Harold

Gordon finished calling out their positions, and Vera sprang to her feet.

The thing underwater sensed something was wrong.

The river bulged, black water burst apart, and a large Deepclaw Demon shot out of the water, sweeping its long claws toward Vera's waist and belly.

She drove straight into the rush of its claws, stamping her left foot onto the deck. The narrow boat plunged lower, and her right foot swung out, smashing into the Deepclaw Demon's chest.

Bam!

It was less a kick than a sledgehammer blow!

The Deepclaw Demon's chest caved in instantly, while a cone-shaped hole burst through the scales on its back. Shattered ribs and dark red organs sprayed out together.

The monster flew more than ten meters and crashed into the river, leaving only a hole that the water swiftly filled.

"-" The Wet-Foot man in the reeds went completely blank.

Before anyone could react, Vera had already leaped onto the left bank.

The Wet-Foot man fired in haste, a gout of flame bursting from his muzzle.

The lead shot shredded several reeds, catching only the edge of her afterimage.

Gun smoke spread.

Before the Wet-Foot man could move, a tall figure flashed out of the smoke and pierced his ribs.

Vera heaved upward, lifting him clear off the ground with her greatsword.

His body slid down the blade, his own weight splitting his chest farther open. His gaping mouth managed only to spill a mouthful of steaming blood.

"Die!" Two axe-wielding Wet-Foot men hacked at Vera.

Vera pulled her sword free and turned, sweeping the greatsword sideways with a twist of her hips.

The greatsword swung like a massive axe. It struck one man's head, instantly crushing his skull out of shape and sending it flying with a length of neck attached, straight into the other man's face.

"Aaaah!"

The Wet-Foot man fell onto his backside in terror, his face covered in his companion's blood.

He looked up helplessly. Vera raised the Black Piercer high and brought it down, cruel and merciful at once.

The last Deepclaw Demon had just jumped down from the wall when it turned and saw Vera with blood all over her hands.

In its short life, this might have been the closest it ever came to developing intelligence.

Vera ran it through, lifted it off the ground, and flung it into the wall. Its gray-green body hit the bricks, every bone collapsing at once, before it slid limply to the ground.

She looked back. One of the Wet-Foot men on the ground twitched twice, so she went over and gave him another kick.

The fight was over.

Only then did the shotgun smoke finish clearing.

Vera flicked the blood off her sword, returned to the water, and brought Gordon ashore.

"I think you could've beaten them even if I hadn't told you where they were," Gordon said.

"A compliment?" Vera tilted her head.

"Yes."

"You can give me more."

They climbed the stone steps.

They pushed open the door into the pumping station.

The interior was spacious. To the left stood the boiler room, red light roiling inside. Three horizontal boilers sat side by side, with steam pipes extending from their tops.

On the right stood the pump tower. An enormous walking beam spanned the air overhead, slowly rising and falling as the steam engine ran. A connecting rod drove machinery up and down inside a deep well, lifting river water by the ton.

Then pouring it into the center of the hall.

...Onto an enormous clam shell!

It was as big as a car, its gray-white exterior covered in concentric ridges like growth rings. This was supposedly the Giant Clam Demon's shell, impervious to blades and bullets.

Sixteen iron chains hung from the vaulted ceiling, hooked to either side of the shell and suspending it in midair.

The intake pipe had been rerouted into part of some ritual. Black water was continuously pumped through cast-iron pipes into the top of the shell. The pipe mouth protruded into the gap between its halves, like a transfusion feeding a malformed heart.

Every few breaths, the shell contracted gently, squeezing warm vapor out through the gap.

The white mist carried a faint, sweet fishiness and spread across the floor. In both its aura and its properties, it closely resembled Womb Amniotic Fluid.

Through the gap, Gordon could faintly make out a human figure stretching inside.

This was a... clam man.

Gordon stared at the shell.

He had seen fish cultists with gills and tentacles, but an externally attached clam shell was something else entirely.

The shell opened a sliver, and a voice emerged.

"Gordon Vick. I've been watching you... I never expected you to swim right up to me."

"Brother, I came by boat," Gordon said.

The gap widened. Scarlet flesh writhed inside, the inner walls like peeled-open raw meat.

A figure lay curled within the shell.

Harold Wade.

He no longer resembled the Montfort Family's servant. His face was swollen from soaking, his skin translucent like a jellyfish. Six rows of fine gills had split open on either side of his neck, fluttering together whenever he breathed.

He reclined inside the clam, holding a colorful, transparent scale in his hands. His shoulder blades protruded unnaturally, and two masses of cartilage were trying to emerge from his back. His chest and abdomen adhered to the clam, connected by tough adductor muscles.

"Old Baz sends his regards," Gordon said, remembering.

"Old Baz..." Harold stretched inside the shell. "A coward, resisting the gift..."

"You sent Water Monkeys to the Montfort Ancestral Home to steal the sacred casket while you hid behind them," Gordon said. "If refusing the gift makes someone a coward, what does being afraid to collect the goods yourself make you?"

"The sacred relic is no mortal vessel you could understand," Harold said slowly. "And the Montfort Family... must be punished... Such arrogance... labeling a sacred relic and putting it in a glass cabinet. Slaughtering our kin..."

"Kill him?" Vera asked.

"Wait. I'm fishing for information. Enemies usually keep spilling important details at times like this," Gordon whispered.

Harold laughed, the sound echoing back and forth inside the shell.

"The black water will reshape my regrets. My new shell will protect my rebirth. The tidal birth is nearly complete." Harold seemed perfectly comfortable inside the clam. "When I open my eyes again, blades, bullets, and fire will only be able to kneel outside my shell. I will be born anew. I will escape death. I will become-"

"Don't rush to become anything yet. Think about your brothers and sisters," Gordon said.

