Markets and Multiverses

Huh? 

I stared at the fish, dumbfounded, as I realized that I had already lost one of my two jobs in this fight. I had expected the glowing fish wouldn’t be tricked by my illusory boat after a while, but I had at least thought it would take a while. The fight had barely started, and my illusory boat was already useless.

“It’s third rune ability is lightning! Everyone, be wary of whenever its skin starts glowing, and prepare to dodge or flee! Good job, Miria!” Yelled my village chief, his sound carried by wind to spread through the area.

I felt a sense of relief, as I processed the village chief’s words and realized I hadn’t failed. One of the biggest dangers in this fight was the fact that we didn’t know what the glowing fish’s third rune ability was, besides healing and teleportation. Even if I had hoped to distract the fish for longer, the fact that we knew to be wary of lightning attacks whenever it started glowing would still help us win the fight with fewer deaths.

The glowing fish scanned our ships, snarling as it eyed them, before its eyes settled on a totally random ship. It clearly hadn’t realized where the illusion had come from yet - it was more pissed off by the fact it had been tricked in the first place.

The fish continued glowing brightly, and then its rune lit up again. I frowned. The targeted boat realized another lightning attack was coming, and the sailors began desperately flying away. At the same time, chunks of sand and stone started forming a shield in front of the boat.

Both were too slow.

A burst of lightning shot out of the fish.

The targeted boat suddenly dropped in midair, the sailors abandoning themselves to the pull of gravity in a last ditch attempt to dodge. As the lightning tore through the air, the lightning bolt bent, curving around the half-formed stone shield and slamming into the boat. 

The boat nearly collapsed as the smell of charred flesh drifted through the air. I resisted the urge to retch as I looked at the boat. The light from the rune of the glowing fish finally began to settle down, but I stared at the damaged boat.

Had the sailors died, just like that? I felt my heart leap into my throat - my distraction wasn’t working anymore, and the fish’s new attack was fast and deadly.

The glowing fish’s eyes whirled around, completely ignoring the destroyed boat as it scanned the crowd for a new target. The boats started to shift uneasily, as the sailors realized they needed to be ready to dodge now. Without my illusion distracting it, the fish would attack real boats now. And the fish had just demonstrated once again how deadly it was.

A boat flew towards the boat that had just been struck by lightning, and a woman jumped onto the boat filled with charcoal and corpses. She touched her hands to the side of the boat, single handedly stabilizing it, and then touched one of the ‘dead’ sailors with her other hands.

“Some can still be saved! Keep fighting! Don't lose hope!” She bellowed. Her voice wasn’t enhanced by runes, but in the silent wake of the lightning attack, her voice carried well enough to be heard. At the same time, I saw one of the ‘charred corpses’ on the boat start to grow new skin.

Finally, the sailors regained their senses. The glowing fish had locked eyes on another boat, but it was swimming away again. I wondered if it was wheeling back around for another charge attack. I was thankful that it wasn’t just resorting to lightning attacks - perhaps they were more mana-intensive than its other abilities? Or its lightning ability was hard to use? Either way, its lightning ability had some sort of restriction. That was good news for us, since it had a longer range than its teleportation, and was almost as deadly as having the creature devour a boat.

As the fish began to charge towards us again, another hail of magical missiles flew through the air.

Small wounds opened up on the skin of the fish, before the hunters with blood-related abilities burned mana to enlarge the wounds.

Water and wind users finally got to work now that my illusion was useless. Suddenly, gusts of wind and water began to furiously push against the approaching fish, slowing its advance as it swam towards us. Its ferocious charge slowed to a crawl, and for a few moments it struggled against the waves. 

The glowing fish bellowed at us, and the sound was like nails against a chalkboard. 

The fish teleported towards us, breaking free from the prison of wind and waves. All of the boats immediately flew backwards, retreating from the fish. Another prison of wind and waves formed right in front of the fish, desperately trying to hold it in place. 

If we could keep the fish imprisoned at this distance, it couldn’t harm any more sailors. I felt a surge of hope, as I realized the fish was unable to close the distance properly with us now.

