Higher Plain Ch 38: Evolution The Coming Of A Monster!

Krelzor's knuckles were white against the splintering wood of the porch handle, his body rattling with every quake that rippled through the land. The boards beneath his boots groaned as though the farm itself were about to be pulled apart. Dust spilled from the rafters, tools clattered against the barn wall, and still he clung on.

The sea was so far away—miles upon miles beyond the rolling hills and fields of golden grain—and yet its weight pressed against his bones as if the waves themselves had come to swallow his home. He felt it with every thunderous tremor: the steps, the shifts, the incomprehensible weight of the Xylarion titans moving in the waters.

It was wrong. Wrong that something so distant could rattle the nails in his walls, wrong that voices too high above to see could shake the air like storms.

"They don't belong here," he muttered hoarsely, his voice lost to the howling wind. "Not on this plain."

Another crash rolled across the ground, knocking an old clay pot off the windowsill. Krelzor winced and squeezed the handle tighter. His lips parted in a whisper, almost a prayer.

"Fay... please be careful."

⸻

Far out across the ocean, that very name hung heavy in the salt air.

Faylina stood beside Kaelira, both of their towering forms like mountains rooted in the sea. Waves coiled and broke violently against their legs, froth spreading out in desperate spirals. The sisters' gazes turned downward, watching as the ocean beneath them twisted restlessly.

Faylina tilted her head, strands of golden hair sliding across her cheek as she peered closer. The water shimmered strangely—and then she saw them.

Tiny dots, struggling against the swell. At first she thought them driftwood, but no—they moved with intent. Ships. Little crafts of wood and iron, no larger to her eye than ants, braving the fury of waves that to them must have been walls of death.

Her chest tightened. A soft, almost guilty expression crossed her features.

"Little ones," she murmured.

Lowering herself carefully, Faylina knelt so close her knees sent sprays of foam rolling outward. She cupped one great hand beneath the surface, scooping water in a wide cradle. She tried not to pinch, tried not to press too hard, though she didn't realize that even her gentlest movements pulled at the fragile vessels like twigs caught in a tide.

The tiny ships bobbed helplessly in her palm, their crews surely unable to comprehend that their world was now tilted by the curve of her hand alone. Faylina raised them slightly, her eyes softening with something between wonder and sorrow.

"Be still," she whispered as though speaking to frightened birds.

But before she could linger longer, Kaelira's voice cut sharp beside her.

"Faylina!"

The silver-haired titaness loomed tall, water streaming from her steel armor, her gaze stern as her voice thundered. "Put them down. We don't have time to waste on the little ones. Not now."

Faylina's shoulders flinched. Her fingers trembled slightly as she lowered her hand, letting the water spill back into the ocean, scattering the fragile vessels once more into the waves.

Her eyes lingered though, her heart tugging with guilt. She opened her mouth to argue—but then stopped.

A glow stirred beneath the sea.

At first it was faint, almost like lightning reflected under the surface. But then it swelled, a sharp and unnatural violet radiance, cutting through the depths and staining the water with its poisonous hue.

Faylina's breath caught in her throat. Her eyes widened, her voice a whisper that trembled with dread.

"Oh no."

The light grew stronger, pulsing upward, as though the ocean itself were about to give birth to something ancient and wrong.

***

Captain Darnic Vey had spent his life on the sea. The waves were his bread, the winds his bed, and the fish his coin. The ocean had taught him everything—patience, hunger, fury. He had weathered tempests that snapped masts like twigs, storms that ate fleets whole. But none of that prepared him for this.

Before him, the sea itself seemed to have risen into flesh.

Great pillars, long and smooth, thicker than castle towers, stronger than mountains, plunged down through the roiling waters. They weren't cliffs, weren't islands—they were legs. Legs so vast they reached endlessly upward, their summits lost in haze and cloud. The ship pitched violently against the waves those movements spawned, tossed like driftwood in a storm.

"Captain!" one of his men screamed, clutching at the rail. "Orders! Tell us what to do!"

Another shouted, his voice ragged with terror, "The tide's pulling us straight toward it!"

Darnic could not speak. What orders could there be? Against beasts that with a single step churned the entire ocean into fury, what could men possibly do? His mouth opened, then closed again, his lips trembling against the salt spray.

He raised his eyes, slow, unsteady, and wished he hadn't. Above him—far above him, so far it made his stomach hollow out—was the impossible vision of a giantess. He could only just make out her waist, the lines of her hips stretching wide across the horizon, her upper body swallowed by cloud and distance. He couldn't see her face—not yet—but he knew. Knew in his marrow.

His voice cracked, hoarse, muttering more to himself than to his crew. "What a woman..."

