrug.

“I don’t know, but it’s probably something like that.”

Ja Yun’s panicked voice interrupted their discussion.

“Oh shit! I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

Yoshika didn’t have time to ask why as another giant serpent exploded from the surface of the water, just before they made it to the edge of the maelstrom.

Her blood ran cold as she realized that not only was it not the same sea serpent that Ienaga had been wrestling with, but it wasn’t a sea monster at all.

A long, lithe body that rippled with strength, covered by scintillating layers of overlapping scales. Fierce, intelligent eyes behind a powerful jaw filled with rows of razor sharp fangs. Four legs, ending in grasping claws that were as likely to crush a victim as they were to cut. And a pair of distinctive, antler-like horns adorning its brow.

Yoshika had never seen one in person, but she knew what it was in an instant. Books and illustrations failed to do it justice. Even Do Hye’s fanciful illusions hadn’t come close to capturing its majesty. Even in the mana dense environment of the storm and surrounded by xiantian cultivators, Yoshika could feel the power radiating from the creature blocking their path.

They had just met a dragon.