Surely this would stop the creature? If we got through this fight with only one boat of wounded, it would be a massive victory. One boat of injured or dead out of one hundred and fifty would be a tiny price to pay for restoring the food source of the islands. 

Magic attacks continued to rain down on the glowing fish from all sides. I frowned, as I realized that the creature seemed to be grinning at us. An uneasy feeling crept into my stomach. It wasn’t glowing in preparation for a lightning attack, and it had just teleported. Why did I have such an ominous feeling?

The massive water currents our hunters were using to hold the fish in place suddenly disappeared. I spared a glance at the water and wind hunters, wondering why they had stopped imprisoning the beast. However, I saw them looking just as confused as me.

I turned back towards the fish, before noticing that the fish’s dozens of eyes remained locked on its target. The boat it was targeting had drifted uncomfortably close to us.

I wasn’t sure what the fish was planning, but the ominous feeling in my stomach was getting stronger and stronger. I turned towards Olav, who seemed to have also felt something was wrong.

“Dodge! Get away! Left!” screamed Olav, before we desperately flew to the left. Some of the other ships started flying away from the targeted ship, some of the chief’s ships flew closer to the targeted ship. I wasn’t sure what they were planning, but I wanted to be out of this area. The targeted ship was flying higher, trying to get as far from the glowing fish as possible. They also realized something was up.

The water around the fish suddenly bubbled, before a pillar of water began tearing itself out of the ocean. Winds started to pick up, tossing our surroundings into disarray. The glowing fish floated on top of the pillar of water, as our surroundings started to stretch and wobble in ways I couldn’t understand. 

Then, the pillar of water and the winds suddenly exploded, flinging the fish directly towards the targeted boat like an arrow released from its string.

The spine of the glowing fish contorted in a strange way, like a twig about to snap. While we were caught off-guard, the fish got within range of the targeted boat. Suddenly, it disappeared into thin air.

It reappeared right on top of the targeted ship, before its tail snapped down. Like the hand of a giant, the tail of the glowing fish tore through the targeted boat as if it were made of wet paper. The targeted boat, along with one chieftain boat, collapsed into splinters and corpses faster than my eye could track.

I gasped in horror, as I finally realized what had just happened.

The glowing fish used a fourth ability! Some sort of water-related rune that lets it launch itself around! I was shocked, wondering how in the world the glowing fish could use four abilities instead of three, before my eyes settled on its eighth rune, which glowed like a miniature sun.

Something was definitely wrong with that rune.

However, things hadn’t gone quite as planned for the glowing fish. Because after crushing two boats of sailors, its tail had gotten stuck on the second chieftain boat it had attacked.

I saw my village chief on the boat, gritting his teeth as he held his hands above his head. One of his shoulders was crushed, possibly beyond repair, but with both hands he firmly grasped the tail of the glowing fish. His hands had dug directly into the creature’s flesh, and as the fish’s body started to flop back towards the water, he dragged the fish into the air purely with the strength of his body and his wind manipulation. A moment later, glittering light appeared on top of my village chief’s skin, and I realized another chief was either healing him or empowering him.

“Hurry up!” Yelled my chief, as the fish started frantically thrashing. It only had a few seconds left before it could teleport again.

Then, I saw a giant bubble of water rapidly condense on the surface of the ocean. Sand and rocks from our surroundings began to fling themselves into the bubble of water, dragged there by the cooperation of several chieftains. Wind began to swirl around inside of the bubble of water, as if it were about to explode. 

Sand from the nearby island, as well as fragments of stone, bone, and other materials hurriedly assembled themselves into a massive spear. A droplet of blood flew through the air, before coating the surface of the massive projectile. The spear began glowing an ominous red color, before the entire projectile exploded.

The massive spearpoint was flung directly at the belly of the fish, and tore through the fish’s belly. It penetrated deeply into the fish, and I swear I saw a few of its ribs shatter, as well as a few fish organs.The fish shrieked, thrashing in agony, before its cooldown on teleportation finally ended. It disappeared, before reappearing in the ocean.

