Two hours earlier, on the Empire's West Coast, in the Eternal Night Trench.
Hundreds of meters beneath the sea, sunlight had been devoured completely. Crushing water pressure enveloped everything, leaving only darkness and cold. Intelligent life rarely ventured here-yet for the Many-Armed Folk, it was a homeland where they were in their element.
In the dark water, three figures stood on a towering ridge of the seabed, letting the deep currents wash over their barnacle-covered, horny skin.
Kolsh and the chiefs of the Reef Perch and Sunken Bones clans behind him had their heads raised, watching the colossal creatures hovering overhead-the Leviathans.
These biological submarines resembled enormous deep-sea squid. Thick layers of horny armor covered their bodies, with blue bioluminescence shimmering between the plates, casting a pale glow through the surrounding water.
"Well, damn. Those big fellas sure look impressive, but with bodies that size... how much food do they put away in a day?"
One of the chiefs, Whirlpool Throat, scratched his belly with a rough tentacle and clicked his tongue at the shadows. "Keeping a bunch of money pits like those fed would take more than every fish and shrimp in our waters. Wouldn't even fill the gaps between their teeth."
He turned and shouted in a dialect thick with a trench accent, "Hey, Kolsh, old buddy, that's quite an investment. Once we finish this job, will that gill-less landlubber... no, the Count, really cough up the 'primordial blood crystals'?"
"Let's make this clear up front," the other chief, Golos, chimed in. Once a fearsome pirate of the Blackwater Ocean, he now waved his arms like a farmer choosing watermelons at a market. "We want the high-purity stuff, the kind that gets our youngsters straight through their mutation phase with one bite! Don't try feeding a few thousand