A ship coated in a broken barrier whizzed past Dane. He barely had time to brace before the waves that slapped against his hull, rocking the deck beneath him. As far as he could tell, only two ships were left in the battle royale. They would've been in the home stretch if the colossal Kraken hadn't surfaced.

  They were now trapped in a fishbowl. If he didn't end things with the sea beast, it wouldn't matter who was standing at the end.

  Dane fed mana into his new armor. Wards flashed along his frame, and a new bar flickered on his interface: OXYGEN – 100%.

  He glanced at his android first mate. "You're in charge. Watch for tentacles."

  The robot didn't respond. He took its silence as an acknowledgement. Dane opened a portal beneath his feet. The deck vanished, and he dropped straight into the sea.

  The water was nearly black, and he felt the cold start to strip him of his heat. The darkness was vast and smothering. His mind bounced around; he remembered the void when he was flung to Shattered Reach, and he shivered.

  His ward's blue glow was the only light, scattering in the murk. The darkness warped it, twisting outlines and bending shadows until he couldn't tell if he could see an arm's length or only inches. Sound was even worse; every groan of the Kraken below and every creak of the ships above bounced through the water in disorienting echoes.

  He grimaced. I probably should've just harpooned this thing from my ship.

  A pressure shift pulled at him. Something massive slid past in the dark. The current tugged at him hard enough that he clenched his jaw, shutting his eyes tight. He took a deep breath and tapped into the shield's reserves. His oxygen bar dipped past three-quarters.

  He tried to center himself, but the darkness pressed in, dragging old fears to the surface. The Mana River, the raging flow that he had based the jetting geyser spell on. Something he repressed slid out.

  His chest tightened sharply. For a moment, he swore he was back in the current, being yanked and battered between the jagged stones that the dungeon river had carved. I died here.

  Dane clenched his fist. It'll kill you. Quiet your mind.

  The panic snapped. His focus returned just in time to keep him from colliding with something directly in front of him. An eye twice his height, gleaming like a sunken moon.

  The Kraken moved with him, its massive pupil contracting, reflecting his wardlight.

  A voice rumbled through the water, distorted by depth and pressure. "Human… you are foolish to come here. To fight me in my element."

  It sounded like a whale trying to speak through a throat full of gravel. The noise was a crude beast tongue that vibrated through Dane's bones.

  The Kraken's pupil contracted, focusing on him like a predator debating whether the thing in front of it was food… or nuisance.

  Dane kept himself still.

  He saw the oxygen counter tick down by a sliver. The creature's massive tentacles drifted through the dark like drifting continents, each one large enough to crush a ship in half.

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  He didn't conjure his weapon.

  "I'm not here to kill you," Dane said, his voice muffled by water and mana, but steady. "The Crucible forced this fight. Not me."

  The Kraken watched him with its massive, moon-bright eye. A rumble answered him. "Human… your mercy is strange."

  Dane kept the creature in view and kept the panic chained down somewhere behind his ribs.

  "Walk away," he said. "Sink back into the Abyss. Let the contenders finish their trial. I don't want this fight."

  The Kraken shifted, and another wave of underwater current pushed him back.

  "You offer peace," the creature said slowly, "in your enemy's arena."

  "I offer honesty."

  "Honesty…" The Kraken's eye narrowed. "Kindness… restraint… these are wasted gifts here."

  Dane stayed silent.

  "I accept your sentiment, human. Truly… I do."

  Dane blinked. He felt tension bleed from his shoulders

  "...but I cannot accept your truce."

  The Kraken's voice deepened into a suffocating quake.

  "The ones who built this prison compel me. Their runes are carved into my flesh. Their commands are burnt into my mind. If I do not fight… I suffer."

  A massive tentacle shifted, revealing glowing glyphs seared into his pale underside.

  Dane's jaw tightened.

  "They did this to you," he said, almost in disbelief.

  "Yes…" The Kraken's eye darkened with a sorrow older than kingdoms. "And so I have no choice."

  Water around Dane swelled. The Kraken flicked a tentacle with impossible speed and tore at him.

  Dane used Blink.

  He reappeared several yards away, the tentacle carving through the space where his spine had been a second earlier. The shockwave slammed him backward, tumbling him end over end through the dark. His oxygen bar dipped again. - 47%

  The Kraken did not hesitate.

  Another tentacle rose from the abyss like a mountain pulled on a string. Dane steadied himself, hands on the currents, eyes burning beneath the water.

  The Kraken's tentacle ripped through the dark, cleaving the water where Dane had been a heartbeat before. The pressure blast alone bruised his ribs through the armor.

  Dane blinked again, reappearing closer, lower, barely beneath the beast's massive body. His ward cast blue arcs across its pale skin, illuminating more of the carved runes sizzling along its flesh like molten chains.

  The Kraken twisted, an entire continent of muscle shifting overhead. Its eye followed him, slow and mournful.

  "You move faster than light," the creature rumbled. "You bend distance. this is unnatural…"

  "I've had practice," Dane said.

  Then he attacked.

  He blinked forward this time towards the monster rather than away from it. And slammed his fist into the Kraken's runic underside. The warded bracer burned through layers of corrupted glyphs, searing the flesh beneath. Boiling clouds swirled where the strike landed.

  The Kraken roared, the sound vibrating the entire pocket of sea. The sound was pain and shock, not anger.

  "You… hurt me," it said, voice shaking.

  "I'm sorry." Dane blinked again, dodging another tentacle sweeping from behind. "I don't want to."

  The Kraken writhed, thrashing the water into violent whirlpools. Its runes blazed, forcing its body to move, not in its natural patterns, but in jagged, unnatural arcs.

  The beast fought in pain.

  Dane saw his opening. Each time the monster moved against its will, A ruin near its beak-like mouth would glow. Something was channeling mana into this tether. He didn't know much about compelling magics, but he would have to try something. If I break that, the creature might be free.

  Or dead.

  He blinked again, but the Kraken moved faster this time, anticipating the dodge. Another tentacle snapped toward him like a guillotine.

  Dane's ward flexed under the force, then he heard a sound like cracking glass.

  The impact sent him tumbling into the abyssal dark, spinning, losing orientation. The oxygen bar began to deplete rapidly. The vital gas was slipping out of the ward through the cracks. His head struck something, a stone, a chunk of wreckage, he wasn't sure. His vision blurred.

  Pressure crushed him from all sides.

  He forced his mind to steady.

  The Kraken surged toward him. Bright blue bioluminescence rippled across its body, revealing more runes igniting in sequence.

  The arena was forcing it to transform.

  "Human," the Kraken groaned, "I will return your body to the phoenix."

  It lashed out for the final blow, and Dane blinked, reappearing at its beak and driving a mana-charged axe strike into the rune. A shockwave spread out from the explosion. The ocean heaved, rippling for miles. The rune cracked, then shattered, light leaking through the fissure like molten sun.

  The Kraken convulsed.

  "No…" it whispered. "You don't know what you have done."