The wound rapidly closed on itself, confirming that the fish could heal flesh, and possibly organs. However, its bones didn’t heal properly - they remained uneven, causing the fish to swim unevenly now.

However, the fish had still recovered from a massive blow. It was actually injured now, but it was nowhere near dead. My village chief was right.

As long as this fish had mana, killing it was nearly impossible. It healed too quickly, and its teleportation ability meant it could flee too quickly. Its lightning ability gave it a huge level of lethality, and its water ability increased its mobility and how dangerous it was even when its teleportation was on cooldown.

I gritted my teeth, before glancing at my village chief’s shoulder. It looked like it was repairing itself, likely with the help of another village chief, but I had no idea how bad the damage was or if there would be problems left behind. However, at the very least he was still alive.

The fish took a big look around the area, its dozens of eyes spinning wildly in circles. For a moment, I was worried it would flee. If it left after this, all of our effort and sacrifices would be for nothing.

Then, its eyes locked on to another ship, and I felt a strange sense of relief. Even though that boat would probably be seriously damaged or destroyed, at least the ship hadn’t given up yet. However, the ship it had targeted was another chieftain boat. When I looked closely, I realized that the chieftain on the boat was glowing, his eyes locked onto my village chief.

Was he the one healing my chief? If he got killed or injured by the fish, it would make things far more dangerous, both for my village chief and for the rest of us.

As the fish prepared to charge, I hesitated, before an idea came to me. 

The fish had repeatedly proved it wasn’t very bright. It had realized my illusory boat was fake, but that didn’t mean it would see through my other illusions. If that was the case, maybe…

As the fish charged towards the boat with the healing chief, I created an illusion of the massive sand and stone spear the chieftains had used. My chief had made me practice this ability for the past week, and I finally realized that I could use it in other, more clever ways, instead of only making the glowing fish start to underestimate the attacks of the chieftains. After two seconds, my illusory stone spear flew towards the fish. 

The fish had just been seriously wounded by a similar spear a minute ago. Its memory of the massive stone spear was fresh, and so the moment it saw my spear, it flinched away. It completely broke off its charge towards the healing chief, and actually swam underwater for a moment.

My spear crashed into the surface of the ocean, before it shattered into motes of light. I didn’t have the ability to control too many different illusions, so the moment the stone spear was supposed to break into parts I totally lost control of it. But I had already succeeded. My village chief and the healing chief had noticed the fixation of the glowing fish, and were already retreating further into the sky. The other boats were surrounding the spot the glowing fish had submerged itself, preparing for the moment it returned from the water.  I grinned.

Even if my fake boat wasn’t fooling the fish anymore, I still had a way to contribute to the fight. 

A few moments later, the glowing fish emerged from the water, its dozens of eyes wildly rolling around as they searched for the target of these annoying illusions. 

Finally, it seemed to realize something. It looked at our boat, and put two and two together. Its eyes locked on to its new target, and I felt a tingling sense of danger as I realized the fish had finally figured out the source of the annoying light shows.

“Fuck…” said Olav, swearing as the glowing fish glared at our boat.

acaswell

So, Wednesday, after turning everything in, I kind of just crashed for a day and got nothing done yesterday. In hindsight, I probably should have predicted that. I haven’t had an actual weekend since I got back from my vacation at the start of January, so I’ve definitely been feeling kind of exhausted. Once I no longer felt the pressure of deadlines and stress pushing me forward, it was probably quite predictable that I would basically crash for a day. Planning Fallacy at its finest, I guess. Statistically I’m prone to crashing after large due dates, so it should have been obvious to me it would happen again. Oh well.

I’m mostly functioning again now. For those reading my other story, I’ll be posting the chapter for that story tomorrow. And I might or might not have a Markets and Multiverses chapter then as well; we’ll see. No clue what next week’s MaM release schedule looks like yet. We’ll cross that bridge next week. Should be back to at least 3 chapters. Maybe I’ll semi-crash on Monday as well, or maybe I’ll go back to 5 chapters a week. I have no idea. I’ll figure it out next week.

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