Chapter 12

The situation was far worse than I had anticipated. Not only were the fishmen adept fighters, but they also wielded the Aether with surprising finesse. On the other side stood Rafael’s crew — brave, perhaps, but utterly unprepared for real combat. It was becoming clear that I’d have to intervene more directly than I had originally intended. Tossing the fishmen overboard, as I’d done with the elves, wouldn’t suffice this time either. Unless they were dead or unconscious, those slippery bastards could simply swim back.

Annoying, really. I couldn’t afford to waste time on theatrics if I wanted to prevent too many human casualties. Truthfully, dying in my presence was a tall order. As long as no magic targeted the soul directly, I could heal wounds so severe that even decapitation wouldn't be much more than an inconvenience. Still, I hoped it wouldn’t come to that — watching heads roll would reflect poorly on me, especially as a former emperor who once ruled an entire planet.

First things first, I slowed the wind that billowed through the ship’s sails. We needed to remain in this blood-soaked patch of ocean. The scent of spilled fishman blood would soon drift into the deep, and with it, a new kind of trouble. If I was lucky, the colossal sea serpents would arrive — creatures over twenty meters long, their scales gleaming a deep crimson, much like a Humboldt squid, allowing them to vanish below a certain depth.

One serpent, in particular, always came to mind: the first to arrive and the most eager to hunt fishmen. We’d shared quite the history, that beast and I. Even if it couldn’t speak, it had always recognized me the moment I stepped into the water. But centuries had passed — perhaps hundreds of thousands of years — and even these long-lived predators weren’t immune to time’s slow, grinding hand.

A sharp cry snapped me from my thoughts. One of Rafael’s sailors — a big-bellied, long-bearded man — was fending off two clawed fishmen with more panic than skill. Both attackers were unarmed, but their claws were already stained dark with human blood. I blinked forward, appearing just in time to catch a descending claw aimed straight at the sailor’s exposed throat. With an almost casual flick of my wrist, I twisted the creature’s arm and impaled its hand onto the venomous spines of its fellow attacker. The fishman’s bulbous eyes grew comically wide as he stared down at his swelling, poisoned hand.

The second creature lunged, mouth agape, revealing rows of shark-like teeth. I delivered a sharp uppercut that locked its jaws shut with a muffled, gurgling curse, and a follow-up kick sent both attackers flying over the railing. One fishman managed a shriek of agony as it plunged into the sea, while the other, mouth sealed tight, could only gurgle his frustration before vanishing beneath the waves.

The sailor, meanwhile, crumpled to one knee, clutching his split-open abdomen with shaking hands. His intestines peeked through his bloodied fingers, but he was still alive — barely.

“Oh, come now, it’s really not that bad,” I muttered with a hint of mockery, gently pressing his entrails back into place. A flash of Aether later, and the wound sealed itself, leaving behind only a faint red line, as though it had never happened at all. Oddly enough, it had cost me barely any Aether to heal him — far less than it should have. Curious.

“Thank you...” the man managed to stammer, his voice quivering, eyes still glazed with shock.

“Don’t mention it. Now, on your feet! Time to show these fish-headed bastards what a proper punch feels like.” I clapped him on the back with a sharp grin and vanished in the next instant.

I could heal anyone on this ship — anyone, that is, except the one carrying the amulet. Rafael. Even if I couldn’t patch him up, there were still plenty of ways to intervene. Aether manipulation was off the table when fighting near him, but physics — well, physics remained delightfully impartial.

At that moment, Rafael was barely holding his ground, locked in a vicious three-on-three skirmish. I’d have to act fast. The fishmen were too close for Aether to be of use, so I needed a more conventional solution — something solid. And as luck would have it, I still had one more task to handle.

I blinked straight into the ship’s kitchen, startling the cook, who was just about to stir a large pot of soup. “Don’t touch the soup until I get back!” I barked, snatching the knife from her hands. The thought of returning to a ruined celebration feast after all this trouble was simply unacceptable.

Before she could even protest, I vanished once more. The blade left my hand the second I reappeared, slicing through the salty air like a cannonball. It punched clean through one fishman’s skull, bursting it apart in a wet spray of gray matter and bone. The second target fared only slightly better — the knife skewered his throat, cutting off any chance of a dying curse, though his lips still twitched in a silent, gurgling protest.

The third fishman had the dubious luck of being struck by the knife’s handle rather than the blade. A loud, satisfying bonk echoed through the air, and the creature’s eyes rolled back in its head as it crumpled to the deck like a marionette with its strings cut.

I waved cheerfully at Rafael before vanishing in another blink. The fishman mage was proving far more troublesome than expected — his water magic had just hurled two crewmen clean off the deck and into the ocean with a single sweeping wave. I reappeared silently behind him, breaking off two of his species’ venomous spines and, in the same fluid motion, drove them deep into his palms the moment he spun around, eyes wide with shock.

His hands trembled violently as the poison surged through his veins, fear and pain warring on his face. I, in turn, relieved him of his wand, plucking it from his weakening fingers with little resistance. Without wasting a heartbeat, I teleported beneath the waves, where the two sailors were still struggling against the pull of the sea. One had just broken the surface, coughing for air, while the other remained trapped below — held fast by two fishmen, a male and a female, who seemed to delight in their cruel game of tugging his leg deeper every time he clawed closer to freedom.