It was madness. He imagined her vast form bent to his will, imagined grabbing her by that endless spill of black hair and forcing her down with all the strength he had left as a man. A foolish fantasy, gone as soon as it came. He barked out a laugh that was half-sob, half-madness. Impossible. He was nothing—a speck, a flea—to her. Nothing more than a gnat buzzing at her ankles.

The ocean groaned. The world itself seemed to shake.

And then—her shadow moved.

The giantess bent. Clouds shifted around her torso, light breaking as her massive body angled downward. The heavens seemed to descend when she did, her hand unfurling from the sky itself.

The sea screamed as her fingers entered it. Waves towered, ships snapped their lines, men cried out as the pressure shifted. Darnic clung to the deck as the colossal digits cut into the water, their sheer bulk displacing tides big enough to drown islands.

"Brace!" he roared, but his men were already screaming prayers, their bodies sprawled against the deck.

One by one, ships rose from the water, caught between those fingers as if they were nothing more than splinters in a palm. The wood groaned and cracked, hulls buckling as the giantess's hand closed, lifting them from the only world they knew.

Darnic's ship lurched violently upward, water sheeting from the decks as they were dragged into the heavens. He heard the timbers snap beneath his boots. He heard his men scream, felt them fall against him, pressed down by the weight of air itself as they climbed higher and higher.

A few ships below splintered outright, keeling over into the abyss as her fingers pinched too tight, their crews vanishing in a froth of wreckage and sea spray. Another capsized as its mast cracked, flinging men like toys into the void. The air was filled with screams, but there was nothing any of them could do.

And then—it stopped.

The suffocating pressure relented. The hand stilled, hovering.

The crew fell silent, panting, gasping for breath. Their eyes lifted slowly, cautiously, toward the sky. And there it was.

A single, vast eye.

Dark, endless, ringed in black lashes thicker than ship masts, gazing at them with the weight of an entire world. The iris stretched so wide it was like staring into an ocean itself, its pupil a void that threatened to consume them whole.

Darnic's knees buckled. His lips parted.

"My word..." he whispered, trembling, lost to awe and terror all at once.

***

Faylina felt it before she saw it.

A prickle against her skin, like cold needles dragged across her nerves. The ocean beneath her, already restless from her steps, began to tremble with a different kind of energy—one she didn't recognize, and didn't like. Her throat tightened, her stomach rolled.

And then she saw it.

The water split, not with foam or spray, but with light. A purple glare, unnatural and raw, pushed its way upward. It wasn't the soft shimmer of magic she knew, nor the glow of a star caught in the tide. No—this was harsh, jagged, almost violent, like lightning forced into shape and color.

Her chest clenched. It made her sick, that glow. Sick in a way nothing ever had, as if her body itself was rejecting the sight. She steadied herself, pressing a hand against her ribs, fingers curling into the fabric of her gown. The light stabbed at her eyes, and she had to look away, breath coming sharper than she intended.

But then—silence. The glow snapped out as quickly as it came, vanishing like a flame blown away.

For a moment, all that was left was the black mirror of the sea. Her heart pounded against her sternum, each beat loud, too loud. She strained her eyes, staring into the deep. Something had risen. Something was there.

And then—movement.

It broke the surface with a slow, deliberate wrongness, its body gleaming wet with seawater. At first she thought it was a man—small, pitiful, like so many humans she'd accidentally crushed beneath her feet. But no. She blinked, and her lips parted in disbelief.

It wasn't human. Not anymore.

The thing was the size of her fist—tiny, almost laughably small compared to her—but every line of its form screamed corruption. Its skin was charred grey, cracked like stone that had been scorched and left to cool. Across its arms and neck ran thin fractures, and from those fractures seeped a glow—purple veins of light that pulsed faintly, as though the creature's very blood had turned into fire.

It raised its head to look at her.

Faylina felt her entire body seize, her heart lodging itself in her throat. That gaze—sharp, furious, hollow—met hers across the impossible gulf of size. Her knees bent slightly, not from weakness but from instinct, as though her body whispered that even something so small carried danger.

She whispered aloud without meaning to, her voice low, wavering against the roar of the waves.

"...What are you?"

The creature's claws flexed, long, hooked, cutting through the air as droplets of seawater hissed off its body. There was no fear in its stance. No reverence. No awe of her colossal frame.

Only anger.

It had once been a seeker, a man hungry for knowledge, she realized with a shiver. And now—now it was something else entirely. Something broken. Something made to hate.

Faylina drew back slightly, her long hair sweeping with the wind of her movement, her eyes locked on the tiny monster standing defiant against a world that should have drowned it.

And for the first time in centuries... she felt afraid of something smaller than herself.