Chapter 536 | A Dropped Cathedral Bell

Chapter 536: 536 | A Dropped Cathedral Bell

Every head on the shelf turned toward me. Belle, Blair, and Hikaru all looked at me at once, Jordan with blood on his mouth, Javier with his pen frozen. Naomi looked down from her spire with her pink eyes wide and bright.

I had four cups in the vault that tasted like butterscotch and Belle’s stubbornness, and I had a divine suicide button in my chest that was forty percent cheaper as of last night. The quest reward sat in the corner of my vision in cheerful gold text, reminding me that Divine Overflow had been discounted like a mattress sale. Past me would have spent a week on the math. Current me just wanted everybody to get back on the ferry so Jordan could throw up again.

"Naomi, get in the water," I said.

She blinked at me. "You want me to do what?"

"Wave Motion is stronger underwater, and you know it’s stronger. Drop in under the head and blow it upward so the core rises to the surface. Hikaru goes in after you and covers your back."

"You’re sending me under that thing?" Naomi’s voice cracked on the last word, and then she caught herself, and her jaw set. "Okay, and I’m doing it."

"You’re not going under there!" Belle’s scream went up an octave. "Are you insane, Jace? It’ll eat her!"

"It won’t eat her, because she’s going to hit it harder than it’s ever been hit."

"You don’t know that!"

"I don’t know it, but I believe it, and that’s going to have to be enough."

Naomi looked at me for one long breath. I saw the fear in her face, and I saw her fold it up and put it away somewhere, and then she smiled at me, bright and a little crazy. She pulled the staff tight against her chest.

"If I die, you owe me boba forever," she said.

"If you die, I’ll haunt you, Naomi."

"That’s backwards, idiot!"

She jumped. She went off the top of the spire in a clean dive, and the Gold light trailed behind her in a streak, and she hit the green water without a splash and vanished. Hikaru took two running steps and went in after her, disappearing into the dark between the kelp stalks.

My stomach dropped with them.

"Jordan, give me everything you have left on the tentacles," I yelled. "Blair, you’re on the face, and don’t let those eyes see down!"

"You just threw your girlfriend into the sea!" Blair looked at me like I’d grown a second head. Her fire went wild across her forearms, and the water around her boots flashed to steam. "You’re insane, and you’re a monster!"

"You can yell at me after she comes back up!"

"I’ll yell at you now, and I’ll yell again later!"

But she turned toward the alpha, and she threw both hands forward, and the beam that left her palms came out so hot that it tore a tunnel through the humid air. It raked across the right eye cluster. The alpha reared back, tentacles jerking up and away from the shelf, and Jordan’s shadows snapped around three of them and dragged them down against the rock. Misato’s clones hit the other four with steel poles. One clone vanished in a spray of green light when a sucker the size of a trash lid closed over her. Another clone took her place so fast that the gap never opened.

"Twelve seconds," Javier shouted. "They’ve been under for twelve seconds!"

"I know, Mendoza, and I can count too!"

"Then count louder, because it’s making me feel better!"

I swapped the spear into my left hand and held the kama low in my right, and I started walking toward the edge of the shelf. The water came up to my knees. Belle grabbed the back of my suit and yanked me to a stop with more strength than a girl her size should have.

"Where do you think you’re going, Jace Monroe?"

"The core is going to come up fast, and someone has to be there to catch it."

"You mean you want to jump on its head," she said, eyes blazing. "You want to jump onto a giant monster’s head in the middle of the ocean, and you’re pretending it’s a plan."

"It’s a plan, Belle, and I’m the one who makes plans."

"It’s a terrible plan!"

"All my plans are terrible, and they keep working."

She stared at me. Her lips were pressed white, and the tear in her suit had slipped further down her hip, showing a strip of that black lace and the pale curve of her waist. Her fingers stayed knotted in my suit. Then she let go and shoved me hard between the shoulder blades.

"If you die, I’m keeping your jacket," she said, voice shaking. "Go, and come back, and I’ll kill you myself later."

The water under the alpha lit up.

It started as a pale blue glow deep down in the dark, and then it swelled and brightened until the whole sea around the monster’s head turned white. The kelp stalks snapped outward in a ring. The surface bulged upward in a huge dome, and a sound came up out of the ocean like a dropped cathedral bell, low and heavy enough to shake the spire.

Then the alpha’s head came off the water. ℴ

Naomi’s spiral punched it upward from below so hard that its entire skull lifted clear of the sea, streaming green water and screaming, and the underside of its jaw burst open in a column of blue-white fire. I saw a shape inside the wound pulsing gold, bigger than a basketball, and I felt it through the graft like someone had set a bonfire next to my heart.

Belle’s voice ripped across the shelf behind me. "Core’s exposed! It’s right there, Jace, and it’s under the third eye!"

Reaping Dash threw me off the edge of the shelf in a smear of black. I landed on a floating tentacle, slid, kicked off it, and fired Wave Motion out through the soles of my feet. The spiral shoved me upward in a gold burst. My stomach stayed behind on the tentacle.

The alpha’s skull filled my whole vision, grey and wet and glowing, and one milky eye swiveled toward me, big enough to reflect my entire body in its surface. I saw myself in it, a guy in a torn black suit flying at a monster with a stick in one hand and a death sickle in the other.

I hated how good I looked.

"Monroe, the tentacle on your left!" Misato screamed from far below.

It came out of the sea in a white spray, suckers open, and it wrapped around my waist and squeezed so hard that the air shot out of me. My ribs creaked. The kama hand was pinned against my side, and the spear hung useless in my left fist, and the tentacle started dragging me down toward the mouth.

A beam of blue-white fire hit the tentacle two meters below my hip and burned straight through it. The severed end went slack around my waist. I fell, and I twisted, and I landed on the alpha’s forehead with both boots and the coil of dead tentacle still wrapped around me like a very disgusting belt.

On the shelf, Blair stood with both arms out, smoke pouring off her fingers, her red hair plastered to her face with seawater.

"You owe me, Monroe!" Her voice cracked across the water. "You owe me so much!"