Land of the Blades

21. Livy

As I recovered my senses, I immediately started coughing water out of my lungs. I felt someone patting my back.

—There, there, get it all out —the voice I identified as Ghost's spoke, and as my coughing fit stopped, I finally was able to confirm she was indeed right next to me.

The last thing I remembered was Rider's ship suddenly sinking into the ocean. Now, we were on some sort of cave, sealed by every side but an entrance submerged in water, forming a lake in front of us. On it rested a gigantic beast, some sort of elongated whale with pincers and arthropod-like legs. It stood looking at us with curiosity, so I deduced that it wasn't our enemy.

—What happened? —I asked—, Caster and Rider had captured us and...

—He saved us —Ghost replied.

—I-I'm Livyatan of the Admirabilis —the beast spoke, in a rather childish voice, but without moving what I thought was its mouth—, it's a ples-pleasure meeting you, lustrous ones.

—An Admirabilis, like Ventricosus?

—Ah! yes... —the creature seemed a bit ashamed and even afraid, despite its monstrous size— W-we are sorry for what our king did, we are very sorry!

I closed my eyes for a moment.

—Don't worry, we aren't mad about it, on the contrary, I'm very thankful that you saved us —I said bowing my head towards her.

—N-no! This is the least I could do as a compensation for what our Ruler did.

—In any case, I'm really grateful that you were there to save us.

—About that... —she said, looking even more embarrassed, having to gather courage to keep talking— I had been following you since you entered the ocean!

—You were? Why?

Ghost tugged me from the shoulder and pointed towards my arm, the one that I had lost before and now was reattached to my body. There were also some shards of diamonds and others from a very familiar green gem, placed on a piece of red cloth that had been torn from my uniform.

—I found your arm while doing patrolling, and I took it to our king. She told me what she did to your people. I-I was overjoyed like the rest when our king and his brother returned, our kingdom has been only a shadow of its former glory after the Lunarians attacked us, and now we could prosper again. But I... I couldn't serve a king who would do such a thing. At least not until I repaid our debt towards us.

The Admirabilis told us that she left her home and went back to the ruins, searching all up until the winter for any gem shard hidden under the sand at the bottom of the sea. She then took them to our island, but when she got to the beach she was too scared to go outside of the water, thinking we would punish her. When she saw us entering the ocean she followed us from a safe distance, looking for a good moment to approach us.

I wasn't entirely sure how such massive creature could do that without us noticing, and I was very curious about her nature, but I had a more important question to ask.

—What happened with Caster, Rider, and the Lunarians that were attacking us?

—Livy blew the Sun spots by throwing streams of water against them, and damaged Rider's ship by pulling it underwater. It returned to the surface once she got us and we ran away, but the sails were pretty messed up. And about Caster...

The Admirabilis finally opened her mouth and from it Caster emerged, covered in saliva, and in utterly shock.

—Gross, gross, gross —she kept saying, until Livy took a sip of the water and shot a stream of it to wash her. Caster was less than grateful.