A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

Erik's muscles strained. He swam as hard as he could despite the kraken getting further and further away. But, after just five minutes, its speed suddenly dropped significantly.

"There!" a victorious Erik exclaimed with a wide grin. "Growing up near the Norwegian coast with it's large fishing industry, you learn a thing or two about sea creatures. That thing is clearly a mutated squid, and they only have short bursts of speed, before being forced to resort to regular swimming."

Elora's anxiety dropped when she noticed he was right, and the squid was now traveling at a mere fraction of its previous speed. It's jet propulsion had ended.

Now, it was merely flailing its tentacles to propel itself forward, but with one of it's ten limbs missing, its movement was lopsided, making it even slower than it would otherwise be when swimming this way.

With renewed vigour, Erik surged after the kraken, now at a much faster speed than the squid was capable of. The pressure and cold of the ocean's icy depths were increasing rapidly, but he held on. His armour protected against the pressure, and as someone with the ice affinity, it would need to be far colder for him to be affected.

He had no idea how deep he was now, but he'd already committed to this, and he wasn't one to back down. Not so long as he still had a significant chance to get out of there alive. Continue your saga on empire

He was quickly beginning to close in again, until he was finally no more than a few meters away from his target. Seraphina was still conscious, but barely. Her eyes were unfocused and fluttering rapidly.

Unable to say anything, she simply looked at him with hope, gratitude, and pleading, while extending both her hands in his direction.

Erik wasn't one to leave a woman hanging, so he pushed himself harder, every muscle in his body screaming as he closed the final distance. Just as he was about to reach her, however, things got worse.

Elora exclaimed in his mind, her omnisense having picked something up. "To your left!" her voice cut through his focus like a blade.

He turned his head, the light from his helmet slicing through the water, revealing a new horror. A mass of fins and teeth, a mutated predator of the deep, barrelled towards him with terrifying speed.

He didn't take the time to properly inspect what this second creature was, however. He had no time to think, only to act. He turned forward again with determination, despite Elora's alarmed yell, "Erik…!"

Seraphina had also noticed the new danger, and her eyes were now filled with panic. She wanted to live! She stretched her body as much as she could to get as close to Erik as possible.

Anxiety and tension increased, because the second creature was now lost in darkness again. They knew it was there and approaching quickly, they just couldn't see it.

But Erik pushed those thoughts aside. Instead, he roared and pushed forward with all his strength, before extending his hand forward.

For a moment, it didn't seem like they were going to make it, and Seraphina's eyes became filled with despair. But then, their fingers touched, and that was enough.

Instantly, Seraphina disappeared completely, leaving the kraken's tentacle with nothing. Erik only needed a single touch to toss someone in his dimension, so long as they didn't resist, and that was exactly what he did.

There was no time to cheer, however. The kraken was continuing, clearly either unaware, or uncaring, that Seraphina had disappeared, but the second danger was still there.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"Elora! Eira!" he quickly exclaimed into his surroundings, causing the two of them to jump into action.

Instantly, Erik received a direction from Elora, and he used the agility from his snake blood to quickly twist in that direction. Just as he turned, however, he thought he saw another light shining back at him from the deep. But then he was passed it and put it out of his mind. He had other things to deal with.

At the same time, his light flickered past the rapidly approaching set of dangerous teeth. But all Erik felt was victorious contempt.

He had absolute faith his armour could hold up against those teeth, even if he wasn't about to get out of there. That said, he didn't know, nor want to know, what other deep-sea horrors were waiting just outside of Elora's omnisense. Honestly, he couldn't wait to feel dry land again.

Fortunately, Eira was working on that. While he turned, the missing sabatons from his armour appeared on his feet, covering up the ice-webbed toes. At the same time, four sigils flickered to life, one on the bottom of each sabaton, and one on each palm of his gauntlets.

Half a second of tensed silence followed.

Then, the sigils roared to life. Erik groaned as both his aetherium storage, and his Runebound energy were being drained at immense speeds, but the results were noticeable. Four jets of powerful thundersnow exploded outwards, freezing and electrifying the surroundings, but also propelling him forward.

Instantly, he was launched away like a rocket. Behind him, a massive row of teeth just barely missed his body. He couldn't use this before, for the simple reason that they were one-offs that simply couldn't be stopped until all his energy was drained.

Erik roared and his body shook as he surged through the deep sea while his energy was quickly leaking away into those sigils.

Soon, however, light broke through. He saw the sun again, and a wide smile appeared on his face. Moments later, he broke through the ocean's surface, and flew into the air, laughing wildly.

At the same time, however, both his aetherium storage, and Runebound energy ran out, and he almost fainted from the shock. But he gritted his teeth, and kept himself together for a moment longer, because he still needed to land.

In front of him was the African coast, and it was quickly coming closer. He was flying in an arc, out of the ocean, and towards the heavily forested mainland of Africa.

With a final, exhausted roar, he curled into a ball, bracing himself for impact.

He crashed into the forested land with the force of a meteor, trees splintering and earth upheaving along his path, until he eventually rolled to a stop.

For a moment, he lay still, breathing heavily, his body aching from exertion, and on the brink of fainting due to all his energy stores having emptied out.

Yet, before fainting, his lips curled up into a victorious grin, and he raised a trembling hand.

He snapped his fingers, and in an instant, he was gone, leaving behind only destruction as a testament to his passage.