"You..." Harold's voice stopped.

Gordon walked around the shell.

"You invoked the Silverfish Casket's power and summoned a bunch of Water Monkeys to disturb everyone's peace," Gordon said. "Now they've been turned into pot after pot of potions."

Silence fell inside the shell.

"Your little octopus-faced lackey secretly followed me around with my portrait," Gordon said. "Now he's a teaching specimen, contributing to humanity's progress."

A stifled roar came from inside the shell.

"Those Wet-Foot People outside were guarding the area on your orders," Gordon said. "Unfortunately, their main contribution was proving that people die when they're killed."

"You... maggots on shore!"

The shell slammed shut, and the chains shook violently.

Bang!

Not a single gap remained in the shell. It was like the locked door of a bank vault.

"See? Getting worked up again," Gordon said.

Vera walked beneath the giant clam.

After studying it for a moment, she swung her sword upward with all her strength. The Black Piercer struck the shell.

Clang-

The sword tip slid off, leaving only a white mark so shallow it was almost insulting.

"Wounds that refuse to heal" had bitten into it.

But this was a clam shell. It had never needed to heal in the first place.

"I can't pierce it," Vera said.

"Your sword is only fit to cut the flesh of shore dwellers. It cannot pierce my shell," Harold jeered, his voice sounding particularly muffled inside the clam.

Gordon looked up and examined it.

[Aberrant shell. It suggests you try a little harder.]

The ritual...

Gordon studied it carefully.

The giant clam gave off the aura of Womb Amniotic Fluid from within. Clearly, Harold had secretly collected it earlier, when he was still a servant.

Fine threads of light ran along the iron chains suspending the clam, hinting at some kind of spiritual imprint.

And Harold held a colorful scale.

Clearly, this was a complete esoteric ritual, every component serving a purpose and giving rise to some incomprehensible phenomenon.

The giant clam was impervious to blades and bullets. Vera could not open it anytime soon. If the ritual continued, it would reach completion-perhaps days from now, perhaps the next second.

"What's the plan?" Vera asked, watching.

"...Not a big problem." Gordon was already heading outside as he said it.

The two went back and carried the wooden crate of explosives into the hall.

They opened the crate.

[Fuse. It is waiting for an irresponsible person.]

[Detonator. Small thing, big temper.]

Gordon took out a detonator and inserted it into a cartridge, then bound several packs of explosives tightly together and padded them with waterproof cloth.

"I'd like to introduce you to a new friend, Harold," Gordon announced. "It's humanity's thunder, and it doesn't care whether you're a servant, a saint, an embryo, or a clam with especially strong religious ambitions."

"You dare profane this rebirth?" Harold could not see clearly what was happening outside, but he sensed that Gordon was doing something particularly insane.

"This spot looks good," Gordon assessed. "You know what? There are five pounds of explosives here. A generous charge."

"It cannot destroy the shell," Harold said. "It has been blessed."

"You misunderstand." Gordon looked up. "I don't want to open it. I'm not a chef."

"...?"

"The key is the shock wave. You in there still look like you're made of flesh. It's the same principle as blast fishing. A single underwater shock wave can stun fish or rupture their organs..."

Harold froze for a moment, then understood.

"You can't! You don't know what I will become! I am one acknowledged by the black water! I am the child within the shell! I am-"

"Mr. Clam-Carrier," Gordon said. "Welcome to the industrial age."

He lit the fuse.

Sparks bit into the fuse with a hiss and raced along it toward the explosives.

"Go!" Gordon shouted.

Vera scooped him up, shattered a floor tile underfoot, and shot more than ten meters away with him. Gordon felt the world spin.

The explosion came from beneath the shell.

BOOM!!!

Blazing white fire swallowed the hall.

The reservoir burst open. Every glass window exploded at the same instant into a glittering rain of shards, carrying flecks of moonlight into the Blackwater River.

The main water pipe tore apart at its joints. Tons of black water gushed wildly from above, like a severed giant python thrashing in its death throes.

A flying chain smashed through a steam pipe. White, high-pressure steam let out a piercing shriek and swept across the entire hall.

Several suspension chains snapped in the blast. The enormous clam shell tilted violently in midair, struck the main water pipe, then crashed heavily to the floor.

The shock wave slammed furiously in every direction, surging past walls and doors and throwing Gordon and Vera into the air.

Fire, vapor, masonry, and Harold's roar rose into the night sky together beside the Blackwater River.

Gordon thought he might already have died in Lundenim.

Then the pain started, which meant things weren't too bad.

"Cough-"

Gordon struggled to his feet, his ears ringing.

The pumping station's hall was unrecognizable.

The main water pipe had burst, and its twisted metal was still pouring water into the hall. Flames flickered fitfully in the boiler room.

[Water pipe. It has finally found a way to express its pressure.]

The edge of the reservoir had visibly collapsed. Rubble rolled into the black water with a series of plunks.

"You're not dead," Vera said.

Vera stood up, a shard having cut a gash across her face.

"That doesn't sound very comforting," Gordon said.

"Can you walk?"

"If Harold hasn't been blown to death, I can still run," Gordon said.

Gordon looked up toward the center of the hall.

The enormous clam shell lay on the ground. A crack had opened in its gray-white surface, releasing waves of hot, fishy air.

"Is he dead?" Vera asked.

"I..." Gordon's eyes hurt terribly. A jumble of erroneous information appeared in his vision.

Something flickered inside the shell. Flowing gray light, fine bone-white threads, viscous shadows of black water-and seemingly a lump of flesh that had not yet been named, kicked out of its mother's womb by someone.