The Jellyfish Messenger

Chapter Six: Leviathan's Lair

Chapter Six: Leviathan's Lair

I continued to float for what felt like forever, allowing the ocean currents to pull me along. Exhausted and weak, I had little energy to start actively swimming, but I couldn't keep floating like this the entire time.

I needed to find Kale and Chrystal, but I couldn't catch the scent of either of them. I had no idea how far apart we had been separated. Maybe they had been caught by that human ship too, experimented on and dumped back into a different part of the ocean. Or maybe the waves had dragged me so far off-course, I wouldn't be able to find them again.

Rather than continuing to float on my back, I flipped over and welled up all my meager energy to swim. Even if it was slow, at least I could hopefully realign myself this way. Right now, I needed to place my trust in my instincts. My biological compass always set me on the right path no matter what. I just needed to keep following it. Thankfully I hadn't sank too far, I still remained in the sunlight zone. When I looked up and saw the bright rays beaming down, all I could think of was that huge, beautiful blue sky. A blue even more vivid than the sea, speckled by splotches of wispy white clouds. I had never witnessed such an incredible sight before. If nothing else, that was the only thing in the outside world I truly wanted to see again.

It made me realize just how tiny and insignificant I was in this great wide world. I really hadn't seen anything outside of my own little aquatic bubble. Even the sea was full of amazing and frightening things. But with all the danger and terrifying situations I had gone through, I almost forgot what the point of this journey even was. Were Chrystal and I really risking our lives so immensely just to deliver a wedding proposal to the prince of the Antarctic Ocean? Was all this really worth it? Even if it was supposedly for the sake of my kingdom...with every passing moment, I feared that I would never see my home again. With every mile I swam, I drifted farther and farther away from everything that was familiar to me.

I kept swimming along, lost in my own thoughts, until a flurry of little creatures flew past me. They looked like very tiny shrimp. But I noticed these animals. They usually moved in large groups like this, clustered together in a massive cloud. They had a name. I believe they were called krill. But to be moving in such a hurry, they must have been trying to escape from something. A large, distant thumping noise soon alerted me to the 'something' the swarm was trying to escape from.

A gigantic creature, far bigger than anything I had ever seen. It occupied my entire field of vision and took up a huge chunk of the surrounding water. It flapped its finned tail up and down to move forward. Its entire body was a dark gray, and its humanoid upper half had a distinctly masculine appearance, with a sharp-angled face and messy blue hair that undulated in the waves. He had shiny blue eyes and pointy ears that he wore the anchors of large ships in like earrings. I hadn't expected to see his kind so far out to sea. He was a whalefolk. To be specific, he looked like a blue whale, though aside from his eyes, none of his body was blue at all. Those sleepy-looking eyes scanned the water, likely focused on the fleeing school of krill.

I decided to call out to him. "H-hey there, uhhh...would you have happened to see a black jellyfish girl and a squidfolk with big fins anywhere around here?"

He didn't respond. It didn't seem like he heard me at all...probably because he didn't. He wasn't even paying attention to my presence, because he kept on coming straight for me. My eyes widened almost as big as his gaping jaws did when he spread them open, revealing the void within his maw. I could feel a suction, like I was being pulled toward that huge mouth...and that was a very bad sign. Panicking, I gathered up my strength to swim with all my might, catching up with the krill and trying to swim above them to escape the beast's range. But my tiny body could only move so far so fast, and with every flap of the whalefolk's massive tail, he propelled himself closer, covering a wide distance in a short time.