With a flick of will, I froze the seawater around their limbs, locking hands and feet into jagged blocks of ice. The shock plastered their faces as the buoyant ice yanked them helplessly upwards, their flailing, webbed hands waving wildly against the inevitable pull to the surface. I grabbed both sailors by their arms and teleported them back aboard, landing squarely in front of the disarmed mage.

One of the sailors collapsed, coughing up seawater as his trembling hands planted into the soaked deck. The other slumped over, chest heaving as he stared blankly at the chaos unfolding around him. Mortal bodies were always so fragile — I really should have blinked them in stages instead of yanking them directly through space like luggage. Next time, perhaps.

Both had lost their weapons, but that was easily fixed. I teleported straight to the ship’s modest armory, snatched an elegant elven warhammer, paused for a heartbeat, then shrugged away any sense of stinginess and grabbed a second, even more ornate hammer. Moments later, the cold steel was pressed into their palms.

“Rematch!” I shouted, grinning, and vanished again before either could fully register their new armaments.
High in the rigging, I caught sight of another fishman — this one armed with a harpoon — poised to strike a sailor below. I materialized behind him, twisted his head around until his neck snapped, and let his body tumble lifelessly into the sea, though I caught the harpoon mid-fall. Rafael's gaze met mine across the deck, his wide eyes a mix of disbelief and exasperation. I casually tossed him the fishman’s water wand like it was part of a game.

As I turned back, the rematch was already underway. The two sailors — now wielding the impossibly heavy, rune-etched warhammers — advanced on the fishman mage, whose trembling, punctured hands could barely lift in defense. One sailor swung with all his might but missed the fishman’s head as it stumbled back in panic. Instead, the hammer came down squarely on the creature’s foot. The scream that followed was shrill enough to make even the ocean pause.

Yet the battle still raged on around us. More sailors had fallen; three were already down. I couldn’t afford to idle. I hurled the harpoon toward another fishman, its tip burying itself deep in the attacker’s chest just as the creature raised its blade over a defenseless sailor. In the same moment, I teleported to the bow, seized one of the older fishmen by both head and leg, and with a sharp, brutal twist, ripped him clean in two. His torso still howled as it sailed through the air before splashing back into the sea.

“Come, fishy fishy,” I murmured under my breath, the familiar ritual phrase gliding from my tongue as the ocean drank his screams.

My next blink brought me to Rafael’s side, where I disintegrated five fishmen in a single sweep of black lightning, their bodies reduced to ash before the last echo of the crackling blast had faded. Things were escalating too quickly — too many fishmen, and too little time.

“This is becoming far too stressful. Send the sailors below deck — I’ll handle the rest,” I barked over the din.

Rafael, his face grim and taut, nodded once before dashing toward the stairwell, shouting orders for the surviving crew to retreat. As the men scrambled toward safety, I raised my voice once more.

“And someone make sure no one touches the soup — or I swear, you’ll be swimming home!” I called after them.

With the deck steadily clearing of mortals, I let myself relax, standing still before the stairway door, watching as more fishmen clambered aboard from the bloodied waters. They came in droves, each new wave bringing even more variety: some bore shark-like dorsal fins, others sported writhing, squid-like tendrils, and a few clacked monstrous crab pincers where their hands should have been. Their scales shimmered in every imaginable shade — blue, red, orange, green, even pale ash-gray. A living rainbow of nightmares, slithering and snarling across the planks.

Two fishwomen caught my eye amidst the growing crowd, their silver crowns gleaming as they stood apart, exuding an air of arrogant sovereignty. Each held a golden scepter, and the other fishmen bowed deeply in their presence — which was, frankly, a rare sight. Fishman society had long been dominated by males, with females little more than property or slaves. Their status alone told me this wasn’t a normal encounter.

"Shouldn't you be in the kitchen?" I asked flatly, tilting my head as I met their cold gazes.

The words hit harder than any blade. The tension on deck thickened at once, the mood shifting as one of the larger fishmen — towering nearly two and a half meters tall — let out a deep, guttural growl.

“How dare you! My queens, allow me the honor of slaying this insolent human. I will prepare him for tonight’s feast myself.”

"Ah, so you’re on kitchen duty as well? You know, I could tell you a story or two about that. These days, women can’t even cook properly anymore — I had to throw out an entire cauldron. Can you believe it?" I said, the corners of my mouth curling into a mocking smile.

The queens exchanged a glance, and one of them gave a slight nod. “Please do. And after you’re done, bring us the rest of the humans hiding below deck. This ship will soon belong to us.”

A voice cut through the rising tension from the side of the ship. One of the elves, still bound and forgotten near the railing, shouted indignantly, “Hey! This is our boat!”

The fishwoman’s lips curved into a sweet, venomous smile. “No. Now it’s our ship.”

With that, the Aether around her began to hum and bend, arcs of blue lightning flashing out in a split second. The elves didn’t even have time to scream before the bolts tore through them, reducing their bodies to smoldering husks. The air still crackled long after the light had faded — a mark of raw, concentrated power rarely seen in mortals.

I narrowed my eyes, a slow smile spreading across my face. “Tell me, do you still remember the name Tiberius, the Undying Lord?” I asked, as the towering fishman warrior stepped forward.